Kingdom Keepers VI (9781423179214) (9 page)

“We were told we could work with you,” Finn said. “Wayne Kresky told me you were the one person we could trust.”

Mention of Kresky's name stood Bob up a little taller. The rogue designer, the man accused of running a secret agency within the Imagineers. Who were these kids to tell him about Wayne Kresky?

“You will answer for the damage to this balloon,” he said.

“Seriously? You think we're
that
clever? To turn ourselves in at three in the morning in order to take suspicion
off
of us?”

“I wish we were that smart,” Finn said.

“Return to your rooms. You'll hear from me.”

“Chernabog is gone,” Philby said. “You guys have got to find him!”

“I acknowledge that you and your friends are special guests aboard this ship, young man”—Bob directed this at Philby—“but I will determine what I have to do. Not you. Now get out of here before I change my mind.”

A
BOY WALKS DOWN
a dark tunnel. A shadow climbs the
wall to the left, runs along and rolls down the rocks like a
snake. There are sounds—his feet? Someone else's?

The sound of rapid breathing suggests danger lurking.
The boy is afraid, deathly afraid. Yellow light leaks into the
confined space.

The boy continues through a square tunnel of some kind.
A park attraction? There are no lights, no music, no sounds
other than water splashing.

Something is chasing the boy. It's monstrous. It makes
hideous, guttural sounds that drive the boy forward, deeper
down the tunnel.

Whatever is back there, whatever is coming—it means
business.

It means to kill him.

Jess's eyes snapped open. She was looking at the underside of a mattress, held up by wire mesh. Her natural instinct at such moments was to reach for her sketchbook, switch on the battery-operated book light, and take the pencil out from the binding. She did just that and started to draw the image of a frightened boy in a square stone tunnel, knowing that Amanda was so attuned to her process that at any second her head would come over the edge of the upper bunk.

And it did.

Amanda knew better than to speak. Nothing could come between Jess and whatever images lurked in her thoughts. The dream needed to be preserved. Jess's premonitions contributed to the Keepers' efforts like information from a spy. The more detailed and accurate her drawing, the better.

Amanda lowered her head to her pillow and stared at the ceiling. Three glow-in-the-dark stick-on stars gave her dull green images to focus on. Patience was everything. The persistent scratching of pencil point
on paper was all she heard…and the occasional dull rubbing sound of the eraser.

The eraser meant a lack of confidence; it was the sound of Jess changing her mind or not liking the way something had come out. Amanda knew her to be an expert illustrator. Her crude drawings of a year or two earlier had evolved into sophisticated realism.

The sounds of sketching finally stopped. Jess sighed, as if she had held her breath for the past ten minutes—an unintentional signal. Amanda slipped off the top bunk.

“Can I see?” she whispered, painfully aware of Jeannie Pucket sleeping only a few feet away.

“I'm not sure what was going on. A boy.”

Amanda knew not to force her. “Any hints as to who it was?”

“No.”

“A shadow,” Amanda said, studying the superbly sketched image.

“Yes. A boy.”

“It's a cave.”

“More like a tunnel,” Jess said. “See the square walls?”

“We need to get this to Finn.”

“We will.”

“I mean right now.”

“Why the hurry?” Jess asked.

“Because the
Dream
docks in Aruba this morning. They're heading to the caves.”

“I'm not so sure this is a cave.”

“Doesn't matter.” Amanda couldn't take her eyes off the sketch. “They need to see it.”

“I don't know. It doesn't feel complete. I heard water, but I didn't see any.”

Amanda felt sorry for Jess, who bore the burden of her dreams and the messages they contained. Jess occasionally rebelled against the significance Finn and Philby attributed to her visions. To her, they were just dreams, sometimes accurate projections into the future, sometimes not. She didn't like her friends basing their plans—or worse, risking their lives—on something so ephemeral.

Amanda said, “I'll get this to Philby, make sure he sees it before they leave the ship.” She forced her eyes off the page. The edge of the window casement was glowing yellow with the flush of dawn. “I hope we're not too late.”

I
N THE EARLY HOURS
of Thursday morning, Clayton Freeman, a handsome African American man who shaved his head to a spit polish, found himself heading backstage in the Walt Disney Theatre. He blamed the two Kingdom Keeper boys for making him lose sleep. But he also found himself at least slightly believing what Bob had told him.

Maybe it was because he was younger than Bob. Maybe it was due to inexperience. Maybe it was because he'd come through college on the fringe end of Harry Potter, and he still had a thing for Artemis Fowl, Percy Jackson, and Legend, but he didn't immediately dismiss the improbable the way his boss did.

Certainly what the boys reported seeing backstage was a stretch. Clayton Freeman would rank it as highly unlikely. But impossible? He worked for Disney; was anything beyond the scope of imagination?

Clayton had heard the stories from fellow security personnel within the Disney World parks, stories that Bob had no time for. He'd seen the damage inside the It's a Small World ride—dolls broken off the scenes, others floating in the water; he'd heard it called vandalism. He'd also heard rumors that the dolls appeared to have broken free of their platforms, as if marching like an army. Clayton didn't know what to make of any of it.

He approached the backstage prop storage, his mind weighed down by the disappearance of a second Mickey Mouse who had been spotted on board; the vandalism done to some security cameras during the Castaway Cay stop; and Maleficent's unscheduled video just before the lights sparked and shattered.

Too many unanswered questions…

Clayton stopped. As they'd been told, the Buzz Lightyear balloon lay on the stage floor, deflated, collapsed. It was his job to inspect it. Indeed, it appeared to have been cut open with a sharp blade.

Like Bob, he wanted to fob this off on the two boys who reported it.
They goof around backstage, a bit of
mischief leads to vandalism. The boys—both VIPs!—report
the incident as something much bigger.

But the balloon had not popped by accident. It had been cut open intentionally. Try as he might, Clayton couldn't see the boys doing that. Physically, it would have been nearly impossible.

He kneeled and inspected the cut seam. There
was a bead of dried glue
,
implying it had been opened previously and then repaired.

The boys claimed the Buzz Lightyear balloon had contained Chernabog.
The creepy thing from
Fantasia
? As
if!
Clayton nearly laughed aloud.

Then he discovered a five-inch length of coarse hair. Animal, not human. Thick and inflexible.
A whisker?

He found another, and another, all stuck to dried beads of glue.

Impossible!

The evidence supported the boys' claim. Clayton collected the hairs. No choice but to show them to Bob.

No choice but to consider this a legitimate investigation.

P
RIOR TO LEAVING
the ship for the day, the early risers met on the deck of Cabanas for breakfast before sunup.

Philby, Storey, and Finn listened as an excited Willa explained to Storey and Philby what the other Keepers had figured out the night before.

“
K
'an
is gold, yellow, or precious.
Ch'en
is cave.
J
anaab
is flower.
Pet
is island. We have nearly all the pieces of the journal's second clue.”

Philby said, “Yes. Finn told me last night.”

“But?” said Willa, contesting him. The friction between them was palpable.

Finn answered, trying to keep the fireworks to a minimum. “Philby points out that now that the OTs have the flash drive with their DHI data, all they need is a new server, since I fried their other one.”

“If I were them,” Philby said, avoiding eye contact with Willa, “I'd replace it in Aruba. After Aruba we have a day at sea, then the Panama Canal passage, then another night without a stop. It's several days before anyone gets off the ship again.”

“Today is the final
island
stop on the cruise,” Storey said.

“‘Island' is one of the four words from the journal,” said Willa. “Not ‘computer.'”

Ouch
, Finn nearly said. Instead he tried to keep them focused. “Let's consider the four words—”

“Twenty-four different combinations,” Philby said proudly, and made an unpleasant face at Willa, who winced and blinked.

“Actually,” she snapped, “it's three times that when you consider the two added definitions for
k
'an
of
yellow and precious.”

Philby looked crushed.

“In my opinion,” Willa said, “the most promising is: island cave, gold flower—or maybe yellow flower. I don't see ‘gold cave' or ‘gold island' or ‘island flower' or ‘precious flower,' though who knows?”

“Okay, so let's start there,” Finn said hastily.

Philby glanced down below the edge of the table where he held a printout of an e-mail sent by Amanda. It showed a shadow on a wall of what might be a cave. He nearly showed it to them, but looking across at the defiant Willa, he shook his head, refolded it and slipped it into his pocket. “I think we should consider their need for a server.”

Finn said quickly, “So…island cave, gold flower. Any luck with the look of the caves?”

Storey slid an excursion brochure across to Philby, followed by some computer printouts of Aruban caves.

“None are an exact match with Jess's drawing, but what's interesting is the similar formations and the surrounding landscape. She was definitely dreaming of a cave on Aruba.”

Philby compared Jess's drawing to the various
photographs. “Agreed. So we're in the right place at the right time, and we know what they're looking for.” He fingered the vacant space framed in the copy of the journal page and glanced up at Willa. “You're going with
flower
because of this.”

“Yes. There was a pressed flower in there, like Charlene said. Has to be.”

“And the OTs have it,” Philby said.

“Could have it. Might not,” Willa said.

“We are outnumbered once again,” Philby said. “Forward following could work, should work, but it won't if we're watching the wrong cave.” He turned to Storey. “There are what, five important caves?”

“Yes. And many more up and down the north-eastern coast,” Storey said.

“Divide and conquer,” Finn proposed.

“No other choice,” Philby said. “Five caves. Six of us, including Storey. Not to mention the need to cover the computer stores.”

“Then let's not mention it,” Willa said, and drew a scornful look from the boys.

“What if you stay behind and watch the cameras for a computer box being brought aboard?” Finn suggested to Philby. “We'd know where to look, who to go after.”

“Hmm.”

“There are two others we could ask to help us,” Storey said, somewhat tentatively.

Dillard? Finn wondered. He was fairly certain his neighbor, who'd helped the Keepers in the past, was on the ship, but how could Dillard possibly know Storey? And how could he possibly find the kid anyway? He kept quiet.

She said, “Their names are Kenny and Bart. I work with them.”

“Not for fieldwork. I could use them as lookouts,” Philby said.

“Done.”

Philby, apparently satisfied with Finn's solution to the computer problem, mellowed. “The rest of you…four
will each take one of the famous caves. The fifth—maybe
we give this to Maybeck?—will be our control: he'll show the Jess sketch to a taxi driver and see where he's taken. Maybe it overlaps with one of you, maybe not.”

“Maybe we should all do that,” Finn said. “I like that idea.”

“It puts too much faith in the sketch,” Philby said. “Better to cover as many bases as possible.”

“Jess's drawings have never been wrong,” Willa said.

“But if you talk to Amanda, that's not the case.” Philby looked Willa in the eye. “Jess gets confused now and then. We have to stay objective, be as statistically accurate as possible. Of the five most popular caves, we cover the top four. Maybeck acts as our control.”

No one looked sold.

“The stolen journal started this,” Philby insisted. “The journal tells us it's an island cave. This is the only island stop after Castaway, and there aren't caves on Castaway. Right place. Right time.”

“And if Luowski or another OTK leaves the ship?” Finn said.

“They won't trust him or anyone to do whatever it is they're planning. You want something done right, you do it yourself.” Philby squinted, deep in thought. “Okay. A compromise. Maybeck and Willa leave super early. You and Charlene leave next,” he told Finn. “Storey goes last. If an OT or OTK is seen leaving the ship during that time, maybe we change plans. If not, each one of you takes a different cave and I watch for a computer coming back on board.” He paused and said, “Is everyone good with that?”

No one objected—unless you counted Willa's rolling eyes.

* * *

A blade of bloodred arched above the horizon, absorbed in spots by cumulus clouds, all of it dripping with foreboding. The smells and sounds of land had awakened Greg Luowski as the ship docked; now he climbed down to the deck, peering over the rail to see dockhands and shore workers busy below.

The shiver that ran through him had nothing to do with air temperature; it was instead the recollection of his meeting with Maleficent—the Ice Queen—and how she'd told him he had to “collect one” for her.

“One what?” he'd asked.

But he'd known the answer. Another shiver. He knew “what.” He knew “who.”

His contempt for Finn Whitman knew no bounds. Whitless was the kind of boy Luowski lived to hate: clever, brainy, fast-tongued and slow-footed. His feelings of ill will were multiplied by Amanda's obvious adoration; she wouldn't give Luowski the time of day as long as Finn Whitman existed.

Focusing on the task at hand, Luowski attempted
to collect his thoughts—a bit like picking up three dozen apples without a basket or bag: the more he gathered, the more he dropped. And so it was that
his plans spilled out of his head and over the ship's
rail like confetti, lost to the whims of the wind.

First, he had to get off the ship. He'd deal with the rest later.

Maleficent had made fun of him—something no one got away with. He would show her: he'd pull off this assignment flawlessly, return with the computer she needed. He'd use his accomplishment as a bargaining chip. Let someone else do the other thing. Luowski was no killer. She'd treated him like a thug. She'd see.

Twenty minutes later, he wore a ship hand's blue coveralls over a pair of NBA shorts and a World of Warcraft T-shirt. A Disney Cruise Lines ID badge hung from a lanyard around his neck. His hands and forearms looked like those of an engine room worker who'd failed to get all the grease off. Crew members were disembarking to the docks. The process of resupplying the ship was well organized and executed: everyone had his or her assignment; they worked in concert. A single player like Greg Luowski was, to the security team scanning the crew as they disembarked, just another player. His ID was legit. He was scanned off and disembarked.

Luowski stepped onto the sands of Aruba and inhaled deeply.

There was work to do.