Finn watched as Maybeck sparkled, became transparent, and vanished.
Finn sat bolt upright in bed. His own bed, at home. Maybeck blinked furiously from his air mattress.
Finn felt something on his leg and threw back the covers.
A rattlesnake.
He screamed a bad word loud enough to be heard two blocks away.
He shook his leg like a maniac. The snake flew up and was caught, dangling from one of the paddles on his ceiling fan.
His father threw open his bedroom door and switched on the light, his mother craning over her husband’s shoulder.
When Finn’s ceiling light switched on, so did the fan.
The snake began circling overhead. The fan gained speed.
“FINN WHITMAN!” his father thundered, glaring at him. His father had run out of patience for the Kingdom Keepers after their earliest adventure. Wanting his son to focus on academics first and sports second, he had little tolerance for Finn’s claims of saving Disney from its villains. Although he appreciated the college money that resulted from his son’s participation in the program, and even secretly enjoyed some of the attention and fame that rubbed off on him for being Finn’s father, this kind of nighttime interruption to his family was exactly what he objected to and found so offensive.
He didn’t need a manual to understand why his son and Maybeck were fully clothed in black, wearing shoes, and sweating profusely while in air conditioning.
“I had a nightmare,” Finn said.
“Lying will only make it worse for you.”
The rattlesnake was currently rotating at warp speed, wrapped around the fan blade.
“Mom? Please?” he said, flicking his eyes to the ceiling fan.
His mother spotted the snake and went ashen white.
“Sweetie,” she said to her husband, “come on back to bed. Let’s deal with this in the morning. Nothing to be done now.”
Mr. Whitman seemed unmovable. “Terry,” he said, “do I have your word you two will go back to sleep? No shenanigans?”
The rattlesnake was losing its hold. Six inches of the snake was now sticking off the end of the fan’s paddle.
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Whitman trusted Finn’s friends more than he did his own son.
Mr. Whitman made a grunting sound of disapproval, allowing his wife to pull him out of the doorway. She stepped forward, made a face of pure horror, and reached for the light switch. As she shut off the light, she closed the door.
Finn heard a thump, but couldn’t see in the darkness. His father opened the door again and peered inside. “What was that?” he said. “Are you testing me, son?”
“No, sir!” Finn answered.
The rattlesnake had hit the door. It was hanging in a coil from the pair of hooks on the back of the door, its tongue flicking in the direction of his father’s head.
Finn sprang out of bed. “Sorry, Dad. Won’t happen again. Good night.” He toed the door and shut it in his father’s face.
His father called softly through the door: “We’ll discuss this in the morning, young man!”
The snake turned toward Finn.
“Whitman!” Maybeck hissed, having backed up to the wall.
Finn dove into his closet and grabbed his laundry bag and a hanger. He’d seen this on the Discovery Channel.
“You gotta help me!” Finn whispered.
“Oh, yeah, as if that’s going to happen.”
“I need you to hold the bag open.”
“Pass.”
“I can’t do both at once.”
“No way!”
“Maybeck!”
Maybeck approached cautiously and held the bag. “This feels like the losing end of this deal.”
“You want to handle the snake? Be my guest.”
The snake’s rattle was going strongly, raising every hair on Finn’s body. If his father heard it, he might as well let the snake just bite him now.
Maybeck held open the laundry bag, his arms extended supernaturally. He was basically a ZIP code away. Finn hooked the snake with the hanger and lifted it carefully from the door’s twin clothes hooks. The snake hung heavily from the U of the hanger.
Finn lowered it slowly and Maybeck caught the snake in the bag.
“Window!” Finn hissed.
Maybeck moved that direction. Finn opened the window and Maybeck extended the bag outside.
“Okay,” Finn said, “let go.”
“I can’t,” Maybeck said. “My fingers are frozen.”
“Let…go…” Finn said, uncurling Maybeck’s fingers one by one.
The bag crashed down in the plants.
Shutting the window, Finn heaved a sigh of relief. Maybeck hadn’t moved. He looked like a statue.
“It’s out,” Finn said.
Maybeck shook his head and finally managed to step away from the window.
“We’ll have to check the bag in the morning and make sure the snake is gone,” Finn said.
“You can if you want,” Maybeck said.
Finn texted Willa and Philby.
Willa texted back immediately, thanking all three boys. Philby texted a few minutes later:
trouble here. group skype b4 skool @ 7:45
Reading the text over Finn’s shoulder, Maybeck whispered, “He thinks he had troubles. I gotta hear this.”
THE KEEPERS MET ON VIDEO conference fifteen minutes before buses and parental rides departed for school.
Finn: “We had a tricky situation last night.”
Willa: “As in, Maybeck and Finn saved me.”
Finn: “And Philby.”
Maybeck, looking over Finn’s shoulder, said, “It was the Evil Queen and Cruella.”
Charlene: “Same as Downtown Disney.”
Charlene was using her own video image as a mirror while applying mascara.
Willa: “The fob was missing.”
Charlene: “Did you check—”
Willa: “The Lost and Found? Yes. Not there. Gone. It’s got to be why they crossed you, Charlene. Finn and Philby come into the Park and the three of you lead them to the fob. You Returned and they stole it. None of us saw that coming.”
Maybeck: “Whoa.”
Charlene: “They stole it, because…?”
Maybeck: “We become stuck in the Syndrome, for one thing.”
Philby: “First the server, then the fob. If we hadn’t managed to hack back into the server last night, Willa would still be stuck there.”
Finn: “I guess I can see how that helps them break out Maleficent—I mean, it takes us out of the picture—but it’s sure a lot of planning, a lot of work, if you ask me.”
Philby: “Which means we’re missing something. The bigger picture.”
He then described his fight with Hugo.
Philby: “Obviously, they knew I would try to Return you three. They sent Hugo to stop me. Hugo must be the one we can’t see in the photo. I still can’t believe he’d do this to me.”
Maybeck: “To us.”
Charlene: “This just gets creepier and creepier.”
She applied one last stroke of mascara and twisted the tube shut.
Willa: “But the real reason they wanted me was for me to describe Jess’s sketch. The one she showed me at school.”
Finn: “We need to see that up close.”
Philby: “Question—how did the Evil Queen know you’d seen the sketch?”
A general silence.
Finn: “A green-eyes. One of the spies saw Jess show Willa.”
In light of Hugo and Luowski, this seemed like the best explanation.
Charlene: “So we’re not safe at school and we’re not safe crossed over. Anyone feel like a vacation?”
She won some laughter—but not much.
Charlene: “Seriously, any ideas? I’ve got to get downstairs. The bus’ll be here any minute.”
Philby: “Stay here a second longer.”
He waited for everyone’s attention on-screen, especially Charlene’s.
Philby: “What if we missed a major clue? Finn saw Cruella on the telephone at Downtown Disney.”
Maybeck: “We all agreed that was bizarre.”
Philby: “But what if she and the Queen were DHIs at the time?”
Silence.
Philby: “What if the phone call was to request a manual Return? It’s possible DisneyQuest serves as Downtown’s centerpiece. We don’t know.”
Maybeck cursed.
Finn: “Using the phone as the signal to send them back.”
Philby: “Exactly.”
Willa: “That’s why they want the fob so badly. To make it easier for them to Return.”
Philby: “I think so, yes.”
Maybeck shouted, and Finn cupped his ear.
Maybeck: “Hold on! Wait a second.”
Philby: “We know they took control of the server. It was them who locked me out, not the Imagineers. I was never buying that. We got all hung up on it being about us, about controlling us. Locking us in the Syndrome. And sure, that’s probably part of it, but it also may be what they want us to think.”
Finn: “It explains them stealing the fob. But how could they have done it? How could they have turned themselves into DHIs?”
Philby: “The same way we turned Amanda and Jess into DHIs.”
Another long silence.
Willa: “But think about it. If they need the Return, if they can cross over as DHIs, then when that’s happening they’re asleep, right?”
For a moment it seemed as if the connection had failed—no one moved in their respective video windows. Charlene was no longer concerned with catching her bus.
Philby: “Makes sense.”
Finn: “I’ll tell you one thing; the Queen wasn’t any DHI last night. She was throwing spells all over the place.”
Charlene: “So last night she was real. But if they stole the fob for themselves, then they must be planning to cross over into one of the Parks, and a manual Return is just too hard for them to pull off.”
Willa: “They’re afraid of Jess knowing something about this. They’ve always tried to control her, from clear back at the start. If we can see the future, then maybe we can stop them. That’s got to be what they’re worried about.”
Charlene: “And you’re right, Willa; if they’re DHIs, then they’re asleep somewhere. We know that much.”
Maybeck: “I see where this is going and I’m liking it.”
Philby: “If we trap their DHIs, they’ll be stuck in SBS. They won’t be able to wake up and we’ll have defeated them. But before you freak, remember we don’t have their powers. We can’t throw up laser jails and probably can’t put fear into them the way they can with us. It’s not the same.”
Maybeck: “Back up, Philbo. Forget trapping their DHIs. What we want to do is distract their DHIs. We want to find where they’re sleeping. Long as they’re sleeping, they are totally vulnerable. Totally. We can slap on the cuffs, blindfold and gag them so they can’t throw spells or do anything to anyone. We turn them over to Wanda or the Imagineers, and that’s two more behind bars.”
Philby considered the words “behind bars” and thought of Wanda and his first contact from Wayne. His thoughts moved past Wanda to Maleficent and Chernabog and their being locked up somewhere. As so often happened with him, it just struck him like a lightning bolt. The answers to math equations came this same way; science assignments, too. A spark of understanding in his brain.
Philby: “Prison! The reason they need to be DHIs has to do with Maleficent and Chernabog—”
Finn: “So they can break them out.”
Philby: “I think so, yes. It’s their end game. It’s everything they’re about.”
Charlene: “How could that possibly work?”
Philby: “Who knows? But that’s their plan. It adds up.”
The mention of Wanda had Finn wondering about her. They’d gotten her out of jail, but she hadn’t been back in contact with them. Did she fear police surveillance? Or someone worse? She had a hearing scheduled for Monday morning.
Willa: “If they’re asleep, it’s somewhere in the Parks.”
Maybeck: “Out of the way. Someplace no one’s going to bother them.”
Finn: “Or find them.”
Charlene: “Hello? The Parks are ginormous.”
Maybeck: “There can’t be that many places. Cast Members are all over the place all the time. We can figure this out.”
Maybeck didn’t often play cheerleader. None of the others knew quite what to say.
Philby: “Don’t forget, we surprised them last night by having access to the server. They thought they’d locked us out. But if they go DHI, I should be able to detect it. I won’t know exactly where they are, but the ISP, submask, and router data will help narrow it down. That would allow us to have two teams: one, like Maybeck said, to challenge their DHIs and keep them busy, while the second team tries to find where they’re sleeping.”
Maybeck: “Thing is, they’ve got the fob. The minute they figure any of this out, they Return, and then we’re in the deep woods.”
Finn: “We can’t rely on sending signals anymore. That was close last night. I think we should hide one of our cell phones in each of the Parks. We’d all know where to find them. If we need out, we call Philby and he takes us out manually.”
Philby: “Makes total sense.”
Charlene: “You expect me to give up my cell phone? Seriously?”
Willa: “Finn, we need to check with Jess about that drawing.”
Finn: “No problem. And I want to talk to Wanda. We can’t ask her to risk anything since she was arrested. But who knows how she might help us?”
Philby: “If we’re dividing up teams, I vote for Maybeck, Finn, and Charlene to go after the sleepers. Amanda, Willa, and Jess can play cat-and-mouse with the Evil Queen and Cruella. DHI against DHI.”
Willa: “I don’t mean to be a buzzkill, but I am so grounded. It’s like my mother’s got me on suicide watch or something—she wakes me up every couple hours. I mean, I want so badly to be part of whatever we’re doing, but…I just don’t know.”
All the Keepers spoke at once. No one expected anything from Willa. She’d been through enough. She apologized profusely; it was clear she wanted to be included if they crossed over, but if caught by her mother it could threaten them all.
Finn: “Well, the rest of us should dress for action each night. Philby will cross us over when he knows the Overtakers have crossed. The first thing we do when we enter a Park is to find the hidden cell phone in whatever Park we’re in. Got that? That’s our way out of the Park: we call Philby for a Return.”
Philby: “One small problem. When I hit the Return you’ll all Return as long as you’re somewhere near the landing point in whatever Park you’re in. So that makes the girls’ job more complicated. We need to get the fob back. Whichever side has the fob has freedom.”
Maybeck: “Easier said than done.”
Charlene: “Are we forgetting anything?”
Willa: “Probably.”
Finn: “So, we start tonight.”
Willa: “Be careful in school. The green-eyes are out there.”
Moments later, Finn disconnected from the conference call, a pit in his stomach about probably forgetting something.
* * *
Finn arrived at school feeling like an idiot: he’d forgotten it was a “free dress” day. That should have meant professional sports team jerseys for boys and short-shorts for girls—since neither was allowed at Finn’s school—but living in Orlando, it turned into a Disney costume contest for half of the fifteen hundred kids. Worse, a few students came as one or more of the Kingdom Keepers, and Finn didn’t know whether to feel honored or mocked.
But he looked tragically normal in a pair of shorts and a striped T-shirt. Even Amanda had gotten into it, showing up in a pressed white shirt and plaid skirt, which he assumed was connected to Harry Potter. At least a third of the remaining girls and more guys than he’d
expected came as vampires. But it was Disney and Marvel Comics that won by a long shot. Iron Man characters. Alice in Wonderland. Toy Story. Every witch, dwarf, princess, and mermaid in numbers that staggered the imagination. Added into the mix were girls who dressed as princes and boys dressed as witches, so that the bathroom ended up a confusing mix, which was exactly where Finn found himself as he heard the familiar voice.
“What are you looking at, Whitless?”
Luowski’s voice, but the body of the Russian madman in Iron Man 2, complete with the scars and bad teeth and something coming off the ends of his hands, which were supposed to be bolts of electricity but looked more like Christmas-tree tinsel. Finn felt sorry for the guy: the costume got close, but in the end didn’t work.
Finn realized that he was looking at himself in the mirror—like the last time he’d run into Luowski in there. The situation was doubly strange because he didn’t remember coming into the bathroom. Nor did he remember turning on the faucet, which was currently running.
“Hey, Greg.”
In addition to the Mickey Rourke look, Luowski was wearing the green contacts. Something Finn took note of with added apprehension.
Finn chanced a glance at his watch: eight minutes had passed since the end-of-school buzzer. For a moment he couldn’t remember having been in school at all that day. He could force himself to imagine, if not actually remember, having entered the boys’ room, but he had absolutely no recollection of the past eight minutes.
The Evil Queen? Had someone dressed up like her been behind him in the mirror just a few seconds before Luowski? Was that a memory, or his imagination?
He cleared his throat. “The more important question, Greg, is why are you hanging around the boys’ room staring at other guys staring at themselves in the mirror?”
“I…ah…Who said I was?”
“Picture’s worth a thousand words.” Finn pulled his phone out of his pocket.
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