“Who?” Michael asked, not sure who Fritz was talking about.
“Morgandy,” Fritz clarified, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “The Swede Saoirse was sweet on.”
Something else that Michael felt wasn’t meant to be. David had brought Morgandy here for a reason. There was no way he was going to send him on his way or ship him off to another school because things hadn’t worked out between him and Saoirse. No, as much as Michael would like it, as relieved as he would be, Morgandy definitely was staying put. Fritz wasn’t as confident, and he really had good reason. “Give him some time, and he’ll up and leave like all the rest,” Fritz said. “Phaedra, Imogene, Hawksbry, Doc MacCleery. Even Diego—no one’s seen the bloke since before that daft holiday of yours.”
“Christmas isn’t exclusively American.”
“No, the other one,” Fritz replied. “Where you hoodwinked the Indians and stole their land.”
“Thanksgiving?”
“That’s the one,” Fritz said. “Don’t know why you’re all so bloomin’ proud of yourselves over that coup. You stole their land you know.”
“Oh, and the Brits never stole land that wasn’t theirs?”
Smiling and leaning back into the bleachers, Fritz responded, “We did it for Her Majesty. You did it for corn on the cob.”
“You’re a lunatic, Fritz!”
Tilting his head in acknowledgment of Michael’s praise, Fritz switched topics yet again. “Perhaps I am,” he said. “But if I were in charge of this school, no one would ever go missing.”
If only Fritz or anyone could ever have that power. “Really?” Michael asked. “And how would you prevent that?”
“I’d inject every one of us with a GPS device, so when somebody goes missing, the headmaster’ll be able to track ’em down.” Fritz slapped Michael so hard on the back he actually felt the sting for a few seconds. “What a corking issue that would make!” Fritz exclaimed. “Double A turns out to be built on a bloody wormhole and more people start vanishing from the school than in a missing person’s unit.”
Little did both Michael and Fritz know that not all missing persons remained missing.
When Blakeley’s whistle blew, Nakano jumped. When Blakeley announced that he wanted the A Team of Ronan, Michael, Morgandy, and Fritz to practice the four-man relay, he sat back down. When Blakeley stood with his back to the windows that opened out to The Forest and Imogene materialized behind him, Nakano ran out the side door.
Lucky for them Blakeley was fixated on watching the technique of his starting team and Kano could run faster than most people could blink, so he wasn’t seen by anyone leaving the gym. He was, however, seen by someone entering The Forest.
“Get away from me, you murderer!” Imogene cried.
“Are you completely off your trolley?!” Nakano shouted back.
Imogene was furious that Nakano was ruining her excursion. When Brania had raised her hand to slap her, Imogene took the opportunity to fade out of that claustrophobic cave and fade into one of the places that had brought her so much joy when she was alive: St. Sebastian’s.
“Nobody can see me unless I’m in that bloody cave!” she yelled. “And if somebody does ... well, I’ll just tell them I’ve decided to come back to school.”
The verdict was in, and the jury had found Imogene to be insane. Crouching behind some wild brush so he wouldn’t be seen, Nakano tried to empathize with her plight and calmly talk sense into the girl, but failed miserably. “You’re a walking corpse! A bloody ghost girl!” he shouted. “If you
“And you can’t tell me what to do!”
The second Nakano ran forward, he knew what was going to happen, but he had no choice. Imogene wasn’t listening to him, and it was clear that she wasn’t going to take cover, move out of the line of vision of everyone in St. Sebastian’s on her own. If she hung around in front of the windows much longer, there was a chance that someone would see her, and there was no way she was going to explain her whereabouts the past year or why she had chosen to return without winding up in a loony bin somewhere. Or worse, exposing the countless secrets she knew. No, Nakano had one choice: to grab her and drag her back to the cave. Unfortunately, when he ran toward Imogene, she had a foolproof defense. She disappeared.
Despite her unique talent, Imogene was predictable, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she would return to the cave. She could only disappear when she felt frightened, she could wander around a bit on her own, but inevitably she would have to return home, to the cave. When Nakano burst into the hidden enclave, Imogene sounded anything but peaceful.
Standing in the center of her coffin, Imogene screamed, “When are we going to explore the world like you promised?!”
He almost didn’t see Brania because she was sitting in the far corner on the floor, her legs crossed in a meditative position. Her weary expression made Nakano think she wished she possessed Imogene’s migratory skills so she could evaporate and reappear anywhere else but here. “We
“I don’t have any work to do!” Imogene shouted as she began to pace the length of the casket, back and forth, back and forth, stomp, stomp, stomp. “All I do is sing! Well, I’m tired of singing, and I’m tired of listening to you!”
“Looks like shacking up in a cave ain’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Kano joked. He was sitting on one of the largest boulders in the room, leaning forward, his chin resting in his palms as if he were watching the final scene in a riveting play. “How will it all end? Will the ghost girl disappear for parts unknown or will vampire lady be able to restore peace to her rocky kingdom?”
Nakano was so amused with himself he didn’t even care that Brania looked like she wanted to tear his throat apart with her bare fangs. “Rocky! Get it?” he asked.
Ignoring Nakano, Brania walked toward the coffin, smiling compassionately. When she spoke Nakano realized she had decided to play the role of doting mother. “You don’t have to listen to me, Imogene,” Brania said softly. “But I wish you would.”
Instead of being soothed by Brania’s placation, the girl was incensed, stopping in mid-pace to whirl around and hurl an ultimatum at her keeper. “I will if you stop seeing that red-haired girl. She was my friend first!”
Brania gripped the side of the casket and felt the metal rim cut into her flesh. How dare someone as lowly as Imogene give her an order? Imogene was her subject, not the other way around. This was what happened when you showed someone tenderness, sympathy, and love. They turned on you and used your feelings to their advantage. If that’s the game Imogene wanted to play, then she should be prepared to lose, because no one was a better manipulator than Brania. “Imogene, darling, there’s no reason for you to be jealous of Ruby,” Brania said. “You’re my firstborn, my dearest, and that will never, ever change.”
One layer of armor fell from Imogene’s slender frame, and the girl’s features softened, her entire body relaxed. “You promise you’re telling me the truth?”
Climbing inside the coffin so she could hold Imogene close to her heart, Brania replied, “Of course it’s the truth. A mother would never lie to her child.”
Nakano only clapped his hands twice in applause before Brania’s stare made him stop. She needed Imogene to be obedient in order for her plan to find the location of The Well to succeed, so she had to assuage her ruffled feathers. Nakano, while useful, wasn’t vital, so she could pluck out his feathers one vindictive yank at a time. “Why don’t you keep your hair short Nakano?” Brania suggested. “You really don’t have the bone structure to wear it long.”
They could burn in hell for all he cared!
The enthralling smell of blood and rotting flesh distracted him for a second, intoxicated him, and set him
