Free The Dominion Key by Lee Bacon Page B

middle of the night to roam the hallways.
    I could see why the guy might spook people. HermanAlabaster’s features looked as craggy and gray as the island that was named after him.
    Then I heard a noise. A faint shuffle from somewhere behind the painting. I looked both ways, but there was nobody around. The noise grew louder. Closer.
    I staggered backward a step. Herman Alabaster’s gray eyes seemed to follow me.
    Suddenly, my palms were covered in sweat.
    A draft blew through the hallway, sending a chill down my neck and raising goose bumps along my arms. Then the frame started to rattle and shake.
    All my curiosity turned to paranoia. Before I could give it a second thought I spun around and took off running. The hallway was a gray blur. My heartbeat and footsteps pounded in my ears.
    But as soon as I rounded the corner, my fear began to melt away and I heard a voice in the corner of my brain saying,
There’s no such thing as ghosts. The shuffle you heard behind the wall was the echoing footsteps of students somewhere else in the school. And the rattling frame? Just the wind
.
    I slowed to a walk. Glancing around, I was glad that at least nobody had seen me running away from a painting of some old dude.
    At the other end of the stairway, I came to a stop by a wall of black-and-white photographs showing students from years past. Sixth-grade class pictures. The first was more than a hundred years old. A scratchy black-and-white image of boys in suits and ties and girls in old-fashioned dresses, all posed with severe expressions, as ifthey knew that by the time I looked at their picture, they’d all be dead.
    As my eyes moved from one framed class to the next, the photos became more recent. Seventy years ago. Sixty-five. Fifty. I paused in front of one from thirty years ago. The clothes weren’t as stuffy and the students didn’t look quite so uptight. Many of them were smiling—especially a tall blond boy in the center. When I leaned in a little closer, I saw that he was floating a few inches off the ground.
    But it was a couple of other kids who really grabbed my attention. A boy and a girl perched at the far edge of the crowd, as if they couldn’t wait to get away from the group. The girl had long, dark hair and looked like she was practicing her supervillainous scowl for the camera. Beside her was a skinny kid with thick glasses. His arms were crossed, and he was staring sourly at the ground.
    I didn’t need to scan the fine-print list of names at the bottom of the photo to know.… These were my parents.
    It was strange to think that Mom and Dad had ever been my age, but there they were. I wondered what they’d been like back then, and why they never talked about Alabaster Academy.
    “Taking a trip through time, I see!”
    I nearly jumped out of my skin. Especially when I spun around and saw the ghost of Herman Alabaster looming over me.

Okay, maybe I
was
still a little freaked out. Because an instant later, I realized it wasn’t a ghost after all. It was Principal Alabaster. With his silver hair and gray eyes, he looked a lot like the painting of his great-greatgrandfather.
    “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
    “Th-that’s okay,” I said. “It’s just—for a second, I thought you were … someone else.”
    “I noticed you looking over our old class photos.” Principal Alabaster leaned in, squinting at the photograph. “Aha. So
that’s
why you’re so interested!”
    His remark set off alarm bells in my mind. Had he seen the way I was looking at my parents? What if he made the connection between me and the Dread Duo? Nobody was supposed to know my real identity. Not even PrincipalAlabaster. We’d been at the school for two days. What if I’d already blown my cover?
    “I wasn’t looking at anybody,” I mumbled. “I swear.”
    The principal gave me a funny look. “Captain Justice. Didn’t you recognize him? He’s front and center.”
    It took me another