A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1

by Shannon Wendtland

  “And what about now?” she said, her voice almost a whisper, her strawberry lip gloss taunting me with its scent.

  “I was right. Blue is my favorite color,” I said, now only inches away. And then I swooped in and kissed her. The slightly sticky gloss on her lips was sweet and her breath tasted like root beer. Anyone who ever said that they’d rather play video games than kiss a girl has obviously not kissed the right girl.

  She reached her hand up to curl around my neck and that was all I needed to chase the last vestiges of Spirit Board from my brain. Right now, all that existed for me was her.

  56. SAM

  Same place, same time, same bat channel. Yep, the rave was going good and I felt like I was home. Several of the dancers remembered me from the last one and came up to tell me that they liked my mixes—especially my finale song—and that really made my night. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Lily had changed back into her risqué outfit of red vinyl heart pasties and black stretch pants.

  She hung out in the DJ booth more this time than last time, but she still was on her walkie a lot, or sometimes her cell phone. I gathered that she was coordinating some sort of big event for the finale, though I couldn’t fathom what would be more amazing than the incense dropping out of the ceiling like that.

  The owl was still on the wall behind me, still lit up like a psychedelic Christmas tree and pulsing in time with my music, but this time there was a screen up on the opposite end of the warehouse showing movie clips. Most of the movies were older and had some sort of cult status. A few I recognized, most I didn’t.

  “The crowd likes your music,” she said, coming up to yell in my ear.

  I felt her naked skin brush against my hand, and I snaked my arm around her waist. “That’s the point.”

  Her red lips turned up at the corners, and she leaned in a little closer. “I’m still waiting to see what you’ve done with the song I gave you.”

  I glanced at the clock and then up at the owl, which curiously, because of the play of lights across its face, seemed to be staring down at us. “We’ll find out in thirty minutes.”

  “Oh, is that the time?” She pulled back a little bit. “I better go get you a drink then. Something stronger than all these red bulls you’ve been drinking.”

  “I wondered if you were going to foist mystery substances on me again.”

  “What kind of hostess would I be otherwise?”

  And just like that she was gone, and I was left to set up the last couple of mixes and wait for her to come back.

  Another creepy vibe slid along my back, this sort of ticklish sensation over my left shoulder, and I couldn’t help but look back at the owl again. It was still staring at me, and it freaked me out a little bit.

  “What the hell do you want?” I asked it, irritated.

  Fuel.

  I stared up at it in disbelief.

  WTF was that?

  I got a serious set of heebie-jeebies, and the hair on my arms stood up like it was suddenly twenty-below in the room. And then Lily was back, grinning at me like a vixen, waving some sort of blue drink in a martini glass at me. “What took you so long?” I asked, shoving the psychedelic owl, and what I thought it said, out of my mind.

  “There was a line at the bar, but I had Hugo make this special for you, on the side. I got one for myself, too.”

  “So do we toast or something?”

  “Not yet. We wait until the finale. Then we toast.”

  “Two songs left.” I gestured at the board.

  “Then I guess we dance.”

  I snaked my arm around her waist again; her version of dancing looked a lot more like making out.

  Ten minutes went fast, and I had to let her wipe the red lipstick from my face before I turned around to queue up the last song of the night. I watched the clock count down from thirty seconds to three o’clock in the morning, and as I pushed the button for my dubstep mix of “Riders on the Storm,” the lights on the dancefloor dimmed. Smoke machines rolled in at the four corners of the dance floor, and the screen across the way now showed a desert landscape, just after sundown, the sky over the mountain range filled with swathes of orange and purple. The film sped up and storm clouds rolled in. I grinned. This was freaking awesome.

  The dancers cheered and swayed to the opening bars, gyrating wildly as the electronic beats slammed home. Lily rubbed up against me from behind, and her hand swung around, arm curving around my chest, blue concoction in a martini glass held up to my lips.

  “It’s now or never, Lover,” she purred.

  I drank the liquid, cool and citrus-y as it went down my throat, and wondered idly why it was now or never. As the liquid warmed my belly with that familiar alcohol feel, I watched the floor and almost laughed in amazement as a large plasma ball descended from the ceiling. Purple and red electrical surges pulsed from the center and flickered to the circumference of the sphere as the dancers cheered and lunged in to touch it. As they touched it, their hair rose on end and thin streams of purple energy swam through the fog, joining them all together.

  “That’s freaking cool,” I said, watching as sometimes one person, sometimes a group of dancers, were added into the gyrating mass, connected by the thin, translucent stream of purple energy. As the energy moved, sinuous and snakelike, it came closer and closer to the DJ booth. I felt the hairs on my arms rise again, as if static were everywhere in the air, but curiously, even though I reached my fingers out to touch it, the stream of energy pulled away from me and Lily to find dancers farther down the line near the speakers.

  “I wonder why it didn’t connect to me like everyone else?” I asked, vaguely disappointed.

  Lily danced around to the front of me and slid her hands beneath my shirt. She stepped up on her tiptoes and nibbled on my neck. “Who knows?” she breathed against my skin. “Who cares?” And she pulled my head down toward her inviting red lips.

  57. MELODY

  Gram had me weeding the garden again, which I didn’t mind so much now that I remembered how to feel the energy of the earth. And Tara had come over early to help since G. had to work. She promised to hang with me and watch stupid movies and then join G. later for hotdogs on the grill with his Dad.

  “What do you think he meant?” I asked finally, breaking the unspoken silence between us regarding the Spirit Board.

  “Who, Matthew?”

  “Yeah. ‘She’s not who she seems.’ It’s vague. Really vague.”

  “I guess it’s only vague because we don’t know who he’s referring to. We could make a list?”

  “So let’s see: me, you, Gram…”

  “Shelby, Brittney,” she added. “We know Orla is a place and not a person, so I guess we can leave that out.”

  “Yeah. Who else do we know? Lily?”

  Tara paused and shared a long look with me. Her expression was thoughtful. “That’s a good one,” she said. “I had pretty much forgotten about her.”

  “Have you met her?” I asked, decidedly not meeting her gaze. “What does she look like?”

  “No, I’ve never met her. I don’t think G. has either, unless you count that weird dream he had. But the way he tells it, she didn’t look like a normal person in his dream, so I’m not sure that counts anyways.”

  “What do you mean, not normal?”

  “He said her eyes were black and beady, and shadowed as if they were sunken into dark pits. He made her sound ghoulish.”

  I frowned. “She can’t look too ghoulish in real life or else Sam wouldn’t be so smitten with her.” Did that sound bitter? I couldn’t tell. I snuck a glance at Tara to see if she noticed. “I wish Sam would figure out the audio on that recording we did already,” I said to change the subject.

  “He’s probably not even awake yet.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s, like, two o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “Yeah, and it’s freaking hot outside too. The shade from the tree has moved on… I’m going to be really burned after this,” she said
. “You’re going to owe me big-time.”

  “You know I love you,” I said, throwing a clod of dirt at her. “Let’s quit here. I can finish the rest tomorrow.”

  “Hallelujah,” she said, and fell backwards onto her butt in the grass. “I wish you guys had a pool,” she said suddenly. “Because I really need a shower or something.”

  “You know what we could do?” I asked, a sudden idea glimmering in the back of my mind. “We haven’t done it for ages.”

  “What?”

  “We could run through the sprinklers!”

  “I don’t have a swim suit.”

  “You can borrow one of mine.”

  “Yeah, like my rack will fit in your suit. I don’t suppose it’s also an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, yellow bikini, is it?”

  I grinned. “Come on, I have a one piece that will fit you fine.”

  We spent about thirty minutes acting like six year olds in the cool water from the sprinklers before decorum got the better of us, and we decided to air dry in the shade, glasses of cold lemonade at our side.

  “You know what’s weird?” I said, suddenly.

  “Everything’s weird with you lately,” she said, dodging my punch in her arm.

  “I feel all tingly. Energized, except it’s all over my skin. My hands especially feel weird. Good, but weird.”

  Tara nodded sagely, her yellow, curly hair draping down her back like thick, wet ropes. “Well that sort of makes sense. If you’re going to cleanse a crystal of negative energy and influences, you either put it in the sunlight, or on the ground, or out in running water, and it drains the negativity away. And basically, that’s what we just did with our bodies, right? Our bare feet on the ground, water running over us in the sunshine. That’s gotta be like the mother load when it comes to cleansing. The only thing we didn’t have with us was rock salt. But that would probably ruin your grass…” She took a sip of her lemonade, peering at me over the rim of her glass.

  I decided to surprise her and just nod. I didn’t protest because it was all starting to make a weird sort of sense in my brain. Science was magic. Magic was real. Magic was everywhere all the time, and all I ever had to do was be open to it? Is that how it worked? “So I guess that’s why some people get that seasonal affective disorder. They need the sun to charge them up. Like batteries.”

  She shrugged. “I suppose so, I’ve never thought about it.”

  After a time I said, “I can’t stand it anymore. Let’s go over to Sam’s.”

  “Okay. To be honest, I am as anxious to find out what he’s got as you are. But food first. I’m famished. Cavorting in the water like a little kid is hard work.”

  “Who knew?” I said, grinning. “Sandwich?”

  “Big sandwich,” she said.

  58. SAM

  Mom didn’t wake up until ten, which gave me and Lily plenty of time to get dressed and pretend that she hadn’t spent the night in my room. I made pancakes, Lily made coffee, and Mom sat at the kitchen table and talked to us both. I could tell that she liked being home and feeling normal. I think she liked Lily, too, but it was too soon to tell for sure.

  “So you travel for work?” Lily asked, setting a cup of coffee down in front of Mom, sugar and milk just how she liked it.

  “More than I’d like,” my mom admitted and took an appreciative sip of the coffee. “Japanese coffee is good but very different. It’s nice to have a cup of regular old joe.”

  “I thought Japanese people drank mostly tea?” I asked, flipping some fresh pancakes onto a plate and passing it over to Lily, who gave it to Mom.

  “Oh, they do. But they also have these crazy vending machines everywhere. Some of them have cans of creamy, sweet coffee in them and you can order it hot or cold. It’s called Georgia coffee and it’s good, but it’s really more like a dessert than something to kick-start you in the morning.”

  “Do you go to Tokyo often?” Lily asked, clearly intrigued.

  “Several times a year. Also Beijing, Saigon, and Taipei. Basically once a month I head off for the Far East. One of these days, maybe I will get to drag Sam with me on a trip. Before he heads off to college anyways.”

  “Really? That’d be cool, Mom,” I said, surprised. She’d never mentioned the idea to me before, but then there are lots of things she says that she doesn’t follow through on. I might as well add visiting Japan to that list.

  “Sure. Harris said it was do-able. I talked to him about it last week. Probably not until after the first of the year though, because the holidays are such an expensive time of year for airfare, etc.”

  I raised my brows and flipped another batch of pancakes onto a plate for Lily. I smiled over my shoulder at her, and Mom and spooned out the last of the batter onto the hot griddle. Going to Tokyo would be freaking awesome, if she actually followed through, and I was beginning to wonder what had gotten into my mom. She seemed more like her old self this morning than she had in a long time.

  Echoing my unspoken thought, she said, “I really feel refreshed this morning. I thought for sure I would be crazy-jet lagged, too. Traveling back from Asia is always tedious. Oh, speaking of travel, I have some errands to run this morning. Can you throw my travel clothes in the dryer for me while I’m gone? And if you don’t mind hanging them up…”

  I turned the griddle off and brought my plate to the table. Lily slid a hot cup of coffee at me and I gave her a wink and a smile, like a cheap Humphrey Bogart impersonation. Then I glanced sidelong at Mom. “I don’t know. That might cost you extra,” I said.

  She took a forkful of pancakes and weighed it against an empty hand. “Let’s see…. Trip to Tokyo,” she said, lowering her empty hand, “or hanging up my clothes,” she lowered her other hand for a second and then raised it back up. “Hmm, tough choice. I can see where you might have to think about that one.” She trailed off and after a moment she and Lily giggled at my dumbstruck face.

  Lily laughed out loud. “I see laundry in your future,” she said, reaching out to grab my hand.

  I grinned.

  #

  “So what’s this audio from again?” Lily asked, scooched up next to my desk on a kitchen chair. “It looks all choppy.” She pointed to a section on the graph.

  “I know. It’s from a… Spirit Board thing we did the other night. It was pretty sick.”

  “Really. A Spirit Board? How old are you guys anyways? Twelve?”

  I sat back in my chair and gave Lily a long, steady look. “I know, its sounds stupid. But trust me when I say that weird shit is happening, and I managed to capture some on tape. Er, hard disk. Except I can’t seem to decode it. It’s like it’s encrypted or something, which actually doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Whoever heard of a ghost speaking in GPG?”

  She leaned over and tweaked my mouse, going through the settings and options of the software. “What if it’s just a codec issue?”

  “How could that be?” I asked, frustrated. But I took the mouse from her and scanned through the list of codecs I had installed and downloaded a few that I didn’t have. I plugged them in and was about to restart the audio again when I heard the dryer buzz. “Crap, give me a minute, will you? I have to go hang those up for her before they get wrinkled.”

  “Sure,” she shrugged.

  I hung Mom’s blouses and pants up as quickly as I could, anxious to get back to the computer and to Lily. Then the doorbell rang and I heard Lily call from the front of the house.

  “I’ll get it,” she said.

  Coming from the laundry room, I felt a weird vibe in the air before I even got close to the front door. And when I saw who was there, I knew why. Tara and Melody were standing on the stoop, trying to act natural, and Lily hung in the doorway, her body draped against the doorjamb like she owned the place.

  “Sure, I’ll tell him you’re here,” she said coolly.

  “Oh, hey. I see you’ve met my… Lily?”

  I ignored the curious look coming from Lily’s corner and concentrated on Tara and Melod
y, neither of whom was actually looking at me at the moment. Their eyes were all for Lily, who I had to admit, looked hot in a pair of cut-offs and one of my favorite t-shirts. And then I realized which t-shirt and cringed – The Ramones. Melody recognized it. I know she did—she was the one who gave it to me.

  “I, ah, am working on the audio from the other night. Maybe you guys want to come in and see what I’ve—”

  “We’ve,” said Lily firmly.

  “—come up with so far?” I finished. This was awkward. The only thing that would make it worse is if I were naked. Seriously.

  Tara recovered first. “Sure. Maybe you can bring your rig out here though, so we don’t have to … crowd in your room?” she finished brightly.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Great idea. I’ll meet you guys in the living room.”

  59. TARA

  There was a tiny part of me that wanted to giggle at how uncomfortable Sam was feeling right now, but the larger part of me was feeling bad for Melody. I mean, she thought she was being all cool and collected most of the time, but Hello, Othello, it was obvious to anyone who’d known her for a while, that she was suddenly crushing on Sam.

  Which made sense of course, because he was now unattainable. I was suddenly very glad I had met G. Not only was I no longer smitten with Sam, but G. was strong and steadfast, and Sam, as I could see now, was still lacking some spine. The realization almost made me laugh, but one look at the daggers shooting from Lily’s eyes and I knew that would be a can of worms I didn’t care to open.

  Sam sauntered in with his laptop and speakers under his arm and set them up on the coffee table in front of the couch. Lily sat next to him, forcing Mel and I to sit on the loveseat, further away from Sam, and from the laptop screen.

  “So the audio signal is definitely there, but its encrypted or something. Lily… and I were just downloading and installing some new codecs before you got here, and we were about to try them out. Here goes nothing,” he finished, almost under his breath, and clicked the play button.

  And then the daggers stopped shooting back and forth across the room because the audio actually played.