Meeting Read online

  “Sure, I knew that,” said Peter.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I checked these books out of the library. I’ve been watching Bran at school and all those Janus House people during Music Night. Bran is so quiet. But sometimes he does weird stuff when he thinks no one’s watching. He won’t really look me in the face, though. I try talking to him to see if we can be friends, and he looks at the ground and kind of shifts away.” Peter pounded the bed with a fist. “It’s so frustrating having someone not be there when they’re right there, you know? I don’t know how to get past that.”

  Fairy dust, Maya thought. Chikuvny. A disguise, so they think you’re one of them.

  Peter continued, “Sometimes when those guys sing on Music Night, strange things happen. Lights shine where there aren’t any lights, and the air tastes funny. I snuck my camera down one night to try to get pictures of it, but nothing happened that night. Next week, the lights went crazy, but I forgot to bring my camera. I can’t paint pictures of it the way you can.

  “That’s why I want to see all your art,” he added. “You’re painting stuff that happens next door, aren’t you?”

  THIRTEEN

  Maya drew a deep breath. The true test of Rimi’s relaxing of Harper’s commands came now. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah.” She touched her throat again.

  “The aliens with wings and funny hair, the people dancing around that colored fire, the alien egg?”

  Maya nodded.

  “The dead boy,” Peter said slowly.

  Maya swallowed, felt Rimi’s rush of sadness at Bikos’s loss again. She nodded.

  Peter’s lips tightened. “Since then, you’ve been using up a lot of sketchbooks, but most of them aren’t here. Sometimes I find one in your backpack and it’s full of amazing pictures. Then it’s gone and there’s a new one. What happens to them when they’re full?”

  “Peter, how many times do I have to tell you not to snoop through my stuff?” Maya asked, angry with him all over again. She had to stop leaving her backpack any place but in her room. She wondered if Gwenda could help her ward her room or her pack or both against Peter.

  “I know you hate it, but it seems like the only way to find out what’s going on, Maya, and I want to know. I mean, you’re hanging out in a house full of magic users, and you draw pictures of big scary centipedes and monsters. What if something bad happens to you? I want to at least have a clue.”

  “If I tell you what’s going on, would you quit going through my stuff?”

  He clenched his hands into fists. “I don’t know. Maybe. I have this hunger. You know. Candra has it, too, but she does something else with it.”

  I can help you guard things from him, Rimi thought.

  You can? And you waited this long to tell me?

  But I want Peter to be part of us. I want him for my brother, too.

  Maya sighed. Her anger ebbed. “I guess if I were you and you were me, I’d want to know what was going on, too.”

  He smiled, relieved.

  “And my new friend the poltergeist wants you to know.”

  “What you have is not really a poltergeist,” Peter said.

  “No.”

  “Is it Stephanie’s ghost?”

  “No. I wish, but no.” She stroked the guinea pig. “Peter, you have to swear you won’t tell anybody about this, okay?”

  He looked up at her. “Okay,” he said. “I do so swear.”

  “On all the things you hold sacred.”

  “On all the things I hold sacred.”

  “Cross your heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye?”

  He made a cross over his heart and swore.

  “It’s my new best friend, Rimi. She’s invisible most of the time.”

  “Is she a ghost?”

  “No. She’s an alien.”

  Peter frowned. “I don’t get how aliens fit in with magic. What do you mean?”

  “It’s confusing.” Maya stood up and set the guinea pig back in its cage.

  “You got that right.”

  “I don’t understand it either, but it all mixes up. Rimi is my new best friend. She’s like a part of me, like a shadow, but she’s her own self and makes her own decisions. She’s wanted to talk to you for a while.”

  “She can talk?”

  “Uh—well, she can talk to me, anyway. I don’t know if she can speak out loud.”

  “Rimi?” Peter said. “Are you here? Knock once for yes and twice for no. That’s how they talk to spirits at séances sometimes. I don’t know if it works with poltergeists.”

  Rimi knocked three times on the wall by Peter’s bed.

  “Three times? Three times means what?” Peter flipped through the book, checked the index at the back, then looked up with a frown. “You’re teasing me.”

  Rimi knocked once.

  Peter frowned, then smiled. “Oh, okay. So, about the housekeeping thing—”

  Rimi upended the laundry bag and scattered dirty clothes all over.

  “Yikes,” said Peter.

  “Okay, you know that’s not me doing it, right?” Maya asked.

  “Yeah, I get that.”

  Two grass-stained T-shirts danced in the air, moving together and apart, mirroring each other’s moves. “Wow,” Peter whispered. “Wow, Rimi. Wow, wow, wow.”

  “Do poltergeists do things like that?” Maya asked.

  “I don’t think they usually know how to dance,” said Peter.

  Pounding sounded at the door. The T-shirts dropped to the ground. “Hey, talk louder so I can hear you,” Candra yelled. “What are you twerps up to in there?”

  “None of your beeswax,” Maya yelled back.

  “You can run, but you can’t hide!” Candra yelled.

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” cried Maya. “We’re not running. We’re not even hiding. You know where we are!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Candra said. She stomped away.

  Maya and Peter giggled.

  “Is she gone?” Maya whispered.

  Peter frowned.

  Rimi eased part of herself under the door. No. She snuck back. She has a glass to her ear and it’s against the door. What is that?

  That helps you hear through walls, Maya thought. She whispered to Peter, “Rimi says Candra’s still listening to us.”

  He whispered back, “How can she tell?”

  “Rimi is good that way. She can sneak under doors and check stuff out.”

  “That is just so cool. You are the luckiest person on Earth,” he whispered.

  Rimi ruffled his hair. “Hey,” he said out loud, startled.

  “She really likes you,” Maya whispered.

  “Hey,” he said, softer, and smiled. “I like you, too, Rimi.” He slid off the bed, tiptoed to the door, and yanked it open. Candra fell into the room, tucked and rolled so the water glass in her hand didn’t shatter.

  “Wow.” Candra rose to her feet as though she had never fallen. “You sure haven’t been keeping up with the cleaning, little brother.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Peter. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

  Maya had a sudden swooping fear that Candra had heard everything. She tried to backtrack, wondering what words they had said aloud. Alien. Magic. She knew she had said both of those words.

  “So. You were talking about poltergeists . . .” Candra let her voice trail off, waiting for someone to fill in a blank. Maya had seen Candra use that trick before.

  Oh, good, Maya thought. Candra had fixed on poltergeists, the least worrisome of the words. Maybe she hadn’t heard everything.

  “Yeah, poltergeists,” said Peter. He waved the paranormal book at Candra. “Do you have one? You’re disturbed enough.”

  “I don’t have a poltergeist! But Maya has one, right?”

  “No,” Maya and Peter said together.

  “Oh, like I’m going to believe you now! You drive me crazy!”

  “I don’t have a poltergeist
,” Maya said. “I swear.”

  “So is it something else? You have something else?”

  Maya stood and brushed past Candra. “See you later, Peter. I better check with Mom and see if I finished my chores.”

  “Hey,” Candra said, but she let Maya go by.

  FOURTEEN

  Tuesday at lunch, Travis sat at the Janus House table. “How was the field trip?” he asked.

  Twyla and Kallie groaned.

  “Sviv so sucks!” Twyla said.

  Kallie coughed theatrically. “My throat’s still sore, and I think I’m getting a rash.” She showed the backs of her hands. They were red and had small bumps on them.

  “You know you’re not supposed to touch any of the plants,” Rowan said.

  “But those flowers looked so soft.”

  Gwenda took a wrapped parcel out of her lunch tin. “The Littles collected some good sva nuts, anyway,” she said, and opened the waxed paper to reveal something the size of a grapefruit but pale and solid-looking. She tapped it. It fell apart in slices. She handed them around to everyone.

  Maya held hers in front of her. It was like a round piece of wood, about a quarter of an inch thick, only the edges felt softer and there weren’t any splintery parts. Rimi explored it. Food, she said. Safe. Good for you, even.

  Maya took a bite. Not really a crunchy texture; solid but soft. Buttery, nutty, a little salty, with faint undertones of garlic and smoke. “Yum,” she said. She looked up. Everyone else had already eaten their slices.

  Gwenda laughed and passed around the rest of the slices.

  “Did you learn anything good?” Maya asked.

  “Some new healing songs,” Benjamin said. “Except they don’t use songs, really, they do something else with sound and pictures, and we have to transpose it to make it work for us. That’s the hard part, the transposing. Aunt Sarutha is really good at it. I’d like to learn how to do that. How did your sissimi meeting go?”

  “Good,” said Maya.

  “Do you know what species the partner was?” said Gwenda.

  “I don’t. Aunt Noona said what he was, but I don’t remember. He was like a big furry pyramid with lots of arms, no feet, and three eyes, and his sissimi was one of his arms. He smelled good, but his food stank. He had a trunk like an elephant, only furrier.”

  “Sounds like a mrudim,” Benjamin muttered. “We hardly ever see those. Most of them don’t like to portal.”

  “Mrudim sounds right,” said Maya. “His name was Kachik.”

  “He had a sense of humor,” Travis said. “And a real A-plus voice. Kind of like if a bear could talk.”

  “You met him, too?” Rowan asked.

  “Yeah, sure, why not? Didn’t have training to go to, since my teacher was off with you guys, so I tagged along to the tea room.”

  “Harper said that was okay?” asked Rowan.

  “Noona did, anyway.” Travis shrugged. “What’s your problem, Rowan?”

  Rowan stared at Travis, sparks kindling in his amber eye. Then he shook his head and looked away. “Still trying to adjust to the new open,” he muttered. “Sorry.”

  “They chased me out before Maya got too involved with the guy, anyway.”

  “What does that mean, too involved?” asked Benjamin. He leaned forward.

  “We did this sissimi thing called fusion,” Maya said. “I think we did it with Ara-Kita, too, only that time, it was more Rimi and Kita. I was sort of nearby but not really involved.”

  “Fusion,” Benjamin said. “Sounds intense.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that something you’ve done pictures of?”

  “Not yet,” said Maya. She frowned. “There were a lot of colors and things—it’s in my head, but it’s not in my mind, so I don’t think it can come out of my hand yet.”

  I wonder if I could draw it, Rimi thought.

  Let’s try that! Maybe after school? Would you want to make an arm to do it, or would you just do like you do when you’re using my pencils and I can’t see you?

  Don’t know, Rimi thought. Wait till we have private time and try them both, maybe.

  “Hey,” Travis said. “I have a favor to ask.”

  Gwenda set down her spoon and tin cup of soup. “What is it?”

  “Would some of you come to my house after school today? The caretaker needs to leave early, so I have to go straight home. I’d like to introduce some of you to my oma. I can’t talk to her about anything in Janus House, since Harper junked my tongue. But maybe you guys could tell her what happened, about me being a giri in training and all that.” He glanced at Rowan. “That should be okay, right?”

  Rowan nodded. “Since she’s giri herself.”

  The Janus House kids looked at each other.

  “I can come,” Gwenda said, “if one of you will say I’ll be late for singing class today.”

  “Me, too,” said Benjamin.

  “Do you need me as well?” Rowan asked. “At the business meeting last week, we discussed your oma. Aunt Noona said we should send help to her, since she had been our help for so long. We should talk to her about what she needs and what we can give.”

  “Why don’t I just introduce her to Gwenda, Benjamin, and Maya—if you can come, Maya—and we can talk about the other stuff later?”

  “All right,” said Rowan.

  “I can come,” Maya said. “I’d like to meet her.” Tuesday afternoons she didn’t have training at Janus House, and she hadn’t found an after-school art class to sign up for yet. She was curious about Travis’s oma. He spoke of her with such tenderness, and then sometimes he was harassed and irritated about having to take care of her. She already had several pictures of Oma in mind. A real image would be better than invented ones.

  “So, good,” Travis said. “Meet you guys out front after last period.” He went back to sucking Jell-O worms out of a cube of red cafeteria Jell-O with a straw.

  After school, Gwenda, Maya, and Benjamin fell into step beside Travis. Leaf smoke scented the air. The sky was brilliant blue, and the fall leaves glowed orange and yellow on the trees along Passage Street. The trunks of the trees looked black and skeletal.

  Travis glanced toward Dreams & Bones as they passed. Lots of people were inside, looking around.

  “Do you go in there?” Maya asked Travis.

  I want to go inside, Rimi thought. There’s something—a skrill—something. I want to sisti it.

  “When I have time,” Travis said. “Weyland has a lot of great stuff, and he knows everything he’s got. He’s like a talking comics encyclopedia.”

  “Wait. Wait. There’s a store here? How long has it been there?” Benjamin asked. “I never noticed it before.” His voice had an edge to it.

  “Nor have I,” said Gwenda. She gripped Maya’s arm and stopped to stare toward the store. “The windows are cloudy. What’s inside?”

  Maya looked into the café. The light was bright but touched with gold, making it look warm inside. Kids and grown-ups were sitting at the tables, reading comic books or working on their laptops or iPhones, drinks in tall, colored, flared cups beside them, plates of pastry next to their computers. Past the café part of the store were the wooden shelves full of books, manga, comics, and anime-related toys. There were lots of kids in the store, some of them talking to the proprietor, who leaned back against the glass case containing dice, role-playing game cards, and other game equipment.

  “You can’t see inside?” Maya asked Gwenda. Rimi, do you see the store?

  I do. It looks like a store full of people, but—there’s something—I remember—something familiar about this place. An energy trace. A taste from before I could taste.

  Gwenda said, “I see soapy windows and a locked door. It looks run-down and vacant.”

  “It’s a store,” Benjamin said. “I can tell that much.” He narrowed his eyes and stared at the sign. “There’s writing on the sign, but it’s faded, and some of the letters are missing.”

  “You guys are kiddi
ng, right?” Travis said. “Dreams and Bones has been here about a year and a half. All new.” He pointed to the sign, which to Maya looked sparkling and clean, red letters outlined in yellow against a dark brown background: DREAMS & BONES.

  Benjamin shook his head. “That’s not what I see.”

  “I don’t even see a sign,” Gwenda said. She touched some of the charms on her bracelet and sang softly in Kerlinqua. Her eyes widened. “Oh! Oh! Benjamin!”

  He sang the same phrase she had, and staggered back, almost stepping off the curb. “Oh! I’ve never seen wards like this before. We have to tell Columba.”

  “But—” Travis said.

  “It’ll keep,” said Gwenda. “It’s already kept a year and a half. Probably it’s not an immediate threat. And we promised Travis we’d go home with him today.”

  Benjamin sucked on his lower lip. “Okay,” he said.

  They turned away from Passage Street and headed north. Some porches of the houses they passed bore pumpkins, and one yard had a witch scarecrow and her arched-back black cat lurking near a big cauldron on the front lawn. Another house had fake spiderwebs with big black spiders hanging from the porch eaves. Someone else had put up tombstones on their front lawn, and another yard sported leaf bags that looked like giant skulls staring toward the street.

  “Are you going to dress up for Halloween?” Maya asked Travis.

  “Probably not so much,” he said. “I’ll be handing out candy with Oma, most likely. Me and the digital camera. We like to have pictures of the best costumes. This way.” He turned from Passage Street onto Thirty-fourth.

  The houses got bigger as they walked, the yards more expansive, more hidden behind various kinds of hedges. The decorations here were smaller and less fun, more like things picked by grown-ups who didn’t know any kids.

  “Interesting neighborhood,” said Benjamin.

  “Yeah. You never see anybody playing outside at these houses,” Travis said.

  “When you were little, did you play in the yard?” Maya asked.

  “I played all over my old neighborhood. Dad and I have only lived with Oma since the crash.”