by Dalya Moon
The second note also gives me concern:
You have five days or there will be dire consequences.
I'm down to two days now. Was Heidi bluffing to get me motivated, or are the dire consequences true?
If someone means to do me or someone I love harm, what could that harm be? I don't know anything, so there's no point in silencing me, unless they think I know something I don't. There's also the possibility people are plotting to steal my powers, as Heidi and Newt were in the summer, but what's stopping them from coming after me at any time?
I look up at my now-black bedroom window. The sun's gone down and anyone standing outside would be able to see me and my computer screen easily. Moving calmly, I stand and draw the curtains.
Was that a noise in the house? Is someone coming down the hall, or is it the old floor creaking with a temperature shift?
I scour the room for a weapon, and the best thing I come up with is a good-sized tea mug, which is certainly no baseball bat, but could put someone down if they received it in the face.
Dire consequences.
Not on my watch. I grip the mug tightly and step lightly to the door.
Chapter Nineteen
Mug in hand, I creep up to my door, still listening.
The clock in the living room gongs once, for the half-hour. There's no sound of movement. I'm used to the clock, but its sudden gongs terrify visitors, so surely if someone were here with me, they would have squeaked or done something. Unless the maker of the noise is not a person, but a monster. A ghost. Or a demon.
Slowly, I reach down into my jeans pocket and slip on the pinkie ring. The bees I summon might kill me, but so might whatever is in my hallway. The noise isn't coming from Mibs, who is now curled in a ball on one of the pillows on my bed.
I wait another full minute, and my fear gradually subsides the longer nothing happens, until I feel foolish.
Creak.
That was definitely something. I close my eyes as my sweat glands go into overdrive. What good does sweating do when you're scared? Make you greasy so you slip out of the predator's claws?
I sense the presence of something living, mere feet away, in the hallway, and I don't know how I know this, but I'm sure: it's not going away.
Gripping the handle of the mug tightly, I jump around the corner. Something white flashes.
I yell an aggressive sound without words.
The white disappears down the hall.
I chase, my mug ready to smash.
Out the white thing goes, out the cat flap in the back door, its white tail disappearing last.
A cat?
I let out an embarrassed laugh, put the mug on the counter, and catch my breath with my hands on my knees. Some silly cat was in here, probably eating the soft cat food we give Mibs.
You'd expect me to feel weaksauce for being scared of a cat, but I don't feel that way at all. I'm proud of myself. Cats don't make a lot of noise, but I knew it was in the house. I sensed it. Not bad, Zan. Not bad at all.
Next order of business: investigating what's in the crock pot, underneath the steaming lid.
Gran's out doing a final dress-fitting for the wedding. Actually, it's not a dress so much as it is a two-piece suit, though I haven't seen it.
Ah, but she's left me beef stew in the crock pot. This one is her version of a curry, with pineapple chunks. Sounds odd, but the combination is amazing. I scoop up a big bowl full and chow down with a vengeance.
I do another search the house, but there are no intruders, be they demons, ghosts, or uninvited pets.
Now what? Back in my bedroom, my head spins at the idea of facing those case files.
Since nobody's home, now might be a great time to practice my bee vision.
When I first tried summoning them, whether it was my inexperience or not wearing the gold ring, I had no control over the bees.
Too clearly, I remember the suffocating sensation in the woods, when they came out of my throat at a furious pace, threatening to choke me first and then sting me to death for good measure.
But when I've had the ring on, like the time one stung James and the time I was in the swimming pool, they came out in smaller quantity and seemed to be on my team.
The one I summoned more recently, with one of my eyes closed, was the most successful experiment yet, so I try duplicating that exactly.
I sit on the edge of my bed, Mibs peacefully asleep next to me, and I calm my mind.
Think of good little obedient bees. I try the bee-summoning again, holding one of my eyes open and the other closed while also tensing my stomach muscles.
Tickling in my throat.
I open my mouth and breathe out audibly, as though fogging a mirror.
A teeny, tiny bee, barely bigger than a chocolate chip, flies out of my open mouth. I see my face! From the vantage point of the bee!
I dive at myself angrily, seeking soft flesh.
My closed eye flies open in shock. Of course the little bugger stung me. What else did I expect? The bee turns to ash before it hits the floor.
Apparently, that bee was a female, as only the females have stingers. The barbed stinger rips their abdomens when they sting, so the bees die quickly after stinging, though turning to ash is not something mentioned in the science books. Neither is birthing them from a human's throat.
My ears are ringing, screeching despite the silence in my bedroom.
Mibs yawns at me and jumps off the bed. On the way out, he stops by my door to smell the frame and rub his chin on it.
“You are not a guard cat,” I say to him.
He flicks his tail and pads off in the direction of the kitchen.
I get up, turn on my computer speakers, and put on some music. The first song is good for running, and fills me with sparks of energy. Not the mood I'm looking for. I put on Julie's play list and let the mellowness wash over me. She's partial to girl-with-a-guitar music.
My muscles are aching, but I want to expand my test. I rub the red welt on my arm. At least the stings will fade quickly, if prior stings are any indication.
For the next part, I lie down on my bed, on top of the covers, and tense each muscle one at a time, from the feet up, as a relaxation exercise.
I slip the ring off, polish it on my shirt, and slip it back on. An idea comes to me, so I sit up, push back the curtains partially, and open my window a crack. The bee needs something to do, a command. I lie down again and repeat the relaxation exercise.
Once I feel centered, I close one eye and tense my stomach muscles, as I did before.
When I feel about as peaceful as I can get, with slightly rigid abdominal muscles, I carefully conjure up a single bee, a male drone.
My throat tickles again and I breathe the tickle out.
He appears, my drone.
He's a big one, the size of my thumbnail.
“Out the window,” I say out loud. The bee flies out the open window.
My world goes from bright to dark.
At last, I'm seeing something from the bee's perspective besides my own squinting face. The world outside my room is dark, and bee vision seems to have different colors and patterns I don't understand, but I can see my house as the bee flies up, over the roof.
My body, on the bed, feels weightless, as though I'm flying with the bee, and in a way, I am. This is different from the times I tried astral projection. Then, I felt almost nothing physical, but now I'm dimly aware of the soft bed under my back and also the hard-working wings on my back.
Because it's night, my bee instincts are telling me to return to the hive, but I urge the bee onward. After a few minutes of flying, energy reserves are fading fast, and I'm caving in on myself, shrinking. Regular bees probably can't do that, but this one can. I can burn myself up as fuel.
I have eyes all over. I have so many eyes, though none of them are adapted to seeing in the dark, or very far ahead of me. I seem to have two sets of visions, though, with my human vision still in the mix, so I'm able to naviga
te the neighborhood.
My entire body—I don't know if it's the human one or the bee body—trembles with exertion by the time my drone gets to Austin's house. I've done it. I'm here.
I almost didn't recognize her house, because it has no color. Austin's house is, as I know it, bright red, like a country barn on a jigsaw puzzle. Bees, however, don't see the color red. I came all this way and nearly couldn't find her house!
Doesn't matter—I've come to see Austin, not the side of her house.
There's just one problem: all her windows are closed.
I nudge the bee closer to her bedroom window, where Austin's light is on and her curtains are open. Something cool and wet washes over me, reminiscent of falling in the swimming pool, and I'm bathed in bright light. The bee is on the other side of the glass, inside the room.
I flew through glass.
There's Austin! She looks up from where she's sitting on her bed with a book, probably hearing the buzz of the bee, so I instruct my little black and yellow solider to put out landing gear and drop down on the wall shelf between Austin's unicorn statuette and her well-worn childhood teddy bear.
“Hello?”
Something like fear seems to pass over her face. I'm such a jerk for spying on her like this. What a stupid idea this is. I'm sorry, Austin, I'll go.
I should disconnect, but back at my house, in my body, I don't open my closed eye, because I don't really want to break the connection. I stay in the bee's mind, watching Austin as she puts down the book and turns on her television, clicking through channels until she gets to a fashion show.
“Zan?” she says, turning again and looking right at me.
I open my closed eye and let go of my stomach muscles.
Something pulls at me, feeling like the moment you hit the bottom of a bungee jump, and I'm yanked away from her.
Back on my bed, in my house, I gasp to catch my breath. Ashamed, I slide off the ring.
Will Austin know what I did? If she checks the shelf, she'll probably find a little smudge of ash where the conjured bee was. Would a pile of ashes be enough to make her suspicious?
I pull out my cell phone. If I send her an apology message, how would I explain what I've done? And if she's still ticked at me for grabbing her finger and trying to steal into her Secret Town with a vision, she'd be more than pissed if she found out I sent a bee spy.
What to do, what to do.
I'm drained of energy, my body heavy and depleted. I must sleep, but first I get up and head to the kitchen to gobble down the rest of the curried stew, standing over the sink.
My throat's raw and sore. Am I coming down with something? My legs are shaking, so I sit in a chair to finish scraping my bowl.
Still hungry. It's too dark in here with just the under-cabinet lighting, so I go to click on the overhead fixture, but it's already on. Are some of the bulbs burned out? Hmm, no.
I can't figure out why everything is so dim. Does it seem dark now, in comparison to seeing from the bee's perspective, or is there something wrong with me? My ears are ringing again, but I'm still so hungry.
Someone's talking to me.
“You don't like those,” she says.
“Huh?”
Gran is in front of me. “You don't even like those rice cakes. You say they taste like something that isn't food.”
I look down at the pile of rice cake crumbs on the table before me. “Oh, sorry, I ate them all.”
She shakes her head. “Food's for eating, don't apologize.”
I stand and tell her I'm going to bed.
“The suit fitting went well,” she calls after me.
“Oh. Sorry,” I say as I round the corner for my room, stumbling toward my warm, comfy hive—I mean my bed.
* * *
Friday morning comes way too bright and early.
Gran wakes me and tells me to shake a leg and she'll give me a ride to school on her way to work. As I'm getting in Gran's car, she waves at Crystal across the street.
Crystal waves back, looking a little better than the last time I saw her. The knots have been combed out of her hair, but her eyes still dart around nervously.
Poor Crystal, she seems haunted.
Whether I'm in danger or not, I want to solve the case for Crystal, so she can be at ease. It's the least I can do for her after she's been so good to me and Gran, always babysitting Mibs for no charge, and generally being a nice person. She doesn't deserve to be mixed up in witchcraft and murders.
When I get to my first class of the day, I put my head down on my arm and fall asleep. The only upside to being exhausted is I'm too tired to be worried about getting in trouble in class. When the bell rings for lunch, I wake up refreshed and invigorated, jumping to my feet so quickly I startle the teacher. I was dreaming about a girl in a mermaid costume. That has to mean something.
My locker door has been repaired, and everything inside my locker appears to be untouched, though I don't care. This world isn't even real to me.
I yawn and stretch, trying to get more comfortable. My body doesn't hurt, but I have an ache all over. My feet are sore, too, as though they've outgrown my shoes since last week. The waistband of my jeans is uncomfortably tight.
Ahead of me, I see the person I want to talk to, and thoughts about my sore feet disappear.
It's Rosemary Stonehurt, the girl Shad Miller's been dating, going into the library, so I follow and find her browsing the sci-fi paperbacks. Everything up until now has been leading to me questioning her, using my powers.
This must be why Heidi tasked me with her work. If I'm the person who's destined to solve Newt's murder, it's got to be by doggedly chasing down all possible leads, even if it means getting a face full of Shad through Rosemary's vision.
So far, to get girls to poke me in the navel, I've used a variety of tactics, the most common being a variation on the truth. Quite simply, I offer to tell a girl's fortune and future.
From an early age, girls are primed to want to know what kind of man they'll marry. They have several word games and folded-paper, pick-a-number devices used to predict a future husband. It's a source of endless fascination and giggles, and although none of the actual results are taken seriously or considered accurate, the process is very regimented. I've seen girls pass entire hours on long bus rides for field trips, just playing these games. Girls may envy boys our simple fascination with video games or anything gun-shaped, but I envy them their folded-paper games.
Today, however, I'm going to try something different. I'm not even going to offer to tell Rosemary's fortune.
I hike up my shirt. “Rosemary, does my belly button feel weird to you?”
She giggles and sticks her finger in.
* * *
The vision begins.
Shad is so tall and I'm so short, and this is really awkward, so maybe I'll get on top.
Who's thinking that? Me? Must be Rosemary. I'm in a dimly-lit vision, but it's not dim due to my powers not working. This room is dim.
Wow, this vision started fast, and there's Shad, and I am feeling things that are extremely foreign.
I seem to be Rosemary right now, in this dim room, and I'm enjoying myself. What's happening? Oh.
Rewind! Rewind! Back to the pawn shop.
Shad's making a really horrible face. Oh no! Oh no!
REWIND!
Mercifully, the world swirls, a kaleidoscope of colors and smells and feelings.
Now I'm at the pawn shop. There's Cinderella. Who does she think she is? She thinks she's so pretty just because she has long legs and a tiny waist. I hate her. I'm going to tell all my friends so we can hate her together. I'm taking a picture of this Cinderella with my cell phone right now so I can post it and we can make fun of her.
These thoughts I'm having, they aren't mine. They must be Rosemary's thoughts.
Why does stuck-up Cinderella have her eyes shut? What is she carrying inside that paper bag? Something tells me it's not a sandwich. And is she talking to hersel
f? She's not wearing one of those phone thingamajigs on her ear. Oh snap, she's totally nutters. Nutters! I have to get Shad out of here now.
Is he looking at Cinderella? He'd better not be, or he's in big trouble. He'll see.
Me: Get me out of here!
Rosemary: Oh yeah. Shad will see. Tonight, I'm going to climb him like a tree.
Me: !
* * *
I come out of the vision in time to hear Rosemary say to me, “Your belly button seems fine to me.”
I'm relieved to no longer be inside her mind, inside her vision. “Thanks for checking,” I say.
“You are a little warm, so maybe you're getting a cold?”
“Maybe.” I point to a paperback. “Hitchhiker's Guide. Totally a must-read.”
“Thanks,” she says as I walk away.
I pass Shad Miller on my way out of the library, and I fight this strange urge to give him a hug. These visions. They're not fooling around anymore, are they?
Now I'm thinking about running my fingers—no, Rosemary's fingers—through his red chest hair.
Julie jumps up in front of me. “What's goin' on? Whatcha thinkin' about?”
“Nothing!”
Her eyes crinkling with amusement, she draws out her response. “Reeeeealllly.” Her short, messy black hair is up in two messy pigtails, high on her head.
“Why do you look like that?” I ask.
“Because I'm WEIRD! And I accept that about myself.”
“Uh, okay,” I say as we walk toward the cafeteria.
She grabs my arm and whispers in my ear, “I also had some moonshine. Hey, do you still want me to poke you in your tummy?”
Her breath smells like exhaust fumes, and I have to wave the noxious cloud away with one hand. “No, but thanks anyway. It's actually working just fine again.” An uninvited image of Shad Miller flexing, topless and bottomless, pops into my mind. “It's working a little too well.”
“Good. So you and Detective Strangeness have it all figured out, right? Case closed!”
Some people are turning to gawk, so I shush Julie and pull her aside, into the nook of a doorway. “Quiet, you little booze-weasel. No, I haven't solved the case, and it's stressing me out.”
