Kingdom Keepers: The Return Book Two: Legacy of Secrets (16 page)

“The jobs you did,” Nick said. “You felt like one?”

Amanda and Jess turned to one another. Both girls were frighteningly pale. Jess’s hands were trembling. Amanda shook her head slightly. Both girls knew the boy was lying.

Jason Ewart shrugged. “It all went down like I was told. Day or night. Look, I get to hang out in the parks all the time. I’m asked to do something like once a week. Maybe twice. It’s nothing! And I’m paid almost like a full-time Cast Member. Did I know it was wrong? Yeah, sure. Did I know it wasn’t Disney? Of course. But I’m a fan. I love it here. How was I supposed to say no?”

“You loved it enough to commit sabotage.” Tim sounded disgusted.

“It was kinda give and take, admittedly. But on the whole I never did anything that bad.”

“So you can’t quit,” Amanda said. “You told us you’d quit, but you can’t because you aren’t a real Cast Member, are you, Jason Ewart?” She raised her palm. Jason Ewart cowered. “Tell them the truth!” she said. “Tell them about the Major.”

“No…No way.” The boy’s face went ashen white. “You can’t possibly…”

“Can’t we?” Amanda hissed. “Tell them about the Quiet Room or the Mirror Chamber or the Pipe.”

“Who are you? I can quit! I promise! Here! Shred my ID! I swear.” Still trembling, he produced his Disney ID card. Emily snatched it from his hand, held it so that it floated in the air in front of him. Seeing that, Jason Ewart’s knees buckled and he collapsed, his eyes closed.

Emily reappeared, her hand on the battery pack on her leg. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Overdid it, I guess.”

“I’m out of here,” Nick said, moving toward the door. “We’ve been compromised. But at some point, Amanda, you’re going to explain how what you said turned him to Jell-O.”

Tim called out earnestly. “We still need your help with…” He glanced down at Jason Ewart, worried he might be faking. “That person we were talking about.”

Nick turned. “If I help you? That’s up to me.”

F
INN DIDN’T CARE FOR THE PAST.
He didn’t care for two-dimensional projections and feeling at sea in Disneyland, of all places. He didn’t like failure of any kind; he’d hoped to find Walt’s pen right away and then focus on how the Keepers might return to the present. He was sick of looking stupid in clothes his grandparents would have worn. He didn’t like what had happened at the Golden Horseshoe, nor did he appreciate that this guy, Hollingsworth, might be the father of the Overtakers. A man so awful Walt Disney had fired him, a man so reckless and mean-spirited that he’d use a celebration to threaten people.

But most of all, more than anything, he missed Amanda. He felt like his lungs weren’t working, like he was sucking for air. His head hurt; his eyes stung, his throat went dry, and his heart sped up whenever he thought of her.

He had to do something about it—or go crazy. Cinderella hour, as Charlene now called it, approached—the hour or so after the park closed when power to Wayne’s maintenance shop was cut. The projections ceased; the Keepers became real again, living, breathing teens. Although it might become more important later, it wasn’t Finn’s job to overthink the phenomenon. It was his job to take advantage of it.

The DHIs returned to the Opera House where they’d eventually settle down for the night. It was a strange reversal of how their projections typically worked. Once again, Finn wondered: How odd did the past have to be?

Maybeck told the two girls to go sit behind a pile of lumber.

“What for?” Willa complained.

“Hey. Don’t treat us like that,” Charlene said, the ice in her tone bringing Maybeck down a peg. She and Maybeck had been something of an item for a while now, and while no one had control of Terry Maybeck, Charlene definitely carried influence.

“I’m getting out of these stupid clothes,” Maybeck said. “I didn’t know you cared!”

The girls hightailed it out of sight.

Laughing, Maybeck explained himself to a puzzled Finn. “Look. My projection’s my projection. That was set when we crossed over. But at least for the moment, I happen to be me, and those over there”—he pointed—“happen to be lockers. Workers’ lockers. I found myself some blue jeans and a shirt. If I stay in this penguin suit for one more minute…” He stripped down to his boxer shorts. The jeans and shirt were a little big, but Maybeck was cursed, Finn thought, by looking good in anything. You could dress him in an apron and rubber boots and someone would put him on the cover of a magazine.

“I hate you,” Finn said. “And I’m not kidding.”

“Thanks, man. I do look good, don’t I?”

“I have words for you that should not be spoken, so I’m going to keep it that way.”

“The Phil-pill and me are meeting up with Wayne’s World and heading to his place for a little late-night soldering. Philby’s going to build a laser Wayne can use to make us 3-D.”

“He can’t do that. We don’t have the parts.”

“Actually,” Professor Philby said, overhearing them. He dug into his pockets and opened his hand, revealing what looked like penlights. “Laser pointers,” he said, and added proudly, “with laser lenses. I took them and some other stuff before we crossed. Stuffed my pockets. Last night, when you woke me, I didn’t even notice. But coming back from the studio, I put my hands on my legs and felt them in my pockets. They became real when I did. Now, I have no idea what will happen when we project again tomorrow morning. But for tonight, I’ve got pretty much all I need to get cooking, provided Mr. Artist here can keep a steady enough hand when soldering under a magnifying glass.”

“Hey, I’m the Picasso of soldering,” Maybeck said.

“Let’s hope not,” Philby said, laughing. “I can’t recognize a thing in his paintings.”

With Maybeck and Philby gone, Finn’s mission would be easier to pull off. He nodded and smiled at them, hiding any trace of tension from his face.

“All-y, all-y, in come free,” shouted Maybeck to the girls. “Coast is clear. Mr. Abs is clothed.”

“Give me a break,” Willa said, reappearing along with Charlene.

“What are you two up to tonight?” Finn asked. He tried to sound nonchalant, but it wasn’t a question he ever asked.

“We thought we’d knit and sit by the fire while you men do the real work,” Willa said. “Translated: we’re going to look for some rags in the costume shop so that we can get out of these frills. You?”

“Maybe explore outside of the park some.”

“But not too far,” said Willa in a moment of motherly concern.

“Not too far.”

If he’d been in middle school, Finn would have crossed his fingers behind his back.

O
UTSIDE THE GATES
of Disneyland, past the empty oceans of parking lot asphalt and onto the street, Finn left the quarter-mile of roadway familiar to him from his ride with Wayne. The air smelled bizarre, a combination of oranges and car exhaust. Neon signs took the place of streetlamps. Finn didn’t recognize a single store or restaurant name. Not one chain. No McDonalds, no Starbucks, no Target, no GameStop here. Just donuts, “service stations,” and mom-and-pop restaurants and stores with strange names.

There were too many phone poles holding too many wires, too many lights and too many cars going way too slowly—big, unruly cars, more like tanks, driven by teenagers smoking cigarettes and shouting car to car. Harbor Boulevard was the scene, as far as Finn could tell, and he’d walked right into it.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t much of a town, just a few city blocks growing out of a central intersection of two major roads. Finn didn’t recognize it as in any way related to the Anaheim of sixty years later. He moved through it, feeling like a ghost. No one seemed to take any notice of him; it was the first time he realized he’d come to feel like something of a celebrity in present time, and he didn’t like the thought of that. He didn’t want to become full of himself, to be so self-important that he started looking for other people to react to him. That seemed like more of a Maybeck or Charlene thing, not his.

When he spotted what he’d come looking for, he stopped. He was standing in front of a barbershop with a red-and-white spinning pole out front. The barber’s pole dated back to medieval times, Finn knew, and the practice of bloodletting, tooth extraction, and surgery. The two colors were said to represent clean bandages and blood. Finn found it odd that, of all places, this was where he would first spot the thirteen-story hotel.

An odd and ungainly shape, it stood unevenly, like a set of poorly stacked wooden blocks. The upper floors were burned and damaged; they’d been struck by lightning twenty years earlier. Unoccupied and said to be haunted, the hotel remained in place, partly because Anaheim lacked the funds needed to tear it down, partly because the remains of at least one family had never been found after that fateful night. The surviving family members had repeatedly sued to leave the structure in place until the bodies were discovered, and proper graves dug. The lawsuits alone had, at one point, nearly bankrupted the small town. And still the hotel stood, just off the main intersection to the north, looking like a tower of terror.

Standing so close to a pole representing bandages and blood, Finn felt himself shiver. The shop was shuttered for the night, but inside he could see a series of three oversize leather thrones, which faced a wall of mirrors and a shelf of straight razors, combs, and colognes.

Finn shook himself. He was just standing here, staring. As much as he didn’t want to be where he was, he’d made no effort to move on. This unsettled him. How much of him had actually crossed over to the past? How equipped was he to make good decisions? Was he mentally as two-dimensional as his projection by day? Was he wrong to have wandered outside the boundaries of his Keeper existence and into a time and place where a person like him did not belong?

These seemed like valid, important questions, ones that needed answering prior to his taking action. And yet, his feet moved almost independently, pushing him forward in a somewhat trancelike, near-catatonic state. He was going into that hotel.

The question weighing on his brain was: Would he come back out?

F
INN FOUND ONE DOOR
that wasn’t boarded up, though it was marked
DO NOT ENTER
. It was around the side of the golden-brick hotel, with its flaked paint trim and windows scarred silver with grime. Only part of the warning board remained. It leaned against the wall, its stenciled letters a grayish white, a
T
handwritten into the empty space between words:
NOT
T
E
. Finn happened to know what it meant, thanks to an Italian babysitter in elementary school:
notte
was Italian for “night,” as in
buonanotte
, or “good night.” That struck him as far creepier than
DO NOT ENTER
.

To make matters worse, the doorknob moved easily and the door did not squeak on its hinges. Finn was no fan of the horror movie cliché, but since when did a door to a building closed down twenty or thirty years earlier not make at least a little noise when opened?

The answer was plain to his eyes: oil streaks ran like tears from the rusted hinges. Finn reached out and touched the streaks; not tacky or dry, but wet and smooth. Somewhat fresh oil, recently applied—and by someone who didn’t want to be heard. A homeless guy, probably. Maybe a few of them. Finn wondered how a group of homeless dudes would take to an eighteen-year-old visitor violating their space in search of a particular room.