Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern Book 4) Read online

  “He’ll probably identify you eventually. I mean, you were arrested for breaking into his hangar-slash-morgue and don’t be surprised if he finds something to tie Ping to the dragon.”

  “He won’t be able to prove anything about Ping and the dragon,” Mara said.

  “Why not?”

  “The dragon is gone. Sent back to its own realm Friday night, right after it burned down my mother’s house.”

  The detective’s eyes widened. “What? How did that happen?”

  Mara held up a hand. “It’s a long story. Just take my word. You won’t be hearing from the dragon again.”

  “Okay, then what did you do with the robot?”

  Mara went blank for a moment. “What?”

  “You know, Cameron Lee, the robot passenger from another realm, whose head you were using as a tracking device to find your mother and the dragon?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Pirelli’s got a copy of the report we received from the hospital, when they asked us to come take a look at Cam. Remember how the administrators at the hospital were weirdly vague about the whole thing? Pirelli will want to take a look for himself.”

  “Well, that might be a problem.”

  “How so?”

  “We lost his head.”

  Bohannon inhaled deeply, a look of exasperation on his face. “You lost his head? How?”

  “The Aphotis appeared in my living room and took it.”

  “Come again?”

  “Remember Stella Reese—the woman who shared her memory with me about the phenomenon that appeared in her kitchen and tried to evaporate her?”

  The detective nodded.

  “Same thing happened in my house, except it happened to Cam’s head, and we were in the other room when it did,” she said.

  “What about the rest of his body? Is it still at the hospital?”

  “As far as I know. I haven’t been back, but I was planning to go there this afternoon and see if I could help Cam.”

  “It might be best if you just kept your distance and let Pirelli take the body. If he runs into you again, it could turn into a real mess. Corpses may not be the only thing he can make disappear.”

  Mara leaned across the counter. “I can’t do that. Cam needs my help.”

  “What can you do for a headless robot?”

  “He’s a real person, and he asked for my help. I’m the one who put him in this situation, and the least I can do is try to help him.”

  “He’s asking for your help? I mean, how?”

  “He sent me a text message.”

  “From his headless body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, you better get over to the hospital and move that body without anyone knowing it was you, because Pirelli will eventually make his way there, and, after that, you are not likely to see Cam again.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Ping and Sam dashed out the back door of the bakery into the dark, drizzly alley, jogging through the headlight beams of Mara’s Subaru Outback before reaching the passenger doors and jumping inside. Ping sat on Mara’s backpack in the front passenger seat and had to lift his hips to extract it from beneath him.

  “Oh, sorry about that,” Mara said, reaching for the backpack. “I thought I should bring along some tools and things, in case I needed them while I worked on Cam, even though he specifically said I was not to use our archaic instruments on his body.”

  She handed the bag over the seatback to Sam, who was settling into the backseat. Turning around, she put the car in gear and slowly navigated from the alley into the slow-moving end-of-workday traffic on Woodstock Boulevard. After going less than half a block, heading east, they stopped at a traffic light.

  “I appreciate you coming with us, but I think Sam and I probably could have dealt with getting Cam’s body out of the hospital storage room,” Mara said.

  “I’m sure that’s true, but I thought it might look odd if someone were to observe two teenagers removing a body from the hospital. It’s less likely to draw attention with an adult on hand. If nothing else, it can’t hurt to have an extra pair of hands or someone to act as a lookout. Besides, I feel a little responsible for putting you in this position. After all, I was the one who suggested you wait before doing something about Cam. Now that federal investigator is on his way,” Ping said.

  From the backseat, Sam extended his arm between them, holding out a paper coffee cup, its lid sealed with several layers of tape. “Why do you have this old cup in your book bag?” he asked.

  Mara glanced into the rearview mirror to see Sam and said, “I would appreciate it if you would not root through my belongings without my permission.”

  “It’s just a bunch of tools, the Chronicle, a couple rocks and this cup. It’s not like it’s your underwear or something,” he said. He shook the cup. “It feels more like powder than liquid. What’s in it?”

  The traffic ahead cleared, and Mara pressed the gas hard enough to force Sam to sit back, thereby retracting the cup from the space between Mara and Ping. Keeping her eyes forward, she said, “I think those are Juaquin Prado’s ashes. I found them on a shelf in the office at the shop when I was gathering some tools.”

  “Gross. What are you doing with a dead man’s ashes in a cup?” Sam asked.

  Ping turned and said, “Prado turned to ashes after being shot during a bank robbery, and Detective Bohannon brought them to us. Your sister used them to identify the correct node to select to travel to Prado’s realm via the Chronicle. That’s how she learned Prado’s spirit had gone viral and caused the shedding to spread.”

  “Great. So why do you have them in the book bag?” Sam caught Mara’s eye in the rearview mirror.

  “I had forgotten we even had them. I was just going to ask Ping how we should dispose of them.” She looked to Ping. “What do you think?”

  He shrugged and said, “I suppose, technically, they are evidence in the bank robbery case. Perhaps you should return them to the detective.”

  “Excellent idea. That’s why you’re the brains of this operation. I was thinking I would have to bury them or something.” She glanced toward Sam in the backseat and added, “Put the cup in the bag and stop snooping.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, after circling the hospital once and accidently backing out onto Market Street in southeast Portland, Mara found her way to the entrance of the parking garage. She wondered why no signs pointed the way, at least until she pulled up to the tiny booth with a retractable gate arm in front of the building. A sign on the side of the booth read Employee Parking Only. Mara craned her neck to find a way in around the barrier but only saw an exit lane, which featured a barrier arm extending from the opposite side of the booth. When she turned to face forward again, an attendant exited the booth, pointing to an electronic card swipe mounted to a pole two feet behind Mara’s window. She had missed it when she pulled up. She rolled down her window.

  “If you don’t have an employee pass, ma’am, you can’t enter the garage. Back out before someone pulls in behind you,” the attendant said.

  “We’ve got to pick up a large package, and I was told to come in this entrance,” Mara said.

  The attendant shook his head. “I don’t know who told you that, but there are no pickups in the garage. You might want to check at the rear of the building. A couple vendor loading areas are there. That’s the only place I know of where you can make a pick up. Now please back out.”

  Mara put the car in Reverse, but Sam reached over her seat and tapped her on the shoulder. He opened the back passenger window, leaned out and called to the attendant. “Excuse me, sir. Could you help me with something?”

  The attendant looked put out but sauntered closer to the car.

  Locking gazes with the man as he approached the side of the car, Sam nodded and said, “She swiped her card, and it didn’t work.”

  The attendant nodded in sync with the boy. “Yeah, I saw her swipe it, and the gate didn’t go
up.”

  “When she showed you the card, it might have had a scratch on the back, but it was definitely a valid pass to get into the parking garage.”

  The attendant continued to nod. “Happens all the time.”

  “What do you normally do when that happens?” Sam asked.

  “I just open the gate manually.”

  “That sounds like a good idea. Why don’t you go to the booth and open the gate manually? After we enter, you won’t even remember the problem.”

  The man turned on his heel and returned to the gate, muttering, “No problem at all.”

  Sam sat back and closed his window.

  As the barrier arm rose in front of the car, Mara said, “You know, I’m beginning to think being a prompter might be better than all this progenitor stuff I’ve got to deal with.”

  She drove into the garage and followed the signs pointing to level P2. After executing two tight turns on narrow ramps leading deeper underground, she pulled up to a yellow curb next to a wide sidewalk, along a concrete wall running the length of the garage and featuring doors spaced about thirty feet apart—the storage rooms. Mara cut the car’s ignition, opened her window and leaned out.

  “Okay, that’s the elevator alcove back there,” she said, looking behind them. Pointing to the second door from that direction, she added, “That’s the room he was in on Friday, before all the dragon business started up. Let’s go.”

  Ping exited his car door and stood. Over the hood, he said to Mara, “Those doors have a keypad lock. I assume you know the code to get in.”

  “Not exactly,” she said. She peered at Sam. “Bring my book bag.”

  “Do I look like a bellhop or something?” he said. Mara made a move to open the back door. He raised a hand and grinned at her. “Just yanking your chain, sis. Mellow out. I’ll get it.”

  The garage seemed more foreboding at night. A pinkish light cast weak shadows on the concrete walls and asphalt surface. Footsteps and squealing tires echoed from the level above, but Mara couldn’t detect any sound or movement from here, the lowest level of the garage. She heard only their own footfalls as they approached the storage room door. When they stopped in front of it, Sam handed the book bag to her, but she shook her head.

  “Don’t you need your tools? I figured, without the code, you could probably take apart the keypad and hot-wire it or something,” Sam said.

  “I suppose if I had an hour or two to figure it out, that might work,” she said. “Just hold on to the bag. I want you and Ping to lean against the wall on either side of the door and keep an eye on things behind me. I’m doing something a little different here.”

  Sam glanced over to Ping, as if he might know what Mara was up to, but he simply shrugged and leaned his backside against the wall on the left side of the door. Sam said, “Okay,” and slouched on the right side.

  Standing directly before the door, Mara cupped her right hand in front of the doorknob and narrowed her eyes in concentration. Her fingers loosened and extended slightly as if she expected a ball to land in her palm.

  Sam looked up from her hand and frowned. “What are you trying to do?”

  “Shut up,” she said through tight lips.

  Her fingers flexed again. The doorknob blurred.

  “She’s pixelating it,” Sam said.

  “Shush.”

  Mara’s eyes tightened into a squint, and her fingers opened. The doorknob vanished in a flash of light. A second burst of brilliant white appeared above her hand. When it receded, two doorknobs bridged by a complete locking mechanism sat in her palm. The weight of it pulled Mara’s arm downward, so she relaxed her arm and let it drop to her side.

  Sam pointed to the round hole in the door and said, “Cool. You popped the whole thing from the door.”

  Ping looked impressed. “The element of Space, but you didn’t have to exchange one object for another. When were you aware that you had developed this ability?”

  Handing the doorknobs and locking mechanism to her brother, Mara pulled open the door. “That’s the first time I’ve done it intentionally. It happened spontaneously during the battle with the dragon, and I’ve been wondering if I could do it when I’m not freaked out.”

  “It appears so,” Ping said. “Why not just pixelate the lock? Make it go away?”

  “I’m hoping we can get in and out of here without looking like a felony has been committed. With any luck I can replace the mechanism before we leave. If we simply break in, that might draw more attention, if the feds come snooping around,” she said, stepping into the storage room.

  She remembered the light switch was on the far side of the room and slowly walked forward with her arms extended. After several steps, her thigh grazed the gurney, and her hip rubbed against what felt like a hand. She found the switch and flipped it. Her gaze locked on the decapitated body on the gurney. Her phone vibrated in her pocket.

  Taking it out, she saw an opened message from Cam, the first she’d received since Friday. She tapped it, and the message displayed Hurry.

  CHAPTER 4

  For a second Mara froze. Blankly she looked at Ping, who remained in the doorway of the concrete-walled storage room next to Sam. Still standing behind the gurney, she extended her arm over the body and held out the phone, so they could see the screen.

  “Is that a text message from Cam?” Ping asked.

  Mara nodded. “But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in a hurry. Get him out of here? Repair him? He hasn’t called, and he’s got no head to talk to this time.”

  Sam pointed to the body and said, “Hit Reply and ask him.”

  “Duh.” Mara rolled her eyes and typed on the screen What do you need me to do? I will do my best to hurry. She hit Send.

  She stared at the headless body on the gurney and hefted the phone in her hand as if the motion would speed a response. After a moment the phone vibrated again. On the screen the message read Return to Repository 97210. Hurry. She read it aloud, then glanced at Ping and asked, “Repository?”

  Ping shook his head. “Some manner of storage facility? Since he is asking to be returned to it, he’s not referencing this storage room.” Glancing at the phone, he said, “Ask him.”

  Mara typed on her phone Repository?

  After another short wait, the phone vibrated again. Mara read the response. Cameron Lee, Receptacle 7531-12-7250. Return to Repository 97210. Hurry. She frowned and said, “That’s not very much help.”

  She typed on her phone What repository are you referring to? and hit Send.

  Ping was about to say something when the phone vibrated again. She looked at the screen and said, “It’s the same message again, repeated verbatim. It looks like it could be some kind of automated error message. Maybe Cam set it up to ping my Wi-Fi signal, and, when I got close enough, my phone received it.”

  “Why didn’t he just call again?” Sam asked.

  “Maybe he couldn’t. Before his head was taken, he was concerned about the weakness of the signal between his head and torso. He said it would eventually degrade to the point that he would have the personality of a toaster. It looks like he might be there, if all he can do is send the same message over and over. Maybe I can do something to help him, make some repair to his body that will enable him to give us a little more information. Where are my tools?”

  Sam held up the book bag. “Your pack mule, at your service.”

  As she reached for the bag, her phone rang. Her heart jumped, thinking that Cam might have found a way to communicate, but, when she glanced at the tiny screen, it read Bohannon. She held up a finger, then used it to tap the screen.

  “Hello, detective,” she said.

  Concern in his voice, Bohannon said, “Where are you right now?”

  “We’re in the storage room at the hospital. As soon as I got into the room, Cam sent me a—”

  “You’ve got to get out of there. I just found out that Pirelli and his folks are at the hospital right now, meeting with some of the
administrators. They will probably show up down there any minute.”

  “Hold on,” Mara said. She looked at Ping and Sam and said, “Come in here and close the door.”

  In the distance, a muffled pinging sound bounced off the concrete walls in the cavernous parking garage. Sam leaned out the door, looked over his shoulder and said, “Someone is coming in the elevator.”

  “Shut the door,” Mara said. She pointed to the locking mechanism in Sam’s hand and said, “Hold that up for a minute.” Mara narrowed her eyes at it, and it disappeared in a flash of light. A moment later, light shot through the hole in the door, and the mechanism appeared, mounted properly where it belonged. Sam pushed the door closed until it clicked.

  “Presumably someone with the access code will be escorting Pirelli here,” Ping said.

  A look of panic swept over Mara’s face, but it was quickly replaced by determination. She held out her hand, and a bolt of lightning shot from her palm, striking the doorknob next to Sam’s hip.

  He jumped and yelled, “Hey! Watch it with that!”

  Mara nodded toward the door and said to him, “Check to see if it’s jammed, just to make sure.”

  Sam looked at the smoking doorknob and said, “I’m not touching that. It’s melted metal. We’ll just have to take our chances.”

  Bohannon shouted through the phone, “What’s going on?”

  Mara put the phone to her ear. “We’re not sure. Someone came down in the elevator, and we’re locked in the storage room with Cam’s body. It’s probably just an employee getting to their car in the garage.”

  “You guys need to leave. If Pirelli sees one of you near that robot, he’ll probably hold you for questioning or maybe for a whole lot more than that. There won’t be any lenient judges or technicalities to bail you out this time.”

  “Okay,” Mara said. “I’ll call you later when we’re not in hiding.”

  “Just don’t let him see you with the robot,” Bohannon said, as Mara tapped the End icon on the phone.

  She walked around the gurney and toward the door, where Sam and Ping stood with their ears to it. Sidling up to them, she listened as footfalls echoed in the garage. The noise seemed to move from the elevator, past the storage room door and fade away in some distant corner of the garage. All three of them exhaled and straightened. Mara walked back to the gurney.