Orphan of Mythcorp (26 page)

“
What makes you think Damien will even
be in the bathroom?”

“
A hunch. See you later.”

Yeah, he was having an awful lot of hunches
lately. Whenever someone in the movies consistently knows things he
can’t possibly know, it turns out he’s either: a magician, a god,
or the Devil. I didn’t know which theory disturbed me most.

Damien was indeed in the bathroom. We eyed
each other like guys do, giving looks of
don’t-screw-with-me-and-I-won’t-screw-with-you, and then I
proceeded to scrub the blood from my shirt at the sink. I’d never
spoken to the beef bus before, so trying to come up with a proper
and cool ice-breaker took some time.

“
Did Morgan tell you that Ash needs
your help today after school?” Well, blunt hammers do make
efficient ice-breakers.

Damien took a moment to finish his black cig.
After flicking it into the closest urinal with impressive aim, he
aimed his eyes on me. He nodded before heading for the door.

“
Wait,” I couldn’t help my stupid self.
“Why help them? What’s in it for you?”

The big black yahoo paused, hand on the door.
When he turned, his full attention smacked into me: eyes, head,
even his body and that whole black guy intimidation shtick. It did
not make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. “One of them,” he
explained, “one of those frigging I-cops dissed me in front of half
my crew. An eye for an eye. Old Testament.” He straightened back up
and calmed down with alarming speed. “Keep it righteous,
zombie.”

The blood did not come off my shirt, but I
did manage to get the material wet enough to make it look like I
was pouring sweat. An indignity I might have suffered had I
functioning sweat glands.

Seven hours later: time for stupid stuff.

Instead of waiting to pick their kids up
after school, the moms and dads (or, to be PC: step moms and step
dads, or dads and dads) parked their cars and came inside, to the
auditorium. Since this whole Parent-Teacher spiel had been set up
with about as much forethought as a crackhead has before taking his
next hit, everyone was milling around. ‘A bunch of sheep without a
shepherd,’ as Lamorak put it.

Principal Steck was not in attendance, but
his Iconocops certainly were. All three of them.

The Morai showed up about ten minutes into
this melee. Without so much as a preamble they stepped up and
started directing traffic, introducing teachers to parents. I
couldn’t help but notice that all these ‘chosen’ parents happened
to have students Ash had favored with his gift.

“
Liven up Sanson,” Lamorak whispered as
he passed by behind me, Wes Dodds trailing him, looking menacing.
“Lexi is looking a smidge lost over there.”

Oh right. I was supposed to babysit the Goth
chick until her dad showed up and then guide them both to Ash, who
was hanging by the Camelot stairway. Maybe if he’d Mesmerized me,
I’d be able to remember all his rules.

I marched over to Lexi, taking my sweet old
time. On my way past one of the columns supporting the second story
tier, I noticed Ava. She was sitting alone in one of the pink
seats, writing in a notepad. As if they had a mind of their own, my
feet switched direction and wandered over to her.

Being cursed, my mind went blank and all
words were lost on me as I stood over her.

“
Yes, Charlie?”

“
Um,” I said. “How come you’re not with
the rest of . . . you know, your people, herding the old folks
around?” Your people? Jeez-oh-man what a douche.

But she laughed. Ava laughed for real. And it
wasn’t one of those pity-titters either. She stopped writing and
sat up straight to look at me. “Between you and me?”

“
Absolutely.”

“
I don’t know what Ash is up to.” She
sighed. I couldn’t believe she was taking me into her confidence. I
looked across the way over at Lexi. She was still alone, doing
homework in between glances around for dear old dad.

“
I think he wants to get inside
Mythcorp,” I confessed. It was mostly true: I didn’t ‘think’, I
knew.

Ava waved a dainty hand through the air. “Oh,
I know that. But all this?” A wider wave to take in the entirety of
the Parent-Teacher conference: “Screwing with people’s minds,
messing with schedules. It doesn’t make sense. And it’s not right.
He’s acting like—”

“
President,” I finished for
her.

“
Yes,” Ava agreed. I loved her smile.
She was one of those rare girls who smiles with her entire face.
“He’s trying to run everything as if he were the President of
frigging Mythcorp.”

We traded abrupt glances when she said this.
The words seemed to have hit the bulls-eye.

I plopped down in the seat beside her and
looked ahead at nothing. “Holy crap.”

“
I know, right?” Ava said. “You don’t
think that’s his real design here, do you?” She said it like it was
a question, but there seemed little doubt to the answer. “I mean,
he’s wanted to get inside Mythcorp for like ever. You know, to find
out about our parents. But to reopen it? Is that even
possible?”

I snorted without thinking. “Have you looked
around? This is all his doing. And he’s about to meet a
congressman. You know how that’s going to go.”

Ava sat up so quickly it startled me. “We
have to stop him.”

“
Wait, what?”

“
We can’t let him open that place.” She
was already marching off through the crowd in search of Ash. “Last
time Mythcorp was up and running, it divided the city. And Ash as
President? He’d make hunting the Iconocops who slaughtered our
parents his first order of business. How could I not see this
coming? What a flipping dum-dum.”

“
Whoa, hold up,” I raced after her,
bumping past someone. In the hallway I grabbed Ava’s shoulders. If
I’d had some kind of sensation, it would no doubt have been . . .
righteous.

“
It’s too late.” Though I wasn’t sure
that it was; I just didn’t want her to walk in on Ash and Damien
and his boys dealing with the Iconocops. I wasn’t sure what was in
the cylinder Nimrod had given to me and which I had given to Ash,
but I doubted it was heroin or any other kind of pleasure. Besides,
if she stopped the little Napoleon, I’d never get my curse
lifted.

“
Let go,” Ava shrugged out of my
grasp.

Time for damage control.

I lunged forward, gripped both her wrists and
tugged her towards me. Despite her squirming, I managed to hold her
snug to my body. And then I planted a long, hard kiss on her pale
lips.

“
What the hell?” she pulled away and
wriggled. “Let go.”

I released her and, after receiving a loud
painless slap, watched her twirl around. Her long white braid
batted my face as she twirled, and then she huffed down the
hall—opposite the way she’d been going. I watched until she
disappeared into the girls’ bathroom, safely away from Ash.

How did I feel? Vacant—and also sad. Ava was
going to hate me.

I checked the auditorium. Lexi was standing
between Mr. Pribeck and a man wearing a light blue suit and a
severe expression. Either she was dating far out of her age range,
or her father had showed and was growing impatient. I shuffled over
to them. Lexi’s face brightened when she saw me, and who could
blame her.

“
Daddy, this is Charlie.” She wrapped a
bracelet-covered arm around him.

The man in the blue suit offered me a beefy
hand. “Call me Virgil.” He looked away and nodded as I took his
hand. After a tense moment, his eyes landed on me with the kind of
scrutiny that makes you feel like those pathetic cats in pet
stores. “You’re the one with the disorder, right?”

Oh super, my favorite subject. I nodded and
sighed in a vain attempt to dissuade him.

“
Yeah,” Virgil Montaigne said, showing
teeth. “I remember reading about you . . . what, four years ago?
What was the name of that doctor on that documentary?”

He clicked his fingers as if doing so would
summon the memory. “Dr. Wilmut,” I provided.

“
Yeah. I remember that clip got over
forty million hits. That was some impressive genetic stuff. Almost
like something Mythcorp would’ve done. Is it true you don’t have a
pulse?”

Lexi had been watching me and squirming a bit
while papa Virgil spoke. She put a finger up before me and said,
“Daddy, he doesn’t want to talk about that stuff. Jeez.” She leaned
over to me, favoring me with her perfume, some pungent fumy gak.
“He always pries like this. ‘Information is key, Lexi’ he
says.”

Virgil was back to looking impatient. “Ah,” I
said, “would you like to meet Ash, Virgil?”

“
Not really,” he mumbled. Lexi cast a
wicked glance at him and he sighed. “Fine. Let’s go meet the boy
who wants to take my daughters chastity.”

“
Daddy!”

Well, this was going to be fun.

I led them through the crowd and out into the
hall. It was quieter out here, and cooler, as my thermal indicated.
Last thing I wanted was to have it start wailing with Mr.
Wow-You-Were-Somebody-Once-Upon-A-Time hovering nearby.

About twenty feet from the corner around
which Ash should be, we started hearing grunts and curses. I
stepped in front of the Montaigne’s. “Um, can you two just wait
here a moment? I think I need to check on something with . . .
someone. Yeah. Just please, wait here.” I backed up, holding my
hands in front to make sure they didn’t follow.

I rounded the corner alone. Oh man. What
incredibly atrocious timing. Twenty feet away, at the foot of the
Camelot stairs, Damien’s boys were grappling with George the
Iconocop. Old George was giving the three muscle-heads a run for
their roids. The floor was all tracked up with about a hundred
black boot scuffs, and the once proud George was no longer wearing
his blue and yellow Iconocop vest.

Keenan tore the sick-stick out of George’s
grip and prodded him with it. The Iconocop trembled before going
still.

That’s when Ash strolled down from the
stairs. Agravaine and Lamorak followed him. “Ah, Charlie,” Ash
said, noticing me before turning to the conscious but decidedly
helpless Iconocop. “Did you find Mr. Montaigne?”

“
He’s,” but I stumbled over my words,
too shocked by the scene. Ash wore an expression of supreme
confidence. “He’s . . . back there, waiting.”

“
Ah,” he said, “excellent. Distract him
for ninety seconds, please.”

Ash turned his back on me without waiting for
a response. He then marched up to George, hands folded before him
like always. I lingered to see what would happen. A voyeur, sure,
but I also wanted to make sure the little Napoleon didn’t kill poor
Georgie boy.

“
Take his shades,” Ash ordered. Lamorak
whipped the chem-shades from George’s face.

I cringed at the expression of abject fear
the man wore. It was the look a man wears on his way to the
gallows. While George tried and failed to scream, Ash thanked
Damien and his boys.

I left George to suffer, heartless jerk that
I am, and, swallowing my pride, I went to distract the Montaigne’s
with the excuse that Ash was in the bathroom. Ninety seconds later,
Ash called my name and I led the Montaigne’s around the corner.

At least the Iconocop had been dragged away
and the scuff marks somehow cleaned up.

Ash gripped Virgil Montaigne’s hand with both
of his and gazed up into his eyes. During the quiet that followed,
I began to realize just how easy this was for Ash. It begins (for
the victim) with a seemingly harmless look into the Morai eyes, an
understandable action, considering the mesmerizing appearance of
those blasted things. Like trying not to stare at Medusa.

I listened to Ash’s spiel about his need to
meet the Mayor, and it made sense, in an out-there kind of way.
Gareth had taken Lexi to the side and I could tell from his stance
and gaze that he was Mesmerizing her. I swallowed an urge to grab
her hand and run the other way.

But I was in too deep to quit now.

“
So, Mr. Montaigne,” Ash said three
minutes later “will you help us?”

Virgil nodded slowly. He swayed and I
steadied him, giving Ash a dirty look. “Of course,” Mr. Montaigne
said. “Mayor Hayes leaves his office at six. I’ll set something up
tomorrow.”

“
I was thinking we might meet him
tonight. Now, in fact,” Ash said with a faint smile.

Mr. Montaigne nodded once more and took a
moment. “Of course. If we leave now, we should catch him having
supper. How’s that sound?”

“
Dynamite. Thank you so much, Mister
Montaigne.”

Ash shook his hand one last time while Gareth
led Lexi over. Like one big happy family, they turned and headed
down the hall. For lack of a better option, I followed.

Two police officers were heading our way.
First thought: here we go, Ash’s little revolution is over before
it begins.

But then everything slowed down as I realized
the officers were not looking at Ash. They were looking at me.

Since Izzy was still in school and I didn’t
want to bring her into Vera City, I headed for the phantasmagoric
world first, alone. I’d draft her at her house after recruiting
Kana and Faustus.

Assuming everything went according to
plan.

HUGE assumption.

The path through the baseball diamond was a
muddy one, but it afforded me solitude. Well, solitude from humans;
Marie and Castor were hovering around me like very bad news, and
the demon Malthus was trudging along in the shadows of the trees,
out of sight but most definitely not out of mind.