“Demon, I cast thee out!” Mr. Lebkuchen said, planting his feet on the ground and shoving Danny toward the coil.

  Danny felt weak and hurt and part of him wanted to just let events carry him along to a quick death.

  But then he thought: No!

  What would Dan Flight of Eagles do?

  What would the samurai in Japan do?

  What would Jeff do back at the Tropicana Wash?

  They would fight to the very last.

  He would fight to the very last.

  Danny bit into Mr. Lebkuchen’s wrist; he bit hard into tendon and bone.

  Mr. Lebkuchen screamed, and at the same moment, behind him, a window smashed as a brick came hurtling through it.

  Tony Meadows climbed through the broken frame a moment later.

  “Danny, what the hell is going on in here?” she yelled.

  “Better yet!” Mr. Lebkuchen cried. “Two birds with one stone!”

  “It’s Lebkuchen. It was him all along! He’s crazy!” Danny said.

  “I will cast thee into the fire too!” Lebkuchen cried, walking toward Tony.

  “Cast this,” Tony said, throwing her backpack at him.

  “And this!” Danny said, freeing himself. He spotted a heavy wooden chair and tossed it.

  The chair and backpack caught Lebkuchen in the stomach, tripping him and sending him clattering into the Bunsen burner gas taps at the back of the classroom.

  He got to his feet quickly just as they heard a car screech to a halt outside the building.

  Tony tried to dodge him, but he was too fast for her. Mr. Lebkuchen grabbed Tony by the scruff of the neck.

  “No!” she yelled, and began clawing at him.

  “Perhaps it should be ladies first,” Mr. Lebkuchen said, and carried her toward the Tesla coil.

  Danny jumped him and tried to tackle him to the ground, but Lebkuchen was far too strong and threw Danny away from him, hurling him almost all the way into the hissing coil.

  Danny landed awkwardly on the floor just in front of the machine.

  “I’ll blame you for both of your deaths,” Mr. Lebkuchen said to Danny. “And you won’t be able to contradict me because you’ll be dead.”

  With Tony under one arm he walked purposefully toward Danny.

  Danny tried to get up but his leg gave way under him.

  “Wait a minute! You smell that? You fell against the gas taps and turned them on. That’s gas! If we don’t get out of here we’re all going to go up in flames!” Danny said.

  Mr. Lebkuchen laughed. “All the better. The Controllers, the Masters of this false reality, will reward me for this in the next go-round. But first you, the two of you, into the flame.”

  Suddenly they heard banging at the classroom door.

  “Open up, Lebkuchen, the game’s up. The cops are on their way!” Bob was yelling as he shoulder-charged the door.

  Mr. Lebkuchen’s eyes widened for a moment, but then he shook his head and continued walking toward Danny. “So be it; we will all of us go together!” he snarled.

  “Come on, Lebkuchen, open up. It’s over!” Walt yelled through the door.

  “Shut up!” Mr. Lebkuchen yelled back.

  “Why did you do it, Lebkuchen? To impress your father?” Bob yelled.

  Mr. Lebkuchen was taken aback. “What do you know of him?” he snapped, dropping Tony to the ground in his rage.

  “We know everything. Okinawa, the murder, the suicide. That’s how it started, isn’t it? But then you came back to the States and it all stopped for a long time. What got you started again? What gave you the push? Did something happen? Did you meet someone?”

  “You know nothing! You are ignorant!” Mr. Lebkuchen screamed, and advanced the last two paces toward Danny. “Come, boy, let us enter the coil together!”

  He bent down to pick Danny up, but before he could reach him, Tony grabbed a piece of broken glass from the window and tossed it underhand to Danny, who caught it in his outstretched T-shirt.

  The glass glittered in the Colorado sunlight.

  It was long and sharp like a dagger.

  Mr. Lebkuchen grabbed at Danny and the boy stabbed the glass into his principal’s shoulder.

  Mr. Lebkuchen screamed, clutching his shoulder, and fell backward, tangling himself in the snake pit of cables at the base of the Tesla coil.

  Tony helped Danny to his feet just as the classroom door burst open and Bob and Walt rushed into the room.

  “I smell gas! Kids, quickly, we’ve got to get out of here!” Bob yelled.

  Mr. Lebkuchen was desperately trying to free himself from the cables. His eyes were wild and panicked.

  “We’ve got to help him!” Danny said, pointing at Mr. Lebkuchen.

  “No time! We’ve got to run!” Walt said as he and Bob helped Danny to his feet.

  All four of them ran out of the classroom and sprinted across the playground.

  They dived into the snow just as the Tesla coil ignited the room full of gas.

  There was an almighty explosion that sent fragments two hundred feet into the air and whose percussion wave set off every car alarm in Cobalt and Manitou Springs.

  Burning splinters and liquefied glass rained down on Tony, Bob, Walt, and Danny.

  “Cover your eyes!” Bob yelled.

  Yellow fire licked the sky, and the Tesla coil, which had taken off like a rocket, landed with an enormous crash.

  The fire burned and the debris came down like snow in a nuclear winter.

  People were pouring out of their houses now. In the distance Danny could hear a fire truck already on its way from Manitou and a cop car coming up from the Springs.

  Danny was still dazed. “Bob? What are you doing here?”

  “Saving your bacon,” Bob said with a smile.

  “Well, thank you,” Danny said.

  “You did well, son,” Bob said.

  “I was lucky,” Danny said.

  “Nah, you weren’t lucky; you were smart—both of you,” Bob said, and winked at Tony.

  Walt was talking now. Danny nodded, but he couldn’t really hear anymore because of the ringing in his ears.

  Seeing was enough.

  An exploded classroom.

  Burning drywall. Upturned desks. Fizzing electric cables.

  And all around, smoke—tight corkscrews of smoke curling from dozens of little debris fires into the impossibly blue sky.

  Sirens. More sirens. A news helicopter. Firefighters. Cops. FBI.

  Danny and Tony were taken to the hospital.

  For Tony this was the first time ever.

  For Danny it was the second time in a matter of days.

  They were both released the following day.

  Interviewed.

  Their picture in the local paper.

  Their picture in the Denver Post.

  Of course, the school was closed.

  First for a week and then for two weeks.

  At an emergency parents’ meeting it was decided that Mrs. Sanchez, the Spanish teacher, would take over as principal and run Cobalt Junior High along traditional lines until they could figure out what to do next. Only the science classroom had been destroyed and it seemed a shame to let the rest of the buildings go to waste.

  But Direct Instruction was scrapped and the silent system was scrapped.

  The uniform was kept, but they lost the gloves.

  Newspapers speculated about Mr. Lebkuchen’s motives, but no one really knew the answer. Was it about his father? Was it about some satanic religious cult? Was it about his terminal illness? Or was it simply the fact that he was insane?

  He had kept a journal, on the cover of which he had written the line “It was written that I be logical to the nightmare of my choice,” but, frustratingly for the investigating officers, all the other pages had been torn out and presumably destroyed.

  It came out about Bob’s part in the rescue.

  He was released early and said good-bye to everyone at a meal at Casa Bonita and hopped a bus for anywhere that wasn’t Colorado.

  Life slowly got back to normal.

  February.

  March.

  April.

  It wasn’t quite as cold.

  Daffodils were everywhere.

  The casino was open and doing a roaring trade.

  Danny and Tony held hands as they walked to Tom’s house.

  Her hair was short, boyish, spiky. It would always be like that. Eventually she would get a nose ring.

  Danny wouldn’t like it, but he’d put up with it.

  They walked up Hill Street and rang Tom’s doorbell.

  “Poor Tom. He hasn’t been the same since the SSU collapsed. No one to spy on, no big conspiracies … His life’s pretty dull,” Tony said.

  Danny rubbed his chin.

  Coming to Cobalt had changed him. It had deepened him. He had grown up and he had become a more astute observer of himself and everyone else.

  He could acknowledge Walt and accept him, flaws and all.

  He could look within himself and see his own flaws.

  And sometimes this self-knowledge helped him understand others, too.

  There was something about Tom that he didn’t quite like.

  Something—

  “What is it?” Tony asked, concern knitting her brows together.

  Danny shrugged. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

  “I was saying poor Tom, his life is empty now.”

  “Don’t worry about Tom. He’ll find something else, you’ll see,” Danny said.

  “He’s going to give us that awful hot chocolate,” Tony said.

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “I like this,” Tony replied, and kissed him. He kissed her back. Her lips were soft, salty.

  A thought occurred to him. “Hey, you ever been to the ocean?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Next time I go there with Mom and Dad, you wanna come? I’ve got cousins in L.A.,” Danny said.

  “I’d like to meet them,” Tony said.

  “You will,” Danny replied, and rang the bell again.

  A sunrise. A gag of gray light through the webs of haze. I can smell the forest. I can see birds, planes, clouds on the mountaintop. But I am in the city. The pavement pushes up coins and paper and the rings from plastic bottles. My coat is heavy, my ski pants thick.

  I am lonely.

  People disappear as they pass behind me. It’s all darkness back there. I don’t turn to make sure. I just know.

  I walk through the north wind. Through the empty streets.

  The school is deserted at this time of the morning.

  The science lab bulldozed. The police tape gone.

  It’s as if the whole planet has been evacuated, with only one person left behind.

  Me.

  I sigh and leave the school and walk home.

  A long walk. I miss Lebkuchen. It was almost as if we shared one mind, so similar were our thoughts. The two of us, together. And now I am here by myself. Stuck here. On this scratch of land. Alone. I walk through Colorado Springs to Hill Street, to my house, and up three flights to my room.

  I think about the FBI.

  I think about them with contempt.

  They’ve solved nothing. They are idiots.

  Of course, how could they know? They couldn’t know. It didn’t match their profiles. Serial killers worked alone. They didn’t take apprentices. Or disciples. One case in a hundred was like that. They worked by themselves, enjoying their personal fetish. A world of their own making that they didn’t want to share.

  But Lebkuchen had shared.

  I had been in on every kill, including that last one in the rock canyon.

  Yes, the FBI were wrong about a lot of things. They made a big deal about the report from Lebkuchen’s doctor that his hands were covered with lesions from his Alexander disease. That’s why he made everyone wear gloves, they said. It wasn’t true. He really believed the gloves were a good idea and would promote discipline within the school. And they were wrong about the trophies, too. The missing cats’ hearts. They weren’t trophies. I only wanted the cat hearts to grind into my hot chocolate like the ancient Maya had done.

  My secret recipe!

  They never did explain how Lebkuchen got through spaces only a child could fit through. And they never figured out the Tesla connection either. Tesla, like Newton, was a scientist who believed in the paranormal, and he’d picked Colorado Springs as a place to do his experiments because of the supposed “flux energy” of Pikes Peak.

  They’d only scratched the surface of this case. They were lazy. Everyone was lazy.

  Still, what did it matter? Lebkuchen was dead. The cat-killer case was closed. They had nipped it/him in the bud. A serial killer grown in youth, reformed in adulthood, grown again, but caught in the early stages. Before he had a chance to move up that phylogenetic scale.

  Of course, it was exciting news for a small place. They’d splashed it on the front page of the Cobalt Daily News, the front page of the Colorado Springs Gazette, and the second lede of the Denver Post. It was silly. What was the big deal about a man who killed cats? The Colorado Springs municipality kills twenty or thirty cats a week and nobody kicks up a fuss about that.

  Poor Lebkuchen. I’d directed him so well. Controlled him. Gave him the drugs to tranquilize the cats, told him about those falconer gloves he’d loved so much. He’d been so easy to manipulate. Sharing his secret and me sharing mine.

  The gnosis.

  The secret.

  In retrospect, it would have been better to keep him out of it. He was a sad, deluded man, driven forward by his ambition and his fear. I’d peeled him like the layers of an onion; first when he was my private tutor and then when I suggested he reopen the Tesla school.

  And of course when I told him about the Other World and that I could save him from his disease, that I was the Chosen One and that cats were a familiar for him and a sign for me …

  Poor Lebkuchen. How his head had been turned with my stories of magic and sorcery.

  He really must have been crazy.

  Anyway, all that was in the past. Finished. Over and done with.

  The page-one story had become a page-two story had become a page-six story. It wasn’t picked up in the national press or the TV news. Now even the school was open again with many of the same teachers, almost all the same students. The events of January were like a bad dream.

  It was all so neat and pretty.

  Danny and Tony together. Danny and his dad reaching a new understanding. My own dear father due back in a few weeks. Lebkuchen and his father united in death. Of course, if Lebkuchen hadn’t botched that whole operation in the rock canyon, I was going to use the postcard I stole from Bob’s cell to set him up. Bob would have been the perfect victim instead of a hero!

  Oh well …

  At least I’m safe up here. I can see the whole town from up here.

  “The whole world,” I mutter sarcastically, and turn the periscope viewer through 360 degrees, looking at Pikes Peak, the US Olympic Training Center, Goose Gossage Field, Colorado College, the Air Force Academy, Fort Carson, the entrance to NORAD over at Cheyenne Mountain …

  I look for a while and then, bored, put the lens cover on the device. I flick through my DVDs, briefly consider The Invisible Man or A Matter of Life and Death, aka Stairway to Heaven, but finally decide on nothing.

  I lean back in my chair and wonder if the only thing this whole episode has taught me is the value of patience. Lebkuchen’s problem was that he was impulsive, quicktempered. He didn’t see that life was counted in years and decades, not weeks and days. Even with his condition he could have waited a little longer.

  I certainly will not be carrying out any acts of violence for a long time now.

  I’ll probably wait until I join the army.

  I’ll be a pacifist until then. (Except of course for the rodent hearts I now put in my hot chocolate.)

  Perhaps, though, it is time for a new letter to Tony?

  I begin scratching on a piece of paper: I, Indrid Cold, the Grinning Man, the Seeker, the Believer, wish you to know that I have only the greatest respect for you and that I wish you no harm …

  The doorbell rings.

  I crumple up the paper and throw it in the trash can.

  “Mother!” I yell, but then I remember that she’s visiting the graveyard today. This is the anniversary of the accident. My poor brother, John, killed on the way to his job at the animal shelter. A random accident on I-25. A job he’d only taken so it would look good on his Harvard application, and possibly because our own dear kitty was accidentally poisoned.

  Cleaning and inoculating all those stray cats and dogs—what a bore.

  Poor John.

  John, who really raised me when Dad was off with the Army or lobbying in Washington DC, leaving his family on that awful ranch that no one liked. Least of all me.

  It was after John’s death that I had run away, been expelled from Colorado Academy, had run away again and got private tuition.

  That, I suppose, was when it all began.

  The doorbell rings a second time.

  “I suppose I’ll have to get it myself,” I mutter to the unseen listeners. To those Watchers who control everything in this wicked, fallen sim that we call the earth.

  I get up from my chair and walk down those three flights.

  I open the door. It’s Danny standing there with beautiful Tony.

  Smiles on both their faces.

  “Hiya, Tom,” Tony says.

  “Come in,” I reply, and grin so hard that it actually hurts.

  “We will,” Danny says.

  “So,” I ask with more forced cheerfulness, “who would like some of my famous hot chocolate?”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Adrian McKinty is an award-winning crime novelist, and his Lighthouse Trilogy series of young adult novels was published by Amulet. He was born and raised in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. He studied philosophy at Oxford University, and in the early 1990s he immigrated to New York City, where he found work as a construction worker, barman, and bookstore clerk. In 2000, Adrian relocated to Denver, Colorado, where he taught high school English for nine years until moving with his family to Melbourne, Australia.