GHOST CROWN: THE TRACKS TRILOGY - Book Two

by J. Gabriel Gates

  But it had. And whatever it was, some kind of awesome power came with it. Even after Principal Innis took the crown from her and placed it back in the trophy case, even now, lying in bed, she felt the weight of it on her brow, like a ghost crown.

  She wondered if that could be what was heightening her perceptions. It was as if she could feel every single thread of her sheets resting against every skin cell on each of her arms.

  She didn’t know where the power came from, but she knew what had unleashed enough of it to demolish a wall: it was seeing Raphael with Aimee, protecting her. Loving her. Seeing them together like that infuriated Maggie. The closeness, the sweetness—that was something she would never have with Rick, something she would give her soul to have with Raphael.

  Maggie hadn’t really wanted to hurt anyone. She had just wanted Aimee gone, out of the way. And if the look on Jack Banfield’s face was anything to go by, that just might be happening. Maybe he would send Aimee back to boarding school. More awake now, she wondered if anything had spread over the gossip grapevine yet, and she fumbled on her nightstand for her phone. Then she remembered it was in her purse. She’d been so tired last night she hadn’t even bothered plugging it into the charger. It was all the way across the room.

  And I have to go all the way over there to get it, she thought, wishing it would somehow come to her. But it was really time to get up anyway. Arching her back, catlike, she stretched, yawned and threw back her duvet cover.

  And froze.

  Her cell phone was hanging in mid-air, next to her bed, suspended as if by an invisible hand, as if merely wishing for it had brought it to her.

  She screamed and it dropped to the floor.

  Scrambling backwards against the headboard, she bunched the covers up in front of her like a barricade. Then slowly, cautiously, she peered over the end of the bed. The cell phone was lying on the plush rug.

  It occurred to Maggie, for the first time in her life, that she might be inheriting her mother’s madness.

  “Maggie? You okay up there?”

  “Yeah, Mom! Fine!” Maggie yelled back. Her mom sounded way more mellow than usual. And something else was weird, too. Her mother was downstairs already, which meant she’d begun the next phase of her work, transferring her sketches to the fabric she would embroider.

  But that didn’t make sense, either. When her mom was working on a tapestry, nothing could draw her away from it. Maggie could scream her head off while the house burned down around them and her mom would still be sitting there sketching or stitching away with the speed and intensity that only the truly deranged could manage. So if she was downstairs and she wasn’t working on the tapestry, what was she doing?

  “Maggie, come on down and have breakfast.”

  Now she knew something really strange was going on. Her mom barely ate the breakfast Maggie served her every day—and Violet Anderson certainly didn’t make breakfast.

  “Coming!” She shouted and climbed out of bed, careful not to touch her possessed cell phone. She hurried downstairs, still in her pajama pants and tank top.

  She headed into the kitchen, but there was no sign of her mom, and no evidence any cooking had taken place.

  “Mom?” she asked, getting a little worried.

  “In here, honey!”

  Maggie followed her voice into the dining room. There, beneath the crystal chandelier, a beautiful breakfast was laid out complete with her mother’s best silver and the nice china. And her mom, looking healthier and more vibrant than Maggie had seen her in years, stood next to the table in a pretty knit dress, her hair neatly brushed for once. Maggie stared.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Breakfast,” Violet said brightly. “It’s ordered in—from Spinnacle. I didn’t trust myself to cook such an important meal. It’s been a while.” She pulled a chair out for her daughter and gestured for her to sit.

  “Important . . . why?” Maggie moved closer to the table.

  “It’s tradition. You’re homecoming queen and this is the first day of your reign.”

  “Mom—get a grip,” Maggie said. “It’s a title and a picture in the yearbook. And wearing that stupid crown.” But even as she said it, she was sorry. Her heart did a funny lurching thing, and she realized she missed it. She missed the crown as if it were a living, breathing thing. “It’s no big deal,” she finished halfheartedly.

  “No,” her mother said firmly as Maggie took her seat. “It is a big deal.” She pushed the chair in for Maggie and sat down next to her, at the head of the table.

  “Okay.” Suddenly ravenous, Maggie decided to humor her—it was so much easier when her mom got something fixed in her mind and couldn’t let it go. “Whatever. But you didn’t have to do all this.”

  She grabbed a strip of bacon, and as she took a big bite of it she studied her mom, who was just sitting there, looking at her so seriously. Violet held her back straight and her head high. Bathed in the pale morning light, she looked regal. Like she was a queen herself, Maggie thought. Like the years she’d spent as a frazzled slave to her own idiosyncrasies—compulsively checking the doors to make sure they were locked, obsessively designing and stitching her tapestries, harping on Maggie about the importance of being homecoming queen—like it had all been a bad dream from which she had now awakened.

  “Maybe it’s just a title for now,” her mom said as she poured coffee for both of them. “In time you’ll see that it’s much more. All you need to know for now is that with the queenhood comes great power and great responsibility.”

  Maggie managed not to laugh at her mother’s corny terminology. “After last night, it looks like all I’m going to be queen of is a big hole in the ground.”

  “Oh, no, my daughter. You have a great destiny before you. Last night was part of that destiny.”

  “Oh yeah?” Maggie retorted cynically. “When do we get to the good part?”

  Again she thought of Raphael Kain, and remembered his lips on hers one night not so long ago, his arms around her, holding her close, as they slid together down the wall to the floor of the abandoned railroad car.

  

  Instead of rain, it was snow that fell from the steel-colored sky as Beet and Josh hauled the last piece of Emory’s family’s furniture—a faded and tattered brown plaid couch—from the back of the pick-up truck toward the old, rundown garage that stood behind Beet’s dad’s auto body shop. The rest of the Flatliners were hard at work, too. Benji was running two extension cords across the cracked concrete between the shop and the garage, one to run the electric heater they’d borrowed from Dalton and Lily Rose, and the other to run a clock radio and a little microwave. Mr. Van Buren, Emory’s dad, had gone up to a gas station to pick up ice for the cooler, so they could keep their food from spoiling. Mrs. Van Buren was inside, thumbtacking old towels over the garage’s three windows so that the family would have some privacy at night, and Raphael and Nass were arranging the furniture and supplies so that everything would be accessible, but still leave room for the family to move around in the cramped two-car garage.

  Beet’s dad had been kind enough to move the two old cars he normally stored there, and had let Beet take the company truck to move all the furniture. Josh and his family were avid campers, and they had donated some sleeping bags.

  Raphael was proud of the way his crew had come together to help their friend. It wasn’t the perfect solution—it was illegal to live in a garage, Raphael knew, and if city officials found out about it, Emory’s family would have to move again. But at least they’d have a roof over their heads until they found a more permanent solution. They had no relatives in Middleburg, and none of the other Flatliners had enough space in their small, cramped apartments to take them in.

  At Raphael’s request, Emory was rifling through some papers in the boxes, looking for their lease. His sister, still wrapped up in her
Gameboy, was sprawled on her bed, which was pushed against the wide, metal garage door.

  “Haylee, why don’t you do something useful instead of playing that stupid game?” Emory asked her irritably.

  “Why don’t you do something useful, instead of going through that stupid box?” Haylee mocked.

  “Whatever,” Emory said.

  Raphael finished stacking a pile of heavy boxes in the corner, then pulled out his phone. It was noon, and still no call from Aimee. He wished he could call her—he just wanted to hear her voice and know she was okay—but it was impossible. If he called, it would only get her in worse trouble.

  “Hey Raph,” Nass said, and he gestured for Raphael to follow him outside.

  In the driveway, scattered snowflakes drifted lazily in the frigid air. When Nass spoke, Raphael could see his breath crystallizing in front of him.

  “I didn’t say anything before because I didn’t want to freak everyone out,” Nass said quietly, “But we got a lease termination notice too. It says we have thirty days to get out.”

  Raphael nodded gravely. “Also illegal. You were right not to tell the others, though. Let’s find out what’s going on first.”

  At that moment, Emory emerged from the side door of the garage, holding a packet of papers up in one hand.

  “Found it,” he said triumphantly and handed the document over to his leader, who scanned it.

  “Look,” Raphael said, pointing at the first page. “Banfield Realty manages the building. The owner is listed as ‘Middleburg Property Group, herein referred to as MPG, Incorporated.’”

  “What does that mean?” Ignacio asked.

  “Middleburg Property Group is a corporation owned by two investors,” Raphael said, looking up from the document. “They own three-quarters of the property in the Flats.”

  “Two investors,” Nass said. “Jack Banfield and who else?”

  “Cheung Shao,” Raph said quietly. “Zhai’s dad.”

  Emory groaned.

  Rick’s dad and Zhai’s dad. As if the Flatliners needed another reason to hate the Toppers.

  “Are you sure?” Nass asked. “How do you know?”

  “Study your enemy. That’s one of the most important things Master Chin taught me,” Raphael said, and he handed the lease back to Emory. “And I’ve done that.”

  “So what do we do now? We can’t live in a garage forever,” Emory said.

  “We find out why they’re trying to push us out,” Raphael said. “And we put a stop to it.”

  Chapter Six

  Zhai raised the violin to his chin and rested the bow gently on the strings. Sometimes, this was the moment he loved the best: the instant before he played the first note was always filled with anticipation, excitement, possibility. He glanced up at his family—his father, Cheung, smiling at him from the couch as he sat with his arm around Zhai’s beautiful stepmother, Lotus. Lotus was smiling too, her beauty as fragile as a glass snowflake, as if she might shatter with the slightest mischance. Zhai’s sister Li sat in a big leather chair near the warm glow of the fireplace, texting someone, her legs folded under her. When she saw Zhai looking at her, she put the phone down, suddenly attentive.

  The concert he gave for his family every Sunday since he was ten years old was a tradition that had long been sacrificed to his dad’s obsessive work schedule and his stepmother’s endless social engagements. But since Li had miraculously recovered from her mysterious illness, their dad was doing a lot more of his work at home. At first Zhai thought it was because Li’s illness had reminded him of his own mortality, a perfectly natural reaction. But then Zhai noticed his dad had become hypervigilant, frequently looking at his cell phone to check his caller I.D. but answering almost no calls. He seemed anxious and tense. It was almost as if he was afraid to go into the office—so Zhai had suggested the concerts again, as a way to help his father relax.

  Lotus objected—she had so much to do with the pharmacy, and she was on the school board now, too—but Li liked the idea, so it was settled. Their father doted on Li more than ever after she came home from the hospital.

  Zhai played for them every Sunday after breakfast.

  He had just begun his first note, a high, clear A minor, when the doorbell rang and spoiled it. He lowered the violin and bow, frustrated at the interruption, and listened as the maid answered the door. He could hear her muffled greeting and the low, clipped response of a male voice, followed by footsteps in the hall outside the music room. The maid entered and hurried over to Cheung Shao. She leaned between him and Lotus and spoke quietly to them.

  The expression of his father’s face was no longer relaxed, and Lotus went suddenly pale.

  “It can’t be,” she whispered anxiously, but her husband silenced her with a glare. He rose from the couch and headed for the foyer, with the maid and Lotus right behind him.

  It wasn’t unusual for the Shaos to have weekend visitors, but none of them showed up unannounced, and none of them had ever elicited this sort of response. With one look at Li, Zhai knew she was thinking the same thing. He put his violin back in the case and, with his sister, crept toward the half-open door, hoping to catch a glimpse of their visitors.

  Both men were Chinese, which he thought unusual since there were not many Chinese families living near Middleburg. They each wore a black suit topped with an overcoat. They both had close-cropped hair and each wore a black derby hat. The two men could easily have been brothers; the only difference between them was their height—one was about six inches taller than the other—and the color of their ties.

  “Just more corporate wonders,” Li observed dismissively and went back to the fireplace.

  But Zhai felt compelled to stay in the doorway. He tried to keep out of sight but as they approached, the taller one glanced over, and for a second he and Zhai locked eyes. Zhai felt a jolt of recognition. It was the same feeling he got upon waking up from a dream he couldn’t quite remember, only this was a thousand times more insistent. He had seen this man before. He knew him. And somehow, he knew the man knew him, too. It was an uncomfortable feeling . . . unsettling.

  An instant later, his father’s two visitors were past the doorway, tramping their way up the stairs. But even in their absence, the unsettled feeling did not abate. Zhai was on the verge of something—some incredibly important realization—but the harder he tried to figure out what it was, the further away it slipped. He wiped one hand across his forehead and realized that his brow was covered with clammy sweat. His knees were shaking.

  “…some of my friends are going—Weston, and Amanda, maybe Lucy. It should be fun. Hello?”

  Zhai realized Li had been talking to him.

  “Are you going with me to Spinnacle tonight, or not?” she repeated, annoyed.

  “Yeah. Sure,” he said. “I’ll take you. Sounds good.”

  “Are you okay?” Li asked, taking a step closer to him. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”

  “I’m fine,” he said, his voice constricted. “Spinnacle for dinner. Sounds good.”

  And he turned and hurried out of the room. He raced up the steps, taking them two at a time, and jogged down the hallway, his footsteps falling silently on the thick, plush carpeting.

  He stopped in front of the door to his father’s study and leaned closer, quietly placing his ear against the wood.

  From inside, he heard Lotus shouting until his father yelled at her to be silent. Zhai could hear words but couldn’t make out what they were saying. After a second he realized they were speaking Chinese. He cursed himself for slacking off on his Chinese lessons.

  Giving up and turning away from the door, Zhai saw Li in the hallway, looking at him quizzically.

  He raised one finger to his lips, silencing her, then pointed to the door. As usual, she understood exactly what Zhai wanted. She crept up to the door next to him and p
ut her ear against it, her face next to his just as the shouting erupted again. She listened for a moment, concentrating, then finally stepped back. “What are they saying?” Zhai whispered. Lotus had made sure her daughter stuck with her Chinese lessons, and Li had a natural flair for it.

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Tell me anyway,” he said.

  “Something about a scroll. The Scroll of the Wheel, I think. Then…” Confusion and worry lined her face.

  “Tell me, Li,” he said. “Word for word.”

  “One of the men told Dad, ‘Remember, Cheung Shao, who it is you serve. You are our slave.’”

  

  By the time Lily Rose answered the door, Maggie had stopped crying, but when she saw the tender concern in the old woman’s eyes more tears threatened.

  “Maggie!” Lily Rose exclaimed cheerfully. “I thought you might come by today.”

  The comment struck Maggie as strange; she’d only been to her housekeeper’s home once when she had dropped Raphael off there, after he’d battled samurai warriors in her kitchen. She had the address—her mom had taped Lily Rose’s business card to the refrigerator door years ago, and it was still there. It was plain, simple, completely unembellished:

  Lily Rose’s Cleaning Service

  We put things right.

  Maggie hoped with her whole heart that Lily Rose’s slogan was true—because she desperately needed someone to talk to. She couldn’t talk to her so-called friends—all they were interested in were clothes and boys. Rick was a demonic psycho. Her mom was—well, her mom. Raphael was too wrapped up in Aimee to know Maggie existed. Everything in her life had suddenly become so bizarre and she felt like she was drowning in confusion. There was no one in the world she could turn to—no one, except Lily Rose. Maybe.

  The old woman was already leading her inside. “Come in, come in,” she said. “Oh, child—I can see you’re vexed something awful. Come on now. Let’s go into the kitchen and see what we can find.”

  Lily Rose’s kitchen was as clean and shiny as it must have been the day she’d had the cabinets installed, which had to be some time in the 1950s, unless the old lady was into retro chic. But these looked original. Maggie knew about home décor. She planned to support her pursuit of a modeling career in New York with some kind of interior design job. Black-and-white checkered tiles covered the floor, an immaculate, plastic lace-patterned tablecloth adorned the small kitchen table, and there was a tallboy filled with elegant, gold-trimmed dishes and little glass figurines. Lily Rose steered her to the table and sat her down, then crossed to the kitchen counter and opened several glass jars filled with what looked to Maggie like herbs.