Chapter 13

Dylan

 

“What the hell were you doing down here in the middle of the night?” Joss asked Maddy as we jogged from the deserted parking lot where we’d left the car to the closest entrance to the mall.

“We were patrolling.”

“Patrolling,” Joss repeated the word in a voice that made me think she’d rescue Matt from his stupidity just for the pleasure of kicking his dumb ass.

“Yeah. Matt thought we should help out.”

“Matt needs to stop thinking. Clearly it’s not his strong suit.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at that, which pissed Maddy off. “You guys suck. We were totally just trying to help out and you’re just being nasty.”

The entrance we used, about halfway down the mall, was a wide, brick walkway with a row of trees down the middle. The windows on either side of us were dark. When we reached the end and the mall itself we found it much darker than usual. Whatever Joss did to the lights it must have been more than just breaking the bulbs because they still hadn’t been fixed yet.

“Maybe we should call for reinforcements,” Maddy whispered.

“Have anyone in mind?” Joss asked. “Who’ve we got in our circle? Besides the four of us we’ve got a mind reader, a car starter, a girl who can inflict blindness if she doesn’t fall over her impractical shoes, and a girl who can animate an army of dolls—which would be awesome if Matt were being held at a toy store instead of an ice cream shop.”

“We could call the police and let them actually do their jobs,” I suggested.

She stopped and turned to me, and even in what little light we had, I could see that her face was grave. “We could call the police and let them deal with it, but once we turn it over to them, we’ve got no control over what they do with that information. Aside from the thing with NIAC, we don’t know how careful they’ll be or what will happen to Matt. We don’t know if Marco will find some way to pin whatever he’s been doing tonight on Matt and just leave him there for the cops. Marco let Maddy go on purpose. He’s got enough people who have enough power that he didn’t have to let her get away. He did it because he wants us there.”

That was quite a mouthful for Joss. It must have been what she was thinking about when she was totally quiet on the way over. “So wait, are you saying that you’re going to fight Marco because you know he wants to fight you and that’s why he set this up? Because on TV people usually frown on walking into that trap.”

“And then the character does it anyway. Because they know there really isn’t another choice. And then they kick ass.”

“This isn’t TV.”

“This would be so much easier if you weren’t here.”

That pissed me off so bad I wanted to grab her and shake her. So I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “I thought we settled this already,” I snarled. But I could hear other stuff in my voice I hoped she wouldn’t.

She moved into me, threading her arms through mine and pressing herself against me. “We did. I’m not asking you to let me do this by myself. I don’t even want to go in there by myself. But I still hate taking you into this. It seems like I’m choosing Matt’s safety over yours. Or like trying to get even with Marco, or putting him in his place, is more important to me than you are. And it’s not true.” Her voice was tight, small.

I pulled my hands out of my pockets and held her. “So you find yourself in a situation in which you have no choice but to walk into that store and deal with what happens, but…you feel guilty about making the choice? The choice you don’t actually have.”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“That’s messed up, Marshall. Especially since most of what you’re upset about is the idea that I might get my eye blackened—like that’s some new thing—which is actually my choice, not yours. Because, as you may recall, you’re not the boss of me.”

“Jesus, are you guys done yet?”

I stiffened, ready to snap at Maddy who had no idea what Joss and I had been through. But Joss pushed away from me and said, “Yeah, let’s stop thinking about it and just take care of it.”

We rounded the corner, moving quietly past the dark windows. I wanted to think that Marco was just being Marco, that all this was just him wanting to flex his muscle, feel like a big guy. That he’d be satisfied just giving us a few bruises and sending us home humiliated. I mean, we were just kids. I was caught between believing that because it was still believable, and letting my mind run away with me on this trip where the stakes were much, much higher.

My heart rate kicked up when we got to the shop. Inside Sweet Blondies there was a single row of florescent lights on. The low light glowed on the clean, shiny counter and ice cream freezers that ran along one side of the place, showed the scatter of tables and chairs in the center, and didn’t quite reach the booths along the other side. The place looked empty.

“Where’s Dylan?” Maddy whispered, looking around with frantic jerks of her head.

“He’s right behind me.” Joss flicked a glance over her shoulder, as if she wanted to confirm what Maddy’s question had already told her. She reached around me, knocking into my invisible arm. She grabbed Maddy’s gloved hand and put it against my jacket.

Maddy jumped and jerked her hand back. “Oh that’s just freaky.”

“Okay, so we’re all in the know,” I said. “Let me go in ahead of you, move in toward the back, see if I see anything.”

“Just be careful,” Joss whispered as she pulled the unlocked door open.

I thought about touching her as I moved past, kissing her or something. But on the inside I was shaking and if any of that was on the outside, I didn’t want her to feel it. My heart was pounding hard now, my breath coming faster. It was hard to try to calm down when I needed to keep at least some of it up to keep the invisibility going.

I moved quickly to the better lit side of the shop to check behind the counter. No one crouching in the space behind it. It was built so there was plenty of room there for servers to move around each other and the path was clear. Going this way seemed a better idea than weaving through the tables, maybe accidentally bumping a chair and giving myself away. I ducked under the pass-through at the near end and paced to the far end as fast as I could while looking over the Plexiglas tops of the freezers and scanning the booths for anyone hiding. I wondered if Bella was sitting there, if we could be looking at each other and not even know it.

Something made me turn. Joss and Maddy were already slipping through the door. Joss’s eyes were fixed on a point above the door and didn’t leave it until she had the door closed behind her. She must have held the bells still when I went through the door too. I’d completely forgotten about them. So much for stealth.

Joss took Maddy by the hand and pulled her toward the counter, taking the same route I had. My choice now was to slip through the swinging door behind the counter at the far end, or to duck under another pass-through and check out the restrooms.

I chose the door, opening it just enough to squeeze my body through, keeping my back to the wall. I was in the kitchen. There was enough light coming in from the service road to make out the dark shapes of the fryers and grill next to me, the sinks and huge refrigerator on the other side of the room, and the big steel island in the center. There were three doors. One was on the back wall and led out to the service road for deliveries. On the wall to my right were two more doors. One big steel one with a pull-down handle that looked like the deep freeze. The other was just a door.

A hand wrapped around my arm. I was still holding the door open and Joss and Maddy had come up behind me. Joss pulled herself up to whisper, “We checked out the bathrooms. No one there.”

“You should have waited for me to do that.”

She shrugged. I gave her a look she couldn’t see.

“So three possibilities,” I said. “They left and took Matt somewhere else, they locked themselves in the deep freeze, or they’re behind that door.”

“Door number three it is.” Joss crossed the room and pushed the door open, but there was nothing there. “That’s w—”

An unshielded light glowed from the ceiling. There was stuff in the room, but it was all piled haphazardly and completely impossibly on the ceiling. On the other side of the light we could see three people squatting upside down, hanging like bats.

All that was only an instant, then Joss’s whisper was cut off when everything fell from the ceiling at once. One of the people came down with a neat, somersaulting twist of his body that landed him almost gracefully on his feet. The other two people landed on their feet with less finesse, going to one knee before getting up again. Around them the floor was littered with all kinds of boxes, papers, everything you’d expect to be in the combination office/storeroom of a small restaurant, only broken and trashed. Everything except a desk.

Joss was still craning her neck. I looked up. A desk hung in the air over the door along with a big executive chair, one of the chairs from the dining area, a broken desk lamp, a fax machine, and a bunch of other stuff.

“Ms. Chambers?” Maddy said from behind me.

I didn’t recognize the two guys, but I thought the woman looked familiar. Now I could see it. What the hell?

“We’re not at school, dear. I guess it’s okay for you to call me Vivian.”

“What’s our school nurse doing at a crime scene? How are you mixed up with Marco?” Joss asked. The things above us shifted when she looked at Vivian. A desk drawer swung open and papers flew out, drifted down as Joss righted the desk and shoved it closed. She lowered the items to the floor on the left side of the room rather than spend her energy continuing to hold them in the air.

“Impressive,” Vivian said. “So, this is a crime scene?”

“Kidnapping’s a crime!” Maddy snapped, pushing past both of us into the room. “Where’s my brother?”

“That one. You know he tried to push my boys into letting him go? Nice power. Of course I’ve made them pretty much immune to that kind of thing. That’s what I do, get into your head and put up walls.”

“The static,” Joss said.

“So you’ve got a mind reader? Good to know,” Vivian said, nodding.

Joss narrowed her eyes. She’d be mad at herself for slipping up like that. “And this,” she said, waving her hand at the guy who’d been the first to come down, “is the guy I told you about, the one who picked up the money from Dad.” She was looking at Maddy who gave her a confused glance. Maddy didn’t know about the money and the comment had been for me. But I was still invisible.

“Yeah, your dad’s really on the ball. Always has his payment ready, usually real discreet. Does he pay people off a lot?” the guy asked.

“This is Richie, and this is Poe,” she said, indicating a shorter, heavy-set guy with squinty eyes. “We’re here to facilitate Marco’s activities, which is about all you need to know. It seems like you and your boyfriend keep showing up and screwing with his plans, and since we knew you’d be coming, I sent Marco off about his business so I could finally meet you.”

“We’ve already met, Nurse Chambers.”

Vivian smiled. “Well, so you could meet the real me then. So maybe we could come to some kind of…understanding.”

Joss took a small step back to the threshold of the door. Taking my cue from her, I moved into the room and tugged Maddy by the arm. She didn’t move so I took her arm and pulled, trying to be insistent, but not to jerk her off-balance and give myself away. But Maddy yanked her arm away. “No, I want to know where Matt is right now.”

“Dylan. I thought you’d be here too. Good, we can get this lesson over with.”

Nice one, Maddy, I thought as I phased back into view. No sense keeping it up when I’d already been made.

Joss slid the desk between Maddy and Vivian. “Maddy, go check the freezer.”

Maddy dashed for the door and I followed, as all the stuff from the room started to fill in the space between us and them. I pushed Joss out ahead of me and closed the door. There were crashing sounds behind it as Joss pulled everything up against the door, the same way she’d blocked the door at Kat’s house when we’d escaped into the garage.

Maddy was yanking on the freezer. “It’s stuck!”

Joss hurried over. “I can’t really see through the window. I can’t figure out how to move whatever’s jamming the d—”

We heard a crash from the office, and then another. Then, faster than they should have been able to move any of that stuff, Vivian and her friends were coming through the door and Vivian closed it behind them. I wondered if one of them had abilities like Joss’s. Maybe they’d just pushed all that stuff aside.

I was still thinking about it when Poe grabbed me. It was like being on a carnival ride, the unfamiliar force as he swung me up and flung me into space. I hit the huge prep table island hard, sliding across it in a blink. I think it’s only because I cringed and tried to tuck into myself that I went down off the other end and crashed onto the floor instead of continuing through the wall.

Poe didn’t have telekinesis. He was like Marco. Maybe he was so strong he just swiped all that stuff to the side to clear the door.

It was weird that my brain was still working on that problem as I curled onto my side on the floor. Maybe I was getting to be more like Joss, always thinking. I could see her through the legs of the table. She grabbed Maddy, putting the other girl behind her as she started across the room toward me. Maybe she was actually considering retreat?

I shook my head and tried to get a deep breath. Things seemed to be moving slowly. I needed to get up off the floor.

The world titled. Slid. It was one, big, massive roll, like the way they describe an earthquake. The legs of the table slammed into my gut, knocking the wind out of me again. Or…I guess it was that I slammed into the table. There were groaning noises, like the noises you hear in the movies, straining metal right before something collapses. Things were clattering on the opposite wall as everything loose in the room was flying in that direction. Joss was holding onto one of the table supports with one hand, her other hand holding Maddy’s. They both seemed to be hanging perfectly sideways, parallel to the floor, with Maddy’s feet not too far from the freezer door. Then Maddy dropped from Joss’s grip and landed on it.

I saw Vivian and her two goons watching us, smirking in satisfaction, standing upright, their feet planted firmly on the wall.

My perspective shifted like a tear in my head. That wall was now the floor.

Vivian threw a nod at Poe and he started toward Maddy. Joss swung herself down and landed between them. She didn’t waste any time throwing punches. It was like watching her fight Marco at Salvation the other night, only this guy was better, more practiced.

Maddy was kneeling on the freezer door, looking in the windows with her hands cupped around her eyes. “I can see him! He’s in there! Hang on, Matt, we’re gonna get you out!”

The distraction cost Joss. Poe got one in under her guard and into her gut that sent her flying backward into Maddy. I had gone invisible again and had been climbing down the table to get to her. Now I swung down on Poe, knocking him off balance.

When we both got our feet again, I let him have it. He struck out at where I should have been, but I dodged out of his reach. I grinned as I continued to strike and duck out of the way. Joss was right. This is a lot better than getting hit. And as long as I was invisible I had to keep from getting hit because if Joss couldn’t see me then she couldn’t deflect his blows from me the way she had when I’d fought Marco.

I couldn’t help trying to keep an eye on the girls to make sure the other two, who were just watching Poe swing at me, didn’t go for them. Joss kept moving around like she was trying to get the right angle of vision through the window so she could use her Talent to work the handle on the door from the inside.

“Go for the hinges!” I shouted at her. It cost me. Poe used my voice to find my face and shot a glancing blow at my jaw.

Not glancing enough. It whipped my head sideways and my body followed, phasing back into view. Blood welled in my mouth as I moved through space and space itself somehow changed, making me nauseous and dizzy. A moment ago I had been staggering to catch my balance with my feet on the wall. Then I couldn’t keep my feet under me anymore. I was freefalling.

I landed hard on my back. Broken dishes and kitchen implements slid down the wall to pile up against my right arm. My feet were near the tiled floor but I was lying on my back when Poe landed on me with a grunt. I winked out, but he was on me, knew just where I was. He grabbed onto my jacket, held on with his left hand, and started whaling on me with his right.

I stayed invisible, trying to move around as much as I could to avoid his punches, but it was hard to move much. He was a heavy guy and I was pinned under him. My arms were free but it was all I could do to try to deflect him from punching right through me.

I heard a hollow, metallic pounding to the left. Poe and I both looked. Vivian and Richie were running hand-in-hand across the metal cabinet doors that fronted the fryers and grill.

Poe slammed into me again, a full body slam that drove all the air from my lungs. Joss and Maddy had lost their hold on the freezer door and slid down the wall into him. Joss didn’t waste any time going to work on the guy. Maddy crawled out of the way, up onto the front of the nearest fryer. Joss pulled Poe up enough for me to get out from under him. I tried to hold onto him, to hold him still for her, but he flung me off. My head smacked against the floor tiles next to us.

I saw Richie leap from the front of the grill, over the swinging door to the dining area. He landed, impossibly, on his feet on the adjacent wall.

A moment later, everything shifted again, sending us tumbling and sliding along the equipment toward him, grasping for hand-holds.

“Wherever their feet touch, that’s ‘down’!” Joss shouted. “They’re manipulating gravity!”

Somehow that made everything make sense. My stomach settled a notch.

Maddy was below me, her fingers dug into the crevice between the grill and the fryer. Her feet weren’t too far from what was now the floor, but she didn’t let go. Poe let go of his handhold, kicking her hard in the head just before gravity took him down. He landed on his feet, but when Maddy lost her grip she flailed, trying to stop her slide, and fell through the swinging door.

The room abruptly tilted back to floor-normal. I saw Poe, Richie, and Vivian make the shift neatly as it happened, landing on their feet as I felt myself falling again. Something hit the floor on the other side of the room and I whirled toward the sound. Joss was near the center of the room now, facing the freezer. The second hinge bolt was sliding out of place.

Poe almost ran through me as he passed and I was too taken by surprise to grab him. I followed, but not fast enough. I called out to Joss. Right before Poe’s fist would have plunged into her kidney, she sidestepped, grabbed his arm and used his momentum to throw him forward.

“I’ve got this!” she called. “Get Matt!”

I did what she asked, not pausing but running past them into the wall. I started trying to force the door open, feeling the room start to tilt again, feeling myself being pulled backward. I yanked desperately on the door and it gave. Everything righted and I felt like my feet were firmly on the floor again.

Now I could see Matt pushing from the other side. He squeezed into the space.

“Maddy’s out in the front room alone,” I told him as he wedged himself through. “I don’t know if she’s okay. You need to get away from these guys and get to her. Out the back door and around the building. Do it!”

Richie was barreling toward us. Matt cleared the door and we both stepped out of the way. Richie crashed against it, slamming it shut again. Then, in a fluid movement, he squatted, back-flipped, and landed on his feet on the back wall of the kitchen.

The room shifted and we were all tumbling toward the back wall.

“Don’t think!” I yelled at Matt as the drawers in the kitchen island opened and it rained utensils. “Just get to the door!”

Matt tried to boost himself up onto the front of the huge refrigerator, but Vivian was already standing on it. She kicked him in the face and he fell back. I grabbed her boot and yanked hard, jerking her off her feet. “Go!” I yelled at Matt.

He scrambled back up as I pulled Vivian toward me. She squirmed, kicked, and swore, and Richie jumped me. I had gone visible to get Matt and forgot to phase out again. I rectified that, at least, as I lost my grip on Vivian’s ankle and the room tilted again.

As I tried to find my balance I looked around for Joss. I couldn’t see her. She and Poe must have been dumped out into the other room. I needed to get out there.

Richie kicked me forward. I slammed into the fridge, bashing my knees before my feet went out from under me and I sprawled half on top it. Then the room tilted back toward the deep freeze. As I fell backward, I saw Vivian above me, her body curled and braced in the big sink. Matt was on the side of it, clinging to some exposed pipes and holding on for dear life.

My back hit bottom again and knocked the wind out of me with a grunt. Richie groped around and found my jacket, started pulling me up. Above us, Matt stretched hard, got hold of the doorknob and popped the door open. Richie and I fell over onto the floor as Matt scrambled out of the building and the door slammed closed behind him. I swung wildly at Richie, landing a hard punch to his face. His hands fell away from me and I bolted through the swinging door into the front room.

Poe had Joss by the front of her jacket. He slammed her back into the ice cream freezer, and her head whipped back with the force of it, slammed into the Plexiglas. He raised his fist and brought it down hard, but she was able to shift out of the way. His hand burst through the glass beside her head. He jerked it out and raised it to try again.

I rushed him, plowing my shoulder into his ribs and taking us both into the scatter of tables and chairs in the center of the room, but we hardly had time to get untangled from the furniture before the room shifted. Everything slid, tables, chairs, the dishes on the shelves behind the counter, and us. The noise seemed tremendous. Most of it, including me, piled into the alcove at the back of the shop that led to the bathrooms.

Joss was clinging to the frame of the broken freezer she’d been pinned to and Poe was hanging onto one of the booths as I was trying to claw my way up from the tangle of tables and chairs. Blood ran into my eye and I raked my sleeve across my forehead. Richie’s foot crunched above me, shoving a chair leg hard against my ribs. I reached up for him, but couldn’t quite reach. He yelled out “Dice!” as he reached the other side of the room.

I didn’t know what it meant, but I saw Poe lever himself up onto one of the booths and wedge himself between two seats, under a table. Joss saw it too. She climbed around the freezer, getting as much of her body within its frame as she could. “Hold on to something!” she called out.

Richie vaulted into the corner booth. As I finally heaved myself to the top of the pile and could see around the corner, he leapt from wall to ceiling. As soon as the room’s gravity followed his movement, he jumped to the other wall. I was bashed around in a circle—like dice in a cup. It was all I could do just to try to catch myself and stay clear of as much of the furniture as I could, let alone try to find some way to brace myself. The furniture stayed in the alcove because Richie never touched the front wall of the store that would dump it out.

A table that would have hit me in the face stopped, flew away. Joss was hurling tables and chairs in Richie’s direction. He must have been dodging them as he ran around the walls.

“Joss!” I yelled, “pitch it through the window!”

The table whizzed away, flying across the length of the dining area, smashing through the huge front window with a horrendous crash of shattering glass.

Everything just kind of stopped.

I tumbled down the pile of tables and chairs, unable to try to climb down. My legs felt weak and shaky when my feet hit the ground, and I hoped they were going to stay under me. Everything hurt.

“Well,” Richie said, jumping down from the table, “I guess you figured that one out.”

“It only works in a closed system?” Joss asked.

“Whenever a door opened, the floor was the floor again. That’s why he had to slam the freezer door shut.” I said. “But there’s no shutting that window.”

“No, there’s not. Your boyfriend’s just so smart,” Vivian said from the door to the kitchen. Poe moved around us to go to her side. Richie was following suit. “So we’re done here.”

“Just like that?” Joss asked.

“Sure. What did you think it was, fight to the death?”

“What was the point?”

“Maybe we just wanted to see what you could do. It was almost impressive. I’d like to say that the Syndicate has a place for people like you but…I just don’t think you’d fit in.”

“The Syndicate?”

“I think we’ll take that as a compliment,” I drawled. I knew stuff about Marco’s family background that Joss didn’t, had a better sense of what his ambitions were. And even though I didn’t know, this didn’t really surprise me. Except for maybe the fact that they would bother.

“Whatever,” Vivian sneered back at me.

“So no, really,” Joss said, “that’s it? You’re not going to warn us off your turf or some lame shit like that? Tell us to leave Marco alone?”

“I’m not going to tell you anything, dear.” She jerked her head and her two goons went into the kitchen ahead of her. Poe held the door, staying right by her side. She turned back to us. “Well, except maybe that you might want to check in on your dad’s store on your way home. You know, do a security sweep. Make sure all’s well.”