The Gryphon Project

by Carrie Mac

  She pulled Saul’s address up on her pod screen and then opened her map program to see where his house was situated in the Lions. According to the little red star, it was two blocks to the west from her gold star on the map. Phee started walking, checking on the map screen to make sure that the gold and red stars were getting closer. Sure enough, when the two stars joined into one pulsing green one, she was there.

  The house was tall and skinny, like several others on the block, all of them painted in cheerful colours. Saul’s house was lime green on the bottom half and purple on the top. Nadia had described it as odd, but Phee was surprised nonetheless. Nadia wasn’t very good at description, or all that observant, really, being more of a “living in the moment” kind of girl compared with Phoenix and her painfully keen sense of past and future and here and now.

  The yard was neatly trimmed, likely by the same crew she could see working several doors down, mowing and weeding and pruning in their coveralls and goggles and ear protectors. Phee pushed open the gate and started up the walk, unnerved by the trepidation coursing through her body, filling each footstep with dread. She glanced up at the house. Broad daylight, yet every shade and curtain was drawn, as if the house were squeezing its eyes shut against the sunshine. Phee glanced at the houses nearby. All of them had their blinds raised and curtains opened. Such a small thing, but it made Phee’s heart lurch with worry. This house might look as cheerful and content as the others, but Phee—and perhaps only Phee—knew that the family living inside was living a complicated lie.

  Pots of flowers stood sentinel on each step to the front door, where Phee reached for the knocker. She knocked twice and then waited. Silence. No footsteps, nothing. She tried again, this time rapping the heavy knocker several times before pausing. Still nothing. With a surreptitious glance to make sure no one was watching, including the labourers down the street, Phee tried the door. It was locked. She put her face to the window and tried to peek through the slit in the curtain, but there were no lights on inside, so she saw only the dim outline of a sofa, and beyond it, the curve of a banister stretching up.

  She went around to the backyard, trying to walk purposefully, to appear as if she was supposed to be there. She marched up the back steps and grabbed the doorknob. It turned and the door opened, so Phee went with it, swinging the door wide open and calling out “Hello? Anyone home?”

  Inside, she pulled the door closed behind her. “Saul?” She was in a little room off the kitchen. “Mr. and Mrs. Morrisey?”

  The kitchen was a mess. Or, not really a mess … more in suspension, as if Saul and his family had all gotten up and left in the middle of a meal. Lunch, by the looks of it. Sliced roast beef waiting in a fold of butcher’s paper, a loaf of bread on the counter, a half-sliced tomato on the cutting board and an open jar of mayonnaise. A bowl of fruit salad was turning bad in middle of the small kitchen table, flies buzzing over it. A mug filled with coffee was cold to the touch, and a quick pinch of the bread told her it was stale. On the other counter, a bowl of raisin-oatmeal cookie dough was attracting its own legion of flies, the baking sheet beside it half full of carefully portioned dollops waiting to go in the oven.

  “Hello?” Phee left the kitchen and made her way through the more formal dining room and down a dim hall. She instinctively reached for the light switch, but then changed her mind and carried on to the front room in the dark. Unlike the scene in the kitchen, everything in the living room, and the den off it, looked to be in order.

  She stood for a moment in the middle of the living room, looking at the couches where Saul and his parents spent their time, all the while imagining. How had they come to be here? And where were they now? Clearly, they’d left in a hurry. Phee ran her hand over her phone, wondering what she should do. Phone Nadia? No … that would only make her friend freak out and wouldn’t accomplish anything. Phone Crimcor? Definitely not. Saul’s family didn’t need them looking into things, not if it meant the risk of uncovering their secret status. Her own parents? No. They were still down at Chrysalis, pleading for Gryph’s life to be restored to him. Tariq. That’s who.

  “Hey, Phee.” His voice sounded odd, but then everything nowadays was odd.

  “I’m in Saul’s house and he’s not here and it looks like his family up and left in a hurry,” she said in a breathless flurry.

  Tariq didn’t reply.

  “Tariq!” Phee shouted. “You have to start talking to me!”

  “Get out of there.”

  “I’m going to have a look upstairs first.” Phee headed up them as she talked. “What’s going on—”

  “Get out of there now!” There was a grim firmness to his demand that made Phee stop, mid-step, one hand on the railing, the other holding her phone to her ear.

  “Why?”

  “You’re trespassing, that’s why.”

  “No one saw me.”

  “Just get out of there. Now, Phee!”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Tariq. I won’t leave unless you tell me what the hell is going on!”

  “I can’t—”

  “You can’t? Or you won’t?”

  “Just get out of there.”

  Phee sank to the stairs and sat. “I’m going to hang up on you unless you start talking to me. For real, Tariq.”

  “Phoenix, listen to me. You need to get out of there now.”

  “Talk.”

  “I’ll tell you everything, but you have to get out of there!”

  “Tell me now.”

  “No!” Tariq shouted down the phone, panic in his voice. “Listen to me, Phee—”

  “Maybe you should listen to me!”

  “Just go! Don’t be such a stubborn bitch! Get out of there!”

  “You just called me a bitch …” Phee’s voice caught in her throat. She was confused and hurt and wanted so badly to understand what was going on. All of this was so complicated. And now Tariq was being cruel, on top of everything.

  “Phoenix, I’m sorry, I am, but I need you to hear me. Really hear me, okay?” He waited for her answer, but Phee was still muddling through her thoughts. “Phee?”

  “Okay,” Phee finally replied in a whisper. “I’m going. I’ll call you when I’m on the train.”

  She hung up on him. Even before she had time to slip the phone into her pocket, it rang. Tariq. As she brought the phone back to her ear, prepared to argue with him, she heard sirens, not that far off in the distance.

  “Tariq? There are sirens.”

  “Don’t panic, Phoenix.” Now he sounded sure, careful. “Go upstairs.” Phee climbed the stairs, her legs trembling as she did. “ To the end of the hall, into the room on your right.” The sirens were getting louder. Tariq could hear them now too. “Quick!”

  “I’m in the room.” With a glance she realized that it was Saul’s room. Pictures of Nadia in frames on his nightstand. His leather jacket tossed on the chair beside the desk. A poster of the football team from last year’s homecoming game tacked above his bed. The quilt thrown back, the sheets rumpled.

  “Pull his dresser away from the wall.”

  Phee prepared to heave it aside but found it surprisingly light. “Okay …”

  The sirens were right outside, shutting down into an awful silence, one by one.

  “Feel along the wall—”

  “What am I looking for?” Phee ran her hand along the wainscotting. “There’s nothing!” Just as she was about to give up and meet Crimcor as if they’d come for supper, she felt a slight give. She went with it, and a section of the wall folded inward, exposing a tiny wedge of space between the wall and the outside of the house. Phee dived into it at the first sounds of the Crimcor men pounding on the front door.

  “I’m in!” Phee reported, noticing the cutouts in the back of the dresser. She pulled it toward her until it was flush with the wall and she was cloaked in darkness. She scooted out of the way of the secret door, and pushed it shut.

  “Jesus, Phoenix.” Tariq was breathless on his end of the
call.

  “Crimcor! We have a warrant to search the residence. Open up!”

  More pounding, harder, and then she could hear the front door being broken open and then footsteps and shouting.

  “Living room clear!”

  “Tariq?” Phee dared whisper.

  “I’m going to hang up. Text me if you can. Just be sure to silence your phone.” With that, he was gone. And Phoenix was alone as the Crimcor men trooped up the stairs, banging open doors, searching.

  “Kitchen clear!”

  More footsteps. Closer. In the room.

  “This is the kid’s room,” someone said. “I want everything and anything you think might be important.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Box up his computer.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  A noisy search, the closet doors yanked open, stuff being pulled down from shelves, things kicked across the floor … and then the heart-stopping sound of the drawers in the dresser being pulled out and emptied onto the floor. Phee pulled her knees tighter to her chest and hugged herself hard, willing herself to stay calm, breathe in and out. In and out.

  “How many pairs of socks and underwear can one kid have?” The nearest voice.

  “Never too many, I say.” Another voice, farther off.

  “But a teenager?”

  “Probably wears the same ones over and over, which is why he’s got a dresser full of clean, folded ones.”

  A drawer made a scraping noise as it was ripped from the dresser and dumped onto the floor.

  “Was that necessary?”

  “Is this?” This time a crash. And then another one that sounded like the lamp being knocked onto the floor. Phee prayed they didn’t topple over the dresser.

  There was some laughter, and then silence for a while as the interlopers rummaged through Saul’s things and Phee listened to the crash of her heart as it laboured through her terror. She was dizzy in the tiny, airless space. She explored around herself with curious, cautious touches. She could hardly imagine Saul fitting in here in the first place, as tall and broad as he was. But he must’ve, at some point, because she felt the flutter of pages, a comic book maybe, and the soft, reassuring feel of a small square pillow that she dared not try to wedge behind her back, where her spine was pressing rudely against something sharp. In small increments, she brought the pillow up to her face and tried to examine it in the dark. It felt like corduroy, and smelled like Saul. Or the cologne he wore, more aptly. Phee nudged the pillow between her head and a rafter and closed her eyes as the shuffling and rummaging carried on so close to her hiding spot.

  PHOENIX CAME TO with a start, knocking her head against the rafter. She sucked in her breath, remembering at once where she was. She’d fallen asleep, and had woken to her phone buzzing. A text from Tariq. “What’s happening?” he wanted to know.

  “I don’t know,” she texted back. And then, “I fell asleep!”

  “Crimcor still there?”

  Carefully, Phee pressed her ear to the false door. She listened intently, but could hear nothing except the whine of a lawn mower outside, and a dog barking somewhere in the distance.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then get out of there! Carefully!”

  Phee thought for a moment and then replied, “Meet me at the arcade in one hour?”

  Tariq’s answer came immediately. “I’ll be there.”

  PHEE MADE HER WAY OUT into Saul’s room as quietly as she could, having to remind herself to breathe on occasion, so caught up in being stealthy that she was neglecting to breathe normally. Her head spinning, she pushed the dresser away from the wall just enough to have a clear line of sight to the door. She watched it for a while, listening for anything that might suggest that Crimcor was still in the house, looking for whatever it was they wanted. When she was as sure as she could be, she squeezed out of the hiding spot, and stood, shaky on her feet after hours folded up in the hole in the wall.

  Daylight was flattening into dusk as she crept down the stairs, worried that a Crimcor agent might’ve been left behind to keep an eye on things. But the house appeared to be as deserted as it was when she’d arrived. That was the only similarity, though. Whereas it had been fairly neat before, every room had been ripped apart, the minutiae of Saul’s family life tossed about as if a giant had lifted the house up and shaken it like a snow globe, unsettling everything into a chaotic storm. Phee tried not to panic, the worry for Saul rising in her throat like a scream. Out the back door, and to the gate that opened onto the lane behind the house she went, waiting until she was certain that the coast was clear before letting herself out of the yard.

  Finally safe and sound, Phee doubled over and clutched her knees, gasping for breath, willing her nerves not to fail her as she teetered from a sudden wave of nausea.

  Even though she wanted to phone Nadia and tell her about her ordeal and that Saul was gone, she phoned Tariq instead. Nadia wasn’t ready to hear any of this. Not yet. “I made it!” she reported to Tariq. “I’m outside. No one saw me.”

  “Good.”

  Phee waited. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say after—”

  “I’ll meet you at the arcade.” He hung up.

  Phee started to dial him again but then thought better of it. Clearly, he didn’t want to talk. On the phone, anyway. She’d save her million questions for when she saw him face to face.

  HE WAS ALREADY THERE when she arrived. He was sitting at one of the tables at the back, by the concession stand. Melissa, the girl at the counter, scowled at Phee when she noticed her. Tariq stood as she approached, ever the gentleman. Overcome with blistering relief, Phee threw herself at him, forcing a hug from the boy who could barely make eye contact at the best of times.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, pushing her away. But Phee wasn’t ready to let go. She clung to him, not caring who was watching, not caring how uncomfortable she was making Tariq feel. She’d been trapped in a hole in the wall in a strange house with Crimcor just a breath away, and Gryph was dead and who knew if he’d be reconned, and Saul was missing, and everything was upside down and screwed up.

  “Phoenix, you’re okay. You’re fine.” Tariq pried himself out of her grasp and steered her into a chair. “You made it.”

  Phee sat, dazed with relief, stunned by confusion. “Tariq, you have to tell me what’s going on. How did you even know about that cubbyhole?”

  “We used to play in there when we were little.”

  “Really?” She looked at him, challenging him to admit whether he knew the truth about Saul.

  “Prisoner of war,” Tariq said. “That was the jail.” He slid a mug toward her. Hot milky tea. And then a chocolate-chip-banana muffin on a small plate. Two of her favourite things.

  “How did you know …?”

  “You order it all the time. Go ahead. Eat.”

  Phee stared at the food.

  “Phee, you must be hungry.”

  Phee nodded, but couldn’t imagine eating the food. Her tummy was awash with anxiety, and even just looking at the sandwich made her gut churn uneasily. She pushed the plate away and took the mug in her hands, holding it tight. She concentrated on the heat against her fingers … anything to pull herself away from the edge of nausea. She took a sip and felt the liquid travel down her parched throat. He’d even put in the perfect amount of sugar.

  “I can’t tell you anything right now,” Tariq started. He leaned forward, prepared for the look of protest Phee gave him. He put a hand on her arm, his oak-coloured skin dark against her pale and freckled arm. “Trust me.”

  “Trust you?” Phee didn’t even know where to start, but was sure she didn’t want the entire arcade to hear what she had to say. “How can you say that? After everything! You guys know what happened to Gryph and you won’t say and now he might not be reconned! You know he didn’t kill himself … and what about Saul? Where is he?”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “You do!”r />
  “No. I don’t. Honestly.” Tariq’s gaze was calm, steady. “But I can tell you that it’ll all work out, Phoenix.”

  “I don’t believe you for one second,” Phee snapped. “Gryphon is gone, Saul is gone. What about you and Huy and Neko? Are you next? Is this some kind of weird suicide pact or something?”

  With a small smile, Tariq replied, “No.”

  “Would you tell me if it was?”

  “No,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t.”

  Phee sat back, giving up on that line of questioning. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “I know that you know what really happened to Gryph. Please, Tariq. Why won’t you tell me?”

  Tariq’s expression, flat and unresponsive to her coy gesture, didn’t particularly unnerve her. Tariq held his emotions and thoughts close, never letting on when he was rattled. If he ever got rattled, that is. Phee couldn’t think of a time he’d ever seemed ruffled, even when Gryph or the guys pushed too far and found themselves in sticky situations. Like that day when he and Saul got caught in the train doors. He was always the voice of calm reason. Now was no different. He would not tell her anything he didn’t want to. Once again, he was playing his hand the way he wanted to.

  “Come on, Tariq. Give me something. Please.”

  He set his hands on the table, fingers splayed, and leaned slightly toward her. Phee caught the scent of his aftershave, a smoky, seductive whiff that sent her back to that night at the rave when he had danced with her. She blinked the memory away, struggling to stay in the moment even though she would have given anything to go back to that night.

  “I’m going to ask you to do something very difficult—”

  “Harder than dealing with Gryph dying? Harder than not knowing where Saul is? Harder than hiding in a secret hidey-spot with Crimcor agents just feet away?”