Amanda Lester and the Black Shadow Terror Read online

  Carrying her baby, Bubble burst into the room. Her skin-tight yoga pants revealed a trim figure that couldn’t possibly be that of a woman who’d just given birth.

  “What’s all this?” she said, looking around. When her gaze fell on Ramon her nose wrinkled in distaste. “And what is that?” she said staring him up and down.

  “Be quiet,” said Ramon. “Can’t you see you’re disturbing the spirits?”

  Bubble burst into laughter. “Blixus, what’s going on here? Please tell me it isn’t what it looks like.”

  “We’re having a seance,” Ramon interrupted. “And you may just have driven away the ghost of your husband.”

  Bubble’s jaw dropped. “My Stencil? He’s here?”

  “Not yet,” said Ramon.” And as a result of your meddling maybe not ever. Now get rid of that child and take a seat or you can kiss your husband’s ghost goodbye.”

  Bubble looked at Blixus helplessly.

  “Do as he says,” said Blixus.

  She glanced at Hugh.

  “Do it,” he said.

  She left the room with the baby, and in a minute came back without him. Blixus pulled out a chair and she sat between the two girls. He motioned for her to take their hands, which she did reluctantly.

  Ramon said, “We need to start over. The spirits will be confused but we have no choice.”

  Blixus leaned over and whispered in Ramon’s ear. “We’re after Amboy, not Stencil.”

  “I know,” Ramon whispered back.

  Blixus gave him a look that was half admiration for his cleverness, half disgust at what he was.

  “Now,” said Ramon. “Eyes closed, everyone. We are gathered here today to honor the spirit of our beloved brother, uncle, and teacher, Amboy Moriarty aka Christopher Scribbish.”

  Bubble opened her eyes. “But you said—”

  “Shut. Up,” Ramon said loudly. Bubble looked aghast but said nothing.

  “Amboy, we await you with open arms.” Hugh broke the circle and stretched his arms out. “No, you ninny,” said Ramon. “Not literally. I thought you were supposed to be so smart.”

  Hugh stuck his tongue out and took Blixus’s and Ramon’s hands again, but first he glanced at Ivy. There it was again. This boy had it bad.

  Ramon breathed deeply. “See how much your kin love you. Please, Amboy, grace us with your presence.”

  “He was an odd duck, Amboy,” Bubble blurted out.

  Ramon stood up, stomped over, and said, “If you don’t keep quiet I will personally remove you from this seance.”

  He looked at Blixus, who nodded. Bubble’s eyes went wide.

  “Blixus, are you going to let him talk to me like that?” she said.

  “Yes,” said Blixus. “Now sit in your chair and be quiet. I’m not going to tell you again.”

  Bubble huffed and gave him a dirty look but did as he’d ordered.

  “Amboy, you can see how much we need you,” said Ramon. “Your wisdom and guidance are all that can save your family now.”

  Hugh opened his eyes and glared at Ramon, but Ramon’s eyes remained shut. Suddenly Ramon felt something deep in his mind, sharp but inchoate, present but not present, ethereal but material. It was unlike the feelings he’d got from ghosts before. Where other spirits were like single musical notes, this one was a chord, possessing multiple parts. Of course Amboy had been two people with two sets of DNA, so that might explain the sensation, but as Ramon opened himself wider and wider, he realized that there were multiple layers to this ghost. He felt himself grow excited, then tried to tamp down the feeling lest it get in the way.

  He relaxed every muscle, every joint, emptied his mind of all but the spirit, and felt it fill him. He could feel the ghost oozing into his mind, bit by bit, and then suddenly it seemed to stick, as if some part of it didn’t fit. It howled inside his head, and he knew what the trouble was. The ghost possessed something he both loved and hated, something that was tearing him apart. It was as though there was a part of himself that he couldn’t accept, even as he tried to integrate it into his essence.

  “What’s wrong?” said Hugh.

  “Hush,” said Blixus.

  Ramon’s head was beginning to throb. The foreign thing that was half in, half out was battling both itself and him, aching to enter but desperate to stay out. And then, as it flailed inside his consciousness, he knew what the intrusion was: James Moriarty’s formulas, the knowledge Amboy had craved but Scribbish had attempted to repel.

  The formulas, the ones that had led to Amanda’s nightmares, were tearing Amboy/Scribbish’s spirit apart and taking Ramon’s sanity with it. As he realized what was happening, he struggled to expel the ghost from his mind, but it hurt so much that he was weakening, losing consciousness, losing his very essence.

  “What’s happening to him?” said Amphora.

  “Something is wrong,” said Ivy.

  “Wake him up!” Amphora shrieked.

  As the voice of his beloved pierced through the fog in his brain, Ramon rallied for the briefest of moments. And in that moment a thought came to him. “Amboy and the formulas are now separate. He’s caught on them. Now is the chance I’ve been waiting for.”

  He reached out with his mind and grabbed at the formulas. At first they felt slippery, as though covered with oil, but then, as he gathered his strength the oil faded away and he managed to grasp a corner of them. But oh, how they bucked and pulled and strained away from him.

  Ramon’s mind clawed at that little corner, pulling it closer for a second, almost losing its grip. He tried to get a better hold, but no matter what he did the formulas kept eluding him. He huffed and he panted and the sweat rolled down his forehead, but he couldn’t budge them.

  “Wake him!” screamed Amphora.

  Bubble slapped Ramon and Hugh shook him, but he kept vibrating.

  “I’ve never seen him like this,” Amphora shrieked. “This isn’t normal.”

  Panicked, Bubble slapped Ramon harder, to no effect.” He’s killing Amboy’s ghost!” she screamed. “Blixus, don’t you see? He wasn’t trying to speak with him. He’s trying to destroy him!”

  She ran out of the room and returned with a handgun, which she pointed at Ramon. Amphora screamed.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot,” Bubble yelled.

  Amphora got up, darted out of the room, and returned a moment later holding Bradan over her head. It seemed all her fidgeting had had a purpose. She’d got free from her bonds.

  “Put that down or I’ll throw him,” she threatened.

  Bubble screamed and waved the gun around. Blixus lunged at her, his hand out to grasp it, and she pulled the trigger. Blixus fell and Amphora screamed again. Bubble shrieked and fired a second time, but now she hit Hugh, who had run toward her in an attempt to wrest the pistol away. She screamed, raced for Amphora, and grabbed Bradan out of her arms. Then she dashed out of the house.

  Ramon felt his mind clear. The invader was gone, and along with her the formulas. Amphora was crying and clinging to him, and Ivy was asking him if he was all right.

  “What happened?” said Ramon.

  “I think they’re dead,” said Ivy. “We need to call the police.”

  “We need to get you to the emergency room, baby” said Amphora. “I’m dialing 999.”

  “What happened?” Ramon repeated. He couldn’t remember a thing, but his head hurt like crazy. He looked around him and saw two bodies. “Did I do that?”

  “No, it was Bubble,” said Amphora.

  “What happened to her?” said Ramon.

  “She ran off,” said Ivy. “How do you feel?”

  “Terrible,” he said. “I tried to get the formulas, but I couldn’t.”

  “Quiet now,” said Amphora. “I can hear the sirens. Let’s get you fixed up.”

  Despina Lester, Detective

  Amanda’s cousin Despina Lester believed in being stylish, or at least her concept of it. The daughter of a slovenly woman, she had rebelled by becoming a fashion icon
at school, riding the new wave of British design in the early eighties. After that she had kept up with, if not led, every trend, from new wave to grunge, eventually parlaying her passion into her successful clothes-for-jurors business. But when Despina married Hillary Lester, a descendant of the famous Scotland Yard detective G. Lestrade, something else had begun to take root in her soul: a desire to investigate, to hunt down criminals and bring them to justice as her husband’s ancestor had done. Now at last she was pursuing that dream. As a first-year student at the newly relocated Legatum Continuatum Enduring School for Detectives, Despina was on her way.

  And so it was that on the morning of October 1st she found herself and her intrepid husband the sole investigators of one of the most dastardly and mysterious crimes of the 21st century: the bombing of Legatum’s Windermere campus by person or persons unknown.

  To celebrate the occasion, Despina was dressed to the nines in one of her colorful ethnic getups. A knee-length Indian tunic with a red background and white, brown, and blue flowers flowed over chubby turquoise leggings. Over that she wore a full-length long-sleeved cotton coat in shades of orange, red, and green, lined in the same turquoise as the leggings. An Indian-style necklace hung around her neck, with a blue choker as a complement. She had dyed the tips of her hair turquoise to pick up the shade in the outfit, and had donned orange high-heeled sandals to match the coat. She looked like a cross between an aging hippie and a refugee from a dye factory.

  While the fashionable shoes were less than practical, they lifted her spirits so high that she barely noticed how much her feet hurt, or how the rubble was making mincemeat of them. Rather she was focused on finding the source of the explosion as well as the tablet she’d accidentally left in the common room on the day it had occurred—the tablet with her designs for next year’s line.

  It wasn’t that Hill was a nag—not exactly. It was just that he’d warned her about backing up her work a thousand times and yet she’d procrastinated. Yes, she should have done it, and yes, she was contrite and rueful, but she still didn’t want him to know about her little oversight. Never a man to say “I told you so,” Hill was the soul of discretion, except that with her attending Legatum and having moved house they were a bit strapped for cash. They needed those designs. And no matter how much of them she might be able to re-create from memory, a re-do would never be the same. She’d been on fire during the week she drew them, riding along on a manic inspiration that struck but rarely. It was unlikely she’d see another spurt like that for years. So finding that tablet, and doing it without his knowledge, was essential.

  But the criminal investigation was important too. To date neither the faculty nor the fire brigade had been able to discover the identities of the mysterious ninjas witnesses had reported seeing just before the blast, despite repeated site visits. But that didn’t faze Despina. She was convinced that her eye for detail—an eye that had served her well over the years—would help her turn up evidence no one else had uncovered. After all, she’d been the one to find the long-missing Detective’s Bible. She could do this too.

  In consultation with her docile husband she decided that the best approach would be a systematic one. They would divide the campus into grids and explore each one thoroughly before moving on to the next. Of course she would insist that they start with the one that contained the Holmes House common room. She needed that tablet, and the sooner she found it the better.

  The pair ducked under the yellow hazard tape and entered the restricted area. Within seconds she realized they should have brought protection for their eyes, noses, and mouths. But Despina was nothing if not resourceful. She dug into her copious bag and extracted two designer scarves, which they tied around the lower portions of their faces like bandits. They would have to do.

  The common room had lain directly underneath the toxicology and sketching classrooms, which meant that sketching pads, colored markers, test tubes, and odd plants were mixed in with the décor gremlins’ specially designed furniture, but there were also items from other parts of the school, as the blast had been powerful and scattered debris in all directions. In a soup like that it was nearly impossible to tell where anything had been located pre-blast. Most of the landmarks were gone, except for the elevator in the northeast corner that led to the girls’ dorm. Some of the ancient iron work was still standing, which meant that their target was just a few paces to the south, if paces were even possible in all that rubbish.

  Cursing herself for having worn those shoes, Despina tiptoed through the mess and arrived at the general area of the common room, or so she thought.

  “Oh bother,” she said.

  “What’s that, dear?” Hill called.

  “Come and take a look at this,” she said.

  Hill waded through the rubble, stopping to inspect what appeared to her to be every little pebble like a dog on a walk.

  “Interesting,” he mumbled.

  “We can sift later, dear,” she said. “Right now it seems that we need a new approach.”

  Seeing what a disaster area she was facing, she realized that her grid system wasn’t going to work. Without physical indicators to work from, they would have to—wait a minute. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

  “But we’ve only just started,” Hill protested. “Changing horses in midstream isn’t a good idea. Jeffrey would never do that.”

  “Momentito, darling,” she crooned, taking stock of her surroundings and nodding. “I think he would. He’s such an open-minded boy. That’s why he made inspector so young.”

  “I thought it was because of his rigorous attention to protocol,” said Hill.

  “No, dear. It’s his creativity. You know how he takes after me.”

  She pulled her phone out of her bag and consulted her GPS. Of course. All she had to do was divide the area into virtual grids and use her GPS to navigate, just the way that lovely boy Scapulus Holmes had showed her. Why Amanda had rejected such a suitable boyfriend she’d never understand. Yes, that tall boy Nick Muffet was handsome and all, but Scapulus was what the kids called a total package. Such a shame.

  She eyed the rubble and blocked out the common room grid with the aid of her phone, forgetting all about that nice boy and the mess Amanda was making of her love life. Then she set about looking for the tablet.

  “Never mind, dear,” she said to her husband. “I’ve got it sorted. Why don’t you go back to your sifting?”

  “I don’t know why you call it sifting,” he said. “I’m not touching anything. Just having a quick look-see. It’s quite fascinating.”

  “Of course, dear,” she mumbled as Hill turned back to who knew what.

  Watching carefully for the pink and purple paisley cover, Despina scanned the area to see if there was any sign of her tablet. At first glance she was disappointed, but the rubble was more than deep enough to conceal it. She wondered if there was a way to estimate where it might be. She knew where it had been sitting before the blast: on a table in the southwest corner of the room. If she could figure out the force and trajectory, even though it would be difficult to compensate for all the other flying objects, she might be able to plot its flight and identify a likely landing spot.

  “Listen to me, all sciency,” she said to herself. Yes, Amanda had made quite a mistake letting that Holmes boy go. It was the kind of idea a genius like him would have come up with. Perhaps her own acquaintance with him was rubbing off on her. Of course he didn’t hold a candle to her son Jeffrey, but Jeffrey was way too old for Amanda anyway, at least for a few years. Perhaps when she was in her twenties though . . .

  For now her primary concern was the tablet. “If I want to calculate this trajectory business what do I do?” she thought. “Perhaps an app.”

  She opened up the app store and looked for “explosion calculator.” After a quick scan it was apparent that there was no such thing. Well then, she’d just have to suggest the idea to Scapulus. He could probably write one in his sleep. Sadly she’d have to do w
ithout it for now. She mentally drew a circle around the table where the tablet had been sitting and began wading through the rubble within it.

  Inside of three minutes she was rewarded by the sight of a charred bit of pink plastic lying among some shards of wood and something that looked like it might be upholstery. She opened her bag, donned the pair of gloves she’d brought with her, and gently picked it up.

  Sure enough it was a bit of her beloved tablet—a piece large enough to tell her that the thing had shattered. She stared at it for a moment, then burst into big, sloppy alligator tears, like Alice in Wonderland. Then, regaining control of her emotions, she brushed off her coat, squared her shoulders, and bagged the fragment, secreting it in her hold-all. She would be sure to give it a decent burial once she and Hill had returned home.

  “I say,” she called out. “Hill, darling, let’s change tack, shall we?”

  “But this is so interesting,” he said.

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “My scavenger hunt,” he said. “I’ve made a list of items the school must have had and have been searching for them.”

  “Like what, dear?”

  “Well there was that expensive electron microscope,” he said. “And there were some rare volumes in the library.”

  “But do you think those will help us in our quest to identify the perpetrators?” said Despina. “Surely the microscope has been broken.”

  “Not really,” he said. “I’ve just been marking time until you’re ready to begin.”

  She waded over to her husband and kissed him on the nose. “Well aren’t you a dear,” she said. “I’m ready now. Let’s see if we can find any evidence that will tell us who they are.”

  She knew this would be a monumental task, but if she was going to be a detective she’d have to get used to sifting through mounds of data, something Hill seemed to take to naturally. It wasn’t a task she relished—she was more of an idea person—but Despina was nothing if not disciplined. They might as well get started.

  “I think we have two choices,” she said.