The Lie Spinners (The Deception Dance) (6 page)

Strangely,
Jones doesn’t fight Madeline and stops fighting his ropes.

“
Get
out of the way,” Madeline shouts.

I
step aside to let them enter the plane cabin. I say, “This is
really wrong…”

“
Just
stop talking,” Madeline says, as she and the grass rope drops
Jones on the floor and Madeline yanks closed the plane door.

Immediately,
the plane jolts and starts driving forward.

I
grab Linnie and pull her onto a couch. When the jet was first bought
the interior was probably luxurious; it has that spacious, wealthy
set-up, but I’m pretty sure that the chairs and couches are
made of hemp, the floor is a sort of tweedy carpet and house plants
clutter every available space.

Are
constant altitude changes even good for plants?

I
turn to Madeline. She looks like a walking corpse; dark hollows sink
under her eyes and her skin has paled to a grayish-white. Whatever
Madeline did, it beyond exhausted her in a matter of minutes.

“
Did
we just totally screw up?” Linnie asks, leaning into me.

“
I
don’t know,” I say.

The
moment Madeline slumps into a chair, the plane takes off.

My
gaze meets Jones’; tied up at Madeline’s feet, he stares
at me.

I
quickly turn back to Linnie and whisper, “Of all the cronies
Linnie, why him?”

She
wrinkles her brow. “He was the only one at the house.”

“
Yeah,
because he was being punished,” I say pointing to my ginormous
bruise.

“
That’s
‘stupid jerk face’?” she says, leaning past me to
peer. “No wonder… We were waiting in the spot we planned
on, right, for..” she air quotes, “ ‘my friend’
to pick me up; I saw you make the signal, pressing your face against
the glass with your hands on the window, but I didn’t say
anything, he just took off after your car. He must have recognized
the bruise he gave you.”

“
I
can’t believe we thought that plan would work.”

“
Yeah,
we seriously screwed the poodle on that one,” Linnie says.

“
Screwed
the
poodle
?”
I smile, I can’t help it.

Linnie
smiles back, and bobs her eyebrows while saying, “We’re
going to Thailand.”

Day
Two (Continued)

Coffee
has nothing on adrenaline; actually, I’m pretty sure that the
adrenaline that coursed through my veins during the confrontation in
the airport plowed right over my measly cup of coffee. Twenty minutes
after our plane takes-off, I seriously regret not getting the
‘heart-attack in a cup.’

I
lean back into the green hemp couch and wish this was an actual fight
so an actual flight attendant would bring me an actual cup of coffee.
Linnie starts to burrow into the couch beside me, looking ready for a
nap.

Rich
soil aromas fill the cabin with a tangy, musty smell, like dust,
fresh dirt and herbs mingling together.

There’s
some low mumbling on the other side of the cabin, and then Madeline
says, “If you speak again, I’ll gag you.”

Linnie
and I might be exhausted, but it’s nothing to how Madeline
looks. Madeline looks as if she rapidly aged to about one-hundred
years old as she teeters back and forth in her chair.

I
wonder if Jones’ ropes actually prevent him from attacking her,
or if he just waits for the right moment to strike. Madeline’s
eyes slip shut for a moment, and then she shakes her head and
straightens. Jones looks over at me, his umber colored eyes examining
my face. I think he might be wondering the same question I’m
asking myself:
do
I want him to strike?

Yes,
I’m being forced into this. And yes, even though I don’t
know exactly what our quest entails, I already know it’s
probably stupider than pulling a Marry Poppins from the roof of our
Victorian. But…from what they were saying, Stephen
is
missing. Jones not only confirmed it, he confirmed that Albert and
all his cronies knew.

I
look into his eyes, and shake my head.

Jones
stares upward then closes his eyes, obviously annoyed. He looks back
to Madeline, who has completely passed out. He scoots his tied up
body toward her, rocking back and forth in an attempt to wiggle into
a sitting position. He almost makes it… when the door to the
cockpit swings open smacks him in the back of the head.

Amazingly,
Jones makes no sound. He just returns to lying on the ground with his
eyes on the newcomer.

“
Oh,
I am so sorry!” A girl says with a light English accent. She
leans down to look at Jones, “Oh, Richard.” She says,
“Hallo. It seems you are some type of prisoner.”

It’s
Cassie. Like my perfect classmate Cassie. The first thought that
comes to me, which I regret a second later, is
:
no way can she fly a plane, too
.
My second, more appropriate for the situation, thought is: what is
she
doing here?

“
Cassidy,”
Jones says, “How did you get mixed up in this?”

“
I
couldn’t very well guard Raven if I was still in Arcata, now,
could I?” Cassie says.

“
You’re
not guarding her; we’re guarding her,” Jones replies.

Cassie
examines Jones’ tied up body slowly, she flicks his still
writhing ropes and then says, “Clearly.” She stands and
steps over Jones, to walk over to Linnie and me. Cassidy falls into
one of the green chairs across from our couch.

“
You’re
Cassidy Dixon, aren’t you?” I say, putting it all
together. No wonder we had the exact same class schedule both
semesters, the same running schedule, everything. Jeez...I really
should have put it together months ago. I just attributed her
constant presence (and inevitable outshining of me) to my bad luck.

Cassidy’s
smile is disarming, friendly, practiced, which instantly makes me
wary. She says, “And you’re Raven Smith. I guess we both
know each other, without
knowing
each other.” She’s wearing normal school garb, jeans and
a ‘Humboldt State’ hooded sweatshirt, but now knowing
that she’s only been playing student her outfit screams,
‘disguise!’.

Linnie,
passed out beside me, grunts in a really strange way, pulling my
attention for a second.

I
turn back to the pretty imposter, and say, “I don’t
really know that much about you just heard you mentioned a couple
times and I met your uncle…” The moment the words come
out of my mouth, I know how awful they are.

She
swallows and I can see the emotion filling her eyes.

Stupid.
Stupid. Yeah, Raven, bring up that you witnessed her beloved uncle,
Father Dixon, being murdered within two minutes of your introduction.
Maybe I
should
live in a padded cell.

“
He
told me he visited you,” She says, smiling though her eyes
still look like they might start dripping emotion at any moment,
“That must have been quite a shock for you.”

I
lean forward, because Cassidy isn’t talking about the murder,
she’s talking about when Father Dixon visited me as an angel;
something I told no one about. “He visits you?” I ask.

“
Not
often,” She replies. “But, I’d love to hear who
mentioned me to you; I know it wasn’t my uncle.” I can
tell she’s changing the subject, which pretty much sucks
because I really want to know about angels and don’t want to
tell her the things I was told about her.

She
smiles, sensing my reluctance. “That bad?” she asks.

“
Tobias
and Albert,” I say.

She
grins, wolfishly and chuckles, “yes, worse than
that
bad.”

I
try to think of a detail that wasn’t negative, but of course
all I can think about is the negative. How her disgrace made them
never admit another woman into the Leijonskjöld’s
compound. How she went to save her little brother and let a big group
of innocent people die, and her brother died. I finally come up with,
“They said you were Stephen’s friend.”

“
I
am,” She raises her eyebrows and waits for me to continue.

I
come out with, “You were the only girl admitted into the
Leijonskjöld’s ‘boys only’ club and then they
kicked you out.”

She
gives a confident grin and throws a glance at Jones tied up on the
floor, and says, “Both true.”

I
decide that turn-around is fair play and change the subject. “Are
you the co-pilot? There is someone else up there, right?”

“
Oh,
no,” she says, “I just helped with the takeoff; made sure
we avoided the birds, Madeline tells me the plants like to hit them.”

“
The
plants?” I ask.

“
Yes,”
she says, “The plants fly the plane. Or, I guess you could say
that Madeline’s magic levitates the plane through the plants,
and the plants drive it.”

Errr,
what? The car was one thing…

Cassidy
slaps my knee, obviously enjoying my terror. “You look like
you’re going to piss your britches.”

“
It’s
a possibility,” I say.

“
Came
as a bit of a surprise to me too, but Madeline transformed them so
they are quite capable. And, if it makes you feel better, I was
planning on sitting in the cockpit anyhow. Best seat in the house.”
Cassidy stands up and says, “We are going to be friends.”

Suddenly,
I really want to believe her; which, honestly, makes me more wary.
Paint me paranoid, but everyone who has come into my life in the past
year has had an ulterior motive.

Except
for… Stephen; which is probably the reason behind my deciding
on (the very stupid option of) barely even mustering an attempt to
fight Madeline.

Then
suddenly, the memory that I spend so much energy battling in the back
of my mind assaults me, striking into my conscious thought:

I
take a step, and then Stephen’s weight pulls me down.

A
pool of Stephen’s blood webs into the cracks between
cobblestones. The blood loss has left his face paler than the morning
sky; his pallor defines the scar, that leads up his cheek to split
his ear in two, all the more. “Don’t tell anyone about
the fire,” Stephen says feverishly as his eyelashes flicker
shut. His words confirm something that I don’t even know that I
suspect. I shouldn’t have survived the Hell Fire. It was bad
that I survived the Hell Fire.