The Glass Wall (Return of the Ancients Book 1) (21 page)

He laughed, but it wasn’t a nice laugh. The bird on his shoulder ruffled its feathers. “I’m disappointed. I thought you would have figured it out by now. You’ve been surprisingly brilliant at times, but a complete dullard at others. Surely, the iron was a huge hint?”

“You know, I don’t know why I thought I wanted to talk to you,” I snapped at him. “I’ve much better things to do than to stand around being insulted by an alien.”

“Alien?” Jareth grinned. “Now, that’s the first time I’ve ever been called
that
!”

“Whatever!” I frowned at him, my temper getting the best of me.

“If you’re trying to figure out what we are, then you must look
back
into history. I might suggest Ireland or Avalon.” he said, still grinning. It was an arrogant grin. “This isn’t the first time the human race has encountered us.”

He was enjoying my confusion far too much. Since he appeared chatty, I decided to ask what was really on my mind, “Did you kill Melody?”

Genuine surprise flickered across his face, followed once again by amusement. “If you are going to survive your destiny, Sydney, you are going to have to look deeper, beyond the obvious. Why would I kill someone I’ve spent the past year trying to find?”

I frowned and snapped a bit sarcastically myself, “Because you are an assassin, perhaps?”

He grinned. “Touché. I forget I’m speaking to a human. Such thoughts are rare for my kind.” He bowed at me in what appeared to be some kind of an apology and then added, “Melody is not dead.”

“Reese said she was dead—” I began.

“To her, she is.” He shrugged. “Melody was never Reese’s aunt to begin with. It was the best cover Melody could find under the circumstances and it was a good one. We had a hard time finding her as it was.”

I felt a rush of relief. I hadn’t wanted to believe they were killers.

“Don’t be a fool.” Jareth continued with a slightly exasperated tone. “It is no small wonder Rafael is enamored with you, even though it would be catastrophic. You both live with your head in the clouds. The universe is not a rosy place and there are no “happy endings”. You will find more heartache and pain than anything else.”

“Enamored?” I repeated, caught by the word, and then shivered remembering the other one and added, “Catastrophic?”

He opened his mouth to say something else when Al opened the front door and called, “Sydney? Are you there, kiddo?”

As I watched, Jareth sent me a mocking look and then simply disappeared. Where he had been standing was a cloud of mist.

I shivered.

It was one thing to see it on tape, or to believe it in theory. It was entirely another to see Jareth disappear right in front of me.

“Sydney?” Al called louder.

“I’m here,” I said, licking my lips and heading toward the porch.

“Thought we heard voices, kiddo,” he said, frowning deeply enough that a crease appeared between his brows.

“I was just talking to Tigger,” I lied. Since Tigger was snoozing on the front porch, it was a bad lie. I added belatedly, “I mean, I was calling him … trying to find him.”

“He’s right here.” Al chuckled fondly at the dog and leaned down to scratch his belly. “Aren’t you the wily one, Tigger, hiding here while Sydney’s trying to find you?”

I looked at Tigger stare adoringly into Al’s eyes and decided he was definitely the most useless dog that I had ever encountered. He hadn’t even squeaked when Jareth had appeared and had shoved me into the trees. I was sure Tigger had snoozed the entire time.

Al held the door open for me and I went inside, but not before I stooped to pick up Jareth’s phone number still sitting on the top step. It might prove useful.

I always had a lot to think about after speaking to Jareth. What had he meant by Rafael being enamored with me? And that it was catastrophic? And what had he meant that humans had met them before and that iron was a huge hint? I was going to have to borrow Betty’s computer.

First, I wanted to get something to drink, because my mouth was dry. As I gulped down the water, my eyes fell on the alien detection kit. I snorted, but I was still drinking, and I ended up with water in my nose. I recovered after a minute and eyed the contraption. Yeah, it was a piece of junk. Jareth had just appeared and disappeared in the front yard and the thing hadn’t even let out a peep.

But then Jareth had said they weren’t aliens. I squinted, trying to recall his exact words. What he had said about Rafael had distracted me a little too much, but after concentrating a few minutes, I recalled the words “Avalon”, “Ireland”, and “Iron”. Everyone knew of Avalon and King Arthur’s sword, but I had no idea what it had to do with Ireland and Iron. Apparently, I was going to have to start researching legends and folklore.

It was too late to use Betty’s computer, but my head was pounding anyway. I decided to write down as much as I could in my science notebook and research it at school. I was sure he had given me enough clues to get a few steps closer, maybe even to unlock the entire mystery itself.

Chapter Sixteen - Tinkerbell

School kept me busy the first part of the day, but in the afternoon, I escaped to the library and began my research. I flipped through books and searched on the computer for the terms “Avalon”, “Ireland”, and “Iron”. The results were amusing; almost all of them were about fairies.

Finally, I sat down at the table and seriously considered the possibility that they were fairies. It would explain the fairy runes. After a few minutes, I laughed heartily at myself. How could I even think it? Jareth, Rafael, and Harmony were certainly taller than a few inches, and they didn’t have wings. They had nothing in common with Tinkerbell.

Obviously, I was missing something.

I spent a few more minutes reading about fairies and learned that there were different kinds, but they all still had wings. I’d seen Jareth take his shirt off at the concert and he hadn’t had any wings. I sighed. It was another dead end.

Besides, if Jareth was a fairy, the fork should have caused him pain. I had confirmed that stainless steel really was mostly iron. Yeah, Harmony had been hurt by iron but he hadn’t. I had to be missing a clue. After all, Jareth was one of them; I had seen him disappear!

Tired of reading, I decided to make a little chart in my notebook. I gave each alien—or fairy—a row, and noted down the traits that I had observed.

Jareth - iron doesn’t bother him, he doesn’t have wings, he disappears, talks normal

Rafael - ?, ?, he disappears, talks as if from seventeenth century sometimes

Harmony - iron bothers her, ?, she disappears, talks normal - except the Heaven’s Bells

After that, I found myself stumped. I finally decided that Jareth must have been deliberately giving me false clues. He did seem to have a sadistic streak. He had lied about iron being a clue. My fork hadn’t bothered him in the slightest except to put him in a peevish mood.

The last bell rang, and I stuffed my notebook into my backpack. I was just going to have to get Jareth to talk some more. Maybe he’d make a mistake and drop me a
real
clue.

Betty had to drive Grace and a couple of other girls to a soccer game, so Al said he’d pick me up and take me out to practice driving.

Waiting for him, I played with the fairy runes in my pocket and wandered around the bridge, kicking the inspirational words. Suddenly, something sharp pricked my finger. Startled, I jerked and shook out the contents of my pocket. The fairy runes had turned black and gray, and one of them had shattered into shards. I peered closely at the ones that were still intact. The symbols were peeling off, and I could see fractures in the stone.

I felt an ominous chill run down my spine. What did it mean? It didn’t look good.

Al pulled up in his truck with Tigger, or at least I assumed the black sniffing nostrils resting on the window ledge belonged to Tigger. Apparently, he was too lazy to stick his head out of the window.

“Take over, kiddo.” Al chuckled as I approached.

I nervously slid into the driver’s seat. I’d never driven Al’s truck before. It was much bigger than Betty’s.

“Any progress on your alien investigation?” Al asked conversationally as I gingerly tapped the gas pedal.

“Not really.” I shrugged.

“Well, Jack is willing to help out, if you ever find any evidence. He has connections you could only dream about.” Al was obviously proud of his friend.

I didn’t answer because I was too tense driving Al’s truck. It was definitely different from Betty’s, and I was growing paranoid that I’d hit something.

Al kept chatting and instead of letting me go directly home, insisted that we stop to get hamburgers. It was nerve-wracking to navigate his monstrous truck through the drive-through, but I was proud of myself after I had done it.

“I knew you could do it.” Al chuckled as I paid for the burgers and handed him the bag. “You should have more faith in yourself, Sydney. You’ve got a real head on your shoulders.”

I smiled and headed over the bridge to Mercer Island. Al always made me feel good about myself. He flipped on the radio and began to sing along with the song that was playing. Every now and then, he’d push Tigger’s nose out of the hamburger bag.

We were halfway across the bridge when the truck started to sputter and cough.

Al frowned, sitting up straight as the truck lurched forward. “Pull over, kiddo,” he ordered curtly. “And put those hazard lights on!”

I barely managed to park the truck on the side of the bridge before it died completely. Al hopped out and popped the hood open, and I joined him as the cars whizzed around us. It was already growing dark, and he had to use a flashlight to inspect the engine.

After a few minutes, he closed the hood and heaved a sigh. “This hunk of metal isn’t going anywhere tonight without a tow truck.”

“Did I do something wrong?” I swallowed.

Al grinned at me and tousled my head. “Of course not! I’ll just call Dennis at the shop. He’ll pick it up before the cops do, and we can walk home. It’s just a few miles.”

I snagged my backpack from the truck and burrowed deeper into my sweatshirt. It was chilly on the bridge. As Al talked on his cell phone, my eyes fell on Tigger. I wondered how Al was going to get that dog to walk a couple of miles when I’d never seen him walk more than twenty feet.

Satisfied that Dennis was on the way with the tow truck, Al grabbed the burgers, pulled Tigger out of the cab, and locked the truck.

“Are you sure Tigger can make it a few miles?” I asked a little skeptically.

“Tigger?” Al appeared surprised at my question. “Of course! He’s a pure bloodhound. When they’re tracking a scent they can go for miles!”

Al handed me my hamburger, and we began to eat as we headed over the bridge. To my surprise, Tigger kept to our heels, his eyes locked on our burgers. I smiled. Al was right. It looked like Tigger
would
walk miles for a scent—the scent of a hamburger.

The wind was vicious, stirring up the lake below and causing the waves to crash against the side of the bridge. We walked without speaking, watching the beautiful sunset dazzle us with a spectacular array of colors. It was so striking that we both pointed to it as we munched on our burgers, but we didn’t find it necessary to do more than grunt. Al was good company. He knew the importance of companionable silence.

Above our heads, seagulls swooped in circles, on the alert for any sign of a handout. Grinning a little at the greedy birds, I tore off a piece of my burger bun and tossed it into the air.

I was unprepared for what happened next.

The seagulls dove and Tigger leapt, all of their eyes focused on the small piece of burger arcing in the air. Only the seagulls had wings and Tigger didn’t.

To my horror, I watched as the bloodhound’s legs stretched with his nose pointed toward the burger and his jowls flapping in the wind. Closing his eyes, he opened his mouth to capture the tidbit, but he missed and sailed right over the bridge railing, straight into the riotous waves of the lake below.

Al’s mouth dropped open in horror.

We both rushed to the railing, but we could do nothing other than watch helplessly as Tigger crashed into the waves.

Suddenly, there was the sound of a roaring engine and squealing tires behind us. I whirled to see Marquis’ red sports car skidding to a halt halfway on the sidewalk. Rafael leapt out of the driver’s side and rushed to join us at the railing. His piercing gray eyes riveted on the flailing bloodhound fighting the waves.

“He’s too old! He’ll never make it!” Rafael shouted grimly.

Before we could respond, he tossed his car keys to me and climbed up on the railing.

“Wait!” I heard Al’s voice rising above the wind, but it was too late.

Rafael had already jumped.

I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I felt awful that I had caused Tigger to jump, but now Rafael had suddenly appeared and had followed him into the freezing lake.