GHOST CROWN: THE TRACKS TRILOGY - Book Two Read online

  “What you need, Maggie, is a nice, warm cup of tea. Lucky for you, I make the best tea in town.”

  Maggie was about to object that she didn’t like tea, but the aroma of the herbs and crushed flowers Lily Rose was scooping into a little, slotted metal ball was amazing. Lily Rose filled the teapot with water from the tap and put it on the stove while Maggie slouched forward on the table, her chin leaning on her hands, staring down at the plastic lace tablecloth. She’d never known her grandparents—they all died before she was born—but she guessed that this must be what it felt like to be a little kid at Grandma’s house. It was wonderful, after all the time she’d spent trying to help her mom keep it together. It was nice to be taken care of for a change.

  “Grandma, what—” Dalton walked into the room and stopped short when she saw Maggie.

  “Dalton, sweetie, look who’s come to see us.”

  “Why is she here?” Dalton asked, glaring at Maggie.

  “We’re having a cup of tea,” Lily Rose said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Why don’t you join us? We can have—what do you children call it—we can have us a little girl talk.”

  “I’ll pass,” Dalton said and stamped out of the room.

  Lily Rose sighed and took a silver plate out of the cupboard, placed it on the table and started arranging cookies on it. “Please forgive Dalton,” she said. “She’s having a tough time right now.” She leaned closer to Maggie and whispered, “Boy troubles, I think. I bet you know something about those, don’t you?”

  Maggie nodded glumly. “Yeah,” she said, her voice low and tremulous as she thought of Rick. Or whatever he was.

  Lily Rose smiled as she set cups on the table. “Well, what girl your age doesn’t have boy troubles?” she asked philosophically. “I try to tell her that all these worries will pass with the season and everything will work out in the end, but she won’t listen. I guess I wouldn’t either, at her age.”

  But Maggie knew why Dalton didn’t want her there. Dalton was Aimee Banfield’s new best friend. Maggie started to wonder why she’d come here in the first place.

  “Maybe I should just go . . .” she mumbled.

  “Nonsense,” said Lily Rose. The teakettle was shrieking, and she turned off the stove and filled an elegant old teapot, into which she had placed the little silver ball, with steaming water. “You haven’t told me what’s on your mind yet.”

  Again, the old woman’s strangely colored eyes bored into hers, and Maggie had an overwhelming urge to tell her everything that had ever hurt or frightened her throughout her entire life. She just had to figure out how to do it without sounding like a lunatic. They waited in companionable silence for a few seconds as the tea steeped in the pot. Lily Rose poured for them, and Maggie took a tentative sip. To her surprise it was delicious—sweet and refreshing and soothing all at once. She felt the tension melt from her body as the warmth of the drink slid pleasantly down her throat.

  “You know what happened at the dance, right?” she asked. Probably everybody in town knew by now.

  “You mean when that wall fell down?”

  “Yeah.” Maggie bowed her head and blinked away the tears that made her feel so weak. “Yes, ma’am,” she amended softly.

  “Yes, baby girl. I know what happened. What do you have to say about it?”

  “I think . . . I did it.”

  Lily Rose studied her for a moment, as if trying to decide something. And then she looked into Maggie’s eyes. She took off her glasses, cleaned them with a corner of her apron, and put them back on. At last, she spoke.

  “Now what makes you think you could do something like that?” she asked.

  Maggie was almost hypnotized, just looking into Lily Rose’s eyes. They were two different colors—one amber and one blue—and Maggie’s secrets were defenseless against them.

  “Weird things have been happening,” she said. “For a couple of weeks. Since Halloween.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’ve been seeing things.”

  Lily Rose sat up a little straighter and took a sip of her tea. “What kind of things?”

  “It’s like I can see . . . what’s under people. You know, what’s under their skins. Like their truest selves—what they are inside.”

  Which is why she knew she could trust Lily Rose. When Maggie looked at Lily Rose, she saw paradise. She saw flowers and rainbows and birthday cakes. She saw glorious sunsets and great forests with waterfalls and birds and fawns and bunnies. She saw a tiny woman with a lap big enough to hold a troubled teenage girl. And sometimes, when Lily Rose turned away from her, Maggie thought she saw the faintest, transparent outline of big, white wings.

  “That might be a good kinda sight to have,” mused Lily Rose. She nibbled at a cookie. “What troubles you about that?”

  “Some people are really ugly underneath,” said Maggie. She wasn’t ready to tell anyone about Rick, not even Lily Rose.

  “Like I said, good sight to have. It lets you know who you got to keep an eye on. What else, baby girl? What else is scaring you?”

  And Maggie realized it wasn’t just her eyes that made the old woman so amazing. It was also her voice. When she spoke, it was musical, mesmerizing, and filled with pure love. Maggie knew Lily Rose could probably talk anybody into doing just about anything.

  “I’m afraid . . .” Maggie began, and then tears really did start to flow. She wiped them away with the paper towel Lily Rose had given her to use as a napkin. “I’m afraid I’m going to end up like my mom,” she said, choking back a little sob. “She’s really crazy, isn’t she?”

  Lily Rose reached across the table and patted her hand. “No, she is not,” she declared. “Your mama is as sane as you and me.”

  “Then what’s wrong with her?”

  Lily Rose gave her that look again. Like she’s deciding how much to say, Maggie realized.

  “She’s got a job to do,” said Lily Rose.

  “What kind of job?” Maggie scoffed. “All she does is work on those stupid tapestries.”

  “Exactly. Those tapestries are important. They tell the history of Middleburg.”

  “Oh, who cares about that?” Maggie said. “Middleburg is a great big nothing, in the middle of a great big nowhere. Nothing important ever happens here.”

  Only, it does, Maggie thought. The battle between the Toppers and the Flatliners the night she’d first seen Rick change into a demon—that was important. The wall collapsing in the high-school gym was important. The crown she’d won and worn so briefly—that was important, too. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t know how she knew, but it was.

  “Now you know that’s not true,” Lily Rose observed. “But whether people think your mama’s job is important or not, it is her destiny. You’ll find your own soon enough.”

  “She’s got it into her head that mine is to be homecoming queen of Middleburg High . . . forevermore.”

  “That could be part of it, I guess.”

  “Anyway, I don’t believe in destiny,” said Maggie. “I mean, I think you make your own destiny. You have a choice, right? My life can’t just be predetermined.”

  That has to be true, she thought. I can’t end up like my mom, alone and unappreciated in a miserable, decaying little town.

  “Well, maybe it’s a little bit of both,” said Lily Rose. “Think of destiny as a road running along the side of a mountain. Most people are born into a certain life, and that’s where they stay—on that road. It’s the easiest path, after all, and so they move through life pretty smoothly. Some fail to meet their responsibilities, and they fall into the valley below, where it’s rough and rocky. The path is tough down there; it’s slow going, and it’s hard to climb back up where you belong. But a few, a very few, choose the highest path of all. It’s slow and treacherous, climbing up to it. I tell you, it’s mighty rocky and hard, but once you reac
h that mountaintop, once you’re moving along that ridge, child, the sun is on your face. It’s so nice, you feel like you might just sprout wings and fly.”

  “That’s what I want to do, Lily Rose,” Maggie said, suddenly filled with hope and conviction. “I want to fly. I don’t want to be like my mom. Will you help me?”

  Lily Rose dabbed the corner of her mouth with her napkin and stood. She went to the china cabinet, opened a drawer, and took out a book, which she offered to Maggie.

  It was surprisingly heavy. The cover was thick, made of some kind of gold leather. Embossed on it in black letters were the words The Good Book. It was secured with a small gold lock.

  “Oh, we’re not really religious,” Maggie said quickly.

  “You don’t have to be for it to work,” Lily Rose told her with a little smile. She pulled on the thin gold chain around her neck and pulled it up from the collar of her blouse and used the tiny gold key that hung from it to open the lock. Inside, Maggie expected to find the microscopic print of a Bible, but the first page was blank. The paper was thick and weighty, and had a pearlescent sheen to it that seemed to swirl and sparkle as the light played off it, but there were no words. She flipped ahead. All those pages were blank, too.

  Lily Rose laughed. “Not what you were expecting?” she asked. “The Good Book only shows you what you’re ready to read. I tell you, half of mine is still blank, and I been thumbing through it since you were knee high to a grasshopper.” Maggie tried to give the book back to her, but Lily Rose waved her away. “Keep it, baby girl. It’s yours.” She took the key on the gold chain from around her neck and handed that to Maggie as well. “But I want you to do something for me, you hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Look at the book every day, and when it shows you something, I want you to come and have tea with me again. Will you do that?”

  Maggie nodded. “Thank you, Lily Rose,” she said, rising from the table, “I mean, seriously. Thank you.”

  Lily Rose smiled, her beautiful dark skin crinkling up around her eyes. “Now don’t you worry. When one person helps another, the helper often gets even more benefit than the helpee. But you’ll get to that chapter soon enough!”

  As Maggie stepped out onto Lily Rose’s front porch, she felt more at peace and more alive than she had since—since she could remember. More aware, more alert. It was still only noon, and she supposed it was the chill in the air that made her feel so awake, so vibrant, and somehow much more real. The heavy book tucked securely in the crook of her arm seemed to give her weight, to anchor her to the earth.

  Again she felt the crown, as if it were still there, sitting heavily on her head, pressing against her brain, but it was no longer creepy and mysterious. It was actually starting to feel . . . pleasant.

  The ghost crown.

  As she hurried up the sidewalk toward her mom’s car, eager to get out of the Flats, she thought about what Lily Rose had told her. Some people could escape their destiny, then sprout wings, and soar above and beyond it. Maggie wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but she desperately wanted to try.

  

  Aimee woke on Sunday around noon and she knew exactly what she was going to do. It was as if someone had whispered the plan to her in her sleep. On her way to her bathroom, she spotted two granola bars and a note on the floor near her door, as if they had been shoved underneath it from the outside. The note read:

  Aimee,

  Rick’s arm is still bothering him so I’m taking him to the hospital in Topeka. We’ll be back for dinner and if you behave yourself we can go out to Spinnacle for a nice family meal. Still waiting for a call back from Montana.

  DAD

  Aimee laughed bitterly, wadded the note up, and tossed it across the room. She tried the doorknob, but, as she had guessed, it was locked. She rattled it once, furiously, and then struck the door hard with the bottom of her fist. There was a hollow thud and her hand throbbed, but the door was undamaged.

  All the time, all the effort she’d put in at Mountain High Academy trying to find a way to deal with the horror of watching Tyler die, and then trying to get over her subsequent panic attacks—and now her father had locked her in her own room. Didn’t he know that was about the cruelest thing you could do to a person with anxiety problems?

  He knew, she thought; he just didn’t care. He would do anything to keep her from seeing Raphael, even if it made her go completely crazy.

  Crazy. The word snapped her back to her first night in Mountain High Academy. The place was nestled in the mountains, designed to look like a French chateau, but it reminded Aimee of the hotel in The Shining, and she tried to escape the first chance she got. Big mistake. They had caught her before she got outside the gates.

  She had screamed as two huge orderlies held her arms while another tried to put the straight jacket on her, treating her like the insane person they thought she was, pinning her down to the cold tile floor. A woman in a pantsuit came forward with a hypodermic needle that looked at least six inches long. Eventually they got the straight jacket on her, and they posted a young nurse at her bedside to watch her all night.

  And now, it was as if something—some malevolent energy—was draining the air from the room. And if she didn’t get out of there soon, she really would go insane and break everything in sight, until she smashed her way out. Slowly she paced back and forth, calming herself as her counselor had taught her. When the panic started to subside she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. As she squirted the paste onto her toothbrush, she forced herself to think calmly and logically about her situation. She had come too far, she had fought too hard, to let her dear old dad push her back into that nightmare.

  Locking her in her room was just one more example of how her father dealt with the world. He controlled his businesses, he controlled the city council, the mayor, the police—he controlled the whole town. And he ruled with fear. Everyone in town did exactly what Jack Banfield wanted because they were afraid of what might happen if they didn’t. They could get fired, arrested, or run out of town. Aimee knew all this, because her dad bragged about it. Winning at any cost was his prime objective. When people were afraid, he boasted, everything fell into place for him to get what he wanted.

  “But I’m not going to be afraid,” she said to her reflection in the mirror. “Not anymore.”

  Back in her bedroom, she pulled on her heavy parka, slid carefully out her bedroom window, walked across the roof of her porch, and climbed down the trellis. She knew it would never occur to her dad that she would dare do such a thing. He had no idea how many times she’d done it in the past to meet Tyler.

  Instead of going down the driveway in front of the house, she went to the back and pulled a lawn chair over to the back fence so she could climb over it to the service road that ran behind the property. Then she hiked down to Hilltop Haven’s back entrance, where no security guards were stationed, and left by the pedestrian gate.

  Her plan was simple. She was going to find Raphael and be with him every minute she possibly could, until her father shipped her to Montana or did whatever he was going to do.

  She hurried on, skirting around downtown Middleburg, staying away from the main roads and close to the forest. In twenty minutes, she’d be in the Flats.

  

  By two in the afternoon on Sunday, Emory and his family were settled into their makeshift home, and Raphael was able to call a Flatliners meeting inside one of the bays of the body shop. A calendar featuring a bikini-clad woman leaning on the hood of a car hung above a cluttered old desk in one corner, next to a map of Middleburg. The place was littered with tools and smelled of grease. The big bay door was open, letting in the occasional gust of cold air and an influx of pale, wintery light, but it was still warmer than being out in the open.

  “All right,” Raphael said to his crew. “We have a problem he
re. We’re not going to stand by while Emory and his family lose their home. And I’m afraid they’re not the only ones.”

  “Yeah,” Benji piped up. “When I told my mom what was happening, she said the people in the building next door to us got eviction notices, too.”

  “I saw one on the door of the little house across the street from us,” Josh said.

  Raphael and Nass exchanged a glance. “Nass and his family got one,” Raphael said gravely. “And they just moved here a couple of months ago.”

  “We gotta hit ’em back!” Benji said.

  Raphael nodded, “Right. But first we have to find out what’s going on, and we have to know who to hit. They’re not just targeting Flatliner families, so this isn’t a gang thing.”

  “How can they just throw people out on the streets like that?” Beet asked.

  Raph sighed. “I read Emory’s lease. There’s a clause giving the landlord the option to end the lease any time with a thirty-day notice. Although I’m sure that’s not legal.”

  He went to the map and pointed to the Flats. “Whatever’s going on, it’s happening building by building. I want all of you to keep an eye out for anything weird going on in the Flats. Ask your neighbors if they’ve heard or seen anything. Nass, Emory’s building is across from yours, so I want you to keep an eye on it.”

  “For what exactly?” asked Nass.

  “For anything you’ve never seen before—anything that doesn’t belong.”