The second thought was that if Li had gone out and gotten a tattoo, Lotus was going to kill her, then him for not looking after her.
“Your mom is gonna be so pissed,” he said, and she erupted in merry girlish laughter.
“You should see the look on your face, brother mine. You’re as white as a ghost!” she teased. “Relax, it’s just henna! It’ll be gone in a couple of days.”
* * *
“Hey, guys?” Josh rattled his keys then yanked them free from the lock in his apartment door (they always stuck in the crappy old lock). “Anyone home?”
Outside, the afternoon sun was beginning to wane, and the living room was strewn with thickening shadows. As he went through he turned on a floor lamp to ward them off. Clearly, his family wasn’t at home. They’d mentioned earlier that they might head down to the Starlite to check out the latest superhero movie.
Josh had run home on his break from bagging groceries at Ban-Waggon supermarket to snag his wallet. Normally, he would have just grabbed a cheap, prepackaged sandwich at the market and hung out in the cramped little break room, eating, zoning out, and staring at the time clock until he had to go back to work. When he realized he’d forgotten his cash, he asked the manager if he could hook him up with a sandwich, promising to pay for it at the start of his next shift. But the manager wasn’t having it, so Josh had been forced to jog all the way back to the Flats from downtown, and as soon as he found his wallet he’d have to jog all the way back. His white polo shirt embroidered with the Ban-Waggon logo was already pitted-out with sweat. The whole thing irritated him, but he was starving. There was no way he could finish his shift on an empty stomach.
He was in his room now, which he shared with his little brother, Beau. LEGO blocks, Nerf swords, plastic G.I. Joe vehicles, half-transformed Transformers, and stuffed animals of every color and variety littered the floor. Josh tended to think the kid was a bit spoiled, but he couldn’t hold Beau’s stockpile of playthings against him. Half of them were Josh’s hand-me-downs and most of the rest came from Goodwill and garage sales.
The wallet wasn’t on the bedside table where he expected it to be, nor was it sitting on the top bunk of the bed he shared with his brother—the spot he called his penthouse.
Finally, he found it in the top drawer of his dresser, grabbed it, and stuck it in his pocket. With a sigh, he glanced at his watch. It was almost five. At this rate, even if he ran all the way, he’d be late getting back and he wouldn’t have time to eat—which was completely unacceptable. He was fighting Rick tonight, and he knew it would be the battle of his life. There was no way he could go into it on an empty stomach. He needed to carb up, build up some energy. Maybe there was a piece of cold pizza in the fridge he could gnaw on while he jogged, he thought. But before he got to the kitchen, he stopped. He heard something in the living room. Footsteps, low voices, then a crash.
It took only a moment to realize the voices didn’t belong to his parents. He glanced around the room looking for a weapon and settled on a hockey stick standing in the corner next to the bed. He was creeping back toward the door when a series of rapid footsteps came toward him. The door burst open and he found the barrel of a pistol in his face. A man in a black, long-sleeved shirt bulked up with a bulletproof vest was holding a gun on him. Two men dressed the same way were right behind him.
“Drop it,” the guy barked at him.
Josh retreated until his back was against the bunk beds, but he continued holding the hockey stick out in front of him.
“You deaf? I said drop it,” his captor said. This time, Josh processed the request and let the stick fall from his hands.
The man lowered his gun but watched him closely as his companions ransacked the room.
“What . . . what’s going on?” Josh asked. “Are you guys here from Banfield Real Estate? ’Cause we didn’t get an eviction notice yet.” He added defiantly, “And even if we did, we aren’t going anywhere.”
The man with the gun snorted. “Do I look like I’m in real estate?” he asked.
He didn’t. He looked more like a Navy Seal who’d gone over to the Dark Side. But that wasn’t what concerned Josh now. They were tearing his room apart!
One of the guys yanked every piece of clothing from his closet, checked the pockets, then chucked them on the ground. Another guy was jerking out his dresser drawers and dumping the contents onto the rug.
“Stop it!” Josh yelled. “What the hell do you want?”
The guy with the gun moved closer. “You’re Josh, right? You were there when Raphael Kain disappeared? Don’t bother denying it—we know you were there. We’re looking for pieces of the crystal ring that shattered during the event. Any chance you have one?”
Josh hesitated. Certainly, he had a piece of the ring. And the truth was, he didn’t care if these guys took it or not. What use did he have for it? Raphael was gone, Emory was barely alive and the Flatliners were drifting apart. What was the use of hanging on to a piece of broken glass? And yet he did want to hang on to it. For some reason he couldn’t explain even to himself, he couldn’t imagine parting with it. More than that, with every object these guys tossed onto the floor and every piece of furniture they overturned, his anger grew. Maybe they weren’t from Banfield Real Estate or Shao Construction, but they were part of the same corrupt system. They thought they could come in here and push Josh around and steal from him because he was a poor kid from the Flats. Well to hell with that, he thought. They could tear the place apart. They could torture him, but he wasn’t going to tell them where the shard was. Nothing could make him tell.
From the other room there came a bang and the sound of broken glass.
“You better not be breaking my mom’s stuff in there!” he shouted.
“Just calm down,” the man with the pistol said. He put it away, but he was just as intimidating without it. Josh thought he was six-feet-two at least, and he had arms like a pair of fire hoses. When Josh tried to slip past him again, the man pushed him back on the bed and held him down, twisting one of his arms behind his back—hard—and sending a jab of hot pain through his wrist.
There was a screek of springs, and Josh saw the top bunk bow above him. A second later a voice came from up there.
“Got it.”
Before Josh knew what was happening, he’d been released and all three men were heading for the door—and he knew they had his piece of the ring. He’d been keeping it under his pillow, inside his pillowcase. Now, it was gone.
Two seconds later, he heard the front door of the apartment slam. There was a clatter of booted steps on the stairs, then silence. Josh wandered through the wreckage of his bedroom, then his parents’ room, then the living room, all the while clenching and unclenching his hand. His wrist still ached, but the pain was going away fast, and he was pretty sure that the guy, whoever he was, hadn’t done any permanent damage. The apartment, however, was demolished. His mother was going to go ballistic when she saw the carnage, he thought, and the vision of her spending hours cleaning up what those guys had wrecked in only minutes made him feel sad and a little empty.
And that reminded him that he was hungry and his break was pretty much over. He looked at his watch. He should have clocked in two minutes ago. If he didn’t get back there soon, he’d lose his job.
He didn’t know why—he didn’t even know he’d been planning it—but he walked into his parents’ bedroom, went into their closet, and took a small cardboard box off the top shelf. Inside, wrapped in an old T-shirt, was his father’s small revolver. He stared at the gun, feeling its cold, dead weight in his hands, and almost put it back in the box. Why take a gun? He didn’t want to kill anyone. But suppose the men who broke into the apartment decided they didn’t want any witnesses and came back to kill him? Was he supposed to just let them do it? What about Rick? Was Josh just supposed to roll over and let Rick beat him i
nto a coma, like he’d done to Emory? The answer that came within him was a primal shout of triumph: No—I will not go down without a fight.
But he wouldn’t use the gun, he amended. Not unless he had to. He put the empty box back on the shelf, grabbed a backpack from his bedroom, and zipped the revolver into one of its pockets. Then he rushed out the door, slammed it, and hurried down the stairs.
He ran all the way back to the supermarket, all the way back to the break room, where he shoved his backpack into his locker and clocked back in. The manager was there, talking to the head stocker, and he tapped his watch and shook his head at Josh as he came out of the break room.
“Josh, you’re late.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I was just—”
“I don’t care. Just get out front and start bagging,” the manager said and went back to his conversation with the stocker.
Clenching his teeth together, wiping sweat from his brow with one sleeve, Josh walked to the front of the store and finished his shift on an empty stomach.
* * *
Nass was in the middle of his Saturday evening shift delivering pizza for Little Geno’s when his cell phone beeped. It was a message from Beet. His dad had been in the process of closing the body shop for the evening when some men with guns had shown up and demanded to see where Emory’s family was staying. They had ransacked the garage that was the Van Buren family’s makeshift home, found Emory’s piece of the ring, climbed back into their black SUVs and left without another word. From the descriptions, they seemed to be the same government agents who had interrogated Nass on Valentine’s Day.
He should have collected those other ring shards sooner, Nass realized, but Zhai hadn’t finished collecting the pieces from his crew yet, and it didn’t seem appropriate to ask Emory’s family if they could go through his stuff while he was in the hospital in a coma. Now the chances of restoring the ring and getting Raphael back seemed more remote than ever.
“What should we do?” Beet asked when Nass called him back.
Nass cursed under his breath. “It’s all right, man. We’ll figure something out.” But he had no idea what he was going to do or how it was going to work out. He wondered if the ring shards Beet and the others had entrusted to him were still safe at home, where he’d hidden them.
“When do you get off?” Beet asked. “Benji and I were going to head down to Rack ’Em to have a good dinner and gear up for the fight.”
“Couple of hours,” Nass said. “I’ll meet you guys there.” He ended the call and glanced at the clock on the cracked, discolored dash of the car—his father’s old beat-up Honda Civic.
He’d just completed a delivery out in the country north of town, and the place had been hard to find. By the time he got back to Geno’s, there would probably be five pizzas waiting to go out. But he was about to pass the entrance to Hilltop Haven, and there was no way he could just breeze by without checking on the shards he’d put together so far. He was pretty sure Clarisse or his parents would have given him a heads up if a pack of government thugs came by and robbed them, but it would make him feel better to know they were safe. And, he decided, he should keep the shards with him, hide them in the car someplace. If the agents found out where Nass and his family were staying, it would be easy for them to show up and do a search. But if the pieces were in the car, at least they’d be dealing with a moving target.
He waved to Mike the security guard, who buzzed the gate open and nodded at him as he passed, and Nass thought about how different it was before, when he’d first come to town, when the Haven security viewed him and his buddies as public-enemy number one. All it had taken was a few words from Zhai, and they treated him as well as their wealthy residents.
His tires screeched slightly as he shot around a curve and came to a stop next to the back of the Shao property. He jogged to the metal walking gate, entered the five-digit security code, and went inside. Footlights glowed dimly among the new landscaping, which had just been planted, a harbinger of spring.
He was a little breathless when he entered the house, but he didn’t find the scene of chaos he had feared. His parents sat in front of the TV with a bowl of popcorn between them, looking surprised to see him.
“’Nacio, what are you doing home?” his mom asked. “I thought you didn’t get off until ten?”
“No, I just came home because . . . I have to check on something. In my room,” he said awkwardly, then shot past them, headed toward the hall that led to the bedrooms. The hall light was on, as was his bedroom light, which was odd. His father was pretty militant about wasting electricity.
He was about to step into his room when he found himself face to face with Lotus Shao, and for a moment, the thick floral scent of her perfume made him a little light-headed. The jade-colored eyes she leveled at him were arrestingly beautiful.
The sight of her gave Nass a jolt. Ah, crap, he thought. Zhai had told him they could stay only until his stepmother found out they were there, that she didn’t want anyone living in her guesthouse. Nass had not relayed that information to his parents who would have refused to stay under those conditions. Now what the heck were they going to do?
Lotus gazed at Nass now, eerily calm. “Excuse me,” she said evenly. She was holding a thick book and she had a fancy purse slung over her shoulder.
“Oh. Sorry, excuse me,” Nass said, and stepped aside to let her pass. He held his breath, waiting for her to lambast him and his family for being there.
But she didn’t say anything. She just made a quick exit. Nass watched her go and then he hurried into his room. He went straight to the vase that sat on the bookshelf and tipped it upside down so that the shards hidden inside would fall into his outstretched hand. They didn’t.
“Mrs. Shao just wanted to grab one of her books on flower arranging,” Amelia Torrez said from the doorway. “She was very nice.”
Nass stared at his empty palm, his heart pounding.
“Mom, I had something hidden in this vase. Some, like, pieces of crystal. Have you seen them?”
His mom shook her head.
“Did anyone come in here today? Men in black outfits. Men from the government?”
His mother frowned. “’Nacio, I’ve told you about staying up late and watching those violent movies. This is what happens. You get paranoid. Video games, too. Everything is a conspiracy!”
Nass sighed heavily and set the vase back on the shelf.
“No one came in here today?” he asked. “When you got back from the store it didn’t look like anyone had torn the place apart searching for stuff or anything?”
“No,” Amelia said, looking at him like he was a little bit nuts.
Nass groaned and glanced at the alarm clock.
“I gotta get back, or Geno is gonna rip me a new one,” he said, and he planted a kiss on his mother’s cheek as he hurried out the door.
* * *
Lily Rose took a few minutes to check on Master Chin while Maggie called Kate on the new cell phone Zhai had given her and asked if she could come over. Ten minutes later she showed up, her nose a little pink with sunburn. She told them what had happened to Li out at the lake, and that Zhai would be over as soon as he’d dropped her off at home.
Aimee held fast to her lemonade glass the whole time, until Lily Rose came back into the kitchen.
“How does Chin look?” Dalton asked her grandma.
“The same,” Lily Rose said. She explained to Aimee that Master Chin had been wounded in a fight, with a poison-tipped weapon. “I’ve done everything I know to do and he’s not getting any better.” She smiled mysteriously. “But I think that’s about to change.”
“What do you mean?” Aimee asked.
“First things first,” said Lily Rose. “Let’s get down to business. You want to go and find your mama. Isn’t that right?”
/> “I know where she is,” Aimee said. “I’ve just got to go and get her.”
Lily Rose looked at all the women gathered around her table. “The time has come for us to speak openly,” she said. “I think by now everyone here has witnessed some of Middleburg’s peculiarities firsthand so let’s not waste time pretending that magic is impossible. Middleburg is an unusual place, and we’re all unusual women. Here, with us, nothing is impossible and nothing is foolish so none of us should be afraid the rest of us won’t believe what we have to say. We will believe. Agreed?”
They all nodded.
“Aimee, have you ever seen the tapestries Maggie’s mother has been working on?” asked Lily Rose.
“No—I mean, maybe—a couple of years ago.”
“Well, I’ve seen ’em all,” said Lily Rose. “They’re all about Middleburg’s history. The images in them depict our town’s past—and its future. I’m here to tell you that they are no ordinary tapestries. And Aimee—you’re in them.” She paused and looked at the others. “You’re all in them, in one way or another. The tapestries suggest that Aimee has some rather special powers that will be useful in reaching her mother. Do you?” she asked Aimee.
Aimee hesitated. Her gaze drifted to Maggie Anderson. Her former best friend had snubbed her when she’d returned to Middleburg from boarding school, and it had almost broken Aimee’s heart. But Maggie was different now—she was a lot nicer. Even Dalton, who had once hated her, was now treating Maggie like a friend, but Aimee still wasn’t sure she could trust her.
She stared down at the tabletop in front of her, unsure what to say, and was surprised when Maggie spoke first.
“I can see auras,” Maggie said, looking at Aimee. “And I can move objects with my mind—for real. Sometimes I can even create this crazy pink fire. And the wall that collapsed at the homecoming dance—it was an accident, but it was me. And that’s not all. The basement door in my house leads to hell. My mom guards it with magic—that’s her job. She can’t leave it unattended for long. That’s why she never goes anywhere—not because she’s crazy.”
Shadow Train Page 27