The Brotherhood of the Snake (Return of the Ancients Book 2) (30 page)

“Yeah, there’s so much in it,” I agreed, training my flashlight on her garden gnomes. I didn’t like her yard. I thought of it as a Mesmer playground.

“Not because of the quantity of targets!” Al explained with an earnest chuckle. “It’s because she doesn’t properly maintain her items for Operation ID!”

“Operation ID?” I repeated. How did he remember so many code names in life?

“All diligent homeowners here mark their outdoor valuables with an ID to permit proper tracking if an item is stolen,” he informed me in a serious tone. “As captain, I keep a spreadsheet for our block.”

I looked at Mrs. Patton’s yard all covered in snow, wondering who would really want to steal used garden gnomes.

“Look, she’s got a new one over there.” He flicked his beam at a weird looking gnome huddled under a tree and handed me his black Sharpie. “Just go mark that one with the number ‘884’, and I’ll scratch it in for her later, kiddo.”

I hesitated.

Mrs. Patton’s yard was the last place I wanted to venture into, especially at night.

I glanced at Ajax to see if he was sensing any Mesmer activity, but he was only looking highly annoyed that his paws were wet.

Al wiggled the Sharpie, trying to get my attention, and I took it with great reluctance.

“Shouldn’t we do it in the morning?” I couldn’t resist suggesting. “I mean, surely she doesn’t want us tromping around her yard at night! We might scare her.”

“Oh, she knows the drill!” Al smiled, giving me a nod of encouragement.

Gritting my teeth, I nudged Ajax. “Come on, let’s go.”

He looked at me as if I were insane, but seeing that I was really following through, he trailed behind, gingerly picking his way through the snow.

I flashed my beam at the odd gnome, taking heart in the fact that it didn’t look like a chupacabra at all. It was just a hunched little man wearing a black suit with a black top hat.

But there was something about it that made me uneasy.

I hesitated and slowed my step, and suddenly wanting Ajax closer, I whistled over my shoulder. “Hurry up, Ajax!”

That only made him rebel, and he immediately sat down.

“Thanks a lot,” I muttered, turning back to the weird garden gnome.

Only it wasn’t there.

I flashed my beam around as my heart began to race.

It was gone.

“What is it, kiddo?” Al asked, moving to join me.

Finally finding my voice, I whispered, “It’s gone!”

I glanced back at Ajax.

He wasn’t in the least bit upset. In fact, he took the opportunity to yawn in my face, sending me the clear message that he was bored out of his mind.

Al’s face knit into a frown but then he brightened. “A rookie mistake! The snow must be creating optical illusions for us tonight. Come on, kiddo. We’ve still got the last half of the block to cover!”

I didn’t buy it for a second.

I scrambled out of her yard as fast as I could, vowing to never set foot in it again. Al was giving me further instructions, but I couldn’t concentrate.

That hunched figure had been alive.

But what was it?

It wasn’t Fae, and it wasn’t a chupacabra.

But then, recalling that the Fae could shape-shift, I wondered if it was Brock. Rafael had told me that I’d have bodyguards.

That thought made me feel safer all at once, and I began calming down, even as my logic told me there was no way on Earth that the vain Fae would shape-shift into an ugly garden gnome wearing a black suit with a black top hat.

I began listening to Al once again when we arrived at a long cement wall that protected the neighborhood from traffic noises. In the center of the barrier there was an open archway, leading across the street into another neighborhood.

“What about over here?” I said, stepping forward and pointing through the opening.

“No need,” Al informed me. “That’s the responsibility of Block 241. We’re Block 240. We stay in our territory, kiddo.”

“Check!” I said.

He turned to go, and I moved to join him when Ajax bolted past me with a low, barely audible growl. Stretching his neck, he half climbed, half jumped onto the wall and ran along the top before crouching to pounce down on the other side.

I gasped and began calling him, but he didn’t respond.

But then, I hadn’t really expected him to.

“You better go get him, kiddo!” Al said, pulling a walkie-talkie out of his pocket. “We don’t want to give Block 241 a false alarm now.”

I didn’t want to move.

Had Ajax sensed a Mesmer?

Somehow, I didn’t think he had. He wasn’t acting as vicious as he had before, but I wasn’t brave enough to find out.

I was just going to ask Al to go with me, when something through the opening caught my eye.

A white-cloaked figure had flitted across the street.

Instantly, I knew it was the same white-cloaked form that I’d seen in the Hall of Mirrors.

I gasped.

“What’s that?” I heard Al ask.

From the corner of my eye, I saw him walk in the opposite direction towards what looked like a soggy cardboard box and poke it suspiciously.

Ajax appeared in the opening of the barrier. He stood there looking at me, clearly wanting me to follow.

I took a deep breath, knowing I had to go.

It was harder than I thought to force my feet forward, but somehow I managed it, and then I was standing next to Ajax, peering through the opening and wildly swinging my flashlight beam in wide arcs.

Almost immediately my beam caught a man’s tall form slumped against the wall a few feet away.

I opened my mouth to scream, training the beam straight into his eyes by pure accident. But before I managed a squeak, I heard a familiar voice.

“Get that light out of my face, Sydney!”

It was Jareth.

“What are you doing out here?” I shouted at him angrily, furious that he’d scared me half to death.

He staggered forward a few steps and then fell to his knees.

All at once, I became concerned.

I ran to his side, arriving just as he pitched forward into my arms, nearly knocking me off my feet. He was heavier than he looked.

“Are you ok?” I asked, shaking his shoulders a little.

He mumbled a few incoherent words before falling silent.

I shook him again, but he didn’t respond.

I heard the sound of a car zooming down the road, and Rafael’s Bentley pulled up just as Al stepped through the archway to join us.

“What is it?” Al asked as Rafael jumped out of his car.

“He’s drunk,” Rafael said quickly, bending down to slip his arm under Jareth’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of him. There’s no need to be concerned.”

Al didn’t say anything. He just watched as I helped Rafael bundle Jareth into the Bentley, and in moments, they zoomed away without giving me a chance to even tell Rafael about the white-cloaked figure.

I glanced down at Ajax, sitting quietly at my feet. It was good to know that apparently Rafael could still hear him without his sense of Light.

Al gestured through the archway, and I followed, returning to our designated block.

We walked in silence for a time.

I didn’t know what to think, but I knew that Jareth hadn’t been drunk.

What had happened?

I was lost in thought, wondering about Blue Threads, Fate Trackers, fate and destiny, and we were almost home when I found myself asking Al, “Do you think we can change fate?”

His brows knit into a line. “I don’t know what that word really means, Sydney,” he said after a time. “You can’t change the truth, that’s for sure. But you can change whatever it is that you’ve resigned yourself to accept.” He reached over and patted me on the head.

“But what if it’s the truth that the future holds a horrible fate?” I pressed.

“You won’t know until you see where you end up, kiddo.” He chuckled. “Until then, you’ve got to keep coming up with ideas to solve your problems. You never know, you might have one of those plot twists in life that turns everything upside down at the last second. But you’ll never know that until you fight your best fight until the end.”

I liked that answer. It just seemed to click.

“No one see’s their fate until it’s done,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “So that’s why I really don’t know what the word means. Sometimes, I think people just throw around words like ‘fate’ because they’ve run out of things to try and then just give up. But they end up missing what it’s really all about.”

I looked up at the tall, bald man walking beside me, thinking he was one of the wisest people I’d ever known.

And then he said the words that changed my life forever.

“You’ve got a smart head on that shoulder of yours, kiddo!” He beamed at me proudly. “I’d say there’s nothing you can’t do if you set your mind to it. So, just go make your dreams come true. You can fly to the moon and beyond!”

Dreams.

Rafael and Jareth had said before that humans were unique in that way, that they had the ability to make their dreams come true.

Yes, they’d seen the giant Blue Thread dangling over my head.

But they most certainly hadn’t factored in the human power to dream.

They couldn’t have.

They didn’t understand what dreams even were.

Something deep inside of me ignited, and I knew I’d hit upon something that could change my life.

I just had to figure out exactly how to make it happen.

Chapter Sixteen – The Many Uses of Nail Polish

Arriving home, I went straight to bed, and I wasn’t the only one who thought they were exhausted. Ajax jumped onto the pillows and stretched out, pretending to fall sound asleep in five seconds.

I stared down at him angrily.

“How can you possibly be tired?” I fumed. “You sleep at
least
twenty hours a day! I’ve never seen such a lazy dog in my life, and with Tigger in the house, that’s saying something!”

A microscopic twitch of an ear betrayed his reaction to my insult. I supposed I was lucky he’d decided to fake being asleep, otherwise he’d probably have pinned me against the wall all night, growling in my ear.

I scowled.

I was tired of him treating me like his prey, and I certainly wasn’t about to curl up all night at his feet like a dog.
He
was the dog, and he needed to be reminded of that fact.

It was about time he knew I could be a worthy adversary.

I stood there, tapping my chin and forming a dastardly plan. With a wide grin, I slipped into the family room where Betty sat dreaming up uses for twelve gallons of neon purple nail polish.

She was more than happy to pour some into a paper cup for me, and I headed to the kitchen to rummage through Al’s spy cupboard for his bag of brushes. I knew they were labeled to be used for dusting fingerprints, but by the layer of dust on the bag, I was pretty sure he hadn’t dusted any fingerprints in a long time.

Returning to my room, it took much longer than I’d originally planned to accomplish the deed because I didn’t want him to wake up and catch me in the act. I ended up staying awake almost half the night. But by the time I fell asleep, I was pretty pleased with the results and didn’t even mind curling up at the bottom of the bed.

I woke up to the sound of Grace’s alarm clock.

One look out the window told me school was closed, but I joined her in the family room to confirm it.

“
School’s closed, school’s closed,” Grace kept repeating under her breath as she grabbed the remote and flipped the TV on.

“It’s closed,” I promised her.

She sent me a hopeful smile.

The newscaster’s voice filled the room. 
“—
I disagree with you, Craig. Jareth’s already achieved superstardom. And it’s not that album going platinum yesterday that proves it. It’s the astounding number of teenage girls that packed the arena in L.A. last night that settles
that
score!”

The camera panned to cover what looked like thousands of screaming girls, some holding up signs begging Jareth to marry them.

“Well, I stand corrected, Ann.” Craig’s deep voice laughed through the speakers. “Who can argue with that many fans? I can only imagine what Seattle will look like next month when he performs at Key Arena!”

As both of the newscasters bantered, the TV showed footage of concert stage lights dimming as Jareth zoomed in on a motorcycle, wearing what looked like a black leather dragon costume, complete with two-foot ridges along his spine. As he leapt off the motorcycle, it vanished in a flash of light and smoke. And throwing his head back, he lifted his arms as more fireworks shot off around him and from the ridges on his spine.

“What an entrance that was!” The newscasters laughed. “Finally, we’ve got a teen idol that not only can
actually
sing but knows how to put on a fantastic show.”

As Jareth began a song, the image zoomed out to focus on the newscasters shaking their smiling heads before segueing onto a story about tigers at the zoo.

Grace stared at the TV before turning to me in confusion. “How did he get back so fast? I saw Rafael lifting him out of the car just last night.”

I shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t Jareth.”

“No, it was Jareth.” She frowned and added, “Even if it wasn’t, I saw him at the coffee shop an hour earlier when we dropped by to see if you needed a ride. He couldn’t have gotten back from L.A. that fast.”

“I’m sure he’s got a private jet or something,” I mumbled. Jareth was getting sloppy, but I felt it was my duty to cover for him somehow—at least a little, anyway.

I was rescued by the newscasters announcing what Grace had been waiting for, and forgetting all about Jareth, she ran squealing in delight through the house.

The winter storm had officially arrived.

School was closed.

We returned to bed to snooze for a while.

Ajax hadn’t bothered to wake up yet.

I couldn’t wait until he did, and with a goofy grin of anticipation on my face, I settled back at the foot of the bed to idly stare at my hand, recalling the Light Queen’s golden feather. But then since I still couldn’t see it, I finally gave up wondering about it and let my thoughts shift to Rafael. What was he up to? I was worried about him and hoped he was doing ok.