Kingdom Keepers V(38)

The traffic light turned green.

“Now!” Finn said, yanking on the door handle while releasing his seat belt.

To his great relief Amanda was, as usual, a step ahead of him and already out of the car.

Neither bothered to shut the doors. Instead, they took off at a full sprint down the sidewalk, Amanda suddenly possessed with strength again, though her adrenaline faded fast, and Finn took her and pulled her along with him.

“How did that happen?” Amanda choked out.

Finn couldn’t answer. He didn’t want to reveal the tears choking in his throat. His ally at home. The one person he felt he could trust above all others, even Wayne. His own personal rocket scientist who happened to cook him meals and tuck him in at night. Sure, she could be a pain in the butt—she was his mother.

He couldn’t go home. His own mother was an OTK, but not a kid, an adult, so more like an OTA. Maleficent had stolen his mother from him.

“It’s not possible,” he said.

“Maybe we got it wrong,” Amanda said, trying to cheer him up as they darted across the wide boulevard and onto the grounds of Downtown Disney. They could catch a bus to the Transportation and Ticket Center. They could make a plan. They could figure something out.

They both knew the truth. No matter how Amanda tried to comfort him, such a thing wasn’t possible.

He was alone. Willingly or not, his own family had joined the other side.





Finn spent the night with Dillard Cole, his closest friend outside the Keepers.

Before he finally fell asleep, he tried to make sense of his mother’s green eyes. He cried at the thought of what his mother must be going through while under some spell. Seeing his mom as his enemy took some getting used to. He seethed with anger—hatred—for the Overtakers and everything they represented. How dare they drag his mother into this (even if Finn had done so in the first place)? How dare they compromise her? He wondered where she was. Still sitting in the car? Parked outside their home? In bed sleeping? One thing was for sure: it would take Finn’s father about a month to realize the color of his wife’s eyes had changed––he seemed oblivious to those things.

As he drifted off to sleep, he saw a vision of his mother waiting outside Dillard’s house like a predator awaiting its prey. A mother, her son.

He awoke with a start at five a.m. from a bad dream. He snuck back out Dillard’s window. His mother wasn’t there. He crept up the street. A dog barked loudly from within one house, causing Finn to jump. He took off running. His once peaceful neighborhood felt like a dangerous place now. Even the smallest of sounds sent ripples of terror through him. Finally arriving at the McVeys’ house, across the street from his own, he kneeled in the dim shadow of a bush and studied his home. He waited a full five minutes for any kind of movement inside. The horizon was dull with dawn, the overhead clouds beginning to warm with color. The air chilly. The grass wet.

He found the hidden key, let himself into the garage, and a moment later he led his BMX quietly up the drive, climbed on, and pedaled off.

* * *

Amanda was drawn to the window. She would later tell Jess it had just been blind luck that she’d spotted Finn across the street from Mrs. Nash’s, but that wasn’t entirely true. Something had compelled her to peer behind the blind that always hung over the bedroom window. She couldn’t describe exactly what it was, but it was undeniable. A force of some kind. Like gravity pulling her. To him.

There had been a time when she’d thought he was cute. Then came interesting. Then, intriguing. Beguiling. Now it was something compelling. Forceful. Chemical. The evolution of her feelings might have told her something except that she’d never experienced them before. The caterpillar doesn’t know it’s going to be a butterfly; it just happens.

She couldn’t forget about the kiss. The power it had instilled in her to hold back the wave. How could such a thing happen? She’d been totally out of energy at that point; on the verge of giving up. And then his kiss, and all her power returned. And more. Maybe it had been the shadow of the kiss that had drawn her to the window.

Jess joined her.

“That’s strange,” Jess said.

“Yes.”

“Has he ever done that? Waited there like that?”

“No,” Amanda answered.

“You think something’s wrong?”

She told her about Mrs. Whitman’s eyes and Finn’s inability to return home.

“What’s he going to do if he can’t go home?”

“The cruise,” Amanda answered. “The inaugural. They leave today. The five of them.”

“So he’s here to say good-bye?” Jess said.