by Georgia Byng
Molly nodded, but she was too upset to speak. She picked up Petula and left the room to think.
* * *
For the next half hour, Rocky and Sinclair finished deprogramming Cell. They told him that he now had access to all his feelings, that he was completely out of Lucy Logan’s grasp, that he was free. Rocky left Primo with all his knowledge of hypnotism. And then they took him to Sinclair’s bedroom and told him to sleep.
Sinclair looked at the prone body of Primo collapsed on the circular bed. “He’s dog tired because of what’s happened to him,” he observed. “He probably feels like sleeping for a century. We must let him rest for as long as possible, so that when he wakes, his mind has properly absorbed the deprogramming. And Rocky, as far as the rest of the country goes, Primo Cell is still the president elect. We must keep him hidden in here, because if Lucy Logan was to get to him before he announced that he was not going to be president, she’d still have a chance of carrying out her plans. We’ll lock him in my room for safety. When he’s conscious again, and his head is clear, we’ll get him down to Iceberg Studios and he can declare on TV that he no longer wants to be president. As soon as we’ve done that, Logan’s lost.”
So they closed the door on Cell and turned the key. Rocky felt sorry for the man. When he woke, he’d have to come to terms with the fact that Lucy Logan had stolen eleven years of his life and used them for herself.
Molly reeled from the succession of shocks that had battered her. That Lucy had betrayed her, that Lucy was behind Primo Cell, was a bad enough shock. The fact that Lucy was her mother, a mother who had wanted her dead, and that Primo was her father, was a shock of such high voltage that Molly wasn’t quite sure how to cope. Rocky couldn’t help her. She needed to be alone. She went upstairs to sit in the sunlight, on the roof of Sinclair’s house.
Thirty-eight
Molly spent the next few hours with Petula, sitting quietly on the warm sun deck on the top of Sinclair’s house. She did her best to come to terms with her mammoth discoveries.
She tried to breathe deeply and calmly. She shut her eyes and drifted off, just as Forest had taught her, and in her imagination, she looked down on herself. In her mind, as she floated far above Los Angeles, a thick red line connected her to Primo Cell, and another glowing red line joined her to Lucy Logan, wherever she was. Molly realized that these lines had always been there, but she hadn’t seen them before. Molly hated the line that joined her to Logan. But no amount of wishing could make the line go away. Molly was connected to her, whether she liked it or not. That ruthless, evil woman was her mother.
To make herself feel better, Molly imagined special golden lines connecting her to the people whom she knew and loved best: Rocky, Mrs. Trinklebury, Gemma and Gerry, and little Ruby and Jinx. Molly sent silver lines, bronze lines, green, purple, and blue lines swooping away from her. They all helped blot out the horrible red one that shot toward Lucy Logan.
Lucy Logan. Molly hated her very name.
When Logan found out that her plans had been foiled, she would definitely try to pull everything back on track. She’d try to make Primo her puppet again. She’d try to hypnotize him. She’d try to hypnotize all of them. Molly dreaded to think how strong her hypnotic powers were.
Molly let herself fly all the way up into space, until she was aware of her body as a microscopic cell on the surface of the earth. It was as if her mind was drifting, looking down at the spot where her body, her Molly Moon body, was. From her lofty vantage, she imagined where Logan’s body might be. She shut her eyes and concentrated hard, but at the same time, she let her mind relax. Molly looked down across to the hazy San Gabriel Mountains, but she had no sense of Logan being there. Molly looked southwest to Santa Monica Beach, but her instinct told her that Logan wasn’t there either. Now she swiveled her mind’s eye directly below her, to Hollywood. She felt a kind of radarlike certainty that Logan was there. And, as if turning the lens on a telescope, Molly focused her imagination. She zoomed in on the place where she could picture Logan. Her mind became brighter. Sunlight and a bird’s-eye view of green trees filled it. Then her mental vision conjured up a view of the top of Logan’s head. Molly breathed in and let the strange apparition expand. She saw Logan walking up a path flanked by geranium bushes and pepper trees.
All at once, Molly knew that she had imagined the path to Sinclair’s house. And in the next moment, as she opened her eyes, she realized that the vision in her head was not imaginary but true.
The front doorbell rang. Molly could hear Sinclair’s voice answering the intercom.
“Hello?”
“Sinclair,” came a woman’s deep voice. “Sinclair, I wonder whether you might come downstairs. I’m an old friend of your father’s, and I’d like to get in touch with him. My name’s Lucy Logan.”
Molly sat up as if she’d been stung and put her hand around Petula’s mouth in case she should bark.
“I’m sorry,” she heard Sinclair reply. “But if you’d like to get in touch with Primo Cell, I suggest you make an appointment with his secretary.”
“But, Sinclair, I have to speak …” The intercom clunked as it disconnected. Molly heard a frustrated sigh from below. Lucy had been left on the doorstep. Molly craned her neck and heard crunching steps walking away from the house. And as soon as she thought there was no risk of being seen, she scuttled through the hatch of the sun deck and bolted it behind her, and she and Petula sped down the steep stairs into the safety of the house.
At the bottom, they bumped straight into Sinclair and Rocky. Molly jumped.
“Molly, I’ve got—”
“I know. Bad news. She’s here, I heard her.”
“She must know Primo’s here,” said Sinclair in a panic, pacing forward and backward on the spot. Molly had never seen him look so scared. “Did you see where she went?”
“It sounded like she was setting off through the garden,” said Molly.
“Is Primo’s bedroom locked?” asked Sinclair.
Rocky tapped his pocket. “You locked it yourself.”
“I’ve locked the back door too. There’s no way she can get in. You two had better keep away from the windows.”
“Maybe we should wake Primo up and get him out of here right now,” said Molly.
“Far too risky,” Sinclair replied instantly. “He’ll still be semiconscious. We might damage the deprogramming. Anyway, who knows what we might meet on the road.” Sinclair started rubbing his fingers together as if he was fiddling with a piece of invisible putty.
The minutes passed. They stayed where they were, outside the entrance to the sitting room, all fighting the fear that was crawling up their spines.
“Do you think she’s got other people out there?” asked Molly, chewing her sleeve. “I mean, she may have a small army, ready to ambush us.”
All at once, Molly and Sinclair felt a coolness on the surface of their skins beneath their crystals, and a chill flickered through their bodies. Molly grabbed Rocky and, as the world froze, she helped him resist it. Outside, the traffic on the road in the valley ceased. The water in the fountain that fed Sinclair’s lap pool stopped in midflow. Petula was still. Everywhere was silence.
“What’s she up to?” Rocky said.
“The feeling’s coming from over there.” Molly stepped into the sitting room with Rocky and pointed to where the trees hid the road farther down the hill.
“I think we’ve got to grab Primo and leave now,” said Rocky. “If she’s on the far side of the house, we can get him into the car without being seen. Probably.”
“Maybe we should risk it,” Sinclair agreed.
Just as suddenly, the world started moving again.
“Whatever it was that she needed to stop time for, she’s done it now,” said Molly. “I’m not sure we should leave. I mean, she doesn’t know Primo’s here. She doesn’t know Rocky and I are here—she thinks we’re dead. If we leave now, we might come face to face with her or some cop she�
��s hypnotized. She’d have Primo taken from us. And who knows what she’ll do with us? We’ll have more of a chance if we wait for her to come to the door. Here, we have the advantage of surprise. I can use my eyes on her.”
They all perched uncomfortably at the back of the room on some star-shaped, wire-mesh chairs that weren’t really designed to be sat on. Everyone expected the doorbell to ring again at any moment. Rocky picked at a hole in his jeans, making it twice as big. Sinclair scrolled through numbers on his cell phone as if looking at them would give him the answer as to what he should do next. Molly stared at the narrow channel of water that ran along the side of the huge room to the fountain where it was filled. The constant fountain splashed quietly but did nothing to diffuse the tension. Ripples from the opposite direction met the fountain’s flow and made the water swish against the edges of the lap pool. Molly’s eyes followed the channel as it curved toward the window, and she realized, with a nauseating lurch, that there was an entry to the house they had all overlooked. Then she saw, to her horror, where the ripples were coming from. Someone was swimming in the lap pool. Like a duck in a fairground’s shooting gallery, Lucy Logan’s head was forging its way through the water, toward them.
Thirty-nine
Slowly, the head started to rise, and like a killing water beast, Lucy Logan rose, dripping, from the water, a silver pistol clenched between her teeth. She no longer wore the bandages and the plaster cast that had covered her in Briersville. Petula began to bark and bark.
Lucy fixed Sinclair, Molly, and Rocky with a cold, petrifying glare. She looked very unlike the Briersville librarian whom Molly had known. She was still dressed in a tweed skirt and sensible cardigan—these were now sopping wet—and her blond hair was styled, as it had always been, into a bun on top of her head, but she looked disturbingly different. Her eyes had lost all their kindness, and her nose looked more hooked.
“Don’t look at her eyes,” gasped Sinclair. No one needed to be reminded. Molly had already fixed her eyes on the gun, now in Lucy Logan’s hand.
“And don’t listen to her.”
“But she’s got a gun,” Molly said, as if no one else had noticed it.
“And it’s loaded,” said Lucy, as calmly as if she was about to start a guided tour of the house. She pointed the pistol at Petula. “Stop that dog barking or I’ll shoot it.” Molly snatched up Petula and silenced her, instinctively stepping away from Lucy. Sinclair and Rocky moved with her.
“Where is he?” Logan asked, raising her weapon. “You might as well let me have him, or I’ll kill you and find him anyway.”
“You’ll kill us whatever happens,” said Sinclair.
Molly gulped. The idea of a bullet, a hard steel bullet puncturing her body at lightning speed, was terrifying. But mixed with this fear was a thought that tantalized her. The madwoman standing in front of her was her mother.
Logan raised the gun.
“If you shoot, then you’ll never find out where Cell is,” Molly lied. “We’ve deprogrammed him and he’s somewhere so safe that even you won’t be able to find him.”
Lucy Logan lowered the revolver. She glanced toward the kitchen and the other door that led off the room. Sinclair’s bedroom. She walked toward it, keeping her gun aimed at everyone. She tried the door handle, which held fast. Loudly, but as nicely as if she was about to tell him his lunch was ready, she called, “Primo?”
“What is it?” came Primo’s groggy reply. Logan smiled slyly.
“No doubt one of you has the key,” she said politely. Molly stared at her. It was amazing how now, because she hated her, Lucy seemed far uglier than she had remembered her.
“He’s deprogrammed,” said Molly. “You won’t ever have power over him again.”
“You underestimate my influence,” said Lucy coolly. “Just as I underestimated your luck.”
“You thought the magpie killed me and Rocky ages ago, didn’t you?” said Molly.
“Yes. I should have taken the precaution of leaving some hypnotic instruction in you, just in case you did survive.”
“You never could have hypnotized me that day at your cottage. I was too alert,” said Molly defiantly.
“Oh, I could have, if I’d tried,” said Lucy. “I should have. It would have been a lot less tiresome now if you were still under my thumb. But the chances of a specimen like you surviving Cell were so slim.” Petula growled.
“Slim in your eyes, but your microscope’s obviously broken,” said Molly. Logan ignored her and pointed her gun at Sinclair.
“And I suppose you had something to do with their escape. I remember seeing pictures of you, Sinclair, when you were a ragged little circus boy. Primo and I were wrong about you. I thought you had potential. I thought you were trustworthy. And you,” she said, looking at Rocky. “Perhaps you were more talented than I realized.” Lucy’s hard blue eyes scanned them all contemptuously.
“You do realize that I have to dispose of you all, one way or another. So which is it to be? My eyes or the bullet? It’s your decision.”
No one spoke. Patience certainly wasn’t one of her virtues, for fed up with no answer, Logan said abruptly, “Actually, I’m sick of the lot of you. I’m going to shoot you all. Good-bye.” She pointed her gun at Rocky.
Molly saw Lucy’s finger moving to squeeze the revolver’s trigger. In the same instant she realized that this was no game. Lucy Logan was about to shoot Rocky. With a speed that Molly didn’t know she had, she drew the cold fusion feeling from the air itself and instantaneously stopped the world. In that slice of time, the first nanosecond of a loud bang hit her ears.
Everything stood still. Except for Logan, Molly, Petula, and Sinclair. A bullet three inches from Rocky’s throat hung like a frozen missile in the air. Logan smiled and pointed her gun at Molly.
“Good timing,” she said. “Try to stop this one.”
Molly was confused. She was already holding the world still. Could she stop it again? She watched Lucy’s wrist, trying to sense when she would squeeze the trigger again. Sinclair dived behind a chair.
Molly saw the tendon on Lucy’s thick wrist rise slightly, and she chose her moment. Again, time stopped. Molly had judged it perfectly. This time, a bullet hung in the air midway between her and Lucy. This bullet was on its way to Molly’s chest.
“Hhhmmm,” commented Lucy. “That one would have hit you in the heart.”
Molly couldn’t give in to her numbing fear. She had to remain lucid, or she would be dead. She hadn’t known until now that time could be stopped on top of already frozen time. She looked at Sinclair to see his reaction, but now he was a statue too, like Rocky. Molly quickly put Petula down behind the sofa, where she also went rigid.
Molly wondered how many times she would be able to stop the world. But there wasn’t long to wonder, because Lucy was about to kill her. She fired her third bullet. Again Molly froze time. For a moment Logan and Molly were both distracted as they resisted the freeze.
Logan took a moment to adjust to the new time; then she snarled, “You’re waning, Moon.” She fired again.
A fourth bullet. A fifth bullet. Terror swept through Molly as Logan pointed the gun at her head, at her heart, at her stomach. Molly trembled as she stopped the world for the eighth time. She was almost too late. A bullet hung suspended in the air, an inch from her forehead. Molly threw herself behind the sofa.
“You’ve only got a few more bullets,” she shouted through the icy fog that was beginning to rise from the water and fill the room.
“You’ve been watching too many films. I’ve just reloaded,” said Logan. Molly glanced around the side of her hiding place. Logan saw her and another shot rang out, the sound cut off instantly as Molly froze everything once more. Molly shivered. Logan shivered. The room was starting to feel very, very cold.
“You’re a coward,” said Molly, panting. “This would be fair only if I had a gun too.”
“I’m not a coward,” said Logan. “I just like to have an unfair
advantage, that’s all. After all, I have to win, Molly.”
Logan frowned. She really didn’t want to play cat and mouse with this girl. She wanted this business over. All this time stopping was very tiring. She had never suspected that Molly might be this good. To stop the world over and over required extreme focus of mind. Logan had never thought a child would be able to do it. But she also knew that, like folding a piece of paper over and over again, eventually folding time would become impossible. Logan knew that, in the end, Molly would have no way to dodge her bullets. So, although Logan’s strength was being tested to the fullest, she also knew that she would win. She raised her gun.
Molly’s teeth were chattering. Each time she forced the cold fusion feeling outward, it was as if the world sucked heat out of her body. Now the icy mist was shrouding everything in the room. Lucy Logan’s body was just visible, but Molly could barely detect the movement of her finger against the trigger of the gun. She was sensing as much as seeing when Logan was about to fire.
Lucy Logan’s vision was becoming blurred too. Her hearing was fuzzy. It was as if she was in a cold airplane at a very high altitude. She fired at Molly but, on stumbling toward her, found that the shape she’d shot at was a coat on a chair and not Molly at all. She saw an indistinct figure move to her left.
The world froze again—froze this time before Logan had fired. As Logan resisted it, her legs went numb with cold. She grabbed at something to steady herself. They must be nearing the impossible fold now. If she was weakening, the child must surely be about to collapse. Lucy had the advantage. She had trained her mind for years. She would win this contest—she knew she would. She felt for her crystal under her wet cardigan—colder than ice. With great effort she spoke.
