The Lost Saint(9)

The scar on my arm flared, and the pain of my powers tingled into my muscles. I clutched my moonstone and shook off those terrible memories. A more immediate problem stood in front of me now.

I left the tray of coffee cups in the car and headed up to the storefront. The thing that struck me the most was how strangely clean the glass of the front door seemed. That is, until I realized the door was actually missing. Shards of shattered glass littered the ground just inside the doorway. I hesitated for a moment, unsure if I was allowed to enter, but no one tried to stop me, so I stepped through the gap. I heard voices near the cash registers—or where the cash registers should have been. One lay smashed on the ground, and the other two appeared to be missing altogether. Mr. Day slumped on a stool while talking to Chris Tripton, another early-morning employee, and Daniel stood nearby with a broom.

It looked like Day’s Market had been the epicenter of an earthquake that somehow hadn’t touched the rest of town. Most of the shelving had been knocked over like a giant set of dominos, it’s demolished contents scattered everywhere. Spots on the floor were slick with soup oozing out of crushed cans. Basketball-sized holes pocked the walls, and the Halloween display in the center of the store looked like someone had taken a bulldozer to it.

“What happened?” I asked Daniel when I caught his attention. “It looks like a hurricane swept through here.”

“Might as well.” Daniel leaned his weight into his broom. “Somebody ransacked the place last night. They emptied out the registers, tore the safe out of the wall in the back office, and trashed just about everything else.”

“Holy hell,” I said.

Stacey Canova came up to us with an empty box in her arms. “The strange thing is,” she said, “they destroyed everything else, but took every last bag of chips and can of beer in the place.”

“What? Does the sheriff think it was teenagers?” I asked her.

“Only if they make teenagers with superpowers these days,” a voice said from behind me.

I reeled around to Mr. Day. “What was that?” I blushed and crossed my arms behind my back, as if I had something to hide.

“Whoever did this had to be superfast, and strong as a bull. It would take a forklift to knock over one of those aisles. And they got in and out of here in a matter of minutes. I locked up and headed home last night, but I was barely a few blocks away when I realized that I’d left my garage key in the back office. I turned around and came back to the store and found all this. I was gone five minutes tops. And there’s nothing on the security cameras.” Mr. Day indicated the cameras in each corner of the store. “Looked them over with the sheriff last night. They just go black. And these are battery powered, so it’s not like cutting the power to the whole building would do anything. None of you scrawny Holy Trinity kids could have pulled this off.”

He turned to Chris Tripton. “I’m telling you, it had to be those invisible bandits from the city. Either that, or the Markham Street Monster has turned to a life of larceny.” Mr. Day sounded just like the news reporter from last night, only he wasn’t joking.

Stacey rolled her eyes but then shook her head when she saw Mr. Day glaring at her.

Daniel looked down and swept up some broken glass into a pile with his broom.

According to the “official” story, wild dogs had attacked Mr. Day’s granddaughter Jessica and were responsible for the other attacks in town last winter—Maryanne’s mutilation, James’s going missing, and then what happened to Daniel, Jude, and me at the parish—but Mr. Day had been a die-hard believer in the Markham Street Monster ever since.

“Either way, this town is in trouble. I bet I’m just the first of many. Someone—or something—with that much power isn’t going to stop at one store. Mark my words: Rose Crest is going to hell in a handbasket unless somebody can do something.”

The phone rang from the back office. It had a strange, tinny echo. It must have been damaged. “Local paper got ahold of the story.” Mr. Day grumbled. “They keep on calling. Won’t be surprised if we end up with reporters from the city picking through the place like vultures later today. I could be ruined, and they think it makes a great headline. Thought I’d never have to deal with those buzzards again since they got tired of the story about Jessica’s death. Now they’ll want to pick at her dead bones some more with all of this.” He was trying to sound gruff and annoyed, but his voice had a high-pitched catch to it, and I noticed a puffy redness to his eyes.

The phone kept ringing, and Mr. Day stalked toward his office. “You two get on to school,” he said, pointing back at Daniel and me.

“But we can help,” I said.

“You kids got college applications coming up soon. Don’t want you messing up your grades because of this. But I expect you back here after school,” he said to Daniel, then grabbed the receiver of the ringing phone on his desk. “Hello!” he practically shouted into the phone before he shut the office door behind him. Mr. Day really didn’t deserve this—especially after what had happened to Jessica.

“I guess we should head out, then.” Daniel handed his broom to Chris. “I’ll be back right after my last class.”

“We’ll still be here,” Chris said, sounding like he wished he had an excuse to take off, too.

Daniel took my hand and we headed toward the nonexistent door, but after about four steps I noticed something sticking to the bottom of my shoe. I let go of Daniel and reached down and peeled some kind of plastic card from the heel of my boot. I flipped it over. It was a plain white card with a small logo on the front that said THE DEPOT and a magnetic strip on the back. It reminded me of my frequent buyer’s card for the Java Pot that they swiped each time I bought something.