Kingdom Keepers V(121)
A knock on the door startled her, and she jumped in her chair.
It was a green-eyed girl, motioning her out of the studio.
Storey shook her head. “No!”
“Open the door!”
“No!”
They were inches apart now, separated only by the door’s safety glass.
“Please…” came the girl’s muffled voice.
Something about the quality of that voice made Storey turn the doorknob. She stepped out, keeping the door ajar with her right foot.
“Who are you?” the girl said.
“Who are you?” Storey said.
“A friend.”
“Same.”
“Then how come I don’t know you?”
“Same question,” Storey said.
“I was expecting…someone else.”
“A boy.”
“Yes.”
“A smart boy.”
The girl nodded.
“He’s busy.”
“It’s a trap.”
“Excuse me?”
“The network will indicate one of the refrigerators on Deck One. They left a clue there some time ago so the Keepers would believe it. But it’s a trap.”
“A clue?”
“Tell them the piece of torn robe was a phony. You can convince them if you tell them that.”
“And I’m supposed to believe this because…?”
“Because you don’t want them walking into a trap.” She paused. “Do you?”
“Shut…up!”
“Just tell them. What they’re after—it doesn’t need the cold. It’s in a special case.”
“You know this how?”
Sally Ringwald took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. “Because I’m one of them.”
She turned and took off down the stairs.
“Wait!” Storey’s foot slipped out of the door.
“No!” She grabbed for the handle. Too late. It clicked, locked shut.
She spun in circles, having no idea what to do, blissfully unaware that the ship’s meteorologist had been summoned to the bridge. The Dream was heading smack into the roar of wind and rough seas.
* * *
“Where the devil did you come from?” The question was posed to Finn by an Indian man polishing the atrium’s floor with a buffing machine.
“I…well…we…” Finn said, pointing across the small photo-shoot stage to the opposite corner and Willa, who was just sitting up. He found himself suddenly tongue-tied.
“We were playing a game of hide-and-seek,” Willa said. “The Vibe club? And we both must have fallen asleep.”
“Which is to say,” Finn said, “no one ever found us.”
The maintenance crew member scratched his head. “It’s too late for you to be here. You should be in your staterooms.”
“Which is where we are going right now,” Finn said.
“Mom and Dad are going to be furious,” Willa said, playing it as if they were brother and sister. It made Finn think about his mother and how he was going to break whatever spell held her. Where was she now? he wondered.
“Off you go before I report you,” said the worker. The curfew for teens was one o’clock, and it was well past that.
Just then the ship shuddered bow to stern, a long rumbling tremor underfoot like a growling stomach. The man must have seen Finn’s horror.
“It’s nothing, son,” the man said. He sounded more Irish than Indian. “When the seas kick up, she’ll push and fight and pitch and yaw her complaints like an old maid, but she bends like bamboo, the beauty. It’s all part of what they call the ‘seafaring experience.’”
“Have you sailed a long time?”
“I was a farmer. And my father and his father, both farmers. So no, I’d never seen the ocean before. Took some getting used to for me, but now I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Every ship has a personality, and the Dream’s well named.”
Another grinding shudder rippled through the expansive atrium.
“That’s normal, then?” Willa said.
“Perfectly,” the man said. “Don’t you worry a hair on your head. Now, off you go!”
Finn and Willa thanked him and took off across the atrium, but reached out and caught hands to steady themselves as the ship lurched to port. Suddenly it was like trying to walk in an amusement park ride, Finn thought, only he didn’t find it so amusing.
“Where’s Philby?” Willa said as they reached the elevators. Given that they were glass elevators on the side facing the man they’d spoken to, they had to ride at least a few floors up to convince him they were returning to their staterooms.
“I was wondering the same thing,” Finn said.
The elevator arrived, and they boarded and rode to the sixth floor.