Candy Shop War (25 page)

The dwarf sprang, streaking toward Trevor as if he had been shot from a cannon, slamming into him with stunning force. Searing pain erupted in Trevor’s ribs. The teleidoscope flew out of Trevor’s hand, as did the Shock Bits, and he crashed to the ground with the dwarf’s strong arms wrapped around his torso.

The teleidoscope rolled forward across the carpeting. Standing in the doorway, Nate picked it up. “Run!” Trevor gasped.

Nate shoved a handful of Shock Bits into his mouth, and a glob of orange jelly splashed into him, accompanied by a flash. “That’s all I have!” Nate cried.

“Run!” Trevor repeated, clinging to the dwarf, trying to give Nate a chance.

Nate disappeared from the doorway. Trevor heard his feet thumping down the stairs. The feisty dwarf wrenched himself free and chased after him. The big man shambled over and collapsed onto Trevor, blanketing him with mushy loose skin. The man seized Trevor’s wrists, pinning them to the ground at either side of his head.

“Your luck just ran out,” the big man said. His breath reminded Trevor of a rotten jack-o-lantern his family had once kept on the porch too long.

Trevor bucked and struggled but, even deflated, the big man was too strong. Orange liquid began to slither over Trevor, warm and syrupy. The liquid streamed up the big man’s arms and flowed into his gaping mouth. Trevor closed his eyes.

“Trevor, Trevor, Trevor,” said a familiar, grandmotherly voice tinged with regret. “I could not be more disappointed.” Trevor opened his eyes. Mrs. White stood above him wearing a lavender robe with lace embellishing the neck. She shook her head sadly. “I had so hoped to spare you from the horrors of my dark side.”

Chapter Twelve

Costly Clues

Nate knew that without any more Shock Bits, he would get caught along with Trevor. Which would mean the teleidoscope would remain in the hands of Mrs. White and her sideshow henchmen. But if he managed to get away with the teleidoscope, he might be able to enlist help from Mr. Stott in defeating Mrs. White. Maybe they could even use the teleidoscope as leverage to bargain for Trevor’s release.

Mind racing, Nate dashed down the stairs. In his peripheral vision, he had seen the blond dwarf streak across the room. Like the big man full of jelly, the little man had some sort of magical power. Nate debated whether he should try to get out through the mirror, through a door, or through a window. He could recall no windows in the workroom, just as he had seen no windows in the apartment. Wasn’t there a back door someplace?

In answer to his question, he saw the back door at the bottom of the staircase, opposite the door to the workroom. Skipping the last five steps, Nate landed heavily, grabbed the knob, and found it locked. The door had a deadbolt that he could release, but the knob had a keyhole. He rammed the door with his shoulder but it felt sturdy, and he heard footfalls at the top of the stairs, so Nate switched tactics and charged through the door into the dark workroom. Running blindly with his free hand extended, he glanced off tables and stumbled over stools.

In the midst of his panic, he tried to strategize. Mr. Stott had warned them to exit through the mirror. The old magician had expressed concern about the spells that guarded the lair. But wasn’t that just if they were trying to be stealthy? Would those spells actually harm him on his way out, or simply raise an alarm? His understanding was that the spells were in place mainly to prevent people from entering.

Could the dwarf use Mirror Mints? What about the big guy? Where was the dude with the huge birthmark? Was he a roommate as well? Nate realized that if he could just get through the mirror, even if somebody chased him, he could run as far as he wanted and get lost in the darkness. Then he could eventually exit through some random mirror anywhere in town. If he escaped the store through a window or a door, he might get zapped by some spell, and the dwarf might follow him out onto the street. He had seen the dwarf fly at Trevor only out of the corner of his eye, but had glimpsed enough to know that the little guy had some sort of ability to attack at great speed.

The flood of thoughts and questions was interrupted when Nate heard the door open behind him. Fluorescent lights flickered on overhead. Focused on reaching the mirror, Nate burst through the batwing doors and vaulted the counter, holding the teleidosope high as he tumbled to the floor on the far side.

Regaining his feet, Nate raced toward his destination. He fumbled in his pocket to find a Mirror Mint. Sliding to his knees at the table with the mirror underneath, Nate finally glanced back. He saw the dwarf perched atop the counter, holding a chair that he must have brought from the back room, his body crouched and contorted. Shimmering light gathered around him.

Worried that the dwarf was about to take flight, Nate fell flat. A fraction of a second later, the dwarf uncoiled in a ferocious motion, hurling the chair with superhuman force. The chair flew too quickly to be anything but a blur, but Nate felt it whoosh past above him, and heard it collide violently with the table. The table flipped end over end, and the chair sailed though one of the plate-glass windows facing Main Street. As the window disintegrated, there came a tremendous blast of sound, like the horn of an ocean liner, accompanied by a fiery surge of light and heat.

The way the table had landed, Nate could see that the mirror on the underside had shattered. The gaping window through which the chair had passed was his next best option. Nate sprinted in a crouch, trading the Mirror Mint in his hand for a Moon Rock. He leaped through the huge square hole where the window had been, broken glass clinking and crunching underfoot.

Slipping the Moon Rock into his mouth, gripping the teleidoscope tightly, Nate jumped away from the candy shop with all of his might. His feet had hardly left the sidewalk when a powerful force slammed into him from behind, carrying him across the street low and fast, two bodies spiraling through the air until the dwarf hit the ground first and they rolled to a stop on the narrow front lawn of an antique store.

Thrashing to escape the dwarf’s tenacious embrace, Nate heard a car screech to a halt nearby, and headlights suddenly glared at him. He heard a car door slam, and the dwarf released him. Having somehow maintained the teleidoscope in his grasp, Nate jumped, gliding considerably higher than the eaves of the antique store roof before curving back down to land on the shingles. Just before he landed, he heard a gunshot.

Head down, Nate took a low hop to the far side of the roof. Adding to the momentum of the gentle hop, he leaped hard, ascending over the small parking lot behind the antique store and rustling through leaves and twigs before grasping a half-glimpsed limb. Pulling on the limb and letting go, he drifted to a higher branch. Pushing off, he turned and wrapped his arms around the trunk of the tall tree. Not wanting to gain more altitude, Nate kicked off the trunk, floating sideways through a gap in the branches, arcing down and alighting on the weedy back lawn of a one-story home. His next jump put him on the roof of the house, and the next deposited him on the sidewalk out front.

He was now on Greenway, not far from the street where Mr. Stott lived. After the disaster at the candy shop, he wanted to deliver the teleidoscope immediately to the old magician. Nate cleared the street with a single spring, then glided up to a roof. Most of the houses in this neighborhood were one-story, and the yards were narrow, so Nate was able to jump from rooftop to rooftop most of the way to 1512 Limerick Court.

From the roof of a home neighboring Mr. Stott’s, Nate leapt to the roof of the free-standing garage, then into the front yard, landing beside a turtle fashioned out of wire. All of the windows were dark. Nate spat out the Moon Rock and rushed over to the window that had been lit the first time they had visited Mr. Stott. He beat on the glass. A moment later a light came on and the blinds parted, revealing a pair of eyes. Nate held up the teleidoscope.

The blinds snapped back together, and Nate met Mr. Stott at the front door. Today his pajamas were plaid with a matching nightcap. “You got it?” he asked in wonder, stepping aside to let Nate enter.

“She caught Trevor,” Nate said, coming inside.

“Oh, no,” Mr. Stott said.

“I barely escaped,” Nate said, his voice catching. “I was out of Shock Bits. I had to either run or get caught too.” Tears stung his eyes. He clenched his jaw.

“You did the right thing,” Mr. Stott said.

“Will he . . . be okay?” Nate asked.

“He was no longer fighting?”

“No, he was done.”

Mr. Stott nodded. “Anything can happen during a fight, but if Belinda subdued him, she won’t kill him. Losing the teleidoscope is a major blow; she’ll want to use Trevor as a bargaining chip.”

“Can we trade the teleidoscope for Trevor?”

Mr. Stott cocked his head slightly. “Without the base, it would do her little good. If she suspects I have the base, she may want more than the teleidoscope. But first things first. Shall we see if it actually reveals a clue?”

Nate gave a nod.

Mr. Stott led the way to his bedroom, crossed to the little marble platform beside his bed, and placed the teleidoscope in the mounting. It fit perfectly. He bent over and began turning a wheel on the teleidoscope. Nate waited, hoping the sacrifice had not been wasted.

“Mrs. White also had a book written by Hanaver Mills that she got from the museum,” Nate said. “We had it, but we lost it in the fight.”

“You brought the most important item,” Mr. Stott said.

Mr. Stott quit peering through the teleidoscope for a moment and turned on the rest of the lights in the room, then returned to his task, slowly fingering the wheel, one eye closed. Nate folded his arms. He paced. He thought about Trevor, wondering whether Mrs. White was hurting him.

Mr. Stott backed away from the teleidoscope. “Without touching a thing, tell me if you see words.”

Nate crouched and gazed into the eyepiece. The message was faint, written in sparse gold flecks mingling with the other colors, the letters warped but unmistakable:

HOLDS

THE

KEY

“Holds the key?” Nate said. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I assume there’s more,” Mr. Stott said. Nate moved out of the way, and Mr. Stott resumed his position. He began turning the wheel backwards in such small increments that the motion reminded Nate of the minute hand on a clock. Patiently Mr. Stott nudged the wheel, studied the image for several seconds, and then nudged the wheel again.

“Aha!” he finally exclaimed, stepping aside. “What do you see now?”

It took Nate a moment to recognize the words, faintly inscribed in blue specks against a brilliant background of tie-dyed sunbursts, the letters highly stylized:

HOUSE

OF

HAAG

“House of Haag?” Nate said.

“Tougher to spot that one,” Mr. Stott chuckled. “Not an endeavor for the color-blind. House of Haag holds the key.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I need to research the Haag family,” Mr. Stott said. “I know there are numerous Haags here in town. The family has been well-represented in Colson for many years, no doubt dating back to the days of Hanaver Mills. This is a major breakthrough. The key to accessing the treasure must be a Haag family heirloom. They probably don’t even know what it does.” Mr. Stott hunched over the teleidoscope and began to delicately turn the wheel again.

“You think there’s more?” Nate asked.

“If there are two messages, there may be ten,” Mr. Stott said. “We must be thorough.”

Nate sat on the edge of Mr. Stott’s mattress, not really expecting Mr. Stott to find anything else. “Mrs. White has a dwarf who can jump super far and throw things really hard,” he said. “He tackled me out in front of the candy shop and practically broke my back. We landed on the other side of the street. Then somebody showed up in a car, and the dwarf let me go. I heard a gunshot.”

“Did you see who was in the car?” Mr. Stott asked, his voice remote as he concentrated on the image in the teleidoscope.

“No, it was dark and I was scared of getting my head blown off. I just ran, well, glided, to your house.”

“Probably wise. Some rival of Belinda’s must have been keeping an eye on the shop, awaiting an opportunity. I wonder who else is in town.”