Kaitlyn led the way out of the conference room toward a series of narrow hallways at the back of the building. Just as she had promised, a janitor’s closet offered up an access panel in the rear wall. They used a wrench from the closet to loosen the bolts and remove the panel. The resulting hole was an easy fit for Sketch and just barely large enough for Rush to squeeze through.
On the other side was a small shed that stood against the outside wall of the lodge. Gardening tools hung from metal pegs, neatly filling the top half of every wall, leaving the bottom half free for stacked bags of peat moss, weed killer, and fertilizer.
Rush went first, shoving a few bags out of the way and then standing up to make room for Kaitlyn. The shed was too small to hold more than two people comfortably, but Kaitlyn slid past him and opened the outside door without any hesitation at all—ignoring Rush, who threw one hand up in surprise and then dropped it lamely when nothing happened.
“I told you,” she said. “This door isn’t on the alarm system. I’m Gears, remember? This is my thing.”
“My mistake, your mechanicalness,” Rush apologized, throwing her an exaggerated bow. “After you.”
They all made their way outside and followed Kaitlyn down the path toward the maintenance garage.
“The garage has its own alarm system,” Kaitlyn whispered when they reached the normal-looking door at the far end of the building, “but I watched Ammu reset it when we left after our session, so I know the code. We just have to get in.”
She fished around in her pocket and pulled out an odd-looking tool set, chose a couple of small tools from it, pushed them into the lock, and started to fiddle around with them. For the second time that night, everyone just stared at her.
“Where the hell did you learn how to do that?” Sam finally asked.
“It’s really not that hard,” Gears whispered. “Little springs inside the lock push the pins down to keep it from turning. You just push the pins back up, keeping enough tension on them so they don’t fall back down again… and… voilà!”
The door opened and Kaitlyn slipped through it. She entered the security code into a beeping alarm pad, and the beeping stopped.
“Aren’t you coming?” she asked, popping her head back out to see why everyone was still outside.
“I think maybe your tag should be CIA,” Rush said.
“Nah,” Kaitlyn replied, giggling. “I like ‘Gears’!”
She disappeared into the garage again, and this time the others followed her.
? ? ?
The shop didn’t have any windows to give them away, so Kaitlyn turned on the overhead lights. “I officially call this meeting of the Cloak-and-Dagger Society to order!” she said grandly.
“Sure, okay,” Sam said, rolling her eyes.
“First order of business: why was Ammu acting so weird this morning?”
“Right?” Sam pounded both hands against the work table. “Like saying nothing happened yesterday.”
“And then acting relieved when it didn’t work today,” Mackenzie added.
“Maybe it’s dangerous?” Kaitlyn suggested.
“Maybe,” Mackenzie acknowledged, “but if that’s all it was, he would have been acting weird yesterday too.”
“So, what then?” Sam demanded.
“I think whoever’s watching us doesn’t know what’s going on,” Mackenzie said. “I don’t think they could see that thing yesterday.”
“How could they not see it?” Daniel muttered.
“I don’t know,” Mackenzie admitted, “but think about it. Why else would he stand in front of that one-way mirror and say it didn’t work?”
“Unless he didn’t see it himself,” Sam said, thinking out loud. “But then he just would have said it didn’t work. He wouldn’t have acted all weird about it.”
“Agreed,” Mackenzie responded. “I think he knows it worked, and obviously we know it worked—but whoever’s watching us, I think they don’t know it worked, and Ammu doesn’t want them to figure it out.”
“But why not?” Kaitlyn asked.
“I have no idea,” Mackenzie said, and everyone fell silent, pondering the question.
“Whoever we’re doing this for, ultimately,” Rush said finally, “wouldn’t Ammu want them to know it was working? I mean, that’s gotta make him look good, right?”
“Yeah,” Mackenzie agreed. “Something must have changed. But what?”
“I don’t know,” Rush said. “But that thing…” He paused, not sure he wanted to admit what he’d felt.
“What thing?” Sketch wanted to know.
“I’m pretty sure that thing yesterday was some kind of portal. I swear I could feel something on the other side, trying to come through.”
“I knew it!” Sam crowed.
“Keep your voice down,” Rush hissed. “But yeah, I think you and Grid were right. I think Ammu has us trying to… I don’t know… to call something here… from somewhere else… and I think it has to be that gryphon. But I have no idea why.”
“Maybe if we actually do it, we can figure that out,” Sam suggested.
“But Ammu doesn’t want us to anymore,” Kaitlyn protested.
“He doesn’t want us to do it in front of that mirror,” Sam countered. “But there’s no mirror here.”
“What? Now?” Rush glared at Sam. “You’re out of your mind.”
“I want to see it,” Sketch said quietly. He was tired of being the only one who could see things nobody else could see. If his friends could see the portal and the people behind the mirror couldn’t, maybe the gryphon would be like that too.
“Look, Sketch—” Rush began, but Kaitlyn interrupted him.
“I want to see it, too,” she said. “I mean, come on! It’s a miniature gryphon! Don’t you guys want to see a gryphon?”
Daniel shrugged. If Kaitlyn wanted to see a gryphon, he didn’t want to argue against her, but he wasn’t so sure about the idea himself.
“Grid,” Rush protested. “For God’s sake, help me out here. Please tell them we should not be trying to summon something we don’t know anything about—especially not all on our own in the middle of the night without any backup.”
“Look, I want to know what’s really going on,” Mac replied cautiously, “but I’m not the one who freaked out. What do you know that we don’t?”
Rush just glared at her, refusing to answer.
“Rush?” Kaitlyn tried. “We’ll listen to you, OK? If you tell us we shouldn’t do it, we won’t do it. But can you tell us why?”
“I don’t know,” Rush said reluctantly.
“Rush,” Mac prompted him again, leaving his name hanging in the air.
“Fine!” he said finally. “I felt it coming through, OK? There was definitely, absolutely, no-doubt-about-it something coming through that portal. Wouldn’t that have freaked you out?”
“Probably,” Mac admitted. “But Ammu keeps telling us to trust our unconscious minds, and the rest of us didn’t sense anything wrong. You’re the only one who felt it, whatever it was. So did it feel like something we wouldn’t want to bring here?”
For several long moments, Rush didn’t say a word. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. They all just watched him, waiting for an answer.