Whirlwind

by Robert Liparulo

  Tick-tick-tick. “Okay,” Taksidian said.

  Xander shifted uncomfortably on the bench. He glanced at Dad, who seemed to be doing nothing more than studying the other man’s features—the way Roy Scheider had eyed the shark before blowing its head off in Jaws. He cleared his throat. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” Taksidian repeated.

  Dad said, “What do you want in return?”

  “The house. Free and clear. And you gone.”

  Dad shook his head. “It’s not that simple—”

  Taksidian raised his hand, stopping him. “It is that simple, Ed. I know the property is held by an irrevocable trust, which means it cannot be sold, and the only people who may legally live in it are those in the King bloodline. However, I am a man of many resources. My attorneys assure me they can break the trust—with your consent, of course.” The long fingers of the hand not ticking against the table pushed the hair up off his forehead and smoothed the tangle of curls that covered his scalp.

  Tick-tick-tick . . . tick-tick-tick.

  Taksidian smiled. “Yes or no?”

  “How do we know you have my wife?” Dad said.

  Xander thought Taksidian’s smooth demeanor cracked a little. He wasn’t sure what made him think so: a twitch of his mouth or a blink that wasn’t calculated and timed. Taksidian said, “I thought that was a foregone conclusion.”

  It was Dad’s turn to lean forward. He said, “Nothing about that house is conclusive.”

  Taksidian glared at him. The ticking stopped.

  The waitress returned. As she lowered the plate with Taksidian’s pie, he pushed it away and said, “To go, sweetie.”

  She pulled it back as though he had slapped her hand. She set down a cup, saucer, and coffee decanter, and stormed off, her shoes loudly spanking the floor.

  Taksidian broke eye contact with Dad to glance absently around the room. “Well,” he said. “You think about it. In the meantime, let me extend a hand of good faith.” He gripped Xander with his freaky, intense stare. “The two of you destroyed my house, young man.”

  “You attacked me!” Xander snapped.

  The man’s gaze flicked to Dad, back to Xander. “You misunderstood my intentions. Regardless . . .” Tick-tick-tick . . .

  Again with the ticking. It was driving Xander nuts.

  Taksidian continued: “You also demolished a vehicle, a car I believe does not belong to you. It’s owned by a Dan Rainey, correct?”

  Xander looked at Dad. The car, the house . . . it was all a mess that would bring in the cops. How were they going to explain it without their whole bag of secrets spilling open?

  Was this just the trouble the police were looking for to arrest Dad—not on some trumped-up charges paid for by Taksidian, but for real and for good this time? Then Child Services would step in and take him, Dae, and Toria away, leaving the house for Taksidian to do with as he wanted.

  Dad must have been thinking the same things. He was trying to play it cool, but Xander knew his father. The concern was in his eyes, in a few beads of sweat that had broken out at his hairline.

  When Taksidian spoke, his voice was softer, affecting a graciousness Xander knew the man was incapable of feeling.

  “To demonstrate my sincerity about wanting to resolve our differences,” he said, “I’m willing to overlook this afternoon’s incident. What’s a little bricks and mortar among—”

  He stopped. Xander knew he had been about to say, among friends, but realized that using that word would have sent Xander over the edge.

  Instead, Taksidian moved on: “I’ll even make everything right with Mr. Rainey. He doesn’t have to know what happened to the car he lent you, only that he got a new one out of the deal.”

  “Why would you do that?” Dad asked.

  The waitress dropped a bag on the table and moved off.

  “Let’s just say,” Taksidian said, “that I’m not the bad guy you’ve made me out to be.”

  Yeah, right, Xander thought. He made fists under the table. His father wrapped his hand around one of them, gave it a squeeze. Xander said, “You think buying Dan a car makes up for taking my mother, for . . . for . . .” He was so furious, he couldn’t finish.

  “Not at all,” Taksidian said. “But it is a gesture. While you consider my proposal.” He slid out of the booth, adjusted his overcoat, and picked up the bag. “But don’t think about it too long. There are already . . . activities set in motion that could spoil our negotiations. It will take some doing to stop these events, and I’ll need to start right away.”

  “What activities?” Dad said sharply. He had abandoned his attempt to remain cool.

  This was Taksidian’s first threat since they’d started talking, and it didn’t sit well with him. Xander thought if his son weren’t in his way, Dad would have sprung up and grabbed the man.

  Taksidian shrugged. “Same ol’ stuff,” he said. “You know.”

  Through gritted teeth, Dad said, “If you come near my family or my house again . . .”

  Taksidian raised his brows as if to say, What? What can you do?

  Dad answered the look: “I’ll forget about repercussions. I’ll make sure you can’t hurt us ever again, you understand?”

  “Ed, Ed,” Taksidian said, as if to a slow child. “Let’s not go there. Not after we’ve come so far. I’ll take care of my house and Mr. Rainey’s car. You think about my proposal.” With that, he stepped away. He stopped and turned back, absently rubbing his injured fingers. He said, “Bring something home for your other boy. I think he’s hungry.”

  CHAPTER

  sixteen

  THURSDAY, 7:46 P. M.

  Xander watched Taksidian toss cash on the counter by the register and push through the door, causing a little bell above it to jingle. Through the window, he saw the man climb into his car and drive away.

  He turned to Dad. “Give him the house. Who cares? If we can get Mom—”

  “We can’t,” Dad said. “Not through him. He doesn’t have her. If he did, he would have offered something that proved he could fulfill his end of the bargain.”

  “But . . .” Xander’s thoughts were slamming around inside his skull. “Didn’t he have her taken in the first place?”

  “Probably.” Dad pulled the cup and saucer closer, poured in some coffee. “But I think it was to scare us away. It worked with my dad. It’s a lot cleaner to scare a family off in such a way that they’re afraid of ever coming back.”

  “And,” Xander said, realizing the evil beauty—if there ever could be such a thing—of Taksidian’s scheme, “if a family believes their battle is with the supernatural, not some human kidnapper, what are they going to do? Risk going to the loony bin or having the house taken away to be examined by the government for a thousand years? Either way, they’ve lost. They’ll never see their loved one again.”

  Dad nodded. “I think Taksidian either lost Mom or he never had access to her once Phemus took her away. But now he realizes we don’t scare as easily as my father did, and he’s bluffing about returning her. Maybe he thinks we’ll fall for it and then realize we’ve been had only after it’s too late, after he has legal possession of the house. Then he’d really be able to kick us out.”

  Xander’s heart felt like someone had played baseball with it. He said, “Then why take care of the house and Dan’s car?

  Wouldn’t they cause us enough trouble to get the cops on his side?”

  “As I said before, he’s not doing that for us,” Dad said. “He’s cleaning up the evidence against himself. The body parts, the sculpture.”

  “If all he has to do is clean it up, he can do that overnight,” Xander said. “Seems a small thing compared to finally getting rid of us.”

  Dad shook his head. “Crime scene investigations are pretty sophisticated these days. With trace evidence—microscopic bits of DNA that seeped into the floorboards or something— he’d have to replace that whole room, which is probably what he’s planning to do. But that’ll take
time. He doesn’t want the cops looking into the destruction of your friend’s car. That would lead them right back to his house—”

  “And he doesn’t want them snooping around there,” Xander finished, nodding. He stared down at the fake wood grain of the Formica tabletop. He drummed his fingers, realized that was what Taksidian had done, and stopped. Quietly, he said, “Then there’s that other thing.”

  “What?”

  “The future,” Xander said, throwing a glance at Dad. “Even if we could give up the house for Mom . . . would we?”

  Jesse had said saving the world from the awful future he had shown them was the reason they’d come to the house. Xander didn’t buy it, but if they could fix the future, it meant figuring out what Taksidian had done and using the portals to undo it.

  Dad frowned.

  Xander pressed him: “If it came down to saving Mom or the future, which would you chose?”

  “I don’t have to decide, Xander. We can do both.”

  Xander picked at a gouge in the table. He hoped Dad was right.

  CHAPTER

  seventeen

  THURSDAY, 8:45 P. M.

  Dad and Xander stepped into the foyer of their house and slammed the door.

  “Lucy, I’m home!” Xander called. He had never seen a single episode of I Love Lucy, but he knew the line. His nerves had calmed on the walk from town; now he was just glad to be home.

  David appeared at the top of the staircase. He was wearing Avatar: The Last Airbender pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt.

  The clothes, coupled with a big grin that broke out on his face when he saw them, gave him the appearance of a boy even younger than twelve.

  “Hey,” Dad said. “Where is everybody?” He sounded a lot more anxious than Xander felt.

  “Keal’s up here, working on the walls Phemus knocked down,” David said, hurrying down. “I’m helping . . . now. I needed a shower first. Toria’s in her room.”

  David’s bare feet hit the foyer floor, and to Xander’s surprise, he didn’t run to Dad, but to him. David threw his arms around Xander. “I thought Taksidian got you,” he said. “Until I talked to Dad and he said you were all right. I was so scared.”

  “Me too—for you.” He really had been. Xander had even prayed that David had gotten away. And when they couldn’t find him, when they’d called into the woods and he hadn’t answered, Xander’s stomach had twisted like an old rag.

  David stepped back and brushed his hair away from his eyes. He glanced at Dad, and his mouth dropped open.

  “What happened?” He reached for Dad’s forehead, but stopped short.

  Dad touched the wound, which was a thin, arching scab framed by a yellow-blue-red bruise. He made a face, touched it again, more gently. “I had an unfriendly encounter with a steering wheel,” he said. He used his fingers to comb his hair over his forehead.

  David turned to Xander. “Did you see Taksidian?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Xander said. “You’re not going to believe—”

  “Excuse me . . . pardon me . . .” Dad said, grabbing David, lifting him and giving him a fierce bear hug.

  “Uhhh,” David moaned. “I can’t breathe.”

  Dad set him down, mussed David’s hair, and said, “Sounds like you had an adventure too.”

  David’s eyes got wide. “I found another portal—to Taksidian’s house! Want to see?”

  “David was sealed up in a little room,” Toria said from the top of the stairs.

  Keal appeared behind her, tape measure in hand, plaster dust coating his face and clothes. Both of them started down.

  “Keal knocked a big hole in the wall with a sledgehammer! He looked like—who’s that guy you said?”

  “John Henry,” Keal laughed. “The mighty steel-driving man.”

  Dad met Keal at the bottom of the stairs and shook his hand. “Keal,” he said, “thank you.”

  “Well,” Keal said, “seemed like you had your hands full at the time.”

  “We have a lot to talk about,” Dad said. “All of us.”

  “Let’s do it in the kitchen,” Xander said. “I’m starving.”

  “You’re not starving,” David informed him. “You’re just hungry.”

  Xander gave him a puzzled look. “Uh . . . okay.”

  “You don’t want to eat your foot, do you?” David asked him.

  “Not today,” Xander said. “What—?”

  “Nobody has to eat any feet,” Keal said, brushing past them to get to the kitchen. “Toria made mac ’n’ cheese.”

  “With little bits of hot dog,” David said approvingly.

  “Dae ate like a pig,” Toria reported. “I had to make another batch.”

  David simply smiled.

  Toria stepped between Dad and Xander and took each of them by the hand. “I saved you some.”

  CHAPTER

  eighteen

  THURSDAY, 9:05 P. M.

  David sat on the kitchen counter, Toria on his right, the sink on his left. He watched Dad and Xander finish their bowls of food. They were leaning back against the island, near enough for David to kick them if he had wanted to. The kitchen was big, but they had positioned themselves in a tight group, as if instinctively knowing they needed to be close.

  Only Keal stood away, his rump wedged into the elbow of the L-shaped counter, near the pantry. But he could have been right among them, one of the family, David thought. He knew the others felt the same.

  The way Keal’s big arms crossed over his chest, he looked like the military officer he once was, assessing his troops. And that made David realize the man wasn’t family as much as he was a comrade-in-arms: almost as close as family, but a lot more useful in the heat of battle.

  David told Dad and Xander about going through Taksidian’s pantry to the bone-filled chamber—and totally freaking out.

  Toria and Keal described hearing, then finding, then rescuing David.

  “Then I fell backward into the chamber,” David said, “and went back to Taksidian’s pantry!”

  “Dae bit him,” Toria said, excited. “There was blood in his mouth!”

  “Taksidian’s?” Xander said. He made a disgusted face, looked into his bowl, then set it on the counter.

  “What would you have done?” David said.

  “Exactly what you did,” Dad answered, “if my mind were as quick as yours. Good job.”

  “Hey,” Keal said, “if the choice is between making a meal of Taksidian or letting him get his hands on you, bon appétit, David.”

  “Dad,” Xander said, suddenly smiling. “That’s what Taksidian meant at the diner.”

  Dad grinned at David. “He said we should get takeout for you. He thought you were hungry.”

  Keal laughed out loud, and that got the rest of them going.

  “His fingers were all bandaged up and bleeding,” Xander said. “Way to go, Dae.”

  “It wasn’t funny at the time,” he said. But the praise felt like a warm blanket on a cold day.

  “Or afterward,” Toria said. “He almost puked.”

  “It tasted gross,” David said, wiping his mouth as though something of it remained.

  “That’s not the half of it,” Keal told Dad. “Taksidian followed David back into the chamber.”

  “He was right there,” Toria said, “grabbing at Dae!” Her hands shot out to show them, and she almost fell off the counter. David swung his broken arm around, catching her.

  “What happened?” Xander’s eyes were cartoon-wide.

  Keal shrugged. “Chased him away.”

  “With the sledgehammer!” Toria added.

  Dad said, “But he can come through . . . anytime?”

  “I got it boarded up,” Keal said. “No one’s getting into the house that way.”

  “Well, I know one thing,” Xander said. “The Brady Bunch never had a dinnertime conversation like this.” He told the others about his face-off with Taksidian, the sculpture of body parts, Dad plowing Xander’s classmate’s ca
r into Taksidian’s house, the conversation with their pecan pie–eating nemesis.

  David realized his mouth was hanging open. He looked around to see Toria and Keal staring at Xander with the same stunned expression.

  “This guy, Taksidian,” Keal said finally, “he’s all over us, like dirt on a pig.” He shook his head. “He even bugged the phones.”