Orphan of Mythcorp (19 page)

“
Not bad. How’d you get painkillers
into the school?”

“
I contacted our congressman about
getting some drugs to treat your friend Gareth. Congressman Gerace
then called Senator Montaigne, who approved and set it all up with
a pharmacy.”

“
What happened to Gareth?”

Nurse Little pulled back a curtain, revealing
the sleeping Gareth in a cot. His normally chalky complexion was
colored by a rainbow of bruises. His left peeper was so screwed up
that I doubted he’d be able to open it anytime soon. “What
happened?”

“
Apparently Manny Kant and Gareth here
had some kind of argument. The day after they brought him to me,
Kant was found by Mr. Pangborn near the bleachers in the gym, badly
beaten. It’s all so sad. Violence just begets violence, my mother
always says.”

‘
I’ll bet you my left arm Ash had
something to do with that,’ Marie said, looking at Gareth with
sympathetic dead peepers. ‘Sure it was Ash,’ Castor agreed. ‘But
the zombie did the actual deed.’

So
,
morphine doesn’t keep the spooks away, only
doojee, and only barely. Curious.

Miss Little had gone back to her desk and was
now drawing.

“
What are you drawing?”

“
Oh, it’s something for my friend. What
do you think?” She held up the sheet of paper and smiled at me. “I
know I’m no Da Vinci, but I think it catches his self-confidence,
his air of . . . intelligence? What do you think? Don’t leave me
hanging.”

I sat up on my elbows and gawked. In the
pencil drawing a short white-haired boy was standing in front of
the White House, holding up what I assumed to be a framed Degree.
“Is that . . . Ash?”

“
Oh good, you can tell it’s him,” she
turned back to her desk to finish it. “I wasn’t sure if I got the
eyes right.”

“
Your friend is Ash?”

Speaking of the devil, Ash walked into the
station, having knocked on the door before entering. Galahad was in
the waiting room beyond, holding something half-concealed behind
Ash’s smidge form.

“
Hello Kimmy,” Ash said to Miss Little.
“How are you?”

They traded dum-dum pleasantries while I lay
banged up and shackled to a cot. At last Ash honored me with his
attention. “I heard our friend Mister Dodds paid you a visit. Mind
if I see the results of that visit?”

We stared each other down for a few ticks. I
nodded at the nurse. She pulled the sheet off, revealing my network
of wounds. I braved a peep down; snaky welts all wrapped in red.
There was hardly a patch of skin free from some degree of
nastiness. I imagined my back looked much the same, just a day or
two more vintage.

Ash whistled. “Cover him up, please,
Kimmy.”

His ‘friend’ obeyed. So, I was
officially in the
Twilight
Zone
, only it was called Philicity High.

Ash paced, tapping his chin with his right
index finger. “I wonder if you would help me with a small project
I’m working on.”

“
Help you? In case it’s escaped your
wondrous attention, Malfoy,” I snapped, “I am shackled to a cot and
can barely move without rubbing two wounds together.”

He nodded, turned to his friend. “Do you
think you could supply him with some painkillers so he can help
us?” He was gazing into Nurse Little’s peepers, but I wasn’t sure
if he was pulling a Mesmer. She nodded and removed a bottle of
pills from a locked drawer. She set the bottle—which sported a red
warning label—on the metal bedside stand.

“
No more than one pill every six
hours,” she spoke slowly, as if to a dum-dum. “I mean
it.”

Ash clapped once while I tried not to cry
tears of joy for the bottle of drugs he’d just procured for me.
“Excellent,” he said. Nurse Little handed him her drawing, her
peepers averting shyly. “Kimmy,” he said, “this is dynamite. A real
work of art. Thank you.”

She smiled and went to check on Gareth.
“Now,” Ash leaned in close, pouring his peepers into mine, “you’re
tight with Damien Frigg and his gang, right?” He posed it as a
question, but you could tell he knew the answer. Ash was usually
playing at something, and by the arrangement of his facial
features, this time was no exception.

“
Am I
tight
with him?” Where was he picking up this
slang? “I know the guy, a little. What’s it to you?”

Ash circled my cot. I was sure it was just to
prove how free he was and what a sucker I was. “Tomorrow, after
school, there’s going to be a teacher-parent conference.” Ash
stopped trying to make me dizzy, and settled on a spot near the
foot of my bed. “There’s going to be some special individuals at
this conference, individuals that I need to speak with. But . .
.”

“
There’s always a butt,” I
cracked.

Ash gave me a withering glare. “But, the
Iconocops have decided that they need to chaperon this conference,
even though they’re banishing us to Camelot for the evening.”

I shrugged. “So, have your boy Sanson
distract them. Aren’t you ‘tight’ with him?”

He peeped down at the incredibly presumptuous
drawing of himself. “Sanson has been a megabomb help. But for this
I need brute force.”

I’d have suggested using his boys Lamorak,
Gawaine and Agravaine, the biggest Morai, but the Morai have
fragile bodies. I was one to speak. “So, you want to use Damien and
his gang to hold down the Iconocops long enough for you to
Mesmerize them, yes?”

Ash shrugged. “It’s that or we let those
I-cops get away with beating on you.”

I sat up. My shackles jangled. “Don’t pretend
this is some kind of retribution for me.” I sighed. Whatever his
reasons, I too wanted to see Wes pay.

“
Fine,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure
there are only three dudes in Damien’s gang.”

“
That’s bully,” Ash declared,
depositing the drawing in his pack. “There will be only one I-cop
supervising the conference. Thank you.” He smiled and made for the
door. “Oh, and don’t worry about those cuffs, I’ll speak with
Kimmy. She’ll make Mentkowski take them off for you.”

“
Hey,” I called to him as he was
disappearing through the door. “Why didn’t you just Mesmerize
Damien and his boys? And don’t even try denying you pull that crap
on people.”

Looking over his narrow shoulder at me, Ash
said, “Actually, I did try. Damien and his boys have proven immune
to my gifts. I think it has something to do with all the drugs they
take.”

‘
Why would he confess that?’ Castor
wondered. ‘It gives you a weapon against his ability. What a
dumbass mistake. He was going so strong, too. Damn. Well,’ he
smirked at me with that crooked scarred face, ‘probably doesn’t
matter. An astounding moron like yourself won’t be able to exploit
his little faux-paux anyhow. Isn’t that right, moron?’

“
Piss off, vapor-dick.”

Fifteen minutes later Kimmy came through and
the Iconocop Mentkowski unshackled me. Without a word he walked
out. A few ticks later Galahad came in. He’d recovered my father’s
cane. “Mister Dodds did not want to give it back,” Galahad
explained. “He kept going on about how he recognized it, and how it
finally confirmed his suspicions. I had to go to Nurse Little for
help, make her convince Mister Dodds that you needed the cane.
Eventually the principal and the other Iconocops convinced him that
‘denying an injured ward of the state a standard of care would have
serious legal repercussions, especially if the Zoners found
out’.”

Wow. Apparently this cane had a reputation.
Cool.

We were walking (Galahad was walking, I was
limping) back to Camelot through a congested hall when he asked,
“So what the flip happened to you? I thought when you left you’d be
gone for a day to . . . you know, check out that Dex kook. When you
didn’t show up in class I was afraid you’d gotten yourself
eternally buggered.”

At the stairway to Camelot, I leaned down to
Galahad and whispered, “I met a couple of Mythicons who knew my
father. They said he was the one who ended the War.”

“
What? Your father? Really? What did
they say about—” the bell cut him off. Poor Galahad had school to
get to. I had three manuscripts (Galahad had managed to recover
these before Wes could confiscate them) waiting for me, and a
bottle of drugs I was gung-ho about downing.

“
You better go. Thanks for everything.
And G, stay away from Ash.”

Sanson: One Day Earlier

My second talk with Lexi went loads better
than the first, probably because I prefaced this one with a gift of
a home tattoo kit, complete with three colors of ink. I thought she
was going to kiss me. Her excitement gave me an opening to explain
my condition was not contagious.

Now satisfied that she wouldn’t contract
‘zombism’, I was able to explain about Ash wanting to meet her
father. “Okay but, I don’t understand exactly why,” she said when I
was done.

“
Well,” I stammered, “Ash just wants to
. . . meet the father of the girl he wants to go with.” The words
just blurted themselves out. I was getting ready to yank my foot
out of my mouth when Lexi screeched and jumped forward, embracing
me. She smelled like strawberries.

She stepped back, clapped, twirled. WTF?

“
Really? He wants to go with me?
Seriously?”

“
Yes, yes and yes,” I answered. “He’s
just old fashioned, you know. I don’t think the Morai were raised
like the rest of us. So, will you bring your dad here after school
sometime? He’ll have to come inside. Ash can’t leave the
building.”

She slumped and I was sure the Goth girl was
reconsidering her frenzy, but instead she took my hand and led me
over to the fountain outside the gym, where it was less crowded. “I
would ask my dad to come, I would, but he’s always like, so busy.”
She lowered her head and seemed depressed. But a few seconds later
she jerked her head up, sending her black hair flipping around.
“Hey, I bet he would come to a parent-teacher conference. He’s such
a Grinch, always saying he doesn’t trust me when I tell him my
teachers love me and stuff.”

“
A parent-teacher conference?” I asked.
Just then her girlfriends showed up, taking wide detours in the
hall to avoid rubbing shoulders with me. They’d apparently been
giggling about something, but when they saw that Lexi’s proximity
to me was no accident, their smiles fled and they shut up
quickly.

“
What’s
he
want?” Misty or Missy or Mindy asked. Before
Lexi could answer, two of the girls (one of them was Joe, I was
sure of that much) started babbling about some new flavor lipstick
or some crap like that. I tried to get a word in, but girls babble
louder than a crowd of Wall Street traders. And anyway, they were
dragging her away, beyond the gym doors.

“
I’ll talk to my dad, but it’ll be a
no, I’m sure,” Lexi called back.

So; not a success, but not exactly a disaster
either. I checked my thermal, which was becoming a habit, and
wandered up to Chemistry class on the third floor. Mr. Wanksman
(yeah, he catches a lot of flak for his name) was resetting his
screens for a new class. After downing half a bottle of Nanex, I
took my seat in the back corner by the window where a light breeze
was blowing. I didn’t feel the breeze but I could see it playing
through the Willow out front.

Why did I take the back seat when I couldn’t
even enjoy the breeze? Because I wanted to, and besides, the breeze
would help regulate my body temp.

Yahoos started pouring in, warring for the
remaining window seats. I was enjoying the spectacle of sweating
girls, moisture glistening on their exposed flesh, when Murphy’s
Law asserted itself and Ash waltzed in. I gawked. Chemistry was one
of five subjects blissfully Ash-free. What was he doing here?

The little Morai sauntered up to me, his
hands held before him as usual. We traded looks and then he turned
to face the yahoo in the seat to my right. The yahoos name was
Jewel Macklemore and despite having attended this school for only a
couple of weeks, Ash knew this.

“
Excuse me, Jewel, is it?”

Jewel nodded and Ash continued. “You look
lovely today, that blouse really brings out your eyes. Stunning is
the word I should have used. You look comfortable, like you could
just conk out right here and now—which, I suppose, wouldn’t be
difficult, considering Mr. Wanksman’s dry monotone.” They shared a
laugh that made me incredibly uncomfortable. I shifted in my
seat.

Ash was leaning over her desk now, locking
eyes with her. I couldn’t watch but I also couldn’t help but
overhear the rest of Ash’s spiel.

“
The thing is, Jewel, we Morai tend to
overheat, and since you were obviously smart enough to wear the
proper attire, I am completely at your mercy. Think you can help me
out, just this once? I’ll dance at your prom and make you laugh, I
promise.”

Oh come on. What kind of a fool would
possibly fall for—

“
Of course,” Jewel got up and smiled at
Ash before heading for a seat away from the windows. As she sat in
this blighted chair, she dabbed sweat from her face, smiling the
whole time.

Ash followed her, whispered something in her
ear and then wandered back over to take his freshly repossessed
seat beside me. I gave him a ‘what the heck’ look. “Oh,” he beamed,
“she’s going to make me a drawing. If you’re wondering why I’m
here, I had our schedules rearranged.” He whipped out a class
schedule and handed it to me. “I had to change two of your classes
as well. Sorry, but it really is better this way.”