Janitors

  “Hadley said you made it.”

  Walter shook his head. “Never seen anything like it. But we have one now,” he said, gesturing toward the end table. Spencer saw the used latex glove in a limp pile. Seeing the glove reminded him of the destruction he’d caused the night before.

  “I’m really sorry about yesterday,” Spencer admitted.

  “Me too,” added Daisy.

  “And we’re sorry that we didn’t get to you sooner. All of this could have been avoided.”

  Spencer took a deep breath. Knowing the janitor’s side of the story made Garth Hadley look unquestionably guilty. Spencer couldn’t believe he’d been tricked. He still felt the need to atone for his wrongdoings at the ice cream social.

  “We’ll help you get that hammer back, Mr. Jamison,” Spencer said, his voice ringing with determination.

  Walter Jamison smiled. “I can’t let you do that, Spencer. Marv and I will do the best we can to recover Ninfa, but you kids need to stay away from the BEM. I’m afraid they might have more plans for you.”

  “What kind of plans?”

  “I’m not sure. And we won’t risk finding out.” Walter glanced around the closet. He’d been using the room as a makeshift factory for several months now. Thanks to Spencer and Daisy, the entire Rebel Underground would die off and Toxites would destroy education.

  “We have you in detention for three more days,” the warlock said. “Will you let us teach you what we can?”

  Spencer and Daisy nodded in unison. If they had to see Toxites for the rest of their lives, at least they could learn to kill the monsters.

  “Good,” Walter said, “because there is a war brewing.”

  Chapter 26

  “Today we’ll try out some basics.”

  Wednesday afternoon rolled around and Spencer and Daisy met at the top of the janitors’ stairs. Unlike the previous day, they were anxious for detention. Marv met them as the school busses rolled away and led them down the stairs.

  Grudgingly, Marv broke out two cans of soda and handed them to the kids.

  “Walter’s out scouting for Hadley’s local hideout,” Marv said. “He’ll be back soon. And anyway, we’ve got to wait till the school clears out before we can give you an introduction to basic equipment.”

  Marv dug around in the desk and withdrew a paperback book with tattered edges. “Walter wanted me to show you this.” He held it out so they could see the cover. It was drab brown. Embossed in the center was the symbol of a large metal ring with more than a dozen keys hanging from it. It was the same symbol that appeared on the Rebel Closet door.

  “The Janitor Handbook,” Marv said. “Fifth edition.”

  Spencer and Daisy almost forgot about their sodas as they thumbed through the contents of the Handbook. They skimmed through a chapter about the Founding Witches. There were several pages about the history and organization of the BEM. Much of the book was dedicated to the Toxites, including early and modern sketches of the creatures.

  The kids were far from finished with the book by the time Walter arrived. The warlock reported that the school was finally clear, so he and Marv went into the hidden Rebel Closet. A moment later they emerged with a mop, two brooms, and a can of vacuum dust from an upright vacuum.

  “So,” Daisy told Spencer as they followed the janitors toward the gym. Daisy had The Janitor Handbook in one hand. “I’m pretty much grounded for life now.”

  “Poach called your parents yesterday?”

  “I still can’t believe what we did at the social.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Spencer said.

  “What about your mom? Are you grounded too?”

  Spencer nodded. “Grounded from the computer. My mom wasn’t happy about me e-mailing without permission.”

  They entered the gym, and Walter locked the doors behind them.

  “Today is just an introduction,” Marv said. He didn’t look overly pleased to be teaching the kids. Marv had been on the front lines, dealing with Spencer from the beginning. Unlike Walter, Marv seemed to be hanging onto a grudge.

  “Today we’ll try out some basics and let you go home. Tomorrow we’ll observe some Toxites. Then, on Friday, hopefully you’ll be ready to catch them. All right?” Marv took The Janitor Handbook from Daisy.

  “Let’s start with brooms,” Walter said. “These particular sweepers carry a double-T charge. That means two Toxites have been crushed under the bristles.”

  Walter picked up a broom and held it firmly in both hands. “By hitting the bristles on the floor, some of the magic is activated, pushing the broom off the ground.”

  To demonstrate, Walter slammed the straw end of the broom against the gym floor. The broom jerked upward, Walter rising weightlessly as it lifted off the ground. He rose, hovered at the peak for a moment, then descended easily.

  “For every action,” he said, “there is an opposite and equal reaction. The harder I hit the broom on the floor, the higher I’ll rise. You don’t have to sit on the broom or ride it at all. As long as you’re hanging onto the handle, your body will be as weightless as it would be in outer space. Let’s practice.”

  Spencer and Daisy each took a broom. Spencer held onto the wooden handle and gently tapped the other end on the floor. The broom lifted and he drifted about two feet off the waxed wood floor. “That’s awesome,” he said, touching down again.

  Daisy gave her broom a good whack and suddenly jetted into the air. She screamed as she reached her peak about halfway to the ceiling. Daisy drifted down and landed heavily, gasping for breath.

  Spencer tried again, a little harder this time. “How do you steer?” he asked as he floated back to the three-point line on the gym floor.

  “You don’t, really,” Marv said. “Whatever direction you take off in, that’s where you’re going to go.”

  Spencer and Daisy practiced with the brooms for about ten minutes. It was a rush every time their feet left the floor. Soon they were running, smacking their brooms down, and using their momentum to launch sideways.

  “Brooms are helpful when trying to capture Toxites,” Walter said. He took The Janitor Handbook from Marv and started thumbing through. “Let’s see what the glossary says about brooms . . . ah, yes.” Walter began reading aloud.

  “Broom—swift and mobile, a broom can help you maneuver into tactical positions against which Toxites cannot defend. The strength of the bristles is usually such that a single blow will mete out immediate death to any Toxite. Highly effective in pursuit of winged Rubbish. Alternate uses include flying and sweeping floors.” Walter looked up to see if there were any questions.

  “Why don’t you read ‘Mops’ while you’re at it,” Marv said, hefting a dirty white mop head on a long handle.

  Walter turned a few pages. “Mop—accurate and constricting, a mop will deal instant death to any Toxite entangled therein. Highly effective in eliminating Filth and Grime. Alternate uses include ensnaring common objects and cleaning hard floors.” Walter closed the book.

  “Couldn’t have said it better,” Marv said.

  Suddenly, Marv whipped the mop like he was casting a fishing line. To the kids’ surprise, the strings of the mop extended, reaching out until they were nearly ten feet long. Spencer tried to step back, but the mop had wrapped around his arm. Quickly, the mop retracted, dragging Spencer forward until he stood only a foot away from Marv. The burly janitor grinned, showing yellow teeth. “Gotcha,” he said as the mop unwound from Spencer’s arm. “The range and strength will increase with every Toxite you destroy.”

  Walter set up a few close-range targets—an orange cone, a basketball, and one of Marv’s shoes. Daisy went first and found it very difficult to aim the mop. She managed to entangle the basketball, but lost control as the mop reeled in.

  Spencer was not much better, but he was de
termined to snag Marv’s shoe. At last he succeeded, tangling the dirty sneaker in the mop strings and pulling it in.

  “Last thing for today,” Walter said, holding out the can. “Vacuum dust! When you use a vacuum to suck up a Filth or a Rubbish, the creature dies and its magic leaks into the vacuum. This charged dust is particularly helpful in immobilizing an escaping Toxite.” He scooped up a small handful. “Run for it, Marv!” he shouted.

  Instantly, the big janitor fell into a floor-shaking sprint. Walter made a funnel with his fingers and threw the dust like a Frisbee. The puff of gray shot through the air with the sound of a revving vacuum and struck Marv in the back. The big man stopped, his feet pasted to the ground and his knees almost buckling. His hair and beard were strained downward and the strangest suction sound filled the air.

  After a moment, the sound subsided and Marv righted himself, his hair fluffier, like he’d been through a dryer cycle. The janitor scowled at Walter, but the warlock simply laughed.

  “The harder you throw it, the more suction it creates on your opponent. Marv is strong, so I couldn’t bring him down. But I’ve seen people with their faces flat on the floor from vac dust suction. Controlling the vacuum dust isn’t as easy as it looks. Different hand positions change the distance and spread of your attack.” Walter leafed through the pages of The Janitor Handbook. “Take a look at this diagram for the different throwing techniques and hand positions.”

  The Palm Blast (easy)

  Wide spread of dust over short distances.

  The Funnel Throw (medium)

  Accurate and dangerous over long distances.

  The Thumb Shot (difficult)

  Allows for hitting multiple targets with one throw.

  Spencer and Daisy practiced until the can was empty and the last bit of vacuum dust had been tossed across the gym. Marv grabbed a big dust mop and began sweeping up the thrown vacuum dust.

  “Can we reuse it?” Daisy asked.

  Walter shook his head. “The vac dust is spent. We’d have to get more from the bag before the vacuum maxes out.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Daisy asked.

  “We can’t use these things forever,” Walter explained. “Glopified supplies have a Toxite kill limit of fifty.”

  “What happens if you max them out?” Spencer asked.

  Marv gave him a look. “What do you think? They stop working. Once a Glopified broom hits fifty Toxites, the only thing you can do is throw that broom into a special dumpster. Someone will be around to collect it and dispose of it safely.”

  “Who collects the stuff from the magic-filled dumpster?”

  “That information is classified,” Marv said. “Time to go home.”

  Spencer didn’t want to go home. All he could think about was the unbelievably cool equipment that Walter and Marv had just shown him. He couldn’t help imagining Dez with a ten-foot mop wrapped around his face. Then Spencer thought of Mr. Hadley attacking, angry that Spencer and Daisy had betrayed him.

  Could a broom lift them out of Hadley’s reach?

  Chapter 27

  “First thing you’ve got to know about Toxites . . .”

  You should’ve put some Glop into a sports car or something,” Daisy told Walter Jamison on Thursday afternoon. “That would be awesome. You could fly high, or drive over water. Who knows?”

  Walter smiled, as Spencer found he often did. “It doesn’t work quite like that. Good idea, though.”

  Spencer and Daisy were in the janitors’ storage/office waiting for the school to vacate so they could train again.

  “You see,” Walter explained, “the Founding Witches were afraid that someone in the future would misuse Glop. They decided to put some limitations on the hammer and nail. One limitation is that Glop can only be handled by a warlock in an established domain. Another is that Glop can only be applied to certain objects that are useful in maintenance.”

  “So just vacuums and mops and stuff?”

  “Those are the obvious ones,” Walter said. “There are probably hundreds of possibilities—washers and dryers, keys, machines that wax the floor, buffers that shine it, lawn mowers, weed whackers—anything a janitor might use. I don’t know. Exploration is dangerous. Penalties for misusing Glop usually keep warlocks from experimenting too far out of the ordinary. But the latex glove is new. Someone was daring enough to try that and it paid off.”

  “How’d they make the glove?” Spencer asked.

  “Every time a warlock Glopifies something, he has to make a special formula. You start with a bit of raw Glop and carefully add other substances into it. Think of it like a witch’s brew. I’ve seen warlocks add everything from a Rubbish wing to a drop of molten lead to a dash of paprika.”

  “Sounds like my dad’s cooking,” Daisy muttered.

  “Once a successful Glop formula has been developed, the warlock can send a batch to other janitors. All they have to do is take a new latex glove and dip it into the Glop formula. After that, the glove is Glopified, and makes the wearer uncatchable. It would also make the glove strong enough to destroy Toxites, although I doubt that’s its primary purpose. You see,” Walter continued, “warlocks are only supposed to Glopify equipment that will aid them in catching Toxites.”

  “But that’s not why they made the glove,” Daisy said.

  “That’s what worries me,” answered Walter. “By making the glove, the BEM has developed a Glopified object whose sole purpose seems aimed at attacking other humans. That is dangerous experimentation. I hate the thought, but the time may come when experimentation is all we’ll be able to do to keep an upper hand.”

  “But you can’t experiment unless you get the hammer back,” Daisy reminded him.

  Walter smiled. “Oh, we will get it back.”

  “We’ll help,” Spencer offered again. “We already have the BEM’s trust; we could trick Hadley and . . .”

  “No!” Walter snapped. His face suddenly looked extra weary. “We’ve already been over this. I don’t want you two getting involved any deeper than you already are.”

  Spencer felt a pang of hurt. Didn’t Walter trust them? Wasn’t he impressed by their skills at the ice cream social? Spencer frowned. Jamison was just being stubborn, refusing to accept help from a kid.

  Marv suddenly lumbered down the steps, slurping from a bottle of cream soda. “Coast is clear,” he said. “All’s quiet up there. I left several messes that are sure to attract some hungry Toxites.”

  Spencer and Daisy followed the two janitors up the stairs. They weren’t training with equipment today. This was a day for observation.

  “First thing you’ve got to know about Toxites,” Marv said, keeping his voice very low and gravelly. “They hate being seen. Toxites thrive on being undetectable.”

  Spencer suddenly recalled how each time he’d seen a Toxite, the little creature had noticed him staring and scurried away.

  “There,” Walter hissed, dropping to a crouch in the middle of the hall. The others followed his example. Spencer and Daisy peered ahead, straining to see what Walter had spotted.

  “You see it?” The warlock pointed slowly. Halfway down the hall, a vulture-bat was perched on the edge of a garbage can. “That’s a Rubbish. They feed on trash and litter. Those things can palate almost anything—scraps of food, paper, plastic, rubber . . . you name it.”

  “They don’t fly straight, so they’re hard to catch,” Marv added. “Sometimes you can tangle them in a Glopified mop and that’ll crush them. But brooms are best for Rubbishes.”

  Walter crept forward, staying close to the wall. The Rubbish had hopped into the trash can and was playing in the piled garbage like it was a birdbath. Walter, bent low, approached the can as the Rubbish dove deeper in search of an unseen treat.

  Like a pouncing cat, Walter leapt up,
grabbed the garbage sack that lined the can, and tied it closed. No sooner was the top sealed off, however, than the Rubbish tore through the plastic sack, wings pounding. A cold, limp French fry drooped from its hooked beak.

  Spencer and Daisy reeled back, frightened by the sudden emergence. The Rubbish flapped down the hallway and around the corner.

  Marv strode forward, grinning stupidly. “Thought that’d work?” he asked Walter.

  “No,” he answered. “But I wanted to prove something.”

  “What?” Marv asked.

  “I wanted to show the kids how a skilled Toxite hunter can approach the creatures nearly undetected.”

  “You’re lucky that thing didn’t attack,” Daisy said. “It barely missed your face when it came out of that bag.”

  Marv snorted. “Toxites don’t attack people. That Rubbish is totally content in this environment. It inhales your brain waves and exhales apathy.”

  “Apathy?” Daisy asked. She’d heard that people exhaled carbon dioxide and plants exhaled oxygen. But what was apathy?

  “Apathy is a lack of interest,” Walter said. “When a Rubbish exhales, students nearby suddenly lose the desire to do any work. They become completely disinterested in whatever the teacher is saying. In short, they don’t want to learn anything.”

  “Oh,” Daisy said, grateful now that she only exhaled carbon dioxide.

  “Other than that, Rubbishes don’t attack physically,” Walter said.

  “Unless they’re relocated,” Marv said. “A few years back, Toxite scientists from the BEM did experiments to see how the creatures would fare in other environments. But the Toxites don’t like to be moved out of schools. The scientists relocated some to restaurants, business buildings, and a few other locations. As soon as they were released, the Toxites went haywire and started attacking the scientists.

  “An innocent bystander saw it. ’Course, she couldn’t see the Toxites, so she thought the scientists were having some kind of spasm or seizure. Looked real creepy. She called an ambulance. Lucky thing, too, since four BEM workers were critically injured. The Toxites escaped, fighting a path all the way back to the school they were taken from. They’re very territorial.”