Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 38

I GAVE PHOEBE a kind of brotherly hug before she stood to leave. I wanted to try to comfort her and, what the heck, just, you know, hug her. I couldn’t believe how good she smelled. Her hair, everything. Like a garden I’d visited once in the French countryside. Yep, that good.

“We’re going to find Allison,” I whispered before she broke away. “I promise, Phoebe.”

As I watched her leave, I tried to convince myself that I actually would find her sister, rescue her from whatever, and bring her back safely to the Cook family.

I can do that, I thought to myself. Or I don’t deserve to have The List, do I.

Outside the coffee shop, it was California perfect. Room temperature, no wind, a tangerine sunset in the cloudless sky. As I walked home, I hoped Phoebe’s sister was still around to see it.

I was lost in deep thought when I reached out to open the wrought iron gate in front of my house.

Hey, wait a second! Hold up! This house doesn’t have a wrought iron gate!

I double-checked the address. There was no mistake. I couldn’t believe it.

My house wasn’t there anymore!

I stood and stared at rows of headstones, stone angels, weather-beaten tilted crosses. Worse, I could smell the rotting dead all around me.

It was Seth! He’d turned my house into a cemetery.

Not a cutesy, grammar-school, Halloween-decorated-gym kind of cemetery either. We’re talking a heart-bursting, run-for-your-life, Night of the Living Dead-style boneyard.

The worst of it was a Greek temple-sized granite mausoleum with DANIEL carved above Doric columns. Just in case I didn’t get the message. Seth was off-the-chart powerful.

I looked up and down the street to see if any of my neighbors were walking around. The place seemed deserted. How long had the house been a graveyard? I needed to change it back, but how? I’d transformed things before, but I’d never reversed somebody else’s transformation. Could I actually do that? I had no idea.

Only one way to find out. I cleared my head and closed my eyes. Then I pictured the rental property the way it used to look, in extremely vivid and precise detail. I concentrated on the image from the past.

Seconds later, I popped open my eyes.

I winced and groaned out loud. The cemetery was gone, but the building I’d created was a replica of the one I’d lived in when I was in Portland. Worse, the two cops from the Runaway Juvenile Unit were standing outside. They called out, “Daniel! C’mere, Daniel! We want to talk to you, buddy. Where’s your crazy mom and dad?”

I clamped my eyes shut, concentrated, and tried again. Very slowly, I opened my eyes.

Yes! It had worked. The house was back to normal, at least it looked that way. Just a little reorganization of atoms and molecules, that’s all.

I immediately turned around and left the way I’d come. My home base was officially compromised.

Much worse, I was officially compromised.