Shadow Walkers (9 page)

“Okay, so maybe it wasn’t Conrad and Evelyn who grabbed him. Maybe it was someone else who handed him off to them. Someone he trusted. Someone dressed like a policeman.”

What Emory was saying made sense. The person who did the kidnapping wasn’t always the person the kid ended up with. I’d read this online. Kids got traded off all the time—which is what made it that much harder to trace them.

“But there are no policemen on Hinder Island,” I said. “Just two sheriffs. There are no strangers either. Everyone is—”

I stopped mid-word. An idea was dawning on me like the moon breaking through clouds.

Emory looked at me. “What is it?”

“I think I know who might’ve taken Gilbert off the island.”

I told Emory about the woman at the New Age store, the one who’d sold me the special incense. “She knew all about Gilbert—his name and everything!” I said.

“But I thought you said everyone knew everyone on the island,” he said.

“They do, but Gilbert wasn’t even with me at the time. And that’s not even the weird part. She had this really big purse, like a carpet bag—that’s where she kept the ‘special’ incense. A couple of weeks earlier, Gilbert and I were out at this park, and I saw he had this candy, and I asked who had given it to him, and he told me the lady with the really big purse. It
had
to be her. Plus, she was just kinda weird.”

I didn’t tell Emory this, but she had also been willing to sell me that incense, something pretty obviously illegal or illicit. It was clear she wasn’t the most ethical person.

“A strange woman gives a kid candy, and a couple of weeks later, he turns up missing?” Emory said. “I’d say that’s a definite lead. You should go back and tell the police. Everyone knows adults aren’t supposed to give candy to kids they don’t know.”

“Yeah! No, wait.” I thought for a second. “I don’t have any more incense.”

“So?”

“So what if I’m wrong? What if it wasn’t her? I wouldn’t be able to get back in the astral dimension again.” The woman in the New Age shop wasn’t going to give me more of that special incense, not if I reported her to the police. And even if she
was
willing, where was I going to get $100 cash?

“What are you saying?” Emory asked.

“I’m saying I want to check her out first, see if she really did have any connection to the kidnapping—check her out from the astral dimension, I mean. If I find anything,
then
I can call the police.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure!” I snapped at him. I stopped myself. I had one friend in the astral realm—did I really want to piss him off? “Sorry. Look, is there any chance you’d be willing to come with me?”

“I guess.” He glanced at the shadows around us. “The truth is, something about this place is kinda creeping me out.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant the cabin or the whole astral dimension. But I was focused on other things, so I didn’t bother to ask.

———

We started flying back to Hinder Island together. I didn’t dare do that whole weird silver cord thing again. For one thing, Emory and I couldn’t do it together. But more importantly, I didn’t see how I could let it draw me back to my body and not have it end with me suddenly waking up.

We reached Puget Sound sooner than I expected. It’s a long, narrow body of water that runs deep into the state. We must have cut directly across the mainland and caught up with it south of Hinder Island. But Puget Sound has lots of islands and peninsulas, and in the astral dark, they all looked more or less the same. I was starting to think I’d never get home.

Then I caught sight of a soft glow of light farther up the Sound—the lighthouse at Trumble Point. I’d never been so happy to see anything to do with Hinder Island.

With the lighthouse in sight, I started to pick up speed. By this point, I could fly pretty fast, but I wasn’t as fast as Emory. I’d been like a wobbly Peter Pan before, and even now I was barely managing a serviceable hang glide, while he looked like Superman, confident and a little exaggerated.

He seemed to sense me watching him. “Do you know where she lives?” he said, slowing down to my speed. “The woman in the New Age shop?”

I thought back to the New Age shop. I was pretty sure there was an apartment in the back of the store.

“I think so,” I said.

———

We landed in the street in front of the store. I hadn’t been looking, and suddenly a car, headlights looming, swept right through us.

I flinched, surprised. But Emory didn’t. Now I was almost certain he’d been in the astral dimension more than once or twice before.

I was still a little disoriented from the car, but I turned and looked at the New Age shop.

Emory reached over and touched me on the shoulder with a finger.

I jumped, startled again. Just that small push made me slide sideways a few inches in the frictionless astral dimension, until I stopped myself with my mind. He had only touched me for a second, and he hadn’t touched me on bare “skin,” but on my “shirt.” But I’d felt him anyway, clearly, and in a way that was much more intimate than just touching bare skin. It was like he’d brushed against something deeper, something inside me, and it made me tingle.

“Why’d you do that?” I said.

Emory thought about it. “To see if I could feel you,” he said at last. “I’d been wondering. I mean, I know we’re just spirits or whatever. But I can feel my own body. So I was wondering if I could feel you, too, or if my hand would pass right through.”

Feel me? Maybe he hadn’t been lying about only coming to the astral dimension once or twice before.

“For the record, I could,” he said, even as he looked away, embarrassed. “Feel you.”

I could feel you, too
, I thought, just as embarrassed. It wasn’t just the touch itself, but the little tingle of electricity, of energy. I’d never felt anything quite like it in my life.

“So this is the New Age shop, huh?” he said, changing the subject.

“Yeah,” I said. The lights were off.

As he peered in through the darkened windows, I snuck another look at him. For the first time since meeting him, I realized how cute he was. But as I watched him now, I thought I saw the confident mask slip a little, revealing a layer of sadness underneath.

I couldn’t help but wonder,
Is he like me?

Suddenly
he
flinched.

“What is it?” I said, looking to see if there was another car coming. But this late at night, the street was dark.

Emory glanced at the shadows around us. It was like he shivered. “I don’t know. It just feels like it did out at the cabin. Like we’re being watched.”

Watched
? He hadn’t said anything before about being watched. By who?

I remembered that familiar chill I’d felt out at the cabin on Silver Lake, right before I’d seen what had looked like some kind of black tentacle. But that had just been a trick of the shadows.

“I thought I saw something out there,” I said. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten to mention this to Emory.

The whites of his eyes looked unnaturally bright in the astral dark. “Something? Like what?”

If you’d seen it too, you’d know what I mean,
I thought.

“Forget it,” I said. “Let’s just go inside.”

———

The front door was glass with a sign taped to it that displayed the hours of the store. I floated right through them, into the area inside.

It looked very different in the dark—none of the bright colors from before, everything shades of grey—and the ceiling seemed lower than I remembered. There had been lots of different smells before, too, but of course I couldn’t smell anything now.

“Let’s see if there’s an apartment in the back like you thought,” Emory said, pressing forward, wafting through the counters and shelves.

I followed him and suddenly found myself passing right through the hexagonal glass case with the crystal figurines. The light had been out before, making the figurines look drab, but ironically, they were catching the moonlight now and even sparkling. Gliding forward, I was impaled by the crystal unicorn.

I shivered, suddenly cold again.

I kept moving forward, all the way to the back of the store. The beaded curtain to the back room was tightly closed. I scanned the wall in front of me.

Eyes stared back at me.

I jerked back in surprise. I had no pulse to pound, no heart to catch in my throat, but I couldn’t remember ever being so startled.

Swaying unsteadily, I looked again.

It was a mirror—one of the colorful African ones I’d seen covering the wall all those weeks before. I must have caught sight of my own my face in its reflection. I had glimpsed my own eyes.

But as I looked more closely at the mirrors, I didn’t see my own face or eyes reflected in any of them now. And I take back what I said about seeing my own eyes; I couldn’t have. I was in the astral dimension, but the mirror was in the physical dimension. Even if I’d happened to look into the mirror, it wouldn’t have reflected anything.

So what had I seen? Was this what Emory had been talking about when he said it felt like he was being watched? But by who?

It’s nothing
, I thought. Another trick of the moonlight. I hadn’t really seen anything.

I looked for Emory, but he’d already disappeared through the back wall.

“Emory?” I said, still uneasy.

He immediately floated back out into the store. “What is it?”

“Oh,” I said, startled again. “I, um, just wondered where you went.”

“For the record,” he said, “there is an apartment back here.” He turned back toward it.

Emory was still there with me. I wasn’t alone. Everything was fine.

I followed him through the wall with the mirrors, but I made a point not to touch any of them with my astral body.

The light in the room beyond the wall caught me by surprise. I can’t say it was bright—from the astral dimension, it was still like I was wearing dark glasses. But it had come so suddenly, and I’d been in the darkness for so long, that I found myself disoriented.

The apartment was small—a kitchenette and a front room with what looked like a single bedroom to one side—and it definitely wasn’t glamorous, with none of the fountains or Himalayan rugs from the store in front. But it was neat.

Someone was lying on the couch watching television—a crime procedural.

“Is that her?” Emory said.

“Yeah,” I said. Even now, I expected her to look up at us and scream. She was wearing a bathrobe with socks, not slippers, and her hair was wet from the shower.

“I gotta say,” he said, “she doesn’t look like a kidnapper.”

I didn’t say anything, but I couldn’t disagree.

Emory looked around the apartment, but I couldn’t stop looking at the woman from the store. Had she really kidnapped my little brother and handed him off to Conrad and Evelyn?

She picked her ear.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Emory said at last.

“Some evidence that ties her to the kidnapping.” But now I saw the problem: even if she was involved, it’s not like she was going to have a lock of Gilbert’s hair stuck to her refrigerator.

“I’m going to check the bedroom—and see if there’s a garage,” Emory said. “Maybe she left something in her car.”

I nodded, and he disappeared through one of the walls. I kept staring at the woman from the store. For some reason, I couldn’t look away. I’d made it all the way to this astral dimension where I’d also been able to “hear” my brother from dozens of miles away. Who’s to say I couldn’t also read this woman’s mind?

I decided just to ask her. “Did you take him?” I said. “Did you kidnap my little brother?” If anyone could hear me, it would be a woman who worked in a New Age store.

She yawned and just kept watching television.

This wasn’t getting me anywhere.

I was just about to join Emory in the other room when her cell phone rang. I froze. This wasn’t reading her mind exactly, but it could still be valuable information, depending on who was on the other end of the line. Maybe it was Conrad and Evelyn calling.

She answered her phone. “Hello?” She listened, then leaned back again on the couch. “Oh, hey, what’s up?” She listened some more. “Oh, God, I wish!”

It didn’t sound like she was talking to people she’d been hired to kidnap for. But even if it was just a relative or friend, she could still say something important.

“Not a word,” she said into the phone. “And you know what really burns me up about that? He was the one who said he wanted to go so bad! I told him it wasn’t a good time, that I didn’t have anything to wear. But he
begged
me!”

This was
really
getting me nowhere. And if she really had kidnapped Gilbert this afternoon, she had to be the world’s most heartless person to be so cool about it now.