GHOST CROWN: THE TRACKS TRILOGY - Book Two Read online

  It was as if her old, fragile self had been wrapped in a cocoon for the last year, and now that she had emerged, she was different. She wasn’t a butterfly, though. She knew now she was tougher than that, almost indestructible. Whatever life threw at her now, she would not cry again. And she would not go back to Montana, no matter what.

  

  Looking around to make sure he was unobserved, Orias Morrow levitated an inch or two in the air, floated up the steps to settle on the porch of the old Victorian house, and let himself in the front door.

  The house had been in his family further back than he or anyone else could remember. A broad veranda wrapped around the imposing structure, which was large enough to accommodate a ballroom on the third floor. Most of the bedrooms and a small parlor were on the second floor. On one corner of the house, a round tower with a pointed roof stood watch over the thick, lush garden that filled most of the backyard. Below the tower, which Orias had thought of as a child as the Castle Tower, round attic windows peered out beneath the gables. The paint on the exterior of the house—a deep, muted red with dingy, faded brown trim—was peeling in places. Despite its size, the place looked just as plain and unassuming as he remembered it from his last visit to Middleburg, thirteen years before. Of course, they could afford to repaint the house any time they wanted. If they wanted to, they could get the whole place gold plated. But Orias had learned the importance of living in shadow, feigning humility, and above all biding his time.

  Yes, he had learned his father’s lessons well, he thought bitterly. For years Oberon Morrow had played a role in Middleburg, posing as the modest owner of a couple of shabby businesses, living in a beautiful but rundown house a block over from Main Street. In all the years Oberon had lived in Middleburg, no one had an inkling of his power. It had been important, he always told Orias, to keep it that way.

  Two days before, Orias had brought him down from the mountainside and taken him home. As they’d stood together at the front door, Oberon had said, “It’s locked,” and reached into his pocket for his keys.

  “You underestimate me, sir,” Orias had told him pleasantly. “I’ve honed my skills since I saw you last.” He opened his left hand and passed his palm in front of the doorknob, and there was a click as the latch retracted. Then he’d moved his hand slowly up the door until they heard the sound of the deadbolt sliding back. Orias had waved his hand then, as one might swat a gnat, and the door had swung open.

  The house was dark and smelled musty from being shut up, as if Oberon had been absent for years instead of just a few days.

  Orias glanced briefly around the shadowy foyer. The elaborately carved wooden banister he’d slid down as a boy looked smaller than he remembered it, but he supposed that was the way of things when one had no choice but to age—albeit more slowly than other mortals. He took a few steps and glanced into the main parlor. The antique chaise was still there, and Orias had a vague recollection of seeing his mother sitting on it, holding her arms out to him. The memory filled him with an aching sadness. Even after all these years, the pain of her death still tormented him.

  “You’ll have to get me up to the Tower Room, Orias,” his father had told him. “As long as the police are looking for me I can’t take any chances. I’ll have to stay up there until Dr. Uphir arrives.”

  “When will that be?” Orias asked.

  “Who can tell with his kind?” Oberon grumbled, as he groped his way along the wall, toward the staircase. Orias tried not to take too much pleasure in seeing his father in his pathetic, handicapped state.

  “Wait, Father,” he said kindly. “Let me help you.”

  Laboriously, tediously, Orias had helped Oberon climb up to the tower. He could have levitated with him but he was not yet ready to share with his sire how well developed his skills were. Opening a door was one thing, but the ability to levitate two men up the stairs would have taken some explaining. He’d helped his father get unpacked, put fresh linens on his bed, and made a note to himself to call whatever cleaning service Oberon used.

  It wasn’t long before boredom had set in and Orias became restless, so tonight he’d gone looking for her.

  After a couple of false starts—an old movie house, a coffee shop—he’d had dinner at the little Italian restaurant a few blocks away, and there he’d heard a group of kids, all dressed up in gowns and tuxedos, talking about their high-school homecoming dance. And he’d wondered . . .

  So after he’d paid for his meal and a glass of sub-standard wine, he’d strolled over to Middleburg High, taking his time, getting a feel for the town. Gaining admission to the dance had been no problem. Orias had learned, at an age much earlier than usual for his kind, how to camouflage his appearance and blend into any background whenever he chose. When he no longer needed to hide, he simply took one step forward and, chameleon like, his disguise fell away.

  And he had found her there—in a high-school gymnasium. His father was right—she was impossible to miss. She shone like a star, bright and pure. Radiant. He’d gotten only a brief glimpse and a whiff of her elusive, tantalizing scent as she glided by in the arms of the boy who had taken his father’s sight. But even that became unimportant in the moment. Because Orias had known.

  He’d known she was the one.

  And just as he was about to step forward and ask her to dance, all hell (at least a high-school human’s version of it) broke loose. That asinine jock had picked a fight, then the homecoming queen had lost control of her puny magic and knocked the wall down.

  Orias had lingered long enough to see her walk out of the dust and debris, unharmed, and then he’d mingled with the crowd and made his way home, thinking of her all the way. He would have his chance with her, but not tonight. Tonight, he would have to content himself with thoughts of her, dreams of her. Tonight, he would sleep blissfully, drunk on the possibilities she represented. Because she existed, the world would never be the same again. Yes, there was no doubt about it, he thought, unable to repress a grin, she was definitely the one.

  

  Raphael awoke with a start, the remnants of a dream still clinging to his mind . . . a clackity-clack-clack of train wheels and the slow howl of a spectral whistle approaching down a set of dream-world train tracks. Almost instantly, however, the nightmare faded and the shrieking of the whistle dissolved into an insistent beeping sound. He looked around, groggy for a moment, before realizing it was his cell phone.

  Grabbing it off his bedside table, he looked eagerly at the caller ID, but it wasn’t Aimee. There’s no telling what kind of hell her dad had put her through after he dragged her out of the dance. His threat had been so ominous Raph had hardly been able to sleep last night.

  “You’re never going to see her again,” Jack Banfield had proclaimed softly, his voice a cold monotone. Nothing in his expression indicated he was furious, but Raphael saw it in his eyes. “Never.”

  Maybe everyone else in Middleburg thought Jack Banfield was an upstanding citizen, but Raphael knew better. The picture of his dad still sat on his bedside table. He had his arm around Raph’s mom, and they looked amazingly happy. The photo was taken only a few months before the so-called accident in Jack’s factory took his father away forever. If Jack Banfield said you were never going to see someone again, you had to take him at his word. He didn’t have any concrete evidence that Jack Banfield and his partner, Cheung Shao, had murdered his dad, but he knew it was true. The way birds know which way to fly in the winter, the way flowers know when it’s time to bloom. He knew.

  Raphael blinked, rubbed his eyes and looked down at his phone, still waking up. His caller ID said EMORY, and it was about to go to voicemail.

  “Yo, Ems. What’s up?”

  “Bad stuff,” Emory said. He usually sounded mellow and upbeat on the phone, but not this morning.

  “Why? What’s going on?” Raph said, getting up.

 
“Just come over to my apartment, okay? And hurry.”

  Still pulling on his long-sleeved t-shirt as he charged through the living room, Raphael searched frantically for his sneakers. He was surprised to find his mom lying on the couch, her expanding belly clearly visible now beneath a thick, purple sweater. As she yawned and sat up, he wondered if it was normal for a pregnant woman’s stomach to get bigger every single day. Despite the extra passenger, Raphael thought his mom looked as pretty as ever as she stretched and smiled at him.

  “Morning, Raphy,” she said sleepily. “Where you off to so early?”

  “It’s not that early. Emory has some kind of problem. I’m going to see if I can help him out. What are you doing out here?”

  “The bed was killing my back,” she said as she swung her legs around and put her feet on the floor. She was wearing a pair of his thick wool socks.

  “And the couch is better?” Raphael asked, skeptical.

  “Yeah. Don’t ask me why. There are a lot of things about being pregnant that seem to defy the laws of physics.”

  Raphael finally found his shoes under the coffee table. He pulled them out.

  “How was the dance?”

  Raphael sat down in the chair and put his sneakers on, trying to figure out how to sum it up for his mom. “It was weird,” he said finally.

  She laughed, “You and your friends wearing suits? I’m sure it was.” When he didn’t respond she asked, more seriously, “Did something happen?”

  “Well, one wall of the gym collapsed, for starters.”

  She gaped at him. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “No.” The image of the steel beam lying across Dalton flashed through his mind. She should have been hurt—killed, maybe—and he didn’t know how to explain to himself, much less to his mom, the fact that she was miraculously unscathed.

  “So did you have a date? You never even told me.”

  “I gotta go, mom. Emory’s waiting.”

  “Dalton?”

  “No, I didn’t take Dalton.”

  “That girl from your science class you liked last year?”

  Raphael sighed. “Okay. You’ll hear about it sooner or later, I guess. I took Aimee Banfield. And her dad wasn’t too happy about it.”

  A cross current of different emotions played over his mom’s face as she processed his revelation. “Why wasn’t Jack happy about it?”

  Raphael looked at her for a moment, surprised she had to ask. “Come on, Mom,” he said. “Why do you think?”

  Look where they live, he wanted to cry out, his heart heavy. And look at our home sweet home. Even worse, you and Aimee’s dad have been seeing each other and—although you won’t say so—he’s probably the father of my new little baby brother or sister. Why the hell do you think?

  Instead, he shrugged. “Aren’t you going to tell me to stay away from her like everyone else has?” he asked.

  “That depends,” his mom replied, getting awkwardly to her feet. “Do you like her, or are you dating her just to piss Jack off?”

  “I like her,” Raphael whispered. He heard a vulnerability in his own voice that made him uncomfortable, but his mom only smiled and embraced him.

  “Then she’s a lucky girl,” she said.

  He hugged her back, incredibly grateful for her presence. But Emory was still waiting, and he hadn’t sounded good on the phone.

  “I gotta run,” Raphael said, pulling away.

  On her way into the kitchen, his mom called over her shoulder, “What about breakfast?”

  “No time.”

  She grabbed a banana off the counter and tossed it to him. “Love you, kiddo.”

  “Love you, mom.”

  And he ducked out the door.

  

  Raphael was stunned by what he saw as he jogged up to Emory’s apartment building. It was a big, old Greek revival mansion that had been divided into six apartments. It had four columns on its front porch, none of which were straight. Half the windows were filled with particle board in place of missing or broken glass panes, and the whole structure was covered with ugly scabs of dark blue paint that had largely peeled away to reveal the old, gray wood beneath. But that was normal for the Flats. The surprise was all over the skimpy, patchy front lawn.

  It looked like someone had thrown everything in the whole building outside. Furniture, rugs, tables, chairs, couches, lamps and TVs littered the yard. As Raphael watched, a couple of burly men came down the front steps with an old, beat-up entertainment center, which they carried down the walkway and deposited near the curb. All the while, an old lady followed them in a flowered mumu, her hair a ball of tangled white fluff on her head, cursing them out in what sounded to Raphael like some Eastern European language. He scanned the strange scene for a moment before he spied Emory on the far side of the yard, pacing furiously.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Raphael asked as he approached.

  The words exploded from Emory’s mouth. “Look! You can see what’s going on! They’re throwing us out! All of us!”

  “Throwing you out? Of your apartment, you mean?”

  “Yeah! Look, everyone’s being evicted. Every family in the building.”

  Raphael put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Okay, Emory. Calm down. First of all, they can’t just evict somebody. Now without giving them a notice or something.”

  Emory shrugged in agitation. “They did give us a notice. My dad went to talk to the realty company three times, and they just kept putting him off. He didn’t think they could really do it but look—they’re already changing the locks. All our stuff is going to get ruined.” Emory gestured accusingly at the sky where a host of storm clouds was indeed sweeping in. “We’re screwed.”

  “Like getting all hysterical is going to help,” a sarcastic voice said. Raph looked over and saw Haylee, Emory’s eleven-year-old sister, sprawled in a recliner, playing an old-school Gameboy.

  “Shut up, Haylee,” Emory said with disdain. “You don’t even understand what’s going on.” Raphael had never seen Emory look so serious—or so worried.

  “Oh, right. Because I’m eleven? I get better grades than you.”

  Emory looked like he was about ready to strangle his sister, but Raphael put a hand on his shoulder again.

  “Let’s focus, man. We’ll figure this out. Where’s your mom?”

  “She’s inside. They let her pack up some of the plates and stuff.”

  “And your dad?”

  “He went down to the rental office, but I think they’re closed. That’s probably why they waited until Sunday to throw us out. There’s no one to complain to.”

  “Did you get the summons to go to court?” asked Raph. Every family in the Flats knew the drill. You didn’t pay your rent on time, you got threatened with eviction. But that threat came in the form of a three-day notice that heralded the summons to appear, with a date.

  “I think we got a thirty-day notice, then a three-day notice,” Emory said.

  “That can’t be legal.”

  Emory laughed, bitter and harsh. “Yeah, well. They know once they get us out we can’t fight it. It’s not like we’re going to worry about hiring a lawyer when we’re living in a cardboard box.”

  Raph nodded. He was angry, but not surprised. Some rich property owner living up in Hilltop Haven had decided to throw six families out of their homes for no good reason. It was just another day in the Flats.

  He took out his phone, scrolled down to the name NASS and pressed talk.

  “Nass, it’s Raph. Call the crew. Get everyone down to Emory’s place, right away. It’s an emergency.”

  When Raphael ended the call and looked back at his friend, he could see that Emory’s face was stiff, his jaw clenched, as he tried to hold back tears.

  “We have no place to go, man,” Emory said quietly. />
  “Don’t worry. We’re going to figure it out.”

  Above, the storm clouds continued to roll in.

  

  Maggie snuggled deeper into her big, fluffy pink comforter and pulled it up over her head. She’d woken up three times already, and three times she’d drifted back to sleep. Still a little hazy from lying comatose for so long, she had no desire to get up. There was no reason to leave her bed. Her life was a wreck. She had a dad who’d skipped town years ago, a mom who was nuttier than squirrel poop, and a hot boyfriend who didn’t love her and who, if the lighting was just right, kinda looked like he might actually be a demon. The boy she really liked was in love with her ex best friend, Aimee—and now, on top of it all, what would be known forever as “the homecoming dance incident” would follow her through the rest of high school. She had worn the homecoming crown for all of thirty seconds when that wall had collapsed.

  When she had brought that wall down.

  It was crazy, she knew, but that’s what happened.

  Sure, maybe there was some kind of a hole under the gym that helped make the wall crumble, but she had done most of it. How she had done it she had no idea. All she knew was that she had felt some kind of power surge through her, and that she’d never felt anything like it. Her confidence had started growing from the moment her mother had told her she was powerful (although she had never really cared what her mother thought). When her mom had placed the crown on her head, she’d felt like something really important had clicked into place in the universe—and that was just plain weird.