Kingdom Keepers: The Return Book Two: Legacy of Secrets (7 page)

“Bizarre,” Finn said. “Maybeck, can you memorize that serial number?” The best artist in the group, Maybeck also enjoyed something of a photographic memory.

He took a long moment to do so, then nodded. “Got it.”

“Some kind of code. A partnership. Someone else has the other half,” Willa theorized.

“But why, and who, and is Roy hiding it or leaving it for someone?” Finn said.

“Nothing written on it,” Willa observed.

“And nothing left inside,” Maybeck said, checking again.

“We’ve got to put it back,” Finn said.

“Because? You don’t actually expect he checks it very often, do you?” Maybeck sounded as if he’d already decided to keep it.

“We put it back,” Finn declared. “Maybeck, you’re sure you have the number?”

“Got it.”

“Back to work,” Willa said, sighing. The boys moved off, and she studied the other awards and oddities on the big desk.

The other trophies and pieces of art were gifts from business groups; their engravings mentioned Roy, not the Disney company. One, smaller than the others, caught her eye. It was a brass or copper coin embedded in thick glass, a fortune-teller’s face on one side, “To Absent Friends” stamped into the metal on the reverse. There was no plaque. Another award or trophy showed a glass ballerina rising out of a glass pond, her back arched, her face aimed heavenward. On the shelves, Willa found a hole-in-one golfing award, a curled ballet shoe, a framed ticket to the Bolshoi Ballet, and another to the Opera House in Paris. No pen, and very few items that could hide one.

The boys fared no better. Finn found a half-dozen pens in the desk drawers, including a new fountain pen still in the box. It had no engraving on its side and its mechanics were perfectly clean, suggesting it had yet to see ink.

“Strange,” Willa said, “how you can form a picture of someone based only on his stuff. He golfs. He likes ballet. Opera. He’s been generous to the city and the businesspeople.”

“He was a heck of a businessman,” Maybeck said.

“Is, you mean,” Finn corrected.

“Yeah…still hard to get used to that.”

The door popped open. “Security coming.” It was Philby. “To the bathrooms. Now!”

Finn, Willa, and Maybeck tidied up and hurried out of the office. In the hallway, they saw a shadow looming, projected at the top of the stairs.

“Stalls. Standing on the seats,” Philby whispered. “Leave the doors partially open. Charlie’s already in.”

The boys took three of the four toilet stalls. Finn climbed onto the fixture and leaned against the cool metal barrier, the stall door between him and the line of sinks and mirror.

“Hello?” a man’s low voice called out. “Security check.” He switched off the light. The restroom went darkroom black. Finn released a pent-up breath. He heard knocking. The Minnies’ room. The guard announced himself. Then, nothing. He’d moved on.

“What…now?” Maybeck whispered. “Or are we going to stand here all night?”

The lights came on. “Hello?” A man’s voice. “I heard you talking just now, whoever you are. Unless you were talking to yourself, then there are two of you. Maybe more. Now, I don’t know why you’re not answering, and maybe it’s none of my business. But we’re closing up Animation in fifteen minutes and I’m making the rounds so as no one comes crying that they need more time, and no one calls telling us we locked them inside. Hello? Can you answer me, please?” He paused. “I’m not trying to interrupt nothing. I’ll just wait outside then. We can talk about this in a minute.”

“You sure it wasn’t us you heard?” Charlene’s voice.

Finn couldn’t see what happened next, but it sounded as if the guard said, “Girls?” The door thumped shut on its springs.

“Go!” Philby said.

The three boys each stole a look out of their stalls: no guard. They rushed to the door. Philby swung it open and stuck his head out. “He’s going the way we came. The girls bailed us out.”

The three boys dashed into the hall and faced in the opposite direction. “This is the way the boys went,” Philby whispered.

“What boys?” Finn asked, confused.

“Don’t look now,” Philby said, pointing, “but I think we’re about to find out.”

Three boys emerged from an office down the hallway. They were all dressed identically, in khakis and short-sleeved white shirts. They looked at the Keepers; the Keepers looked back. A brass badge was pinned to all three of their shirts: a Disneyland Cast Member number badge.

The race began.

F
OR ONCE,
F
INN REALIZED,
it was not the Keepers being chased, but the Keepers doing the chasing. More confusing still: Why were the Cast Members the ones fleeing? It had to have something to do with the papers one of the boys was holding, he thought. The papers, and the office they’d come out of.

The boys were fast and hard to keep up with, much less catch. They bounded down the stairs, followed a second later by the three Keepers. But it was a long second and a great distance. By the time the Keepers threw open the glass door to the outside, the boys had turned and were waiting for them. The paperwork was nowhere to be seen—shoved up a shirt or discarded in the bushes.

All six boys were winded and labored for air. They stood ten yards apart, saying nothing with their voices and everything with their eyes. Decision time. Clearly neither group knew exactly what to do.

“Numbers,” Philby half-whispered to Maybeck. “Pins.”

Maybeck nodded, face screwed up and focused. He’d already started memorizing.

Philby called out to the boys. Finn realized it was in an effort to turn them so that their badges could be read more easily. “Who are you?”

“We’re not the ones trespassing,” said a boy with no eyebrows. He might have been wearing a wig. His face indicated a moment of consideration; he was debating his options. “S…E…C…U…R…I…T…Y!”

The Keepers took off, entering the same narrow alley they’d followed to get in. The girls were visible in silhouette at the far end, waiting. They took off the moment they saw the boys.

“Did you get them?” Philby said as he ran alongside Maybeck. He sounded surprisingly calm.

“Two. I got two.”

“Excellent,” said the professor.

“Who were those guys?” Finn asked, at a full run to keep up.

“Trouble,” Philby answered. “Those guys are trouble.”

“N
OW I KNOW HOW
Cinderella felt,” said Charlene.

It made sense. She was arguably the closest thing the Keepers had to a Cinderella.

The group had fallen asleep with beating hearts and awakened as two-dimensional projections once more. Having returned from the harrowing night in the studios, they had elected to spend the night in the Opera House in Town Square, rather than risk wild pig and wolf attacks in the teepees. The Opera House wasn’t actually an opera house, but a warehouse full of lumber. The air held the sweet scent of pine and redwood, like camping at the edge of a lake.

“Wayne and I will try to figure out how any of this is possible,” Philby said.

“I wouldn’t try too hard,” said Willa, coming awake on a bed made of bags of peat moss. “When the baseline of a theory happens to be time travel, it isn’t likely to make much sense. I think it’s way smarter if we just accept and learn to work with the fact that we’re going to turn mortal about two hours after the park closes each night. As weird as it is, as nonsensical, that’s what seems to be the case. Better to take advantage of it.”

“I want to find those three guys and debrief them,” said Maybeck, referring to the Cast Members—presumably fake—they’d seen the night before.

“They were after today’s schedule that includes the big shindig tonight at the Golden Horseshoe,” Charlene said. “Opening Day for the public. It’s going to be huge. Their poking around can’t be good.”

Finn sat up on the drop cloth he’d laid atop a pile of sawdust and called the Keepers into a tighter circle. They needed to keep their voices down. “Maybeck, Charlene, and I will search Roy’s office on Main Street for the pen. Philby and Willa, you figure out Wayne’s transmission and work out a way to return us.”

Philby stared down Finn. “We have to remember, it’s always been me, manually taking control of the Imagineers’ DHI server in order to return us. It’s totally different now. One: I’ve never done it from a phone, always from a laptop with more power. Two: our phones don’t happen to work in 1955, and the personal computer won’t be invented for thirty years.”

“Philby, you and Wayne and I will figure this out,” Willa insisted, somewhat weakly. “We need to see how Wayne managed to project us in the first place and work from there. Don’t worry, guys. We’re going to find Walt’s pen and get it back where it belongs.”

Finn felt he belonged in the future—his future. He missed Amanda. They had the ability to solve huge problems together. With half of the equation absent, the chance of any such solutions lessened. He could picture her face, her smile, her laugh. He missed her laugh most of all.

R
EACHING
R
OY’S OFFICE
in the park required Finn, Charlene, and Maybeck to travel backstage from the Opera House woodshop to a set of stairs leading up above the Main Street Cinema. Maybeck and his choice of a business suit and hat stood out backstage, particularly as the only African Americans in the park seemed to be workers or Cast Members dressed as Indians.

Finn, in coat and tie, and Charlene, who wore a pretty cream dress, looked like Opening Day guests, but hardly had the right appearance to be backstage Cast Members. For these reasons, and the fact that they were two-dimensional projections, the three stayed away from each other. Out ahead of the other two, Finn led the way. Using the construction chaos in an area that would one day be a parking lot, he kept to the walls at the back of the Main Street shops. Maybeck followed, and, a few seconds later, Charlene.

They’d agreed on a common story to tell if questioned: they’d wandered backstage by accident, but, finding themselves there, were hoping for a bird’s-eye view of Main Street and the castle.

Finn reached the fourth door—the one Wayne had told them to use—and ducked inside. Backstage lacked the paint and polish of the working park; it was all rough wood, with a few bare bulbs lighting the way. He waited for Maybeck and Charlene to catch up.

“All good?” he whispered. But he could answer for himself. All was not good. There was some kind of interference in this building; their projections were sparking and fuzzy.

Charlene held out her long arm and waved her thin fingers. “Kind of wonky, if you ask me.”

“We should hurry,” Maybeck said. “If we get caught when we’re this unstable…” He didn’t need to finish his thought.

Finn took off up the stairs, keeping an eye on his own hands and arms. The higher he climbed, the more his image deteriorated. Not good, he thought. The stairs led to a hallway, which ran a short distance in both directions. It was no more charming than the stairwell. The doors were unmarked. Finn stepped his projection through the first and looked around—it was clearly tool storage. He walked back through the door and rejoined the others.