The Shaktra (3 page)

“You’ve known him a long time?” the old man asked in a soft voice.

“Long as I can remember.” Ali stepped closer to the old man. “You from around here?” she asked.

“Just passing through.”

“I love your hair and beard. I hope you don’t cut too much off.”

The old man played with his hair for a moment. “It’s more trouble than it’s worth. People tell me it makes me look like Santa Claus.”

He was way too skinny to be a Santa Claus, she thought. Indeed, his arms were so bony they hardly had room for skin. His face was austere, starved—if he ate more than once a day she would have been surprised. His long-sleeved white shirt was oversized and it hung from his narrow shoulders like a short robe. He did not look sick, but he did not look well, either. Mostly, he looked like no one she had ever seen before in her life. Obviously, she had never seen him before.

He appeared to study her, as she did him.

“Where are you from originally?” she asked.

“I don’t think you would know the town. The name . . . it’s just a place.” He paused. “What’s your name, may I ask?”

“Alison Warner. Everyone just calls me Ali.”

“I’m Shane Bumpston.” He offered his left hand; it was wrapped in a white glove. “Pleased to meet you, Ali.”

“Same here.” They shook, and his hard grip squeezed the blood from her fingers. She nodded to his gloves. “Those look cool.”

“I don’t wear them to keep warm or cool. No, I hurt my hands some time ago, burned them actually. Now I have to wear these to keep away infections.”

“Sorry to hear that. Do they hurt?”

“Yes, they often do.” He paused. “You wouldn’t happen to be a friend of Ted Wilson, would you?”

She nodded. “I go to school with his daughter. You know him?”

“We talk now and then. That was a bad accident he had up there on the mountain. I’m so glad he’s up and walking around. When I saw him the other day, he looked fit as a fiddle.” The man added, “It was like nothing had happened to him.”

“That’s great,” she said. The reason Ted Wilson had recovered so quickly, and completely, was because she had healed him after
turning back the elemental army on top of Pete’s Peak. But no one—other than Steve and Cindy—was supposed to know that. Ted himself did not remember what she had done. At least, that’s what she had thought. The old man’s next remark caught her by surprise.

“Ted told me how you helped him. He said you were a remarkable young lady.”

Ted had been in a coma when she had zapped him. “What did he say exactly?”

“He said there was more to you than met the eye.”

Ali frowned. “How do you know him? Since you’re not from around here.”

“I know a great many people all over the world.” He added, “Now I know you.”

“What Ted said about me—it’s flattering and all that—but I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m no healer.”

Shane Bumpston stared at her with his strange blue eyes. The color was so faint around the pupils it was as if they had been removed, bleached overnight, and then put back in place. “Are you sure about that, Ali?” he asked.

She felt the
need
to meet his gaze. Indeed, she felt a surge of power run the length of her spine, and was surprised he did not turn away as she focused on him. Most people would have; they would have been forced to. But this man did not even blink. It was as if he challenged her with his eyes.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said coldly.

In response he tugged on a string around his neck, and pulled out a gold medallion that had been hidden under his shirt. The emblem was a small inverted triangle, and it had an odd jagged line through the center of it. The piece was the same size as her Yanti—the triangle matched the shape of one aspect of the
Yanti—but it was still something that could have been bought in a jewelry store. Nevertheless, she found it a coincidence that he wore it. She backed up a step as he stroked the medallion.

“I’ve had this for some time. What do you think of it?” he asked.

She hesitated. “It’s pretty.”

He glanced up. “May I see yours?”

A chill shook her. “My what?”

“I see the string. You must be wearing . . . something.
Please
, Ali, let me see it.”

His voice was oddly persuasive. She found her hand reaching for the Yanti, and had to will it back down. “Why should I show you anything of mine? I don’t know you.”

He grinned; he had a mouth of perfectly white teeth. “Are you sure about that? I think we’ve met before. Yes, now that I consider it, I’m positive we met a long time ago. Don’t you remember?”

“No,” she said flatly. “When? Where?”

“It wasn’t here, in this city. It was somewhere else.”

Ali glanced toward the door. It was twenty feet away and it looked like a mile. Harry continued to sleep as if he had been injected with a drug. Shane Bumpston—she doubted that was his real name—never took his eyes off her face.

“It would help if you were more specific,” she said.

“Let me see it,” he repeated.

“Let me see your wallet, your ID.”

“Why?”

“I want to see who you really are.”

His grin widened. “You see me, don’t you?”

The question was odd; she felt the layers hidden inside it. He was asking more than the obvious. Again, she felt him challenge her, as well as mock her. He not only looked like a wizard, it was
as if he were trying to cast a spell over her. On the other hand, she did not feel he was trying too hard. He was just playing with her.

“You see me, don’t you?”

Did she? Suddenly, Ali had the urge to turn around. To look in the mirror.

She started to move. The man jerked. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Show me your ID, Mr. Shane Bumpston,” she insisted.

He let go of his medallion, leaned forward in the chair. All of a sudden, he did not look so old and kind, and for the first time she felt a stab of fear. The sensation was alien to her. Since returning from the mountain she had assumed nothing on Earth could harm her. But her stab of fear swelled into a spike as she stared deeper into the man’s eyes.

There was
much
more to him than met the eye.

“I know you have
it,”
he whispered, and with that he stood.

Ali’s left hand went to the Yanti under her shirt, and she raised her right palm to erect a force field if necessary, which she was quite good at. Yet
what
was she trying to repel? She needed to look in the mirror, she just knew it, but she feared to take her eyes off the old crow. Nevertheless, she tried a quick peek, but the instant she turned her head there came a sharp flash of light. It could have been lightning; it was white, alive with a blistering charge. It stunned her so badly she dropped to the floor, banged her head on a row of drawers beneath the mirror that ran the length of Harry’s shop. The blow to her skull, or else the flash itself, blurred her vision. The room was momentarily filled with red, yet there was no blood in her eyes. But she did not black out, she was pretty sure she did not.

When her eyes cleared, though, the old man was gone.

“God,” she whispered, slowly getting to her feet, taking a seat
in the chair he had just vacated. It was warmer than it should have been; the brown leather felt as if it had been stretched out in the sun in a harsh desert. Plus there was a smell of ozone in the air and something else she could not identify, a faint odor of decay. Her heart was pounding, and she was afraid to let go of the Yanti. Perhaps it had saved her life. He had known about it, that’s for sure. He had known about
her
.

Ali sat for a few minutes, trying to catch her breath.

She did not realize that the snoring had stopped.

Harry called to her. “What’re you doing here, Ali? You know you don’t like me cutting your hair.”

“I stopped by to say hi, you were snoring.” She added, “Did you fall asleep in your chair?”

Harry shook his head. “Must have.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a man here with long white hair and a long beard. Did you see him?”

“Someone came in the shop, I remember. But I couldn’t say what he looked like.”

“Why not?”

Harry frowned. “I must have fallen asleep the second he got here. That’s odd, don’t you think?”

Still shaken, Ali could only nod.

At the store, walking the meat aisle, Ali ran into Steve Fender. Well,
ran into
might have been pushing it—he had obviously come to the market to find her. She had spoken to him earlier in the day and had told him she needed to pick up a few groceries.

He might have
run
to the store, however, a physical act Steve was not known to indulge in very often. He was struggling to catch his breath. Like her, Steve was thirteen years old, on the cusp of high school, but unlike her he was plump and out of shape. He had a bit of troll in him—food was his first priority in life. Yet he had more refined tastes than Farble. Steve was discerning when it came to coffee and pastries and he seldom had one without the other. Paddy and Steve did not particularly get along, but when the leprechaun craved a great beverage, he always turned to Steve.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Steve said. “I finally did it.”

“Did what?” she asked.

“Broke into Karl’s computer.”

Ali felt hopeful. The night she had returned from the mountain, a month ago, with her human friends and elemental
buddies in tow, she had immediately gone to the hospital to heal Ted Wilson, then had returned home to reassure her father that she was okay. But when all the excitement had died down, and she had laid in bed and tried to find Karl and her mother in her mind, and failed, she realized she might need a backup plan. Clearly magic was not going to solve all her problems.

Yet she had known she had to act fast, before Karl was reported missing. That same night she had snuck over to his house and climbed into his bedroom through an open window, and had searched his desk and drawers for . . . what? Any clue of what he might have been up to since he had kidnapped her mother. Unfortunately, she had found nothing useful and in the end, partly out of desperation, she had swiped his computer, knowing Steve was a genius when it came to hacking into computer systems. But Karl’s files had been protected by an encrypted password—like there was another teenager on the West Coast who would bother with such a thing. That password had stumped Steve until, apparently, this morning.

Karl’s parents had noticed their son’s computer was missing. They had told Officer Garten about it, and the last time he had confronted her,
he
had told Ali. It was possible the lot of them believed she had swiped the computer, although Ali was confident no one had seen her enter and exit Karl’s room.

“Find anything interesting?” she asked.

Steve caught her eye. “Several interesting things.”

She glanced around. “Let’s not talk here. How’s your house?”

“Empty. I’ve already called Cindy to meet us there.”

Reaching out, Ali gave him a hug, although she imagined he would have preferred a kiss. Steve had had a crush on her since he had discovered girls were not the same as boys. “You’re a master,” she whispered in his ear.

He beamed. “A high compliment coming from someone like you. Or should I say, a
queen
like you.”

Ali forced a smile, while feeling pain in her heart. She loved being queen of the fairies, being special, having power, but she hated it as well because it separated her from those she loved. It made it difficult for her to hang out with her friends, to just be silly, to just be Ali Warner. Those who knew who she was could not look at her without staring; those who did not could never really know her at all. Her father fell into the latter category. Since she had returned from the mountain—with her hair as bright red as a flame—she had spent as much time with him as usual, fixing his meals, begging him to sleep more, washing his clothes, and yet she had sensed
him
sensing that she had changed in some inexplicable way. For sure, she was no longer his little girl.

How would she and her mother get along when they finally met again? Ali did not know; she feared even to find out. They had been apart for more than a year, and so much had changed in that time. From the hints her mother had dropped, Ali could only assume her mother had known she was a fairy. But Ali wasn’t a hundred percent sure about that, and if her mother
didn’t
know . . . well, then, they would have a terrible time communicating, particularly if she saw that her daughter’s method of putting out the garbage was simply to incinerate it with her eyes. She had done that
once
, for fun.

Worse, Ali could not see herself far in the future, older, and married with her own children . . . Because the truth was, she could not imagine it. She couldn’t even see herself in the present with a boyfriend . . . Because she could not see herself as a
girl
friend . . . Because she was not a girl . . . Not really.

“Watch your tongue,” she said to Steve. “We’re in a public place.”

“Cindy’s probably on her way. Can you leave now?”

She hesitated. “Sure.”

They headed for the door. Images of the old guy in the barbershop continued to haunt her. She had no idea who he might have been. Nemi? She had always pictured him as a kindly wizard. Definitely, the two times they had spoken, she had been overwhelmed by his love. But the guy in the barbershop had given off scary vibes . . .

Ali debated whether he had knocked her unconscious or simply vanished before her eyes. The question was important because it led to another question. Was he from this world or the elemental world?

“Still struggling to feed Farble and Paddy?” Steve asked, when they were outside.

Ali nodded. “It’s a full-time job.”

“Why do you keep them at your house? Isn’t the Baker place still empty?”

“When my dad’s out of town, I prefer to keep them close. You know the two don’t get along.”

“Is Farble still trying to eat Paddy?”