Kingdom Keepers: The Return Book Two: Legacy of Secrets (10 page)

“Excuse me, sir!”

The sound of Philby’s voice turned the heads of his friends, as well as that of the man on the way to rescue Charlene from what appeared to be a slickly dressed assailant. The man looked in Philby’s direction. And Philby disappeared.

In fact, he’d reduced himself to a thin blue line of one dimension, but given the park guests, the blue sky, and sunshine, he appeared to have vanished. The man looked bewildered. When Philby reappeared a few strides later and called out again, the enchantment was complete.

Unfortunately, Charlene’s would-be rescuer wasn’t the only one to have seen Philby’s magic “act.”

“What in tarnation was that?” The voice sounded so familiar to Finn. He took it to be Walt Disney’s, but couldn’t confirm it. A passerby blocked Finn’s view; he heard the same voice again saying, “You see that? There!”

Philby reappeared, disappeared, and was then apparently gone for good.

“We gotta go!” Maybeck said.

But Charlene’s would-be rescuer had almost reached them now. “Hey, boy!” he called out cruelly, aiming the words directly at Maybeck, who pointed his thumb at himself, shocked. “Yeah, you! What do you mean putting your hands on that girl?”

“Oops,” Maybeck said under his breath to Finn and Charlene.

“You say something to me, boy? City slicker, are we?”

“He’s my friend, sir,” Charlene said, stepping forward. “We were just…horsing around.”

“He tell you to say that? This boy threatening you, miss?” The man had a tattoo of an anchor on his forearm, with the letters USN beneath. United States Navy. A World War II veteran, Finn thought. Tough, and willing to show it.

“No, sir, he really is my friend.”

The man was still far enough away not to pick up on their low-resolution pixelation, but if he drew any closer…Charlene laced her very solid hand with Maybeck’s and squeezed. This man’s threats had pushed all three Keepers well out of their projections and into something more mortal.

“I don’t mean no trouble, sir,” Maybeck said, sounding nothing like himself and more like the stereotypical black man from an old, old movie. Finn blinked at him in surprise. “We here to have a good time, me and my friends.”

“Well, maybe you should have it without the lady for right now, boy. What do you say to that? What do you say you let her go and you just walk free and clear of here? Maybe out of this here park altogether.”

“Now, now!” A lady’s voice. It belonged to Mrs. Disney, Finn realized. She was without her purse—there was Wayne behind her, wiggling it for the three of them to see. Walt had been engulfed by his fans. “That’s not how we treat our fellow guests in Disneyland, sir. And I should know. My husband created this park.”

The aggressive man pivoted toward Mrs. Disney, already lifting his hat from his head. He bowed and uttered a string of apologies in rapid succession. It gave the Keepers the perfect excuse to move, their backs kept to the wall, slipping away from the problem. As they got out of Mrs. Disney’s peripheral vision, they angled themselves and caught up to Wayne, who’d stepped into the path. Charlene took the purse. Miraculously, it stayed in place instead of crashing to the ground.

Mrs. Disney could be heard behind them. She was polite but firm with the man, who sounded ever so humbled. A reprimand from a celebrity had reduced him to a gushing sycophant.

The three teens rounded a hot dog cart; Charlene set the purse on a bench.

“You two check it out,” Finn said, “while I keep watch.”

Finn wanted to search the purse and find Walt’s pen; he felt certain it would be there, that Wayne’s theory was solid. But one of the qualities he’d learned as a leader was the willingness to take crummy assignments. If he took all the fun and glory, resentment from the others would pile up quickly. It was something Philby had yet to learn, and it separated his and Finn’s styles of leadership.

Mrs. Disney returned to her husband, just in time for the Disneys to board the Mad Tea Party. There was a massive push by other park patrons to line up and join them on the ride. Thankfully, as far as Finn was concerned, it kept all the attention there, and away from anything else. He checked over his shoulder, repeatedly wanting to shout,
Get on with it!

Within seconds, he could tell there’d been no immediate discovery. Maybeck and Charlene dug around desperately in the small purse. Charlene stood, the purse in hand, obviously ready to return it. Maybeck had the slumped shoulders of the defeated; after a second, he squared up and reached for the purse. Finn divided his attention between the events at the Mad Tea Party and his friends, arguing behind him. He heard Maybeck say, “One of the coins!” Charlene relented, surrendering the purse. Maybeck unsnapped it and put his head so close the brim of his hat struck the purse and dislodged.

“Oh no!” he heard Maybeck say as his hand passed through the bag instead of stopping inside it. Finn understood what was happening. His own fingers had begun to tingle the moment they’d found a safe hiding place behind the cart. Maybeck tried again. His projected hand waved through the bag.

The Mad Tea Party was slowing down, the ride ending! Wayne looked frantically at Finn.

“Switch!” Finn called, and Maybeck reacted instantly, taking his place.

“There’s a coin with the others,” Maybeck told him, “a little smaller than a quarter, a little thicker than a nickel. You’re a pigheaded piece of dog poo, by the way.”

Finn felt his hands grow more solid. “Thanks.” He joined Charlene, who had also returned to all clear, her fear rising as their time ticked down. Together, they dug into the purse. Seconds passed, and Charlene’s hand went spongy against the bench.

“Will we be able to carry it back to Wayne?” she whispered.

“You have a zit the size of a raisin next to your nose,” Finn said, attempting to jolt her.

“Oh! That’s better!” Charlene proclaimed.

“Your hair, besides looking pathetic, hasn’t been washed in three days.”

Her hand smacked the bench. “That did it! Though I may never forgive you for the ‘pathetic’ comment.”

Finn had the interior coin purse open. He saw a torn half of a twenty-dollar bill. He grabbed for it, and failed to pick it up. It was too light, too thin.

“They’re getting off,” Maybeck said. “Hurry!”

“Got it!” Finn announced, taking hold of the coin that fit Maybeck’s description. It looked familiar, though he couldn’t place it. It wasn’t American currency.

“I have no idea if my pocket will work,” Finn said. “These projections are so unstable.”

“We’ve got to hide it. We can’t have it falling out of your pants somewhere.”

“We could give it to Wayne,” Finn said.

“Too tricky. It’ll be hard enough for me to pass him the purse,” Charlene whispered.

“Hurry!” Maybeck hissed.

“Go!” Finn told Charlene, who scooped up the purse mumbling, “Pathetic?” and headed toward Wayne.

Disneyland’s 1950s grounds were so different, so sparse. Finn was afraid the hot dog cart might be rolled away at any moment. Maybeck had an artist’s eye; Finn turned to him and explained their predicament.

“There!” Maybeck said, pointing behind them. “That boat.”

The boys took off in the direction of the replica pirate ship under construction, a square-rigger painted black and gold. It was permanently docked and set up as a restaurant. The gangplank boardwalk leading to the door in the hull had rope railings fixed to stanchions every eight feet. Maybeck reached the second of the posts and told Finn to remember it. “Tuck the coin between the rope and wood. We’ll come back for it after midnight, when we’re solid and handling it won’t be so risky.”

It was a brilliant solution. The coin all but disappeared.

“Let’s gather up the group,” Finn said, smiling.

*  *  *

“Does anyone else think meeting here is really weird?” Willa said, poised on the edge of a futuristic bathtub.

“Actually,” Maybeck said snidely, “I was just thinking they got this one incredibly right. This is basically what bathrooms have become.”

“I meant that we’re meeting in a bathroom in the first place!” Willa said.

“It’s a display bathroom,” Charlene said. “I mean, that’s a glass wall over there. It’s like a fishbowl.”

“It’s not somewhere anyone’s going to look,” Wayne said. “That’s the point.”

The futuristic bathroom of 1955 looked exactly like a contemporary bathroom in a nice home of the 2000s: large, partially sunken tub, two sinks—his and hers—corner shower tiled in stone, and a toilet behind a wing wall, all lit by architectural lighting. The group’s voices reverberated off the stone and glass, but couldn’t be heard outside of the room—all part of Wayne’s planning.

“The Golden Horseshoe reception starts soon,” Finn said. “We know those other kids, the fake Cast Members, have something planned, but we don’t know what it is.”

“I still can’t believe you left that twenty-dollar bill in her purse,” Maybeck said to Finn.

“I tried. What’s important is: Mrs. Disney and Roy each have the same coin, and they each have one-half of a twenty dollar bill, meaning Walt or someone wanted them to put those two halves together to prove their connection.”

“Trouble,” Philby repeated. “The Cast Members we saw are planning trouble. The question, therefore, is how to stop it without knowing what it is.”

“I’m not invited to party at the Horseshoe,” Wayne said, “but I think it might be possible for me to get a waiter’s costume and join the catering staff. As long as I work hard, no one’s going to complain. We’re a team here.”

“That’s good,” Philby said.

“At least we’re dressed for a party,” Charlene said, ever conscious of her appearance.

“Our projections are so limiting,” Finn said, raising his wavering hand and shaking it in frustration.

“Philby and I are working on that,” Wayne said. “The technology he describes from…where you came from…I think the company is going to be ‘ahead of the times’ for a long while if I can get even half of it to work. And no one will ever know why.”

He drew laughter from everyone but Finn, who was all business.

“We can’t be seen from the side, so we’ll take up places around the room, our backs to the walls. We keep an eye out for any of the Cast Members we’ve seen, either at the studio or at Roy’s apartment.”

Finn nodded to Maybeck, who repeated a list of the ID tag numbers they suspected belonged to possible Overtakers. “Wayne will check out the waiters and waitresses as well.”

“‘Check out’?” Wayne said, having no idea what the expression meant. “Like checking a hat or coat?”

Charlene explained as best she could. Wayne nodded and told Finn to continue.

“You’ll keep an eye on all of us,” Finn explained to Wayne, who nodded. “We’ll signal you if we see something weird—suspicious,” he said, correcting himself. “From there, I guess we improvise.”

“Our specialty,” Maybeck said, playing with the sink hardware.

“Please don’t touch that!” Wayne admonished. Too late. At that exact moment, Maybeck pulled loose a faucet handle—and fumbled to put it back into place.

“It’s got to be some form of sabotage they have planned,” said Willa, smiling ruefully at Maybeck. “I mean, right? They wanted the schedule of events for the day, but nothing really bad has happened yet. This is the last event. Any clue at all, Wayne?”

Wayne shook his head. “I’ve gone over this repeatedly,” he said. “On the horrible side: someone tries to poison Mr. Disney. But I’ll be in and out of the kitchen, looking for something like that. On the bright side, someone—possibly the Cast Members—is planning an innocent surprise, a congratulations to the Disneys and their friends. This has been an incredibly complicated construction, difficult and expensive. So many challenges. The man deserves a crown and a throne.”

“It’s not how these people work,” Maybeck said ominously. All the Keepers wanted to disagree or soften the tone, but they couldn’t. What Maybeck said was true.

“Right!” Finn said. “So, that’s the plan. And we’re uninvited, so we’ll need to come through the walls as projections. We’ll do it one at a time, a few minutes apart.”

“Bathroom stalls,” Wayne said. “I can direct you to step through the walls of the empty bathroom stalls. No one can see you enter that way.”

“What about us girls?” Charlene said.

“I’ll get you close enough,” Wayne said. “Two taps”—he knocked twice on the tile—“and it’s safe.”

“Appropriate enough, given this place,” Maybeck said, still struggling to get the faucet handle back on.

T
IM AND
J
ESS GOT OFF
to a late start. Absent from their Disney School of Imagineering classes because of the Tink Tank meeting in Burbank, they’d spent much of the afternoon laboring to make up classwork. Tim had been helping Emily Frederickson with the tech details of her fiber-optic clothing designs while Jess reviewed a video of a lecture on Addressing Design—“The Essential Elements of Guest Movement.”

Jess had barely seen Amanda all day, so when they finally crossed paths in a hallway, they ran to the fourth-floor commissary and grabbed Starbucks. Once again, Jess had to make excuses for where she’d been. Her membership in the Tink Tank was secret, even to her best-friend-slash-sister. She felt horrible for lying, and was terrible at it, clearly raising Amanda’s suspicions.