The Paladin Prophecy

#78: THERE’S A REASON THE CLASSICS ARE CLASSICS: THEY’RE

CLASSIC

.

“At six o’clock their mommies and daddies

Will take them home to bed

Because they’re tired little teddy bears—”

Will jerked the needle off the record. A scratch popped in the speakers. “Belinda” came in behind him.

“You always loved that song,” she said.

“I haven’t heard it for a hundred years,” he said. “It’s kind of creepy.”

“You played it all the time when you were little—”

“I’m not really in the mood right now.”

“But you loved it—”

“Yes, I did,” said Will. “And when I played it over and over again, it used to drive you crazy.”

Her smile never wavered. She didn’t even blink. She held out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. “Oatmeal raisin,” she said.

Will stared at the milk. Were his eyes playing tricks on him, or did it have a faint greenish glow?

She kept the plate in front of him. He finally took the milk and a cookie, hoping she wouldn’t wait for him to eat it. “Where’d you go?” she asked.

“For a run.”

“It looks like you fell. Did you hurt yourself?”

“I’m fine.”

“Come help with dinner.”

He followed her to the kitchen, trying not to limp. He broke off half the cookie, dumped it into the umbrella stand in the hall with half the milk, then pretended to chew as he walked in after her. She stood over the stove tending pots, one of them pouring steam into the air. Dr. Robbins’s packet sat on the table where he’d left it, next to his laptop.

“How’s the cookie?” she asked.

He held up the remaining half. “Good.”

“Did you look through all the stuff from the school?”

She’d emptied the packet onto the table: the electronic brochure, a small pamphlet about the school’s history, and a stack of official forms and paperwork.

“Most of it,” said Will.

“So what do you think?”

His iPhone dinged. He fumbled it from his pocket and switched it on. An unfamiliar app popped up on his greeting screen: a feathered quill pen poised over an old-fashioned parchment. The title below read UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR.

Where did this come from?

“Seems pretty interesting,” he said.

“I have to say, I’m having trouble with the boarding school thing. It’s halfway across the country. When would we ever see you? Know what I mean, jelly bean?”

She stepped past him and reached to an upper shelf for the pasta. Her hair parted for a moment, and Will caught a glimpse of a gnarled knob of flesh on the side of her neck, just behind her left ear. A more vivid pink than her skin tone, it looked like recent scar tissue, or an inflamed insect bite. And it was twitching.

What the hell?

As she turned back, Will looked away, trying to mask his fright. He gathered up the laptop and the contents of the packet from the table.

“I have time for a quick shower?”

“Twelve minutes,” she said, looking at her wristwatch.

With the same hand, she poured the whole box of spaghetti into the pot of boiling water. Then shoved the tops into the water with a spoon.

Mom always breaks the spaghetti in half before she drops it in the water.

“I’ll be quick.”

Will walked out of the room and up the stairs, fighting the urge to break out of the house at a dead sprint.

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