by Carrie Jones
Annie’s mind whirled. It hadn’t been Miss Cornelia who said that Aurora was a safe haven. It had been Bloom or the mayor. Her heart stiffened when she thought of the mayor and his pride in Aurora. It would kill him if the Raiff’s plan succeeded.
“I can’t imagine that stopping them in time will make them any happier,” Annie said. “They’ll be stuck, helpless while your nasty trolls eat them. And those … those … vampire thingies suck their blood. Instead of a zoo it’ll be a horror movie.”
The Raiff’s face contorted into an expression of concern. “Is that what they told you? That we’d go around eating and pillaging? No. No. No. Well, it’s no wonder you hit me. That’s not the plan at all. Why even the mayor is in favor of my plan.”
“Which is what? Kidnap Miss Cornelia when you should have just kidnapped me?” Annie asked. “Why didn’t you just kidnap me?”
“Oh … So many reasons. You are untrained. Miss Cornelia is trained. Who knew if you were powerful enough to even make a portal. Obviously, now we know you are. Cornelia was a sure thing. Except for … Well, she doesn’t cooperate. But you … If we tortured you? I think she’d cooperate then. One of you will do my bidding. Either way it’s a win-win for us. Isn’t it, Mayor?” The Raiff clapped his hands together. “Mayor? Mayor?”
Nothing happened. He rolled his eyes. Annie moved a centimeter closer to Bloom and then another one. No one seemed to notice. The vampire still had a finger on her, though.
The Raiff turned to the trolls. “Will someone get me the mayor?”
The troll pounded out and returned in a moment with the mayor. Annie’s whole body relaxed when she saw the familiar man with his ruddy face and huge hands. He’d taken off his parka, of course, and wore just a simple blue T-shirt with suspenders holding up his large pants.
“Mayor!” Annie moved a step closer and the vampire pulled her back, but as he did she leaned another inch closer to Bloom. Soon she’d be able to touch him. Unfortunately, a vampire was touching him as well, so if she stopped time they’d have two vampires to contend with. Then she had another idea.
She forced herself to have a mind as innocent as a two-year-old’s. She made herself feel like the mayor was her daddy coming home after a long day of work. Shrugging off the vampire’s hand, she bounded toward the mayor and jumped up into his arms while the Raiff smiled indulgently.
“So sweet,” he murmured, licking his lips.
But Annie wasn’t being sweet at all. She was being sneaky. She clutched the mayor’s large chest, and squeezing with every ounce of her body, she forced herself to the right resonation. She could feel the power surging and yelled, “Stop!”
And, of course, time did stop.
And, of course, it was very much the wrong thing to do.
27
A Traitor Revealed
“Mayor, oh thank goodness.” Annie broke away from the stone giant and started searching the room for ropes and chains. “Now we have to hurry and tie them all up. Are there more in the fort? We should tie them up, too, I suppose. Hopefully, it won’t take long. Stopping gives the ghosts an awful headache, you know.”
The mayor grabbed her arm but said nothing. His face was cold, terribly cold.
“Mayor?” Her voice came out like a squeak. He smelled … spicy.
“You’ve misjudged, Annie,” he said, his hand squeezing tighter. “You’ve misjudged badly.”
She tried to back away toward Miss Cornelia but couldn’t move an inch. He held her fast.
“You’re filthy,” he spat out. “No better than a troll. Now start time again.”
She closed her eyes, had to think of something to do. Nothing came. She was desperate. Maybe she could stall.
“Was it you? Were you the one who betrayed Miss Cornelia?” Annie asked.
He shrugged and didn’t loosen his hold.
“But why? She loved you. The town loves you. The fairies and pixies … all your speeches.”
“The fairies are a nuisance, always hanging on me. Plus, they were all too content; they never wanted anything more. Why stay in Aurora? I asked them. Why not expand?” His voice grew big like it did when he gave speeches. “It was like we were trapped there.”
“But you could leave.” Annie scanned the room. Everything was frozen. Bloom’s face trapped in a fierce expression. Eva, SalGoud, and Jamie all stuck in various stages of entrapment. The vampires resembled wax figures. The Raiff had a horrible TV-actor-style grin plastered on his face. It was much too wide.
“What good would leaving be?” the mayor asked. “We have to hide who we are in the human world. You were there. You know.”
Annie thought back to her life before Aurora, how she never really fit in. But there were plenty of good humans, too. Not all of them were like Walden. There was that nice foster father she’d had who made her peanut butter and fluff sandwiches before he had to go to the hospital. There was Mrs. Ballard, her second-grade teacher, who brought in cupcakes on students’ birthdays and said that everything always came in threes. When she was in second grade, she was sure that teacher was magic.
“Are you worrying about the humans?”
He then went back to the high table and grabbed some newspapers with his free hand, heaving Annie the entire way as if she weighed no more than a pillow. Her feet dragged on the floor as he strode. Plopping the papers down in front of her, he gave her his familiar mayor smile—kind and knowing. He fanned the papers out in front of her.
“See these headlines,” he said. “Read them. See what humans have done to the world. ‘Soldiers Torture Prisoners.’ ‘Air Quality at Its Worst Ever.’ ‘Forest Fire Caused by Arsonist, Kills 200.’ ‘Bombing Stuns City.’ ”
He gloated toward her again, put his finger beneath his chin. “That’s what humans are doing to the world, Annie. They have already destroyed it. Don’t tell me you don’t know that, Annie. You lived there. You’ve seen the worst of them.”
She closed her eyes. She thought of Mrs. Betsey telling her she was worthless. She thought of her foster father who used to chase after all the kids living in his apartment every time he drank too much. She would hide on the roof until he fell asleep, bringing one of the smaller foster sisters with her, holding her so that she wouldn’t slide down the steep pitch onto the busy street below.
“How did you get here? The portal is gone. How did you?” Annie shook her head.
“I came before the trolls destroyed it—as they destroyed it, but there are ways that you don’t know,” the mayor said. “Magic that even Cornelia is not privy to. A Stopper is not a god. You are just magical humans, not all-knowing beings, no matter how often you think you are.”
In the distance, a ghost wailed. The bell. If only she could get a hand free, she could fish it out of her pocket. She could get help. She squirmed but the mayor simply wrapped his arm around her trunk, smashing her arms useless against her sides.
“Start time again, Annie.”
“No.” She swallowed hard. “I don’t know how.”
She didn’t want to think of how angry the Raiff would be when time started again. The cold of him was unlike anything she’d experienced before. She had no desire to relive his freezing touch or withstand his wrath.
“Do it.”
“No.” She shook her head. How had she liked him? She’d been so stupid. Hadn’t her motto always been: We must. We must. We must never ever trust. “No, I can’t.”
With his free hand, the mayor pulled out a knife and held it to her throat. “I’ll kill you, Annie, so help me.”
His eyes were glassy, nothing eyes, like someone who’d done too many drugs, seen too many things about themselves. They were eyes that couldn’t stare back. She didn’t doubt him for a minute. The blade of the knife was cold against her skin, cold like the Raiff’s eyes and touch. She thought quickly.
“Then time will be stopped forever. You’ll be all that’s left.” She talked slowly, hoping he didn’t know better. “You can’t kill me because then you’l
l be alone and you can’t abide that. The whole world will be silent except for the beating of your heart. Thump. Thump. Thump-thump.”
She stopped herself because she thought she might be pushing it a bit, maybe a little too dramatic even for the mayor.
The mayor shuddered. She grinned to herself. It was working.
“There’ll be no one to applaud you, Mayor. No one to listen to your stories.” She squirmed her hand up a bit; she could almost reach the bell.
Before she could grab it, the mayor had an epiphany. She could almost hear him say “Ah-ha!” but he didn’t. Instead, he squeezed her more tightly, lifting her up in the air with her feet dangling, and took a step toward Miss Cornelia. He shoved the knife beneath the woman’s bent chin. He pricked her skin, just a little bit, but the blood didn’t come out that should have, which must have been because when time stops so does the blood.
“Start time or I’ll kill her,” he growled. A big bead of sweat barreled down his forehead and fell off the tip of his nose onto his arm, which made him move it a bit, slightly loosening his hold on Annie.
Annie took the opportunity to grab the ghost bell. Her hand wrapped around it, and she began clanging it desperately. It made no sound.
Oh, they lied, she thought, the ghosts lied.
She gulped, staring at Miss Cornelia’s sweet face.
“I’ll kill her, Annie. She’s just a stupid old witch.” He glowered and repositioned his knife. “We don’t need her anymore. She’s useless now that we have you. Too stubborn by half, anyway.”
Desperation took its hold on Annie. The ghost bell didn’t seem to work. The man she’d trusted had betrayed absolutely everyone. She was in a bad-smelling fortress in a godforsaken place where all her friends were frozen in time because of her, and her best foster mother, the best foster mother ever, was about to have her neck sliced by a power-hungry giant. So, using all of her newfound wisdom and strength and Time Stopper knowledge she did what any young girl with her hands pinned to her sides would do. She kicked her leg back and managed to strike a direct hit on the mayor’s left knee.
“Ha!” she yelled as he dropped her.
She fell to the marble floor and scurried a foot away while the mayor grabbed his now-throbbing knee.
“Start! Stop!” she murmured as fast as she could, wishing that maybe, just maybe, she did have the power to start time after all.
The effect was exactly what she wanted. The mayor was frozen hopping on one leg. Annie took a deep breath, felt the cool marble beneath her hands for just one second, and then pushed herself up off the floor. The world is extremely peaceful this way. Everything is so calm, she thought.
Except her heart.
She walked to Miss Cornelia and put her hand along the side of the woman’s wrinkled face. In the moment between starting time and stopping it again one single drop of blood had left the lovely old lady’s neck.
“I am sorry, too,” she whispered.
Then she set about moving her toward the center of the room. It was much harder than she imagined. Miss Cornelia seemed so frail but she was rather heavy, at least for Annie. She heaved and pulled, but the sight of Miss Cornelia being pushed across the floor like a dead mannequin mixed with a sack of oatmeal was just too much for her morale. She gave one more push and managed to get Miss Cornelia a step or two past a goblin who had been caught in the time stop midscurry, his skinny gray-green legs in midstep making him an inch or two above a beetle on the marble floor. When he would step down he’d squash the bug. Poor little beetle. Annie moved it out of the way. Then, thinking better of it, she picked it up and held it in the palm of her hand, staring at the iridescent shell, the little legs.
Sighing, she slumped down to sit on the floor for a moment. She had to catch her breath. She had to think. But all she did really was stare at the beetle, wondering if it had to spend all its time wondering over life or if it simply scurried from place to place, searching for food.
It would be so much easier to be a bug, she thought. No responsibilities.
“What are you doing?” a loud male voice demanded.
Annie’s hand tightened on the beetle, and giving a little embarrassing shriek she whirled around, startled beyond belief. Who could possibly be talking to her? She didn’t see anything. Then all of a sudden the body that went with the voice began to materialize in front of her. First, two fat legs in long socks and old-fashioned shoes appeared. Following them, a rotund belly materialized, and finally the white-wigged head of the grumpy ghost from Miss Cornelia’s house arrived. He glared at her with beady eyes.
“You forgot your arms,” she told him. And indeed he had. The rest of his body had materialized perfectly, but he’d foolishly forgotten his arms. His sleeves hung there, empty.
“Dragon’s teeth,” he muttered, and a second later his arms appeared.
Annie stifled a giggle.
The ghost raised his eyebrows and pointed a finger at her. “You’ve stopped time.”
Annie couldn’t believe it. He was lecturing her, like a teacher at school. “There wasn’t much of a choice, was there?”
Her arm swept the room. The ghost turned his bulbous head around and took in a toppled Miss Cornelia, the demon Raiff still grinning maddeningly, her friends hanging upside down, the mayor in midleap, the countless vampires and trolls and goblins all frozen in their evil tasks. He said nothing.
Annie put her hands on her hips, then started tugging at Miss Cornelia again. “And you guys certainly took a while.”
“Sorry.” He hung his head sheepishly. “We were playing charades.”
The Woman in White appeared next to him.
“I won!” she said in her frothy voice. She flitted over to Annie and glanced sadly at Miss Cornelia. “Oh, my dear friend.”
“You cheated,” the grumpy ghost snapped back. He implored Annie, “She took her body apart to show the word ‘dismember.’ That’s hardly fair.”
A ghostly book materialized in midair. The Woman in White snatched at it and began flipping through it.
“Find that in the rule book. There are no stipulations against taking apart a body. Now, turning solid and moving things—that is clearly against the rules. Yes, right here on page 39.”
Annie had her hands beneath Miss Cornelia’s armpits and heaved her over toward Bloom. She had hardly been paying attention to the spirits’ quarrel, but she paused and said, “You can move things?”
The Woman in White smiled, dropping the book. “Oh, of course we can, dear. Haven’t you ever heard of poltergeists, always shutting doors, and rearranging drawers and things?”
Annie smiled a true smile. She hadn’t felt so good in ages. “Are the rest of you here?”
In answer, dozens of ghosts suddenly appeared, filling the chamber. They overlapped one another and circled around Annie. The little girl ghost, Chloe, wrapped her arms around Annie’s leg. Annie laid Miss Cornelia back down on the floor so that she could give Chloe and her teddy a proper hug. The other ghosts waited impatiently.
“Our heads …,” they said.
“The ache …”
“Oy, could I use some aspirin. With a head like this, I feel like death warmed over.”
“You are death warmed over.”
“Of course I am, you idiot, but do I want to feel this way? No, no, I do not want to feel this way, I can tell you that.”
They talked over one another, voices growling more cacophonous as they talked, turning into quite a din, echoing off the marble walls. Chloe clung to Annie and covered her ears.
“Make them stop,” she whispered, turning solid. Annie pulled her into her arms. She’d had enough of the complaining, too.
The Woman in White saw the Raiff, frozen, and shrieked. “Oh! Oh! It’s him … It’s my—”
The stern ghost wrapped his arm around her, and she tucked her head into his chest before disappearing. Her sobs echoed off the walls.
“They have some history,” the ghost apologized for her. “They wer
e married once. He was … She … Ahem … Well, this is awkward.”
Annie cleared her throat as the Woman in White’s sobs seemed to float out the door. Wait. Did that mean? Was she her great-grandmother? Or something? She couldn’t worry about it right that second. “Okay … Um … Well, that’s … That’s not cool. Anyway, I have an idea. You help me with this and I’ll start time again. Now, here’s the plan …”
28
Basking in the Glory of Ickiness
Annie didn’t have much time to bask in the glory of her own genius. The ghosts turned solid. Then they hauled the Raiff, the mayor, and all the trolls, vampires, and goblins, along with any other unsavory ghouls such as kelpies and satyrs, into the dungeons that filled two levels of the fort. All of the dungeon rooms were empty, but they’d been well used. Blood covered some of the floors. Writing on one wall resembled old Celtic runes Annie had seen once in a book on Ireland. A lonely sock was bunched into the corner of a cell. In another, a long green cloak like Bloom wore was draped across the barred window, blocking out the view.
As they worked, Annie and the spirits really didn’t come across many of the Raiff’s cohorts. There weren’t really that many around anymore. Annie figured that most had already started across the sea toward Aurora. Some were probably already there.
“A dungeon won’t hold them long,” the grumpy ghost said, straightening his wig after the strain of turning solid and helping to heave a bulky troll had caused it to fall over his forehead and all the way down onto his nose. “The Raiff can’t be held by such things.”
“I just want to buy a little time,” Annie explained. She adjusted Chloe, who had spent the whole time sitting on Annie’s shoulders in a marathon piggyback ride. “Any seconds we can get and use to stall the Raiff are important.”
The ghosts also gathered together Bloom, Miss Cornelia, SalGoud, Jamie, and Eva, moving them close to one another so that they were all in a group huddle like football players. Standing in the middle of the room, Annie rubbed her hands together and surveyed their work.
