The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (30 page)

“You know where this place is?”
Chloe asked Violet as they took off down the sidewalk.

“I saw it on a map in the hotel
room,” Violet said. “We go to that big road over there and then turn right.
It’s not far at all.”

Chloe hunched her shoulders and
picked up her pace. She was glad to be out of the hotel room, but with the road
nearby the vehicle fumes stunk up the air. From every direction came the sounds
of human life. Cars honked, people shouted, music blared and the air buzzed
constantly with the conversations of people on their telly-phones. Chloe
couldn’t make out the words but she felt the signals jamming up the air. She
wondered how Emma had lived here so long. Everything was a distraction. Nothing
was ever still.

Violet seemed to adjust well enough,
but she walked around with a look of grim resignation. Chloe wondered if she
felt lost, too. Here, her skills meant nothing.

“I can’t wait to go home,” Chloe
said to test the waters. She watched Violet out of the corner of her eye.

Violet pursed her lips. “We aren’t
supposed to talk about that.”

“Bah,” Chloe said, tossing her
head. The bulk of her purple hair stayed stuck in place under her hat. It just
wasn’t she same. “You can’t possibly like this place.”

“No, not really,” Violet admitted.

“And you must miss everybody. What
about Garland?” Chloe never missed the chance to tease Violet about her old
crush.

Violet shrugged. “I guess.” Then
she looked over at Chloe. “I don’t feel like
that
about him, though.
Geez, Chloe. That was years ago and I only liked him because he was nice to me.
You don’t keep up, do you?”

Chloe resented Violet’s growing
impudence.

Violet giggled. “You should see
yourself! You might frighten somebody with your lip stuck out and your forehead
all knotted up like that!”

Chloe seriously considered setting
fire to Violet’s hat, but held herself in check because they crossed paths with
a human girl walking a poofy white dog. Chloe and Violet turned and stared at
the dog as it trotted past them.

“Looks like a tiny fluffalo,” Chloe
said.  “If it was pink, that is.”

“Do you mean the dog or the girl?”
Violet asked.

Chloe snorted in spite of herself.
“Hey, you told me to stop making fun of humans. You shouldn’t get to, either.”

“Fair enough,” Violet said. “Hey,
there’s the mall.”

The sprawling building lay across
the highway. Chloe took one look at the stream of cars speeding by and gulped.
“Can’t we fly over it?”

“Come on,” Violet said. She walked
to the corner where a blinking sign beeped at them. “I saw some people doing
this on the vision box last night,” she said as she pushed a button beneath the
sign.

The picture on the sign changed
from a hand to the figure of a person walking. The cars stopped in both
directions. Certain that they would spurt forward again at any second, Chloe
sprinted across the road. Her heart beat ten times its normal rate. She sucked
in deep breaths to recover and then gagged on exhaust fumes.

Violet jogged the distance and
arrived next to Chloe just as the hand reappeared on the sign. “You don’t have
to run,” she said.

The traffic started up again. It
roared by inches from where they were standing. Chloe trembled and backed
further onto the sidewalk. Behind her sat the mall. Cars lined rows and rows in
paved fields all around it. Chloe flashed them looks of distrust as she and
Violet made their way to the mall doors.

Othella did most of the shopping
when they needed supplies, so this was Chloe’s first foray into a big human
marketplace. The lights, colors and smells of the mall overwhelmed her. It was
huge compared to Ivywild’s open-air market. At first she just stood inside the
doors with her mouth hanging open. Violet was awestruck as well.

“Get out of the way,” said a young
man with a mohawk. He shoved past the girls. He wore a black leather vest that
left his tattooed arms bare. Metal earrings hung from both his ears.

“I think he’s a Slaugh!” Chloe
squeaked.

“No, he doesn’t have wings,” Violet
said, although she continued to gawk at the young man as he joined a group of
similarly clad teens by the food court.

The sight of a dress in the closest
shop window made Chloe squeak again. It had a flirty ruffle and bright colors.
“Ooooh. Look at that! I wonder how much it costs.”

“We shouldn’t buy clothes,” Violet
said. She watched apprehensively as Chloe walked, trance-like, to the shop
window and put her face up to it.

“Look! Girls are trying dresses on
in there! See those little rooms in the back? Let’s go try some on!”

Violet was still hesitant. “I don’t
know…”

“Don’t be a sissy!” Chloe said as
she darted through a swarm of bag-toting shoppers. Ignoring their scowls, she
went to the nearest rack and pulled off several dresses.

Violet shrank back into the rack as
though to make herself invisible. “All this stuff looks really expensive. Maybe
we should go somewhere else. Uh oh.”

A boxy little saleswoman approached
them. She had a tight little perm and a turned up little nose and a nametag
that said “Margot” in blocky letters. She zeroed in on the purple hair sticking
out from under Chloe’s hat then tried to politely ignore it as though it was a
handicap of some sort.

“Can I help you?” she asked as she
summed them up through narrowed eyes.

Chloe knew when she was being
judged. She straightened her back, lifted her chin and shoved the armful of
dresses at the saleswoman. “I’m going to try these on. Prepare a room for me.”

The narrow little eyes showed
surprise. Margot pursed her lips. “We require a credit card to hold if you wish
to try on our merchandise.”

Chloe and Violet glanced at each
other in confusion. Chloe didn’t want to admit to the puffed up little human
that she didn’t know what a credit card was.

“We don’t have one,” she said.

“Perhaps one of your parents is
around?” Margot said with just the slightest glance to either side.

Chloe grew impatient. This was
ridiculous. In Faylinn the designers fought over who got to dress her. “Look,
lady, my parents aren’t here and they don’t have one of those card thingies,
either. I just want to see how these look on.”

“So you aren’t here to
buy
?”
Margot asked as though this were a heinous crime. “I’m afraid I can’t let you
try those on. What would we do if you damaged one of them?”

Chloe felt heat gathering at her
fingertips. She thought of how pleasant it would be to torch the insolent
woman. Who did she think she was with her stupid perm and her sassy little
nametag? Chloe lifted her index finger and pointed at the woman’s nose. “Now
just you listen here! I am Queen Chloe de Lolanthe and—”

Violet cleared her throat loudly.

The saleswoman squinted at Chloe
with utmost distaste.

Chloe returned the look and crossed
her arms. “This stuff isn’t good enough for me anyways! You call these dresses?
They look like bath curtains! Come on, Violet.”

She trounced out of the store with
a grateful Violet on her heels. She felt the saleswoman staring them down all
the way out.

“Witch!” Chloe spat. “I don’t like
the mall. Let’s go back to the hotel.”

“But we just got here!” Violet
said. “Anyways, not all the people are like that. She must have thought we were
poor.”

“Well I think she’s a troll!”

“Hey, cool hair,” said a passer-by.
It was a preteen girl with sparkly makeup. She wore barrette clip-ins of
different colors in her own hair.

Caught off guard, Chloe muttered,
“Thanks.”

“See,” Violet said. “Can we stay?
Let’s at least get something to eat. Those look yummy,” she pointed to a cookie
stand in the food court.

Chloe eyed the assortment of
sprinkled goodies. “Well, okay. I guess.”

After sharing a half dozen cookies
between them (and completely befuddling the poor clerk who had to take their
money) they set off for further uncharted territory. Chloe found a makeup
counter where the bored young man tending the wares was all too eager to give
her a free makeover.

“You have the best cheekbones I’ve
ever seen!” he squealed. “Are your eyes that green naturally? You’re wearing
contacts, right? Who colors your hair? It’s fabulous!”

After the confidence boost Chloe
was in a much better mood.

“I think that guy was wearing girl
pants,” Violet said as they left the makeup counter. “And he was wearing more
eye shade than you.”

Chloe smacked her freshly glossed
lips. “He was a sweetheart. I wish I could take him back home with me to do my
makeup every day.”

Then she and Violet fell silent
because both of them missed home so much. Chloe was seriously beginning to
doubt they’d ever see it again.

“Hey, look at that!” Chloe said to
distract herself from such gloomy thoughts. She paused before a shop with all
kinds of gadgetry inside. On the back wall sat vision boxes of various shapes
and sizes. The largest one was so big that the people on the screen looked like
they were about to walk right out into the store.

Chloe and Violet walked inside and
gaped at the row of screens. They all showed the same program with a man and a
woman sitting behind a desk and reporting on things that happened in yet
another screen behind them.

 “The investigation of the
disappearance of prominent Tulane professor Kiros Leboux has yet to turn up any
leads,” said the stiff-haired woman on the vision box.

The viewing angle switched to her
male colleague while the small screen behind him showed images of a brick
apartment with yellow tape stretched across the door. Then the little screen
showed a picture of a dark-skinned woman with a patterned scarf wrapped around
her head. Even in the motionless picture the woman looked proud and extremely
intelligent. She had an air of mystery that made her look striking compared the
man and woman reading the news. Chloe’s breath caught as she studied the
picture. It was as if she’d just glimpsed through a telescope and spied her old
world.

“At the urging of the professor’s
son, New Orleans police have stepped up their efforts to determine how
Professor Leboux was taken from her apartment,” said the man. “They have
already issued a statement that they believe force was used. The investigators
were unable to determine the source of the scorch marks found on the floor of
the professor’s apartment.”

The vision box cut to a larger
screen of the apartment. A tall, dark-skinned young man was standing in front
of it, speaking into a stick with a foam ball on the end. He looked to be in
his early twenties. He had dark eyes and tight, curly dark hair. His ears stuck
out more than most people’s. Chloe only noticed it now that she’d been around
humans for so long.

“I just can’t understand,” said the
young man. “Why has it taken months? No leads. No leads whatsoever. My mother
was a loved, well-respected member of the university. She had no enemies. I can
appreciate how difficult the police’s job must be, but somebody must know
something.”

The screen cut back to the man and
the woman at the news desk.

“That was Tobin Leboux, speaking at
his mother’s apartment,” said the newsman. “He’s an engineering student at Tulane
and has been the driving force in efforts to uncover the whereabouts of
Professor Leboux.”

The newswoman shook her head in a
sad gesture. Not a single hair on her scalp moved. “The university has offered
a reward for information anyone may have about the professor’s disappearance.
Here’s the number to call.”

A series of numbers flashed across
the screen. Chloe and Violet stared without really paying attention to them.
Chloe got the strange feeling that a snippet of their own world had showed up
inexplicably in this one.

“That boy…” Violet said.

“There was something odd about
him,” Chloe read her mind. “There’s something odd about the whole thing. Scorch
marks they can’t explain?”

Violet wrinkled her brow. “There’s
something else. That name is familiar. Kiros…Kiros…I know I’ve heard it before.
Leboux doesn’t sound right though. Kiros Leboux. No, that’s not it.”

A man in a tie and a nametag walked
over to them. Chloe curled her lip until she realized that there was nothing
disdaining in the big smile he gave them.

“What can I do for you girls?” the
man asked. “Shopping for somebody? You know, Father’s Day is just three months
away.” He laid his arm on top of the biggest vision screen. “This baby right
here would make a great gift for Dad!”

Violet stared at the floor and said
quietly, “Our dad is dead.”

The salesman’s face turned red.
“Oh…oh, I’m…terribly sorry about that. How insensitive of me…”

Chloe rescued him by pointing at
the screen. “That story that was just on, did you see it? About the professor who
disappeared?”

“Oh, you must mean the Leboux
case,” said the salesman.

“Where did it happen?” Chloe asked.
“They said something about Two Lane, but I don’t know where that is.”

“Tulane University,” the salesman
said. “It’s in New Orleans.”

“Is it far from here?” Chloe asked.

The salesman gave her a curious
look. “New Orleans, you know, Louisiana? Here, I’ll show you.” He pulled his
own rectangular device out of his pocket and pushed some buttons. The little
screen on it flashed up with a map. He pointed to a big chunk of land near the
bottom of it. “To get to New Orleans you go over here—” he moved his finger to
a dot next to some blue water, “—all the way across and down through Louisiana
until you get to there.”

Chloe memorized the location. They
could be there in a flash if her mother could rig up the Pyxis Charm properly.
She thanked the salesman and then dragged Violet back to the mall doors where
they came in.