Indelible

  I didn’t want to look at him so I stuck a potato chip in my mouth.

  “They’ve been powerful friends and allies and I know that they’ve helped me on my quest to fulfill my father’s legacy.”

  I didn’t ask him any questions so he directed the conversation towards me. The rest of the lunch was filled with him asking me about my classes and me giving the briefest answers I could. When I had eaten all my lunch but my brownies, which, through careful planning, coincided with his last bite. I picked up a brownie. I bit into my brownie and made a ‘yum’ sound. He raised his eyebrow and looked at my extra brownie.

  “May I?” he asked gesturing toward it.

  I nodded. He took a bite, dabbed at his mouth with his linen napkin and then bit again. Crosby’s face paled and froze before he was shoved none too gently out of his body. His spirit was expelled so forcefully he went through the wall.

  Time stood still. It wouldn’t take him long to get back. Thanks to my time-slip pill, I was still able to move at normal speed. I ran around to his chair and was grateful to find it had wheels. I rolled it over toward the landscape painting and pushed it aside. Behind it was his safe. Raising his hand, I placed it on the black flat panel. Then I put my shoulders under his and lifted him to his feet, sweating and staggering under his dead weight. The man was seriously heavy. I positioned his chin so it looked into the peephole-like spot. Nothing happened.

  “It won’t work during the time freeze,” a familiar voice said from behind me as the door opened.

  “Brent,” I hissed without turning around. “You’ve got to get out of here before he comes back. If he sees you here, it’s all over.”

  “You’re lucky I’m here.” Brent shouldered most of Mr. Crosby’s weight before touching the safe. Once Brent made contact, a blue light flashed, scanning Mr. Crosby’s retina.

  A soft hiss indicated the safe was open. I could have wept. Inside I counted thirty vials of the cure, plus the two green bottles. There was enough in here to keep Brent healthy for years. I pulled them all out, and then carefully placed them inside my backpack. While Brent wheeled Mr. Crosby over to his desk, I noticed some familiar sheaves of paper in the back. My journal pages! I grabbed those and stuffed them into my backpack too.

  “Go!” I ordered. “Make sure Steve is in position, and get out of here before any of the cameras start working again.”

  “I love it when you’re bossy.” Brent gave me a salute, slipped out of the office, and closed the door behind him. I shut the safe and righted the picture. I returned to my own seat, slipped out of my body and waited until I heard his voice on the other side of the door demanding I open it.

  “Mr. Crosby?” I called through the door. “What’s happening? Why can’t I get back to my body?”

  “Open the door, Yara.”

  “Okay. I’m not as good at this as Brent so it might take a few minutes.” I stalled as long as I could, rattling the knob, until the orange glow around his body faded. In a few minutes the licorice would be worn off and he’d be sucked back into his body. I opened the door, and Crosby was livid.

  “What happened?” I tried to sound confused, but the fear in my voice was all real.

  His eyebrows furled. “What did you do?”

  “Me? What did you do? I was shoved out my body! Is this another trick to force me to help you? I already said I would do it!” I scrunched up my face, trying to look on the verge of tears.

  His eyes kept flashing different emotions: pity, mistrust, anger, sympathy.

  “I didn’t do it,” he finally said.

  “Well I didn’t do it.” I balled my hands into fists and placed them on my hips. “Then who did?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Who gave you the lunch today?”

  “Angela in the cafeteria. Why?” I hated pulling Angela into it, but he’d blame me for it soon enough. Especially when he found out there were no brownies on the menu today.

  “I see.”

  I made the about-to-cry look again. “I like Angela. Do you think she did this to us?” I sniffed. “Why would she do this?”

  Right then, the licorice wore off and he was sucked into his body. I entered mine at the same moment.

  “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay,” he said.

  He wrote me a late pass and my clammy palms held it tight as my stolen goods and I left his office. Steve was waiting for me at the elevator doors and we switched backpacks. He took the elevator and I took the stairs, trying to not look like I was in a hurry. I was only half way down when an out-of-breath Teri called my name. I spun around and found Mr. Crosby storming up behind her.

  “Yara, come back into my office with me. Right. Now.”

  “Is everything okay?” My courage dimmed a little, but I followed behind him, trying to look innocent.

  As soon as we were inside his office he shut the door firmly. “Let me see your backpack.”

  “Okay.” I handed him my bag and silently thanked Cherie for adding a bag-switch to the plan. “What is this about?”

  “This is about the fact that there were no brownies made in the cafeteria today and the fact that something was stolen from my office.” He unzipped my bag and searched through it. He looked up confused. “It isn’t here.”

  “What?” I asked, trying to look lost.

  “The . . .” he started then snapped his mouth shut. “Never mind. Are you sure you got your brownies from Angela?”

  “I didn’t see her put them in there, but she handed me the bag.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair and told me I could go.

  My knees shook as I left his office the second time. If I didn’t think he was watching I would have collapsed on the floor. As it was, I forced myself to walk to class, amazed my plan had worked. By now Steve would have followed the rest of the plan and given Brent a dose before hiding the rest off campus.

  In the morning I was called to Mr. Crosby’s office.

  Teri grinned at me as she let him know I was in.

  As soon as I sat down he glared at me. “That was very well played yesterday. I didn’t see it coming.”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “The security cameras show you handing off your backpack. I’m sure you’re feeling like you’ve won, but that amount of medicine will only help him for a few years.”

  A few years gave me time to discover what was in the cure, or to find another way to help him survive. Right now, a few years felt like an eternity for Brent.

  “I’m giving you the opportunity to still work with us. You’ll get the cure. I won’t release the tapes. And I also won’t release the information of what Mr. Springsteed was doing for us before he fell ill.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mr. Springsteed could go to jail for a long time. He is over eighteen, after all. There’s destruction of property, breaking and entering, burglary . . . ”

  “You have proof of this?” I asked, my mouth dry.

  He opened his laptop and clicked play. The surveillance video showed Brent pulling papers out of a filing cabinet and slipping them inside his jacket. “Imagine what the authorities would say if they saw this.”

  “But. . .” That can’t be right, I wanted to say, but I remembered Brent’s refusal to talk about what they had asked him to do. I thought of how the Clutch had wanted me to spy on a judge as I watched the footage, and with a sickening thud in my stomach I realized it really was Brent on the tape. The Clutch had talked him into doing their dirty work in order to bargain for his life. They were that cold. I stared at Mr. Crosby with revulsion. He ignored me and smiled hopefully.

  “Reconsidering our offer now?”

  I swallowed. As much as I want to save Brent, I couldn’t bring myself to agree to their terms. “No, I’m not spying on any judge. I’m not stupid enough to think you wouldn’t gather this same sort of blackmail about me.”

  “You know,” Mr. Crosby said closing his laptop. “You’re more level-headed than your counterparts.”

/>   “No need to try to butter me up.” I grasped the arms on the chair. “I’m not doing anything illegal for you.”

  “Well, then perhaps you’d consider doing something for us that is in no way illegal.”

  “In exchange for what?” I looked up in surprise.

  “The recipe for the cure, and all of our videos on you and your friends.”

  It sounded too good to be true. There had to be strings I didn’t see. “And what do you want me to?”

  “It’s simple. We still want the key, of course, and one other small thing. We want you to remove the barrier around school. The magical barrier that keeps ghosts trapped here.”

  “Why would that matter to . . . oh, you want to be able to leave campus while projecting.” I shivered as I thought about all the damage they could do to the world if I let that happen. “You don’t need me to do that. Couldn’t anyone do that?”

  “If we hadn’t read your journal notes, we might never have known that you are the key to our plan. We didn’t know until then that your grandfather put it up, and we might never have realized it requires one of his descendants to take it down.”

  “Why?” I picked at the polish on my nails and noticed the veins at my wrist. That’s when I realized something. “He used his own blood in the ceremony, didn’t he?”

  Mr. Crosby didn’t answer but it was easy to see I guessed right. “If you don’t do it,” he said after a moment, “we’ll track down another relative and bring them here to do it. They’ll eagerly agree, because they’ll be well paid. And we can be persuasive.”

  I had little doubt he was right. If I didn’t do it, eventually someone would. I knew that didn’t make it right, but if it was going to happen anyway, shouldn’t I at least be able to save my friends with it?

  “I need time to think this through.” Sadly, this time I wasn’t bluffing. I really needed to consider his offer. We shook hands and it felt like something inside me died. I wiped my hand on my skirt as I left.

  v

  My grandma came to visit me the next day. I passed her a small sample of the cure. She planned to send some of it off to a lab, keeping some for herself and sending some back to her friends in Brazil.

  I dropped to my bed and hugged my pillow to my chest. “Do you know how the barrier was put around campus?”

  “Why?”

  I studied the dust motes dancing in the sunshine that streamed through the windows, not able to look at her.

  “I need to know, because I might need to destroy it.” Her stare felt heavier than a ton of bricks and I cracked under the pressure, telling her everything.

  “What a heavy burden to bear.” She clucked her tongue. “You know why the barrier was put up don’t you?”

  “Yes, to keep Thomas from escaping.”

  “Do you think Thomas was the only evil thing at Pendrell back then?”

  “No, the Clutch were probably part of it too.” I tucked my hands under my legs. “Do you think it isn’t wrong of me to try and break the barrier?”

  Vovó smoothed back the loose tendrils of her hair into her bun. “Do you?”

  “Yes, I think it would be wrong.” I gulped down the sob rising out of my throat. “But if I don’t, they’ll find someone else to do it. Why not do it myself and help my friends?”

  “Oh, Querida.” She held out her arms to me and I scrambled into them. “You’re right. They will find someone else to do it. And you can help your friends by doing it. But what would that do to you? You would be compromising part of yourself and what your family has done to protect the world. They have forced you into a situation that is beyond black and white.”

  “I know, but how can I not do it?’

  She kissed the top of my head. “Do you trust these men to keep their word?’

  I shook my head. “No. Not at all . . .”

  The edge of her glasses poked my scalp as she held me tight. “You know this may not turn out the way they hoped. They are tampering with things they weren’t meant to.”

  “This must have been what Kalina warned me about. She told me not to take the deal.”

  Vovó hesitated for a second like she was unsure of her next words. “Maybe. Just know that I will love you no matter what.”

  Usually I felt centered and clear minded after talking things through with Vovó, but not this time. My mind was as murky as a mud puddle. Basically, she had acknowledged that I had a hard choice to make, and trusted me to make it. If this is what it meant to grow up, I suddenly understood Peter Pan a lot more.

  v

  The next morning I woke up to find Sophia in my room.

  I bit back a scream.

  “I thought you had crossed over.”

  She shook her head. “No, I’ve just been exploring campus, and enjoying happy memories of my husband. I am sorry for vanishing so quickly after you released me. I should have been more help to you. You found the key, yes?”

  I nodded. “We know what it opens, too.”

  “I know you are the right person to take over keeping it safe.” She sighed. “I wish that I had been kinder to Christopher when he gave me the key, that I would have reacted better.”

  She shook her head. “I have been using my time wisely. I heard that man Mr. Crosby say something about Modesto and drought when talking about the cure. They were using words I didn’t understand but I did make those out.”

  “Modesto. Drought,” I repeated to myself.

  “I also discovered a device hidden under the statue on Mr. Cosby’s desk. The lion statue has a false bottom. I’m not sure what it is, but he treats it as if it were important. I felt I should tell you. I will let you know if I find anything else.”

  With that she disappeared.

  I dressed and headed for breakfast. DJ waited for me at the end of the food line. “Hey Cupcake.”

  I didn’t even bother to acknowledge him as I walked by.

  “Okay I get that you’re angry, but did it ever occur to you that maybe we have the same enemy?”

  “Yes.” I whirled around to glare at him. “I pointed that out to you a few days ago. Did it ever occur to you that you’ve already picked your side?”

  His cheeks flushed. “Look, this is bigger than that. You can’t take down that barrier. You don’t know what they’ve got planned.”

  “And you do?”

  “I do.” His emerald eyes shone with stone-cold honesty.

  I grabbed my breakfast and found a table for us to sit at. “Go ahead.”

  “They’re after the same thing the original Clutch wanted.”

  “Which is power and control. Mainly mind control, right?”

  He blinked a few times. “How did you know that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Tell me how they do it.”

  He peeled his banana in three long strips. “When they work together they make people do stuff, they plant ideas in your mind impossible to overcome.”

  It sounded like a demented version of what Vovó could do with ghosts.

  “It’s awful,” he said in a quiet voice.

  “They’ve done it to you?”

  He flinched and nodded. He cleared his throat. “Right now they’re limited to campus. Their mind control only works while on Pendrell property. They’ve been experimenting on . . . people. They know what they’ve figured out isn’t as strong as what the Pendrell sons could do, but it works.”

  I didn’t know they already had a working version of the mind control power. It was enough to make me lose my appetite.

  “Once that barrier is gone, there might not be any way to stop them.” DJ shoved his banana in his mouth and chewed.

  “So all they really want is to be able to do their mojo off campus.” I pushed the oatmeal in my bowl around with my spoon.

  “That’s part of it. The other part they want is some old research journals Christopher Pendrell stole from his sons. It had some other instructions on powers and stuff.” DJ started drumming his fingers against the table. “You can’t do t
his. Can you imagine what else could be hidden in those journals? You can’t take down that barrier. At least at this rate it’s controlled.”

  “If I don’t, they’ll get someone else to do it. I bet they already have people finding some of my relatives.”

  “They do,” DJ confirmed.

  I shrugged. “Then it doesn’t matter if I do it or not. If I agree, then my friends will be helped.”

  “Let your relative do it.”

  “Why?” I slid my oatmeal away, unable to eat.

  “Because then you’ll be spared the guilt.”

  The depth of caring in his voice caught me off guard. “If you’re so worried, you can do your part by not giving them the key.” I frowned at him. “Is all this because now that I have a key, you’re afraid that yours is less valuable?”

  He slunk back and his spine slumped. “It isn’t that. You were the ones warning me away from making deals with them. Does your advice about not trusting them go both ways? Do you really expect them to just hand their blackmail evidence over to you?”

  “No, but I have to do what I can to save Brent.”

  “You love him that much?” I didn’t realize while we’d been arguing we had drifted closer together. His face was so close I could feel his breath on my cheek and his eyes stared into mine.

  I leaned back from him. “I do. And it’s about more than just him now. There are others I need to help.”

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Look, I’ve changed my mind. You can borrow my copy of the key. If you promise to let me have them both when you’re done.”

  “I promise.” I folded my napkin over my uneaten breakfast, trying to pretend that his promise to let me use his key wasn’t a huge deal. Those journals were likely hidden in the old pool room, and if I could remove them and keep that information out of the Clutch’s hands, then letting them have the key wouldn’t be a big deal. One of my agonizing choices had practically vanished, and a heavy weight lifted from my chest. Thanks to DJ. “Why are you willing to help me now?”