The Healing Power of Sugar: The Ghost Bird Series: #9 (The Academy Ghost Bird Series)

by Stone, C. L.

  I slumped where I stood, leaning into a wall, overwhelmed both by the illness and what he was telling me. He had thwarted what could have been enough of a reason for Mr. Hendricks to slip away, leaving me with Mr. McCoy. If the police were searching for me for a kidnapping charge, and Mr. Hendricks slipped away…how could he during such a time? Wouldn’t Mr. Morris rat him out? Wouldn’t Mr. McCoy?

  And who was giving Mr. Hendricks orders? It might be the third man, the one Mr. Blackbourne and the others had been hoping to find.

  Volto might know much more than we did. If that’s true, maybe we should be working with him.

  If it hadn’t been for Volto, would Mr. Hendricks’s plan have worked? “How long has he been planning this?”

  “Mr. McCoy had been begging him to do this for months,” he said. “Just last week, I was feeding him reports that looked like they were from Mr. Hendricks. I think he suspected you and your team were behind it. He was already angry at you. He was going to get revenge.”

  I stood there, trying to grasp what he was saying. Mr. McCoy might have been mad at me when I’d defended myself the last time we faced off. Then he’d been on the run since, and trying to get at us with the help of Mr. Hendricks. Except Mr. McCoy seemed to have his own devious plans. There wasn’t much proof, from what Kota told me, to arrest him, not without me being put on trial.

  If Mr. Hendricks couldn’t have me kidnapped like he wanted, were the others still in danger at school?

  Volto was quiet for a while, watching me. “You should get some sleep.” He turned from me toward the door.

  I was about to beg him again, walking toward him with outstretched hands. “Don’t leave,” I pleaded.

  He paused, but then, before he could turn back to me, something flew into him and there was a thud as Volto met with the wall. The house shook from the force of it.

  I froze, confused, my sick brain trying to register what was happening.

  Luke was on top of Volto, reaching for his mask. “Where do you think you’re going?” Luke shouted, trying to hold him down.

  Volto struggled underneath him, waving his arms wildly. “Stop,” he said, the high pitch of the voice hurting my ears. “Get off!”

  Luke reached over, grabbing the mask right at the nose hole and tugged.

  The mask snapped.

  Underneath it, Volto wore a ski mask, along with some sort of mesh material that covered his eyes, his identity still hidden.

  Luke reached for the fabric when Volto swung a clenched fist, meeting Luke’s nose with a sickening crunch.

  Luke backed up, blood spurting from his face.

  Volto took the opportunity, scrambling to stand up.

  I went after him, but to get at him, I had to jump over Luke, and tripped over his body, crashing to my hands and knees. I got up, but Volto moved quickly and had already disappeared through the side door.

  I raced to the side door, but Volto was faster. He was out of view of the garage as I ran. Out on the driveway, I scanned to find him bolting across the back yard. I tried running after him, but I ran out of breath quickly. He disappeared beyond the trees behind the house.

  “Sang!” Luke called.

  Breathing heavily, I stopped and turned, disappointed he’d gotten away. My lungs felt thick and I was sweating all over.

  Luke walked out of the garage, holding Volto’s mask in his hand, his other holding his nose, the blood spilling out on his lip. He got a look at me and then stopped and dropped to his knees, breathing heavily through his mouth.

  I went to him. He was sick and hurt. He needed me more than I needed to try to chase Volto. “Luke,” I said.

  “This hurts,” he said, pouting, his eyes watering. “Is it broken? I’ve never broken it before.”

  I wasn’t sure. His nose appeared bent, but it was hard to tell because he was holding it tightly. “He got away.”

  “Let him,” he said, groaning. He stood up. “Go get your marshmallows. He won’t be back.”

  “Your nose…”

  “I can walk,” he said. He looked toward where Volto had taken off, and then at the mask in his hand. It had the mouth piece intact, what I suspected distorted his voice when he spoke.

  “How long had you been there?” I asked.

  “Since you left,” he said. He picked up his head. “I followed you. I was right behind you the whole time.”

  I smiled at this. “You were listening?”

  “I only jumped in when he was trying to run off. I didn’t want to interrupt if he was doing a confession. Sometimes, it’s good to wait quietly and listen.”

  Maybe we did learn a few new things, at least how Volto was thinking. “We were so close to figuring out who he was.”

  “We’ll get him next time,” Luke said, urging me on into the house.

  WHERE LUKE GOES

  I used paper towels to wipe up as much blood as I could off the floor at my old house. I made sure to bag them up and put them in the outside trash so Marie wouldn’t be too scared finding them.

  When the bleeding didn’t stop, Luke held some to his face when we walked back over.

  “North is going to yell,” I said, trying to hide the fact that I was really worried about his nose and everything that had happened with Volto. At least now I knew for sure he wasn’t Luke.

  “He was going to anyway,” Luke said.

  We walked toward Kota’s house. The cool air felt good on my feverish skin. We were quiet along the way.

  I carried the Volto mask back, a minor victory, after all the destruction he’d caused. I pondered why he’d told me all those things now. Why had he bothered to come explain it all to me? He said he cared, but he didn’t seem to understand at all.

  I gathered he was trying to make me see his side. I was overwhelmed with knowing he knew as much as he did, and in his own way, was trying to protect me from Mr. Hendricks.

  Why did he have to make us sick, though? Why couldn’t he have told us? Did he think we wouldn’t have believed him? There were more questions than answers.

  Luke stopped in Kota’s driveway, looking at the upstairs bedroom windows. The curtains were drawn. Likely Gabriel and North were sleeping up there, oblivious to what had happened.

  “I’m sorry I lied about putting up the masks,” he said, his voice muffled with his nose covered. He turned to me, looking over the crumpled paper towels his dark eyes meeting my gaze. “I just wanted to get grounded with you.”

  I smiled softly. “You were scaring me a little when you said you did it,” I said, feeling free to make this confession now. “With everything going on, I was starting to wonder if you were Volto.”

  “I’ve been trying to follow him,” he said.

  “You?” I asked. “How?”

  “We had nothing to do for a few weeks,” he said. “So I spent some time just…doing some tracking. It helped when he started leaving those masks.”

  “So you saw them?”

  “Of course I did,” he said. “It’s why I didn’t go to the diner, even after I’d promised North.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I circled Kota’s house,” he said. “I checked the yard and Max. I found footprints. Volto’s.”

  I couldn’t believe it. We’d been chasing Luke, when on his own initiative, he was chasing Volto. “You found his shoe prints?”

  “I took pictures of them. Too bad they’re still on my phone. I took the photos to a shoe shop, trying to find a match so I knew which shoes they were. I’ve still been looking for a matching print. Plus, I found the masks.”

  “We did,” I said. “We collected them.”

  “No, I mean, I found out where he was getting them. Or at least what type. You know how there was always eight?”

  I nodded. “Did it mean anything?”

  “That’s how many are sold in the package,” he said. He sighed. “I had a photo of a shop that sold a set of eight in the package of the exact kind. He’s got the picture now, though, since he has my
phone. And the footprints are gone.” He looked back at my old house. “Maybe he left a few in your yard, but the ground is dry. I doubt it.”

  The wind swept up around us and I shivered, no longer hot. Luke ushered me to get into the garage.

  I turned, then, looking at his face. “You couldn’t tell anyone?”

  “I wanted to tell you,” he said. “Except it was better if I didn’t. I was getting close.”

  “He said if we put our phones together, we would have figured it out.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “He seems like a nut case. He thinks he’s protecting you. He’s looking in from the outside. I don’t really know if this plan he suspected of Mr. Hendricks was actually real. We would have known about it, I think. I’m wondering if Volto is just crazy. But maybe he’s misjudging Mr. Hendricks like he’s misjudging us.”

  That seemed to happen a lot around us. “I’m sorry, Luke,” I said quietly. “Maybe the others were getting worried, too. I didn’t mean to think you could have done all this. I really was just…I was just…”

  “It’s my own fault,” he said. “I was working in secret. The truth was, I didn’t know who to tell, because I wasn’t sure how he was listening to us at all. I’ve been spending time in our homes while everyone was gone checking for listening devices, and setting up traps, testing to see if Volto used the information. I didn’t know he was onto me and would delete our phones. Maybe he realized the information I was leaving around couldn’t be real. Or maybe he was watching me.” He nudged my elbow. “Let’s go in. I’m tired. My nose hurts.”

  I agreed and followed him upstairs. North was still asleep on his back. Gabriel was, too, spread out wide while he had space to himself, humming softly in his sleep.

  Luke chuckled. “I’m going to go clean up,” he said. “I’m not sure if it’s broken, but I want to stop the bleeding at least. Then we can call Dr. Green.” He groaned. “We’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”

  I nodded, yet was watching North. He appeared to be dead asleep, but something was off. He seemed pale. He kept swallowing. I wondered if his throat was bothering him.

  Luke went into the bathroom. I placed Volto's mask onto the window seat and then climbed onto the pull-out bed next to North, sitting on the edge.

  North opened one lid a smidgen. He glanced at me, looked at the bag of marshmallows in my hands. “No,” he said.

  I ignored him. I opened the bag and pulled out a marshmallow.

  “No,” he said more firmly, and sat up. “Sang, where did you find those? Put them away.”

  “You hid the ones down stairs, didn’t you?” I said.

  “I’m not telling.” He checked out the bag. “Those aren’t the same kind. So you didn’t find the other ones?”

  The sound of a car door opening and shutting startled me. I jumped up, dropping the marshmallows on the bed. I went to the window.

  “What is wrong with you?” North asked. “It’s probably just Kota.”

  It was Kota, coming in with a tired, ill-looking Silas. Victor’s car pulled in behind them and Nathan and Victor joined them, coming in.

  “We’re all getting sick,” I said.

  North grunted. He scooped up the marshmallows and tried to put them back in the bag. “No sugar,” he said. “I can make you some tea.”

  “Marshmallows are better,” I said, coming back to him. “Won’t you trust me?”

  He hesitated, holding onto one of the marshmallows he’d just picked up. He examined it. “Baby, you can’t eat sugar like this. You’ll rot your teeth. You’ll make your stomach hurt.”

  There was a thunder of footsteps as the four boys started coming up the stairs. Silas was the first to appear, bare-chested, already having stripped his shirt off. He spotted the pile of clothes in the basket and dropped his shirt into it. “Why did we go back to wearing uniforms again?”

  “I don’t know,” Kota said, coming up behind him. He looked at North and I on the cot, and then at the marshmallow bags. “Were we hungry?”

  “She wants marshmallows.”

  “Give them to her,” Kota said with a small smile.

  “Kota,” North said, as I took the bag from his hand. “She can’t have the sugar all the time.”

  “It’s not just about sugar,” I said, popping the marshmallow into my mouth, finally finding some relief. The powder around the marshmallow seemed to melt in my throat and the pain and scratching eased.

  “How can you eat that now?” he asked. He reached for his own throat, grunting loudly.

  “You should try one,” Kota said to him.

  North made a face, but then pulled a marshmallow out of the bag. He put it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed.

  His eyes widened in surprise. “What is it doing?”

  “The gelatin soothes a sore throat,” Kota said. “Marshmallows can work in lieu of cough medicine. Sang knows what she’s doing.”

  North harrumphed.

  Silas, Victor and the others laughed, waking up Gabriel.

  “Pipe the fuck down,” he cried out, flipping over. He spied me through squinted eyes and reached for me. “I get the bed with Sang,” he said. “We’re sick.”

  “We’re all getting sick,” Victor said.

  “I’ll bring up some sleeping bags,” Kota said.

  “I’ll make some tea,” North said, and got up. “Silas, take the roll-away. Make sure she doesn’t eat too many marshmallows.”

  Just then, the door to the bathroom opened. Luke stood there, his nose looking awful, already starting to get bruised. There was still blood around the edges. There were a few drops of red along his bare chest.

  He looked out at us all, and made a pouting face. “Don’t eat them all,” he said with a whine. “Save some marshmallows for me.”

  There was an uproar then. What happened to Luke? Why was his nose broken?

  I sighed, sat on the bed and ate a marshmallow, while Luke started to explain.

  ~ A ~

  Kota called Erica to let her know the boys and Sang were over and that everyone had come down with something. She told Kota that if they needed anything, she’d stop at the pharmacy on the way home from work and just to let her know.

  Luke felt the bandage over his nose. He was miserable with fever and now the pain, wishing he’d been a little faster and had avoided Volto’s punch. Dr. Green had been by, took some swabs from everyone to determine if they had strep, and confirmed that Luke’s nose was, in fact, broken. He made him a makeshift ice pack with a bag of peas from the freezer, but he wanted Luke to go in for an X-Ray.

  So Luke was in the car now with Mr. Blackbourne and Dr. Green, heading toward the Academy hospital. He had filled them in on everything he’d told Kota and the others, too. Now it was just the long journey to the hospital to check on his nose. That probably also meant a lot of waiting around before he got to go back and join the others in what would probably be a week of recovery.

  “I still can’t believe we didn’t see this coming,” Mr. Blackbourne said from the driver’s seat. His steel eyes were constantly focused on the road, his hands at two and ten, a proper driver always. He never slouched, never sat back. Luke often wondered how he could keep up like that.

  “There’s been too many things happening at once,” Dr. Green said. His sandy hair was messy and in need of brushing. “We assumed it was Hendricks. Hendricks assumed it was us. Turns out, he wasn’t ready to get going like we thought. He almost forced himself out ahead of time. Something is important enough for him to want to stay until the end. We’re not sure if what Volto had to say is true. Hendricks seems reluctant to get out quickly, but was feeling forced to do so this last week.”

  “Volto had said it was some guy putting pressure on him,” Luke said.

  “He didn’t say who it was, and McCoy was sleeping in on Monday morning. Mr. Morris was in class. I don’t think Hendricks was ready for this supposed plan. He was very vigilant, though, and wanting to know who was ratting everyone out, and ready to throw a
lot of people under the bus.”

  “It might be a payoff,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “There’s something he’s waiting on that won’t happen until later. We’ve been pushing, he’s fighting back.”

  Dr. Green tapped the armrest. “So we’ve been pushing too hard? And that means he’s not done…”

  “It means we’ve got time to catch him,” Mr. Blackbourne said. “Only now, we might have changed how we operate. Whatever he’s doing, something is still processing. He’s careful, he doesn’t want to get caught, so he’s willing to go, but because he’s stalling, it means there would have been something he’s leaving behind. Our job is to find it.” He glanced in the rearview mirror, looking at Luke now, examining his face. “How’s your nose?”

  “Bruised and hurt,” Luke said. “Like my pride. I was too slow.”

  “Why did you wait so long before you jumped him?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Luke said, sighing. “He was explaining himself. He was trying to lure Sang away. I was letting him talk.” He relaxed his head against the headrest, searching for an angle that didn’t put pressure on his nose. He’d taken pain medicine, but there was still a lot of pressure.

  Mr. Blackbourne glanced at Luke again. “Were you waiting for him to succeed?”

  “You should have heard her,” Luke said. “The moment he started talking like she should leave, she was so…her face turned so red. She was so angry, she couldn’t even talk.” His eyes teared a little, and he blinked, not expecting to have gotten so emotional.

  She had been so beautiful, with her crazy hair and her steadfast, determined glare on Volto.

  “You told me you were worried about her,” Mr. Blackbourne said quietly. “That this new plan involving her…that she might leave because of it.”

  “It’s still a possibility,” Luke said, believing it to be true. He’d wanted to believe in the plan. At first, he’d gotten really excited. He had pictured the future with her, of dating her, and much more, only his roadblock had been the Academy itself. He found himself daydreaming often of the Academy allowing her to stay on the team, and how he could stay with her and with his friends.