Kingdom Keepers: The Return Book Two: Legacy of Secrets (32 page)

Emily’s invisibility suit barely fit her. It bulged where she didn’t want it to bulge and stretched where she didn’t want it to stretch. The girls had warned her that because of this, the suit wasn’t perfectly invisible from the sides. The plan had been for her to leave the moment she had the combination, but now she couldn’t resist the opportunity to discover more.

The man moved around the safe’s two-foot-thick door and into the vault. Mattie followed. He drew a curtain aside on the left, exposing a section of wall, and a second thick door popped open a few inches. He pulled it open with some difficulty, revealing a large square room beyond, two of its walls lined with neatly ordered shelves, the third filled with smaller doors—file drawers, Mattie realized.

Aware of the battery’s limited charge, she headed for the gallery’s front door, only to remember the female Cast Member had locked it. This was nothing short of a disaster. She had three to five minutes remaining; then she’d be exposed—a girl in a silver glitter suit that fit her like a leotard. What now?

The Cast Member stood by the door, waiting idly for the man to finish. Did Mattie dare turn the dead bolt and knob with the woman just a foot or two away? Would it be taken as the act of a ghost, scaring the woman and sending her running, or would she think some-one was opening the door from the outside and block the entry? The ghost option would work beautifully for Mattie. Blocking the door could backfire horribly.

Stuck with those choices, Mattie lost her nerve. Staying well away from the woman, she crossed the room and crouched behind a display stand just wide enough to hide her. She switched off her suit to save her battery. And she waited, counting down the seconds.

She looked like a silver Spider-Man. Face hood, gloves, booties.

She heard a clunk—the vault handle being turned.

“All set?” The woman’s voice.

“Right as rain. Thanks, as always.”

“One last loop and we’re out,” the woman said.

Loop? Mattie wondered, her finger returning to, but not pressing, the battery’s button. Mattie looked toward the window and caught a distorted reflection off the Mylar window shade.

Something yellowish moved toward her end of the room: the woman Cast Member. How do I handle this? she wondered, unsure if she had more than a few seconds of invisibility remaining in the battery.

Heart in her throat, she peered around the display case. The man was reading his phone, head down. She decided to risk it. Watching the moving yellow orb on the window shade, Mattie waited until the woman was only a step away from seeing her. Then she turned on the battery, going instantly invisible, and moved around the display case, like hiding behind a tree in hide-and-seek. Her arms and legs flashed. If the man looked up, he’d see her.

The Cast Member walked past; Mattie slowly circled the display case until she was back where she’d started. The Cast Member was at the far wall now, passing the cash register, reaching the vault.

“All good!” she said. She switched off all but one row of ceiling lights, unlocked the door, and left with the man. Mattie heard the key turn in the lock, then silence.

Her suit’s battery dead, she waited several minutes before trying the combination on the vault door. It took her two tries; the second time, the handle moved and the door inside popped open.

Thankfully she knew exactly what she was looking for—Joe had shown her.

*  *  *

They reviewed the documents in the dorm library—Tim, Nick, Amanda, Jess, and Emily. Mattie had an important internship project coming up. She was desperate to be included, but keeping the internship was critical to her.

Hollingsworth’s history with the company read like a Shakespearian tragedy. He had started low, as a runner on the studio lot, and risen up through the ranks to become a member of WED Enterprises, the earliest version of Imagineering.

“It looks like once his plan for the park got turned down,” Tim said, reading, “he turned sour. He started making false claims and bad-mouthing Walt Disney.”

Hollingsworth had been accused of trying to recruit a fellow member of WED into the occult. He’d told this Cast Member that he’d learned to cast spells and was working on summoning the dead, that his power and abilities far outstripped those of a “cartoonist” like Walt Disney. His twisted ambition was to make the parks darker. He criticized Walt for sugarcoating the experience and underestimating the average park guest.

Among the secreted papers were testimonies from Cast Members who’d been intimidated into joining up with Hollingsworth. Photographs in the file appeared to be the work of private investigators, which suggested that the WED employees had begun to take the Hollingsworth threat seriously. They were right to worry: soon, animation cells went missing—always of villains.

Eventually, WED set up a film camera to shoot frames every fifteen minutes—very likely the first security camera ever built. It was on this film that a man named Adrian Chesborogh was caught stealing. Chesborogh had been arrested and questioned by the police; no connection to Hollingsworth was proved, but the man shook with fear at the mention of Hollingsworth’s name. Without ever naming him specifically, Chesborogh went on to describe satanic worship, animal sacrifice, and worse. He escaped police custody his first night in jail—it was reported he’d “disappeared” from within a locked cell.

“Well? Thoughts?” Nick said, reading along with the others. “Cat got your tongue?”

“It says here that one of Hollingsworth’s sons was admitted to an asylum,” Jess said softly. “They thought he was bewitched and tried to cure him with a priest.”

Jess and Amanda exchanged a look of confusion and fear. They’d been treated much the same way as children.

Nick said, “What do you want to bet Hollingsworth was working on a few spells of his own, trying to bring the villains to life? I’m betting he tested one on his son. That his ultimate goal—the destruction of Disney—having failed in the courts, in the company, in everything he tried, came down to battling Disney from within?”

“The Overtakers.” Jess had dreams to back up this theory, but didn’t want to take the time to explain.

“We already knew that at some point the villains broke away from the Disney ‘family,’” Tim said. “That was the start of the Overtakers.”

“But we didn’t know why,” Jess said.

Emily cleared her throat and waited for everyone’s attention. “Anyone remember eighth-grade language arts? How do you incite action? Through conflict. Hollingsworth cursed or created or reinvented certain villains to go inside Disney and recruit the same way he was. What if he wanted to create a divide between Disney villains? That divide would be like splitting the atom—excite it enough and you create a burst of energy capable of bringing down the house. In this case, the House of Mouse.”

“That’s what has to be stopped,” Tim said. “The divide. The early conflict that results in empowering the villains—”

“Turning them into the Overtakers,” Jess said.

“Yes! That’s what we have to tell the Keepers,” said Amanda. “They have to know it’s not as simple as getting Walt’s pen back.”

“What pen?” asked Nick.

“Never mind.” Amanda shook her head vigorously.

“They stop the divide,” said Jess, “and maybe they prevent the Overtakers from ever existing.”

“I hate to say it,” Nick said, “but that makes sense.”

“Trouble is,” Amanda said, troubled, “how do we tell them?”

T
HE EXCITEMENT OF
the moment led to a giddiness among the Keepers. The search for the pen had consumed them for days. Now the five teens and Wayne were about to test it out.

It was well past midnight; they were human, not hologram. Only Finn was not at his best. His connection with Amanda, across a million miles and sixty years, left him feeling melancholy and anxious. While the group celebrated their discovery, he was looking ahead to the reality of their situation: there was no way to return. The five of them were Dorothy without the ruby slippers. Stuck in 1955.

His feelings for Amanda, his yearning for his family, overcame him. Though he overheard the conversation, he was a reluctant observer, pushed into the corner of Wayne’s small workshop.

“So, are we ready for this?” Maybeck asked. As resident artist, he got the honor of testing the pen.

“I am so ready,” Charlene said, ruffling her skirt. “I’ve had enough of crinoline for about sixty years.” Willa laughed. The boys didn’t get it.

No one was talking about the fact that the last test of a pen, nearly identical to this one, had failed. The connection of the pen to Walt’s drawing table gave them all added hope this time might be different. Wanting to test it on a blueprint, they used Wayne’s diagram of a floating head in a haunted house, an attraction he hoped to pitch to WED Enterprises sometime soon.

“Aren’t you coming over to watch?” Charlene called out to Finn. Finn got up and joined them—picking a spot at the table far away from Charlene.

Maybeck uncapped the pen. “There is a difference. This one has gold trim.”

Finn sensed something wrong, someone nearby or pres-ent. “Have we checked the workshop?” he asked Wayne.

“For?”

“Unwanted guests.”

“Finn, this place barely holds us,” Willa said. “What are we waiting for? If this is the right pen, if we make sure it’s on Walt’s desk to stay, then it should be on his desk in One Man’s Dream when we solve the Stonecutter’s Quill in sixty years. This is epic!”

“Here we go.” Maybeck lowered the pen’s bulbous nib toward the diagram and used the lever to release a drop of ink. Everyone but Finn watched him closely. Finn’s attention was elsewhere, on all the places a person could hide in the cluttered workshop.

“Try again.”

“Maybe draw a line?”

“Try another blob!”

Finn looked at the unchanged diagram.

“Another piece of paper,” said an anxious Philby.

Wayne dug one out of a drawer. Maybeck drew a mouse, then a rabbit. Nothing changed.

“Wayne, you try,” Philby ordered. “The first time we saw this thing do anything, you were the one holding it.”

Wayne gave it his best. The pen drew lovely lines, Finn thought, but nothing more.

“It…doesn’t…work!” Maybeck declared, exasperated.

“All this for nothing?” Charlene moaned. “Again!”

“Try again,” Philby said, taking the pen from Maybeck and scribbling madly. “It’s got to work!”

“We’re missing something,” Finn said.

“Duh!” Charlene and Willa said in unison.

“We’re not thinking it through,” Finn continued, undaunted. He addressed Wayne. “What do you think?”

“Cause and effect,” Wayne said. The Keepers settled a bit, leaning in to hear his words. “The story you tell about me using the pen. There was a need at the time. Yes?”

“I’d say so,” Maybeck snapped.

“Maybe that need doesn’t exist in the same way at present,” Wayne said.

“There is a great need, an urgent need, that we make sure this pen is eventually in One Man’s Dream,” Finn explained calmly. “It’s missing in the future. Something happened to bring it forward to the right place, and we think that something is us.”

“Perhaps you’re mistaken,” Wayne said.

“Perhaps we’re not,” Philby said. “In which case, it’s the pen that’s not working.”

“Not working
properly
,” Wayne said, correcting him. His eyes widened. “How foolish of me!”

“What?” Willa asked.

“I wasn’t thinking!” Wayne said. “How did Mr. Disney get hold of such an enchanted pen in the first place? Hmm?”

The Keepers were dumbstruck.

“He enchanted it himself,” Maybeck said. “He’s Walt Disney, for crying out loud!”

“Mr. Disney appreciates a good magic trick,” Wayne said, “but he’s no sorcerer. He’s a person just like the rest of us. That’s what makes him so special.” He paused and scratched the side of his nose with his index finger. He would carry that same habit with him for the next sixty years, Finn realized. There was only one Wayne.

“There is a story, probably more myth than fact, that Mr. Disney encountered a gypsy when he was driving ambulances in the Great War. It’s said that this woman sensed the greatness in him that was to come and enchanted him, blessed him with creative powers as her line had enchanted others before, like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.”

“Enchanted his pen.”

“What ambulance driver carries a fountain pen?” Wayne said. “And what gypsy has one lying around to offer as a present?”

“I’m totally lost,” Maybeck said.

“The body is an instrument,” Wayne said, “but it is nothing without spirit and—”

“Blood,” said Philby.

“Someone’s paying attention,” Wayne said. “Go ahead, Philby, tell them.”

“Ink,” Philby said. “It wasn’t the pen she enchanted, it was the ink!”

“Enchanted ink that Walt Disney would have kept handy, but would have used sparingly.”

“It’s in the wood shop!” Charlene said.

They all heard the sound of scuttling feet.

“Outside! Spies!” Finn shouted, connecting the sound with his earlier sense of an unwanted presence. The Keepers raced out of the workshop in time to see four older boys running away at full speed.