The Power Potion (4 page)

“I did,” Dave said, swinging off his bike, “but I was hoping you’d do me a favor.”

“Sure,” the man said with a happy pop out his backside. “Whaddaya need?”

“Can I borrow a station shirt?”

“One of these babies?” the man asked, looking down at his gray and greasy front side.

Dave nodded, then let loose a little lie. “It’s for a costume party.”

The man’s nose wiggled. “So the name don’t matter?”

Dave shook his head. “Whatever you’ve got is fine.”

The man led Dave into the office and dug through a heap of shirts mounded on the floor. “No smalls, but here’s a medium.”

The name patch said VINNIE.

Dave swung off his backpack (and, with it, Sticky, who was watching from the safety of a mesh side pocket). He put the station shirt on over the T-shirt he’d changed into before leaving the apartment and said, “How long can I keep it?”

“Aw,” the man said with a scoff, “as long as ya like,
Vinnie
.”

Dave grinned at him as he put his backpack on. “Thanks,
Hal
.”

The old man’s backside fizgigged with laughter. “See ya, kid!” he called as Dave pedaled away.

So off Dave zoomed (and sweated and panted and puffed) up, up, up to Damien Black’s ominous (and, quite frankly, ugly) mansion atop Raven Ridge.

Now, when Dave operated as the Gecko, he
disguised himself in a very generic way. A ball cap, a bandanna, sunglasses, a plain T-shirt—these were the things he used to conceal his identity. At first, that was because they were all he had or could afford, but the simplicity of the disguise had an unexpected effectiveness:

He looked just like hundreds of other people.

Within the city, debates sprang up as to whether the Gecko was a man or a boy, an executive or a field worker. There were even some who thought the Gecko might be a girl.

Damien Black, however, had seen the Gecko up close and knew:

The Gecko was a boy.

A nasty, nettling nuisance of a boy.

He had also seen
Dave
up close, but (fortunately for Dave) Damien’s diabolical mind had derailed before the singularly crucial connection between Dave and the Gecko had been made.

Regardless, Dave knew it would be foolish to
go up to Damien Black’s door as himself, or wearing a ball cap or bandanna or even dark shades.

And since Sticky was (as you know) a klepto, there was often (to Dave’s annoyance) a veritable treasure trove of pilfered items rattling around inside Dave’s backpack.

(Well, some of them, like, say, grapes, didn’t actually rattle. They more squooshed and oozed.)

Dave tried to return things like rings and keys and watches to their rightful owners (when Sticky could identify who they were), but his attempted good deed often led, instead, to a great deal of trouble.

And so things accumulated.

Rattled ’round.

And sometimes (to Sticky’s extreme glee) came in handy.

“Hey,
hombre
!” Sticky said as Dave scouted out a safe spot to stash his bike in the forbidding forest that bordered Damien’s property. “You need to
dress gangsta, man. He’ll never recognize you. Slick back your hair, wear some bling….”

Dave stopped in his tracks. “Gangsta?
Bling?
When’d you start using words like that?”

Sticky shrugged and went a little shifty-eyed. “You pick things up.”

“Stickyyyy,” Dave warned, but Sticky was already rummaging through Dave’s backpack.

“Here,
hombre
,” Sticky said, handing out an earring. Then a chain. Then another earring. And another chain. And dog tags. (Canine, not military.) Next came a pendant with a two-inch rhinestone “M,” three rings, and a set of teeth.

Silver
teeth.

With sparkly blue stones.

“You stole someone’s grill?” Dave gasped, staring at the teeth. “Where did you
get
this?”

Sticky shrugged.

“Sticky!”

“Look,
señor
. If you put on some bling and
I draw some tears by your eye and you wear your pants real low and walk like this”—Sticky strutted along Dave’s shoulder with great attitude—“that evil
hombre
will think you’re a scary
matón
, not a dorky delivery boy.”

“Hey!”

Sticky stopped strutting and shrugged. “I’m just saying….”

“I don’t care what you’re just saying! I’m not putting someone else’s grill in my mouth!”

But even in Dave’s state of shock and revulsion, he was aware that he needed a disguise more elaborate than a service station shirt. And then it occurred to Dave that he could rinse the grill with water from the bottle he always carried.

And sterilize it with the hand sanitizer that his mother forced on him.

And then rinse it again….

And so it was that Dave (not having a better
idea) transformed into a gangster named Vinnie, with slicked-back hair, flashes of bling, teardrop “tattoos,” and sparkly blue and silver teeth (that didn’t fit right and tasted terrible).

“Morrocotudo!”
Sticky said, greatly pleased with his handiwork. “You look crazy good,
señor
!” Then he added, “I could put some more tattoos on you. Maybe some on the knuckles?”

“Stop it, Sticky!” Dave’s eyebrows knit together. “Have you been hanging out with thugs, or what? Is that why you don’t want to come to school with me anymore?”

“Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky grumbled. “You worry too much,
señor
.” He dropped down on all fours and cocked his head. “So what are we waiting for?
Ándale!
You have a package to deliver!”

So Dave stashed his bike, backpack, and helmet, then took the mailing tube and his delivery folder and strutted out of the forest toward Damien Black’s fearsome front door.

Imagine tall, heavy oak panels fashioned in the shape of a great, ghastly skull. Imagine hefty brass clackers for eyes and a menacing mail drop for a mouth. Imagine creepy cobwebs and spiders scurrying into darkened corners.

Now you know what I mean by “fearsome front door.”

So it’s no surprise that Dave’s heart was hammering as he clanked an eye-clacker against the whitewashed oak. Especially since he didn’t feel at all confident (or, for that matter, thug-like) in his low-slung jeans, teardrop tattoos, and gangster grill.

He felt ridiculous.

“Maybe he’s down in the dungeon feeding that killing machine,” Sticky whispered from his sneaky-peeky spot inside Dave’s service station shirt.

“Shhh!” Dave commanded (partly because Sticky had an uncanny habit of piping up at the wrong time, and partly because he didn’t want to think about Damien Black’s cantankerous, carnivorous Komodo dragon).

But after another half minute of waiting, Dave grabbed the eye-clacker, and—THUNK…THUNK…THUNK—he clomped on the door again.

Almost immediately, the mail drop mouth swung back and a furry face peeked through. (Well, the face itself wasn’t furry—it was dark with curious brown eyes and a narrow nose bridge—but there was definitely fur surrounding the face.)

“Eeek!” came the animal’s voice through the slot.

Dave stooped down to get a closer look, and when the animal shrieked again, Dave caught a distinct whiff of coffee.

“No!” gasped Sticky. “It’s that java junkie monkey! He came back?”

Ah, yes.

The monkey.

Dave, you see, had once freed this very same rhesus monkey from a caged existence as Damien Black’s personal coffee boy. Damien had (quite cleverly) taught him to brew wickedly good espresso from his rare reserve of outlandishly expensive Himalayan blend, but over time the monkey had developed a taste (or, more accurately, an all-consuming craving) for the coffee himself.

“I guess addiction is a powerful thing,” Dave muttered.

“But to come back
here
? That’s
loco
-berry burritos, man!”

“Eeeek! Rrrrreeeeeeek!” the monkey shrieked through the mail drop, baring his teeth at Dave.

Dave laughed and flashed his grill right back at him. “Hey, buddy, remember me?” he said (as he had been quite fond of the little imp).

“Are
you loco
-berry burritos, man?” Sticky cried, yanking hard on Dave’s ear. “Are you
trying
to get us trapped and tortured? He’s on that evil
hombre
’s side now!”

Ah, but (despite evidence to the contrary) Sticky could not have been more wrong. The little monkey despised Damien Black and had only returned to kipe the cappuccino.

Make off with the mocha!

Escape with the espresso!

(In other words, he was simply there to jack some joe.)

Unfortunately for the reckless rhesus, he had gotten disoriented inside Damien’s maniacal
mansion (which is, for the record, an easy thing to do) and had been spotted by Damien Black’s resident trio of block-headed bozos, known as the Bandito Brothers. These petty thieves—Angelo, Pablo, and Tito—were not actual brothers but a band of miserable mariachi musicians who went by that name.

Having (in their view) moved up in the world, the Brothers had put music aside and now thought of themselves as Damien’s helpful henchmen.

His indispensable assistants!

Or, in moments of deluded sophistication, his protégés.

Damien Black, on the other hand, thought of the Brothers as unrelenting pests. They were like fleas burrowed deeply into the thick, comforting fur of his dark and demented world, and no matter how hard Damien scratched, he couldn’t seem to rid himself of them.

And yet the Bandito Brothers were the ones who had spotted the monkey.

They were the ones who had sounded the alarm.

“Boss! Boss, come quick!” Pablo had shouted as they’d tailed the long-tailed intruder.

“Mr. Black!” Angelo had hollered. “Your monkey is back and he’s stealing your coffee!”

“Here, monkey-monkey-monkey,” Tito had said, holding out a trinket for the rascally rhesus.

But the monkey wasn’t interested in sparkly things.

He was interested in coffee.

And so a chase through the mansion had ensued. Out of one room and into another the monkey had raced, with the Brothers in hot pursuit. Up rope ladders and down chutes, along a rail in pulley carts, through a trapdoor, into secret passageways, down one corridor and up another, past rooms with skulls and rooms with maps
and rooms with big, dusty books and quill pens, until at last they’d raced round and round and round a combination of confounding corridors where the monkey had finally ditched the Brothers and found his way to the mansion’s great room. And this is when he heard something klonking on the ghastly front door.

At this point, the monkey’s little heart was pounding in his little monkey chest. He wanted out of that house, and he wanted out
now
. And although he recognized that the enormous skull was, in fact, a door, he was neither large enough nor (despite the double shot of caffeine in his system) strong enough to open it himself.

Then he noticed a smaller door inside the large, ghastly one.

A door he could open.

The mail slot.

“Eeeek!” he’d cried through it, and this “Eeeek!” had, in fact, meant “Help!”

Or, “Open the door!”

Or (more accurately, perhaps), “Get me the heck out of here!”

The hairless primate on the other side had not responded, and so the desperate rhesus had put on his most threatening monkey face and tried again.

It was then (by recognizing Dave’s scent) that he realized he knew the person on the other side of the door.

This same boy had rescued him before!

“Eeeek! Rrrrreeeeeeek!” he’d cried, reaching frantically through the mail slot.

So! Now you see that Sticky was, in fact, completely wrong about the monkey. But at that moment it didn’t matter, because the eeeking and shrieking had alerted Damien Black (and his trailing trio of cohorts) to the monkey’s whereabouts.

“There he is, you fools!” came the evil treasure hunter’s voice through the mail slot. “Get him!”

Dave’s heart stopped mid-beat, for although he could not actually
see
Damien through the solid oak door, he knew whose villainous voice that was. And in his state of brain-freezing fear, he thought for a moment that the “him” in “Get him!”
was
him.

“Eeeeek! Rrrrreeeeeek!” the monkey implored, reaching out and latching on to Dave’s pant leg. “Eeeeek! Rrrrrrreeeeeek!”

This created a through-the-door tug-o’-war, with Dave on one side, a Bandito Brother on the other, and (you guessed it) a monkey in the middle.

“What’s he holding on to?” Damien demanded from inside.

“I don’t know, boss,” Pablo cried, “but he’s holding on tight!”

So Dave (wanting to both create a diversion for the monkey and prevent Damien from thinking he had any part in this monkey business) grabbed the
eye-knocker and clobbered it against the door. WHACK, SMACK, THWACK! it thundered. “IMPORTANT DELIVERY!” Dave shouted.

There was a split second of hesitation, and then the door whooshed open. (Well, it whooshed as much as four hundred pounds of solid oak can whoosh, anyway.)