The Keepers (14 page)

But the girl was gone. So much for changing the future. He'd actually created it, by being here in the shed and scaring her off! The wind tugged at Horace's hair and shook the trees overhead. He thought quickly. He hadn't seen his future self last night through the box, but that didn't mean he wouldn't be there, right? He just had to stay behind yesterday's Horace, out of sight of yesterday's box, so that he'd be sure not to contradict what he'd seen. He counted to twenty, envisioning the chase of the night before, giving his past self—so strange to imagine it!—a head start. Then turned to his right and cut across to Glendon once again, knowing that Dr. Jericho was somewhere off the left, headed toward the park.

Horace ran up Glendon. He reached Marie Street just as the girl was running across into the park. Dr. Jericho sailed
behind her, exactly as the box had foretold. The sight of him burned a nugget of fear and disgust into Horace's gut. Dr. Jericho was not the many-headed beast of last night—the box must have made him look that way—but Horace's heart pounded as he crouched down behind a hedge to hide. Unlike last night, tonight Horace could be seen. Seen, and worse. Dr. Jericho stepped off the sidewalk after the girl, drawing closer.

Horace watched the girl. This was the moment he'd lost sight of her last night. She skirted around a thick tree trunk, putting it between herself and the thin man. She paused, glancing around, and then silently stepped inside the tree.

Horace almost cried out. He had passed right by this tree last night, ducked under its branches. Buried alive inside the tomblike trunk of the tree—how could she tolerate it, even for a moment?

Dr. Jericho stepped up between the trees, examining them as if he were picking out a bouquet of flowers. Surely the girl couldn't see him—could she hear? Could she
breathe
? The thin man prowled, bobbing and searching and sniffing. Horace waited, tense as a bowstring. He waited for the moment that had to come, any second now—the moment he himself had caused, simply by being here last night with the open box. The man began rummaging through the forked heart of the very tree that held the girl, testing the limbs, snapping branches. He drew his fingernails down the trunk, splintering furrows into the bark like a bear. It made a sound like a boulder being dragged through gravel.

And then it happened. Dr. Jericho whirled, crouching. In the same motion, he uncoiled and pounced across the grass, a fifteen-foot leap, brutal and alarming, taking a savage swipe at absolutely nothing. But of course it wasn't nothing. It was the box, open in the past, not really here and now but somehow drawing the thin man's attention nonetheless. And as startled as Horace had been by this attack last night, he knew now that he hadn't been nearly frightened enough. He cowered down behind the hedge at the sight of it, even though he was thirty yards away. The blow was vicious and massive, a killing blow. The man let out a rumbling throaty sound, too, almost like a growl—and then he paused, looking lost. He dropped his animal manner, stretching to his full two-legged height and looking calmly around. Horace understood. In the past, the box had been closed at this moment, having fallen from Horace's hands. And then, to Horace's surprise, the thin man spoke, his tinkling voice carrying easily across the street to where Horace hid: “Surely not. Surely, surely not.”

After a long, suspicious hesitation, Dr. Jericho turned back toward the tree where the girl was. For a moment, he seemed to look straight across the street at Horace's hiding place. Horace stopped breathing. He pressed himself deeper into the shadows of the hedge. He told himself not to panic, that the leestone was working. The thin man took a long step in his direction, humming tunelessly and cocking his head from side to side. Horace told himself:
Do not run. Do not run
. Any moment now, the box would open again in the past, and
Horace knew that the open box would draw Dr. Jericho like a magnet.

Sure enough, the thin man snarled. “Not possible!” he snapped. He spun and lunged again—away, thank goodness, away—charging across the park, lured by yesterday's Horace, by the open box. Horace stood up, stunned by how fast Dr. Jericho was going. Had Horace actually been running that fast yesterday? He felt a weird flutter of pride.

Within moments, Dr. Jericho had reached Bromley Street and hurtled out of sight around the corner, chasing the call of the box. Horace counted to ten and let out a long, trembling breath. The future he'd seen had come to pass. Or close enough, anyway—the girl had been saved, right?

Or had she? He was in unknown territory now. There was no sign of movement from the tree she'd hidden in. He waited, and was just starting to think that something had gone wrong, when a low branch shook and sank, and the dark figure of the girl dropped lightly to the ground, alighting on all fours. She angled across the park and moved up Glendon at a trot.

Relieved, Horace trailed her, leaving Bromley Street—and the thin man, he hoped—behind. The girl rounded the next corner and Horace followed, keeping his distance. She showed no signs of slowing. He jogged as quietly as he could, keeping to the shadows as much as possible, but the girl never glanced back.

They ran on, heading east for another three blocks, into a part of the neighborhood Horace scarcely knew. His chest
burned. He was just beginning to wonder how long he could keep up when the girl slowed to a walk. She jogged up the steps of an apartment building. Horace ducked down behind a low brick wall to watch. The girl reached the door and turned to press her back against it. She looked up and down the street. Then she leaned back casually and disappeared through the door.

Horace sat down atop the wall, considering. Something seemed wrong here. Somehow this girl had discovered where he lived, and he was determined to do the same to her. It would make them even, in a way—he didn't like not knowing things. But was this place really where she lived? If so, how was she managing to keep it secret from Dr. Jericho? Horace himself had followed her here without difficulty, and he was no spy. And after all, she could sneak into any building she liked, pretending it was home.

But she had her ability, and he had his. With the box—and a little luck—he might be able to spot her coming home again tomorrow, if this really was her home, and if her late-night outings were something of a habit. Big ifs. Was it worth the risk of opening the box? He had no idea where Dr. Jericho was now, or from how far away he might be able to sense the box being used.

Horace waited. He wasn't even sure what for. Five minutes passed. Ten. It was now approaching midnight. No new lights came on inside the apartment building. At last, in a rush of impatient suspicion, Horace pulled out the box. He
would just take a quick peek.

He opened the lid. He looked up at the apartment building but saw nothing strange. A few different lights on, that was all—and it was raining heavily. He looked for another thirty seconds before realizing just how stupid he was being. What were the odds that the girl would be coming or going exactly now, in twenty-four hours' time? Slim to none. He turned to look up the street, hoping to see something—anything—and he nearly dropped the box.
A hooded figure, swift and small, headed this way
. The girl, here again tomorrow. She approached the steps of the building she'd gone into tonight, but instead of slowing, she passed on by, walking right past Horace's perch.

Horace stood up, watching her walk away—blurred by the rain but still clear. He closed the box. He'd had it open for too long. He glanced up at the apartment building again. Tomorrow night, she wouldn't be entering or exiting this place. Instead, by the looks of it, she was headed back in the general direction of Horace's house. “I was right,” Horace murmured to himself. “You don't live here after all.”

Horace slipped the box back into its pouch, thinking hard. He asked himself again—what were the odds? He'd had the box open for less than a minute, and the dragonfly girl happened to walk by this exact spot in that exact moment? He wondered if maybe—

Abruptly, a slap of wind brought a stinging, sickly scent to his nose. Brimstone. Heart galloping, Horace dropped into a
crouch, hunkering down beside the wall again, listening. The smell grew stronger.

Now he heard footsteps, heavy and slow. Breathing. A long shadow slid across the grass in front of him, and Horace turned, ever so slowly, to look.

Dr. Jericho stood there, not ten feet away. His chest heaved from the effort of running. Horace was exposed, hidden only by the shadow of the wall he was cowering against—the shadow, and the promised protection of the leestone. Horace cursed himself for opening the box.

For fifteen full seconds, the thin man stood there, looking around from his great height. At one point, the man looked down in Horace's direction—Horace could have sworn their eyes met, and his heart stopped—but the man's gaze passed right over him. The leestone was working! A moment later, the man swung sharply away, staring up at the apartment building where the girl had gone to ground. Dr. Jericho stood there for another minute, and then he strode off in the direction he'd come.

Horace stayed put. The leestone had done its job, but he didn't dare draw any more attention to himself now. He was still crouching there when the front door of the apartment opened and the girl stepped out. She glanced over at the street corner where Horace was still hidden in shadow, then took off up the street, in the opposite direction from the one the thin man had just gone.

Horace straightened painfully. He got to his feet and
continued to follow her. It wasn't easy. She was one of those naturally quick people, whereas Horace was decidedly
not
quick.

The girl wove a path east and south. She crossed Diversey Avenue. Often she kept to the shadows—she clearly did not want to be seen—but she did not use the dragonfly.

And then the girl stopped outside a little grocery store. The store was dark; a gate barred the door. Horace stopped and watched from behind a row of newspaper boxes as the girl glanced up and down the street and drew her hood close. She sidled into the thick shadow of the store's dark doorway, and then stepped right through the gate, gone in an instant.

Horace hesitated. There were apartments above the store, but maybe this was just another secret route of hers. Maybe she was escaping out the back even now. Horace cut down an alley and emerged at the rear of the store, between a couple of dingy, greasy-smelling Dumpsters. He crouched behind one of them and waited. Sure enough, two minutes later, the girl emerged through the store's back door. There was a huge cookie hanging from her mouth, and a bag of groceries in one hand. Horace almost gasped in shock. This was how she was using the dragonfly's power—sneaking into stores to steal cookies! The idea infuriated Horace, made him ashamed for her, for the dragonfly itself. His anger surprised him, and as the girl walked past his hiding spot, he very nearly stood up and confronted her. But instead he let her walk on, more determined than ever to find out where she lived.
Turnabout, after all, was fair play.

At last the girl cut into a lawn on a corner, across from a fenced-in train yard. Horace crept along the fence beside the train tracks and then hunkered down behind some tall weeds to watch. The girl walked up the steps of a ramshackle white house—was this her home? A mini trampoline sat in the yard, along with a rusted-out swing set that was missing its swings. The raised front porch had no railings, and the front window was boarded up, making the place look abandoned, but a light shone inside. The girl approached the front door, clearly trying to be quiet. She leaned up against the boarded window, cupping her hands around her face—Horace suspected she was sticking her face through it. Then, gingerly, she opened it and slid inside.

A minute later, a light in one of the upstairs windows went on. A shape moved behind the flat blue curtain there—or not a curtain; it looked more like a sheet. This was where she lived. For real. Horace looked up and
down the street, taking stock of the neighborhood, realizing now how different it was from his own. Smaller, dingier houses; hardly any trees. The house across the street from hers had a car parked on the lawn. Two blocks up along the railroad tracks, the homes gave way to warehouses and industrial buildings.

He looked up at her bedroom again and was surprised to see a sliver of light in her window. The girl's face was peeking out from behind the curtain, looking out into the night—looking straight at Horace? Just then, a car alarm burst to life down the street, spooking him. The curtain in the window flicked closed, and Horace stumbled to his feet and took off, heading home as quickly as his worn legs would let him.

When he finally arrived back in his room, utterly exhausted, he closed his eyes as he eased his door shut. He took a guess at the time. “Twelve forty-five,” he whispered, and opened his eyes. Sure enough, the clock read 12:45. A long night, no matter how you measured it. The firefly crawled across the ceiling, probably wondering what was going on. Horace stepped up on his bed and swiped it gently down, wobbling with fatigue.

“At least my life's not as weird as yours,” he told it, and sent it through the box.

Horace's legs felt like logs as he got undressed. He had just gotten under the covers when there was a knock, and his mother leaned in from the gloom, looking small in her pajamas and her mussed-up hair. “Hey.”

Alarm bells went off dimly in his head—did she know, or had she just woken up? “Hey.”

“I thought I heard you moving around. Can't sleep?”

“I . . . was thirsty. I was in the kitchen.”

She came close. She pointed at Horace's chest. The box was right there, in plain sight. “And there's that box you've been carrying everywhere. Where did you get it, anyway?”

“The same place I got you that turtle-bird statue.” He wondered if she would ask him to see the box. To hold it. And would he let her? But instead she took him completely by surprise.