House of Korba: The Ghost Bird Series: #7 (The Academy)

by C. L. Stone

  “Motherfucker left masks on all the displays,” Gabriel said. His lips curled and he bared his teeth. He pointed down, where there were several masks piled up on the floor, identical to the one we’d seen on the steps. “All of those mannequins in Gretta’s shop. He managed to get one on all of them. I ran around grabbing them all, and told Kota to go get you guys. I didn’t want to use a phone.”

  “Good call,” Dr. Green said. He reached forward. “Pass me one? We should check them.”

  “I’ve been doing that,” Gabriel said, and he passed one to Dr. Green. “They’re just plastic. No trackers. Nothing fancy. Might check for fingerprints later but that’s if he’s stupid enough to have left some. I can only hope.”

  “Now he decides to stick his head out?” Dr. Green asked. He looked over the mask, and scratched at his temple. “I don’t get it. How did he know we were here?”

  “Who knows,” Luke said. “Maybe he’s still tracing phones and can track us.”

  “Or he’s just following us,” Gabriel said.

  “How could he?” I asked. “I mean with the masks. Mr. Blackbourne and I were just there, looking into the store. We hadn’t left but a few minutes ago to the other shop. He managed to get all those masks on those dummies just in time without anyone seeing? We didn’t pass anyone going up the stairs along the way.”

  “There could be another door in,” Luke said. “Maybe he knew we’d be there and...”

  “He just happened to carry a bunch of masks around like that?” Dr. Green asked. He shook his head. “Something’s not right. I don’t buy it. We didn’t even decide where we were going until this morning, did we? No one said anything on the phones. He waited until some of us were gone, and then showed up assuming you all would see the masks. How could he have prepared for something like this so quickly?”

  “The big question,” Luke said, “is what do we do about it?”

  Dr. Green sighed and rubbed a palm across his forehead. “Looks like we’ll spend the night at the hospital.”

  “We can’t go home?” Gabriel asked.

  Luke stopped at a red light, and turned slightly to look at Gabriel. “If we go to the hospital with Sang running from a guy in a mask, there’s going to be an investigation. We’re utilizing emergency protocols, but he hasn’t done anything threatening.”

  “It’s the only step I can think of,” Dr. Green said. “When we can’t identify our adversary and there’s questions, retreat to a safe house. He’s already infiltrated our usual one, so we should move to a more secure location. What do you suggest?”

  “Maybe we should go home,” Luke said. “Or somewhere else. I don’t want to bring this to the hospital when he hasn’t been violent toward us. I mean, he kidnapped Sang, but he never did anything to her. He just wanted to talk. This is some sort of message.”

  Dr. Green tilted his head, and tapped a finger at his eyebrow. “I’m not sure the best move. Overreacting might allow him to corner us in the hospital while he’s free to do what he wants elsewhere. But he was working with Muriel. That girl tied up Victor and the others. With her mental state, she easily could have killed several of us and he wasn’t even around her, just encouraged her. I want check in with Owen.”

  “Let’s catch them,” Gabriel said, sitting up. He rolled down his window a crack and then pointed. “Luke, Mr. Blackbourne’s car was parked down this way. Turn here.”

  Luke sped up the car, weaving around traffic. I put my feet on the seat, curling up, and mostly hanging on so I wasn’t sliding around. Dr. Green put his arm over me, and then held on to a handle by the door above his head. “Let’s not kill ourselves,” he said.

  “Not today,” Luke said with a grin.

  Dr. Green reached out and chopped Luke on the head. “Not ever.”

  Gabriel guided Luke to where Mr. Blackbourne had parked, but the car wasn’t there. Luke rolled down the street. “They can’t have gotten too far. They had further to walk.”

  “He’s that way,” Gabriel said, holding up his phone and pointing down one of the side streets. “Two blocks down. They’re stopped, so they might be at a light. We can catch up.”

  “You shouldn’t be using the tracking,” Dr. Green said.

  “He found us somehow, so leaving GPS off isn’t working. If he’s using it, then why can’t we? Is it better not to know and let him know everything?” Gabriel tilted his phone again. “Kota’s car hasn’t moved.”

  “Let’s catch up with Owen first,” Dr. Green said. “Kota was with him. They’re probably together.”

  “Where’s Victor?” I asked.

  “Still with Gretta,” Gabriel said. “Finishing the order and making sure Volto-fuck-face doesn’t come back while we’re gone.”

  Luke made a turn, and even drove in the left lane to get around some traffic that had slowed to a crawl as passengers checked out a shop front. By the time we got to the light, it had changed, but traffic was slowly moving onward. I shifted forward, nearly hovering between the shoulders of Gabriel and Luke, trying to keep an eye out. Dr. Green kept a hand on my lower back to stabilize me.

  Luke finally found the BMW. He started maneuvering to get behind it. Dr. Green pulled me back into the seat and wrapped an arm around me again to hang onto me. “It’ll be my head if Owen finds out I’m letting you sit in a car without a seatbelt. Put yours on.”

  Gabriel and I instantly reached for our belts to put them in place. I shared a look and a grin with him, not having realized Dr. Green might have been talking to him, too.

  Luke positioned the car behind Mr. Blackbourne’s and then honked quickly once.

  Mr. Blackbourne’s car turned down a lane, pulling over along the curb. Kota hopped out of the passenger side.

  Luke pulled in behind and stopped. Gabriel rolled down the window more as Kota approached.

  Kota popped his head in, looked at each of us as if counting and then nodded. “What’s the problem now?” he asked.

  “We weren’t sure where we were going, but thought to bunk up at Nathan’s,” Gabriel said. “Camping out at the hospital seemed like overkill, considering we’d be bringing her and they’d ask a lot of questions.”

  “You might be right. This is a bit more complicated than we thought. I need two of you to camp out in front of Silas’s apartment and keep an eye on Theo,” Kota said. “That was my job tonight but I might not be able to make it. We’ve got another problem.”

  “Where’s your car?” Gabriel asked.

  “Not where I left it,” Kota said. He touched the corner of his glasses and his cheeks tinted. “Looks like it was stolen.”

  “Stolen?” Gabriel said. He picked up his phone again and fiddled with it. “Your GPS has it where you parked it.”

  “It got removed. It was the only thing left behind. We weren’t sure if I should touch it and move it, or leave it there. If it was Volto, he didn’t want to be traced. This could be bad. He could plant it anywhere.”

  “Or someone else stole it,” Luke said. “We don’t even know if it’s him.”

  “No proof either way,” Kota said. He pointed in my direction. “You guys stay with her. No one leaves her. Ever. We’re going to do a sweep.”

  “We should help, too,” Luke said.

  “Just get her out of here,” Kota said. “This is going to be a goose chase anyway. I’ll need you to put in a flag to hopefully track the car down before whoever has it does any damage and it traces back to me. I need to go back and report a stolen car if we can’t find it. The best thing you can do is keep an eye out and make sure Theo isn’t doing anything stupid.”

  Kota walked away quickly and got back into his car. We went separate ways again. I settled into the back seat, and blew out a breath.

  Silas had been right. We didn’t have any proper time off these days.

  Lost Him Already

  Relaxing in the car on the ride back was impossible. My eyes kept going to the masks Gabriel had in the front seat.

  Kota’s car had been
stolen. Volto dropped off some masks. Why go to the trouble of putting the masks around the store? It caused an uproar among us, scrambling to figure out what happened and why.

  Volto seemed to like putting us into a panic. Maybe Luke was right. Maybe if we did something unexpected, Volto wouldn’t be able to control us, to make us scatter just because he was around.

  As soon as we pulled onto the highway, Dr. Green sat back, breathing out slowly. “Okay, so we can set up surveillance and then go to Nathan’s for the night.”

  “Maybe not,” Gabriel said, looking at his phone. “Some of us have to babysit Theo at the apartment. That’s just in case he decides he wants to run off or do something. It’ll be easier to keep an eye on him if someone’s there, and Silas isn’t going to be around tonight. So who gets to camp out at Silas’s?”

  Dr. Green and Luke talked at the same time:

  “Not me!”

  “Not me!”

  Then they both glanced at me, expectant.

  I was wide-eyed for a moment, trying to figure out what they wanted me to say. “Gabriel can’t go alone,” I said. “We’re not supposed to separate.”

  “Sang and I can go by ourselves,” Gabriel said with a grin. “We’ve got this covered.”

  “Not while I’ve got an evening off and nowhere to be,” Dr. Green said. “I’m not going to sit at home alone.”

  “I don’t have to get to the diner,” Luke said. “I want to hang out with Sang.”

  Gabriel grunted. “It’s going to look all fucked up if we’re all babysitting Theo.”

  “Is Charlie home?” Luke asked. He sped up to get around another car on the highway. I checked his speed, and he was ten miles over the limit. The others didn’t seem to mind or didn’t care.

  Gabriel took out his phone and started pushing buttons. “Charlie’s at the office. He might be manning the phones tonight.”

  I hadn’t realized that they might have GPS trackers on family members and not just their own phones. “Where’s Theo?” I asked.

  “In his room,” Gabriel said. He tapped again at his phone and then lifted it to show me the image. It was a top down view, so I could see almost the whole thing from one corner, probably a vent like where they installed cameras at my house. I hadn’t seen the room before, and it was hard to recognize Theo, but he was lying on his bed, sprawled out and staring at the ceiling. The bed just had a blanket over it, no pillows. The room itself had a television and a stereo. I couldn’t hear anything, but it didn’t look like the television was on. Some walls had posters, some clothes were scattered across the floor.

  “Do we need to go inside?” I asked. “I mean was Kota just going to sit in a car all night watching from his cell phone?”

  “I don’t want to sit in the car,” Gabriel said. “I’d rather stay in Silas’s room.”

  “I wish Theo would carry a cell phone,” Luke said. “This would make things so much easier. We could just GPS track him that way. See where he goes.”

  “We can’t give him one?” I asked.

  “He’s not allowed,” Gabriel said. He put his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. “He ends up calling his old friends in Greece and that always works him up to doing something stupid. Can’t win for losing with him.”

  This was sounding horrible every time they talked about him. My heart started to ache at the idea of Theo being so alone. Maybe I didn’t know him, but he was Silas’s brother. Wasn’t there some of Silas there? It was too close to what I’d been, locked away for my own safety, and yet seeing him in his room, possibly for hours on end, I wouldn’t wish being so confined on anyone. It sounded like they were doing their best to protect him from himself, but wasn’t there a better way? “Maybe we should do something with him,” I said.

  “What?” Gabriel asked, picking his head up and looking at me, his crystal eyes super-focused. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean why can’t we just... have him sit with us through a movie? Or invite him out?” I asked. “I mean why does he have to stay in his room?”

  “He won’t hang out with us,” Gabriel said. “We used to try. He wouldn’t come.”

  “Can’t we at least ask?”

  “Pumpkin,” Dr. Green squeezed me a little tighter with his arm wrapped around me. “We can try, but every time we’ve asked him, he says he’s tired and retreats to his room again. We can’t force him to come out.”

  “He went for a walk the other day,” I said. “He calls friends from Greece when he has a phone. Does he really want to be isolated?”

  Everyone went quiet for a long moment. The sun was already starting to set now. I hadn’t realized how long we had been at the shops for. Eventually, Luke turned the car into the parking lot of the apartment complex. “Theo doesn’t really trust us, I guess. Or he doesn’t like that we’re Silas’s friends. To him, we’re all just a bunch of kids. He thinks he shouldn’t have to listen to us. ”

  “Let’s at least get inside Silas’s room,” Dr. Green said. “We’ll camp out here tonight. Maybe a couple of us will head home, and two will wait here, but for now, let’s stay together. There should be some leftovers in the fridge if we get hungry.”

  “Yay,” Luke said, sounding more enthusiastic now. “I love Greek food.”

  “What don’t you like?” Gabriel asked with a chuckle.

  “Brussels sprouts,” Luke said. “And collard greens. And carrots. I hate carrots.”

  Gabriel and I started giggling at the same time. Dr. Green reached around my head, clamping a palm against my mouth and he glared at Gabriel. “Don’t start!” he cried out. “She’ll go all night and we’re supposed to keep things on the down low.”

  Luke parked, and we all piled out. It felt odd to be going to Silas’s house without Silas being there. I walked as close as possible next to Dr. Green, behind Luke and Gabriel.

  They led the way up to the second floor, the farthest apartment on the right. Instead of knocking, Luke used his keys to open the door. He returned to me, hand-signaling to everyone to be quiet.

  Luke tiptoed in, with Gabriel behind him. I followed, and Dr. Green closed the door.

  The odd part was having Dr. Green with us. When I looked back at him, I saw someone only a couple of years older than us, being a part of us, rather than a teacher at school. It was almost like he was new to me in some way. It wasn’t bad, just different and unexpected.

  We lined up, single file down the hallway. Luke and Gabriel walked into Silas’s room. I lingered a minute, looking down the hallway and listening. The stereo was playing from Theo’s room. It was a low rumble, slow. The tone was depressing.

  Dr. Green put a warm hand on my back and leaned forward to whisper close to my ear. “I know the feeling,” he said quietly. “The best thing we can do right now is protect Silas.”

  I wasn’t sure how staying out of Theo’s way was the same thing as helping Silas. Couldn’t we help Silas by making Theo happier somehow?

  I stepped into Silas’s bedroom. Luke flopped down and sprawled out on the bed, kicking off his shoes. Gabriel sat at the desk and opened up the laptop. He entered in a password and started clicking the mouse.

  Dr. Green moved around me and sat on the bed near Luke. He snagged his fingers into the collar of his shirt, and tugged at it, lifting it over his head. The move captured my attention. My heart raced at seeing Dr. Green removing the shirt to reveal the snug black undershirt. The lean muscles in his arms and along his chest were in full view and my heart was pitter-pattering at the sight.

  “Do we work in shifts tonight?” Dr. Green asked.

  “Luke and I are going to scout the area a bit,” Gabriel said.

  “We could just set up the alarm system,” Luke said. He had his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. He turned his head to remove the hair clip and set it aside. His blond hair spread out around his head. He turned over on his side, grabbing one of the pillows and stuffing it under his head. “Then we can just hang out.”

  “I vote alarm
system,” Gabriel said. “I vote that. That’s a plan.”

  “What alarm system?” I asked.

  “If anyone opens the door,” Luke said, lifting his hand up and pointing out toward where the front hallway was, “there’s an alarm that goes off on one of our phones. It lets us know if anyone leaves or comes in.”

  Dr. Green patted the spot next to him. “Come on, Pookie. Relax a bit.”

  I moved to sit down, and Gabriel started laughing, still focused on the computer screen. “Pookie? What the fuck?”

  Luke’s shoulders shook as he giggled. “Is it worse than Trouble?”

  “She is Trouble,” Gabriel said. He reached up and raked his hand through his hair, messing up the blond and the brown that had been combed back. “Pookie doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It’s cute,” Dr. Green said. He bumped his arm into mine, looking down at me and grinning. “Like her.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel said. He tapped at the keyboard and turned around, stretching. “Okay. I’ve got it set up to make it ring Luke’s phone if anyone comes through the door.”

  “Let’s get something to eat,” Luke said. He sat up quickly and then scurried to the edge of the bed. He pressed his hand on my shoulder for support as he lifted himself up, putting a lot of weight on me until I was falling over on the bed as he moved to the door.

  Dr. Green laughed, grabbed my arm and tugged me.

  Gabriel and Luke and Dr. Green tiptoed down the hall, and headed toward the kitchen.

  I lingered back this time, tempted to hide in Silas’s room in case someone like Charlie came home.

  I was standing there, listening to music from Theo’s room, when I noticed it was a little louder now. Curious, I stepped closer to his end of the hallway.

  There was a beam of light coming from Theo’s room; the door was partly open.

  I listened quietly for movement, calculating where Luke, Gabriel and Dr. Green were. Old habits. I was trying to figure out how much time I had to check things out without getting caught.