The Nixie’s Song (8 page)

Jules was on his phone.

Jules was on his cell phone when they found him, talking to his girlfriend as he killed zombies on the downstairs TV screen.

“I could ride any wave on this beach,” he said.
“I don’t care what Doug said.
You know what a dirtbag he is.”

“Jules,” Nick said.

Jules looked over at them and made swatting motions toward the door.

“Jules!” Nick yelled.

“Hold on,” Jules said into the phone.
“My little brother has a bug up his butt.” Then he laughed.
Finally, he held the phone away from his ear.
On the television, a zombie dressed like a fireman was eating his character’s head.

“We need you to drive us to Orlando.
To a book signing.”

“Um, lemme think,” Jules said, tapping the
phone to his chin.
“Negatory.
Never.
No way.
Get out of here.”

There was no point to even trying to explain the truth to Jules.
It would take way too long and seem way too easy to dismiss as some pretend game.
“What if I said I had a video of you lifting weights and talking to yourself in the mirror?” Nick made his voice deep.
“ ‘Looking good.
Yeah.
How do you like that, ladies?’ “

“Shut up, dillweed.” Jules got up, clicking
his phone closed and jumping over the couch in a single motion.

“You just hung up on .
.
.
,” Laurie started.
Nick backed into the wall, raising his hands in surrender.
“Look, I’ll delete it off the camera.
As soon as we get back from Orlando.”

Jules towered over him.
The cell started to buzz.
“You’re talking about an hour-plus drive each way.
How about you just delete it now and never mention it again?”

“Please,”
Laurie said, making her eyes huge and putting one hand on his arm.
“It’s just that they’re my
favorite
authors and they were going to come here, but now they’re not.
This is the only way I’ll get to see them and I’ve been waiting
forever
.” She paused.
“And Nick really likes them too.”

“Why can’t your mom take you?
Or Dad?”

“They’re busy,” Laurie said.
“They were
going to take me—us—to the signing here, but it got canceled.”

Nick’s mouth opened and closed.
He was stunned by the audacity of her lie.

Jules blinked at her, like he had no idea what to do.
“Okay, okay,” he said finally, deflated.
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” He flipped open his phone.
“I’ll ask Cindy if she wants to come.”

Nick looked at Laurie in astonishment.
He had no idea where she’d learned it, but she sure knew how to get people to do what she wanted.

Jules dropped them off.

The giant squatted beside the lake and turned black eyes toward them as they hopped in Jules’s car.
The hot seat burned the small strip of Nick’s thighs not covered by his shorts.
He kicked aside fast-food wrappers and shoved a damp beach towel under his legs.

“Okay,” Laurie said.
“I printed out directions.
It should take us approximately an hour and fifteen minutes if there’s no traffic.
Also, I printed alternative directions in case we need them.”

“Uh, okay.” Jules took the directions from her.
“You ready, Nick?”

“Sure,” Nick said, never taking his eyes off the giant.

Beside him, Laurie fidgeted with her books and did the same.

A few minutes later, they pulled into Cindy’s driveway.
She hopped into the front seat, puka shells swinging from her braids.

“Hey,” she said, sitting backward so she could look at them.
“How are you guys?”

“Okay,” said Laurie.

“Fine,” Nick said, tight lipped.
What he really wanted to do was yell,
There’s a giant on our lawn and we’re all going to die.
How do you think we are?

Cindy leaned over and gave him a squeeze on the shoulder that made him smile despite himself.

She and Jules spent the whole drive talking
about the different beaches near the bookstore and different surf shops and whether they might have the kind of wax that Cindy liked.
Out the window, Nick watched as they sped by roadkill being chewed on by a cougarlike creature that had a barbed tail.
He gasped, and Cindy looked back at him.
He just shook his head.
For a moment, he wanted to tell her everything, but then she turned to the front seat and his brother said something, and it was too late.

By the time Jules dropped them off at the bookstore, Nick was vibrating with anxiety.
The event had already started.

“Here’s my cell,” Jules said, handing over the phone.
“We’re going to check out the surf shops—buzz us on Cindy’s line when you’re done.”

“Okay,” Nick said.
Laurie was already inside the bookstore doors.

“Don’t talk to strangers!” Cindy called as the car started to roll away.

The icy air-conditioning and the scent of coffee washed over Nick as he entered.
He walked to the edge of the crowd, watching a plump woman dressed entirely in black and a spiky-haired man in a bright blazer.
The man had a pad of paper set up on an easel and was drawing a dragon.

“Is that them?” Nick whispered to Laurie.

She nodded, not even looking at him.
Her fingers gripped the edge of her books tightly.
“What if they don’t believe these are from home?”

“What?”

“The books.
What if someone thinks I stole them?”

“Calm down,” said Nick.

“I don’t even have a receipt!
What if they take my books?
I don’t have any way to prove that they’re mine.
Maybe I should write my name in them.
But what if they see me writing?”

“Shut up!” Nick said, and Laurie bit her lip, like her teeth were actually forcing her mouth closed.

After the man demonstrated various hand-raising techniques, he offered the drawing to anyone who could answer a trivia question.
Nick raised his hand.

“You haven’t read the books!” hissed Laurie, her arm waving frantically.

It didn’t matter, since the woman picked a girl near the front.
The girl answered correctly some question about a pig squealing.

Then, finally, they were taking questions from the audience.
Nick’s hand shot up so fast that the woman pointed to him.

“What’s your question?” she asked.
Her eyes were outlined in black, like a cartoon character’s.

“I have a problem with a giant,” said Nick.

Some of the audience, including a few parents, laughed.

“I am not some stupid kid,” he said, his face going hot with embarrassment and anger.
“I’m being serious.
It got one of those salamander things and it burned up a pond full of nixies.
It followed the singing of the only one that escaped to my dad’s development and the singing is keeping it happy for right now, but I don’t know what it’s going to do next.
How can I stop it?”

The plump woman looked over at the guy.
He raised his eyebrows like he was glad he wasn’t the one fielding that question.

“Well,” she said, “wearing red might help protect you .
.
.
and, um, iron.”

“But how do I get rid of it?”

She frowned.
“You might want to look at fairy tales—’Jack the Giant Killer,’ ‘The Giant and the Tailor,’ ‘The Young Giant.’ Those are all about someone small outwitting someone large.
I don’t have any more specific suggestion than that, but since you’re the hero of your own story, I know you’ll come up with a good ending.” She smiled, but Nick was pretty sure she was smiling more at her own ability to make up something that sounded like an answer than at him.

“We have to take another question,” the guy said.
“Good luck with that giant.”

The audience laughed again.
Nick’s face went hot.
Beside him, Laurie looked stricken.

“They didn’t believe you,” she said.

“Come on,” Nick said.
He steered her over to the store’s café and sat down backward in one of the chairs.
“Whatever with them.
They’re nothing but fakes.”

Laurie clutched her field guide to her chest.
She looked like she was going to cry.

Nick thumbed open his brother’s cell.
“I’ll call Jules.
We’ve got to get back.
We just wasted a lot of time.” For a moment, he thought about calling home—checking to make sure the house was still there, that they weren’t already too late.

Laurie wasn’t listening to him, anyway.
She was staring at a black-haired boy about their age.
The boy waved to someone standing off the stage—a woman with red hair standing near
a table covered with props supposedly from Arthur Spiderwick.

“Do you know that kid?” Nick asked.

Laurie stood up.
“He looks familiar,” she said.

The boy walked back into the aisles of books, and Laurie followed him.
Nick followed Laurie, tucking Jules’s cell back in his pocket.

“I know you’re upset about the Spiderwick people not turning out like you hoped, but I don’t think stalking some—”

“Shhhh,” she said.

The boy had walked up to another black-haired kid standing in front of the natural history section.
For a moment, Nick blinked in confusion.
They were mirror images of each other.
Then he realized: twins.

“Jared and Simon Grace,” Laurie whispered.
“They look just like their pictures.”

They were mirror images of each other.

Nick was puzzled.
“What pictures?”

“It says in all the Spiderwick books that the information came from real kids.
Jared, Simon, and Mallory Grace.”

“I don’t know—,” Nick started, but Laurie was already heading toward the boys.
There was nothing to do but follow her.

“Excuse me,” she said.
“Are you Jared?”

They laughed.
One of the boys shifted a stack of bird guides to his other arm.
“Who wants to know?”

“Laurie,”
Nick cautioned.

“What are you doing here?” Laurie asked, clearly taking the boy’s question as confirmation she was right.
“Are you part of the book tour?”

“Nah.
Our dad’s shooting a TV pilot,” Jared said.
“Wanted us to come stay with him for the summer.
I think he figured we’d spend the whole time riding roller coasters.
Anyway, we thought
we’d come to the signing.
See what one was like.”

“I think Arthur would have liked it,” Simon said.
“Pretty convincing.”