When she left the house-of-the-bad-guys, it was almost one in the morning. She’d taken a few more photos with her phone, and then the group inside disbanded. Only Clare remained in the house. She must live there, Tracey thought.
She made her way back to her own home, and there she encountered a problem she hadn’t counted on. The house was dark, everyone was in bed, so she assumed she could walk right in. What she hadn’t considered was the fact that her security-conscious parents would have locked the doors from the inside. And then it started to rain.
Invisibility did not protect her from natural forces, and Tracey felt cold and wet. She found shelter in the back yard, in the septuplets’ playhouse. It was a bigger-than-average playhouse, but it hadn’t been set up for sleeping, and Tracey had to attempt sleeping on a hard wood floor. This was not a restful experience.
Now, stiff and sleepy, she sat on the steps in front of Ken’s house and tried not to doze off. The rain had stopped, there was actually some sunshine, and she figured Ken wouldn’t stay inside all day. She just hoped he wasn’t the type who slept till noon on weekends.
He wasn’t. Just half an hour later, the front door opened and Ken emerged. Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone. A man she assumed was his father walked alongside him and they headed towards the car on the drive.
‘Ken!’ she called. Ken stopped, turned and looked around.
‘It’s me, Tracey. I’m still invisible. I’m on your steps.’
‘Ken?’ his father asked. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Ken mouthed some words. Tracey couldn’t figure out exactly what he was telling her, but she knew from his fierce expression that it had to be something like ‘shut up’ or ‘beat it’.
‘Ken, it’s important! I’ve found out something about the conspiracy. And I know who the real spy is. Ken, please, talk to me!’
He and his father had reached the car and Mr Preston was opening the door on the driver’s side. But Ken didn’t move.
‘Ken, let’s go!’ his father said.
‘Um. . you go, Dad. I’ve changed my mind.’
His father looked confused. ‘I thought you wanted me to drop you off at Mike’s.’
‘I’m going to take my bike. It’s OK, you go on.’
His father still looked puzzled, but he shrugged, got into the car and took off. Ken waited until he was out of sight before he joined Tracey on the steps.
‘I’m not sitting on you, am I?’
‘Believe me, you’d know if you sat on me,’ Tracey said. ‘I still have feelings.’
‘OK, so what’s so important?’
‘Look at this.’ Tracey put her mobile phone down on the ground, where it magically appeared for Ken. ‘Click on photos and tell me what you see.’
‘Not a thing,’ Ken replied. ‘Your battery’s dead.’
Tracey groaned. Of course, she hadn’t been able to recharge it the night before. ‘Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a photo of Carter with Clare, Serena, that Stuart Kelley guy. . and Mr Jackson. Our Mr Jackson. And Carter’s talking to them.’
She’d made an impression — she could see it on his face. She told him the whole story — how she’d followed Carter to the house and watched the proceedings through a window.
‘He’s the spy, Ken, not Amanda. That whole zombie business, it’s a big act he’s putting on. He sits in our class and pretends he can’t communicate, then he goes and reports on us to these people. That’s how Jackson knows about us. He put the knife in Jenna’s locker because he was afraid she was reading his mind and he had to get her out of the picture.’
‘How do you know that?’ Ken asked.
She remembered her promise to Amanda. ‘Well. . it makes sense, doesn’t it?’ She hurried on. ‘Other things make sense too, Ken. Like when we were kidnapped, Carter was taken first, remember? They got information out of him about the rest of us. Then, after they took me and Emily and the others, they sent him back because they didn’t need him.’
Ken didn’t say anything.
‘Don’t you believe me?’ Tracey asked him.
‘Are you sure about Jackson? You said yourself, you were looking through a window. Maybe it was someone who just looks like Mr Jackson. I mean, I’m not crazy about the guy, but he’s the principal of a middle school, for crying out loud!’
‘He’s definitely involved with this conspiracy,’ Tracey insisted. ‘I’m not the only one who’s seen him with those other creeps. Amanda said —’ She caught herself just in time and stopped.
Ken rolled his eyes. ‘I should have known Amanda had something to do with all this. Did you two cook up this story together?’
‘Ken! Amanda is not the spy, I swear to you!’
‘How can you be so sure about that?’ he countered.
Frustrated, Tracey wanted to scream. This was exactly why a person shouldn’t promise to keep secrets.
‘You see?’ Ken said triumphantly. ‘You’re not really sure, are you? You don’t want to admit that Amanda can be this evil.’
‘And you don’t want to admit that you have a thing for her,’ Tracey shot back. ‘You’re still upset that she didn’t tell you about Serena in the seance. You’re letting your personal feelings get in the way of logic, Ken!’
‘That’s bull,’ Ken muttered.
‘Oh, come on, Ken, get real! You like Amanda, you’ve always been into her. You’re just trying to get back at her for not acting like she’s into you! Which, by the way, I think she is.’
Ken looked away, as if he didn’t want to confront something he knew was true.
‘Talk to her,’ Tracey pleaded. ‘Tell her. .’ She tried to think of a way to clue him in without breaking her promise. ‘Tell her to tell you what she told me.’
‘Forget it,’ Ken said. ‘I’m not talking to her.’ He stood up. ‘I have to go.’
Helpless, Tracey watched him walk away. Now what? She was on her own.
Yawning, she decided to go home and get some sleep. There, she could plug in her phone, recharge it, and be all set to go back to Clare’s house.
She didn’t know the conspirators’ schedule — if they met daily or if Carter met with them every night at midnight. But if Clare’s house was their headquarters, there had to be items lying around which could provide evidence. So even if there was no gathering of bad guys, she’d accomplish something.
On her own. Totally on her own, by herself. And she was scared. OK, she was invisible. Nobody could really hurt her if she couldn’t be seen, right? But even so, she was afraid.
She tried to shake off the fear and concentrate on her immediate task. First, she had to get into Clare’s house. If there was no meeting and people weren’t going in and out, how could she carry out any investigation? For that reason, she decided to go to Clare’s earlier, in the afternoon, when hopefully the woman might leave or come home and open a door for her.
Reasonably refreshed, with her fear on a back burner and with a fully charged mobile phone, she left her room. She felt pretty focused, but even so, she couldn’t help picking up on the family conversation going on in the living room.
For once, the Devon Seven were quiet. Her parents were talking to them.
‘Girls, we know you miss Tracey,’ her father was saying. ‘Your mother and I miss her too. But even if we can’t see her, we know that she’s here.’
Her mother spoke up. ‘George, you’re confusing them. They can’t understand Tracey’s gift.’
Tracey had to smile. Her mother was right — how could the five-year-olds understand her gift, when she couldn’t understand it herself? Impulsively, out of the septuplets’ eye range, she picked up her mother’s handbag. The sudden disappearance of her bag caught the woman’s attention. Tracey then placed it back down. Her mother smiled.