Kingdom Keepers: The Return Book Two: Legacy of Secrets (5 page)

“Blood,” Finn said, seeing a line of red on its hindquarters.

The teepee entrance now framed the face of a humungous wolf. It looked at the kids hungrily, kicked the suffering pig out of its way, and lifted its hairy paw to claw out its entry. But just as that paw was about to land, the wolf spun, having been struck by the other pig at a full charge. The pig and the wolf engaged in a dogfight, spinning, tumbling, biting. The wounded pig joined in—far Bigger and Badder than any nursery story could depict.

Maybeck was the first to hurry out of the teepee and start kicking the wolf. Charlene and Finn followed, though Finn wondered what kind of fool inserted himself into such a fight. Maybeck yanked the wolf’s hind leg. The animal snapped back at him, and Charlene caught the wolf in the face with an acrobatic and well-placed kick. The high-pitched pig screams, mixing with the wolf’s guttural growls, enhanced the terror. Finn grabbed for the other hind leg. Maybeck bravely took hold again, and together the two boys dragged the snarling wolf backward on its belly. It fought back, but Charlene caught it with the toe of her shoe. As the wolf separated from the pigs, the swine took off into the woods. The boys and Charlene counted to three, Maybeck having already called out, “The river!”

On three, Finn and Maybeck released the wolf. The boys and Charlene sprinted for the water and dived in. Willa and Philby fled the teepee and climbed a nearby tree. The wolf ran to the water’s edge, but wasn’t about to wade in. As the kids popped to the surface and looked back, they saw the wolf slink into the underbrush and vanish.

Treading water, Maybeck said, “And here I was hoping I’d enjoy the original Disneyland.”

Finn swam to shore, marveling at the ease of having his human body back. “You know what this means?” he said to Philby as Philby dropped out of the tree.

“You’re going to need to hang your clothes dry?” Philby quipped.

“Yes,” Finn said. “But first, if we’re not projections any longer, we can go to Burbank and Roy’s office—tonight.”

“If the power’s shut off,” Willa said, “then Wayne will be heading home. As in: right now.”

J
OE
G
ARLINGTON’S DESK
converted from a sitting desk to a standing desk with the push of a button. Currently, he was standing, a colored pencil in hand, a Kanga hat cocked on his head, reading glasses pushed down his nose past tired eyes. He wore shorts and red Hoka running shoes. He looked up at Amanda as she entered. She was carrying an old blue can, like something that had once contained protein powder.

“Miss Lockhart. I told Nancy just now I couldn’t see anyone. I’m busy here.” He gestured to his drawing. Amanda just stood there, waiting for his full attention. “Are you going to speak? Do we have something to discuss? Please don’t argue your suspension. Honestly, that won’t help your case.”

When Amanda didn’t so much as flinch, Joe hollered for Nancy to close his office door. It shut. He occupied a corner office on a studio lot side street with a view of the commissary. “Look,” he said once they were alone, “I appreciate everything you did in Orlando to help your friends. We got them here safely in large part because of you and Jessica.”

“And Mattie Weaver.”

“Maybe. I’ll give you that. But it does not give you a Get Out of Jail Free card, Amanda. I’m sorry.”

“You’re going to reinstate me to the Disney School of Imagineering, Mr. Garlington. I’m going to room with Jess, just like before. You, or the dreaded Tobias Langford, are going to establish an independent project for me. Name it whatever you like so long as I can work, well, independently. Tim Walters and Emily Fredrickson and Jess will be on my team. I need access to Ms. Kline’s staff at the Archives.”

Joe trained his unsympathetic eyes onto her like blinding headlights. “Careful, Ms. Lockhart. You and Jessica, and Ms. Weaver, are valued members of the Disney team. Currently, you—and you alone—are serving a suspension for meddling with your…powers?…unusual abilities?…in the parks and being close-mouthed about your involvement.”

“You mean like this?” Amanda leaned her head forward slightly and focused on Joe’s work area. A moment later, the corners of the papers curled up as if caught by a wind. She made a small swiping gesture with her hand. The papers moved, creating a space on his desk that she filled with the can. “You’re going to reinstate me because I know what this means and you don’t. Because you and I both saw a video of Tia Dalma appearing in Walt Disney’s apartment near his music box. Seeing her scared you as much as it did me, and please don’t lie about that.”

“Tia Dalma is a powerful villain.”

“A powerful Overtaker, you mean.”

“The Kingdom Keepers silenced the Overtakers. You were there. We both know that’s done.”

“Maleficent. Chernabog. Not Tia Dalma.”

“One villain does not an army make.”

Amanda tapped the can. As she did, she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the office wall. It gave anyone who faced it Mickey Mouse ears. Amanda saw a face some called darkly tanned; others knew it to be her natural skin color. She could tan standing next to a lightbulb. She had long dark hair and slightly hooded eyes that suggested an Asian mother or father, neither of whom she knew or would ever meet again. She saw what she’d done to Joe’s desk with just her thoughts and the wave of a hand, and for the millionth time, she wondered how she’d become the freak she was and if her “unique ability”—she was so tired of the euphemisms—would ever leave her.

“You saw the photograph,” she said. “It was from this can. Opening Day, Disneyland, 1955. We both know it wasn’t manipulated. It’s real.” She opened the can for him. “A white glove, faded now, because women wore white gloves back then. A game of jacks with a rotting rubber ball, because that was a game played back then. By burying all this as a time capsule, Finn was letting us know what happened to them. Where they were. Are,” she corrected herself. “Now, factor in Tia Dalma being in Walt’s apartment, near the music box. Are you paying attention?”

“Do not address me like that, young lady. You will find my bite is much worse than my bark. Your suspension is a result of actions committed during your enrollment at DSI. You used your…gift, your telekinesis, to damage Disney proper—”

“I saved my friends from the Queen of Hearts and her insane army of cards!”

“In public!” Joe shouted. “At night, when the park was operational and guests were in attendance! You could have been, probably should have been, expelled! There is time left on your suspension. Reinstatement now wouldn’t even be seen as a slap on the hand.”

“No one knows about this,” Amanda protested, tapping the can. “Besides, hardly anyone knows why I was suspended. They certainly don’t know about my…strength.”

She’d decided on this term for her unusual ability. Jess’s strength was dreaming things about to happen. Mattie could read your thoughts by touching your skin. To Amanda, these weren’t gifts or abilities, powers or spells. They were strengths that when practiced and/or worked on became more potent.

“Don’t kid yourself, Amanda. You and Jess are the curiosity of everyone in those dorms. You and Tim in the basement? Don’t think we don’t know! Everything you’ve done is already the stuff of myth. Believe it. Our company thrives on myth. Being attacked by robots? A secret archive? You’ve set us back years. Why do you think Mr. Langford has his nose so out of joint?”

“We both know why the Keepers are not waking up. They’ve managed to time travel. How? I have no idea. But you and the Imagineers haven’t helped them any.”

“That’s a difficult proposition, given their current status.”

“Which is?”

“Confidential.”

Amanda found herself intrigued. “How do you know their status?”

“Same answer: that’s confidential information.”

“You’re not going to help us.” She hadn’t wanted to cry in front of Joe. If she did, he would think of her as “a little girl.” Nonetheless, pools formed in her eyes and she fought to avoid blinking and sending them skidding down her cheeks.

No. He would take her less seriously. Just because a girl has the capacity to show emotions, Amanda thought, we’re condemned as weak. When we should be seen as socially sensitive.

“We have no evidence, Amanda,” Joe said gently. She didn’t want his sympathy, his fatherly tone of voice. She found it patronizing. “Only theory.”

“I need your help. They need your help and you’re going to do as I ask,” she said, holding back the tears.

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. And you want to know why?”

“I certainly do,” he said skeptically.

“Amery Hollingsworth.”

She might as well have punched him. Joe blinked. It was a name she could not possibly know without also knowing much, much more. “How could you possibly—”

“Now, please,” Amanda said, interrupting, “do what you have to do. But we are going to help the Keepers to return.”

W
AYNE DROVE A
1950 F
ORD
half-ton pickup truck that had spent too much time at the beach. Its two-tone paint job was unintentional; rust and forest green. The leaf springs didn’t merely cry whenever the truck bounced, which proved to be a nearly continual motion. They screamed.

The two girls rode in the cab with Wayne, the three boys behind, in the open truck bed, with its wooden rails and the curving black rubber of the spare tire, mounted to the side behind the driver. The ride out of Anaheim took them past dark orchards of sweet-smelling orange trees, the brightly lit Broadway shopping center, with its vast, empty parking lot, and its neighboring Ralph’s supermarket. The roads were mostly randomly lit four-lane undivided highways, though they traveled briefly on a new six-lane freeway, its opposing traffic separated by chain link fence.

The car designs were big and bulky, with the occasional finned Cadillac parked at a motel, like the Arches along La Habra’s Euclid Avenue. The towns were hodgepodge conglomerations of architecture, from simple boxes to attempts at modern, and everywhere the black lumps of vegetation and the night cry of cicadas. Sand and dust and so many electric wires strung from telephone poles. The smells of tar, motor oil, and asphalt clouded the air. It seemed like construction was under way everywhere, on buildings, roads, reservoirs, and all of it in a kind of milky haze created by pitch-black roadways and man-made illumination reflecting off the swiftly moving clouds as they left the ocean and fled into the mountainous east.

Once over the hills, Glendale’s central avenue was mostly empty, a set of trolley tracks splitting it in two, the nearly uniform awnings reaching like stunted wings from stores named Webb’s and Penny’s.

“I feel like I’m in one of those black-and-white movies my grandparents watch,” muttered Philby.

“I think we are,” said Finn.

“Hey,” Maybeck shouted over the constant rumble of passing cars, “how many teal-green Dodge four-doors could there be on this road after midnight?”

“What are you talking about?” Philby asked.

“I’ve seen the same car, off and on, practically since Anaheim. It passed us maybe twenty minutes ago. Then I saw it at a Shell station getting gas. Pretty sure it was the same car. Green, with a black roof. It passed us again maybe a minute ago.”

“Coming up on a red light,” Finn said, looking around the pickup’s cab.

“So, check it out. A Dodge four-door. Couldn’t read the model,” Maybeck said.

“What’s it matter?” Philby asked. “There are five million people living in Los Angeles at the moment.”

“I don’t like coincidences,” Maybeck said. “Let’s get the license plate.”

“What for? It’s just a car.”

“It’s a car headed from Anaheim north on the same exact roads we’re taking. It’s passed us twice, and while I admit that no one looked over, there are kids in that car. Kids our age, maybe a little older. In a very nice, very new car.”

“Five million people,” Philby repeated. “And a lot of them are rich. They have kids, no doubt. Who spend the day in Disneyland, and then drive home.”

“After midnight?” Maybeck questioned.

“It can’t hurt to get the license plate,” Finn said, and knocked on the cab’s back window, startling the girls. He mimed that he needed a pen. Maybeck looked over appreciatively, while Philby shook his head. He disapproved.