Kingdom Keepers II : Disney at Dawn (9781423141150) Read online

  But Jez just kept on running toward her. The same perfect form and posture. The same perfect Jez.

  Jez finally did stop, though she remained several yards off, like a fearful animal.

  There was a reason her shirt and hair were both dry: the rain fell through her, hitting the walkway below.

  Amanda stepped forward, now only inches from her sister. The rain fell harder, soaking her own hair and shoulders. Jez remained dry.

  “Say something,” Amanda whispered.

  She reached out her arm and swung it from right to left, cutting her sister in half, her hand passing right through.

  A hologram. A DHI.

  “Where’s my sister?” Amanda managed to choke out, the drops of water now flowing down her cheeks having nothing to do with the rain. “What have you done to her?”

  6

  “HE CAN’T POSSIBLY KNOW the way up here,” Finn whispered. “Only Wayne understands Escher’s Keep. He said so.” But he could hear the swishing of the man’s clothing as he climbed the upside-down staircase. He not only knew the way, he seemed to be quickly closing in on them.

  “I don’t think that actually matters right now,” Philby said. “We are going to be in some serious—” He gasped. “What are you doing, Finn?”

  Before him, Finn Whitman, the fourteen-year-old boy, transformed into a glowing version of himself with a slightly shorter haircut. He was now his DHI hologram.

  “Willa said she s-saw you do this.” Philby stuttered when nervous. “But I d-didn’t believe her.”

  “It’s not very stable. I can’t hold it for very long,” Finn said. “Go. Black tiles. Never two in a row. It’s the left staircase when you reach the other side. There’s the final invisible bridge and then the black hole. I’ll meet you there. Wait for me.”

  Philby waved his arm through Finn just to confirm what he’d seen him do. “But if you’re here as your DHI, then where’s the real you? Not back asleep in bed? And why can’t any of the rest of us do this when we’re awake?”

  “Philby, I don’t know. Maybeck said he’s had the same thing happen. Willa, once or twice. We can discuss this later, okay? For some reason, I’m able to will myself to cross over. I don’t understand it, but I don’t try to understand it. It just happens if I let it. Wrap your mind around that. It doesn’t last long, and it’s exhausting. So I’ll meet you in the black hole, and I’m going to need your help from there on.”

  “And you’re going to stay and…what?…fight this guy?”

  “Yeah, right,” Finn said sarcastically, his voice sounding a little bit different, like the buzzing of something electronic. “I’m going to make him wonder what he’s chasing. I’m going to freak him out of his shorts. If I’m lucky…well…let’s hope I’m lucky.” He waited only seconds. “GO!”

  Philby took off across the checkerboard floor, making sure the toes of his shoes landed only on the black squares, and never two black squares in the same horizontal row. It required a kind of dancing across and down the floor that made him look like a kid in Riverdance.

  Finn’s ability to cross over while awake had to do with achieving a kind of meditative state. If he focused on having no fear, no worries, he temporarily crossed over. He didn’t know the rules or how it worked, only that he could make it happen—though only inside the Magic Kingdom, where hologram projectors existed throughout the Park. He took a moment to test his ability, aware of its unpredictability and his lack of control over it. He grabbed for the nearby doorknob. His hand landed on it, and he was able to turn the doorknob. Then he pulled his hand away, closed his eyes briefly, and concentrated on just a single idea: light. He opened his eyes and reached for the doorknob once again. This time the doorknob passed through his hand. It sparkled and glowed as he swept his hand on through the doorjamb and back out.

  So far, he seemed to be in control of his hologram, but he knew from previous attempts that his hologram quickly deteriorated. A few minutes was all he had, until Finn, the fourteen-year-old boy, came back to replace the DHI.

  He stepped out of the way as he heard footsteps approaching. The man arrived at the platform. Finn hid behind him. The man was big, with thick, heavy legs and broad shoulders. He looked a little foolish in his red-and-white-striped jacket and straw hat. He studied the checkerboard floor like a person trying to remember the code, bringing his thick hand to his scrabbly chin in contemplation.

  “White or black? Odds or evens?” Finn said, startling the man.

  The man spun around, his face a knot of anger. “You’re not allowed here,” he said in a deep, dry voice. Incredibly quickly for his size, he jumped toward Finn and swiped at him, his hands passing right through the DHI, at which point he stood up in astonishment, looking at his own hands as if they’d betrayed him.

  “One wrong step, and you fall,” Finn said, darting past the man and out onto the checkerboard floor. He concentrated on the idea of light—pure light. A DHI weighed nothing, and only weight triggered the tiles in the floor. But he knew he couldn’t maintain this pure state for very long. He had to lure the man out onto the floor quickly. There wasn’t much time.

  He tried another tack. “I’m a Cast Member,” Finn said, “like you.”

  “I don’t care. You’re not allowed up there,” he said. By saying this he confirmed he knew about the penthouse—Walt Disney’s former apartment—the secret room Wayne had offered the DHIs as a place to hide.

  An Overtaker? Finn wondered. The group loyal to Maleficent, dedicated to changing the balance of power in the Parks.

  “I said you’re not allowed up there,” the man said.

  “White or black?” Finn said, his DHI standing on one of each.

  The pleasant warmth of the DHI gave way to a slight chill, and Finn knew the internal light was giving way to flesh and blood. He wished he understood how to control this transformation better, but that was for another time. He took advantage of his brief weightlessness and crossed the checkerboard floor to a platform that presented another three ascending staircases. He had one last trick left.

  The man stepped out onto the checkerboard, keeping his eyes on the squares. It was a long fall below—thirty feet or more, though the floor had been painted in perspective, which made it appear more like three hundred: a bottomless, rocky cavern. He took that in, and then, as he looked across at Finn, his face turned scarlet with anger.

  “You won’t talk your way out of this, son.” He stepped onto a black tile. Then another. He knew the pattern! Making sure he avoided any two black squares in the same horizontal line, he progressed cautiously but quickly across the floor.

  Finn felt the DHI fading. He’d managed to maintain it for a minute or more, but he suspected he weighed something now. Would he trip the sensors that opened the floor, or could he make it across?

  His plan was to run right through the man. He believed if he concentrated, he could summon his pure DHI for the fraction of a second it would take to pass through him. In doing so, he was certain to cause the intruder to misstep, which would send him plummeting. But Finn would have to move quickly to avoid being on the floor when it fell out and gave way.

  He stepped out onto two black squares. He could feel his weight on his feet. He was about equal parts boy and DHI. How much longer?

  The Dapper Dan stopped halfway, his face a scowl. Then something occurred to him, and he belched out a laugh. “Going to wrestle me, are you?” He grinned mischievously. “I’ll save you the trouble.” His right foot reached out for a white square.

  Finn had not considered that the fastest way for the man to catch Finn was to make Finn fall with him.

  Finn ran forward on the black tiles, simultaneously letting go of all fear. He felt the warmth return like a blast from a furnace. But well before he reached the other side—in fact, before he even reached his adversary—the floor went out from under him.

  The man fell, letting out a short scream as he was funneled into a red plastic chute.

  Finn was floatin
g. The trapdoor had opened beneath him, but his DHI simply hovered. He was suspended ten feet above the evacuation chute, with only air beneath him.

  He felt the chill returning. He managed three steps toward the edge of the open pit and then fell. His fingers caught the lip of the hinged flooring, and his body smacked into the hanging trapdoor. Normally not good at pull-ups, he must have been partially DHI, because he managed to lift himself, hook a leg, and pull himself up. Seconds later, the trapdoor snapped back into position. He stayed on the black squares and recrossed.

  Middle staircase. Red door. He remembered this section well.

  He heard the Dapper Dan hit bottom and, seconds later, the sound of him climbing stairs again. Faster now. Ever more determined to apprehend Finn.

  Finn stepped forward into total darkness, a matter of extreme trust. The first time he’d followed Wayne in here, he’d nearly puked from fear. The black hole.

  He ran smack into Philby.

  “There’s no elevator,” Philby said.

  “What?”

  “No elevator. It’s not here.”

  “It has to be here,” Finn said.

  “No such luck, Sherlock.”

  “But that means—”

  “Somebody’s up there,” Philby said. “Already in the apartment. And what do you want to bet it’s not Wayne?”

  “There’s got to be another way up,” Finn said. “Fire stairs. Something for an emergency.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s pitch black. You don’t happen to have a flashlight on you, I suppose?”

  “Turn your back to me,” Finn said. He mustered his strength. Transforming into his DHI sapped his energy. He felt exhausted from having challenged the man just now, but knew he had to do this. He closed his eyes. He felt the warmth return. He couldn’t hold it for more than a few seconds. He came out of it, his legs weak, his head swooning.

  “Oh, man! How cool is that?” Philby said excitedly. “Hold on to my shirt, lightning bug. I saw some stairs over here.”

  Finn reached out and held on, as much to keep his balance as to stay with Philby. They reached a set of metal stairs, the handrail cool to the touch.

  “Going up,” said Philby.

  They started climbing the spiral stairs. Higher and higher.

  From below them came the heavy breathing of the man pursuing them.

  He’d already caught back up. He sounded incredibly close.

  7

  MAYBECK PROVED HIMSELF the faster runner, arriving next to Amanda at nearly the same instant as Charlene and Willa despite having come the long way around. The rain was falling in punishing waves, and thunder was cracking menacingly overhead.

  Amanda, soaking wet, was on her knees, crying. Jez just stood there, the rain passing through her. It took Maybeck and the girls a few seconds to realize what Amanda already knew.

  “Oh, man,” said Maybeck. “How long ago did this happen?”

  Willa and Charlene helped Amanda to her feet. Everyone but Jez was now drenched. Charlene held her hands over her hair, as if that would do any good.

  “She didn’t keep up,” Amanda said. “I thought she was probably fiddling with her iPod—trying to protect it from the rain. She won’t stop messing with that thing. So I looked back, and …she was there.” She pointed to the DHI of her sister.

  “But how is that possible?” Willa asked. “Jez isn’t a DHI.”

  “She is now,” said Maybeck, contradicting. He ran his hand right through Jez’s body and out the other side.

  Some kids cheered and called out from the crowded area in front of Peter Pan’s Flight, where they stood protected from the rain.

  “Somebody did this,” Amanda said. “They programmed a DHI for her. But it’s not much of a program. She’s just…standing there.”

  “But why?” Maybeck said.

  “Who?” Willa said. “The Imagineers wouldn’t do this without Wayne telling us.”

  More kids called out from the line, this time wanting autographs.

  “We can’t stay here,” said Maybeck.

  “I have to find her,” Amanda said. “The real her.”

  “We need Finn and Philby,” Willa said.

  Hunched over and miserable in the rain, Charlene added, “Could we maybe move this meeting somewhere dry?”

  Maybeck said, “We saw you two not five minutes ago. If they grabbed her…if they made a switch…it had to have happened between then and now. Somewhere really close to here.”

  “Are you saying she was…kidnapped?” Charlene said, a little too concerned with her hair to have stayed with the discussion.

  “If humans take you, you’re kidnapped,” Maybeck answered. “I doubt there’s a name for it when it’s a band of Disney villains. But yeah. She’s missing.”

  “But why?” Charlene asked Maybeck. “Why kidnap Jez?”

  The three kids stared at Amanda, waiting for an answer. She pursed her lips as if she’d swallowed something bitter. “If I told you—which I can’t—you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Try us,” Maybeck said.

  “You’d be surprised at what we can handle,” said Willa.

  “The Overtakers?” Maybeck asked, winning Amanda’s attention.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Amanda said.

  “Try us,” Maybeck repeated.

  “Please tell us,” Willa pleaded. She wiped the rain from her eyes. “We want to help, but we need to know what’s going on, what we’re involved in.”

  Charlene proved she’d been paying attention after all. “This has to do with Finn, doesn’t it? When Finn got tangled up with Jez, and you said some kind of spell had been removed. Maleficent’s spell.”

  That incident had happened months ago, though the kids remembered it as if it were yesterday. Maleficent had kept Jez under her control to prevent Jez’s own powers from interfering with Maleficent’s plan. The DHIs had managed to trap Maleficent, and Finn had helped free Jez from the spell—though her powers had yet to be explained to any of them. Maybe this was why the sisters had vanished recently: to keep from having to explain themselves.

  “We have to hurry,” Willa said. “For one thing, those kids are blowing our cover. For another, every second counts. She can’t be far.”

  “Since when are you a detective? You’ve been reading too many American Girl books,” snapped Charlene.

  “No, she’s right,” Maybeck said. “Time is in our favor, but not for long. Amanda and I will retrace her route, looking for her. Willa, you and Charlene get Finn and Philby out of the castle and meet up with us.”

  Amanda jerked her head toward Cinderella Castle. “He’s in there?” she gasped, and then mumbled, “I’d nearly forgotten.”

  “Forgotten what?” Maybeck asked.

  Amanda looked back and forth from the sputtering and sparking DHI of her sister to the colorful lights illuminating the castle.

  “Something horrible’s going to happen,” Amanda whispered. “Jezebel dreamed about it. We came here to warn all of you.” She met eyes with Maybeck and then Willa. “He’s actually in there?”

  “She dreamed about it?” Charlene said, distrustful and sarcastic. “Your sister can dream the future, I suppose? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?”

  “Fairlies have abilities you wouldn’t believe.”

  “What’s a Fairlie?” Willa blurted out.

  “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

  8

  FINN FOLLOWED PHILBY up the tightly wound spiral staircase in complete darkness, his lungs and legs burning, his head pounding. Transforming himself into a DHI—twice in a matter of minutes—had taxed him. He climbed, half in, half out of consciousness, sliding his hand along the cool steel handrail, faint of head but not of heart. Someone was trying to attract lightning to Cinderella Castle. He envisioned the penthouse apartment converted into a Frankenstein laboratory, some Disney monster strapped to a stainless-steel table with wires attached to his head and heart. He didn’t know
what to think—except that the Overtakers had sent the Dapper Dan to stop them. That had to mean something big was going down.

  Thunder cracked outside, sending a rumble up his legs. Climbing higher in a lightning storm was not the smartest move. He felt another tremor in his chest.

  Speaking in a breathless whisper as they climbed, Finn said, “What if it’s all a trap? An elaborate trap? What if this guy is supposed to drive us to the top of the castle? What if the weather balloon and lightning are intended for us? To kill us?”

  Philby stopped, and Finn bumped into him. He had trouble catching his breath. His heart was about to explode.

  The staircase vibrated: the man was climbing toward them.

  “But if that’s the case, then this guy’s suicidal,” Philby said, “because he’s right behind us.”

  “But if he’s an Overtaker, how do we even know he’s real?”

  “How do we know if any of this is real?” Philby quipped. “Not one of us has ever told our parents about what happens to us at night. Why do you think that is?” He answered his own question. “Because they wouldn’t believe it.”

  Shadows flickered on the wall. A flashlight. The guy!

  “Climb!” Finn hissed.

  They started climbing higher, running up the stairs as fast as they could. Their pursuer wasn’t nearly as light on his feet as they were. The beam from his flashlight and the strange, shifting shadows it cast propelled them hurriedly up, up, up. At last, they faced a door.

  It was bolted shut; there was no doorknob or handle.

  In the dim light, Finn caught sight of a handwritten sign taped to the wall:

  OPEN ONLY IN EMERGENCY

  “Do we dare?” Finn asked.

  “It has to lead into the apartment,” said Philby.

  “Agreed.”

  The light from the flashlight rose more quickly now. “And we’re trying to get into the apartment.”

  Finn moved the bolt, and the door popped open.

  Together they entered into another dark space. Finn reached out. It was narrow and tight. The sound of bells…no…Finn knew that sound. It wasn’t bells. It was…hangers.