HEART OF ICE

CHAPTER 15

There were no trucks speeding down a busy freeway. There were no airplane cargo holds with a sleigh full of stolen goods. There were no monsters, alien landscapes, or malicious waves of dangerous marshmallow anywhere in sight. But, there was also no sign of the Galaxy Center Shopping Mall. Instead, there were people. Lots and lots of people.

A steady stream of strangers were milling quickly past me and the open door, making the wide corridor I found myself standing in just as noisy and crowded as one in the mall. My brain tried to make each stranger a friend. Names hovered above the crowd. The wall opposite of me was impossible to see for a second as a big group walked past while the corridor stretching away to my left was a sunlit sea of floating names.

I felt dizzy as I looked down the tiled walkway. There were no windows along the wall behind me. Instead, I saw people's clothes lit by the buzzing, neon signs of small restaurants. Curling wisps of white steam snaked around the numerous faces standing in a growing line at a busy coffee stand. A food court was the first thing I thought of. That's the smell that enveloped my nostrils. The place almost could have been a mall, except for the sudden sound of jet engines rumbling loudly beyond the ceiling. The tremendous noise muffled a voice crackling through speakers I couldn't see above me. It was an announcement, a boarding call for the next departing flight. There was no denying the obvious.

I was at an airport!

I couldn't believe it. I messed up again! How hard could it really be to link up a magic door with a real one?! I bet my Aunt Meredith could do it, and she doesn't like to draw! Or even stupid Chase, I bet he could do it! Ooh, that last thought made me even angrier. I took another step away from the doorway still open behind me. Almost a full minute had passed since I opened the heavy door that had ushered me into the busy airport. I could feel the group in the mansion watching me intently. Alejandra kept whispering to me, asking me what I was seeing and if it was safe to follow. So far, I think they were the only people to have noticed my existence at all. The strangers passing me were too busy looking at, or talking on, their cell phones. I was nothing more than a figure in the corner of their vision, something that might be there or might not be. That idea made me uneasy in a way.

Another jumbo jet passed through the sky beyond the building I was in. I know the others had to have heard it. "Airplane," I heard Huron ask just a second later.

"Christopher," Alejandra hissed. "Are you in an airport? What do you see?"

"Come on," said Moe. "Come back through and let's-"

I had started to take a step backward as Moe was talking. It was as good a time as any to retreat back to the Red-Brown Mansion. I didn't make it. Something heavy suddenly crashed against the dense, metal door. I jumped at the noise, dodging the dust-lined edge of the rectangular slab. It swung back toward the wall too fast for me to stop. I barely glimpsed Moe and the others hurrying forward to try to keep it from shutting. The door clicked loudly back into place. A lock hidden in the wall engaged a split-second later, securing the once-enchanted doorway from anyone without an authorized key.

"Hey," said the janitor who had hit the door with his bulky cleaning cart. His name was Joey Parson. He was wearing an airport ID tag around his neck, not that the plastic card with his picture could keep his name from appearing in my mind. Joey was a shy, simple-minded guy with a lonely heart and awkward spirit. The closest person in his life was his eighty-year-old mother. There was a bitter sweet feeling about her that weighed on Joey Parson's conscience.

His pale, brown eyes shifted back and forth between myself and the door he had just closed with his cart. "Where'd you come from? Were you back there? You can't be back there."