Cornerstone 02 - Keystone

by Misty Provencher

  “Maybe somebody should stay out here,” Zane says.

  “You mean, somebody should stay with Shred,” Shred grunts. “I don’t need no babysitter. I can take care of myself. Even against Fury freaks. Just hurry up.”

  We climb out of the van and follow Milo to the door. Maybe it’s the dark clouds that have rolled in along with us, but the apartment door is an olive green and it has a handwritten sign taped to the door that says, Go Away.

  Milo walks up the front steps and raps twice on the door before pushing it open. It isn’t even locked. Milo steps into a dark room and my field explodes.

  Barking erupts at the same time. Garrett jumps inside and I am right behind him. I can make out the stairs on the right, just as an obese Chihuahua storms down them. The thing snarls and Milo stops in his tracks, but he puts out a foot to scoot the dog back.

  “Go on, Princess,” Milo tells it. Princess growls like an overstuffed vacuum cleaner caught on a rug. Milo gives her another shove with his shoe and Princess lunges at his toe, clamping down with her front teeth. Between his own teeth, Milo growls back and he dislodges the dog with a hard shake.

  Princess doesn’t stop growling, but she waddles backward.

  “It’s okay,” Milo says. “You can come in. She’ll stay back now.”

  We file in and stand at the base of the stairs, in the corner of a dark living room that smells like dust. Robin keeps her back to the wall beside the door so she looks straight into the living room, while Zane keeps his back to the room, watching the door. Garrett, despite his casual stance, is keeping his eye on Milo.

  “Auntie! It’s me!” Milo calls, craning his neck into the living room. There is no sound, besides Princess licking her snout between snarls. Milo tips his head toward the stairs and calls up, “Auntie Ig! I’m here to visit! With friends!”

  I’m the only one that has no particular place to look, so I look everywhere and maybe that’s why I see her first.

  She darts between rooms. I only see the wisps of her long gray hair the first time. The second time, she skitters to a room closer to the stairs and I see what she’s doing. She’s weaving between the doors to get closer to the staircase. I can’t get the words out of my mouth before she’s standing on the top step. She is as pale and scraggly as a zombie.

  Her dress is dirty and torn in places and Ignatia’s head is covered in patches of long gray and black curls and bald spots that are frighteningly white and shiny. The biggest clump of hair is at her forehead, straggling down over her face. She is blurry behind it.

  “What do you want?” Ignatia says. The hair in front of her mouth puffs, but when she’s finished speaking, it lays flat on her lips like a filthy curtain. Princess hobbles up the stairs to sit beside her owner.

  “That’s right, I don’t have any change for the bus. But tomorrow, yes, he’ll come tomorrow. We’ll have ice cream in the shower,” Ignatia sinks down onto the top step, muttering so quietly that her hair barely dances over her mouth. Her bony fingers trace over Princess’s fat head and poke the dog in the eyes. Princess just blinks. “I promise, little girl. Someday, we’ll have you and you won’t have to be our Pinocchio anymore. We’ll put you on a chain outside, then. I promise.”

  Milo clears his throat and the woman looks up, wide-eyed, as if she’s forgotten that we’ve been standing here the whole time.

  “Who said you could come in?” Ignatia blows from beneath her hair.

  “Auntie Ig, it’s me, Milo. I brought some friends to talk to you.”

  “Milo? We know him. He’s a bad, bad boy. A traitor.” She touches her lips through her hair. “Do I know how to talk? Do you think I can? I don’t know you. Is that me? Is that what I sound like?”

  “I’m not a traitor, Auntie.” Milo sighs as he says it, but Ignatia shoots up on the top step so quickly, I’m afraid she’ll fall. Even Princess wobbles out of her way.

  “MILO!” she shrieks. “Where is he? Don’t you lie to me again! Where is he?”

  “He’s gone, Auntie.” Milo says and she melts like a witch in water, sinking back down on the top step with a moan.

  “Noooooo,” she howls, dragging her enormous dog closer. “Roger never loved you, you know. Only me. I wouldn’t let The Fury in.”

  The name numbs me to my edges. I imagine Roger here, kissing her, talking to her, walking up and down these stairs. All the possibilities of the life they had together, pour in. I imagine Roger carrying Milo downstairs on his shoulder for breakfast. Buying him a bike, even if there are no sidewalks in the complex. I picture Roger and Ignatia, holding hands and taking a tiny Milo for ice cream. But then I blink and see Ignatia standing on the top step again, with her streaky gray hair draped over her face and I can’t imagine any of it. The only image that flashes in my head is Garrett’s kitchen with Roger in it, his eyes unwilling to meet mine as he holds a gun to my mother’s temple. The numb fades and what’s left in my stomach is like burned spaghetti.

  “Who are you?” Ignatia pushes her hair away. Her face still comes to a center point, just like the young girl in the picture in my pocket, but all the softness is gone. Ignatia squints at all of us.

  “My friends,” Milo says.

  “The Fury are not allowed here!” Ignatia barks, but Milo doesn’t budge. Instead, he laughs.

  “I’m not in The Fury, Auntie,” he says. “You are. Remember?”

  “LIAR!”

  He chuckles again. “No, Auntie. I’m with the Ianua, remember?”

  Ignatia’s hand drifts across Princess’s back.

  “Ianua,” she whispers.

  “Auntie, these people wanted to ask you some questions about Roger.”

  “My Roger?” Ignatia sits up straight, her fingers finding one of the clumps of hair left on her head. She runs a few strands between her fingers, as if she’s straightening them. “He’s coming home. He’s late.”

  “Ignatia,” Garrett says as he moves up the stairs, to stand beside Milo on the landing. “You lived with Roger Maxwell?”

  “Live. I live with Roger,” Ignatia snaps. She runs her fingers down another strand of hair, but this time, she pulls so hard that it comes out. She flicks it away and finds another strand. “We live here. Together. He’ll be home soon and he’ll want you out of here if you’re from The Fury.”

  “We’re not,” Garrett assures her softly. “You and Roger have lived here a long time?”

  “Forever,” she says with a crackly smile. For the first time, I see all the dark holes in her mouth where teeth should be.

  “You must mean a lot to him then.”

  “Everything. I am everything to Roger. He’s mine. Forever.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Garrett smiles at her. She smiles back and it’s grizzly. “I’m sure you know everything about Roger too, don’t you?”

  “Everything,” she nods and a hunk of hair falls back on her face. “Of course I do. He’s mine. Forever and ever.”

  “But I think there’s something he didn’t trust you with.” Garrett grimaces as he says it, as if he doesn’t want to mention it at all. Ignatia perks up.

  “That’s a lie! Roger doesn’t keep secrets from me. Not me. He loves me more than anyone.”

  Garrett shakes his head as if he’s too sad to say anymore. Ignatia grabs hold of the banister and scoots herself down a step, craning toward Garrett.

  “It’s just something I heard,” Garrett tells her with a shrug

  “From who? Who said it? Milo? Clint? Was it the Mastermind?”

  Garrett pauses, tipping of his head. “The Mastermind?”

  Ignatia stops short, scooting backward up to the top step. “Dimitri told you to come here.”

  “Dimitri?” Garrett says, but she narrows her eyes at the question in his voice and takes hold of the banister, scooting backward up the step again. I see the shadow of how her lips purse beneath all her hair and I know he’s losing her trust. I step up beside Garrett and his energy crackles beside me.

  “I can see Roger r
eally loves you,” I tell her and as I say it, her arm relaxes and drops from the railing. One hand ends up between Princess’s bulging eyes, one smoothes out a stray piece of hair. I stand on the landing, looking up at her and for the first time, she looks down at me.

  “He does,” she says, as if it’s a relief to hear someone else say it. “Of course he does. No matter what. He’s mine.”

  “But if that’s true,” I tell her, “If he really loved you, he must’ve told you about Walter’s Memory.”

  My words hang in the air like black magic. Ignatia strokes both her hair and the fur between Princess’s eyes, so hard that the dog squints. I don’t think Milo’s breathing at all and even Robin and Zane are frozen in place, all of us waiting to see if Ignatia will answer. To break the tension, Garrett leans one shoulder on the wall.

  “Of course she knows about that,” he drawls to me, like I’m an idiot. Except that he winks. “She’s his one and only. He belongs to her. Of course he told her his most important secret.”

  “Me.” Ignatia snaps, petting Princess so hard that the dog grunts with each stroke. She yanks out another hunks of hair and lets it flutter down onto the steps below her. “He told me when I found it. It was a mistake! He said he’d leave if I told. I DIDN’T TELL!”

  “But he’s gone,” Robin says from the living room. “He left you anyway.”

  Ignatia turns back to flogging Princess and pulling out her hair and muttering frantically behind what’s left. “No, they’re all liars, Princess. He said they’d lie. But how do I know? I don’t know!”

  “But I know,” I tell her. Her hand pauses over top of the dog. “And he said the only way he’d know how faithful you are, is if you told me the same secret that he did.”

  “You know his secret?” she asks, watching me as she tugs out more hair.

  “I do. Roger hid Walter’s memory really well,” I say, trying to move things along.

  “Yes. Because he’s the smartest man in the world.”

  “He is,” I say, even though I know we’re each talking about different he’s.

  “No one’s ever going to find it,” she giggles. “Because Roger didn’t have to hide it at all.”

  “That’s what he told me too,” I say, hoping she’ll say something coherent. “But I wanted to see it to be sure.”

  “The old man…he was insane. Wrong as raindrops! All those numbers and letters…they didn’t say anything at all.”

  “At least Roger put it in a good place,” I say, but I know it’s a mistake when she jumps to her feet, tugging out one hunk of hair and going right back for another.

  “IT WAS NOT A GOOD PLACE,” she shrieks. She stands, coming down the stairs one at a time, as she spits through her hair, “He traded with Dimitri for them. Not me! It was only supposed to be me! Only me!”

  “So, the Mastermind has the Memory?” I ask and Ignatia halts on the steps.

  “LIAR! You don’t know!” she screams. I almost fall on Garrett. She scuttles down the stairs, toward me, pushing what’s left of her hair out of her face. “You don’t know!”

  But instead of coming down the last five steps, she just dives.

  Chapter 17

  IGNATIA SLAMS INTO ME LIKE a cinder block. My field explodes right before she makes contact, so I get a hold of her, but we tumble backward into Milo and the three of us go down the last couple of steps together.

  Ignatia’s scratching at me and Milo’s trying to grab her and Garrett’s hands cut through it all. He pulls me from them, Ignatia landing a kick, meant for me, in Milo’s stomach. Milo drops on the landing and Ignatia scrambles away, up the stairs.

  “Get her!” Robin shouts, but Ignatia’s already out of arm’s reach. She stops at the top of the stairs, whirling around to face us.

  “Kill, Princess! Get ‘em!” Ignatia snaps, but the Chihuahua blimp only wheezes as it straggles up the stairs after its master. Ignatia turns and runs, throwing herself into a room and slamming the door shut behind her. Princess is stranded in the hall.

  Zane hits the first stair, but Garrett grabs him by the shirt.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he says. “She told us what we need to know.”

  “We don’t know anything!” Robin says. “We don’t know who Dimitri is and if he’s the Mastermind!”

  “She’s got a gun,” Milo croaks, clutching his stomach as he gets to his feet.

  “Where?” Zane stumbles back down the steps.

  “In her hands!” I shout as Ignatia reappears, struggling to hold the shotgun up and align her eye in the scope at the same time.

  “Rule number one!” Zane hollers as my field opens with a crack. I swipe the Cavis away from my heart, even though I can’t imagine what good moving my Cavis makes when Ignatia’s got a gun swinging around at us. It’s not like she has to worry about a bulls-eye to my Cavis, if she’s got a gun loaded with buckshot.

  We both grab Milo on the way out the door. Shred’s settled back in the driver’s seat, watching a woman in a bikini weeding around her front steps, as we barrel into the van.

  “Get us out of here!” Robin shouts as she slams the door shut. Shred gets an eyeful of Ignatia as she busts out her front door and he guns the engine. I hang onto the seat, but the force of the first squealing turn rams me right into Garrett.

  The entire left side of my body molds against him and I’m held in place a minute by centrifugal force. The feeling coming off Garrett is incredible. My senses all come alive at once, as if they are arms, reaching for his scent and his touch and the sound of his breath. A wild burst of adrenaline rips down my side from my shoulder to my toes and back again. I pull in my breath, expanding everything I can to get more of Garrett in my lungs, my eyes, my ears, my pores.

  “Hey!” Zane shouts and he reaches over the back seat and wrenches me away from Garrett.

  It’s like being pulled from the equator to Siberia. A phone rings and Shred pokes Zane with it, so he lets go of me.

  I glance at Garrett. His eyes are shut tight and I watch as he opens them up wide, as if he just got a baseball bat to the chest or just came back to life. He shakes his head and flexes his hands.

  “You two aren’t gonna be any good to anybody if you’re drained. Milo, get in between these two!” Zane says with the phone away from his ear, and Milo, with a puppy grin, flips from my right side to my left, squeezing between us and blocking Garrett completely.

  But I don’t feel drained at all. There’s a raw current running through me, zigzagging around my body like a haywire pinball machine. My fingers are tingling. I feel like I could lift a bus.

  “What was all that back there?” Shred asks in the rearview mirror. He brushes the hair off his sunglasses and strains up on his seat to see us on the backbench from his rearview mirror. I don’t know if he’s asking about the electrical fire that just blew up between Garrett and I or if he means Milo’s crazy armed aunt.

  Zane hands the phone back to Shred. “We’ve got to get back to the hotel,” he says. “There’s a problem with the Outer Curas.”

  “Did they arrange a Totus so they can see the Addo?” I ask.

  “No, they’re moving on us.” Zane says. “As in, attack.”

  The van rocks around corners and bumps over potholes, but no one speaks. We can’t get there fast enough.

  We pull into the hotel garage and as we all pile out, Mrs. Reese comes down the steps with Freddie, VanWeider, and Zane’s dad right behind her. Their faces are all the same kind of grim.

  Garrett moves closer to me than he should, and asks his mother, “What’s going on?”

  “Milo, could you excuse us?” Mrs. Reese says.

  “Oh yeah, sure,” he says with an embarrassed nod. He bobs up the stairs and through the door leading into the hotel. Once the door is closed, Mrs. Reese begins again.

  “The outer Curas are banding together,” she explains. “Someone’s been circulating the rumor that our Cura is making a move with The Fury. They’re saying that we’re keeping
the Addo imprisoned and collecting Veritas. The Outer Curas are preparing to attack.”

  “Why would they do that? Don’t they know we wouldn’t do that to the Addo?” I say.

  “They should know,” Freddie says. “But someone’s stirring things up out there.”

  “Why don’t we just call a smaller Totus so they can see him once and for all?” Robin says.

  “We can’t put the last Addo right out in the open where anyone could get at him,” Ash Middleditch tells her. “It’s not like guarding the president. If somebody kills him, that’s it. It’s not like we have another Addo to take his place.”

  “From the inside,” Zane says. “That’s what you think. That it’s coming from the inside, right?”

  Mr. Middleditch nods to his son.

  “Couldn’t very well be coming from the outside,” He says. He cracks his knuckles, pushing his laced fingers down and out. “The Curas should be operating like we are. Closed up and suspicious of whatever doesn’t make sense. And even what does. But for them to be banding without communication to us, they must really believe something is going on.”

  “So what’s our next step?” Robin asks. Principal VanWeider unfolds his arms from his chest.

  “We could attack first…” he says.

  “Which would be suicide,” Mrs. Reese interrupts.

  “Quite,” Principal VanWeider says with a short grin. “But, I’m not proposing the usual attack…”

  “What kind of attack wouldn’t be a Kamikaze mission?” Mr. Middleditch says.

  “A small one, like Robin suggested.” Principal VanWeider answers with another polite, but short, grin. After a pause, which I think is meant to get out any more interruptions, he continues. “We cannot risk our numbers on a large scale confrontation and the Outer Curas have expressed their own suspicions in meeting with us in smaller numbers. I propose we try to isolate a few of the outer Cura’s Procella, then we would be able to hold individual Totuses with all those lead Contego at once, while also being able to monitor contact with the Addo.”