The Soulkeepers (21 page)

Jacob had allowed himself to grow close to
Uncle John these last couple of months. But now, now that he knew
how twisted this family was, now that the evil of it was poured out
at his feet, he knew for sure what he must do. He had to leave this
place. He had to find his real family, the only real family he'd
ever had. And, he had to do it soon. Because now that he knew how
his uncle really felt about his mother, every minute here felt like
a betrayal.

Master Lee

The knuckles on Jacob's right hand were pale
from gripping his cell phone so tightly. He'd been in this position
a couple of times, chickening out before he dialed the numbers.
What he would say? He didn't even know if he had the right place.
But he wanted to try. He wanted to know why his mother had a box of
knives among her things, and why she had so carefully kept it a
secret.

Jacob took a deep breath and dialed. The
sound of the phone ringing made him nervous and he was tempted to
hang up again but the call was answered before he could chicken
out.

"Red Door Martial Arts," a young female
voice said into his ear.

"Hi…I mean, hello. I have a question about
something that I think was purchased there?"

"Okay, what's your question?"

"Well, I have this wood box that has knives
in it and I was wondering if you sell many of those?"

"Not too many. Why?"

"Well, the key is missing and I was
wondering if you can replace it. Your number was on the bottom of
the box."

"Sure, we should be able to do that. Is it
the black one?"

"No, it's a natural wood. Koa I think."

"Koa, really? And you're sure you got it
here?"

"Well, your number was on the bottom of the
box. It has an engraving of a phoenix on the lid, if that
helps."

"A phoenix?" The girl paused. "What did you
say your name was?"

"I didn't, but it's Jacob."

"Hold on, I need to check something with the
owner."

Jacob heard the girl's footsteps and then
abrupt silence as if she'd muted the phone. A minute or two later
the deep voice he'd heard on the answering machine came on the
line.

"Hello, this is Master Lee. Who is
this?"

"Um, my name's Jacob."

"Hi Jacob. So, where did you find that
box?"

"It was my mom's."

"And, where is your mom now?" The voice was
calming, older, like a grandpa's voice should sound.

He hesitated. "Did you know my mom?"

"Where is Lilly now, Jacob?" Master Lee said
more firmly.

"How did you know my mom?"

"Jacob, that question isn't easy to answer.
If you bring the box to me, we can talk more. Can you come
here?"

"I'm living on the mainland now. I don't
know when I'll be back," he said.

"Can you tell me, where is Lilly? Is she
with you?"

"No. I don't know where she is," Jacob
admitted. "Nobody knows."

Master Lee made a sound like a sob. "We'd
heard, but still we hoped. Jacob, this call isn't about a key, is
it?"

"No. The box is open. I know what's inside.
But I don't understand why my mom had these. And, how did you know
her?"

"I'm sorry Jacob, but I can't help you."

Jacob heard a click and then a dial tone.
He'd hung up. Still, he'd learned what he wanted to learn. His
mother had known Master Lee. The box did come from the Red Door.
And, when Jacob made it back to Oahu, he knew just whom he'd visit
first. He'd find a way to visit Master Lee—in person. Then, he
would find his mom.

The Search

"What the hell?" Jacob said, pulling the
plate from the refrigerator. He'd eventually agreed to care for
Gideon while Dr. Silva made her trip to St. Louis and was following
the directions she'd left for him. The note on the plate said "for
Gideon" in Dr. Silva's tight scrawl but the food looked nothing
like cat food. There was no meat. It was fresh peaches, cottage
cheese, and a variety of fresh vegetables. Could a cat live on
this? He placed the plate next to Gideon's water. The big red cat
came running and buried his face in the dish. It wasn't the
weirdest thing he'd seen since coming to Paris but a vegetarian cat
definitely made the top ten.

With Gideon distracted, Jacob wasted no
time. The relationship between Dr. Silva and her cat was something
he hadn't figured out yet but he had a gut feeling it was better if
Gideon didn't know what he was about to do. Quietly, he walked
toward the door and then veered left to the staircase.

Even with Gideon occupied, everywhere Jacob
moved in the house thousands of eyes followed him. Dr. Silva had a
penchant for Victorian decorating and every conceivable type of
angel could be found in her furnishings. There were statues and
paintings; even the newel post was carved into the image of an
angel. Jacob shivered as he climbed the stairs two at a time.

Instructions for navigating through Oswald
were written in years and years of charts Dr. Silva had kept on her
travels. She'd mentioned them to Jacob when he'd first asked her
how she knew where the tree would take them. These notes were the
key to going home and starting the search for his mom. He planned
to return to the spot where she was last seen, Manoa Falls. It
seemed like the best place to start, not to mention on Oahu where
the Red Door was located. They might not help him over the phone
but they wouldn't deny him in person. If Dr. Silva wouldn't help
him, he would help himself.

The landing at the top of the stairs was a
library. Shelves of books stretched from floor to ceiling in a
three-sided square around several leather recliners and a large
empty table. Against a window overlooking the backyard a huge book
rested on a wooden stand. He walked over to it but was disappointed
to find it was the Oxford International Dictionary. Of course it
wasn't going to be that easy.

He began perusing the books on the shelves.
There was a complete wall of volumes on exotic plants. Another
shelf housed information on herbs, gardens, and landscaping. There
was a shelf of botany textbooks that appeared to be written by Dr.
Silva herself and a row of organic gardening magazines.

Once it was obvious that the library didn't
contain what he was looking for, he headed down the hall, opening
doors as he went. There were six bedrooms filled with furniture
covered in white sheets. Of course, none of these rooms would get
any use; Dr. Silva lived alone and as far as Jacob knew had never
had a guest. There were two bathrooms, as empty and unused as any
of the other rooms.

At the very end of the hall, he opened the
door to the master bedroom. This room looked lived-in, or maybe a
better description would be died-in. Dr. Silva's bedroom was black,
black walls, a black comforter, and wrought iron fixtures. The only
color in the room came from red candles whose wax had dripped in
various patterns on the lacquer and the large stained glass window
Jacob realized was the repaired version of the one he'd broken.

Malini was right about the black. It did
look like a cave. He entered the room and was swallowed by the
darkness. He wondered how it must feel at night, devoid of even the
light that streamed through the stained glass window. Like
everything else in her house, the image in the window was of
angels, two reaching for each other. The background looked like the
Garden of Eden. There was a tree and a brook. The first angel, a
glorious vision of blue and white was depicted reaching down from
the heavens above the tree in the garden. From the roots of the
tree, the second angel was reaching up, the hand emerging from the
slate and black depths. The wings were leathery black like a bat's,
the body humanoid but with serpent skin and vertical slit yellow
pupils like a cat. This was a dark angel, crawling from the depths
of hell. What had Dr. Silva called it? A Watcher.

"Creepy. Who the hell would want that in
their house?" Jacob said. He turned his attention back to his
quest. "Where is it?" he whispered to himself. Opening drawers and
digging through shelves, he searched for the notebooks without
success. He replaced everything exactly the way he'd found it. He
descended the stairs and opened the front door to leave. Taking one
last look up toward the landing, he thought about places he could
search the next day. Gideon was looking down at him, tail
twitching.

"How long have you been there?" Jacob
wondered out loud.

The cat answered with a menacing growl.

Independence Day

On the fourth of July, Jacob rushed through
his chores at Dr. Silva's in order to join Malini and her family to
celebrate. Although he'd searched every part of the Victorian, he
hadn't found any clues to where the notebooks were hidden. He
decided taking the day off to have some fun with Malini wasn't a
bad idea.

The Guptas had a cottage on Lake Stelton, a
relatively small natural body of water just under an hour from
Paris. Homey vacation cottages lined the shore. The Guptas' place
was one of the largest: a cedar two-story nestled in the pine trees
with a gigantic wrap-around porch and a slip where Jim Gupta docked
his ski boat during the summer. Jacob had never skied before but
Malini swore it was a blast, so he promised to give it a try.

"I'll go first, so you can watch how it's
done, right?" Malini said with a wink. She pulled her white
cover-up off. Jacob pretended not to notice how unbelievably
beautiful she was in her aqua blue bikini. Her parents seemed
completely oblivious to their daughter's level of attractiveness
and he didn't want to be the one to draw their attention to it.

She threw on a life jacket and climbed into
the water. Mrs. Gupta handed her a ski and Malini leaned back in
the gentle waves to get her foot into the boot. Once she was
positioned over the ski, Jacob tossed her the rope. The boat idled
against her weight.

"Hit it!" she yelled, and Jim Gupta threw
the throttle forward. Malini popped out of the water and swung out
to the side of the boat before the wake from the boat could meet
her ski. She stayed out there for a while getting comfortable and
then cut deep on her left edge, stretching her body out almost
parallel to the surface of the water. Cutting in, she jumped the
wake, catching air before landing on the other side and leaning on
her right edge. After a few more passes and a lap around the lake,
she let go of the rope and sank gracefully into the water.

"So that's how it's done, huh?" Jacob said,
helping her up the ladder. "Something tells me you've done this
before."

"Oh just about four hundred times," she
laughed.

He donned a larger life vest that Mrs. Gupta
handed him and climbed into the water. The sensation was
remarkable. He'd grown up near the ocean and had always been at
home in the water. But this was the first time he'd been submerged
since he'd discovered his gift. This wasn't like the rain or a
shower; he was surrounded by it. Like before, the individual
molecules of water hummed to him but now they also buzzed against
his skin. Over the last few weeks, as he'd continued to train with
Dr. Silva, the power had grown stronger and more predictable.
Maybe, it was experience or that he had learned to listen more
intently for the hum. But whatever the reason, today the whole lake
felt like an extension of himself.

"Earth to Jacob?" Malini was holding out a
pair of skis to him.

"Why two? You only used one." Jacob willed
the sensation away and the hum stopped. He'd try this the
old-fashioned way. A normal boy, that just happened to be a
Soulkeeper, out skiing with his girlfriend.

"It's easier to learn with two."

"I think I'd like to give one a try," he
said.

"Really Jake, it's nearly impossible your
first time. I've had loads of practice. You should start with
two."

"One," he insisted, taking the one with the
toe strap on the back from her hand. She pulled the other back into
the boat.

"Suit yourself," she laughed, raising her
eyebrows.

Jacob leaned back and put
the ski on his right foot, sliding his other toe through the strap
in the back
.
He
knew he could do this. How hard could it be? The rope plopped down
in the water in front of him and the boat trolled away. He bent his
knees like Malini had and gripped the handle firmly, feeling the
gentle tug. When he felt himself balanced over the ski, he yelled,
"Hit it."

The boat lurched forward. Jacob
overcompensated by bending at the middle. Big mistake. His
bodyweight spilled frontward, the ski went back and he skipped
across the water like a stone, face first, before letting go of the
rope and sinking into the lake.

"Owww," he said as the sound of the boat and
Malini's laughter approached.

"Are you okay?" she yelled. Mrs. Gupta
looked concerned and tugged at Malini's elbow.

"Fine. I'm fine, Mrs. Gupta. I'm good. Let's
try again."

"Are you sure you don't want the other ski?"
Malini said.

"Positive." He readjusted in the water and
grabbed the rope again.

"Just remember to lean back, bend your knees
and tighten your abs," she called.

The boat dragged him along in the water and
he shifted his weight so he was almost sitting on the back of the
ski. "Hit it!" he called.

When the lurching came, he was ready. He
leaned back against the rope, arms straight, abs tight. The water
flowed over his body as he straightened his knees to get above it.
But then the wake of the boat knocked into him, the ski slipped
forward and Jacob went rolling across the water again, the ski
popping off his foot and clipping him in the shoulder before he
sank. He grabbed it before it could float away.