Kingdom Keepers VI(25)

They turned to see Dixon, the rodent-faced stagehand, blocking their way.

“Funny, this doesn’t look like the girls’ room to me,” he said, his voice void of inflection.

“We…ah…”

His eyes didn’t seem to focus. He stared past them in a daze. “Best if you come with me, please.” He produced a wooden billy club from out of nowhere and slapped his left palm with it. “We can do this peaceful-like, or not so peaceful.”

“You’re not going to hit a girl,” Willa said.

“No, I’m going to hit two girls. If I have to. Your choice.” That same dreadfully calm voice.

A spell? Willa wondered. The idea was chilling: a thousand crew and Cast Members traveling on the ship, with some of them acting as undercover OTs? She didn’t like those odds.

Charlene faked a cough to cover her saying, “On three.” Willa nodded.

Charlene patted her leg once, twice… Her third strike was accompanied by a front handspring and a one-eighty-degree pivot back handspring directly into the face of the zoned-out crewman. He flew off his feet and across the hall without having gotten the club to shoulder height.

Willa took off down the hall, running away from the room full of men, heading to port. The sound of the stage’s public-address system played from small speakers. Some kind of scientist was being introduced. She went to speak to Charlene, but she wasn’t there.

Willa stopped and looked back.

Charlene had knocked the club from the skinny guy’s hand. She hooked a knee around his neck and leaped to her side, flipping the guy like a beached fish in some kind of MMA move Willa had never seen. Charlene tugged free a length of rope the man had tucked into his belt—rope meant for tying up two girls?—and bound his hands behind his back like she was a policewoman. Lacking a gag, she pulled his shoe and sock off and stuffed his dirty sock into his mouth. She waved for Willa to come help her.

Willa couldn’t move.

Charlene gestured a second time, more desperately. Her eyes said, Hurry!

The man kicked Charlene in the chest, sending her airborne across the room.

“Uhhf!” Charlene grunted as the wind was knocked out of her.

The man stood and reared his leg back to kick her while she was down.

He fell flat onto his face. With his hands tied behind his back, he couldn’t protect himself. He was knocked unconscious. Willa looked down. She held his bare foot in her hand; she had upended him.

Charlene regained some breath. “Way to go, Willa. Nice move!”

Willa helped Charlene to her feet. Together, they dragged the unconscious man into the machine room and pulled the door shut.

Charlene tried to steady her breathing. “Next time, remind me to come as a hologram. For the record, this is way too difficult.”

Willa laughed. The girls fled down the hall.

Upstairs, the audience broke into applause.

* * *

“Hey,” Finn said, innocently, lowering his voice for the sake of the lecture going on. “We’re looking for the greenroom.”

“Sure you are,” a clean-cut Joe College–type guy said.

The two crewmen moved closer to Finn.

“What are you doing hiding back here?” the second man said. Built like a weightlifter, he was short but solid, with a young face.

“We…ah…” Maybeck was fast on his feet, but not always with his thinking.

“We weren’t hiding. We had this bet,” Finn said, “about what letter was on the other side of the bottom block. I said it was an R. My friend here, a B.”

“We had the same blocks when were kids,” Maybeck said.

The two guys separated. Neither Finn nor Maybeck liked the look of that. The stocky one moved toward the blocks while Joe College faced them.

“And what was the letter?” inquired Joe College.

Finn and Maybeck exchanged slightly panicked looks in the flashing light from the slide show, which was continuing on the big screen above.

The weightlifter leaned in to look at the back side of the alphabet block.

Maybeck shook his head ever so slightly, like a pitcher shaking off a catcher’s signal; he didn’t want to make the guess.

Finn took in the visible letters on the existing stack of blocks.

“It’s E,” he said.

He and Maybeck watched as the short guy nodded to his partner.

Maybeck shot him a look that said, How could you have known that?

“So. We should be getting to the greenroom,” Finn said.

Joe didn’t move. He rocked his head back, eyes on the ceiling. “So…what exactly are we going to do with you?”

Maybeck had had enough. “Look, man, you can join us in the greenroom. That’s where we’re going.”

“I don’t think so,” Joe said in a menacing voice. “We hear your two girlfriends are poking around downstairs where they don’t belong. What is it you kids are looking for? Witches? Monsters?” His tone was mocking. “Grow up.”