Rebels of the Lamp, Book 1 (12 page)

“Hit the puck into the net,” said the coach. “That’s it. You make three goals, you’re on the team. Do you think you can do that?”

“I’ll do my best, Coach!”

“All right. Good luck!”

Parker grinned and held out his hands out awkwardly, trying to signal Fon-Rahm, but was stymied by his bulky gloves.

The coach said, “Um, what are you doing?”

Parker scanned the arena in search of Fon-Rahm. “I’m, uh, shooting you with imaginary guns.”

“Why?”

“It’s, um, it’s a signal to...for...” Parker broke into a cold sweat. The girls in the stands laughed and pointed as he craned his neck looking for his genie. Without
Fon-Rahm, Parker was just a moron in for the humiliation of his life. He would never live it down. Where could the genie have gone? Finally, Parker leaned his head back and spotted Fon-Rahm twenty
feet in the air directly above him. Parker waved to the genie madly. This caused him to lose his balance for good, and he went down hard on the ice.

“Ouch!” said Theo.

“That’s going to leave a bruise,” said Reese.

The girls roared, and Evan grinned behind his mask. This was almost too good.

Parker struggled back to his feet, peeled off his gloves, and gave Fon-Rahm the signal just as his legs went out from under him and he felt himself going into what would be an incredibly
uncomfortable split.

This time there was no missing it. The genie nodded almost imperceptibly, and Parker’s legs stopped moving out. He straightened himself up and slowly put his gloves back on. He grabbed the
stick, held it out to gauge its balance, and slapped it down on the ice.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go!”

With that, Parker swung the stick back and drilled a shot bullet-straight at Evan. It came in so fast that Evan, scared, dove out of the way. The puck caught the center of the net and dropped to
the ice.

The arena was silent. Then a lone voice came from Caitlyn Masters.

“Holy crap!”

Evan pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed the puck from the net and slapped it back to Parker. “I thought you never played before!”

“Yeah!” said Parker. “But I think I’m getting the hang of it!”

Theo looked over at Reese. She was watching Parker, rapt. “I can really skate, you know,” he said, turning red the second the words left his mouth. “I mean, without using
magic.”

Reese smiled at him. “I’ll bet,” she said.

Coach Decker motioned to three of his players. “Get in there and play some D.” They skated out, ready for Parker’s next attempt. Parker looked them over and began to skate in
slow, lazy, clockwise circles. Then, when he was good and ready, he broke fast to his right, his skates spitting frost as he deked past one defender after another, finally speeding past the goal
and slipping the puck in, untouched, past Evan’s reaching pads.

The girls started to cheer, and Parker raised his hands in triumph as he took a graceful victory lap on one leg.

Theo couldn’t help but smile at the kid’s bravado. Theo himself would never be able to muster that kind of guts.

“All right. Everybody on the ice,” said the coach. “Everybody. Whitten, Spinelli, everybody!”

The entire team took to the ice. Parker raised his eyes to Fon-Rahm and broke into a huge smile. So. Much. Fun.

When Coach Decker blew his whistle, guys came in from all sides. With the genie hovering unseen ten feet overhead, Parker glided elegantly down the ice, faking one way and then going another,
flipping the puck with amazing dexterity as he literally skated circles around his defenders. He saw two Robert Frost Fightin’ Poets coming at him from opposite directions, and put on the
brakes so quickly that they ran into each other. He stopped and actually gave the puck away to one of the eighth graders, only to steal it back and leave the kid flat on his butt on the ice. He
destroyed an entire team, little by little making his way to the goal. When he got there, he raised his stick for a slap shot. Evan buried his head in his hands, waiting terrified for the shot to
blow past him. Instead, Parker tapped the puck with the utmost gentleness, and it slid delicately into the goal.

The jocks deflated. They were beaten—worse, they were
dismantled
—by a seventh grader. From
California
.

Parker skated balletically to the wall. Before he climbed off the ice, Coach Decker grabbed him.

“Where are you going? You made the shots. You’re on the team! Parker, I’m telling you, I have been around hockey my entire life, and I have never seen anyone play like you.
You’re going to be the greatest of all time. Better than Robitaille! Better than Guy Lafleur or Bobby Orr or Espo! Better than
Gretzky
! Evan, get this kid a jersey!”

Evan hung his head and skated for the bench. He wouldn’t be going to Caitlyn Masters’s party tonight. He might not even be going to school tomorrow.

“No thanks, Coach,” said Parker as he joined his giggling friends outside the rink.

“What? Why not?”

Parker shrugged. “I think I might take up basketball.”

Theo and Reese laughed out loud as Parker unlaced his skates, but Coach Decker was crestfallen. His life was changed forever. He was no longer content, and he never would be. He had lost the
greatest hockey player in history.

THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE
the best of Parker’s life.

He still had to go to school, sure, and with Fon-Rahm hanging around mopey, unseen, and always within ten or twenty yards, that was a bit of a drag. Still, the genie came in handy. He produced
correct test answers with only a whispered wish from Parker’s lips. He gave Parker the ability to dunk a basketball in gym, stunning the teacher into a stupored silence. He guided
Parker’s brush in art class, producing a perfect likeness of the hottest girl in school. For the first time in years, Parker really enjoyed the process of learning.

The best stuff, though, happened after school was done for the day. Parker, Theo, and Reese had a blast coming up with new and increasingly more ridiculous uses for Fon-Rahm’s power. They
stocked up on all the trendy gadgets they could stuff into their closets without getting caught. They jumped off a bridge a hundred feet over the Merrimack River, using only Fon-Rahm’s magic
as bungee cords. Parker laughed as his beloved Dodgers crushed the Boston Red Sox 31–0 at Fenway, hitting home run after home run directly into his and Theo’s gloves in the stands. They
tore through the woods, playing paintball on souped-up Segways. Parker learned Spanish, Italian, Greek, and even won an argument with Reese in Latin. When Theo wished for an entire outfit of Ed
Hardy clothes, Reese and Parker laughed so hard they thought they might pass out. They had a never-ending supply of milk shakes and Doritos and tacos without getting sick. The only things holding
them back were the parents, aunts, and teachers, who would suspect something was seriously wrong if they didn’t keep everything hush-hush, and the constant scowl on Fon-Rahm’s face that
reminded them that the genie was not sharing in their fun. At all.

Parker, Theo, and Fon-Rahm walked into Theo’s house. They had spent the afternoon watching Theo use his new instant guitar-shredding talent to shut up the guy in the guitar store before
dropping Reese off and heading home.

“Maybe we should leave him in the barn,” Theo said, nodding at the genie.

Parker poured himself a glass of water.

“I’d just as soon keep him close. You never know when we might need him for something.”

Theo’s dad called to them from the next room. “Theo, Parker, come in here for a minute.”

Parker and Theo exchanged looks before walking into the living room. Fon-Rahm stayed by the door.

Uncle Kelsey was sitting in a battered but insanely comfortable old easy chair.

“We have a visitor,” he said. “Theo, you remember Professor Ellison.”

Professor Ellison sat with her back to Parker and Theo on the couch. She turned to the kids.

“Hello, Theo,” she said. “Who’s your friend?”

Busted, thought Parker. Busted hard. Busted bad. Busted in new ways he had never even been busted before. Busted, busted, busted.

Uncle Kelsey said, “That’s Parker, my wife’s sister’s boy. He’s staying with us for a while.”

Professor Ellison smiled. If Parker had expected a rumpled old academic, he couldn’t have been more wrong. She was an elegant older woman, maybe sixty years old, with long limbs and
expensive clothes. Her eyes were a cold gray that matched her perfectly styled hair. She owned the room. The couch was old and covered with a poorly made quilt, but it might as well have been a
chaise longue at a five-star hotel’s pool.

“It’s nice to have family,” she said.

“The professor and I were just talking about security at the university. She was telling me that some things have turned up missing from her office.”

“Really?” Parker said. “That’s weird.”

“What did you say was taken, Professor?”

“I don’t know about
taken
,” she said. “Let’s just say it was misplaced. It’s nothing to get too worked up about, anyway. Just a worthless artifact
someone dug up a few miles from here.”

She stared at the boys.

“A metal canister, about yay big. I don’t suppose you lovely boys have seen it floating around, have you?”

Busted busted busted busted busted

Theo stammered. “Us? No. Nope.”

“It was a long shot, I admit, but you never know. Sometimes missing objects turn up in the strangest places.”

Parker felt himself turning red. When the professor suddenly stood, both he and his cousin jumped.

Professor Ellison shook hands with Uncle Kelsey.

“Thank you, Mr. Merritt. We’ll discuss the new locks and so forth at your convenience.”

“Whenever you’re free.”

“Such a charming man.” She turned to Theo and Parker. “Theo. It was nice to meet you, Parker.”

Parker didn’t even realize he was holding his breath until Professor Ellison walked to the door and he let it out.

“Oh, Theo,” she said, turning back around. “I almost forgot. You might need this.”

The professor reached into the Louis Vuitton bag she carried with her everywhere and handed Theo a piece of paper. It was one of his old science homework assignments. His name was right on top.
It must have fallen out of his bag when everything went flying in the professor’s office. He got a C on it.

Professor Ellison stared at him. “Study hard, Theo. The world needs more great thinkers.”

As she walked past Fon-Rahm on her way out the door, Professor Ellison froze. Impossibly, she knew that something was there. She whirled on Parker and Theo, furious.

“You let him
out
?” she screamed. “Are you insane?”

Parker and Theo turned white.

Uncle Kelsey was confused.

“Um, what?”

Professor Ellison took a deep breath and got herself together.

“Sorry. I thought the...cat had escaped.”

Uncle Kelsey said, “Oh. We don’t, uh, have a cat.”

“Just as well.” She looked at Fon-Rahm. “They’re nasty beasts.”

She glared at Parker and Theo for a moment before Uncle Kelsey walked her out of the house.

Theo panicked.

“She knows! She knows!”

Parker shrugged with false bravery.

“So what?” He looked to his genie. “There’s nothing she can do to us.”

Later, back in her office at the university, Professor Ellison dropped her bag on the desk and walked into the back room. She pushed the rack of spears aside, exposing the
shimmering wall that had knocked Theo for a loop. She muttered an ancient phrase under her breath and reached out. As she touched the wall, her hands disappeared up to her wrists.

She pulled her hands apart, and the wall parted as if it were a curtain. Behind the wall, floating in midair, were four more metal containers just like the ones that once held Fon-Rahm and
Xaru.

Professor Ellison took one of the lamps and turned it over in her hands. She was profoundly worried.

PARKER SLID THE MONSTER TRUCK
to a stop.

It was a black-and-silver beast, easily ten feet off the ground. The tires alone were taller than Reese, and the truck had the words
SKULL CRUSHER 2
painted on the side.
Parker had insisted. He thought that the 2 part was cool because it would make people think that something really disturbing had happened to Skull Crusher 1. This didn’t really make a lot of
sense. No one else was ever going to see the truck. Since the Porsche incident, Reese and Theo refused to get in any vehicle driven by Parker unless they were positive they wouldn’t be seen
in public. Hence the Crusher, and the deep backwoods of Cahill.

Reese, Parker, Theo, and Fon-Rahm climbed out of the truck and jumped to the soggy ground. They were miles from the nearest road, nowhere near anything at all.

Theo said, “Parker, enough. We went hang gliding. We hit the water park. We ate lobster. Can we call it a day, please? My folks will get worried.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” Parker said. “Hey, Rommy, can you give his parents amnesia or something?”

Theo chimed in before Fon-Rahm could answer. “No! I don’t want my parents to have amnesia! I’m tired and I want to go home for dinner.”

“Could someone please tell me what we’re doing in a mud field in the middle of nowhere?” asked Reese.

“Sure,” answered Parker. “This is where we’re going to put the house.”

Theo said, “The house? What house?”

“
Our
house. Right here. Fon-Rahm is going to build us a crib.”

“Come on, Parker. Why do we need a house?”

“I want a pool,” said Reese. Why not? She worked hard. She got stellar grades. She put up with her mother. She deserved a pool.

Parker threw out his arms.

“Yes!
That
’
s
the attitude I’m looking for. We can have a pool. We can have a pool each, if we want, and an arcade and a climbing wall and a bowling alley. And a
submarine dock! I can’t believe I almost forgot the submarine dock.”

“For God’s sake, Parker, what are you going to do with a submarine in the middle of the woods?” Theo asked.