The Keepers (23 page)

“That's very progressive.”

“We just believe it's wrong to fence things in.”

“So it's a free-range relationship.”

“Horace
said
you were funny.”

“Oh, yeah? He did?”

“Repeatedly. It's all he talks about.”

Horace's father put the crust into his mouth and chewed slowly, looking thoughtfully at Chloe. “I like you,” he said at last.

By the end of dinner, it was clear that Chloe would be welcome to visit whenever she wanted. She chattered happily all through the meal, answering every question Horace's parents asked and more, a flood of talk that Horace suspected was at least fifty percent lies: her parents were divorced, her father was a structural engineer, she had a younger sister, she went to Thomas Paine Middle School and hoped to be an engineer herself one day or maybe a writer, she was a Libra by birth but not by temperament—not that she believed in that anyway—her favorite food was whatever was on her plate, her favorite color was not so much any one color but a tone, she couldn't sing or dance, was a terrific swimmer, loved cats but had no respect for dogs, didn't watch much TV but read voraciously, liked Hawthorne but hated Poe, belonged to the chess club, the fencing club, the academic bowl team, and thought her school's dress code was not nearly strict enough. Horace was
pretty sure this last one was a joke. She turned to his father and said, “Think about it, Mr. Andrews—if Horace were a girl, how short would you want his skirts to be?”

His father chewed and swallowed, took a drink of water. “You make an excellent, if disturbing, point.”

After dinner, Chloe pretended to leave for home. Horace's parents made a fuss over her. They were determined to give Chloe a ride, which she kept politely declining, saying it wasn't far and the sun was still up, until at last Horace caught his father's eye and mouthed at him:
Embarrassing!
His father, to Horace's everlasting surprise, relented at once, telling his mother he was sure Chloe would be fine. Perhaps if she would do them the favor of calling when she got home. Chloe agreed at once and was out the door, waving and throwing thank-yous. She winked at Horace as she went.

The plan was for Chloe to get back in the house secretly and hide in the attic. But by eleven thirty, Horace was beginning to worry. When she did show up, a few minutes later, it was dramatic and heart-stopping—she dropped clean out of the ceiling, landing in a quiet crouch.

“Gotcha!” she whispered, raising her fingers like claws.

Horace clutched his chest. “What is wrong with you?”

“The usual. Sorry it's so late. Your parents stayed up talking for a long time.”

“You were spying on them?”

“Not on purpose. Just being safe. But I think they like me.”

“So all that stuff you said at dinner . . . did you make that up?”

Chloe plucked at his blanket. “Some of it.”

“Your parents are divorced?”

“No.” She frowned. “Actually, I don't know.”

Horace let that simmer, then changed the subject, unsure if she wanted to talk about it or not. “Do you really play chess?”

“No. I mean, I have. But my dad and I mostly used to play go.”

“What's go?”

“It's a Japanese game. It's like chess. Sort of. It's like . . . if chess was a garden.”

“Huh.” Horace couldn't make any sense of that. “It sounds cool.”

“It's okay.”

“Chloe, I thought you were awesome today. What you did, at the House of Answers.” It was a relief to finally be able to talk about it openly, but he blushed; he hadn't meant to say those exact words.

“You'd have done the same. Anybody would have, if they'd been the one with the dragonfly.”

“I wouldn't have, though. I know for a fact I wouldn't have. No way.”

“Well, whatever. I guess one of us doesn't know you very well.” Chloe got up and began to circle the room. She fiddled with some of the stuff in his desk, pushing the buttons on
his chess clock and rattling a box of marbles. The dragonfly glinted in the dark. She walked into and back out of his closet without opening the door. She leaned out through the wall of the house—apparently to take a look around.

“It's not like I wasn't scared,” Chloe said, coming back and standing at the foot of the bed. “At the House of Answers. That dumin—I've never been through anything so . . . so
present
before. And the golem. It was all through me, hurting me.”

Suddenly Horace recalled that first night she'd been in his room. “Before, you said stuff couldn't move through you. You told me that. I threw the pillow at you.”

“Yeah, well.” Chloe dropped her head, pressing her chin briefly against the dragonfly's back. “Turns out I was wrong about that,” she said.

“How could you be wrong? You've been Tan'ji for most of your life.”

“I think I might be getting . . . better? But even so, some of it got stuck in me. You saw. And there was one piece of it—hot, and sharp, faster than the rest.”

“I saw it,” said Horace. “It was red and jagged, like a crystal. It was swimming in there, like it was alive.”

“It wasn't, but it hunted me somehow,” Chloe said. “It hurt me.” She began to lift up her shirt along her right side. Horace stopped breathing. She revealed a stretch of pale skin, two bony ribs, and at last a cruel, bubbling wound, red and raised.

“Oh my god, are you all right?”

“I'm okay. It just feels like I got smacked with a belt.” She
touched the wound gingerly, wincing. “A belt of electricity. Or like on fire. Or both.” She let her shirt fall. “Anyway, things are happening. Have you ever had a bigger day . . . Keeper?”

“I think . . . no.”

“We've stumbled into a war.”

“Yeah,” Horace said. “And we don't even really know what the sides are yet.”

“I'm pretty sure the Riven are the bad guys.”

“Agreed.”

“Because more than anything, I know that having the dragonfly is
right
. And therefore anyone who wants to take it from me is
wrong
.”

Horace felt himself reaching out a warm arm of thought toward the Fel'Daera. “That's like the best thing you ever said, Chloe.”

“Pssh,” she scoffed. “Today, maybe. So anyway, what do you think the Riven are?”

“I've thought about that. They're either aliens or some humanlike thing, right?”

“Very logical. But they don't look very human.”

“Compared to every other living thing, they do. And I don't really believe in aliens.”

“That's random.”

Horace shrugged. “I mean, I
do
, I just don't believe they're here on earth. Or at least, I never did before.”

“Well, whatever they are, we agree that the Riven don't have our best interests at heart, right? But here's the
thing—that doesn't mean Mrs. Hapsteade and Gabriel and the rest are automatically the good guys.”

Horace started to object to that but found that he couldn't. “I guess that's true,” he said. Tomorrow they would meet with Mr. Meister. They would hear what he had to say. And then . . . what?

Chloe sighed. “I guess I've been waiting a long time for things to happen. And now they are, and it's not anything I expected, but in a way I think it sort of is. I think I was ready for anything. Even this.”

Horace didn't know what to say to that. He felt so unready for everything, so unprepared for what had happened that day. But he couldn't put it into words. After a minute he said simply, “
We're
the good guys.”

“Right on,” Chloe said. And a few moments later, when she climbed onto the bed and lay down on top of the covers, her feet at Horace's head and vice versa—not so close that they were touching but not so far that he couldn't smell her sweat, smell the tunnel damp in her socks—it felt good, comforting, not at all awkward. Horace felt as right with the world as he could ever remember being—the box at his side, this astonishing new friend, the shared knowledge of this craziest of days.

They lay there, mostly not talking. When Rip Van Twinkle arrived—earlier now than the week before, because Horace hadn't sent him the day after Chloe's first visit—Chloe rose and caught him silently. They put him in the box, where he sat not moving, as if waiting. At last Horace closed the lid and Chloe said softly, “See you on the flip side.” They lay
back down again afterward and floated through a quiet hour. Horace wondered if Chloe was thinking about tomorrow as much as he was, if she was at all frightened. He wondered how a person got to be so brave, so fierce, so sure. He'd already checked through the box, a dozen times at least, to see if he would arrive safely at home tomorrow night. He'd seen himself, and so he wasn't really worried. He'd even caught a glimpse of Chloe. Still, he felt very much on the brink of something big, something unknowable, and he wished he had a better sense of what it was. Things were happening, all right.

“Anyway,” Chloe said into the silence, as though they had been talking. “I think I need to sleep now.” She clambered to her feet and began to bounce gently on Horace's bed. “Watch this,” Chloe said, and the dragonfly began to blur again. She threw her arms over her head and bounced high—once, twice. Her hands went into the ceiling, as though she were leaping up into a cloud. Somehow she grabbed hold up there and hung. She dangled for a moment, handless and giggling. “I wasn't sure I'd be able to do this,” she told Horace, and then she swung herself up into the ceiling, up into the attic, disappearing from sight like a ghost.

A moment later, her head and shoulders reappeared, looking down at Horace. Her raven hair hung around her face and the dragonfly swung low, wings whirring, like it was flying up to greet her. “Those damn passkeys,” she said. “I bet they can't let you do
that
.”

“K
EEPERS
,” M
RS
. H
APSTEADE SAID WITH A NOD
. I
N HER
usual black dress, she looked out of place at Horace's bus stop, like a confused traveler. But as it turned out, they weren't getting on any bus. Mrs. Hapsteade herded them into a waiting cab instead. The driver was the one from the day before, squat and round and once again mysteriously wrapped from head to toe—hands, nose, mouth, hair, all covered. They could see nothing of his—or her—face, except two bright blue eyes that checked the mirror now and again. A small cloth bag hung from the mirror, blue and faded and bulging. The fare on the cab's meter still read 0.00, but under extras it clearly said HAP. Horace refrained from asking any of the hundred questions that billowed in his head.

They drove in silence, headed toward the lake. They swung south on Lake Shore Drive, toward downtown. They
passed the Hancock Center—Horace's favorite skyscraper—and crossed the river. They took a right by a sign that said
BREAKWATER ACCESS
and traveled several strange blocks underground, through a kind of tunnel. They emerged and crossed Michigan Avenue, but after that Horace completely lost track of where they were. He liked going downtown, but also found it messy and confusing, kind of overwhelming. The buildings rose out of sight overhead, blotting out the sky and trapping the noise of the city. The cab took a few more turns and at last pulled up in front of an old stone building three stories tall. It looked like a library, or maybe a museum, with a double staircase that led up to an absolutely massive green door between two pairs of huge stone pillars.

“We are here,” Mrs. Hapsteade said. “Thank you, Beck.” The driver nodded, peering shyly at them in the mirror.

They got out and followed Mrs. Hapsteade up the steps. Above the door, garlands of flowers were carved into the stone, and a curving inscription read: