It ended with the line: To be continued …?
A question I had no answer to.
Upstairs, I found her in Josie’s room, lying on the airbed, arms outstretched. On the palm of each hand lay a single black feather. And though her eyes were wide open and staring at the ceiling, I guessed she was trying to sleep.
“I’ll never hurt you,” I whispered.
“You will,” she said. “You already have.”
I looked at Josie, sleeping soundly.
Freya shut her eyes and closed her hands around the feathers.
And I shut the door softly and went back to bed, the comic in one hand, my father’s cryptic message in the other.
The next morning, during a lull at breakfast, while Mom was in the kitchen and Josie had excused herself and gone to the bathroom, I showed Dad’s note to Freya.
“Liam’s involved,” I whispered.
She nodded, not really showing much interest.
“Liam,” I repeated. “Don’t you think that’s weird?”
She shrugged. “He was your dad’s doctor. People tell doctors all sorts of stuff; they’re not supposed to spill your secrets. Maybe your dad needed an outlet, is all.”
“But Liam works for UNICORNE.”
“So?”
“So why would Dad write a message like this? And hide it behind a picture in our house? How was Liam ever going to find it? And what does it mean? Surely, Liam knew that Dad was going on a mission to New Mexico?”
“So ask him,” she said.
I intended to. I’d already tracked down the telephone number of Liam’s practice and put it in my phone. Freya took a drink of orange juice and grimaced. “Yuck. Keep forgetting the undead don’t like the taste of citrus.”
“And there’s this as well.” I showed her Alexander’s story and quickly explained how I’d come to find it.
“Spooky,” she said. “Especially the missing father bit.”
“Careful.” I jerked a thumb toward the kitchen. Fortunately, Mom had the radio on. I leaned forward and looked into Freya’s blue eyes. Though I wasn’t trying with any intent, I could see no telltale flecks. Maybe the undead didn’t have flecks, or they couldn’t be seen through colored contacts. That suddenly made me think about the different colors of the Bulldog’s eyes. What if he’d been wearing contact lenses in his office? You’re skilled in the art of flecking, he’d said, one eye continually watering. What if he’d been wearing special lenses to make me believe he was answering my questions truthfully …?
“Hello, Devon calling Planet Malone.”
“Uh? Sorry?”
Freya tapped her head. “You zoned out. What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing.” The Bulldog theory could wait for now. “Why did you leave Dad’s room last night?”
She tilted her head, stringing her now-unbraided hair through her fingers. “I was tired. I’d done what I had to do. It moved you nearer to your father, didn’t it?”
Or deepened the mystery further. “I don’t want Klimt to know about the note. Or Alexander’s story. Will you promise not to say?”
She closed her mouth and nodded. “What did you think of the comic?”
I’d been waiting for that. “The drawings were ace.”
“And the story?”
“Neat, but kind of sad.”
She pulled her lips in tight and looked out the window at the cloudless sky. “Like I said, no happily-ever-afters. There’s not gonna be a good ending for me.”
“Why did you give yourself a mauve-colored heart?”
She put a finger on a grain of toast and crushed it. “It was s’posed to be ironic. It’s how they classify people with extrasensory gifts.”
I nodded, thinking back to my hourglass chat with the Bulldog. Hadn’t he stamped the word mauve on her file? “Did Klimt tell you that?”
“Sort of.”
“Meaning?”
She looked toward the kitchen. Mom was singing along to the radio. “I hear them talking when they don’t think I can. Preeve, Klimt — the Bulldog when he’s near. A bird’s sensory powers are highly developed — especially the undead variety. MAUVE stands for Mleptran AUma VEssel. Me, you, Mulrooney, Chantelle, we all qualify. Right now, you’re their number one bunny, the star at the top of their pointy tree. Your dad was probably the same when they had him.”
“Vessel?”
“Human body, I guess. I don’t know any more. I only hear snatches. And Preeve talks science guff most of the time. They mention the ‘artifact’ a lot. Don’t know what that means, either. But I’ve heard them mention New Mexico as well. So maybe it’s connected with your dad’s message?”
I pulled my face into a grimace. “They sent Dad looking for dragons — apparently.”
Freya lifted her shoulders. “Well, maybe he found one?”
Annoyingly, Josie burst in then. “Sorry, I was ages. Did I hear you say dragons? Is he boring you?”
Freya slipped straight into Devon mode again. “No way, José. He’s been telling me about a paper chain you asked him to make for some girl who died. That’s so sweet.” She reached out and touched my hand. Hers was cold.
Josie wrinkled her nose at this show of affection. “Come upstairs. I found that clip for your hair.”
“Cool!” And away they went.
I was finishing Freya’s orange juice for her when Mom came in, pulling on her coat. “All done?”
“Um.”
“You okay? You sound sad.”
Not sad. Confused. Truth and lies. Lies and truth. Artifacts. Mauve. Dragons. New Mexico. And somewhere in the middle of it all was Dad. “I just wish I was going to school.”
She found a hairbrush and tugged it through her hair. “Where are the chatty twins?”
“Upstairs.”
She stepped to the door. “Josie! Devon! Two minutes! Or you’re walking!”
“Coming!” they shouted.
“So is Christmas,” Mom muttered. She put the brush away and strapped on her watch. “I still don’t like this, Michael, you being at home alone. It’s not too late for me to take the day off. I could stay here and help you study.”
“I’ll be all right,” I said. I tilted Freya’s glass between my thumb and fingers. “I might work in Dad’s room if that’s okay?” Maybe there were more clues waiting to be found.
She picked up her keys from a dish. “Of course it is. I’d like that. So would he.”
Out of nowhere, I stood up and gave her a hug.
“Oh, Michael, I love you so much,” she whispered. “We’ll sort out this nonsense with the school, I promise.”
Then she was yelling to the girls again.
And the sleepover was done with, and the house was at peace.
At twenty-eight minutes past nine, when I’d finally found the nerve, I called the number for Liam Nolan’s office.
“Poolhaven House,” a woman’s voice said.
I ran my fingers over the note in my lap. “Can I speak to Dr. Nolan, please?”
“You want to make an appointment?”
“No. I just want to talk to him.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible without an appointment. Are you unwell?”
“No. It won’t take long. I need to speak to him about my father.”
“Is your father unwell?”
“No. He’s …”
“Are you okay?” she said kindly, filling my pause. “Only, you sound very young and really quite anxious. Is everything all right … between you and your father?”
“Yes. Look, I’ve got to go.” The UNICORNE car had pulled into our drive. “Please, will you tell Liam — I mean Dr. Nolan — I called.”
“Do you know Dr. Nolan personally?”
Headlights flashed at the window.
“Yes. Tell him Mi — Tell him Thomas Malone has sent him a message.”
“Thomas Malone,” she repeated in the way people do when they’re writing something down. “Well, Dr. Nolan’s not in the office until t
his afternoon. I can’t promise anything. Can he call you on this number?”
But by then the phone was halfway to my pocket.
And I was on my way to meet Alexander’s Army.
“Here are your orders,” Klimt said as Mulrooney drove me and Freya, whom we’d picked up on the way, into town. “You will go into the comic store and hand in your competition entry. You will not attempt to provoke a situation. You may converse if you wish, but if AJ or Alexander tries to detain you, be polite and say that Devon’s father is waiting in the parking lot. Then leave.”
“That’s it?” I said. “That’s all we do?”
“That is all you do,” Klimt replied. “I do not want to incite them to violence. It is enough to make them aware that they still have a thread of contact with you. Note how they react to Freya — assuming, of course, they recognize her. Remember, she is Devon Winters now.”
“Do I really have to face them in this?” she said, plucking at the neck of a Holton school sweater.
“You’re not Lara Croft,” Mulrooney said. “You heard Mr. Klimt; this is strictly low-key.”
“Freya, do you have your medication?” asked Klimt.
“Yuck, it makes me heave,” she complained. She broke the top off a vial of liquid and downed it in one swig. “Tell Preeve it tastes like rotten apples — not that he’d care.”
“But it’s working?” I asked, trying not to sound anxious. Last night in Dad’s room, she’d seemed close to flipping.
She flicked her blond hair. “Devon through and through. Don’t worry, I plucked my leg feathers before I came out.”
“Really?”
“Mich-ael?” She made a dumb face. Okay, one point to her: Being undead hadn’t “killed” her warped sense of humor.
“You have your phones?” Klimt asked.
I tapped my jeans pocket.
Freya showed him the cell phone Preeve had given her. A flashy state-of-the-art thing that would have made Josie thoroughly jealous.
“And most important, the story?”
“My story,” Freya said. She snatched it off my lap. “I want to be the one who puts it in his hand.”
“We’re here,” said Mulrooney, bringing the car to a halt.
Klimt looked at us both. “Anything else before we send you in?”
“Bottle of soda and a hand grenade?” said Freya.
Klimt graced her with a rare smile. “Michael, are you nervous? You seem withdrawn.”
Hardly surprising. So much had happened in the last two days. So much I wanted to challenge him with. But this wasn’t the time or place. “Let’s just get it done,” I said.
He nodded and the doors clicked open.
Freya jumped straight out.
Klimt put a hand on my arm. “Be careful. She is very impulsive.”
Oh, like he really needed to tell me. I shook him off and stepped into the parking lot.
As we entered the mall, I looked behind me and watched the car back up and pull away. It made me wonder what Klimt did at times like this. As far as I knew, he didn’t get involved in field operations. But assuming Mulrooney was part of our backup, we were too far away from the UNICORNE facility for him to drop Klimt and return to the store. So —?
“Niiiice boots,” I heard Freya say.
She was looking in the window of the Comfi-Foot Shoe Store at a pair of cherry-red army-style boots. Huge laces. Heavy on leather. The sort of thing she would have worn in her goth existence. The sort of thing the Boffin wore now. I shuddered and hauled her away. “Come on. I don’t think shopping was on Klimt’s agenda.”
“You know nothing about Klimt,” she said, hooking her arm slightly venomously through mine. “Or his agenda.”
“Oh? What else have you heard them saying?”
She walked on a little way, looking around at the shoppers, perhaps wondering, as I was, if there were UNICORNE agents watching us. “Nothing you couldn’t have worked out for yourself.”
I unhooked her arm and yanked her to a stop. “I’m tired of playing guessing games, Freya. Just tell me.”
She chewed her lip, taking off a little of the light pink makeup that hid the telltale blue underneath. “All right. Pretend I’ve got something in my eye.”
I nodded and gently pulled down on her cheek.
“Not too hard. I’m in contacts, remember?”
“Sorry. Go on.” I bent my head.
“I haven’t heard anything new, but I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out what’s going on. Klimt could collar these guys any time he likes, and yet he’s sending us in. I think he just wants to rate Alexander to decide how useful he might be to UNICORNE. So he’s pitting him against his best Talen. The Boffin versus Unicorn Boy, aka the Reality Kid. As for Crow Girl, she’s the expendable bait, thrown in to stir things up a bit. Entering the competition is just an excuse to get us in the ring.”
I released her eye. “That doesn’t make sense. If that was true, why would he have told us to keep this low-key?”
She waited for a mother to go past with a stroller, then set off walking again, veering away down the shopping lane that led to the far side of the mall. For a girl so slight, she covered the ground like an athlete. “If Klimt put a lightsaber in your hand and told you to challenge AJ to a fight, would you do it?”
“Um, no.”
“Exactly. This is not a mission; it’s an experiment, Michael. Something’s going to happen in that store. Klimt is just —”
Suddenly, she stopped walking and pulled me to one side. I’d hardly noticed that we’d passed through the mall and were now on the service road, only yards from the bookstore. A colorful figure had just stepped out of The Fourth Enchantment.
AJ.
Luckily, he was walking away from us. He turned the next corner and went out of sight.
“Now what?” I whispered.
Her eyes narrowed. “If AJ’s not there, Alexander must be holding down the store. I guess we’re gonna meet him sooner than we thought. Let’s take a look.”
But when we got there, stuck on the door was a sign.
BACK IN 30 MINS
For some reason, that made me more anxious, not less.
Freya cupped her face with her hands and peered through the door. “Can’t see a light.”
Good. So we could leave. With one eye on the alleyway, I took out my phone. “I’m calling Mulrooney.”
“Wait, I’ve got a better idea,” she said. A grin as wide as the street lit her face. “Why don’t we go in and take a look around?”
She put her shoulder to the door and it opened a crack.
“Freya, what are you doing? That’s against the law.”
“Pff! Some agent you are,” she taunted. “It’s on a catch, unlocked. I didn’t do anything. It just … moved when I leaned on it. Anyway, it’s no big deal. If anyone comes, we’re delivering our comic. It’s not as though we’re going to steal anything.”
“But Alexander might be upstairs.”
She spread her hands. “Isn’t that why we’re here?”
“No. I don’t like this. I’m calling — Oh, heck, shut the door. Quickly!” I’d been looking up and down the road for dangers, and one had suddenly appeared. A post office van had come out of the road AJ had turned down. It pulled up with a ratcheted brake. A post office worker jumped out, carrying a thick white envelope. “Morning,” he said.
“Morning,” I muttered, and stepped aside.
“Closed?” he tutted, seeing the sign. He beat the package against his palm. “That’s annoying. Won’t get this through his puny mail slot. I’ll leave it next door.”
“Actually, it’s open,” Freya said, pushing the door with her finger. “We’re kind of keeping guard while we wait for the guy to come back.”
“Well. Well done, you,” the postman said. “It’s nice to see some honesty in our youth. Pop this inside for me, then, will you?”
He handed the package to Freya. She glanced at it and dropped it just inside the door.
“Have a nice day,” the postman said, and he got back into his van and drove away.
The moment he was out of sight, I went for my phone again. But before I could put a finger to the screen, Freya said, “Michael, there’s something you need to know.”
“I told you, we’re leaving. I’m not taking chances.”
“We don’t need to. The store is empty.”
I threw her a puzzled look. “How do you know?”
She opened the door again and picked up the package. “Check out who it’s addressed to.”
I cast my eye over the name.
Alexander Jonathan Dayton
“Alexander Jonathan,” she said.
“AJ,” I whispered.
She nodded slowly. “There’s no one upstairs. AJ was fooling you; he is Alexander. He’s the Boffin.”
Scared hardly began to describe it. Sick. Weak. Slightly light-headed. That was how I felt as I began to put the pieces together. The noises I’d heard from upstairs last time I’d been in the store must have been AJ flexing his mind, picturing his army standing at attention or turning on the radio. He wasn’t just duping me, he was chalking up a kind of smug victory, telling me the truth in a weird sort of way. Alexander Jonathan was upstairs — or at least that projection of his mind was. On top of all this, there was also the Boffin, the spooky, comic book villain Alexander became when he ran the big operations, like moving the library cart or blowing the streetlamp outside my window. I looked at the address again and wanted to run, but Freya was psyched up and ready to roll; she had already melted into the store.
“Freya!” Even if AJ wasn’t here, to be caught inside would be a big mistake. I double-checked the street. An ash-red pigeon was strutting about, pecking at a patch of crushed potato chips. Where, I wondered, could UNICORNE be? I could see no obvious hiding places, and the windows opposite were boarded up. It felt very much like we were on our own here.
“This is so cool,” I heard Freya say.
With one last look outside, I stepped into the store and pulled the door shut. A ray of sunlight through the postered window had carved the room into splintered shadows, giving us some weird silhouettes for company, but also some low-level light. Freya was walking around the boxes, dragging her fingers over the comics. “Look at all these. I’d like this place if it wasn’t run by a wacko.”
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