MORTAL COILS (59 page)

Eliot
gripped the edge of the table. “What are you talking about? What does some girl
have to do with us? Why involve her?”

Fiona
moved to Eliot’s side, leveling her intensity at Robert as well. “Is this for
real?”

Robert
stepped back from them and held up his hands. “It’s real—very real for that
kid. And for you.”

Grandmother
nodded. “It would not be the first time the Council has involved innocents.”

Eliot
knew that he and Fiona were being treated as disposable pieces on the Council’s
chessboard, but how would they treat people not even related? A shudder crawled
down his spine.

The
clock in the hallway chimed.

“Midnight
in six hours,” Eliot noted.

“Shouldn’t
we call the police?” Fiona protested. “No test is worth someone getting killed
over. Maybe that’s the test: to see if we do the right thing.”

Cee
patted her arm. “The morals of the family, my dove, are entirely different than
what you and I think of as ‘right and wrong.’”

How
could that be? All their lives Grandmother and Cee had taught Eliot and Fiona
right from wrong. Did those lessons mean nothing now?

“Calling
the police won’t help,” Robert said. “Even if they found him before midnight,
the crazy guy has radio scanners. He’d know they were coming. He’d finish and
be gone before they could stop him.”

This
was horrible. The stakes of the first test had been dire: Eliot’s and Fiona’s
lives. But this . . . the Council involving a little girl. It wasn’t fair.

“I
hate them,” Fiona whispered.

Eliot
wondered if Aunt Dallas knew about this. Was that why she’d left so fast?

“Let’s
just try and figure out this trial,” he told Fiona. “We’ll worry about the
Council later.”

Fiona
nodded. “So who is this ‘crazy guy’?”

“It’s
the classic urban legend.” Robert pantomimed a downward slashing motion.
“Insane guy with a big knife. Or in this case, I think he burns things.”

Eliot
and Fiona both shook their heads, not getting Robert’s “classic” reference.

“It’s
in every slasher-summer-movie, group-of-teenagers-gets-killed-off-one-by-one
film that’s ever been,” Robert said. “There’s a guy who’s unkillable? Goes on a
rampage?”46

Eliot
looked for a pad and pen to take notes. “What else?”

“How
do the teenagers in these movies win?” Fiona asked.

Robert
shrugged apologetically. “I’ve told you everything the Council gave me orders
to.”

“We
understand,” Grandmother said in a chilly tone.

Robert
rummaged through his motorcycle saddlebag and pulled out a tiny laptop
computer. He set it on the table. “I did some digging around, just for my own
curiosity. Guess if I accidentally left this here, no one would notice. There’s
probably nothing that would help you anyway.”

Robert
held Eliot’s gaze a moment, then looked meaningfully at Fiona. He nodded to Cee
and then Grandmother. “Ma’am, I can wait if you need a ride.”

Grandmother
tapped the laptop with one finger, thinking. “Thank you, Mr. Farmington.” Her
tone had slightly defrosted. “I think you’ve done enough for us this evening.
You may go.”

Robert
glanced one last time at Fiona and left.

“A
computer?” Cee crept closer, reaching out but not touching it. “It violates the
household rules . . . thirty-four, fifty-five, and ninety-nine.”

46.
A subgenre of horror cinema where an insane killer relentlessly pursues a
series of young adults. The killer can withstand being shot, stabbed, etc., and
continues to stalk his would-be victims. Decried by film critics, these films,
others note, are a metaphor for uncontrollable evil rather than a commentary on
human morals and are comparable to (the equally graphic) late medieval fairy
tales. The origin of the genre is generally recognized as Alfred Hitchcock’s
1960 film, Psycho. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 6: Modern
Myths, 8th ed. (Zypheron Press Ltd.).

Grandmother
stared at the carbon-fiber case. “Indeed it does, but perhaps this once.” She
lifted the lid, turned it on, but halted at the start-up screen.

Eliot
and Fiona moved closer.

The
screen glowed with a redwood forest scene of such depth and color it looked
real. A tiny box with password blinked in the center.

Fiona
stared at the familiar trees and then elbowed Eliot aside. “I think I know the
password.”

She
typed in Sequoia.

The
computer beeped. Colorful icons appeared. Each had labels: DIABLO STATE PARK
TOPOLOGICAL MAP, PATIENT RECORD 0478, and CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL INCIDENT
REPORT DF-4829.

Eliot
noted a cluster of musical notes in the corner, and an antenna symbol broadcasting
waves.

Robert’s
computer connected to the outside world. It had to have music, movies, people
to chat with—everything. Eliot would give anything for five minutes alone with
the thing.

He
shook his head and remembered what was happening. “Try the police report
first,” he told Fiona.

Fiona’s
hands froze over the keyboard. “How do you work it?”

Grandmother
looked to Cee, and she shook her head.

How
stupid could they all be? Robert had literally handed them everything they’d
need to know about the upcoming trial—had probably risked his life doing so—but
none of them knew how to work a computer?

“Let
me try,” Eliot said.

Fiona’s
jaw clenched in annoyance. She nonetheless turned the computer toward him.

Eliot
smoothed his fingers over the keys, getting the feel of the thing, but not
pressing any of them. Below the keys was a smooth rectangle. He brushed his
thumb over it and an arrow appeared on-screen that mirrored his motion. He
swished it in a wide arc, delighted.

As
with the violin and the guitar, Eliot got a sense of this instrument just by
touching it . . . not mastery by any stretch of the imagination, just a tickle
in the back of his head.

He
zipped the cursor to the police file and double-tapped it as he would have
fingered two notes on his violin.

A
report opened. There was a mug shot of a man. He was five foot six, had brown
hair, brown eyes—nothing out of the ordinary—until Eliot saw the scars on one
side of his face and the burns that had liquefied his left ear.

“Perry
Millhouse,” Fiona read over his shoulder. “Multiple arsons, felony
endangerment, first-degree murder . . . sixteen counts.”

Millhouse
had locked the doors to a school, then set it on fire. Eliot felt sick as he
read this. Millhouse had been caught, tried, and sentenced to death. On appeal
he was found mentally unfit and the ruling was overturned. He was remanded to a
state facility for the criminally insane.

Eliot
tabbed ahead to another police report. This one detailed how Mill-house and two
inmates torched the hospital, killed two guards, and escaped. They were tracked
to the foothills near Diablo State Park. Two of the escaped inmates were
shot—but Millhouse eluded capture and took refuge in a cabin.

Before
the police could get him, he set fire to it . . . while he was inside.

The
police watched him burn.

“If
he’s dead already,” Fiona asked, “then who has the little girl?”

Grandmother
scanned the report over their shoulders. Her expression was inscrutable as
usual, but Eliot thought he detected a shadow of what? Recognition?

“There
is one more police file,” she told him.

He
opened it.

This
report was of an ongoing investigation. Last year three kids had disappeared
near Diablo State Park. The last, Amanda Lane, had gone missing yesterday.

There
was a picture of her. She had just lost her baby front teeth, and she grinned
proudly in the photograph.

Fiona
whispered, “It’s like the pictures we had taken. That police program at the
supermarket, remember?”

Eliot
touched Amanda’s picture with his fingertip. “Yeah.”

He
glanced back at the clock. “We need to get going. We should have taken Robert’s
offer for a ride.”

“I
have a car,” Grandmother said. “I will get you there just as fast.”

Eliot
looked at Fiona, puzzled. Grandmother had a car? She could drive? She always
walked or, in extreme cases, took the bus.

“Okay,
great.” Eliot gathered up his courage and told her, “We’ll need to get some
stuff, though. Gear we used in the sewer. It’ll just take a minute.”

Grandmother
stared at him a moment, then said, “Hurry. I will meet you out front.”

“Should
I pack some food?” Cee asked. “I can be ready to go in moments.”

Grandmother
regarded her with narrowed eyes. “You know there will barely be room for the
three of us in my car, Cecilia.”

Cee
dropped her head, disappointed.

Eliot
turned to Fiona. “Basement?” he asked her, and grabbed his backpack.

They
raced downstairs—not competing to see who would be first—all that childish
stuff was gone, replaced by a wrenching anticipation of what might happen
tonight.

L’essai
de la mort. The test of death.

Eliot
hoped Uncle Henry was wrong about that.

44

THE
ONE THING THAT MADE HER STRONG

Fiona
wrapped her handkerchief over her face. The dust in the basement made her gag.
She retrieved her Westley-Richards shotgun and a box of shells from a pile of
yellowing newspapers.

The
weight of the weapon reassured her. She ought to permanently keep it in her
book bag with all the weird things happening.

Did
she look like a criminal? Shotgun in hand and mask on her face. Or did she look
a little like Robert? A rebel.

In
the far corner of the basement, Eliot plunked his violin, tuning it. She waved
her flashlight at him. He was so deep in concentration he didn’t notice.

Motes
of dust jumped into mosaic patterns with his every note.

She
marveled at this display . . . and felt a twang of what? Jealousy?

Maybe.

He’d
taken to the violin as if he’d been born with the thing in his hands. He had
tamed rats, quelled Souhk, and now apparently made even the air dance. What
else could he do?

And
what could she do? Regurgitate facts and figures like some living encyclopedia?
Bus tables? What good was that when they had to face an insane arsonist
tonight?

She
could cut.

Fiona
pulled on and snapped her rubber-band bracelet. It stung her wrist. She halted,
horrified, and examined her hand.

She
had to be careful. If she had been in the wrong frame of mind when she did
that, she might have severed her hand . . . and bled to death.

So
that was her talent? Destroyer of things? Cutter? Was that a gift or a curse?