B003J5UJ4U EBOK (28 page)

There was dead silence for a moment. Then Martin blurted out, “It’s not for me. It’s for Torchie.”

“For Torchie?”

There was this pause. I could almost hear Martin’s brain spinning desperately in search of an explanation. “He’s part Scottish,” he blurted out. “There’s this parade tonight. He forgot his kilt.”

“Oh, that explains everything.” Livy laughed and disappeared inside her apartment. She reappeared at the door a minute later and handed a plaid skirt to Martin. “Have fun.”

“Thanks.” Martin came back, tossed the skirt to Torchie, then looked over at me. “She definitely likes me.”

Grumbling, Torchie took the skirt and wig and went to change. “I hate to say it,” Flinch said when he came back out of the bedroom, “but you’d make a cute girl.”

“Then don’t say it.” A wisp of smoke curled up from the hem of the skirt. It was a good thing the material wasn’t one of those synthetic things that burn real easily. Torchie slapped the fire out and walked over to the window, turning his back onus.

“Cute and hot,” Martin said.

“I wish you guys would stop making fun of me,” Torchie said.

“I’m sorry.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Relax. We don’t want anything catching fire.” I pointed to the roof of the building across the street where a small flame flickered. “Like that.”

He nodded, then squinted his eyes. The fire went out. I checked the time on the cell phone. It was getting close to nine. “We’d better get going.”

As we left the building and crossed the street, Cheater sniffed the air. “You guys smell smoke?”

I sniffed. There was definitely something burning somewhere. “Probably from before,” I said. Then a flicker of light caught my eye from above. “Oh no …” It looked like there was a fire in the building in front of us—the one Cheater had told me about.

“Fireworks …” Cheater said.

FWOOMP!

The night lit up. A rocket shot through the window and slithered into the sky. A zillion others chased after it. Firecrackers exploded and bottle rockets whistled.

“Put it out,” I yelled to Torchie.

A man came screaming through the door of the building,
his clothes blazing. He rushed down the steps. Two more burning men followed right behind him. All three were wearing dark blue suits. They ran right past us, pushing between Cheater and Martin. One of them pulled a cell phone from his pocket, but then flung it away when the fire spread to his sleeve. As they turned and raced toward a van parked at the curb, howling and slapping at themselves, the fire on their clothes went out. Torchie must have doused it.

“We have to help them,” Torchie said.

“I don’t think so,” Cheater said.

“It might be better if we didn’t,” Martin said. “They’re the bad guys.”

The van squealed away from the curb, bounced off a couple cars parked across the street, and blew through a red light. Headed for the hospital, I guess. Torchie turned back to the building. The fire in the window dimmed and died.

I heard sirens in the distance. “We’d better go.”

“I feel awful,” Torchie said as we walked away.

“Don’t,” I said. “They probably did a lot worse to a lot of people.”

“It doesn’t matter what they did,” Torchie said. “It matters what I did. I’m a bad person.”

“Hey,” Martin said, “that just proves you’re a good person. A bad person wouldn’t feel anything.”

“You think so?” Torchie asked, wiping a smudge of soot from his nose.

“Absolutely,” Martin said.

“Besides,” Flinch said, “I think you just saved us from a
very bad experience. Now let’s go give Bowdler a bad experience of his own.”

THREE TIMES ON
the way to the school, Cheater stopped and looked over his shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I think someone’s following us.”

“Yeah,” Flinch whispered to me. “It’s Livy. She wants her skirt back.”

I looked over my shoulder. There was nothing but shadows. I pointed at the school. “I’m more worried about what’s ahead of us.”

As we walked around the side of the school, I imagined coming face to face with a dozen guys in dark blue suits.

“I wish you could sense people from a distance,” I told Cheater.

“That would be nice,” Flinch said. “Bowdler could have fifty guys with him.”

“I don’t think so,” Martin said. “From what I’ve seen inside that twisted mind of his, I think he’s going to be by himself. He can’t imagine that he’d have any trouble with us. He has a disrupter. He probably has a gun or something. For all he knows, the bad guys back there caught us. He’s too full of himself to bring along help. He’s used to people following his orders. And there’s no way he’s going to let anyone see him negotiating with a bunch of kids.”

“Let’s hope so.” I turned to Torchie. “I guess you’re on.”

elsewhere …

BOWDLER KNEW THAT
for most people, there might seem to be little point going to the schoolyard. Santee would have the five boys secured before they got this far. But Bowdler believed in covering every possible outcome. If, by some unthinkable circumstance, Santee failed, then this is where Bowdler would need to be. This sort of careful planning was why he was destined to succeed.

He definitely wanted Eddie back. And he wanted the Grieg kid. That would be useful. Fire from a distance. It wasn’t as universal as telekinesis, but it still had powerful potential. Dobbs didn’t seem to have much value. Unless he could be made to see farther into the future. It might be worth an experiment or two. Maybe try some extreme threats. But this one—Bowdler looked at him with disdain—he wasn’t worth anything.

The mind reader would be valuable. The Anderson kid might be useful, too. Though he looked like he’d be the toughest to break.

But that was all in the future. Right now, he had to stay
focused on the present. They’d be here any moment. And then they’d be his.

“Sparkie!”

Bowdler spun to his right and reached automatically into his pocket. A girl was running across the field toward them.

“Sparkie! Here, boy!”

She ran right up to him. She was so close, he could almost count the freckles on her face.

“Have you seen my dog?”

“No.”

“You sure? His name’s ‘Sparkie.’ ”

“If he ran away, he’s probably dead by now.”

“You’re mean.” She let out a loud whistle, then turned and ran off.

As she disappeared around the school, Bowdler pulled his hand from his pocket. He wouldn’t need any weapons tonight.

showdown

“OKAY, I DID
it,” Torchie said when he got back to us. “Now give me my pants.”

“What pants?” Martin asked.

“You had my pants,” Torchie said.

Martin shrugged. He looked at Cheater. Cheater shrugged.

“Knock it off and give him his pants.” I liked kidding Torchie as much as anyone else, but it would be beyond cruel to leave him in a skirt.

Flinch handed over the pants. Torchie pulled them on under the skirt, then slipped the skirt off.

“Are you sure you got close enough?” I asked.

“I hope so,” Torchie said.

We’d find out soon enough. When we reached the back of the school, I saw two people standing near the bleachers at the opposite side of the ball field. Even from a distance, I could tell it was Bowdler and Lucky. The field lights were off, but the back of the school was lit up enough so we weren’t in total darkness.

When we were about ten yards away from Bowdler, I reached out and plucked some grass at his feet to test my
powers. It worked. The disrupter was disabled. Bowdler was at my mercy. I could rip his heart out right now, and we could all walk away.

“You got your power?” Martin whispered.

I nodded.

“Take him out.”

Bowdler walked toward us with Lucky in front of him. Bowdler’s hands gripped Lucky’s shoulders, as if he was steering him. He stopped a couple of yards from me.

“You okay?” I asked.

Lucky’s eyes seemed foggy, but he nodded.

“It’s over,” I said. “Let him go.”

I plucked a button from Bowdler’s jacket, just to let him know he’d lost. I couldn’t wait to see the look of fear on his face when he realized he didn’t have any way to stop me.

“Very clever,” Bowdler said. He didn’t seem ready to accept defeat. I guess an ego that large needs time to react—sort of like a super tanker.

I plucked a second button from his jacket, floated it up in the air, then bounced it off his forehead.

He didn’t even blink. “You’re quite a smart boy, Eddie.” He took his right hand off Lucky’s shoulder.

I plucked the last button and chucked it toward the school.

Bowdler took his left hand off Lucky’s shoulder. “It looks like you’ve outsmarted me. Sadly for you, looks are deceiving.”

He draped his hands back over Lucky’s shoulders. I was ready to react if he had a gun. My stomach tightened as I
saw what he was holding. In one fist, he had a hand grenade. In the other, he had the pin. He tossed the pin to the side, and then laughed.

“Here’s the thing,” Bowdler said. “With a normal grenade, you’ve got five seconds. Plenty of time for you to deal with it. Of course, I’d be a fool to bring a normal grenade. I’ve got the detonator rigged to explode the instant I let go. You can pull it away as fast as you want, but I don’t think you can pull it away fast enough to keep from getting turned into Swiss cheese by the shrapnel. Remember, I am the world’s greatest, and only, expert on the limits of your powers. I don’t think you’re fast enough. Want to find out?”

“You’re crazy.”

He slipped the hand with the grenade inside the neck of Lucky’s shirt. “Oh, look. It just got even tougher. Maybe you had a slight chance before. But you really can’t pull it away fast enough now.”

“You’d die, too,” I said.

He shrugged. “We’d all die. You, me, your parents. Your friends’ parents.”

“What?” I felt the whole meeting was spinning out of control. We’d already won. How could we be losing now?

“If I don’t make a phone call in fifteen minutes, a chain of events will be set in motion, ending with quite a few tragic accidents.”

“What do you want?” I asked.

“You. I want to finish what I started. I want to turn you into the perfect weapon. Of course, I’ll need you to take your
medicine again, just for the ride back. Happily, I brought a bottle of it with me. Unwatered, of course.”

I thought about yanking the grenade from his hand. But I wasn’t sure I could get it away in time. Especially now that it was under Lucky’s shirt. When I pictured it in my mind, I saw it exploding instantly, right in my face—tearing all of us into shreds, like one of those horrible videos they show on the evening news.

“If I come with you, you’ll leave the others alone?”

“You have my word,” Bowdler said.

“No way!” Martin shouted.

“You can’t go with him,” Flinch said.

They were right. I couldn’t trust him. After he had me under control somewhere, he’d go back for the others. None of us was safe. I had to get the grenade away from him.

If I could sit with the guys and talk, we’d come up with a dozen solutions. I’d seen it at Edgeview. Once we grabbed hold of a problem, we refused to let go until we found an answer. That was our true talent as a group. We refused to let go. But I didn’t have the luxury of discussing this with them. I had to get the grenade away from Bowdler, and I had to do it now.

“Give up, Eddie,” Bowdler said.

“Don’t let go,” I whispered to myself. And saw the answer. I didn’t have to pull the grenade away from him. I didn’t need to get rid of it. I just needed to keep it from exploding.

“It’s time to take your medicine, Eddie,” Bowdler said. He held up a small bottle in his left hand.

“No. It’s time to put an end to this.” I squeezed Bowdler’s fingers around the grenade. Hard.

He yelped and jerked his hand out from under Lucky’s shirt. For an instant, a look of panic crossed his face, but then he got control again.

“You do anything to me, your parents are at risk,” he said. “There’s only one way this can end. You’re just kids. There’s no way you can beat me. You never had a chance.”

“You’re bluffing,” I said. “Check him out, Cheater.”