Magic Nation Thing (4 page)

All during dinner Dorcas talked only about a phone call she’d just had with Abby’s dad about what kind of new car she ought to buy if and when she got enough money saved up. Even though they were divorced, they were still good enough friends for her to ask Abby’s dad’s advice about something every few days. But this time she hadn’t agreed with his suggestion.

As usual, Abby was on her dad’s side. Not that she knew much about cars, but she was almost always on her dad’s side about almost everything. Particularly when the argument seemed to be about whether Dorcas ought to sell the agency and go back to being a secretary and housewife. Not that Martin ever came right out and said exactly that, but there were times when it seemed to Abby that he was getting pretty close.

Abby was having trouble concentrating on the new-car discussion because she kept thinking about the Miranda problem. After a while she even did something she’d never done before and really didn’t want to try because if it worked, it might mean that Dorcas was right about the weird powers thing.

What she did was try to give her mother a kind of mental push in the right direction by concentrating on Miranda and Disneyland—an effort that required staring at Dorcas’s forehead, shutting everything else out of her mind, and thinking, Miranda’s in Disneyland, Miranda’s in Disneyland, over and over again. Okay, maybe a little like mental telepathy, which Abby didn’t believe in either but under the circumstances might be worth a try. Or maybe not, because it didn’t work. Dorcas didn’t get the message.

That would have been the end of it, except that Abby kept remembering, in fact almost hearing like an echo, how Mrs. Moorehead had cried when she’d talked about missing her little girl. At last, when Dorcas had almost finished her ice cream, Abby decided to take a more direct approach by asking, “Anything new about the Moorehead kidnapping?”

It wasn’t a typical question for Abby to ask, and Dorcas looked at her sharply. “Not really,” she said. “The leads in Portland have pretty much fizzled out.” She stared at Abby with a thoughtful expression on her face. “Why?” she asked finally. “Why do you ask?”

Abby’s first inclination was to shrug and change the subject, but then she heard it again, the echo of sobbing, and she found herself saying, “I was just thinking that if it
was
Miranda’s father who kidnapped her, maybe he’d try to take her someplace fun. You know, so at the next custody hearing she’d tell her mother and the judge that she wanted to be with her dad.”

Dorcas was listening very carefully. “Someplace fun?” she asked. “Like…?”

Now Abby shrugged elaborately. “Oh, I don’t know. To the beach maybe, or the zoo, or…” She paused and then, as if she’d just thought of it, “Or maybe someplace like Disneyland.”

“Well,” Dorcas said. “I don’t think a trip to Disneyland would do much to change a judge’s decision, but it’s something to think about.” And apparently she did think about it while they were cleaning up the kitchen, because right afterward she went into the office and made a phone call. Abby tiptoed after her as far as the door, and by opening it just a crack she was able to hear a part of the conversation. Only a part, but enough to let her know that Dorcas was calling Mrs. Moorehead.

Abby was in her room reading a book, or pretending to, when the door opened and Dorcas came in looking… well… if not excited, something pretty close to it. “Abby,” she said. “I’ve just been talking to Mrs. Moorehead.”

Abby tried to look surprised. “Oh yeah?” she asked. “What about?”

“Well, concerning your idea about where Miranda and her father might be. And…” Dorcas paused, and the way she was staring at Abby got even more intense. “And it seems that Miranda is absolutely mad about Disneyland. She was there for the first time about a year ago and according to her mother she’s scarcely talked about anything else since. It hadn’t occurred to Mrs. Moorehead before, but when I suggested it, she thought that taking Miranda there might be just the kind of crazy, off-the-wall thing her ex-husband would do.”

Abby nodded slowly, struggling with a confused mixture of feelings. She couldn’t help being glad that Miranda might be found because of something she had done. But she didn’t want Dorcas, or anyone else, to think she’d done it by using weird supernatural powers. “It was just a hunch,” she said. “That’s all. Just a hunch.”

By early the next morning Dorcas was on a plane to southern California, and the Anaheim police as well as the clerks at all the Disneyland hotels had pictures of Miranda and her father. And within a few days the case was closed, Miranda was home with her mother, and the O’Malley Detective Agency received a lot of good publicity.

But Abby O’Malley’s problem had started to take a turn for the worse.

R
IGHT AFTER THE MOOREHEAD
kidnapping case was solved, Abby’s life became even more hectic and unpredictable. What made the difference was probably the story in the
Chronicle
that mentioned that the O’Malley Detective Agency had helped the police solve the case. Of course, having a bunch of new clients was a real plus for Dorcas, and for Tree as well. But for Abby it just added to her problems. With the agency doing better, Dorcas was even busier and Abby’s life got more disorganized, not to mention quite a bit lonelier.

She complained about it to her dad the next time she saw him. He was in San Francisco for a meeting and he picked her up after school. They’d stopped off for ice cream and were on their way home when she finished her sad story by saying, “I guess I ought to be glad about all the new clients, because
they
sure are. Both of them.”

“Tree too?” her dad asked.

“Oh yeah,” Abby said. “With Mom getting so many new cases, Tree’s doing more casework, which is what she wanted to do all along. She’s really happy about it.”

“But you’re not?”

“Well, I used to be able to at least count on Tree being there in the house every afternoon when I came home from school. And on some weekends too, when she came in to work on the Internet courses she needed for her detective’s license. But now someone comes in from the steno pool to do office stuff. And they usually have to leave before Mom gets home.”

Her dad waggled his bushy eyebrows and grinned at her. “So, you want to come live with me, kid?” Abby thought Dad’s teasing smile made him look like a Disneyland pirate, but a good-natured one with nice gray eyes. She grinned back because they both knew he wasn’t serious.

“Mom would have a fit,” Abby said. Which was true. But of course there was more to it than that, and they both knew it. There would be having to say good-bye to the academy, which really was a great school, and, most important of all, to her friendship with Paige.

“Well, I’ll talk to your mom about it,” her dad said, and he did, but by that time the problem had been solved. And it was Daphne Borden who’d solved it.

When Mrs. Borden heard about how Abby was spending so many after-school hours all by herself, she suggested that Abby come home with Paige and wait until either Dorcas or Tree was back at the house. That was fine with Abby, Paige seemed to agree, and Dorcas said, “Daphne Borden is a good-hearted woman.” And for once she didn’t say it in that put-down tone of voice.

So starting in November, Abby took the Pacific Heights bus with Paige every day and usually stayed at the Bordens’ until five-thirty or six. The arrangement seemed to please everyone, except maybe Woody and Sky. But then again, maybe they enjoyed the situation too, since it gave them an extra victim for their evil schemes. It wasn’t long, however, before something happened that began to change the little-brother problem for the better, at least where Sky was concerned. That was when Abby rescued him from being skinned alive by Ludmilla.

Ludmilla was the enormous woman with bulgy eyes, extra-large teeth, and hulk-sized hands and feet who did the cooking at the Bordens’. Family meals usually, but she could also prepare fancy banquets for important guests when necessary. She was such an excellent cook that all of the Bordens’ socially active friends said they envied the family their marvelous chef. But what the friends didn’t realize was that everyone, including Sherwood Dandrige Borden II, Paige’s big old businessman father, was afraid of Ludmilla.

Abby wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just because the grown-ups were afraid of losing such a fantastic cook. Paige’s theory was that Ludmilla could give people the evil eye. Abby didn’t take the evil eye theory very seriously, but she had noticed that no one in the family displeased the cook if they could help it.

And as for Skyler, it was pretty obvious that Ludmilla scared him to death. According to Paige, Skyler was usually his charming self during meals—throwing olive pits and pretending to barf if he saw someone eating something he didn’t like. But whenever the cook came into the room, he changed completely. As long as Ludmilla was stomping around the table, Paige said, Sky was stiff and silent. So petrified he seemed unable to blink or even to swallow what was in his mouth. “He’s like a zombie,” Paige giggled as she told Abby, “like a scared-stiff zombie. It
must
be the evil eye. I mean, what else could do that to a monster like Sky?”

On a Wednesday afternoon something happened that really changed Sky’s life. Paige’s mom called to say she would be late coming home from her tennis lesson, and with their afternoon babysitter already gone, and Ludmilla not due for almost an hour, the Borden kids were more or less on their own—a rare situation that apparently inspired Woody and Sky to raid the kitchen. They were pawing through the refrigerator looking for a snack, or maybe another egg to drop on somebody’s head, when Ludmilla arrived early.

What happened, according to Woody’s subsequent confession, was that he and Sky heard Ludmilla’s big feet stomping down the hall, and while they were scrambling to put things back where they’d found them, somebody spilled a big pitcher of orange juice. The juice ran down all over everything, through all the refrigerator shelves, and onto the floor. When Ludmilla thundered into the room, Woody, who could run faster, got away, but Sky didn’t.

Abby and Paige had just arrived from school and were starting work on a math assignment when suddenly Woody burst into the room with a strangely unwarlike expression on his face.

“Hey, Woody, what’s up?” Paige asked cautiously.

Woody didn’t answer, but Abby was getting the impression that his intentions were somehow different than usual.

“Well, say something,” Paige said. “Don’t just stand there looking stupid.”

That snapped Woody out of it. He made a gargoyle face by pulling down the corners of his eyes, pushing up on his nose, and sticking out his tongue, and started out of the room. But Abby was left with a strange feeling. It wasn’t visual like the Magic Nation thing, but it certainly wasn’t quite normal. What it felt like was… sheer terror. Hair-raising, skin-tingling terror that came to her not because something was threatening her, but as a faint echo of another person’s fear. An echo that came from not far away and was getting stronger every second.

“Woody?” she heard herself asking, without really having known she was going to say it. “Woody, where’s Sky?”

But the door had slammed and Woody was gone. Abby quickly pushed back her chair and got to her feet.

“What is it?” Paige stood up too. “Where are you going?”

“I’m not sure,” Abby said. “I just think we’d better find out what’s happening to Sky.”

Paige snorted. “Why should I care what’s happening to that little monster?” She picked up her pencil and bent her head over the math assignment.

“Yeah, okay,” Abby said, “but I think I’ll just go downstairs for a minute. Want to come along?”

But Paige was already engrossed in what she was doing. “Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “Not right now.”

So Abby went down the back stairs, and as she went, the waves of fright got stronger and clearer. The rushing current chilled her skin, throbbed in her ears, and smelled of salty tears. She kept going until she reached the kitchen door, where fear surged out around her like a silent scream. As she pushed the door open, the first thing she saw was a huge shapeless blob on the floor in front of the refrigerator. A blob that turned out to be Ludmilla down on her hands and knees mopping up orange juice.

And against the counter, sitting stiffly on a three-legged stool, was a small inconspicuous shape—a quieter, paler version of the usually only-too-noticeable Skyler Borden. One quick glance at Sky’s face told Abby whose fear she had been sensing.

“Oh. Hi, Ludmilla,” Abby said. “What’s happening?”

Ludmilla slowly pulled her head and shoulders out of the refrigerator, and as she wrung a stream of orange juice out of her cleaning rag, she said, “This young zentleman and his brozzer have just made a zhambles of my keetchen. An absolute zhambles.”

Noticing how hard it was for Ludmilla to reach the back of the refrigerator, Abby said, “Can I help? Here, let me do that.”

Ludmilla lunged to her feet and then stood silently while Abby crawled halfway into the oversized refrigerator and finished mopping up the orange juice. It took a while. Ludmilla kept handing her clean rags and urging her to go over everything again. But when the orange juice was finally gone, Ludmilla went on watching while Abby walked over to Sky. Abby could feel Ludmilla’s eyes boring into her back as she lifted Sky off the stool, and for that moment she almost believed Paige’s evil eye theory. But to Abby’s surprise, Ludmilla didn’t say anything or try to keep the two of them from leaving the room.

Outside in the hall, Sky held Abby’s hand for quite a while. The color of his face was becoming a little more normal, but he still didn’t seem quite himself. She was curious. Squeezing his hand reassuringly, she asked, “Sky, why were you sitting on that stool?”

Sky gulped before he said in a shaky whisper, “She did it. She put me up there.”

“Okay. But why did you stay there?”

“She said I had to. And… she said she was going to skin me alive.”

Abby couldn’t help smiling. “What makes you think she’d do that?” she asked.

“Because she said so,” Sky said, staring up at Abby with huge unblinking eyes.