Kingdom Keepers III(121)

But it wasn’t the others. It was only Maybeck and Wanda, and Jess still didn’t know how much she trusted Wanda anyway. What if Wanda was Wayne’s traitor? It helped that Wayne had mentioned her in his video message—it helped a lot. It helped that Wanda had gotten up in the middle of the night and taken huge risks to smuggle her and Maybeck into the Studios. But there was something still bothering Jess about the woman. The performance at Mrs. Nash’s house had been impressive, and yet it had also felt somewhat authentic, as if Wanda had bigger plans for her and Amanda than working with the Kingdom Keepers. Perhaps she intended to place them both in a boarding school far away from here. Jess didn’t like other women making plans for her: Maleficent had played mother for months.

Never again, Jess swore to herself.

She felt it then: an eerie cold, and a strange feeling, as if an animal had crawled inside her and were looking for a way out. Images flashed in front of her eyes: colors in the sky; a jet airplane; a man wearing a beret; Mickey Mouse, but with Japanese anime-style eyes.

OMG! Finn. Was he conducting an orchestra? Directing traffic? And Maybeck and…Wayne, hunched over in some kind of box, struggling to breathe.

She threw her head to the side because there was the horrid face of Chernabog bearing down on her as the chill increased to a deep freeze. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and then forced them open and, Thank goodness, she was standing in the subterranean hallway beneath Fantasmic!

I’m close, she thought. She’s nearby. Where was Amanda?

Jess worked the phone Finn had left for her.

She wrote a text to all of the others:

I can feel her. lower level 1. she’s here.

But not for long. The door swung open. Jess lowered her head, putting the brim of the cap between her face and the person who came out of that room. She could see only the feet.

It wasn’t a person at all. It was a black robe with purple trim. And as the robe parted slightly it revealed…green ankles and shins.

“You!” the familiar voice called out. A voice like breaking ice. “I’m late for my cue. Are you the one taking me? Where is Annie? Are you going to answer me? Hello? Listen, sweetie, if Annie’s late, if she’s not going to do her job, I’ll need you to throw the switch on the lift. Rehearsals! Why are they so understaffed? Do you think you can handle that? Hmm?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jess said, lowering her voice to disguise it. “The switch.”

“Well, hurry it up! We haven’t got all day.”

The cold was intense. Jess realized it was seeping out from beneath the door—Maleficent had the temperature in the dressing room turned down to icehouse freezing. She had no idea where the Cast Member playing Maleficent had gone; but this thing was no Cast Member.

Jess followed the flowing black robe deeper down the hall, followed into the depths of the structure, through two more hallways and down a narrow stairway like something on a ship. The show’s soundtrack grew louder than could be explained by the small speakers along the wall, backstage monitors that allowed all the Cast Members to hear the music and action onstage, so that they could keep track of their cues.

Jess followed the icy creature as if she had no choice, wondering when the thing would figure out who it was coming up behind, and knowing she couldn’t allow that truth to be revealed. Finn would be up there waiting.

Finn and the sword: the Kingdom Keepers’ best and perhaps only chance to defeat it.

* * *

Charlene found exactly what she wanted: a long length of pirate chain, complete with an old lock and key. There were three lengths of the chain coiled backstage alongside a stock of bows and arrows and some rope. The chain was impossibly heavy and cumbersome, but she draped it around her shoulders like a Hawaiian lei and looked straight up the emergency ladder that led down to the back of the stage from the very top of the mountain.

There was no time to waste: someone could arrive at any moment and stop her. She struggled to keep herself upright with the newly added weight, took hold of the ladder railings, and began to climb.

Five feet into the climb she heard voices approaching. She managed two more rungs and then froze, her face pressed against the cold metal. The two men Finn had heard now stood directly below her, with her feet no more than a few inches from the top of the head of the tallest one.

“Do you think they’ll find it this time?” one of them said. It was impossible to tell who was doing the talking.

“No. For one thing he’s supposed to appear only on film. For another, it doesn’t happen all the time. It’s like a typical glitch, you ask me. Can’t make it happen when you want to fix it, can’t stop it from happening when you don’t.”