Mr. Kimble cleared his throat. “So you bring her down here in order to put her to the test and, miracle of all miracles, she passes. Now you no longer want to keep her down here? What’s the alternative, Kenneth? We take her home and then just watch to see what happens?”
“We have no choice,” Chief Quagmire said.
“We need more information. I’ll go gather it myself if I have to, but if we release Fern now, we’re putting her life in danger. I’m sure of it.”
“The vigilantes in the area will be keeping a close eye on her,” Chief Quagmire said, shifting back into his easy, charming persona. “When Vlad shows up, we’ll be there and able to catch him off guard, ready to silence him once and for all.”
“That’s why you’re releasing her? You’re using Fern as bait?” Mr. Kimble seemed angry enough to overturn Chief Quagmire’s desk.
“I would hardly call returning a little girl to her family using her as bait.”
“You never intended to keep Fern at New Tartarus. You had to see for yourself if she was the real thing, and now that you have, you’re sending her back. And you used me to do it. Kenneth, Fern represents one of our only hopes of stopping Vlad and the Hundred-Handers. You’re making a terrible mistake. Your actions are unconscionable!”
Quagmire began cavalierly: “There is little that separates the actions of those whom we deem evil and good. It is the cause a person serves that history judges and the results that person produces. Bringing Fern here was a strategic move, but one that serves a greater cause. Do you know how long we’ve all been working to find the Unusuals? How many people have dedicated their lives to our pursuit of integration? Rollens are tired of living underground. Word of Fern’s visit to New Tartarus—word that she’s on our side—will spread!” Chief Quagmire’s voice rose to an impassioned plea. “Fern McAllister represents hope of a better life to each and every Rollen!”
“Then why are we putting that hope in danger?”
“You’re a valuable member of the Assembly, Alistair, but I’m afraid you’ve always lacked the political savvy to lead. Think for a moment: You and I both know Fern doesn’t come from the best lineage. She may join the Blouts despite our best efforts. The Lins are investigating the existence of what we believe to be two more Unusuals, one on the East Coast and one in Europe. Both cases are very promising. Fern may be the first Unusual to be confirmed, but the sad truth of the matter is that we can afford to make one mistake.”
“You’re sick,” Mr. Kimble said. Hearing the noise his chair made as it slid backward, Fern could tell he was standing up now. “Vlad is going to show up and make you look like a fool!” The door of the office creaked as it swung open.
“Now, now,” Quagmire said, his voice condescending, “don’t become treasonous on me, Alistair. As chief of the Alliance, I must make the hard decisions. This is one of the hardest. You’d better hope we’re not made to look like fools . . . if not for the Alliance’s sake, for Fern’s,” Quagmire said agressively. “After all, it seems you’ve grown quite attached to the girl.” With Quagmire’s words still hanging in the air, Fern heard Kimble’s footsteps as he stormed out of the office and down the hall.
Chapter 19
The Homecoming
He should be thrown in jail! I’ll kill him if I have to!”
Sam’s reaction to Fern’s report on what she’d overheard was pure rage. He paced around the room, unable to sleep as he thought of what he and Fern could do to stop Chief Quagmire.
In the morning, Chuffy came by to tell the twins they were to go to Chief Quagmire’s office for details of their departure. Sam was set on confronting the man in charge of the Alliance. By the time they left for the chief’s office, Fern had gotten Sam to promise that he wouldn’t mention what they knew, convincing him that no good would come of it. They needed to get out of New Tartarus safely, and then they could think of what to do next. As they stepped over the threshold of the chief’s office, Fern tried to calm herself. Though Sam had promised her he wouldn’t, she knew there was a good chance her twin brother would confront the head of the Vampire Alliance anyway.
Fern, it turned out, had little to worry about. As soon as Sam sat down in Chief Quagmire’s office, the anger drained from his entire body. His eyes were empty. His expression was blank. Chief Quagmire began to drone on about their departure, staring intently at Fern and then at Sam.
“You had a good time here, didn’t you?” Chief Quagmire asked. His voice was so slick Fern thought it sounded slimy.
“Yes,” Sam said flatly.
“There were no mishaps to speak of?” Chief Quagmire asked again.
“No,” Sam said, speaking like a zombie might. Fern grew wide-eyed. Chief Quagmire had some sort of hold on Sam. He was not acting like himself.
“What about you, Fern? Did you have a good time?”
“Yes,” Fern said with no emotion. She was trying her best to play along.
“There was no trouble during your stay here, I hope?”
“No,” she said, managing not to tremble.
“What did you do while you were here, Sam?”
“I don’t remember,” he said, his eyes completely vacant.
“You had a tour of the laboratory and you ate at the cafeteria, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Sam responded.
“Fern, can you tell me where New Tartarus is located?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s right,” Chief Quagmire said, smiling widely.
Fern and Sam each answered a few more questions about the duration of their stay as Chief Quagmire fed them other small details. It wasn’t long before Mr. Bing and Mr. Kimble were knocking on Kenneth Quagmire’s office door, ready to take Sam and Fern back to the above-ground world.
This time, Fern knew what to expect when she strapped herself into the Atlas. Sam, however, was scaring Fern. He was acting as if he’d never laid eyes on the truck before. Fern tried to ask him questions, but he ignored her completely, as if he couldn’t hear her at all. He marveled at the leather chairs, oriental rugs, and ornate mirrors. Mr. Kimble was silent and expressionless in his chair. Fern figured he must have realized that Sam was not himself.
“Mr. Kimble?” Fern said.
“Huh?” Mr. Kimble responded with a puzzled look.
“Sam’s acting very strange. He doesn’t seem to know who he is or where he is. I think Chief Quagmire did some sort of mind erase on him.”
“Sam?” Mr. Kimble asked. His eyes were glassy, and he wore the same expression Sam did. Chief Quagmire must have gotten to him, too! He was as useless as Sam. Fern took a deep breath as the engine started, taking some solace in the fact that they were leaving New Tartarus for good.
They were rolling along the freeway in no time. Fern tried to switch on her view box, but it was no longer operational.
Sam remained groggy and out of it. She wanted to unload on him, to tell him everything and share the burden of truth, but he was useless right now. It wasn’t long before he dozed off completely. She looked over at Mr. Kimble’s chair. He’d fallen asleep too.
Fern grew restless and afraid. She wanted to reach Mr. Bing, but there was no way to get to him in the driver’s seat from where she was.
The view box blinked on. FERN MCALLISTER: REPORT TO MOBILE GREENHOUSE scrolled across the screen in block letters. She immediately unbuckled her seat belt and wandered toward the front of the truck. Pulling the curtain aside, she stepped up into the mobile greenhouse. The bright light filtering in through the ceiling made Fern’s eyes water. The humidity made it seem ten degrees hotter than in the main compartment. She scanned the images the wall of green shrubs displayed.
“Greetings, Fern McAllister!” Telemus said in his characteristic croak, sitting in his same chair, his eyes roving over all the images.
“Hi, Telemus,” Fern said, inching toward the wall of Sagebrushes. She had her back to the bushes.
“Fern McAllister, why is it you look so worried?”
/> “Huh?” Fern said, taking a step back from the wall of vegetation.
“What is it that you want to know, Fern McAllister?”
“Um . . . ,” Fern said, totally taken off guard. “I came because I saw the note on the view box. You paged me.”
“Yes, but what is it you want to know?” Telemus persisted.
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“You must want to know something.”
Fern, not knowing what else to do, asked the first thing that came to mind. “Mr. Kimble and my brother Sam . . . why are they in some sort of trance?”
“They will be fine by the time we reach our destination, I assure you. I have never lied in my whole life. The procedure is a common one,” Telemus said.
“The procedure?”
“I have something to give you,” Telemus said, beginning a new conversational thread. Fern was utterly confused.
“Is that why you paged me?”
“Many of your kind—and I mean no offense to you, Fern McAllister—they only treat kindly those whom they think can help them most. This is often a mistake.”
“I’m not sure I understand anything. . . .”
Telemus hopped down from his swivel chair. His squat furry body moved nimbly to the wall of Sagebrushes. He reached behind a plant, pulled out a loose branch, and held it out for Fern.
“You are to have this,” Telemus said.
Fern took the branch. “Thank you, Telemus.”
“It is not I who give it to you, Fern McAllister. A friend of yours requested that you have it.”
“Who?”
“I cannot say. I have been instructed to tell you to keep your eye—excuse me, your eyes—on this. It keeps track of the place you first teleported to,” Telemus said, pointing at the white-flowered branch.
“Okay,” Fern said. Pirate’s Cove! she thought.
“I have also been instructed to tell you that you are the spitting image of your mother. I have been instructed to tell you that she was a kind woman. I have been instructed to tell you to not believe all that people say about her. Finally, I have been instructed to tell you that another knows of her struggle and that in the end, she found herself on the right side.”
“You knew my mother, Telemus?”
“No, I did not. Please do not make it known that the branch is in your possession until after you have departed from the Atlas. It should be set in soil as soon as possible and watered weekly.” Telemus looked away from Fern and began scanning the Sagebrushes of Hyperion once more.
“Thank you, Telemus.”
“Thank you for visiting, Fern McAllister. It is a lonely job watching the world. I appreciate your company, as it has brought about a brief diversion.”
“You’re welcome,” Fern stammered, not knowing quite what to say.
“Please go back to your seat and buckle your belt for safety purposes.”
Fern, grateful to the Cyclops, followed his orders and left the mobile greenhouse.
Who was responsible for giving her the branch?
You are the spitting image of your mother. Of course! Chuffy had said something like that to her during his late-night visit. He must have given Telemus the branch. Fern’s jaw dropped. If she’d known that there had been less than a handful of instances of Cyclopes breaking protocol, even as a special favor for an old, crippled friend, her jaw might have dropped an inch further. Chuffy had used what little influence he had to help her. Just how he meant to help her, though, she had no idea.
As she made the way back to her seat, thoughts of Chief Quagmire’s plan to use her as bait plagued her. The reality of her situation felt like a punch to the stomach. Fern was all alone—the only other people who knew her predicament had been brainwashed.
As soon as she got home, she would go to the grove and plant the branch. She would discern what it was Chuffy wanted her to know. She knew she must find out where Vlad was and what he wanted before he arrived back in San Juan Capistrano.
Fern returned to her seat, feeling only slightly calmer. Though she had little else, a one-eyed monster and a one-armed elderly man were on her side, and she trusted them completely.
Fern had spent the last twenty-four hours in an underground fortress, bearing witness to events beyond her imagination, and yet one thing brought her back to reality faster than anything else could: middle school.
No one could have blamed Fern for forgetting that there was life outside Otherworldlies, Vlad, New Tartarus, giants, hecks, and a centuries-old manservant named Chuffy. But it wasn’t until she walked through St. Gregory’s iron gate, with Sam and Lindsey by her side, that Fern realized the speculation about her appearance atop Splash Mountain had captivated her classmates during her brief absence. To Fern, her trip to Splash Mountain seemed like a very long time ago.
There were, of course, several theories floating around the palm-tree-lined quad. One suggested that once at Disneyland, Fern had bought a bushel of balloons and floated up to the crest of Splash Mountain. A simpleminded classmate named Stephen Bucks figured that she must have tied a rope to one of the sky buckets and rappelled down to the mountain, despite the fact that the sky buckets hadn’t been operational for several years.
The most popular theory by far was that Fern had bribed whoever operated Splash Mountain in order to scale the heights in another of her sad ploys for attention. This theory’s popularity was buttressed by the tireless efforts of Blythe Conrad and Lee Phillips, who sacrificed their recesses and lunches to spread the word. They seemed to follow Fern at every turn.
Fern tried to steady her step and her nerves as she made her way through St. Gregory’s. That morning she’d worried incessantly about when Vlad might come back for her. This was completely different. Although there was no “aha” moment where everyone noticed her, pointing and staring as she walked past the cafeteria and across the blacktop to Mrs. Stonyfield’s classroom, she could feel one pair of eyes on her, and then another and another. She didn’t say a word to Lindsey or Sam. Lindsey broke off to go to her class, giving Fern a solemn look before she parted. Fern looked around her and locked eyes with a girl from the grade above. She could see revulsion in the girl’s eyes. Freak. The girl’s expression was more curious than cruel, but even after everything Fern had been through, it made Fern uneasy. Being weird wasn’t the problem, Fern realized. It was the isolation being weird brought about. Though Fern had Sam by her side, she’d never felt more alone.
Fern experienced a wave of relief as she crossed the threshold of Mrs. Stonyfield’s classroom. The room, normally abuzz during the two minutes before the tardy bell rang, fell silent as soon as Fern entered. Mrs. Stonyfield’s stern gaze traced Fern’s progress to the back of the room. Fern slid into her seat and sucked in a big breath. While class was in session, at least, she could disappear for a while. Though not literally, of course.
“Do you have a note for your absences?” Mrs. Stonyfield said when she reached Fern’s name for roll call. She had somehow grown fatter since the last time Fern had seen her. Her lips jutted out like a pair of large pepperoni slices as she pursed them in Fern’s direction. Fern made her way to the front of the classroom.
“I see,” Mrs. Stonyfield said, reading the note that Mrs. McAllister had written an hour ago. “So you were sick, were you? Catch a cold camping at the top of some mountain somewhere, no doubt?”
Almost on cue, every student erupted with boisterous laughter, marking the first time Mrs. Stonyfield had successfully cracked a joke in the classroom setting. Fern reddened and retreated to her desk in the back row.
Mrs. Stonyfield strode to the front of the classroom and pulled a map of the world down over the chalkboard. She pointed to Mongolia and began gesturing at the territory above and below. The class had begun their unit on world history and were now studying Genghis Khan, who, Mrs. Stonyfield informed people, had the largest contiguous empire in history.
“In his day, Genghis Khan was known to all the people of the Mongol nation as a
hero,” Mrs. Stonyfield exclaimed, putting a picture of the goateed man up on the overhead projector. “Of course, he probably wasn’t nearly as famous as our star of the evening news, Fern McAllister!”
Fern realized that hiding under her desk was not a viable option, but she seriously considered it anyway. Her face was hot and it felt as if acid were crawling up her throat. She imagined all of the terrible things she could do to Mrs. Stonyfield if she really wanted to. If she had to deal with the terrible burden of having supernatural powers, why couldn’t she at least enjoy them a little?
Much to Fern’s dismay, everyone in the class burst out with squeals of delight once again—everyone except Sam, that is. Mrs. Stonyfield, encouraged by the idea that the class was on her side for once, mercilessly pressed on.
“In fact, before we get to Genghis Khan’s conquests, perhaps we should ask the conqueror in our midst what it’s like to have stood atop a theme park ride—to have conquered it once and for all!” Mrs. Stonyfield threw every bit of dramatic intonation she possessed behind her comment, raising her fist triumphantly. Some students turned around to look at Fern while they laughed. Fern concentrated on the pain in her abdomen as a means of dealing with her utter humiliation. It seemed as if thousands of tiny arrows were piercing the inside of her stomach.
To Fern’s relief, Mrs. Stonyfield focused her energy on Genghis’s war with Western Xia.
It wasn’t until Mrs. Stonyfield sat back down at her desk and instructed the class to silently read a chapter from their world history textbook that Fern noticed the coffee cup to the teacher’s left. She eyed it, thinking about how she might use it to her advantage.
In front of her the steam dissipated into nothing.
Fern could tell she had cooled down the hot beverage, delighting in the discovery of another facet of her powers. Every couple of minutes, Mrs. Stonyfield would grab the mug and bring it to her lips and slurp loudly into it. Fern waited patiently for Mrs. Stonyfield to slurp again.
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