Kingdom Keepers Boxed Set

by Ridley Pearson

More kids called out from the line, this time wanting autographs.

  “We can’t stay here,” said Maybeck.

  “I have to find her,” Amanda said. “The real her.”

  “We need Finn and Philby,” Willa said.

  Hunched over and miserable in the rain, Charlene added, “Could we maybe move this meeting somewhere dry?”

  Maybeck said, “We saw you two not five minutes ago. If they grabbed her…if they made a switch…it had to have happened between then and now. Somewhere really close to here.”

  “Are you saying she was…kidnapped?” Charlene said, a little too concerned with her hair to have stayed with the discussion.

  “If humans take you, you’re kidnapped,” Maybeck answered. “I doubt there’s a name for it when it’s a band of Disney villains. But yeah. She’s missing.”

  “But why?” Charlene asked Maybeck. “Why kidnap Jez?”

  The three kids stared at Amanda, waiting for an answer. She pursed her lips as if she’d swallowed something bitter. “If I told you—which I can’t—you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Try us,” Maybeck said.

  “You’d be surprised at what we can handle,” said Willa.

  “The Overtakers?” Maybeck asked, winning Amanda’s attention.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Amanda said.

  “Try us,” Maybeck repeated.

  “Please tell us,” Willa pleaded. She wiped the rain from her eyes. “We want to help, but we need to know what’s going on, what we’re involved in.”

  Charlene proved she’d been paying attention after all. “This has to do with Finn, doesn’t it? When Finn got tangled up with Jez, and you said some kind of spell had been removed. Maleficent’s spell.”

  That incident had happened months ago, though the kids remembered it as if it were yesterday. Maleficent had kept Jez under her control to prevent Jez’s own powers from interfering with Maleficent’s plan. The DHIs had managed to trap Maleficent, and Finn had helped free Jez from the spell—though her powers had yet to be explained to any of them. Maybe this was why the sisters had vanished recently: to keep from having to explain themselves.

  “We have to hurry,” Willa said. “For one thing, those kids are blowing our cover. For another, every second counts. She can’t be far.”

  “Since when are you a detective? You’ve been reading too many American Girl books,” snapped Charlene.

  “No, she’s right,” Maybeck said. “Time is in our favor, but not for long. Amanda and I will retrace her route, looking for her. Willa, you and Charlene get Finn and Philby out of the castle and meet up with us.”

  Amanda jerked her head toward Cinderella Castle. “He’s in there?” she gasped, and then mumbled, “I’d nearly forgotten.”

  “Forgotten what?” Maybeck asked.

  Amanda looked back and forth from the sputtering and sparking DHI of her sister to the colorful lights illuminating the castle.

  “Something horrible’s going to happen,” Amanda whispered. “Jezebel dreamed about it. We came here to warn all of you.” She met eyes with Maybeck and then Willa. “He’s actually in there?”

  “She dreamed about it?” Charlene said, distrustful and sarcastic. “Your sister can dream the future, I suppose? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?”

  “Fairlies have abilities you wouldn’t believe.”

  “What’s a Fairlie?” Willa blurted out.

  “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

  FINN FOLLOWED PHILBY up the tightly wound spiral staircase in complete darkness, his lungs and legs burning, his head pounding. Transforming himself into a DHI—twice in a matter of minutes—had taxed him. He climbed, half in, half out of consciousness, sliding his hand along the cool steel handrail, faint of head but not of heart. Someone was trying to attract lightning to Cinderella Castle. He envisioned the penthouse apartment converted into a Frankenstein laboratory, some Disney monster strapped to a stainless-steel table with wires attached to his head and heart. He didn’t know what to think—except that the Overtakers had sent the Dapper Dan to stop them. That had to mean something big was going down.

  Thunder cracked outside, sending a rumble up his legs. Climbing higher in a lightning storm was not the smartest move. He felt another tremor in his chest.

  Speaking in a breathless whisper as they climbed, Finn said, “What if it’s all a trap? An elaborate trap? What if this guy is supposed to drive us to the top of the castle? What if the weather balloon and lightning are intended for us? To kill us?”

  Philby stopped, and Finn bumped into him. He had trouble catching his breath. His heart was about to explode.

  The staircase vibrated: the man was climbing toward them.

  “But if that’s the case, then this guy’s suicidal,” Philby said, “because he’s right behind us.”

  “But if he’s an Overtaker, how do we even know he’s real?”

  “How do we know if any of this is real?” Philby quipped. “Not one of us has ever told our parents about what happens to us at night. Why do you think that is?” He answered his own question. “Because they wouldn’t believe it.”

  Shadows flickered on the wall. A flashlight. The guy!

  “Climb!” Finn hissed.

  They started climbing higher, running up the stairs as fast as they could. Their pursuer wasn’t nearly as light on his feet as they were. The beam from his flashlight and the strange, shifting shadows it cast propelled them hurriedly up, up, up. At last, they faced a door.

  It was bolted shut; there was no doorknob or handle.

  In the dim light, Finn caught sight of a handwritten sign taped to the wall:

  OPEN ONLY IN EMERGENCY

  “Do we dare?” Finn asked.

  “It has to lead into the apartment,” said Philby.

  “Agreed.”

  The light from the flashlight rose more quickly now. “And we’re trying to get into the apartment.”

  Finn moved the bolt, and the door popped open.

  Together they entered into another dark space. Finn reached out. It was narrow and tight. The sound of bells…no…Finn knew that sound. It wasn’t bells. It was…hangers.

  “We’re in a closet,” Finn said softly. “A closet inside the apartment, I’ll bet.”

  “The stairs are the apartment’s fire escape,” said Philby. “Makes sense.” But why lock a fire escape from the outside? Finn wondered silently.

  He groped in the dark and touched another door in front of them and opened it a crack. The closet led into the apartment’s small bedroom, the shiny bedspread a hideous shade of grass green. The air smelled stale and dusty. The boys slipped into the bedroom. It felt unbearably warm.

  Heavy footsteps clomped up the stairs.

  “Hurry!” Finn hissed. He and Philby rushed out of the closet, shut its door and, working together, slid the bed to block it. At the very least they had bought themselves a few seconds.

  They hurried to the bedroom door, and Finn put his ear to it.

  “Anything?” Philby asked, one eye nervously on the blocked closet behind them.

  “It sounds like someone mumbling.” Finn opened the door carefully and then quietly stepped through. Philby followed. They were in a small hallway with a view into a larger living room. The decor might have once been called modern. Now it looked slightly cheesy.

  Finn angled his head around the corner to get a better view into the living room. Then he jerked back.

  Maleficent—the most powerful of the Disney fairies and Finn’s greatest enemy—stood by the apartment window. Amanda had somehow known! Maleficent had enormous evil powers, including the ability to conjure spells with nothing more than incantations. Finn had once seen her transfigure a trash bag into a rat. She had demonstrated powers of fire and electricity, conjuring a cage of glowing “wires” around him. Her one weakness was temperature—she could only conjure when cold, which helped explain her being jailed in an apartment kept so warm. He doubted she was at her full
powers, given the warmth of the apartment, but that could change in an instant. She had her back to them, and her dark robe hung to the floor. Now Finn understood what he’d heard: Maleficent was chanting while facing the open window. It was blocked on the outside by a heavy iron grate—like a jail cell.

  Casting a spell? Finn wondered.

  His legs shook with fear. The last he’d known, she’d been locked in a jail cell in the catacombs beneath Pirates of the Caribbean. What was she doing here?

  She stepped away from the window but continued chanting. Through the window, the sky darkened. The storm roared as lightning flashed and thunder cracked. Finn tensed with the next lightning strike: a tremendous flash was followed instantly by a crack and boom. Was she summoning the lightning? Another loud crack. A bolt of electricity struck the iron grate. It glowed red hot, and then sparks flew. The iron grate melted and fell open, the window no longer blocked. The evening’s cool breeze blew through.

  Maleficent climbed up onto the sill. The crowd cheered from below.

  Color filled the sky—the fireworks display had begun.

  “Stop!” he shouted.

  She turned. “YOU!”

  It was no trap. Their being here clearly surprised her.

  Her red eyes locked on to his. Her green, hideous skin scrunched tightly around her eyes. If looks could kill…he thought.

  Finn stepped back, afraid. The cool air…Three loud bangs of thunder mixed with the fireworks, making a war zone out of the sky. A fiery backdrop played out behind the green creature standing in the window.

  She glanced back at him one more time and then climbed outside.

  Finn and Philby hurried to the smoldering window opening and looked out.

  Maleficent was climbing the castle wall, her cape swirling in the wind. She moved like an insect.

  He looked down and gasped. They had to be a hundred feet up.

  “I’m not going out there!” Finn said.

  “The stairs!” Philby said.

  With every second she would be cooling off, regaining her powers. The boys hurried back to the bedroom, determined to follow her. The Dapper Dan was pounding on the closet door from the other side.

  “Ready?” Finn said, his hands against the bed frame.

  Philby, selected as a DHI in large part for his brainpower, did not need to hear what Finn had in mind. He knew intuitively.

  “One…two…”

  On three the boys shoved the bed out of the way. The door flew open.

  The Dapper Dan, who’d been pushing hard on the closet door, fell through and tumbled down onto the carpet. Finn and Philby ducked into the closet, hurried out the emergency door, and threw the bolt before the Dapper Dan had climbed to his feet. They had trapped him inside.

  They hesitated on the landing.

  “Up or down?” Finn asked Philby, the challenge obvious to both boys.

  Philby looked down the stairs, knowing this meant safety. Then he looked at Finn. “If she gets free, we’ll never be safe again,” he said.

  “Up!” the two boys said in unison.

  The boys climbed the dark staircase, slowly at first, but then, holding the rail, Finn picked up the pace.

  As they neared the top, the sound of the crowd grew louder. The stairs ended in a small stone chamber with an open window.

  It took only seconds for Finn’s eyes to adjust. There was a young woman tied up in the corner. She had wings, and for a moment he thought she, too, was an Overtaker. Then he recognized her as Tinker Bell. She was a Cast Member, in costume.

  Maleficent stood in the open window, her robe fluttering, the fireworks flashing colors in the sky beyond her. Now Finn saw the metal wire secured to the wall.

  “Silly boys!” Maleficent said in a raspy voice. “The end is near.”

  She jumped.

  Finn ran to the window.

  But she hadn’t fallen. Instead, she flew off, away from them.

  She could fly!

  But then Finn understood: near the conclusion of the fireworks show, Tinker Bell flew from the castle. Tinker Bell was actually a Cast Member riding a zip line from the castle onto a roof in Tomorrowland. But on this night, it wasn’t Tinker Bell riding the zip line.

  Maleficent let out a bloodcurdling screech—to the delight of the crowd—as she rode the wire high in the sky. She grew smaller and smaller.

  The crowd went crazy with cheers and screams.

  Her hideous screech rang in the air until swallowed by the next thumping blast of fireworks—the grand finale—that joined the rippling of thunder echoing off the Florida landscape like the aftereffect of a bomb exploding.

  THE LIGHTNING STRIKE that hit Cinderella Castle charged the night sky with intense light as fire rained down. The bolt of lightning had grounded out on the thin wire holding the weather balloon. Next, the lights went out in a large area encircling the castle, including the street lamps surrounding the Hub, most of Liberty Square, and as far away as Tomorrowland. Spotlights that normally lit the sky went black, leaving the colorful glow of the fireworks’ grand finale.

  Then something—or someone—flew out toward Tomorrowland, and it was quite obviously not Tinker Bell. The caped figure was chased by a ball of swirling orange flame. A chorus of cheers arose. No one was exactly sure what they’d just witnessed, but whatever it was, it was amazing.

  Willa and the others heard the cheer. Only moments later a swirl of rumor reached them: a witch had flown from the castle. Maybeck said a few words that would have gotten him detention in school.

  “Which witch?” Charlene wondered aloud.

  “Three guesses,” said Amanda.

  The three others looked at her sharply.

  “Finn!” Charlene muttered, her worry hanging in the air.

  “What do we do now?” Willa gasped.

  “You’ve got to tell us what you know,” Maybeck demanded of Amanda.

  “It’s Jez that saw this coming, not me,” Amanda said.

  “Saw what coming?” he asked.

  “Trouble.”

  “You already said that. You gotta give us more.”

  “I told you: Jez is different.”

  “She’s your sister!” he complained.

  “Yeah,” she said, sounding apologetic. “Kind of. I guess you could say I’m a little different as well.”

  “Different how?”

  “Just…different.”

  “She’s not on trial,” Willa complained to Maybeck. “She and Jez came to warn us!” She addressed Amanda. “What did Jez think was going to happen?”

  “She saw things. She wrote them down—drew things—in her journal. Kept track of them—dreams mostly. And daydreams. But…” She cut herself off and looked at each of the others searchingly. “The really creepy part is she showed me a sketch she made of lightning striking the castle. She knew it was going to happen, and I think she knew that Finn was going to be inside.”

  “You owe us an explanation,” Maybeck said impatiently.

  “And you’ll have it,” Amanda agreed. She glanced around—a number of guests were braving the rain to get a better look at the castle. “But not here. Not now. You have to help Finn. He’s in danger. More danger than from just the lightning. It’s the Overtakers. They did this. They’re responsible. Jez…I have to find Jez. They’re afraid of her…powers. She can stop this by warning you and others, but not if they control her.”

  “Stop what?” Maybeck asked.

  “I wish I knew.”

  “The lightning?” Willa asked. “We’re a little late, if that’s the case.”

  “It was more than that,” Amanda said. “Listen, I’ve got to find Jez. You all need to help Finn and Philby. They’re in danger. Jez saw that coming. That was what she was trying to prevent.”

  “Okay,” Maybeck said, “enough chit-chat. Let’s get going. Amanda and I are going to head back to look for Jez while you two check out the castle and find Finn and Philby.”

  “With the power out, they’ll clo
se the Park,” Willa warned. “They’re not going to let us run around for long. And if they recognize us, they’re not going to want us in the Park at all.”

  “Well, then, pull up your hood. Mess up your hair. We gotta do this,” Maybeck said. “If they close the Park, we’ll IM and figure this out.” He grabbed Amanda’s arm and tugged. She hesitated, then moved with him.

  They took off at a run.

  “Everyone IM at midnight,” he yelled over his shoulder.

  Charlene and Willa headed for the castle, which was shrouded in darkness and a veil of smoke left over from both the fireworks and the lightning strike.

  Behind them, they left the sputtering hologram of Jez, who, as another series of street lamps flickered and failed in the spreading blackout, sputtered and went dark.

  Gone, just like the real Jez.

  Some kids cheered from under awnings. Rain continued to fall.

  One of them shouted, “The Kingdom Keepers rule!”

  Willa winced at hearing the nickname that a local newspaper had adopted for the kids and their DHIs. She felt a chill down her spine and a pain in her stomach. They weren’t superheroes; they were teen models mixed up in some confused technology that no one fully understood—not even the people who’d invented it.

  She’d gotten a good look at the thing flying. She hadn’t mentioned what she’d seen to the others, because who would have believed it?

  But she knew what she’d seen—whom she’d seen—and the chill was replaced with a spasm of terror.

  Maleficent had escaped. Jez had been turned into a DHI.

  To think that those two events were some kind of freak coincidence and unrelated was just plain wrong.

  IT SOUNDED LIKE DOZENS of footsteps were hurrying up the spiral staircase as Finn and Philby rushed to untie the woman dressed up as Tinker Bell. Finn got the tape off her mouth.

  “Are you all right?”

  She looked terrified. “Who…what…was that?”

  Philby said, “Finn, we’re cooked.”

  The approaching footsteps were noticeably closer. They were either security guards or Overtakers. Either way spelled disaster for the boys.

  “Who’s coming?” the Tinker Bell woman asked.