by Derek Landy
Both hands now, wrapped round Omen’s throat. Squeezing.
“I should have tried being friends with you,” Jenan whispered. Tears were in his eyes. “Thank you for doing this. Thank you for being the one.”
Omen couldn’t breathe. Jenan’s grip was too strong.
“I love you for doing this, Omen. Thank you.”
And then, just as the darkness was crowding in on Omen, there was space between them, and Jenan was being pulled backwards, a look of utter astonishment on his face.
“One of you had better tell me what’s going on here,” Miss Wicked said. “Omen, are you all right? Can you talk?”
Omen sucked in air and did his best to stay standing. It felt like someone was still strangling him.
Miss Wicked turned to Jenan. “This is it, Mr Ispolin. I don’t care who your father is or how many strings he pulls, I will personally see to it that you are expelled from Corrival Academy.”
But Jenan wasn’t listening to her. Omen could tell. His eyes were clouded with disbelief. “How could you do that?” he asked. “How could you stop me?”
“Report to the Principal’s Office immediately,” Miss Wicked said.
“How could you stop me?” he shouted, and his fist cracked into Miss Wicked’s cheek, sending her back a step.
From the look on his face, Jenan had expected her to go down, but after that single step Miss Wicked didn’t even sway on her high heels. Jenan stepped in and swung again.
Miss Wicked barely moved and Jenan flew past her. Omen jumped clear as he spun. Jenan’s next punch was redirected, his arm twisted, his face slammed into the wall. He lashed out and she guided him to the floor quite firmly. He landed and bounced slightly, the air knocked out of him.
“Omen, report to the nurse,” Miss Wicked said, hauling Jenan to his feet. “Your throat looks like it will bruise.”
“I’m OK,” Omen said, his voice a whisper.
“The nurse, Omen,” Miss Wicked said. “Now.”
She didn’t wait to see if he headed off in the right direction, she just twisted Jenan’s wrist and he howled, and she led him away.
Omen doubted he’d ever seen anything as cool.
47
“My car is better,” Pleasant said. “I don’t mean to offend you. Your car is fine, and I admire the fact that you went to the trouble of transporting it across the Atlantic … but was that really the best use of anyone’s time? A Cadillac is a fine car, but a Bentley … A Bentley has character.”
“And where is your Bentley?” Cadaverous said, unlocking the Cadillac. “Is it back in Roarhaven? It is? Then I guess, all things considered, that my car is the superior vehicle.”
He got in behind the wheel. A moment later, Pleasant curled his long frame into the passenger seat. He put his hat on his lap and buckled his belt.
“This is an odd sensation,” he said. When Cadaverous didn’t respond, he continued. “I’m used to driving, that’s all. Of course, this is a left-hand drive car so I’m still sitting on my usual side, which alleviates the problem somewhat. But even so, I’m used to being in control. It’s quite discomfiting to not be in control. It’s not a feeling I’m used to. Maybe it would be a good idea if I drove?”
“Only I drive this car,” Cadaverous said, pulling away from the kerb.
Pleasant nodded. “And I totally understand that. I do. However, I’m used to driving on this side of the road, so maybe it’d be safer for us both if I—”
“Only I drive this car.”
Pleasant looked at him, then shrugged. “OK.” He settled back into his seat. “Fine.”
They turned left at the junction, joined the fast-moving traffic.
“If you tell me where Tanner Rut is living,” Pleasant said, “I could just fly there. I can do that, you know. Fly. I could fly there, grab him, take him back, or fly there and wait for you, if you really want to be involved …”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Cadaverous said. “I don’t trust you, skeleton.”
“I am deeply offended by that, Cadaverous. I have been a loyal member of this team for almost twenty-three hours now. Does that bonding-time mean nothing to you?”
“Abyssinia doesn’t trust you, either.”
“Abyssinia and I have history. Did she tell you about that? No? Ah, so she’s keeping something from her minions. That’s interesting.”
“I don’t care.”
“No? Are you sure? It’s salacious. I stole her heart, you see. I stole it and I put it in that box. My point is, yes, she may have some trust issues with me, but time heals all wounds, Cadaverous. I have a feeling when we bring her back all will be forgiven, and, once that happens, you’re really going to want to be on my good side. So what do you say? Will we be friends?”
“That will never happen.”
“Do I detect a hint of growing admiration in your voice?”
“You’re a ridiculous creature,” Cadaverous said. “You’re a bad vaudeville act. You belong on stage.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
“I’ve known people like you my entire adult life,” Cadaverous said. “Puffed up with their own sense of importance, inflated by their own so-called genius. Arrogant and pompous.”
“You have formed an opinion of me.”
“I have.”
“I have formed one of you. Would you like to hear it?”
“I couldn’t care less.”
“I know you, Cadaverous. You think I don’t, but I do.”
“You know nothing about me.”
“No?” Pleasant said. “But maybe I knew someone just like you. Except his name wasn’t Cadaverous Gant – it was Charles Grantham, a retired professor of English at a semi-prestigious New England university. He’d written a few books of poetry, but nothing that set the world on fire. Truth be told, his poetry was lazy and uninspired. Hackneyed, I believe was the popular opinion among his peers.”
Cadaverous’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“At age seventy-eight, Charles apparently flew into a fit of rage after listening to a so-called ‘street poet’ reinterpret the works of Keats. Charles tried, unsuccessfully, to strangle this street poet, and suffered a heart attack as a result. While he was recovering in hospital, police raided his home. Interesting thing about his home – he’d had it built by three different builders. None of them knew what the others were doing, but Charles knew. There were corridors that went nowhere, doors that opened on to brick walls. There were secret passageways and pits. How many people did you kill in that house over the years, Cadaverous? Was it more than the police believed? Was it more than forty-seven? How many of them were your students?”
“You think you know it all,” Cadaverous said.
“I know Charles Grantham disappeared,” Pleasant replied. “The house had been searched illegally – everything in there was inadmissible in court. A few months later, Professor Grantham was gone. Is that when Abyssinia first spoke to you? Is that when Cadaverous Gant was born?”
Cadaverous slowed at the lights. A part of him, a significant part, had no desire to answer. Satisfying the skeleton’s questions was not something that interested him. Another part, however, had been snagged, as if Pleasant’s words were a hook cast into the still lake.
“It was the heart attack,” he said, accelerating again. “When I woke up, I could feel magic. I could feel it. Do you have any idea what that’s like, to get old, to watch your own body betray you, only to find out that you could have stopped it? That you could have stayed young forever?”
“I’d imagine that would have upset just about anyone, let alone a serial killer.”
“You can’t reduce my life down to a label like that.”
“Why not? You reduced forty-seven lives down to nothing.”
“They were cattle,” Cadaverous said. “Each of them had a sad little existence that I ended. Each of them had stumbled through their lives with blinkers on. They didn’t appreciate the world. They didn’t appreciate art
, or poetry, or the beauty in the everyday. Every single person I killed, every single one of them, deserved to die. They were small. They were meaningless.”
“Unlike you.”
Cadaverous nodded. “Unlike me.”
“And then Abyssinia spoke to you, did she? And took you under her wing …”
“Is that what you did?” Cadaverous asked. “After we went after Valkyrie Cain, you investigated me?”
“After she sent you packing, yes, I did.”
“You were coming after me, were you? For daring to harm your precious Valkyrie?”
“But I couldn’t find you,” said Pleasant. “So I waited. And finally here we are.”
“Are you going to kill me now, skeleton?”
“I’m not sure,” Pleasant said. “It would certainly be easy enough. According to Valkyrie, you’re stronger and faster than you look, but outside your home, you’re just as vulnerable as anyone else.”
“You wouldn’t last a minute in my home.”
“I was there,” Pleasant said. “Your house on Lombard Street. Valkyrie described it as a hellish inferno with metal catwalks and chains everywhere. She mentioned a bottomless pit of fire. And yet when I walked through it twelve hours later it was a nice, ordinary suburban house. Quite boring, actually. We demolished it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Cadaverous. “My home is where I make it, and I am king of my domain.”
“What an unusual power.”
“Like I said, you wouldn’t last a minute.”
“So, if you invite me in, I’m to politely decline?”
“You wouldn’t get an invitation.”
“Even so, I’d just decline.”
“You can’t decline an offer you haven’t received.”
“I can pre-empt it, though.”
“You can’t pre-empt an offer you’re never going to get.”
“Not if I decline it before—”
“Stop it,” Cadaverous said sharply. “Just stop it. Seriously. I’ll drive us off a cliff if you continue this … this … whatever it is. We’re not talking nonsense, do you understand me?”
“Sure,” Pleasant said. “Of course. My apologies. I just get overly chatty when I feel like I’m not in control of the situation.”
“You’re not driving my car.”
“Just a little bit.”
“Stop asking me.”
“Fine,” said Pleasant, and sat back. “I’ll try to enjoy the journey, then, shall I? Apparently it’s not the destination that matters – especially when you travel with friends.”
48
Never teleported them to the roof of the Golden Gate Bridge Welcome Center and immediately they ducked down. It wasn’t a tall building, and a single glimpse would be all it took for the dozens of tourists to look up and point, and then for the cops to come investigating.
This was Omen’s first time in America. Crouching down, with Valkyrie and Temper on one side and Never on the other, he focused on not being sick from the journey while he looked out at the suspension bridge that spanned the water. He was struck by how big it all was. The bridge. The skyline behind him. The sky.
“The bridge is one point seven miles long,” said Never. He was wearing scuffed jeans, a hoody and a jacket. Omen should have worn his hoody under his jacket. It was cold up here. “It opened in 1937. That colour? It’s called international orange.”
“Why do you know so much about it?” Omen asked.
Never shrugged. “It’s a bridge. I know stuff about bridges.”
They teleported on to the grass behind some trees, and Omen threw up. He apologised profusely, and when he was done they walked to the roadside. Valkyrie hailed a cab and they climbed in, Valkyrie in front. The driver chatted and Temper chatted back, but Valkyrie stayed quiet and Never looked out of the window. Omen knew he was committing as much of their surroundings to memory as he could. That was one of Fletcher Renn’s rules.
Omen had once wanted to be a Teleporter. The power to leave whenever he wanted appealed to him when he was growing up, watching all the attention being focused on his brother. Not in an entirely good way, of course. He knew, from the not quite disguised looks that would flash occasionally across Auger’s face, that such attention was more burden than gift. All that training, all that testing, all those expectations … On someone weaker – Omen, for example – it would have proven too much. But Auger handled it the same way Auger handled everything, with charm and good humour.
But alas, teleportation was not to be for the younger Darkly twin. For a start, every competent Teleporter who’d ever lived had been born with the aptitude. To someone like Never, teleportation was instinct, albeit instinct he needed help channelling. Never’s discipline – for there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Never would choose teleportation – was a part of who she was. Omen’s was still a mystery. There was nothing yet that he could truly claim to excel at – even his Elemental skills were lagging behind those of his classmates. He liked the various languages of magic, he supposed, but that was mostly because he liked to read.
The drive to Haight Street only took a few minutes. Omen stepped out in front of a brightly coloured store brimming with psychedelic positivity, and Never nudged him, directing his attention to the multitude of exotic pipes in the window. Far out, man.
Valkyrie wasn’t here to enjoy the scenery, and Temper was too busy adulting to show interest, so they walked ahead, going uphill, closing in on the address while Omen and Never followed along behind. An old guy with dreadlocks rocked by, moving to some internal rhythm only he could hear, and a small pack of street kids, lounging on someone’s front steps, ignored them with such professional detachment that even Never had to raise an eyebrow in admiration. A dog sat beside a white and red fire hydrant, like it was considering whether or not to mark its territory. It watched them walk on.
They crossed the street and arrived at a fenced-off piece of flattened ground. Valkyrie looked at the map on her phone, checked all around, then stared at the empty space before them.
“Well, crap,” she said.
“You’re sure this is it?” Temper asked.
“I’m sure. Even if I wasn’t sure, I’d know this is the place we’re looking for simply because it’s not here any more, and of course it wouldn’t be here any more, because that’s how life works. Just when you think it couldn’t possibly suck any more than it already sucks, it burns down the goddamn house.”
“Oh, that house didn’t burn down,” said an old woman, passing. “It was demolished years ago.”
Temper gave the old woman a smile. “You live near here?”
“I live right here,” the woman said, pointing a pale, knobbly finger at the house next door. “Do you know them, then?”
“Who, Richard and Savant?” Temper asked. “We do. In fact, we’re trying to find them. You wouldn’t happen to know where they moved on to, do you?”
“Maryland or Maine, somewhere like that, I think. After they were gone, squatters moved in and let the house fall into disrepair, and then the bulldozers came and flattened the whole thing. How are they doing, do you know? They were such lovely neighbours.”
“They’re fine,” Temper assured her. “We just lost touch. We were hoping to find some clue as to where they might be living now, maybe track down some of their friends – but obviously that’s not going to happen.”
“I guess not,” said the old woman. “But you could always check their things.”
Valkyrie frowned. “What things?”
“Their possessions,” the old woman said. “I went in there and packed up as much of their stuff as I could fit into their suitcases. The squatters were nice enough, I guess, but they didn’t respect other people’s property as much as they should have.”
“Can we see it?” Valkyrie asked. “Can we look through the suitcases?”
“If you’re friends of Richard and Savant, I don’t see why not.” She led the way to her house. “That’s a nice accent yo
u’ve got, by the way. Irish, is it? My grandmother was Irish. I was named after her. Bridget.”
“I’m Valkyrie. This is Temper, Omen and Never.”
Bridget beamed. “What delightful names! Your parents must have been hippies. We get that a lot around here. Come on in. Wipe your feet.”
She took them into the back room of her warm house, which smelled of old people and cookies. Three suitcases were stacked in a wardrobe so big it could have opened up into Narnia. The case Temper searched contained nothing but clothes, but the cases that Valkyrie, Omen and Never looked through were full of papers and notebooks and pictures.
Never examined a framed photograph of two handsome, smiling men. “Which is which?” he asked.
Temper reached over, tapped the image of the slightly better-looking one. “Savant,” he said.
“Lovely men,” Bridget said, hands clasped over her bosom. “They’d do anything for you. I used to have terrible trouble with my pipes, and they’d come in here and fix it all up. Wouldn’t even let me pay them for their trouble.”
“Did you ever meet any of their friends?” Valkyrie asked, sifting through a handful of documents.
Bridget nodded. “All the time. They hosted the best dinner parties, and knew the most fabulously interesting people.”
“I know some of those same people,” Temper said.
“You do? You don’t look half old enough.”
Temper chuckled. “I remember them from when I was a kid. A couple of them were a bit much, don’t you think? They were a little – I don’t know what the right word is … scary?”
Bridget gave a nod so quick she reminded Omen of a bird pecking at a crumb. “A few of them were,” she confided, like she’d been given permission to gossip. “A few of them were downright weird – and I know weird. I grew up here. I was living in this house during the Summer of Love. I was a Deadhead. I thought I’d seen it all … but there were one or two of those friends who just gave me the heebie-jeebies.”
“Do you remember any names?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t. A lot of hippy names, though – that I do remember.”
