The Society of Imaginary Friends (The Conjurors Series)

by Kristen Pham

  Before she could ask what he meant, Thai closed his eyes. His entire body shuddered, and when he opened his eyes, she saw they had changed from dark brown to a soft gold. Thai had disappeared inside of himself, and the owner of these wide eyes blinked at her with wide-eyed confusion.

  Then he spoke, and his voice sounded subtly different from Thai’s—more gravelly, like it hadn’t been used in awhile. “W-w-who are you?”

  “Um, nice to meet you. I’m Valerie,” she replied, trying to keep the shock out of her voice. A shudder passed through Thai’s body again, and when he opened his eyes, she saw that the Thai she knew had returned. She breathed a sigh of relief as he examined her face. Then he nodded, as if he was satisfied that she wasn’t going to start screaming.

  “His name is Tan. The night I got so sick, a Conjuror named Midnight appeared out of nowhere, and after explaining about magic and the Globe, she described what was happening to me. I’m an amoebiate. What I’m going through are processes called mitosis and cytokinesis. Basically, I’m splitting into two people. I’m making an exact copy of myself, like an amoeba. First, all of Tan’s genes are created inside of me, which is what is happening now. Right now we’re sharing my body, and sometimes he takes me over, like you just saw. But in a couple years, he’ll physically split apart from me, and we’ll have two separate bodies.

  “There are a couple of others like me on the Globe, but no one on Earth for a pretty long time. When we’re fully separated, Tan will have the exact same genes as me—like a clone.”

  Valerie shook her head in amazement. “What’s it like when he takes over?”

  Thai gave her a small smile. “Weirder than anything you can imagine. It’s like being paralyzed inside my own body, which is really scary. But it takes a lot of energy for him to completely take over, so he doesn’t do it very often. When his genes are completely copied, we’ll physically separate into two people.”

  “Will that hurt?” she asked hesitantly.

  A fleeting look fear crossed Thai’s face that he tried to hide. “Yes. But it’s quick—the physical separation only takes a couple of hours. He’ll look exactly like me, and he’ll probably act a lot like me, too. The separation isn’t the part the worries me the most, anyway. Until that day, as he gets stronger, he’ll be able to take control of the body we share, and it will be hard to hide what we are. We’ll have to live apart from everyone. Not even my family will be with me. I can’t imagine being totally alone for months,” Thai said, and Valerie understood the dread in his eyes. She knew how empty and desperate being alone could make you feel.

  “Then you should both come with me to the Globe! You could always come back and visit your family.”

  “We can’t. At this stage, the Conjurors don’t know if Tan would survive the trip. And I could never let anything happen to him,” Thai said, and Valerie heard the tenderness in his voice, almost like a father for his son.

  “You care about him a lot,” she said.

  “Yeah. At first I hated what was happening to me, but I’m growing to like him. He seems more like a person every day. One who’s even more scared than I am of everything that’s happening.”

  “Can I talk to, um, Tan?”

  “Not right now. He doesn’t have the energy to take over again.”

  “Where will you go when he starts being able to take over your body more?”

  “The Conjurors found a place for me in some remote part of South America.”

  “That sounds so lonely.”

  “It will only be for a year or two.”

  “I’ll visit you both—all the time.”

  Thai smiled and then yawned. “I’m counting on that. Now that Tan’s resting, I’m going to try to get some sleep. And Valerie? Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For not freaking out about this. You’re the first person I’ve told. It feels good not to be by myself in all this.”

  “I know what it’s like to carry a secret alone, Thai. I’m glad that neither of us has to do that anymore. ’Night.”

  Chapter 11

  The next day, Valerie and Thai decided to explore the Giza Plateau, where they could go inside the three huge pyramids that they could see from the window of their hotel room, as well as see the Sphinx, a giant statue that was half-lion, half-man.

  As they were about to leave, Thai paused. “Hey, Tan. You have something to say?”

  “H-h-hi,” Tan’s gravelly voice said with obvious effort. Valerie almost jumped in surprise.

  “Your eyes didn’t change!”

  “Yeah, that happens sometimes. It takes less effort for him just to speak without taking over completely,” Thai explained.

  It was going to be strange talking to two people in one body. It would take some getting used to. She took a deep breath. “Hi, Tan. Do you want to see inside the pyramids?” she asked.

  “Y-yes. Thai told me a l-l-lot about them.”

  Valerie smiled. “You’ll have to tell me what you’ve learned. It’s all new to me.”

  “Ready to go?” Thai asked, in control of his voice again.

  “Definitely,” she said eagerly, excited to visit the site that would launch her to the Globe that night. Chisisi was waiting at the entrance of the hotel as they left.

  “Good morning to you both.”

  “Morning, Chisisi,” Valerie replied.

  “I caution you to stay alert today, young ones,” he added.

  “Thanks, we will,” she said, waving goodbye.

  Once they were out of his earshot, Thai whispered, “Who does Chisisi think he is, calling me young? I’m a grown man!”

  “Not much fun being treated like a kid, huh?” she said with a little snicker. “But Chisisi’s cool. He’s looking out for us.”

  “I know. I wish he would tell us who his employer is. Maybe he would know more about Venu.”

  Valerie shrugged. She didn’t want to dwell on the battle at Stonehenge. It was her last day on Earth, and she wanted to relish every second. The Giza Plateau was a ten-minute walk from their hotel, and she stared as the pyramids grew even larger the closer they came.

  After getting their tickets, she hurried over to the base of the Great Pyramid, Thai trailing behind her. As she stood in line waiting to enter, she looked up at the thousands of golden brown stones that made up the Great Pyramid. It towered above her, hundreds of feet high, its ragged edges standing out in sharp relief against the cloudless blue sky. “So what do you know about this place?”

  “I know it was the first of the pyramids built here. A pharaoh named Khufu had it built a long, long time ago—around 2500 BC, I think. It was supposed to be where he would be buried when he died, but they never found his body inside,” Thai said.

  They reached the entrance to the pyramid, and Valerie squinted, staring into the dark opening and trying to see what was in store for them. The second she stepped inside, an oppressive, humid heat hit her like a punch in the face and instantly made her start to sweat. The hall was dark and narrow, and she wondered if the space around her was shrinking and would soon crush her. A bead of sweat trickled down her back, making the hair on her neck rise. As they walked deeper into the heart of the pyramid, the same vibrating hum of magic that she felt at Stonehenge returned. It was so strong that it almost overwhelmed her.

  “It’s d-dark. I don’t like it,” Tan’s gravelly voice said.

  “Don’t worry, buddy, we’ll be out of this hall soon,” Thai said quietly.

  The halls split off in different directions, like a maze. An instinct steered Valerie away from the stream of people who were heading up the biggest of the passageways. “This way,” she whispered, leading Thai and Tan down a smaller hall that looked vaguely familiar as she recalled the images that had flashed through her mind at Stonehenge. The ceiling of the passageway was so low that they had to hunch over, and she felt as if the tight space was squeezing her. She panicked that she had taken the wrong path and they would be lost inside the pyramid forever,
doomed to search in the darkness for a way out.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the end of the hall and entered an empty room with a vaulted ceiling. The vibrating was even stronger in here.

  “It’s b-b-buzzing in here,” Tan said quietly.

  “You can feel it, too? I’m glad it’s not just me,” Valerie replied.

  “This must be the Queen’s Chamber,” Thai said, looking around the room with interest. “No one knows for sure what this room was for. Some people think it was supposed to be where they would put the pharaoh’s body when he died, but they changed their minds and built the bigger room above us for the body instead.”

  Valerie walked around the room, running her hands along the surface of the walls and marveling at the way the stones were perfectly cut and joined together. She knew that the entire pyramid had been built by hand, each stone shaped by a person, not a machine. She couldn’t imagine how they had accomplished it.

  “It’s near here—the room that will launch me into space tonight.”

  “I w-w-want to s-see it!” Tan said.

  “Sorry, Tan, but I don’t think there’s a way to get to it from here. I’ll have to start at the Sphinx and somehow find my way back here. Must be a tunnel,” she explained, and goose bumps rose on her arms at the thought of traveling through a dark tunnel beneath the ancient monuments.

  “That makes sense. Otherwise someone would have found the entrance in here, I guess,” Thai said, his voice filled with curiosity and excitement. “Lots of people have thought that the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx are connected, but no one has been able to prove it.”

  “I have this feeling from what I saw in my vision at Stonehenge that this whole place is a maze of tunnels that no one’s ever seen before,” she said, shutting her eyes and trying to remember the images that had flickered through her mind.

  “L-l-look! I don’t like her,” Tan said, lifting Thai’s arm to point down the dark hall that led out of the Queen’s Chamber.

  Valerie squinted and saw a flash of dark red that stood out against the neutral stones. Seconds later, a woman glided down the hall and entered the room. When she stepped into the dim yellow light inside the chamber, all of the heat drained from Valerie’s body. Sanguina. She stared right into Valerie’s eyes and her mouth stretched in a soulless smile of triumph.

  “Found you,” she said, and the sound of her voice made Valerie’s stomach clench painfully. Thai stepped protectively in front of her.

  “Get away from us,” Valerie said in a wavering voice. But Sanguina glided closer and closer, and Valerie knew that they would soon be cornered in the small space. “Run,” she whispered to Thai. “She can’t touch us; she’s projecting.”

  A part of her mind wondered why knowing that Sanguina couldn’t hurt them didn’t bring her more comfort. She decided to follow her instincts and sprinted past her enemy. Thai was right behind her. He didn’t need to ask why they were running—the danger surrounding the woman was so strong they could almost touch it.

  They were only halfway down the low, narrow hallway when Sanguina appeared in front of them a few yards away, out of thin air. They stopped short, and Thai yanked Valerie’s hand so that she was behind him. The damp heat inside the pyramid was closing around her, smothering her.

  “What do you want?” Thai demanded.

  “I know what you’re here for. And if you leave this planet, I will kill you. I promise you that,” Sanguina said, speaking only to Valerie, as if Thai didn’t exist.

  “If I stay, I die. You can’t stop me.”

  Sanguina was close enough now for Valerie to see that her eyes were as black as they seemed when she was unconscious. “I can and will stop you. And I will make your life hell for defying me.”

  As she stared at the woman who had hunted her for years, Valerie was filled with a desperation that made her hands shake. Would she never escape? “Why do you chase me in my dreams. Isn’t what you do to me while I’m awake enough?” she couldn’t help asking, and saw surprise flash across Sanguina’s face.

  “Your dreams?” Sanguina echoed, looking bewildered.

  Before Sanguina could recover, Thai gripped Valerie’s hand. “Remember what you said. She isn’t even here! She’s on the Globe. There’s nothing she can do to either of us.”

  Anger twisted Sanguina’s face. “You don’t know how wrong you are.” Her eyes bored into Valerie as if she would kill her if she could.

  “Valerie, let’s lose this psycho. Run!” Thai’s voice yanked her out of her frozen terror.

  She did run, squeezing her eyes shut as she passed through Sanguina. She and Thai raced away as fast as they could, never letting go of each other’s hands. They burst out of the pyramid into the bright sunshine at full speed, and didn’t stop until they were on the manicured lawn of their hotel, where they both collapsed, breathing in gulps of fresh air. Valerie looked behind her, half expecting to see Sanguina chasing them, but she had vanished.

  “Who was that freak? You knew her?” Thai asked.

  Suddenly, from behind, they heard a man clearing his throat. When they saw Chisisi, they sighed in relief. “Welcome back. You seem exhausted. Let me take you to your room for rest and refreshment.”

  “Thanks anyway, but we’ll be fine now that we’re back at the hotel,” Thai insisted.

  “You must not assume that anywhere in Giza is safe. Danger may lurk where you least expect it, even here at the Mena House,” Chisisi said, his tone sharp for the first time. Then he abruptly turned and left them.

  Valerie immediately worried that they had offended Chisisi after all he had done for them. But before she could chase after him, Cyrus appeared by her side. “What’d I miss? Who was that woman at the Great Pyramid? I barely saw before she disappeared.”

  “Sanguina. She’s been chasing me for as long as I can remember. She said she’d kill me if I go to the Globe,” Valerie said quietly.

  Cyrus looked shocked, but he quickly recovered. “She’ll have no idea where to even start looking for you on the Globe, Val. Everything about your identity and your trip is a secret to all but a few people. And once you’re here, I’ll be able to protect you. In the meantime, I’ll ask the others about who this Sanguina person is. Don’t worry, they’ll find her. She’ll never get near you.”

  “Venu must be working for her,” Thai said thoughtfully. “Maybe at Stonehenge he was trying to stop you from leaving Earth.”

  “I don’t understand. Why is she after me?” Valerie wondered.

  “Because you’re special, of course,” Thai said, as if the answer was obvious.

  Chapter 12

  Back at the hotel, Valerie and Thai munched on some fruit that Chisisi had sent up while Cyrus wandered around the room.

  “Is Tan okay? He seemed scared back there,” Valerie said.

  “I think so. When something is more than he can handle, he kind of retreats inside me for a while. He’ll come out again when he’s ready. But are you okay?” Thai asked.

  “It turned my world around to realize that there will still be someone chasing me when I go to the Globe. What’s waiting for me there is worse than what’s chasing me here.”

  “But there you’ll have your magic to protect you.”

  “And me,” Cyrus added.

  She looked out the window. The sun was already setting.

  “Are you ready?” Thai asked.

  “I want to thank Chisisi one more time before I go. I hope he isn’t still upset. We were kind of rude before when he was trying to help us.”

  “Fine, I guess you’re right. I didn’t mean to offend him,” Thai said, picking up the phone. “Hi, Amun, could you send Chisisi to our room? Oh, when? Okay, thanks.” He hung up the phone. “Amun said that Chisisi was heading over to our room twenty minutes ago.”

  “I wonder what happened to him,” she said. It didn’t feel right to leave without saying goodbye.

  “Who knows? Whenever we don’t need him, he pops out of nowhere. And
now that we do call him, he’s nowhere to be found. But we can’t wait around any longer.”

  “He’s right, Val. Let’s get out of here before something else goes wrong,” Cyrus added.

  “Well, we’re finally going to need these,” Thai said, pulling the night vision goggles out of their backpacks.

  Valerie grinned for the first time all day. It would be pretty cool to go all James Bond and sneak past the security on the Giza Plateau.

  Rather than take the elevators downstairs and leave through the main entrance, she directed Thai and Cyrus to take the stairs, hoping that they would attract less attention. The minute she opened the door to the stairwell, a sour smell made her cover her nose. As they descended, the smell grew stronger, almost making her gag.

  They were going down the last flight of stairs when she realized where she had smelled that rancid odor before. “Thai, watch out, Venu’s been here. That smell is his poison, I know it,” she whispered, and her fear made her feet feel as if they were glued to the ground.

  They both stopped, but it was completely silent in the stairwell. Thai then moved in front of her, murmuring, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Hurry up. Now is not the time to freeze up,” Cyrus said urgently, and she forced herself to hurry down the last few stairs at top speed and burst out the exit door behind Thai.

  “I can’t believe he was that close,” Thai said.

  Valerie noticed something lying on the ground, covered in yellow slime. She knelt down to examine it, and her entire body quivered with horror. It was a blue cloth with gold embroidery that she had seen before. “It’s that sash that Chisisi always wears,” she said, struggling to keep the panic out of her voice.

  “You’re right. What happened?” Cyrus said. Before she could do more than blink, Cyrus vanished.

  Thai yanked Valerie to her feet. “We have to get you out of here. Now.”