“Kathryn, no.”
“Hi-iy Bobby,” she sang, and plopped down on Bobby’s lap, leaving me standing right in front of Mason.
“Hi Kitty,” Bobby said. “I mean, Your Princess-ness.”
Kathryn giggled and wrapped her arms around Bobby’s neck. “Forgive me?”
“Always,” Bobby said.
“Hi,” I said, looking down at Mason.
He looked up and said coldly, “Jar Jar? That is…awesome.”
I smiled and just stood there feeling extremely awkward.
“A little quiet for a Gungan outcast, aren’t you?” Mason said.
“I’m sort of feeling like one. You know I never meant to upset you.”
“You did a good job of it.”
Bobby gave Mason a not-too-nice look. “How long are you gonna play this, Mase?”
Mason shrugged. “I’m not playing anything.”
“I think I know how to find your mom,” I whispered. “Livermore was a dead end, but there’s another way.”
Mason looked away. “I’m listening.”
“The Whisperers think your dad knows where she is, and he’s under some sort of threat to keep up the lie he’s been living.”
“Are you allowed to tell me that? Did you clear it with Kathryn first?”
Kathryn flew off Bobby’s lap like an escape pod ejected into hyperspace. “Look, dude, the girl is trying to be nice, and you go all wombat on her? I think you need a nap. Come on, Rin. It smells like marsupial around here.”
She grabbed me by the hand and yanked. Mason glanced up at me, and for just an instant, he looked hurt. Then he turned away and stared straight ahead.
“Once a wombat, always a wombat,” Kathryn yelled as she dragged me away.
As if on cue, the Star Wars theme song began to play, and teachers marched in, led by none other than Dr. Miliron. Each teacher was escorted by a Star Wars character carrying a cake decorated with a Star Wars theme. They ceremoniously placed their cakes on individual pedestals and stood beside them while the teachers continued to the other side of the auditorium. There was a Death Star cake, a Millennium Falcon, the planet Tatooine complete with two suns. Dr. Miliron’s cake was accompanied by a storm trooper. Oddly, there was nothing remotely Star Wars-ish about it. In fact, it looked like a Christmas present.
“Kathryn, that cake!” I pointed to Dr. Miliron and the Storm Trooper.
Kathryn’s eyes bulged. “Christmas Present! The riddles! Wait, there was no Storm Trooper in Dickens.”
“No,” I said, remembering the red cake mix on Drake’s gauntlets. “But that Storm Trooper was in Dr. Miliron’s house when he made the cake. I need a diversion.”
Kathryn smiled and pointed. “There’s one on its way.”
The Red Team sauntered across the auditorium in very realistic Sith robes, followed by Jabba the Hutt. Tammy had drawn her light saber and was swinging it without an awful lot of care. I headed toward them, cutting them off in front of Drake and Dr. Miliron’s cake, which I pretended to admire. It was decorated with white wrapping paper-like icing, green ribbons and holly, and a huge red bow. A nice ruse, and typical of Nicolaitan’s theatrics. If what I suspected was true, that cake was deadly. I had to get rid of it somehow without being suspected.
“Look, it’s Jar Jar Stinks,” Tammy said, pointing her light saber in my face.
“Gungan poo doo,” Drake said.
Tammy lifted my ponytail with the point of her light saber. “No bodyguards this morning, Jar Jar? Feeling like a Gungan warrior?”
I put my back against the cake pedestal.
“No,” I said, staring at the light saber. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
“Moron,” Boot snapped. “Tammy, she’s making fun of you because Egon and Mason both like her better than you.”
Tammy gave Boot a Sith lord death stare. “Shut up, Boot.” Then she pulled back her light saber and slapped me in the face with the blade. Drake gasped.
“Hey!” I yelled, covering my face. A huge welt instantly raised on my cheek.
Tammy sneered and snapped her fingers. “Jabba, be a dear and introduce her to the Great Pit of Carkoon.”
“I don’t…” Art slurred. His eyes were glazed, and he looked like he was struggling.
“Are you okay?” I asked, rubbing my cheek.
“No.” He grunted and shoved me hard. My feet left the ground and I landed on my butt against the pedestal, crashing Dr. Miliron’s cake to the ground. Suddenly Art’s eyes popped fried-egg wide as he was jerked backward.
“Get away from her,” Mason growled. He put himself between them and me.
Tammy put her nose in the air. “Let’s go, Red Team. I smell Goody Two-Shoes in the air. The stench is bad for my sinuses.”
“Are you okay?” Mason asked, ignoring Art and the Red Team as they disappeared into the crowded auditorium. He took my hand and helped me up.
“Yeah, the cement broke my fall.”
Mason reached out and gently touched the welt on my cheek. His eyes went all puppy dog. “I can’t leave you alone for a second.”
I smiled.
Dr. Miliron’s head popped up behind Mason. “Are you all right?”
“I’m so sorry, Dr. Miliron,” I said. “I tripped over a light saber.”
“Not to worry, dear,” Dr. Miliron said with a sad smile. “Accidents will happen. We have plenty of other cakes. I was so looking forward to getting a taste of my expedition into Betty Crocker’s laboratory, though. Well, I suppose it’s true what they say.”
“It is?”
Dr. Miliron closed his eyes and shook his head, fighting a smile. “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Isn’t that magnificent? I thought I’d never be able to use that line, but it is so appropriate. It’s as if the cliché was invented for a time just like this. How wonderful! Simply marvelous.”
I smiled because I was totally speechless.
Dr. Miliron’s face broke into a huge grin. “Go on, now, get cleaned up. The movie is about to begin. Mason, my boy, can you give me a hand?”
“No problem,” Mason said. He turned his big puppy dogs on me one last time before following Dr. Miliron.
My heart fluttered for just a second, but I made it quit.
“I see your bodyguard is back,” Kathryn said as we walked to the bathroom.
“It was nothing,” I said.
“Oh, Rin, give it up. I saw the way you looked at him.”
“I was just happy that he helped me up. It was nice.”
“So, explain why your pupils are still heart-shaped.”
“They’re not. Kathryn, you know I can’t be in a relationship. Not yet.”
“Blah, blah, blah, you keep telling yourself that bit of bovine effluvia, but I know better.”
I grunted. “I’m on a mission.”
“Mission accomplished. Creative way to destroy a cake, by the way. But it didn’t explode when you crashed into it. Maybe we panicked.”
“I don’t think so.” I held up a squished hunk of cake.
“And you saved a piece, why?”
“This goes to practice tonight so Andy can analyze it.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
In the LaReau Mansion
“Two things,” Andy said. “One, the cake was laced with strychnine. Good work.”
“Thank goodness the Red Team came along,” I said. “What’s the other thing?”
“I thought that was obvious. I’m incredibly handsome and abnormally brilliant.”
“I’ll go along with the abnormal part.”
“Nice work,” the Kilodan said. “The second riddle is now complete. I have a feeling the third will come too soon. In the meantime, the Megadan’s alter ego, Mrs. Bagley, informed me that over a dozen students, all known drug users, have stopped coming to school. She believes they are the Knights’ latest recruits.”
“Do we know if Drake is involved?” I asked. “Or why he showed up at Dr. Miliron’s without telling us?”
<
br /> “We don’t,” Andy said. “We need to locate the students to find out.”
“But right now, Lynn has another mission,” the Kilodan said.
“I do? News to me.”
“It’s not.”
“It’s not?”
“Mrs. Simmons asked you to explore the LaReau mansion.”
“I know, but she didn’t mean tonight, did she?”
“She did.”
“Oh. How do I get there?”
“The mansion is heavily guarded,” the Kilodan said. “Take Andor with you. He will patrol the outside and provide a diversion if needed. You will enter and see what the gold key you found opens.”
“Dibs on the driver’s seat,” I said to Andy. Then I remembered my near miss in the mines. “On second thought, you drive.”
The drive to the LaReau mansion was short and, as always, underground. We stopped the Andymobile beneath an exit I had not seen before.
“Where are we?”
Andy cracked his knuckles and pointed to a ladder disappearing into the ceiling. “Do you like trains?”
I followed Andy up the ladder through what appeared to be the floorboards of a barn. A musty smell filled the air, and everything was dark. I clapped my hands. Nothing happened. “I guess you didn’t put a Clapper in this one,” I said.
“No need,” Andy said. He reached up and pulled a string. Brass lamps hanging from the walls lit the windowless room. Red wooden bench seats lined both sides.
“This looks like the inside of an old boxcar,” I said.
“This is the inside of an old boxcar,” Andy said.
“Where are we?”
“Smack dab on Five Star Trail overlooking the football field.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” An antique boxcar from the now defunct Southern Pennsylvania Railroad sat at the end of the city’s public walking trail. It was a favorite hangout of the town’s drug users. I had never seen the inside before. It was locked because of vandalism. The outside was covered in graffiti, some of it pretty nasty. Situated on the hill above Offut Field, the high school’s football stadium, the old boxcar was the last place I would have expected a secret entrance to the mines.
Andy hit a button on his chest armor and a panel opened at the front of the boxcar. A monitor blazed to life. The view was amazing. Now I understood why Andy chose this place for a secret entrance. We could see the football stadium in the valley below us, and the entire west side of Greensburg against the night skyline above it. The football field was bright with floodlights. A city ordinance kept them burning all night long because of the recent high crime rate. “See that?” he said, pointing to a particularly large building with the dark silhouette of a castle. “That’s the LaReau mansion. There is the front door. I’ll be watching from here. When you get inside, activate your mask cam so I can see what you see. Did you bring the key?”
“Was I supposed to?”
“What part of ‘see what that gold key opens’ did you not understand?”
I reached into my belt and plucked out the little gold key I had found at Mrs. LaReau’s murder site. “O ye of little faith.”
I waved to Andy, went into Shimmer mode, and ducked though the trap door in the boxcar’s floor. The underneath was completely enclosed to keep kids from sleeping under it, but there was a hidden exit that opened into a large expanse of brush. As I worked my way through the undergrowth, a thought popped into my head. “Andy, are you there?”
“Always. Like the spiders in those bushes.”
“Very funny.”
“Did you have a question, or were you worried about me?”
“I don’t have a lock pick. How do I get in?”
“Do you know how to use a lock pick?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t see how not having one is a problem.”
“I don’t have the front door key, either.”
“The front door key wouldn’t help you if you had it.”
“And why, pray tell, would the key to the front door of the LaReau mansion not get me into the LaReau mansion?”
“Because you aren’t going through the front door. The entire world will see the front door open by itself in the middle of the night. You’ll cause nightmares. Small children will pee their beds.”
“Then how do you propose I get in?”
“That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve asked me,” Andy said. “Through the coal cellar door, of course.”
“Of course. And where might I find the coal cellar door?”
“At the entrance to the coal cellar,” Andy said. “Where would you expect it to be?”
“You aren’t helping.”
“You aren’t there yet. You don’t need help.”
“Andy?”
“Yes.”
“Are there really spiders?”
“I certainly hope not.”
I was within a hundred feet of the mansion. I could see how eerie it was even without my night vision. Then I noticed that it was surrounded by an iron fence, complete with spikes at the top of each spire. “Andy, there’s a fence.”
“That’s how they keep people out.”
“But I want in.”
“Then climb over it.”
“It has spikes.”
“You have armor.”
“Why don’t I wait in the train and you climb the fence?”
“You have the gold key.”
I grunted at Andy and pulled myself over the fence. “This place reminds me of the Munsters’ house.”
“Maybe Herman is home. Go around to the side, and you’ll see a horizontal steel double-door at ground level that looks like it opens into the dungeon.”
“I found it. Where does it go?”
“Into the dungeon. Pull on the handle and open the coal cellar doors. Unless there is a chain on it.”
“There’s a chain on it. And a lock. And my little gold key won’t open it, so don’t ask.” I drew my Amplifier from my belt and concentrated. A misty blade erupted from the tip, and I sliced through the chain with my Thought Saber.
“I was going to tell you to go through the window instead, but never mind,” Andy said.
I lifted one side of the double doors to reveal a set of steep concrete stairs leading into the darkness. I slid inside and pulled the door closed behind me.
“Red,” I said, expecting the usual green glow of my night vision. Instead, the coal cellar became as bright as day, as if someone had opened a window and the sun came shining through. “Wow, what did you do, put new batteries in my night vision?”
Andy chuckled. “Sweet little surprise for you. I got tired of green. So, instead of simply intensifying the low-level visible and infrared spectrum like cheap military-grade night vision, I built a condenser that uses every photon available across the entire light spectrum. Now we can literally see in the dark.”
“Nice,” I said. “Now what?”
“Now comes the hard part,” Andy said softly. “You have to get into Norma LaReau’s private chambers.”
“Why is that the hard part?”
“Because I don’t know where they are.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Norma’s Lair
“Wonderful,” I said, glancing around the coal cellar at the rodent droppings scattered across the dirt floor. A large pile of dull black coal filled one corner of the cellar. The coal smelled harsh, not clean like in the Academy mines. A large wooden shelf filled with jars sat against the wall next to the stairs I had just come down. The jars were filled with a burgundy liquid, and something gross-looking and white. It squished out against the glass like a child’s face pressing against a window. I moved closer, afraid of what I would find. When I recognized the jar’s contents, I started giggling.
“Are those pickled eggs?” Andy’s voice came across my mask.
“There must be fifty jars of them,” I said. “Probably a hundred years old.”
“No, they’re new. The eggs are still whi
te. Odd.”
“Would you like me to bring you a jar?”
“No, thank you,” Andy said. “Have you found a way into the house yet? There should be a staircase somewhere.”
“Only the one I came down,” I said, looking from one end of the room to the other. “The far wall has a couple of shelves. The one on the right is filled with antique dolls. They look expensive. The other shelf is empty.”
“Move closer so I can see it,” Andy said.
I walked toward the empty shelf and noticed that the window above it had been painted black. That was odd. “Maybe they keep vampires down here.”
“They certainly don’t want anyone looking in from the outside,” Andy said. “Why is that shelf empty? Did they run out of dolls and pickled eggs?”
I leaned my hand on the shelf. It gave way under the weight of my arm. “Oops, that’s probably why it’s empty.”
“You’re supposed to be finding a way into the house, not destroying it.”
Slowly, silently, the shelf slid to the right, revealing another room behind it. “Mission accomplished,” I said.
“That explains why it was empty,” Andy said. “All these old houses have secret walls and escape hatches.”
“They do? I thought that was only in the movies.”
“It is, but it sounded good, didn’t it?”
I stepped through the secret passage into the next room. “Oh, this is very creepy.” In the middle of the room, child-sized furniture—small chairs and tables, teacups and toy boxes— sat next to a large wire cage. “Look at that. Just like the cage I saw in Norman LaReau’s mind when I stopped him in Sinclair Park. The one he kept his victims in. Looks like the weirdo let them out to play when the mood struck him.”
“More likely, he used that furniture to lure them down here,” Andy said.
“There’s our way upstairs.” Beyond the tea cups and toy boxes, I noticed an old-fashioned spiral staircase. “Let’s see where it goes.”
The house was supposed to be empty, but I wasn’t taking chances. I climbed the spiral stairs, slowly, cautiously, making no sound at all—not an easy feat even for a trained Psi Fighter, considering the cast iron staircase was like walking on a snare drum. When I got to the top, I found myself on a small square landing, walled in on all sides.
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