Kingdom Keepers the Return Book 3 Read online

  A rattling sound ahead stole Mattie’s attention and kept her from looking behind—it sounded like a million sticks being dumped out of a truck.

  There were no deliveries scheduled at this hour. She reached for her headset wire, but decided against it. She’d checked in with Jaanavi only a minute before; she didn’t want to seem like a little kid.

  Maybe the sound wasn’t wood at all. Plastic? Metal?

  She spun sharply, sensing something. Two Stormtroopers marched toward her, three snakes behind them.

  A girl’s figure appeared, far down the same aisle. Not a child; she had a woman’s fuller shape, was possibly Mattie’s age or slightly older. No face or distinguishing features were visible in the dim aisle.

  “Hello?” Mattie called out. A Stormtrooper raised his right arm, and she jumped to the side as a beam of light shot from an E-11 blaster rifle. A plastic duck on the shelf beside her head disintegrated in a puff of smoke. One of the snakes raced for her ankles, and Mattie scrambled awkwardly upward, using the shelves as a makeshift ladder. Another blaster fired at her, and a plush Mufasa’s whiskers shriveled.

  The ethereal woman’s arms moved like a…a conductor’s. She was orchestrating this!

  “What do you want?” Mattie cried.

  No answer.

  A whoosh of wind snapped her head around. At first, she couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing. But combined with the clatter she’d overheard earlier—wood? plastic? metal?—it made sense: hangers. Plastic hangers.

  There were racks holding thousands of them at the far end of the room, and they had taken flight like wayward boomerangs. They came at her, birds with plastic wings and thin metal necks; the loophole heads were hooks, trying to snag her hair and clothing. Mattie was so stunned that she failed to defend herself from the initial attack. A chunk of hair tore from her head; her shirt popped its top button as her left sleeve ripped away.

  She covered her eyes and ears with both arms, dropping to the ground—the snakes were on the move. She heard another blast and felt her leg burn wickedly. Her shirt was nearly torn off, and still the hangers kept coming, stabbing and hooking.

  “STOP IT!” she cried, to no avail.

  Desperate to cover herself, she pulled down a pile of Monsters University sweatshirts from the shelf. To her relief, the pecking briefly subsided. She jumped down and raced ahead, wary of the snakes and Stormtroopers. To her astonishment, she saw the hangers diving, moving in a wave to scoop up the fallen sweatshirts and lift them back onto a rack. Could that be the answer?

  Mattie started pulling clothing from the shelves and throwing it into the air. The hangers dove and caught the garments, racing to land on a hanging rod. Pile after pile, all the way down the seemingly endless row, she launched costumes, sweaters, and shirts as high as she could throw them.

  Another round of blasters nearly hit her. She’d had enough. With the hangers frantic as fleeing cockroaches, she dared to do something she’d never pictured herself pulling off. Frozen in place, she waited, breathless, for the snakes to advance. As they closed in, she slammed her foot down, first behind the head of the one to her right, and then, in an awkward stretch, the one to her left. She snagged the right snake from behind the head and held it out in front of her just as the next blaster round fired.

  It zapped the snake, removing its head. She dropped the lifeless body and did the same for the one on the left, enduring two bad stings before singeing the head of the remaining snake. Two more piles of T-shirts kept the remaining hangers busy while she calculated how to handle the advancing Stormtroopers.

  Without any hint or prompt, she understood what had to be done. Street-savvy and worldly-wise, Mattie was not one to dawdle. She’d faced pain like this before. Moving swiftly now, she ran to the end of the aisle and turned left. The air filled with the sound of something tearing loose; the Stormtroopers spotted their target and fired almost simultaneously.

  On either side of the two towering toys, smoke rose. They fired again. And then the one to the left dropped in a pile of melted plastic. The second fell on its heels, taking a blow to the chest, its legs still trying to walk.

  Ahead of them in the aisle were Mattie’s head and feet. Between these parts of her was a shiny rectangular mirror emblazoned with the words: HAVE A MAGICAL DAY! AND LOOK YOUR BEST! The light blasts from their E-11s had been redirected to self-destruct.

  The older girl at the far end of the aisle, who had been following along in the wake of the battle, clapped anticlimactically.

  “Well done. Very well done! So you are who we think you are? No normal girl could think like that, react like that. Two words you will speak to me. Only two, mind, or you’ll never see me again. Are you ready?”

  Mattie had to slow her breathing, collect herself, and process everything she’d just been through. To her surprise, she wasn’t burned. Her skin was only red and irritated where the blasts had landed. She pulled her shirt closed slowly and buttoned the two buttons that remained. Then she grabbed one of the Monsters U sweatshirts and slipped it on, wanting to make the woman wait.

  “Ready,” Mattie announced.

  “Baltimore!” the woman called down the aisle.

  Mattie felt the twitch of a smile curl her lips. “Barracks 14!” she shouted back.

  The Stormtroopers stopped moving. Hangers fell to the floor as if strings had been cut.

  She’d made contact.

  PINOCCHIO SITS ATOP A TABLE. Not a wooden table, but something gray and smooth, almost like concrete. There are no puppets hanging above him, none clinging to the wall. Whatever light floods him is not sunlight from a window but something bluer and higher; his shadow spills out beneath him like a black skirt. He is not in the company of other puppets, but is alone and sad-looking. Geppetto is nowhere to be seen.

  No, wait; he isn’t sitting on the table at all. That’s an illusion: the boy puppet is lying flat. No, not that kind of lying, for his nose is its proper size. He is thin, so thin he appears to be part of the table itself.

  Suddenly hands—could they be Geppetto’s?—come into frame, wearing thin white gloves. When Pinocchio is lifted off the table, he’s translucent, making a curiosity out of the shadow visible just a moment earlier. Was it the shadow of a head, looking down at the transparent boy?

  A burst of light suggests the passage of time. Short or long? Impossible to tell. The transparent puppet boy flaps slowly, like a small flag in an inconsistent wind. The light behind him, coming through him, is suddenly orange and flickering, and there is no mistaking it: it is a flame. And the boy is headed straight for it.

  As he nears, his edges curl and melt; in an instant, he catches fire, blue flame with curling red edges. He is released into it. He vanishes. There is laughter, or chanting, or both, a mixture of languages, tones and mirth.

  * * *

  Jess bolted awake. Blinking woozily, she stared across a darkened pillow. Her eye caught the worn edge of her sketchbook, which she’d left jammed between the bed frame and mattress, a pencil at the ready. A battery-operated reading lamp clipped overhead completed the setup. She sat up, switched on the light, grabbed her notebook, and began to draw.

  The puppet boy on the table. In the fire.

  In trouble.

  She’d come to feel when a dream represented an actual event in the near future, instead of a mind wandering in sleep. She wasn’t always 100 percent right, but she was close.

  This was one of the real ones. This was important.

  AFTER CLOSING UP FOR THE NIGHT at 1:00 a.m., Mattie was supposed to ride a city bus two stops to a waiting van, which would return her to Burbank, a long tedious drive, but one Joe deemed necessary. When she failed to arrive at the van, Joe was awakened and informed; he sent the driver back without her.

  Joe lay awake a good part of the night, not out of concern for Mattie, but out of excitement: she’d made contact.

  Escorted by the Fairlie she’d met in the stockroom, Mattie arrived behind the Hollywood Backlot Stag
e. “I’m Antonella,” her escort said. She wore a leather coat with a dozen shiny zippers. Her chinos suggested that beneath the leather was a Disney Cast Member costume. Two silver studs, likely magnetic, shone on her nose. At the moment she looked tough, her hair parted severely and asymmetrically on the left. But, Mattie thought, it was a look easily changed to fit the Cast Member code.

  “These kids up here,” Antonella said. “You may know some of them. I wouldn’t make a big deal of that even if they do.”

  “Okay.”

  “For the time being at least, no one’s going to trust you.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  Two girls and three boys about her age met her there.

  “We recognized you,” a boy said. He didn’t say who “we” was; Mattie knew. He had exceptionally straight, broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and flat abs. His running shoes were worn-out at the heel and scuffed on the toe. He looked like he shaved, probably daily, and wore contact lenses that irritated his eyes.

  “I know you,” Mattie said slowly, disregarding Antonella’s advice. “You’re Humphrey. We took that class on self-control together.”

  “Melinda? No! Madeline!” With the recollection came a smile, and with the smile, a tilt of the head, as if he saw someone different from the girl he’d recognized.

  “It’s Mattie. It’s been a while.”

  “You escaped. She escaped!” he told the others. “Thanks to you, we all had a bad couple of weeks.”

  “Sorry about that, I guess. I took what you might call an indefinite leave.”

  “Because?” one of the girls asked Mattie.

  “Some friends needed me.”

  “That was a big risk to take,” Humphrey said.

  “Look who’s talking.” Mattie raised an eyebrow. She had to appear naive. It wasn’t in her repertoire. “How many of you made it out? How? And why here? So many questions! That must have been some breakout!”

  To them, this had to appear like she had taken their presence in the park as a coincidence. It was something no Fairlie fully believed in.

  “Actually…no,” the boy said. “We didn’t escape.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Where are you living?” a thin, sickly-looking girl asked. Osanna? Mattie thought she remembered the unusual name.

  “Who wants to know?” Mattie answered, stiffening her shoulders.

  “She does,” she said, motioning toward Antonella. Younger sister, by the look of her.

  Mattie nodded but said nothing.

  “We’re here on a mission,” Humphrey interjected. “Twelve of us.”

  “Twelve?!”

  “Maybe lucky thirteen, if you come on board.”

  “Me? No. No mission for me, other than lying low and avoiding recapture.” She and Joe had agreed: she had to make them work for it.

  “You’re not part of another cell?” Humphrey asked.

  “Cell? You mean the Barracks sent you here?” She made herself incredulous.

  “That’s enough!” Osanna told Humphrey, who silenced her with an angry look.

  “Are you supposed to be spying on us?” Humphrey crossed his arms defiantly. “Making sure we’re sticking to the program?”

  “Let me get this straight,” Mattie said, leaning back and raising an eyebrow at him. “I escaped nearly two years ago and came clear across the country just so I could be in place to spy for the people I escaped from? Are you nuts?”

  “That’s not an answer,” Osanna said.

  “Why are you here, anyway?” Mattie asked.

  “We told you,” Humphrey said. “A mission.”

  “We told her too much,” Antonella said. She held Mattie firmly by the arm. Mattie winced, intimidated by a girl who had made toys move and hangers fly. What kind of ability was that? she wondered, curious and slightly afraid. Even Amanda couldn’t use her telekinesis in such a controlled way.

  “No more names,” Osanna announced. “No more explanations.” To Mattie: “You’re spending the night with us.”

  “Am not!” Mattie protested.

  “Blindfold her,” Antonella told the others. “Osanna, tie your belt around her head.”

  Mattie pretended to try to shake loose of Antonella’s formidable grip. She wanted the girl to grab her by the forearm and make skin contact. If they touched, Mattie could read her….

  “Come on!” Mattie complained. “What the heck?” She pulled and twisted, but Antonella was too strong.

  “We appreciate our privacy,” Antonella said melodramatically. “We aren’t going to hurt you. We just want to protect ourselves until we know what’s going on.”

  “If you turn me in, if they take me back to Barracks 14, I’ll be put in 13. I’ll go bonkers. You know I’m right!” Mattie’s heart raced, her palms sweating. In theory, Joe and the Cryptos could and would prevent any such thing from happening. All Mattie had to do was fall asleep in order to cross over.

  “That’s up to you,” her escort said bluntly. “What we do and don’t do is up to us. And that has nothing to do with you.”

  “Nothing,” Osanna echoed.

  “You’re bounty hunters?” Mattie said. She had no problem sounding afraid. “They let you out, give you some momentary freedom for returning past escapees?” It was a bluff. She and Joe thought they knew why they were here: to destroy the park.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “What’s my roommate supposed to think? She’ll call in and ask where I am.”

  “You’ll be back at work tomorrow,” her escort said. “Don’t get all in a twist. Right now you’re an inconvenience. Don’t make yourself into a problem. You wouldn’t like being a problem.”

  FOR THE SECOND TIME, Mattie awoke as a hologram in front of the Partners statue. An orange moon occupied the granular sky, the air damp and heavy like a bathroom after a long shower. The lights of an airplane flashed and sparked. Slowly, she sat up and tried the arm-through-the-concrete again. Yes, she was a hologram.

  A woman waved. A grown-up. She sat on a low wall in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle. She wore navy blue pants and a deeper navy zip sweatshirt with the letters WDI stitched on the front. Mattie approached and sat down next to her.

  “I envy you,” the woman said. “I’ve never done that myself.”

  “It’s amazing.”

  The woman chuckled and nodded toward a small palm tree, recently transplanted, judging by the four wood supports. “In case you don’t remember, that’s where it is. The Return. That’s where it will always be.” It was tucked deep between the upper leaves of the transplanted tree.

  “I’ve made contact,” Mattie said, trying to keep the tremor from her voice. It wasn’t easy. Her arms tingled, and when she purposefully touched the stone, she couldn’t make her hand disappear inside. Fear.

  The Imagineer pulled out a notebook and pen. She fiddled with her phone. She was recording their conversation now. “Go on. Tell me.”

  Mattie explained the bizarre events in the stockroom, the meeting in California Adventure, being blindfolded. She named Antonella, Osanna, and Humphrey.

  “Do you know where you spent the night? Where they took you?”

  “Not exactly. Maybe the tower over Carthay Circle? Inside Grizzly Peak? Someplace high and not too far from the Hollywood Backlot Stage. I took two hundred and fifty-four steps before I started climbing stairs.”

  “Impressive. They called it a mission? Their words?”

  “Humphrey said that, yes. Those words. I think it was Antonella who didn’t like him letting that slip.”

  “And right now you’re asleep where?”

  “That sounds so crazy, doesn’t it?” Mattie drew back for a moment, mulling her situation silently. How had the Keepers trained themselves to think of this as normal? “They locked me in a closet. Sleeping bag. I’m not in any kind of danger.”

  “They let you use a washroom before going to sleep?”

  “They did.”

  �
�Big or small?”

  “Interesting! I hadn’t thought that would be important, but I can see how it might limit the possibilities!”

  The Imagineer waited her out. Then she repeated herself carefully. “Multiple stalls or just a single toilet?”

  “Toilet and sink. No stall. The paper dispenser, it wasn’t automatic or anything.”

  “Tile floor? Color of the walls?”

  “You’re good at this.”

  The Imagineer winced, attempting patience.

  “Cement floor,” Mattie said.

  “Concrete.” The woman made a note.

  “Gray floor, white walls. Boring. It wasn’t a public toilet, was it? So, what, I’m backstage? They, these Barracks Fairlies, are backstage somewhere. You think?”

  “I’m just the one asking questions. People smarter than I am will discuss it.”

  “Analyze, you mean. I’m a project now.” Mattie had been a project most of her life. She didn’t like the feeling, and wondered anew how she’d put herself in such a spot.

  “Don’t get too wonky about it, sweetheart,” the Imagineer said. Her eyes were kind. “Everyone here has your best interests at heart. You and your safety are all we care about right now. This other stuff is an afterthought.”

  “Nice of you to say.”

  “Joe wouldn’t have it any other way. Trust us. It’s a process, that’s all. A means to an end. You snap your fingers, we will snatch you up and get you out of there.”

  “But you don’t know where I am. And you won’t hear me snap my fingers.”

  “Right. So back to it.” The woman gave Mattie a moment to focus. “How many stairs? Do you recall? Did you count?”

  “They carried me for some of them. I think they did it to mess me up, so I couldn’t count, you know? I’m not sure if it was a single flight or a lot more. We went up, we went down. We went back up.”

  “They’re careful.” She made another note.

  “Paranoid, more like it. And I think Antonella and her skinny sister are either in charge or threatening Humphrey to take charge. Humphrey was pretty nice and chill about everything, but he had a way about him. I think he would have answered my questions without pressure from Osanna. Princess Charmless.”