Alyzon Whitestarr (25 page)

“Where are Gilly and her grandmother now?” I asked.

“The Hotel Marceau. Would you like tae go and see her tonight? We could meet as we’d planned at the library, then go tae her hotel afterward. I think she’d be glad if you’d come.”

“Of course,” I said.

Only after I put down the receiver did I realize that he had not mentioned Serenity.

“What’s up?” Jesse asked, passing me a mug of tea. Da came in carrying Luke halfway through the story.

“That nice, gentle old lady,” he said when I had finished. “Alyzon, let Mrs. Rountree know that if there is anything she needs, to just call.”

Even in the midst of my shock, I was touched by the thought of Da offering help to someone as rich as Mrs. Rountree. On the other hand, perhaps there was a kind of help someone like Da could give that no one else could. I was thinking of Portia Sting and the way Da had radiated sparks and bent the air the night of the Urban Dingo gig. Perhaps his bending of the air was some sort of positive or healing force that helped anyone within range.

* * *

I was thinking about Gilly and the fire when I got off the bus, and saw Harlen standing a little way along the fence from the school gates with the same older guys I had seen him with the day I had fled from him. I hadn’t even mentioned Harlen to Harrison. This was such a strange omission that it made me wonder if my own senses had somehow subconsciously stopped me.

I went straight over to Harlen, refusing to think about anything but the apology I owed him. When he saw me, his eyes went cold and flat, but his mouth kept right on smiling. The smell of rot coming from him was overpowering, and suddenly it didn’t seem the least bit exaggerated to think he might carry a contagious sickness of the spirit.

“Harlen, I’m really sorry I didn’t come to Eastland on Saturday. I didn’t get a chance to tell you yesterday, but I was
on my way to meet you when this girl I know had a fit. I would have called from the hospital, but I didn’t have your number.” I said this looking right into his eyes, all the time screening so hard it was making my head ache.

“A sick friend,” one of his companions said with sneering disbelief.

I glared at him with genuine indignation. “I wouldn’t make up a thing like that.” I looked back at Harlen. “My friend really did have a fit, and you can ask Gilly because she knows her, too. Why would I lie, anyway?”

There was a strangely long pause, and then the second guy said mockingly to Harlen, “Seems like she might be telling the truth. Too bad, eh?”

Harlen snapped at him to shut up, and then he stepped closer to me. “I was pretty mad,” he said. “I thought you had stood me up for Gilly.”

“I would never deliberately stand someone up,” I said.

“An honorable woman,” said one of the others, leering at me.

I was glad, because looking at him let me turn away from Harlen. For a moment, instead of his sick, rotting stench, I was enveloped in the boiled cabbage and dirty track-shoe odor of the other guy’s essence. “Are you a friend of Harlen’s?” I asked, because unpleasant as his smell was, it was infinitely better than Harlen’s.

“I’m Quick,” he said. “This here is Breeze. We used to go to school with Harlen until it closed down.” He gave a delighted chuckle.

“Shut up,” Harlen said again, forcing my eyes back to
him. “So, Alyzon, if you really didn’t mean to stand me up, how about meeting me tonight?”

“Oh, I can’t,” I said. “Haven’t your heard? Gilly’s house was burned down on Sunday. I’m supposed to go and see her and her grandmother tonight.”

For a second Harlen’s face was so still it was like someone had used a pause button on him. Then he said, “Gilly’s house burned down? Incredible. Who do the police think did it?”

The bell started ringing before I could answer.

“Time to rock and roll,” Quick said, and he slouched off down the street with Breeze in tow.

“Who were those two?” demanded a teacher as Harlen and I came through the gate. “I’ve seen them hanging around here, and I’m not keen on it.”

“They were asking directions,” Harlen lied coolly, shooting me a look of smiling complicity. I forced myself to smile back, glad that the teacher was coming along right behind us.

Never had school seemed less relevant than it did the rest of that day. My thoughts kept jumping from Gilly and her grandmother losing everything in the fire; to Serenity eaten up by grief and rage; to Aaron Rayc trying to separate Da from Losing the Rope; and then to poor Sarry at the mercy of a doctor who smelled of something old and rotten. And, of course, I thought of Harlen.

It felt as if a shadow was creeping through the world, darkening all the separate threads of my life.

At lunchtime I made for the library, intending to use the computer to learn more about Aaron Rayc, but Harlen was there before me, leaning over the checkout desk and smiling at the woman behind it. I backed away hastily and headed for the computer room instead.

I sat down and got out the business card I had filched from Da’s coat pocket that morning. “Rayc Inc.” was printed on the heavy card in elegant gold lettering. Under it was the word “Consultants” in smaller but equally elegant script. Then in the bottom left-hand corner was an address, a fax
number, and a URL. The only other thing on the card was an obscure logo that meant nothing to me.

What struck me was how little information the card offered, unless you took the luxurious quality of its production as part of its message.

I typed in the URL, and the logo came up on screen. I clicked on it, and the image flickered like a flame and vanished, leaving a coil of white smoke that wound itself into a single line of text: “Light the flame and all shall be consumed by your radiance.”

It sounded vaguely religious to me, or like something from Dante’s
Inferno
or William Blake. But either way, it was totally unexpected. I was still staring at the words in bafflement when they quivered and vanished.

What came up next was possibly the plainest home page I had ever seen. There was just “Rayc Inc.” and “Consultants” above an old-fashioned photograph of a two-story mansion. “Castledean Estate” was written on a plate by the door, and under the picture was a Remington address. There was nothing to say what purpose the house served, but there was a paragraph explaining that Rayc Inc. had been founded decades ago, although there was no information about what the company actually did, and there didn’t seem to be anywhere to go from that page.

I wondered if Rayc Inc. was some sort of charity organization. After all, most of the gigs Rayc had given Da were to do with charities, and it might explain the religious-sounding quote. But where was the plea for a donation?

I looked back to the photo and noticed that the panel with the name of the house on it looked computer-generated. I clicked on it, and the photo began to fragment and blow away like leaves in a high wind. Then I was looking at four lines of text.

The first said, “Who would teach the world, enter here.” The second said, “Who would change the world, inquire within.” The third read, “Who would save the world, come hither,” and the last, “Who would despair of the world, come forth.”

I moved the cursor to the first line and clicked. Nothing happened, nor did any of the other lines yield more than their text. I scrolled in all directions but could find nothing else.

Then all at once the screen image began to fade away. The mouse wouldn’t respond, and a moment later, to my mortified horror, a bondage site came up, complete with a picture of a naked woman tied up and grimacing in pain. I was astonished, because the monitoring software the school used ought to have immediately blocked the download. I was still trying to get rid of the image when the bell rang. There was nothing to do but switch off the whole machine.

I made my way to the art room, thinking that Aaron Rayc’s Web site was like a game and a virtual idiot like me was not going to crack it without help. Mirandah might manage, but she could never have kept her mouth shut about the fact that I was looking into Rayc Inc.

I was soon up to my neck in paints and linseed oil, making my usual inept mess. Whatever else had changed, I had
not developed any artistic abilities, but at least the class took my mind off everything else. Because of the need to clean up after, the class always ran over, and for once I was glad because it meant I would not have to worry about Harlen waiting around for me after school. But it did mean that I had to run to make the city-bound bus that would bring me to the library in time to meet Harrison.

When the bus pulled up at the library, however, Harrison jumped on before I could get off. “This bus stops close tae the hotel, so I thought we might as well go straight there,” he said when he was seated beside me. “There’s a park right beside it where we can go for a walk.”

I asked if he had seen Sarry again, and his face lit up. “Raoul and I went tae visit her last night, and she’s fine. In fact she’s more than fine, because not only has the fill-in doctor dropped the dose of drugs, he has agreed tae sign a release to allow Sarry tae enter a convalescent home in Remington. Which means she is permanently out of Dr. Austin’s clutches.”

His mention of Remington gave me a little start, because that was where the Castledean Estate was. Harrison went on, saying he had been thinking that we ought to check up on Dr. Austin and find out exactly when he had started treating Sarry. I opened my mouth to tell Harrison about Harlen, and this time I definitely felt a resistance to speak. Maybe it was just that we were among other people who might overhear. I decided to wait until we were in the park to try again. To my relief, Harrison switched back to talking about the convalescent
home, telling me it was called Bellavie and describing its facilities. It sounded so luxurious that I wondered aloud how Sarry could afford it. Harrison said lightly that Raoul would take care of it. We fell silent then, because the bus was getting really crowded, but when we were in the park alongside the hotel, Harrison told me Gilly had said her grandmother seemed to be getting more devastated by the fire as time passed. “It’s the photographs and mementos she minds most. Gilly said she seemed really lost and apathetic, as if nothing matters anymore.”

“Poor thing,” I murmured, wondering if the person who lit the fire had any idea or even cared about the harm they had done. “I suppose Gilly’s mother will come back now?”

“She won’t know what happened unless she logs on tae a local news link or gets a local paper. From what Gilly says, she doesnae make contact very often.”

We came to a bench and Harrison suggested we sit for a bit. “I want tae tell you what happened with your sister last night.” My heartbeat quickened.

“I spotted her easily as she came out the school gate, because she had changed out of her school uniform intae black clothes,” Harrison said. “She went straight tae the city bus stop and caught the bus tae the library.”

“So she does go there,” I said.

Harrison ignored my interruption. “She went inside, sat down, and got out some schoolbooks. Then a whole bunch of little kids poured in for some sort of story-reading session. I was distracted for a second, and when I looked back tae
where your sister had been sitting, I got the shock of my life because she’d gone.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean, gone?”

“Gone. Her, her bag, her books. I raced outside, thinking she must have spotted me, but she was nowhere tae be seen. I figured she must have just gone tae the toilet. But when I got back inside, I saw her going intae one of those side meeting rooms with a bunch of other people.”

“She was going to a meeting?” I could hardly believe it.

“I waited until the door shut, then I went tae the desk and asked who was meeting. The guy said it was a poetry group called the Morality Complex that meets every week on Monday nights. They’ve a regular booking.”

“A poetry group!” I said explosively, relieved and also exasperated. Trust Serenity to make a poetry meeting so secretive! I felt like strangling her.

Harrison went on. “A pretty weird sort of poetry group. I went back tae the meeting room. I was going tae barge in and pretend I’d got the wrong door, but it wouldnae budge. There are no locks, so someone had tae be holding it closed from inside. I knocked and finally this tough-looking guy with a shaved head came out and asked what I wanted. I told him I wanted tae join. He said they werenae looking for members right now. I asked when would they be, and he said it wasnae possible for anyone tae join who’d not shown proper commitment. Commitment tae what? I asked. Tae idealism, he said. I asked how you showed commitment tae idealism, and he said that was the challenge. Then he told me tae push off. I didnae
press it, because for all he was talking about idealism, he actually looked like he wanted tae ram his fist down my throat.”

“A poetry club,” I said. I felt stupid for having sent him on a wild goose chase, and said so.

He smiled. “I didnae mind it. The truth is I felt like James Bond, only shorter.”

I laughed, lightened by his self-deprecating humor, but also by the fact that my dark imaginings about Serenity seemed to be unfounded. Harrison glanced at his watch and said we should go in. I had to lean into the wind as we came back through the park. Leaves were whipping around us and flying up into the air from the ground as if they wanted to turn back time.