The Night Shifters (30 page)

“Your turn, Hazel.”
Mrs. Fee gave me a hard glare. I gulped and glanced down at my
book, and – glory of glories – saw words printed there. I pounced
on them.

“
Dear Hazel, Mrs. Fee is a frustrated old maid with a big,
fat
– uh-oh.”

The handwriting was
Serena’s. She had suckered me again.

Mrs. Fee stormed
down the aisle with murder in her eye. I stood, hoping to run past
her, but she blocked me like a pro wrestler. Reflexively, I put up
my fists.

Mrs. Fee grinned –
and suddenly doubled in size. She loomed over me and wrapped
enormous hands around my fists. “And what were we planning to do
with these?” she asked.

“But Mrs. Fee! I
was just reading what was in the book!”

“‘But Mrs. Fee!’”
she mocked. “‘I just wanted to go to the principal’s office and get
my tail paddled off!’“

She tucked me under
her arm and marched out of the room, the other kids tittering
nervously in her wake. I hung there like a sack of grain and
wondered if I should risk trying to reason with her again.

She growled. I
decided not to.

And I had thought
the Girl-killer was scary. Mrs. Fee would have snapped him like a
twig.

The trip to the
principal’s office was almost nostalgic. I had an excellent view of
the sidewalk and the bottom three feet of the buildings. I could
remember myself as a child, a short person with a similar view,
kicking pebbles and wandering to class. It seemed a genuine memory
– or a collection of memories, something that must have happened
day after day for years.

Mrs. Fee stopped in
front of a green door and knocked on it.

“Come in!” bellowed
a voice on the other side.

She turned the knob
and walked in, and I saw some multicolored, striped carpeting. It
seemed to stretch into infinity.

“Set her down
there,” said the voice, and she plopped me into a chair. I heard
noises behind me, but when I tried to turn my head, Mrs. Fee
grabbed my chin. “Hold her,” commanded the speaker, who stood
behind me now. He bound my hands tight, then strapped me to the
chair while Mrs. Fee held me in a vice grip.

“You can leave
now,” he told Mrs. Fee when he was done.

Her hands
fell to her sides and she nodded like a zombie. I watched her
shuffle to the door as if she had forgotten everything she ever
knew – her name, her profession, the law regarding capital
punishment in grade school. She pulled the door open, stepped
outside, and closed it again with a very final-sounding
THUMP
.

“Now, Hazel, I have
you to myself. Everyone else has had a chance with you, haven’t
they dear? So I can’t believe you’ll really mind it.” Nostradamus
strolled into view and grinned at me. He was dressed like a
principal now, really not that differently from his earlier,
accountant-type garb. He was on the thinner side, and he didn’t
smell quite as bad. But I wondered if he thought he smelled at all.
Not that I intended to ask him. Especially not when I was tied to a
chair.

He started to undo
his tie. “Tell me about the hole.”

“I don’t know
anything about the hole.”

He shrugged. “Okay.
I guess that’s not too hard to believe. You always did look smarter
than you really are.”

I took a harder
look at him. “Bernard?”

He grinned.
“Nostradamus works just as well. I’m the same guy, either way.”

“You’re saying –
there’s no difference anymore?”

Bernard considered
that question as he undid the top buttons on his shirt, like an
executive trying to get comfortable at a high-powered meeting.
“Let’s just say our personalities are so close, the difference is
irrelevant. Nostradamus knows some useful stuff, so do I. He made
me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“Couldn’t?” I
wondered, “or didn’t want to?”

He shook his head,
pityingly. “You just don’t get it, do you Hazel? Around here,
there’s no difference. Not for me, anyway. But it’s worked out
great, I love this place. I bet I like it even better than the
Girl-killer did.”

“Especially now,” I
said, “considering he’s dead.”

His brows
crashed together like a couple of thunderclouds, and his mouth
tightened into a nasty knot that resembled another orifice, one
located much farther south. I had seen that look before – anytime I
disagreed with him in class. “Are you talking about what happened
with the claw-handers? That wasn’t
your
doing, Hazel, that was dumb luck – so don’t threaten me. Sir
John is a weak old man, and I don’t agree with him about you, not
at all. The Night doesn’t
like
you, why
should it? There’s nothing special about you.” He jabbed a finger
at me. “You’re a pinball.”

“No I’m not.”

“
No I’m not,
” he mocked
me in a high-pitched whine. “What a joke. Didn’t I tell you the
score back at Glendale College? Some people are controllers – that
would be
me
.” He hooked a thumb
at himself. “Some people get controlled – that would be
you
.”

Before I could
muster a reply, he grabbed my chair and began to drag me backward
along the parallel lines of the carpeting. I couldn’t see where we
were going, only where we had been. We passed through a swinging
door, and he dragged me down a long hallway. Closed metal doors
lined both sides, and I was reminded of the Masked Man’s house, and
King’s caverns. But these were plain, locked doors in a closed
mind. I didn’t want to go anywhere they could possibly take me.

“What about your
job at Motorola?” I asked, hoping to jolt him loose from his
single-minded purpose. “Weren’t you happy there?”

He snorted.
“
Happy
? What does that
have to do with anything?”

“But you were proud
of that job.”

“It’s nothing,
compared to what I can do here. It would have taken years to get
where I wanted in that company, and by then I would have been an
old man. I’ll never get old here. And Nostradamus has given me a
big leg up.”

“Nostradamus has
eaten your life, he stole your body!” I said, desperately. “You’ll
disappear once he’s done with you.”

Bernard
laughed. “You think
he
ate
me
? It’s the other way around, toots. He picked
me because I’m not some damn goody-goody; I’ve got the guts to take
the steps to get us somewhere in this city. But I’m not just a
great body. I’m new blood. I’ve got the brains to shake things up
here. Now
I’m
in charge. And I
know all about
you
Hazel. I know what
makes you tick.”

Now it was my turn
to laugh, but not with any mirth. “You don’t know anything about
me!”

He plowed through
another door, dragged me into a dark room, and wrenched my chair
around until it was facing a big picture window. I gasped at the
scene unfolding on the other side: a stark landscape strobing
between black and white with each burst of lightning, the clouds
roiling around a central vortex – the Hole.

He dug his
fingers into my shoulders. “That’s what you caused. I don’t
know
how
you did it, Hazel, but I know it’s
your fault. You’re mucking things up for all of us. So here’s
what’s going to happen.” He spun the chair around again, so my back
was to the storm and all I could see was him, in intermittent
flashes. “First, I’m going to give you something of mine. You’ll
learn something, and you’ll be linked with Nostradamus and me.
We’ll be able to use you to make better mojo.”

“I want nothing of
yours!” I cried.

He gave me
the thundercloud face again. “Get over it! This isn’t about
what
you
want, it never has been.” He pulled
his shirt open; buttons went flying. His pale flesh gleamed in the
fitful light.

“Untie me!” I said.
“You can’t force me! The Night won’t allow it.”

He looked at me
thoughtfully, as if he were really considering what I had said. But
of course, he wasn’t. Bernard had never respected or believed
anything I told him, and he certainly wasn’t going to start now.
“You know – I think I prefer to keep you tied up. “There won’t be
any argument. Especially if I stuff a gag in your mouth.”

“Bernard, look at
me! I’m only eleven, now! Are you a child molester as well as a
rat?”

He looked me up and
down. “Eleven, really? You know what, Hazel? I can’t see any
difference in the way you look at all. You always were kind of
underdeveloped. Well.” He started to undo his belt. “I’ll make a
woman out of you.”

“Put your clothes
back on!” I said.

“Who’s going to
make me? I’ve gone easy on you so far, but I’m tired of that. So
don’t be demure with me.” He pulled his belt off.

“Camilla should be
enough for you.” I hoped the mention of her name might bring
Nostradamus to the fore again.

But Bernard
just sneered. “Don’t
think
, little girl.
That’s not what you were born to do.” He pulled off his pants
without taking off his shoes. It was an awkward procedure, and I
was sure he would fall over. Once he got the pants off he stood in
nothing but a pair of red polka-dot boxers, black socks, and brown
shoes. He looked outrageously pleased with himself. Lightning
strobed from the window, turning his smirking face into a fright
mask. “Ready or not. Here I come!” And he advanced on me like
Godzilla over Tokyo.

“Help!!” I
screamed.

“Who’s going to
help you?” wondered Bernard. He bent over me, placing his hands on
my shoulders, and thrust his face right into mine. “The Masked Man?
The Car King? Are they the ones you held out for because I wasn’t
good enough for you? That’s a shame, because they don’t want you.
They only chased you because of what you could do for them. Once I
get done, they won’t even give you the time of day.” He grinned and
winked at me. “Make that time of Night.”

No one was
going to rescue me. That should have scared me, but it just made me
angry. “Get your hands off me,” I hissed through gritted teeth.
“I’m not taking
anything
from
you.”

He might have
replied. Or he might have kissed me, which would have been far
worse.

Instead, he bolted
upright with a squeal, holding his bottom. A moment later he was
out cold on the floor, Camilla standing over him with a very
guilty-looking hypo.

•

She wore a school
nurse’s uniform, in a tight cut that was somewhat less than
professional. She winked at me. “You called?”

“I thought you were
on his side,” I said as she began to undo the straps that held me
to the chair.

She regarded
me quizzically. “We were occasional
allies;
you have the wrong idea entirely. No one is ever on
Nostradamus’s side for long.”

“So you just sicked
him on me to get ahead?” I accused.

“Do you think I
would let him molest you? Hazel, you’ll break my heart yet.” She
got my feet undone, but my hands were still bound tight. So it made
me extremely nervous when she stopped untying to give me a kiss on
the cheek.

“What do you want,
Camilla? I can’t tell you anything more about the Hole than I could
tell Bernard.”

“We can remedy
that,” she promised. Her eyes started to do the hypnotic thing
again, and I blinked furiously.

“Stop it! I’m sick
of getting jerked around. You and the other Mighty Night Shifters –
are you trying to tell me you can’t solve this problem?”

She lifted an
eyebrow. “Before we solve it, we must understand it.”

“Then untie my
hands. I’ll do my best to help.”

Suddenly all the
artifice drained from her face. For a moment, I could have sworn I
was staring at King. Or the female version of same.

“You’re an Old One
too,” I said, with awe. “Just like King.”

“You’ve been
talking to Voice.” She didn’t sound happy to hear that. What was it
Four had said? That she was jealous about her business. If she was
related to King, then I needed to show a heck of a lot more
respect.

“
I’m not like
you or Nostradamus,” I said. “I don’t form alliances with people
unless I like them. Voice is my
friend
. I
trust her advice. If she were here, she would untie my hands. But I
know your help has strings attached, Camilla, so I need to know.
What are the strings?”

One corner of her
mouth quirked in what might have been a smile, though the flashes
of lightning made it a scary one. “What, indeed? I can’t answer
that for you. Therefore – if we’re to solve this problem, we must
both be willing to take a leap and suffer the consequences.”

Take a leap
. Each time
I had done that, it had been scary. But it had also turned out for
the best, eventually.

Maybe. Unless I
just wasn’t looking far enough down the road.

I took a deep
breath. At this point, I didn’t have a lot of choices. “If you
untie me,” I said, “I’ll commit to the leap. Okay?”

“Okay.” She undid
the last of my bonds, then took my hand and led me to the window.
“Look,” she commanded.

Now I could see
that it wasn’t just the Night sky that had been eclipsed. The stars
themselves had all shifted into the outer reaches of a whirlpool,
and at the very center lay the Hole, vast and black – except for
one small section at the very center, which was blood red.

“
Something is
happening, something inexorable,” said Camilla. “The Night has
moved you to this time and place deliberately. It has shifted your
body to that of a child. Why, Hazel? And what is on the other side
of
that
?”