Shadow Breakers (3 page)

“Really?” He looks worried, as if he's wondering whether I'm mocking him. Not surprising, really, as it's just a normal sports bag.

“I've been looking for one like that. Where did you get it?”

“Umm . . . I can't remember,” he says, concentrating on tying his cleats. “Do you mind? I've . . . got stuff to do, here.”

I hold up my hands. “Sorry. Don't mind me.”

He nods. “Okay. Well. See you around,” he says, looking at me curiously one last time.

“Sure.” I wave at him as he disappears to rugby.

As soon as he's out of sight around the corner, I slip my hand into his bag and find what I'm looking for. Then I allow myself to breathe out. And I hurry off, late, to French, feeling the slim, smooth shape of Ollie Hanwell's cell phone tucked into my inside blazer pocket.

Mission accomplished.

Stealing? What do you mean,
stealing
?

It's more complicated than that. I have a plan. I'm going to find out what this is all about. Because ever since I came here, a lot of things have not been making sense. And things not making sense churns me up inside, makes my heart pound faster, and my body feel tense, aching. I need to do something. I can't do anything about the Shape and the dream, but I can get to the bottom of why those four Weirdos keep looking at me. And if, ahem,
borrowing
a phone is what it takes, then that's what I have to do.

I'll give it back.

Just as soon as I've got the information I need.

Mum's feeding Truffle. He's sitting in his chair with some sort of apple concoction around his mouth, and he opens his eyes wide as I plonk my bag on the kitchen table.

“Hi, Mum. Hi, Truffle.”

“Manja!”
says Truffle delightedly, and points at me.

Mum, her hair all over the place and her glasses pushed up on top of her head, pauses with the spoon halfway to Truffle's mouth. “Tash is coming round at five,” she says. “I have to be out visiting the old people's home. A few clients there.”

This is the sort of thing my mum does all the time. I've been used to a succession of “helpers,” as she calls them, coming in to look after me and Truffle. Tash must be the latest.

“I've got to go out in a bit,” I say. “Need to . . . collect some shells.”

“Shells?” says Mum.

“For . . . Science. A project,” I say, trying to sound vague but also as if I've given her a full and complete answer.

It's not easy, lying to Mum.

“Well, okay,” she says, but she gives me a strange look.

I rush upstairs, my feet thumping on the steps, crash into my room, and flop onto the bed.

Then I pull out Ollie's phone, thumb it on, and start checking the texts. It's intrusive. I feel guilty. But I'm a detective now. Pretty soon, he's going to notice it's missing, and he'll do what I'd do — phone his own number and see who answers. I'd like to think I wouldn't be daft enough to answer, but you never know.

Five minutes later, I've got the information I need. I change into a top and leggings, grab my favorite leather jacket. I thump down the stairs again.

In the hall, I lace my Doc Martens. I pause, grab my battered old skateboard. Why not? I need to travel quickly.

“See you later, Mum!”

I slam the front door behind me and I don't hear what she says in response.

For a second I look out across the crooked, tiled roofs that sweep down toward the harbor. From up here, the sea is a vast blue-gray monster fringed with white, like lace, and the calls of gulls echo up in the clouds as if mocking me. The place seems colder today, more threatening somehow. Like the harbor is a trap.

Shivering, I banish these thoughts, zip up my jacket, and hop on the board, then skim toward the shore, the opening blast of “Emotional Vandal” (first track on the JumpJets' debut album
We Will Be Back After This Short Intermission
) pounding through my headphones.

It doesn't take long to find the Seaview Hotel.

I'm amazed the text on Ollie's phone mentioned it by name, but here it is, and here I am. I check my watch, pull my scarf up over the bottom half of my face, and crouch behind a builder's dumpster opposite the front of the hotel. I hide my skateboard in the dumpster, as I don't want to be encumbered with it when I get inside.

The hotel looks as if it was grand once. It looms above the seafront like a castle, towers and crenellations reaching up into the sky. It's old and battered now, though, and covered in moss and lichen. Seagulls whirl around it like castle ravens. Some windows are covered with metal grilles; others are boarded up and defaced with rude graffiti. Across the front of the building are faded iron letters saying “SEA I W HO EL.” (Someone wanted to make a sign saying “VET,” then.) There's litter in the doorway — Coke cans, candy wrappers — and the door itself is battered and peeling.

Someone's striding along the Esplanade in my direction. It's Josh.

I duck behind the dumpster and watch. He's got his collar turned up against the cold wind, and he checks quickly behind him before hurrying up the steps of the hotel. I think he swipes some sort of card in the lock and the door clicks open. I wait two seconds, watching as the old wooden door starts to swing shut behind Josh. Then I quickly look up and down the seafront road, dash across to the hotel, and scamper up the steps.

I don't make it in time. The door clicks shut.

“D'oh!”

Okay. I think for a minute, and then I have an idea.

I get my library card out and slip it in between the catch and the door frame. I jiggle it up and down, ear to the door like a safecracker. I listen for Josh's footsteps receding and, when I think it's safe, I twist the card, press the door lightly — and it opens.

Cool, right? I got that from
Burgle My House!
There's a reality show for everything these days.

I slip inside and pull the door closed behind me.

It slams shut and I jump, wincing. Did anyone hear?

I wait. Silence.

I'm in an old-fashioned hotel lobby, dimly lit and covered in cobwebs. Huge cobwebs. I don't want to think about how big the spiders were that made them. And it's dusty, too — I have to put a finger over my nose to stop myself sneezing. There's a wooden reception desk with a rusty bell, and a huge staircase leading up into darkness. At the back there's an old elevator with one of those metal lattice gates on it — and it's making a soft whining sound.

I tiptoe across the lobby. Above the elevator is a dial. The pointer has stopped at LG, for Lower Ground floor.

Okay. I know where Josh has gone. So do I risk taking the elevator myself? My finger hovers over the button but I think better of it. Beside the elevator there's a fire door. I ease it open — it creaks alarmingly — and find two flights of stone steps, one leading up and the other down.

For a moment I shiver as cold air wafts up toward me. But I tell myself to get a grip. There's a mystery here, and I'm not going to solve it by standing around doing nothing. And I need to know. It burns; it almost hurts. Why me? Why them? Why now, and here? I make my way down.

The stairs stop in what looks like an empty underground parking lot. All I can see are concrete walls, chunky pillars, scattered newspapers, and drink cans. There's even an abandoned, blackened barbecue.

And then I spot something. A metal door, ajar, on the far side, hidden in the shadows. I sidle toward it, push it open, and slip into the darkness beyond. I'm on some sort of gantry. I look down, and take a sharp breath at what I see.

Below me is an expanse of white stone floor, lit dimly by some source I can't see. Gantries, like the one I'm on, crisscross at different levels, with metal staircases leading down to a space that looks like a mix of lab, crypt, factory floor, and messy living room.

The dark walls are curved, and on one is a matte blackboard, covered with photos and notes. On another is a spotlit map — I think it's Firecroft Bay. Desks of different heights are piled with junk: gutted computers, old-fashioned radios, circuit boards, papers, maps. I spot a chessboard, a click-clacking Newton's Cradle and, bizarrely, a full-size pool table. One desk is draped in a huge, spaghetti-like bundle of . . . what are those things called? We saw them in school once. Fiber-optic cables, that's it. Twinkling like Christmas lights and sending a flickery blue glow over the room.

I drop to my knees and crawl a little farther. Now I really have to stop myself from gasping. Because there, in her lab coat, expensive glasses, and wild hair, writing on a clipboard, is Miss Bellini.

“No sign of any fluid leakage at all?” she says in her rich voice, and from my new vantage point I realize who she's talking to: Josh, leaning against a desk, and Cal, sitting with her feet up on a computer and filing her nails.

“Nothing, Miss B,” says Cal. “A real puzzle.” She takes something out of her pocket and hands it to Miss Bellini — a small glass phial. “Just water,” she says. “Nothing weird.”

Miss Bellini holds it up to the light. “Got to be
something
weird about it, Callista,” she says. “It came outta nowhere.”

“Some sort of molecular stimulation?” says a chirpy voice. It's little genius girl Lyssa Myers, sitting in the shadows, cross-legged on a chair. “A hidden catalyst causing a high-velocity chemical change?”

I have absolutely
no
idea what she is talking about.

No change there, then.

My heart's beating faster. There's something strange going on here. And whatever it is, they're all in on it. But what's it got to do with the way they were staring at me?

“But it's just ice,” says Ollie. “Pure, simple ice.”

Yup, he's there, too — white-blond Ollie with his hands in his pockets, strolling up and down.

I can see something else now. On a computer screen in the center of the room is a 3-D image of the unmistakable, chunky form of the frozen school bus.

I shift position slightly to get a better look. And that's when it happens.

In the near darkness, I knock something with my foot. A soccer ball, up here on the gantry. It rolls and thumps along the metal bridge as my hand flies to my mouth, and goes
thump-thumpy-thumpy-thumpy-BUMP
down the stairs.

Now I'm done for.

I see Josh step forward and scoop the ball up in one swift move, like a practiced goalie.

“Who's there?” he calls up. “Come out!”

Right. Time to get out of here.

Still crouching, I turn, ready to make my escape the way I came in. But just as I turn to the metal door behind me, it snaps shut with an echoing
CLANG!
blocking off my only escape route.

I suppose there's no point trying to hide anymore.

I straighten up nervously and emerge from the shadows to face them.

“Um . . . hello,” I say, and I give them what I hope is a friendly wave.

They stand at the bottom of the stairs in a semicircle, looking up — Lyssa Myers smiling unnervingly, Josh leaning against the wall, bouncing the soccer ball and looking disapproving, Cal with her hands on her hips and a frown on her face, and Ollie with his head to one side, looking at me as if he's sure he's seen me somewhere before.

“Hello, Miranda,” says Miss Bellini, folding her arms.

“Sorry, miss,” I say in a small voice.

But to my surprise, all she does is put her hand out in a welcoming gesture.

“Why don't you come down?” she says. “After all — we've been expecting you.”

SO WHAT DO
I do? I can't turn and run. I can't phone for help. I have to make my way slowly down the stairs, into the lion's den.

My DMs clang and echo on the metal stairs.

They are all looking at me. My heart is thumping like mad, and I'm really wishing now that I'd told someone — Mum or Jade — where I was going. I look at them one by one — Josh, Cal, Lyssa, Ollie — and remind myself that I know them.

Miss Bellini pulls out a black, padded swivel chair and spins it around. “Have a seat,” she says.

I sit down cautiously on the leather chair. High above, near the dark ceiling, I'm sure I can hear pigeons fluttering and cooing. I realize now that the secret place I am in stretches all the way to the top of the hotel, the floors in between having rotted away or maybe having been removed.

“What do you mean, you were expecting me?” I ask.

Cal tosses her red hair. “Just that,” she says. “You didn't need to come in by . . . well, it was hardly ‘stealth.' You could have just rung the front doorbell.”

“You can't have known I was coming,” I snap.

Miss Bellini turns to Ollie. “Perhaps you'd like to put Miss May out of her misery, Ollie.”

Ollie grins, and starts to empty his duffle-coat pockets onto a metal table. “Hang on just a minute . . .” A yo-yo is followed by a roll of mints, some chewing gum, and some StarBreaker trading cards. That's . . . almost unnervingly normal. “Aha!” he says at last, and fishes out what looks like a small silver stopwatch. “Tracker,” he says. “Following the bug inside my phone. So we, ah, knew where you were.”

“I knew without that,” says Cal sniffily.

“Oh, well.” Ollie shrugs. “Yeah. You did say you knew she'd come.”

What is this? I've read that you can buy bugs and hidden cameras and things off the Internet, but they cost, what, thousands? And Cal
knew
I'd come? What's that all about?

I suddenly feel very stupid. “Oliver, you . . .
let
me steal your phone?”

Ollie smiles. “'Course!” he says. “I mean, you didn't think you'd actually swiped it, did you? Don't mean to be rude, Miranda, but a limping elephant could have done it more subtly. Could I have it back now, please?”

Realizing the game is up, I sigh and hand Ollie back his phone. He takes it with a friendly grin and a nod of thanks.

“This . . . place,” I say cautiously. “It's abandoned, right?”

“Used to be the Seaview Hotel,” says Cal, leaning against the pool table. She offers me some chewing gum. I hesitate, and she waggles it. “Go on, for goodness' sake. We're hardly going to try and poison you.”

I take the stick of chewing gum carefully and fold it into my mouth, its powdery texture softening as I turn it around with my tongue.

“This,” says Josh, waving his arm around, “was the biggest and best hotel in Firecroft Bay, until . . . well, until it wasn't.”

“Tell Miranda the real reason,” says Miss Bellini quietly. She is watching us all with amusement, twirling her glasses.

Josh grins. “Well, I didn't want to scare our guest. But, yes, there was an . . . incident a good few years back. The owner fell several floors to her death. Or was she pushed? Nasty. Horrible mess.” He winces, tut-tuts. “It was never solved. Nobody really wanted to stay here after that. Some people say that, at night, you can still hear her screaming.”

I fold my arms and meet Josh's gaze coolly, trying to show him I'm not unsettled by this. Even though I am.

“Anyway,” he goes on, “it stood empty for a few years, and we decided it would be a good place for a base.”

“A base
?
”
I say. “What are you, then, the Fantastic Four? The Famous Five? Or have you just been watching too much
Scooby-Doo
?” I look over at Miss Bellini, who is clicking her pen against her clipboard. “Miss?”

Miss Bellini strolls over to the illuminated map and taps it. “You may joke, Miranda. But the whole of this area of the British coastline is steeped in myths, legends . . . unusual activities.”

She clicks a button beside the map. Nothing happens at first. She gives it a thump, and tiny blue pin-lights spring into life.

Miss Bellini smiles. “Sorry about that. We're not that high-tech here. Have to salvage what we can from all kinds of sources. This map's forty years old, believe it or not.”

The lights form lines, all intersecting in the center of the brown mass that represents Firecroft Bay.

“Ley lines?” I say, and I blush as they all turn to look at me.

Miss Bellini smiles. “Very good! Science and myth are not as far apart as some people like to claim.”

“Really?” I can't help sounding skeptical.

“Of course!” Miss Bellini beams. “Ley lines, Miranda, are lines of power. Yes, the power is old, it's dark, and we don't fully understand it, but be assured, it is there. And, in some places — especially in Britain with all its legends and history — this power comes together. Like an electrical grid. Firecroft Bay is one of those places where ancient powers converge.”

“Converge.” All I seem able to do is repeat stuff.

Miss Bellini sweeps her hand across the map. “There are more sites of ancient historic interest — forts, tumuli, megaliths, and the like — per square mile here than anywhere else in England. Did you know that? And harbor towns are
special
. They have the energy of both the land and the sea. Things
happen
here which just shouldn't happen. Paranormal activity. Objects and people disappearing. All kinds of other . . . phenomena.”

“Phenomena. Right.” Doing it again. Pretty Polly. But I'm slowly trying to piece stuff together. Is she talking about things like my dreams? The Shape? The ice? That strange moment on the bus when I felt as if I wasn't really there?

Miss Bellini puts on her glasses and stares intently at me. “Oh, yes. Make no mistake, Miranda. This is an area of huge paranormal importance. Wherever there's a Convergence, reality becomes unstable. And here, the activity is getting stronger and stronger, day by day.”

“Okaaaay,” I say. Part of me is still wondering if, at any moment, someone's going to leap out with a microphone and a camera crew and tell me I've been caught by some stupid TV prank show. But another part of me knows what Miss Bellini's saying makes sense.

She looks around at the little group. “We haven't been doing this very long. I only arrived in Firecroft Bay myself last term. It wasn't difficult to find out which pupils of mine were . . . well, likely to be interested in these incidents. To take it all seriously.”

The foursome are all looking at me in
that
way again. Half interested, half out to get me.

“So . . . what do you mean,
incidents
?”

Cal says, “Things happen here against the laws of nature.”

“Disappearances,” says Josh. “Shadows. Odd power surges. Ghosts. Things you sense out of the corner of your eye.”

Cal slides up behind Josh and puts her chin on his shoulder. She whispers, “The things most people dismiss. But we don't dismiss them. We're learning how to . . . catch them.”

“You guys totally weird me out,” I say slowly. “You're telling me you're some sort of . . . secret team of spook-bashers?”

Miss Bellini gives me one of her big trademark smiles. “Everyone here is special, and here for a reason.” She peers over her glasses. “Including
you
, Miranda May.”

Josh leans down and claps me on the shoulder. “We see things we're not supposed to see,” he says softly. “We know things we're not meant to know.”

“Conspiracies,” says Cal.

“Secrets,” says Miss Bellini, “on the other side of madness — and at the borders of what you call reality.”

“Me, I do the investigating,” says Josh. “The history, the digging, the finding out of things people don't know, or don't want to be known.” He nods at Cal, who's gone over to the pool table. “My red-haired friend here is the coordinator, good at making connections, reading people and objects, and being
intuitive
.”

“And bossing you all about,” says Cal as she lines up her shot. “Someone has to.”

“Our little Lyssa.” Josh puts an arm around her shoulders, and she looks up, smiling. “She's our genius. Math, languages, obscure bits of science. And Ollie's our tame geek and gadget boy. Keeps the computers fed, gets the pizzas delivered, and, er, makes bad jokes. Usually.”

“But you're just a bunch of kids,” I say doubtfully.

I mean, it's just daft. Ollie's in the same grade as me, Cal the grade above. Josh, the oldest, is still only fifteen. And Lyssa, well, she'd be in elementary school if she didn't have a brain the size of Big Ben.

“Yup,” says Josh.

“Rather helps, in fact,” says Cal. She slides the cue with a smart flick of one hand, and sinks the eight ball.
“Yesss!”

“You see,” says Ollie, “once you know the weird and you
accept
it, you can move on — toward understanding it.”

“And you're investigating what's happening?” I ask them.

“Like you say,” says Cal, gesturing with her pool cue, “we're just a bunch of kids. And that makes us the perfect investigators. Undercover, underground, underhand.”

“Underfunded,” adds Miss Bellini over her shoulder. She's moved to a desk on one of the higher-up platforms, surrounded by computer keyboards and screens. I am about to ask who
does
pay for all this, but then something else happens.

“Put these on,” says Lyssa, behind me, and before I can stop her she has slipped a pair of headphones over my ears.

“What's going on?” I ask, panicking.

“Only a little test, Miranda,” says Miss Bellini with a reassuring smile. “Just want to confirm something.”

I don't see why I should do this. They aren't holding me here by force. I could get up and leave right now if I wanted to.

But then I wouldn't have answers. And I'd have had a wasted journey.

I may even learn something by playing along. I lean back in the soft, enveloping leather chair and adjust the headphones so that they sit comfortably on my ears.

Ollie, from over by another computer screen, says, “It'll help if you close your eyes.”

Okay. Nothing to lose.

Nervously, I let my eyelids close and realize that I am in need of sleep. I feel myself drifting almost immediately.

• • •

Is this dream or reality? It's like that odd time when you're waking up in the morning, and you only realize afterward that you were hearing conversations from the radio alarm, picturing them in your half dreams.

I think I open my eyes — do I? I can't tell, I am in darkness. I am alone. It's cold. Not just chilly, but depths-of-January freezing.

Something is wrong.

The Shape is here. Fire and water and darkness.

“Who are you?” I ask. I don't know if I ask this out loud, or just think it. Why haven't I asked this before?

The Shape does not respond. There's no whisper this time. But there is a whistling, an echoing tune. I know it, the tune . . . it's . . . it's . . .

I'm trying to remember it, to place it, but the Shape's growing bigger and bigger. No, I realize — not bigger, but closer. Coming toward me through a vortex of darkness.

Coming to get me. And now the whisper comes.

Miranda . . .

• • •

“No!”
I shout, and my eyes snap open.

I'm back in the hotel basement again, and I'm standing, looking down at the chair where I've thrown the headphones.

I don't remember jumping up from the chair.

But the headphones are still rocking back and forth, so I must have dropped them just a few seconds ago.

“Josh?” says Miss Bellini, looking up from her clipboard.

I realize Josh is standing there with a stopwatch. “7.1 seconds,” he says. “Not bad at all. Good assimilation.”

“Lyssa?” says Miss Bellini.

“Intensity 44,” says Lyssa. She's standing by a computer screen right next to me. “Wow.”

Ollie nods. “Same reading over here.”

“What is all this?” I snap. “What were you testing?”

“Interesting,” says Lyssa. “I'd actually calculated a thirteen percent chance that she might fail.” She looks at me mischievously.

“What did you see?” Cal asks, leaning forward. “Tell us.”

I glower at her. “I'm not a test subject! I'm not some animal in a cage! Will you guys tell me what this is all
about
?”

“Josh,” says Miss Bellini gently, “why don't you take Miranda for a little walk and explain everything? We can get on with analyzing the bus.”

“He doesn't have to
take
me anywhere,” I say. “I'm out of here.”