Sleight (2 page)

TO BE CLEAR, Mr. Kenwoode wasn’t talking about a puppy, he was referring to Mr. Goodturn, and I guess that deserves some background.

A little over three weeks ago, on the day I’d managed to derail a plan some lunatics had devised to blow up most of my school, Maddy and I had found Mr. Goodturn unconscious and unresponsive in his apartment. At the time we had thought he was dead. While I had been frantically checking for a pulse and not finding one, Maddy had called a phone number we had found on a note Mr. Goodturn had left for me.

That had been my first contact with Kenwoode. He had rattled off several kooky instructions to Maddy: “Put him in a completely dark room. Make sure he is lying on his back. Get bags of ice and place them tightly around his body.” He had also assured us that he would arrive as soon as possible. Where he would be coming from we couldn’t guess and he hadn’t volunteered that information. Carefully following his instructions, Maddy and I had anxiously awaited his arrival.

When he had shown up the very next morning I immediately began to regret calling him. Curt, unemotional and very demanding he had swept into my life and taken complete control. There were more orders, supplies to purchase and very little conversation about exactly what it was that we were doing. Other than offhandedly explaining that Mr. Goodturn’s knack for slowing things down, including himself, might have enabled him to protect himself when he had been attacked, Kenwoode hadn’t offered any insight as to what was going on.

In the days that followed we had moved Mr. Goodturn daily to prevent bed sores and to help along whatever circulation might be going on in his body. I’d brought more ice as needed, and when I couldn’t sleep, I would go to his room and read to him. I wasn’t sure if Mr. Goodturn’s tastes ran to science fiction stories or mysteries but he’d been forced to listen to several.

School had gone into Fall Break right after the mess in the gym, but I hadn’t returned when classes had resumed. I was getting homework over the internet for the time being and working on a new project to simplify my academic life. My injuries and, from the school administration’s point of view, psychological trauma, had bought me a lengthy leave of absence.

Maddy’s move had been both devastating and cruelly swift. I mean, one day we were hanging out and the next she, her folks and her little sister were packed in the car and I was waving goodbye from the curb in front of her parents’ building. I could see Maddy’s tear-stained face looking back at me until the car turned a corner, and then she was gone.

Her parents had originally agreed to let her stay through the end of the school year, but the mess at school, my getting kidnapped and being the last person to see Justine had soured them on letting her hang out with me any longer than necessary. As we had stood on the street saying goodbye she’d promised to come back for a visit as soon as possible, but her parents had been pretty quiet when she’d said it. My unfortunate talent for getting into serious trouble had not endeared me to the McIntyre parental units. We had initially texted every day but it was a tease. It made her seem close when she really wasn’t.

Kenwoode stood to one side, tapping his foot and motioning me forward with an open hand. He seemed irritated by my distracted attitude. I held my tongue. Without saying anything I walked slowly to the bed. The lights were off and the curtains pulled so the only illumination in the room was what little light spilled in from the hall. As I approached Mr. Goodturn I noticed that the clock with the three monkeys, an antique that was Mr. Goodturn’s favorite trinket, was sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. It looked ridiculously out of place and awkward as it was much too big for the small surface it was sitting on. Kenwoode must have brought it up recently because it hadn’t been there the night before when I’d read to Mr. Goodturn. I saw that the second hand on the clock was moving; which was odd, because it had stopped working weeks ago.

In the shadows I could just barely make out the features on Mr. Goodturn’s face. It was subtle but he looked more present somehow. Less waxy and slack. While I looked down on him, fighting back a tear, his eyelids opened slowly, like a garage door rolling up. They were unfocused and staring straight up at the ceiling, but once the lids had risen completely his eyes slowly slid toward me. My arms broke out in gooseflesh.

Reaching out a hand I placed it on his arm. His skin was chilled from the ice bags that were nestled around him and it felt like touching a corpse.

No more ice.

I almost fell down. One of my knacks was the ability to carry on a conversation on a private mental frequency, but in my experience, other than one particular instance, all contact of this kind had to be initiated by me. During the years I had known Mr. Goodturn he and I had never communicated in this way.

Mr.G?

Yes.

Are you going to be okay?

Need something.

Anything! What?

Breno.

Just like that the conversation shut off and his eyes slowly closed, like the sun dipping below the horizon.

Mr. Goodturn? Can you hear me? What about Breno? What is it? How can I help you?

There was no response and I looked over my shoulder at Kenwoode. He gave no indication that he had been aware of the silent conversation. He gazed at me expressionlessly.

“Has he said anything? Did you talk to him?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’ve only noticed that his eyes have opened, which I take as a good sign. He hasn’t moved and he hasn’t made a sound.”

Not really an answer I thought. Not for the first time I wondered what the connection was between Mr. G and Kenwoode. Friends? Colleagues? It was also an unanswered question as to whether Kenwoode was a member of the loosely connected community of Naturals that possessed knacks. The only related comment he had made had been about how Mr. Goodturn’s slowing knack might have saved him. I hadn’t offered any information on my own knacks. Other than Mr. Goodturn’s request to contact him I didn’t really know much about Kenwoode and it was clear that he was comfortable not sharing much about himself.

I looked at Mr. Goodturn again. “A good sign. What happens next? Does he need something different?” I paused. “Do you think the ice is still necessary? He seems so cold. His skin is almost blue.”

Sniffing, Mr. Kenwoode came closer to the bed and poked at one of the bags of ice with a finger. “I would expect not. Any motor movement, even if it is only his eyes, probably indicates that his physical body is not at risk of decay.”

Decay? It was a little disrespectful, but that was part of Mr. Kenwoode’s questionable charm.

“Yeah? Well, do you want me to get rid of it? What do we do next? Is there something else we should be doing?”

Tugging at the bottom edge of his vest, he rolled his shoulders and cleared his throat. “Yes, I think that there are several things I can put you about.”

AN HOUR LATER I had finished up in Mr. Goodturn’s room. I’d glanced at his face a dozen times but his eyes had remained closed and he hadn’t responded to my attempts to speak with him on my private frequency. Kenwoode had headed back to his favorite spot, and was engrossed in paperwork that covered a large desk in Mr. G’s library, essentially dismissing me.

I headed back downstairs to the pawnshop.

It was late morning and the light from outside was trying to get through all of the stuff in the shop’s windows, giving the interior of the pawnshop an eerie half-lit glow. Even though the shop had never been a busy environment, Mr. Goodturn’s presence had always given the place its own kind of energy. Heart, I guess. His small, yet exciting progress upstairs left me nervous and hopeful, but his reference to Breno was bouncing around in my head.

What did he need from Breno, or what did Breno need from me? The big simpleminded superintendent had been scarce since we’d both escaped a near death experience. That had been at the hands of Sonja, the other lavender-eyed female in my life. He and I had ended up in the hospital. I’d used my knacks to sneak away, while Breno had been forced to remain there for days until Kenwoode had helped me get him discharged. Breno had been unusually quiet when we had taken him home, and when I had explained what had happened to Mr. Goodturn he had taken it hard. He’d cried all the way to the apartment building.

Last year I’d uncovered the history and connection between Breno and Mr. Goodturn. Breno, as an angry teen, had possessed a knack for creating fire. That knack had drawn him into Mr. G’s circle somehow, sort of put him on the Knack Network Radar. Breno’s knack, his emotional instability and the abusive home he’d been raised in had resulted in a dramatic event that had ended with his parents being burned alive. Breno had become Mr. Goodturn’s responsibility, and not coincidentally, Breno’s fire-making ability and most of his intelligence had been wiped out as well.

That had been a difficult time in my relationship with Mr. Goodturn. He’d justified what he’d done to Breno as necessary to protect Breno and others
from
Breno. I had seen it as him playing God. Mr. G’s reason for erasing Breno’s knack was understandable. And his regret over having unintentionally damaged Breno’s intellect had seemed genuine. But I’d had a hard time reconciling the whole thing. Eventually my belief in Mr. Goodturn’s noble motivation, and the fact that I thought of him as a father figure, had made it possible for me to see it as an accident born out of good intentions.

Heck, I’ve made my share of mistakes while I was trying to do something good too.

Not interested in opening the shop and needing some time to myself I left through the front door and knacked the lock behind me, knowing that Kenwoode would probably spend the rest of the day upstairs.

I headed over to my apartment building to check in on Breno. When I got to his door on the first floor I didn’t get a response to my loud knocking. Being able to get past pretty much any lock or closed door made my next decision easy. Maybe easier than it should have been. Reaching out with my knack, I manipulated the tumblers in the lock and heard them click into place.

I let myself in.

Okay, so that
is
technically breaking and entering but I had no intention of stealing anything or trying to hurt Breno. I was just worried about him. It was obvious almost immediately that he hadn’t been home for a while. There was an unpleasant smell I couldn’t place and there were a lot of discarded fast food wrappers all over the living area.

When I got to the kitchen I was able to define at least part of the odor. Unwashed dishes filled the sink. As I got closer I saw a bowl to the right of the sink filled with black debris. When I grabbed it and saw what was in it I dropped the bowl back onto the counter and cursed under my breath.

The bowl was filled with ashes. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and my stomach churned. In any other home the bowl and its contents would be odd but in Breno’s apartment it was scary. Breno’s fire-making knack had been wiped out when he was a kid, but there had been more to it than that. To insure that Breno didn’t reactivate his knack or accidentally retrigger it, Mr. Goodturn had placed a strong aversion to fire in his mind, especially fire of any kind indoors. I’d seen this mental block at work. It reduced Breno to a hot mess.

I stumbled through the apartment and navigated around random clothing strewn on the floor, comic books (Sponge Bob, Archie) and more food wrappers. That was also a warning sign. Even though Breno was slow-witted he was OCD about being tidy and cleaning up. So what did all of this tell me? He hadn’t been home recently. How long had he been away? Hard to say, but thinking about it I couldn’t remember seeing him around for a couple of weeks. Which didn’t mean he
hadn’t
been around; we often didn’t cross paths for days. The lack of cleaning and the general messiness might be nothing more than left over stress from last month’s kidnapping and his hospital stay.

The ashes in the bowl worried me though. Could someone else have been in the apartment? Not likely. The door had been locked and despite the mess it didn’t look like there’d been forced entry or a struggle. So, he’d either burned whatever was in the bowl or seen it happen. Neither scenario meant anything good.

As I walked back through the living room the weird smell that I’d thought was the spoiled food in the sink and the bowl of ashes, actually got stronger. When I got near the couch I saw scorch marks on the cushions. What the hell had been going on in here?

I was struggling to figure out where he might have gone, and then I looked down at the discarded food packaging. Just like the tumblers in the lock at his door, things clicked into place. My hands started to shake. I knew where to look for Breno.