by Gwenda Bond
“Why am I in here?” I ask.
Her head snaps up. “You don’t remember.”
Given the busy noises from the station floor, I doubt anyone is snooping on our conversation. I speak softly anyway. “It wasn’t like anything that’s ever happened to me before — all of a sudden the spirits and their voices just… overpowered me.” I pause, attempting to make space away from the buzzing spirits. I focus on Mom. “Is Miranda all right? How freaked out was she?”
Mom shifts so she rests against the bars beside me. She doesn’t want us to be overheard either, I realize. “Grant, you’re in here because the FBI think you and Miranda worked together to murder her father and then you stole his body.”
“What? I wasn’t even here when he died! I was a million miles away. Well, several hundred.” Their theory is as far off as the moon.
Mom grips her cup with one hand and reaches out with the other to touch mine. “I know, hon. But they don’t understand where the body could be.”
Something in my memory clicks, and a snatch of the shouted questions directed at me drifts through my mind. “What did you do with the body?” one of them asks, a man. An FBI guy.
“Someone took Miranda’s dad’s body,” I say, not a question.
Mom nods. “And you guys were in the funeral home. Why exactly were you in the funeral home?”
So I’m in trouble with Mom too. “Miranda needed to see him and —”
“And you couldn’t just ask your dad to arrange it.” She shakes her head. “Grant, what happened to you yesterday? You were gone. Unreachable. Do you know why it was so bad?”
My forehead touches the bars. “I don’t understand it either. It has to have something to do with the disappearance.”
“The spirits are back, aren’t they? The regular ones you hear?”
I nod.
“I knew from your eyes,” she says, waving her hand next to her own. “I can tell when you aren’t alone. When you’re haunted. You look haunted.”
Mom checks her watch, looks over her shoulder. Is it possible there’s more gray in her hair from one night? Or is it a reflection from the shadow that glides in front of her?
“The agents will be coming in soon,” she says. “Maybe we should ask them to transfer you to the mainland. I don’t want to ever see that happen again.”
I frown. Mom is on my side, always. “I’m not leaving. Where’s Miranda?”
Mom’s eyes land on the wall behind me. “She took off — she’s currently evading federal custody. Any idea where she is?”
Miranda Blackwood, federal fugitive. I’m a bad influence. I can’t stop a grin.
“I don’t know,” I say, and the truth of that sinks in. I don’t know her well enough to know where she might go, but I know she’s stuck here. “She’s still on the island. Mom, you have to get me out of here. I’ll find her.”
There’s a renewed force to the clamor in the front room, and someone breaks out in a cheer. It sounds like they’re watching basketball out there. They might have, even in the middle of the apocalypse. But this is the wrong season, the wrong time of day.
Mom’s coffee cup vibrates. Her hand is shaking.
“Mom, what’s going on?”
The question rests between us for a moment.
She sets the coffee cup on the cement floor. Then she rises and put both hands over mine around the bars. “They’re back,” she says.
“Who? The spirits? I know.”
“The missing people. They’re back too. Your dad’s scheduling a… group cattle call at the courthouse, to do a headcount and make sure it’s everyone.” She lets me process the news but goes on before I can ask anything else. “So why don’t I feel like the danger has passed? The danger to you.”
The missing have returned to Roanoke Island. I allow the brittle edge of the spirits’ voices to bite into me, sure the dead’s return is linked. But how?
No longer trapped —
Trapped there —
Trapped here —
“It hasn’t. Because this isn’t over,” I finally say. “But you don’t need to worry about me — I need to get to Miranda. She’s the one in danger.”
Mom removes her hands from mine, refusing to meet my eyes. She’s never refused to meet my eyes. “Then maybe this is the safest place for you,” she says.
“No,” I say. “No.”
“I’m… I’m sorry. I think it is, and I’m your mother.”
“You have to trust me.”
“This is new territory and… I can’t let you go wandering around in it. My job is to protect you. This is the only way I have to do that. You can go back to being bad boy genius when this is over.”
Mom doesn’t bother to pick up her coffee cup. She just turns and walks up the hall, leaving me all alone, except for the spirits.
*
The minutes creep by, and I wish to make them pass more quickly. I drum my fingers on the legs of my jeans, struggling to push away the brittle voices while I wait. To focus.
Mom might be scared, but that leaves me to sort this out on my own. So I wait — and wait — for the noise in the station to die down. From what I can overhear, they’re planning to take everyone they can spare to manage the crowd and check the identities of the returned at the courthouse. There will probably be just one or two guys left behind at the jail.
By the time it finally gets quiet, I’m more than ready to put my plan into action.
I stand, take a deep breath, and then launch my body forward, passing through the few shadows still in the cell with me. My knees hit the cement floor near the bars, and I shout in real pain. I bang my fists on the floor, hard enough to bruise my knuckles. I raise my hands and tear at my hair. I dive so deep into the performance that I barely notice when the officer appears outside the cell.
“Are you okay?” he says. “Your father’s not here.”
I turn my head toward the voice. I don’t know this particular officer, some younger guy who can’t have been on the force that long. I push away everything in my view that isn’t in the bright, solid colors of reality and shout again, my cry fading when I hear the officer curse and start to walk away.
“Wait…” I choke out the word. The choking part comes easily, given how little I’ve had to drink and the fact I really did spend the night moaning in agony. “Meds,” I say. “Need Whitson meds. Call doctor.”
“I don’t know,” the officer says. “I can call your father and ask —”
I cut him off with another roar of pain. “Meds,” I beg, “call Whitson.” I double over in what I hope is a realistic imitation of pain. At the corner of my vision, I see the guy nod.
“Hang on,” the officer says. He’s talking to himself as he walks away, “Sure, Chief, I’m the one who let your son go crazy. Sorry about that. Maybe you should just never promote me in return.… Crap!”
I moan some more, settling into a pattern of pitiful cries, and lower onto my back on the bench. I keep the pitiful sounds low enough that if I strain to block out the spirits — they seem less agitated, almost cooperative, at the moment, or am I imagining that? — I can hear the officer’s return. It doesn’t take nearly as long as I expect.
“Uh, Grant,” the officer says, “your father actually had the doctor leave these.”
I bet he did.
I moan louder and fight my limbs into an elaborate sit. I jerk to my feet. The officer has a small glass of water and a handful of several pills. This will be the hard part. The part I have to pull off, otherwise I’ll be stuck in here while whatever bad thing that’s come to town goes after Miranda.
“Thank you, officer.” I force out the words like a zombie, my tone loud and broken. I stumble to the bars, then bounce off them and fall down onto the floor. I watch through slitted eyes as the officer realizes he doesn’t have a free hand to unlock the cell
door with, then maneuvers the Styrofoam cup between two fingers of the hand that holds the pills, and angles the key smoothly with his left hand.
Not a fumbler then.
I wait for him to get close and reach up for the pills and the water. Looking skeptical, the officer guides the cup to my hand. I have a flash of insight. I need to convince this guy. So, I do the last thing the guy will expect based on my reputation. I cooperate.
I open my mouth and extend my tongue. The officer hesitates, then drops the gel-coated pills into my mouth.
I take a sip of water and spill the rest on the floor, making sure it looks like clumsiness. I grab the officer’s arm before he can leave. “Can you… can you…” The officer has to believe it’s hard for me to get the words out. “Take me to the bathroom.”
The officer’s eyes narrow again, and I let my own become flying-saucer huge. Huge pupils are disconcerting, and mine should do the trick. I note the last name on the guy’s tag — Warren — without recognition. I don’t remember any Warrens, so maybe this guy’s family moved here after I was sent away. Maybe he hasn’t gotten the full dossier.
The officer shakes his head. “The chief said to keep an eye on you, but leave you put.”
“Please.” I tremble. “The meds. They knock me out cold. Haven’t been to…”
“There’s a toilet in the cell.” Officer Warren points at the corner. I know almost no one is ever made to use that thing. In a town this size, that’s tantamount to treason against a fellow citizen. Tourists, on the other hand…
“Not the tourist toilet.” I grab his arm again, struggling to my feet. “Please, I don’t have long. The meds. Take me.”
Officer Warren’s attention flicks back and forth between the cell toilet and me. “Crap. All right. But don’t tell your dad, okay?”
I close my eyes and flick them back and forth behind closed lids with a moan. Then I pop them open. “I’ll tell him you helped me.”
A satisfied smile transforms the officer back to high school age. God, he looks younger than me. In all the ways that count, he might be younger than me.
I give a moment’s regret to the trouble this guy will be in when Dad comes back. Maybe they’ll bond over it — I’ve tricked my dad enough times.
First, I have to get out of here, though. I bend as I stand, enough to dump the pills in my hand with a casual tired swipe across my mouth. Then I lean my weight heavily against the officer. My timing has to be perfect.
We walk — the officer normally, me half-stumbling — up the hall and into the station. The key’s back on his belt, and I happen to know he’ll only need it to reopen my cell. The bathrooms are on the far side of the large open room, on the other side of the break area.
Officer Warren isn’t the only one left after all. A vaguely familiar man in a black suit that screams FBI sits at the big coffee table in the break area. His head is tipped back to watch the muted ceiling-mounted TV.
The man’s presence complicates things. I trace the consequences — of both success and failure. Once I take the next step in this plan, I’ll be in the kind of trouble I’ve always avoided. The kind that isn’t so easy to get away from. At seventeen, dosing a federal agent will probably get me in non-juvenile-record trouble.
The decision is mine to make.
In that moment, wrecking my future doesn’t seem to matter so much. Only today matters. Only tomorrow matters. Only Miranda matters.
I feel certain I have a part to play, and it’s not in this jail.
The FBI guy is drinking coffee. Another cup rests in front of the vacant chair next to him. So he and the officer have been watching the coverage together, drinking coffee. I banked on both. After all, who wants to miss the action? That guaranteed the TV would be on. And I’m betting all the officers have been working round the clock since the disappearances were reported, which meant the need for even more caffeine than normal.
On the TV, the brittle blond reporter, the one I watched Miranda dismiss so perfectly, beams. The scene behind her shows the crowded chaos in the courthouse square.
I raise my hand toward the screen. “Oh my God,” I say.
The weight of my extended hand carries me forward, the FBI agent spinning with a moment’s surprise.
“What is the kid doing out here?” The agent gets up, agitated.
Shadows dance around the agent, and so I turn my focus back to the small square of TV, my hands shaking like some arthritic old man’s. Officer Warren grabs my other elbow to steady me, and says, “He’s the chief’s son, and he’s having a hard time of it.”
I really will have to put in a good word for Officer Warren. This guy wants to stay local. He isn’t courting the fed’s favor a bit. He’s loyal to Dad.
The FBI guy must reach the same conclusion. “That’s not your call — that boy may have murdered an innocent man just because his girlfriend wanted him to. And your chief promised we could question him after the head count. Take him back.”
“You know none of us think that’s what happened.” The officer’s shoulders square. “I’m not taking him back yet.”
The fed takes a couple of steps toward us. The time has come. I either act fast or go back and wait for John Dee’s main event, per Whitson’s theory. At this point, given that Dee’s symbol is all over everything and the gun is a good candidate for his immortality device, I have to assume Whitson is right.
The spirits’ voices kick up a notch in volume:
You can’t let it —
Act now —
Can’t, no —
They want me to act.
I ignore the fed and blink like I’m dazed by the images on the screen. I power forward, breaking free from the distracted officer’s grip. In an instant, I slip my hand into my pocket and then back out as I crash into the table. I hit hard enough to rattle the cups, but not hard enough to upend them.
“Oh God, so sorry — can’t control…” I say.
“Grab him,” the FBI guy says.
I reach out quickly, innocently, to slide the cups back into place. My hands float over the tops before I release them, trailing the powder from the sedative capsules I crushed in my palms into the coffee cups.
The FBI guy moves forward to shoulder me away from the table. I turn and gratefully grab the officer’s hand.
“You think this kid’s trying something, Agent Walker?” Officer Warren says, disgust in his tone, as he leads me toward the bathroom. “He’s suffering. And I seriously doubt he’s the murderer, since he has an airtight alibi. Down here, we require you to back up accusations with facts.”
“Small town nonsense.” The fed stalks to the chair, yanks it out, and swings back into place. My teeth press into the flesh below my bottom lip to stave off a grin as the fed picks up the cup and drinks from it.
Like a horse to water.
I cross my fingers that the pills don’t taste too strong or work so quickly that Officer Warren catches on before the plan works. After all, he has to suck down some coffee too.
I make it to the bathroom with a smoother step, indulging in a few deep breaths, as if the meds are kicking in. “The pills are working,” I say, keeping my voice weak. I go inside, count off an eternity of fifteen seconds, then flush and open the door.
The officer nods. “Back to the cell.”
He isn’t half bad at his job. I check on the FBI agent as we pass, afraid he’ll already be slumped over and the officer will bust me. But Agent Walker is upright, freshening his coffee cup from the half-full pot and eyeing the screen. He refuses to look at us.
We reach the hallway with the two cells the jail possesses. I have to move quickly now. The drugs put me out in only a few minutes, but I was in much worse shape. Still, not much time.
The officer removes his keys and opens the cell, hooking them back onto his belt. I make my hand fake-spasm as I grab a bar.
I give Officer Warren an embarrassed look. “I hate this,” I say. “Being weak.”
The officer says, “Just lie down and wait for your father to come back. He’ll get you out of this.”
No one can get me out of this. I grab the man in a clumsy hug. “Thank you,” I say, meaning it.
Officer Warren frowns. “Well, not a pleasure, but… I hope you’re better. And you’ll tell your dad like you said?”
“Bet on it.” I go inside and ease back onto my bench. “You better go check on Agent Moron.”
The officer’s face splits in a quarterback grin, despite himself. “Babysitting detail,” he says. “Not sure who I’m supposed to watch more — you or him.”
He rolls his eyes and leaves, the cell door clicking into place. I echo the gesture, rolling my eyes and laying my head against the cinderblock wall to wait. All part of my plan. The key I took from him warms in my palm, and I slide it into my jeans pocket.
You just dosed an FBI agent. And, soon enough, that nice cop.
But I could swear that the spirits seem upbeat. The chattering has taken on an energy that feels like approval.
Good job, our boy —
There you go —
The devil is here —
Already here —
I’ve never noticed the spirits reacting to anything I do or anything going on around me before. They have only talked at me.
Maybe, just maybe, the spirits will keep behaving while Dr. Whitson’s medicine does its trick.
Chapter 23
MIRANDA
We pile into Polly’s Toyota — well, I pile. There’s a stiff quality to the others’ movements, like they’re relearning how to walk. They climb in slowly.
Hanging out with Polly and her friends is nothing like it was just a few days earlier. Polly has always been chatty and warm, with a serious undertone that makes her competent and good at her job. Now the serious has overtaken the warmth. The other girls aren’t much for the BFF giggles anymore either.
I never thought I’d miss their endless inside jokes. But I do.
I casually place my messenger bag on the console beside me, the strange concealed weapon inside. No way am I leaving it behind again.
