“Mandy!”
The creatures closed in on Amanda.
“Mandy! RUN!!!!” Jess tearfully cried.
Amanda looked at her. Then at the creatures and Maleficent, drawing ever closer.
I love you, she mouthed silently to Jess. She struggled toward the spinning carousel, fell onto it, pulled herself up, and moved toward Jingles.
“MANDY!!!” Jess was on her knees. Maleficent was nearly to the carousel.
Amanda climbed onto Jingles. As the platform spun, she lost sight of her friends.
And they, of her.
When Jingles next appeared, the horse stood empty.
Amanda had vanished.
Into the past.
A FEW MINUTES PAST 2 A.M., Finn and Philby walked away from King Arthur Carrousel in a somber mood.
“We should have talked him out of keeping the ink around,” Philby said.
“That wasn’t going to happen. He’s Walt Disney. He’s not about to hand over a vial of magical ink to some kids he barely knows.”
“But if it’s here…if Hollingsworth has any shot at getting it—”
“I know!” Finn said. “Believe me, I know.”
“If my phone doesn’t reach them,” Philby said. “If the Cryptos don’t allow the girls to be DHIs, we’re never going home.”
“We’ve been over this. We can’t be negative. We have to stay positive.”
“I thought Charlene was the cheerleader.”
“Ha-ha! Have you wondered why Walt didn’t try to lock up Hollingsworth?”
“For what? Trespassing? I think he’s had enough. I don’t think he wants anything to do with him.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Finn tried to think of something positive to say. They were stuck, sixty years in the past. The only phone—Philby’s—that could manually effect a Return had been surrendered to a carousel horse and had disappeared, maybe forever. Only a perfect string of events and permissions sixty years in the future would allow him and the other Keepers to see their families and friends again.
“You okay?” Philby asked.
“Not really.”
“Willa and I are so…We’re such good friends. Maybeck and Charlene, too. That must be tough on you. I realize that.”
“It’s okay. We’re all friends. Charlene is acting weird toward me. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“She’s always liked you. You know that.”
“It’s not that. I’m just…confused. I miss Amanda.”
Finn heard running feet behind them. His nerves spiked—had to be the hooligans! Philby heard it, too; he instinctively ducked and pivoted, preparing to defend himself.
Finn wondered about the power of thought. Like Jess, he had successfully envisioned the future on several occasions. And here he was, doing it again. He was missing Amanda so much, so deeply, that he’d painted a mental picture of her, looking more beautiful than ever, running toward him. His brain had gone so far as to hear her shoes slap the pavement. Imagination apparently had no bounds.
It wasn’t Amanda but Philby’s astonishment that told him he had it all wrong. “What…the…hel—?”
“Hello!” the girl called. Amanda’s voice. Amanda’s face. Amanda’s run.
The figure threw herself into Finn’s open arms. He caught her and spun her around, the two of them laughing loudly, spinning, the castle and star-filled sky spinning with them. They held one another, laughing and giggling. They could have been in Paris or Rome or Times Square. It was by far the most romantic moment of Finn’s short life.
He never wanted to let go.
JESS CRIED. At any other time, she would have been thrilled to be sitting in a living room chair in the Dream Suite. Not today.
When Amanda crossed over, Jess had fainted and hit her head. Tim, Emily, and Nick had carried her briefly before Joe’s team caught up.
Through her tears, Jess reread Philby’s instructions—he wanted them to use his phone to effect the Keepers’ Return.
“The note says they, the Keepers, worked out everything with Walt’s pen,” Jess told Joe. “Philby thinks you guys won’t help them, that Mandy and I are their only chance of returning, of getting back.”
“He has that wrong,” Joe said. “Of course we’ll help, but the Legacy changes when we can do it.”
“He doesn’t know that. He wants me to return them tonight. They’re expecting me to return them tonight using Philby’s phone.” The tears started again. She felt so embarrassed by the crying.
“Amanda will explain the Legacy to them.”
“The first time Finn crossed over, he lost his memory.”
“I’d forgotten that. But it was when he returned, wasn’t it?” Joe said. “We don’t know what state he was in when he arrived in the past.”
“He didn’t remember, so no one knows.”
“That is problematic,” Joe said. An associate leaned over to whisper in his ear. Joe sighed. “You’ll all be signing new documents in the morning. Right now, I think it’s best we get what’s left of a night’s sleep, and let tomorrow work itself out.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Jess asked, her voice stinging. “Work itself out?”
Joe placed a caring hand on Jess’s shoulder. “This is Disneyland. It always does.”
“I need you to promise me something,” Jess said to him privately.
“Go ahead.”
“If the others in the Tink Tank try to convince you not to mess with the past, to leave things the way they are, I want you to take this,” she said, placing Philby’s phone in his large hand. “Philby had a work-around to manually return them. You have to promise me you will bring them—bring us—back.”
“‘Us’? What’s this ‘us’?”
“What if Amanda didn’t get the message to them? We can’t risk it. You’re going to write the message about the Legacy on my arms. Right now, before anyone stops us.”
“Am I?”
“You are. And then you’re going to create a diversion to allow me to get out of this suite.” She waited for Joe to object. He did not. “I’m able to dream the future. Right now, that’s much more important in the past.”
“We both know how twisted this sounds, right?” Joe said. “I’m not alone in this.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise. But what if you do slip out of here? What do think you’re going to do?”
“The sun isn’t up yet,” Jess said, a tiny smile of satisfaction playing across her lips. “And I have a date with a music box.”
Special thanks to: Amy Berkower, Dan Conaway, Jessica Kim, Los Angeles Public Library, Joanna Fabicon, Wendy Lefkon, Jeanne Mosure, Brooke Muschott, Chris Ostrander, Nick Perkins, Tim Retzlaff, Lisa Rutherford, Matthew Snyder, Laurel and David Walters, Jennifer Wood, Nancy Zastrow, and Mary Ann Zissimos.
RIDLEY PEARSON is the award-winning author of the best-selling Kingdom Keepers series along with forty other novels for adults (suspense) and young readers (adventure), including Peter and the Starcatchers, cowritten with Dave Barry. Ridley spends a good deal of his time sneaking around the Disney parks and aboard the Disney Cruise Line ships, all in the name of research.
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