Killer Spirit by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
If by unidentified, she meant “almost certainly Amelia Juarez.”
“An unidentified entity, an ‘intruder’ as you so blithely put it, has the weapon you were sent to retrieve?” Mrs. Camden asked, her voice still sickly sweet.
“Yes.” Brooke’s answer was short, and her voice was neutral, but I could feel the tension beneath the surface of her tone.
I expected Mrs. Camden to yell, or to lash out physically, or to do something drastic, but instead, she just sighed.
“Oh, Brookie. What are we going to do with you?”
“It wasn’t her fault,” I surprised myself by saying. “It’s mine. If I’d taken Amel—errr—the intruder out the first time I’d seen her, this wouldn’t have happened.”
That was true enough.
Mrs. Camden considered me, her face the epitome of polish and homemakerly grace. “You’re green,” she said. “And you’ll learn.”
I got the feeling that from her, this was high praise. Beside me, Brooke stiffened.
“Don’t wrinkle your forehead, dear,” Mrs. Camden chided. She must have had incredible eyesight, because as hard as I looked, I couldn’t make out a single wrinkle. “You’ll have worry lines before you’re thirty.” Then, without sparing Brooke so much as another look, she turned her attention back to me. “Why didn’t you disable the intruder?”
I hedged around the question. “When I first noticed her, I mean, when I first noticed another person in the room, I was engaged in combat with the…uhhhh…third hostile.”
“And then?” Mrs. Camden prodded. She was sharp. Nothing got past this woman, and there was no way around telling her the truth.
“I went to help Brooke.”
“And why did you need help?” Mrs. Camden asked her daughter, like someone talking to a very young child who’s been quite naughty.
“I didn’t disarm them fast enough.”
“Which,” Mrs. Camden said, “wouldn’t have been a problem if you’d been properly armed.”
Brooke looked away.
“Tell me, Brooke, if they’d had knives instead of guns, do you think you would have been able to disarm them quicker? Or what if you’d had a gun as well?”
I didn’t see where this line of questioning was going, but Brooke apparently did.
“I’m not sure.”
“Yes,” her mother said, “you are. One of these days, Brookie, you’re going to have to get over this thing you have with guns. You’ll have to use one eventually, and you can’t freeze up every time you see one, not even for a second.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Brooke said, her calm exterior cracking just a bit.
“Don’t get worked up, dear,” her mom said. “And don’t talk back. Right now, I don’t want you to even worry about the operations end of things. I’ll smooth things over, and you’ll have a new case before you know it. I’ll make everything all right. You just worry about homecoming.”
I read the look in Mrs. Camden’s eyes and the expression on Brooke’s face and translated them into words, even though neither Brooke nor her mother actually said a thing.
Mrs. Camden: Try not to screw that one up, too, Brooke.
Brooke: I won’t. I’m not a screwup. Screw you. Don’t be mad.
And before I knew it, Brooke was walking me to the door.
“Do drop by again, Toby,” Mrs. Camden called. “We expect great things from you.”
Sure, I’d drop by again. WHEN HELL FROZE OVER.
On the way out, we passed a bookshelf full of pictures. All of them were of Brooke, and in each and every one of them, she was cheering. In the earliest picture, she was probably about five or six. Trophies sat on the top shelf, and I squinted, making out the names of several individual cheerleading competitions.
1ST PLACE.
1ST PLACE.
1ST PLACE.
Why did I get the feeling that first place was the only place that Brooke or her mother understood?
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Brooke said evenly. “We should practice before school. Big game on Friday.”
Her voice sounded the same as it always did, but I felt like there was something missing, something dead.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my own voice sufficiently subdued.
I didn’t realize until I stepped out of her house and onto the front porch that I didn’t have a way home. I pulled out my Squad-issued phone and dialed the other girls one by one.
Tara didn’t answer.
Neither did Zee.
I got Bubbles on voice mail, which was somewhat amusing, because she’d had technical difficulties programming her phone, and the whole prerecorded message was just her going, “Is this thing on? Is it working? If I like say something, will…oooh, what’s that beep?”
I had no desire to call Chloe, and I wasn’t exactly looking my best postmission, so I decided to avoid calling the twins as well. I tried Lucy—who, after all, deserved some major kudos for the bobby-sock bomb, even if it hadn’t saved our mission. When Lucy didn’t answer, either, I dialed the last number on my list.
April.
She answered on the third ring.
“Toby?”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling more than a little awkward. Of all the girls, April was the only one my age, and the one I’d interacted with the least. We didn’t really know each other, and once upon a time, she’d been Hayley Hoffman’s second-in-command, which meant that the few times I’d registered on her social radar pre-Squad, she hadn’t exactly been friendly. “Listen, I’m at Brooke’s house, and I kind of need a ride. Do you have your license yet?”
“No, but I have a car,” April replied. “Actually, I have two, so it’s no big if I wreck one. I’ll be there in a few minutes—it’s on Calloway Street, right?”
I wasn’t sure, but that sounded good to me. “I think so.”
“Okay. Just hang tight and give me five. Later!”
I hung up my phone, and as I stepped off Brooke’s front porch and walked down her driveway, I hoped that April would hurry.
The sooner I could get away from this place, the better.
CHAPTER 25
Code Word: Kisses
While I was waiting for April, my phone rang. It was Zee.
“Sorry I missed your call,” she said. “I was doing yogalates.”
I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me,” Zee said, and I realized that was exactly what I had been doing. “There’s nothing wrong with yogalates. You can’t honestly expect me to spend all of my spare time working on my latest criminology dissertation.”
“I didn’t even know you were writing one,” I said. “And honestly, I thought you didn’t answer because you were either still selling Cheer Scout cookies, or because you were on the line.”
Gossip queens and phones sort of went hand in hand.
“What do you need?” Zee asked. She seemed to know that I wouldn’t have called unless I really needed something, and that even though I’d accepted my position on the Squad, I was loath to ask for help.
“I just needed a ride,” I said. “April’s coming to pick me up.”
“Good,” Zee replied. “You two haven’t spent much time together.”
She sounded like some kind of twisted matchmaker. I was about to hang up, but just as April’s car pulled into view, I remembered that there was one thing about the conversation with Brooke’s mom that was still bothering me.
“Zee? What’s Brooke’s deal with guns?”
Zee didn’t answer, which caught me off guard. Zee always had an answer.
“Zee?”
“You don’t want to know,” she said, “and if you do, look it up yourself. There’s an information superhighway out there, and you’re the web equivalent of a biker babe.”
I just loved crappy metaphors.
“Tell April hi for me,” Zee chirped, and then she hung up.
I climbed into April’s car, and at that moment, all I
“Where to?” April asked.
“The school. I need to pick up my car.”
April nodded and flipped on her stereo. I listened to the music for a few minutes and nodded my approval.
“Not bad,” I said. It wasn’t exactly good music, but compared to the crap the rest of the girls listened to, it wasn’t horrible.
God, how could I even think about music right now? What was wrong with me that I could do what I’d just done and know what I knew and just sit here, in April’s car, like this was normal? Maybe, after a while, you get so used to living a double life (or in my case, given the whole popularity thing, maybe a triple one) that it just comes naturally to shut off one part of the brain and boot up another.
“That’s the thing about me,” April said lightly, unaware of the serious turn my thoughts had taken. “I’m really not that bad. I’m not a bad person. I’m a good cheerleader, and even if I’m not as good at the secret-agent thing yet, I’m picking it up.”
Apparently, the story about my bombed mission hadn’t circulated yet, because April thought I was good at this.
“I know you think it’s kind of weird that I just ditched Hayley once I made varsity,” April said. “And I know that you and I were never friends before all of this.”
Understatement.
“But the thing is, Hayley and I weren’t really friends, either. I didn’t ditch her. I transcended her, and the only thing she misses is having someone to boss around.”
“She has someone to boss around,” I said. “Kiki…” I searched for Kiki’s last name, reminding myself that she was the PTA president’s daughter.
“McCall,” April provided. The light turned green, and April accelerated.
After that, I expected the conversation to go somewhere. April certainly seemed on the verge of spilling her Poor Little Rich Girl heart, but she didn’t. Instead, she just said, “I don’t mind not having friends, but I like having you guys. Does that make sense?”
Oddly enough, it did. Especially now.
Ten minutes later, when April pulled up to the school, I realized that I didn’t find her company totally abhorrent, which was probably a good thing. Barring any deadly explosions, the two of us were going to be around each other pretty much constantly for the next three years. Eventually, I was going to have to see her as someone other than Hayley’s former sidekick.
“Thanks for the ride.” Things weren’t exactly getting less awkward as time went on, but at least they weren’t getting any worse.
“Anytime,” April replied. “Have to get in plenty of practice before I turn sixteen.”
Her sense of logic was a beautiful thing.
“Hey, April,” I called as I got out of the car. “Do me a favor?”
“Depends on the favor.”
At least she was honest.
“You know that whole homecoming princess thing?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Please win it.”
She grinned. “Done.”
I walked toward my car and was surprised to see Noah sitting on the hood.
“Wasn’t someone supposed to give you a ride home?” I asked. Noah ignored the question.
“Which one was that?”
“Which one was what?”
“Toby, a cheerleader just came within a hundred yards of my person, and I didn’t notice until it was too late. This is a very serious matter.” It was hard to take Noah seriously when he had that goofy, puppy dog smile on his face.
“It was April,” I said, “and she’s not interested.”
Noah rolled his eyes. “That’s what you always say.”
I thumped him in the shoulder. “It’s always true.” I walked past him and opened the driver’s side door. “Get in the car.”
By the time we got home, Noah had actually managed to distract me from thoughts of our failed mission, the weapon that Peyton would probably sell to the highest bidder if the Big Guys didn’t stop them first, and the conversation I’d just had with April in the car.
The only thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was Brooke’s mother, and as soon as we got home, I went to join my own in the kitchen.
“Want to help make the salad?” my mom asked, not commenting on the fact that I was home early for the second time this week.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
She handed me a knife, and I began chopping up lettuce.
“You’re thinking about something,” my mom said. It was a simple comment, and she left it up to me if I wanted to share what I was thinking. No pressure, no wheedling. That was my mother.
“I went over to our captain’s house today after school,” I said. “Her mom was a little…” I decided to go with Zee’s word of choice. “Intense.”
“An intense cheerleading mom?” my mom feigned shock. “Never.”
“You’re not surprised,” I concluded.
“When you were little,” my mom said, handing me some carrots and peppers to go in with the lettuce, “there was a big scandal about this mother in Texas whose daughter hadn’t made the cheerleading squad. She was so upset about it that she took matters into her own hands.”
“Complained to the school board?” I guessed.
“No,” my mom said, sliding the salad dressing down the counter. “She hired a hit man to take out one of the other girls.”
“Seriously?”
My mom nodded. “Seriously. It made national news. So if your friend’s mom is a little intense, well…it’s an intense sport, Toby.”
The fact that she’d called it a sport didn’t go unnoticed. I thought about the fact that we were going to be actually practicing tomorrow morning, and that instead of finishing up a case and safeguarding the world, we’d be flipping and flying and doing all kinds of motions that would inevitably make my armpits hurt.
That was the thing about cheerleading. The jumps were torture on your leg muscles, and the conditioning could be hell, but at the end of the day, your armpits were always sore. Or maybe that was just me.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for not being a crazy cheer mom.”
“No problem.” My mother paused. “Though in fairness to all of those mothers out there who are only partially crazy, I did enroll you in martial arts classes when you were really young, and that world can be just as competitive.”
My mom was a karate instructor, and she was right—I’d been kicking butt for as long as I’d been walking.
“But you weren’t…intense about it,” I said, choosing my words carefully again. She’d never forced me into competitions. She’d never looked at me and said “Oh, Toby” in that put-upon way.
More importantly, she didn’t give a rat’s bum about homecoming. Thinking of homecoming reminded me of something.
“By the way,” I said conversationally, “I should probably tell you that if Noah stages one more publicity stunt on my behalf, I am going to hurt him.”
“What did he do?” my mother asked.
I gave her the grand total for the past couple of days.
“Ran through the school in his boxers, walked around wearing a sandwich board with my face on it, sent out mass emails to the whole student body, and pretended to be a pirate in the middle of the cafeteria.”
My mom showed no signs of surprise, but she did let out a single giggle.
“Mom!”
“Toby, you have to admit, the pirate thing is just a little bit funny.”
I most certainly did not have to admit that, and I didn’t have to stand there and take the abuse, either.
“Just consider yourself lucky that he didn’t open a kissing booth to raise money for your campaign fund,” my mom said. “I’d be surprised if the idea hasn’t crossed his mind.”
As we have already established, my mother is never surprised, which led me to conclude that Noah had, in all likelihood, considered the idea. And if Noah had considered the idea, he probably wouldn’t have had the
“I’ll be right back,” I said. I stuck my head into the living room. “Noah?”
“Yes?”
“How much money did the kissing booth make?”
“It’s not really the amount of money per se that determines the success of a booth,” Noah opined. “It’s the number of girls I managed to kiss before some…errrr…angry young men shut down my operation.”
“And what is that number?” I asked.
Noah grinned. “Two.”
That was it. Absolutely it. The twins had to be stopped, whatever the cost. I’d beg if I had to, and if that didn’t work, well, I still had my second bobby-sock grenade, and it had even more firepower than the first.
CHAPTER 26
Code Word: Rebel
That night, I sat in front of my computer for a long time thinking about exactly two things. The first involved Brooke, her aversion to guns, and Zee’s insistence that I could find out on my own, and the second was peripherally related to the fact that when I was little, and report cards were made up totally of S (for satisfactory) and N (for not satisfactory), I’d always gotten an N in two areas—plays well with others, and, more importantly, follows directions when they are given.
I had a healthy disrespect for authority, and for as long as I can remember, when someone said “don’t do that,” what I heard was something more along the lines of “doing that would probably be fun.”