Candy Shop War (12 page)

Pigeon furrowed his brow. The man changed his grip and swung Summer around, holding her out in front of him like a shield. “Shock me, shock him,” Summer said.

Pigeon hesitated. “Come on,” Summer insisted. He reached out a hand toward her, and the man tossed her aside and backed away. Pigeon charged him, arms outstretched, and Summer slapped her own handful of Shock Bits into her mouth. The bits of candy buzzed on her tongue and made her teeth tingle. The man twisted away from Pigeon and pulled a miniature crossbow out of his coat pocket, leveling it at him.

“That’s close enough,” the man ordered. Pigeon froze. After having dodged Pigeon, the man was facing mostly away from Summer.

“A crossbow?” Pigeon asked.

“I left my battle-ax in my other jeans,” the man said.

Summer dove. The man must have caught the motion out of the edge of his vision, because he swiveled toward her, but her hand grazed his shoe before he could do anything. A dazzling flash accompanied the sound of a gigantic bug zapper claiming a victim, and the man was hurled several yards down the sidewalk. His crossbow clattered into the street. Tendrils of smoke curled from Summer’s mouth. The Shock Bits had entirely dissolved, leaving behind a charred, metallic aftertaste.

Pigeon rushed the sprawling man. As the man sat up, Pigeon swatted him on the side of the head. A brilliant flash accompanied by an electric crackle sent the stunned man tumbling into the street.

“Come on,” Summer urged. She and Pigeon ran off down Main, turning down the side street beyond the museum. Looking back before rounding the corner, Summer no longer saw the stranger in the overcoat lying in the street.

*****

Timepiece or book? Although Nate guessed that the book was more important, he knew the pocket watch would be much easier to carry, and resolved it would be better to get one item than neither. Picking up the watch, he ran to the edge of the shelf.

The slack on his string was almost gone as Trevor reeled it in, and there was no way to tell him to pause, so Nate held the pocket watch over his head and dropped down through the gap between the shelf and the cabinet door, bypassing the second shelf and landing on the first. Not only was the impact painless—he felt nothing. Despite his best efforts to hold the timepiece high, Nate heard a bad sound when he landed, and saw that the glass covering the face of the watch had cracked.

Holding the timepiece under one arm and the plastic bottle under the other, Nate flung himself through the empty space where the glass had been, hugging his possessions tightly as the string pulled him swiftly back along the route he had taken. His path had wound around several tables and displays, so the ride was not smooth. Since he felt no pain, Nate’s only concern was protecting the pocket watch from further damage as he bumped around corners.

As the string dragged him, Nate managed to contort himself as needed to avoid getting hung up on anything. He promptly reached the base of the door and began to rise. He clung to the watch and the bottle as he reached the window above the door and Trevor tugged him through. Trevor kept his hands high, so instead of crashing to the floor, Nate swung wildly. A moment later Trevor set him down carefully.

From the floor, still clasping the timepiece in his unfeeling plastic arms, Nate watched as Trevor crouched down over his actual body and used his fingertips to push apart the eyelids of one eye. When Trevor blew sharply, Nate felt the wind on his eyeball. The sensation made him blink several times. When his eyelids stopped fluttering, Nate found that he was back in his own body.

“What’s going on out there?” Nate whispered, patting his face experimentally, grateful to have nerves again.

“I haven’t looked,” Trevor said. “Can’t be good.”

Nate picked up the pocket watch, the plastic bottle, and the doll. The timepiece seemed so small relative to having carried it as a diminutive plastic surgeon. He shoved the doll into a pocket. Trevor took the watch and the bottle. “Mrs. White said none of the second-story windows had alarms on them, right?” Nate asked.

“Right,” Trevor confirmed. “You thinking we might not want to go out the front?”

Nate pointed to a window at the end of the hall. “That should let us out over the alley,” he said.

They dashed down the hall. Trevor unlocked and opened the window. There was no roof outside—just a straight drop to the alley and a view of the post office roof across the way. The window had a screen. Trevor shoved it, and the screen tumbled to the alley below.

Nate and Trevor each put a Moon Rock in their mouths. The alley remained quiet. They waited for a moment to see if the rattle of the screen would summon anyone. Nobody approached. “Think there’s anybody out there?” Nate asked.

“They might be chasing the others,” Trevor said.

“I guess we jump over to the post office roof,” Nate said, although no sane person would have tried it without a Moon Rock.

Nodding, Trevor climbed out the window and pushed off, floating lazily over to the post office roof. Nate followed him, moving in a trajectory that lifted him comfortably over the clogged gutters and onto the relatively flat roof. Staying low and stepping gingerly, they crossed to the far side of the roof. They found a parking area on the far side of the post office that continued around to the back. The next building over was two stories high. Even with the Moon Rocks, it did not look like they could make the jump to that roof.

Trevor pointed to the back of the post office. They drifted over and looked down into a parking lot with several post office trucks. Nodding at each other, Nate and Trevor stepped off the roof, landing in an empty parking space with the force of a small hop.

“One left,” Trevor said, holding up his final Moon Rock. “Summer has the rest. Do we spit and run?”

“Leave it in,” Nate said. Behind the post office parking lot ran a chain-link fence that served as the rear boundary for several houses on a residential street. Nate motioned toward the fence. “Let’s bounce into that neighborhood.”

They sprang toward the fence, gliding high. Two more bounds and they would be over it and into the backyard. A bright beam from behind suddenly spotlighted them. “Now, there’s something you don’t see every day,” said a gruff voice.

Nate and Trevor touched down, leaping again. Nate glanced over his shoulder. A man in an overcoat was holding a long black flashlight with a blinding beam. Tall and bulky, he could certainly be the same man who had watched them from the front of the bar. The flashlight beam wobbled and Nate heard footfalls as the man sprinted after them.

“You go left, I’ll go right,” Nate said as they neared the pavement only a few yards shy of the fence. When they touched down, Trevor took off diagonally to the left. Nate veered right. Both of them easily cleared the fence. The flashlight stayed on Nate.

“You can go high but you’re not very fast,” the man threatened. Nate heard the fence rattle as the man reached it, heard the man crunch onto the wood chips on the far side.

The backyard was fairly large, with a swimming pool shaped like a peanut. Nate was about to land on the lawn. He could hear the man in the overcoat gaining, heavy footfalls on the grass. The house was too far away for Nate to vault onto the roof in a single leap. But there was a shed on the far side of the pool that might be reachable, and the water would serve as an obstacle for his pursuer.

When Nate landed, he turned and sprang toward the shed. As he soared over the pool, a light on the back of the house switched on, flooding the yard with white radiance. Nate realized he did not have quite enough distance to reach the shed—instead he was going to land on the patio between the shed and the pool. At least he would comfortably clear the water.

The man was sprinting around the pool, but Nate could tell he would land on the patio with enough time to jump again. Nate thought he could make it up to the roof of the house with his next leap.

The man slowed as he stooped to grab something. Nate hit the patio and bounded toward the house with everything he had. At the crest of his jump, Nate judged that he was going to barely clear the gutter. His next leap would be a light skip to the top of the roof.

Nate could hear the man running directly beneath him. As he was about to land a few feet beyond the edge of the roof, something whacked into his side and thrust him brusquely down to the lawn. It took Nate a moment to realize that the man had swatted him out of the air using a long pool skimmer.

The man in the overcoat seized Nate by the front of his shirt before he could try to escape, and effortlessly lifted him into the air. “You don’t weigh any more than a piñata,” the man said.

“Let me go,” Nate said.

“Not until you answer some questions,” the man said. “What are you sucking on?”

“The people who live here are already calling the cops,” Nate said, nodding toward the house.

“That was a motion-activated light,” the man assured him. “The people living here are sound asleep.”

“I’ll scream,” Nate warned.

The man instantly clapped a hard hand over his mouth and nose. The large palm smelled faintly of cologne. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. Let’s try to keep this friendly.”

Nate gave a curt nod. The man removed his hand. “Tell me how you and your pal manage to defy gravity,” the man demanded.

The man was holding Nate high, so he had a good view of Trevor dashing toward them across the lawn. His friend obviously no longer had a Moon Rock in his mouth. “Well, if you really want to know,” Nate said, talking loudly to cover the sound of Trevor’s approach, “I’m one of the Lost Boys, and Peter Pan wanted us to get in some practice—”

At the last instant, the man sensed Trevor approaching and turned, but he was too late. Trevor extended a hand and touched the man on the chest, and with a burst of light the man was flung across the lawn.

Nate suffered the electric jolt as well, muscles clenching involuntarily, but while the man went cartwheeling across the lawn, Nate took off like a rocket. Recovering from the painful shock, Nate watched in horror as he rose higher and higher, body lazily rotating, first facing the ground, then the stars, then the ground, then the stars. Swinging his arms and twisting, Nate managed to minimize the rotation. Looking down on the post office, then on Main Street, he felt like a slow-motion version of a football during a kickoff. As he curved back toward the earth, Nate realized he was going to land on the roof of a building across the street from the post office. Even though the flight was much slower than it would normally have been, by the time the roof drew near, he had picked up alarming speed.

Limbs flailing, Nate failed to adjust his position for
the impending impact, and he flopped jarringly against the shingles, bouncing high and twirling wildly. He caromed against the roof a second time and, after a disorienting spin through space, finally crashed down into the bushes behind the building.

Spitting out the Moon Rock, Nate sat up, dizzy and relieved to be alive. Although jostled and sore, he felt no sharp pain—no bones seemed to be broken. He considered going back to make sure Trevor was all right, but discarded the idea. Trevor had shocked the man and then surely had gotten away. If Nate went back, he would just be giving the tenacious stranger in the overcoat another opportunity to catch him.

Nate got unsteadily to his feet. Keeping his Shock Bits handy, he hurried out the back of the parking lot, avoiding Main Street, and started making his way home.

Chapter Six

Trick Candy

Only a tiny chip of his last Moon Rock was left, and Trevor flicked it around his mouth with his tongue. The candy was now so fragile that biting it was very tempting.

Trevor crouched atop the Sweet Tooth Ice Cream and Candy Shoppe. After shocking the man in the overcoat and sending poor Nate rocketing off into the sky, Trevor had waited to use his final Moon Rock. He had hopped the fence to the front of the house and turned down a couple of streets, winding deeper into the quiet neighborhood and farther from Main. Finding a bushy hedge with a hollow underneath, Trevor got down on his belly, wormed into the darkness, and waited.

It had not been long before the man in the overcoat came running by. He jogged halfway down the street and then doubled back, scanning the surrounding yards and rooftops, occasionally turning on his powerful flashlight to brighten a dim recess. The man had not looked closely at the hedge.