Chapter 35
“You need to go home. Now.”
The cloak ignored him – like usual – and seemed to be looking out the window next to Strange, who was watching as a small contingent of camp staff headed into the wooded area behind his cabin. The same wooded area Peter and his friend Ned had been exploring with their unseen companion fluttering about around them.
“What did you do?” he asked it, scowling. It wasn’t a coincidence, of course, and he was smart enough to not even try to make himself believe that it was. “This isn’t funny,” he told it. “They’re not magic users, but they do have some technology, I’m sure, that might have you showing up. Air pressure monitors, or something that measures particles fluttering around. Go home.”
It slapped his shoulder, almost companionably, and continued watching. Making the sorcerer roll his eyes in annoyance. Being ignored was annoying. Even when the thing couldn’t actually speak to him, anyway.
“Fine. Then just stay away from Peter Stark, will you?”
OOOOOOOOO
When Peter made it to the cabin the other boys were gathered around Ned. None of them had been in the gym, so none had heard about their ‘ghost’, and Ned was telling them how he’d been touched by it – although he was making it more of an adventure than anything remotely scary.
Again, so much for keeping it a secret. But Peter had spoken to Phil, and that meant that SHIELD knew about it, and no one was saying anything about it being dangerous, so they weren’t going to make him go home, he decided. That meant that he could talk about it, a little, too, maybe. It was a pretty good adventure, after all.
“Some of the kids are going to sneak out after dark and go look for it,” Ned said, proving that he was pretty bad at keeping secrets – especially when it came to something so interesting and exciting. “We-“
“No one is sneaking out after dark to go looking for ghosts or anything else,” Ross interrupted, coming over to lean against the bunk Ned was sitting on. “That’s against the rules and is a good way to be sent home if you’re caught. Right?”
The boys nodded their agreement, and Ross made eye contact with Ned, specifically.
“Right,” Ned replied. “I won’t sneak out.”
“Good answer.” The serious stuff out of the way, he clapped his hands. “Everyone get changed and ready for bed – don’t forget to brush your teeth. We have time for stories, or just to hang out before bed.”
“Ghost stories?” Brian asked, eagerly.
“Sure.”
Why not? A few scary stories would keep them from being too interested in sneaking out into the dark, after all, as long as the stories didn’t traumatize them, of course. Bucky didn’t know the difference, obviously, but Ross was an experienced counselor who knew a hundred good scary but not too scary stories to tell.
OOOOOOOOOOO
“Did we find anything?”
Coulson shook his head, wiping his hands on the jeans that he was wearing. Jeans, because camp groundskeepers don’t wear dark suits, after all.
“No. I’m not really surprised, though.”
Romanoff nodded, looking over at Barton, who was watching the growing darkness carefully, even while the small team of SHIELD people went through the entire area from the clearing that led to the main camp buildings to the chain-link fence that surrounded the property on every side but the side with the lake that formed its own natural barrier. They had several tech devices designed to expose that which didn’t belong, but so far none had given any signal that something was out of norm.
“Do you see anything?” she asked him.
He was Hawkeye for a reason, after all.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” he told her, frowning. “No people. No tracks that aren’t little kid feet. No indication anyone went over the fence and landed on this side…”
She didn’t even ask him how he’d know the difference. He was him, and she wasn’t Davy Crockett or anything. She was much more comfortable in the city and the dangers that materialized there.
“We might as well call it, guys,” she said – even though Katie wasn’t a guy (as all of the male counselors could attest). “We’ll add a couple of satellites to our surveillance and keep our eyes open for anything off.”
“Peter’s gut isn’t wrong very often,” Clint said, softly, as they were heading back toward the camp clearing.
Barton remembered when Peter knew Brock was bad news before any of them did.
“He didn’t say it was hurting him, though,” Coulson reminded them. “Only that he felt something. It could be his dinner not agreeing with him…”
Natasha smirked at that.
“We’ll let Barnes deal with that,” she told them. “I’m going to go report to Nick.”
“And Tony?”
“Later.”
She didn’t answer to Stark, technically, so Nick would get her report, first. Then, if Tony called – and she knew he probably would – she would tell him what little she knew.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
“And to this day the ghost of the headless horseman roams through the forest, riding his fire-breathing horse and looking for his head…”
“Cool…”
Barnes rolled his eyes, reduced to simply observing as his fellow counselor told their boys all kinds of stories before their bedtime. He was a little surprised that none of them looked freaked out by any of them; the stories weren’t gruesome or anything, but still had some fairly scary content (if one was wary about ghosts, that is – and zombies. And a little horst with a magic spell on it that turned it into a fierce wolf that protected the forest when someone entered who didn’t belong). But they weren’t. They simply sprawled in their bunks and listened, interested and entranced, as he told them stories for almost half an hour.
“Bedtime, guys,” Bucky told them, reaching for the light switch by his bunk. “We have a busy day tomorrow.”
“What are we going to be doing?” Peter asked.
“No clue.” Which wasn’t exactly the truth and the whole truth. He knew that their cabin activity was going to be horseback riding, because he needed to know in advance, instead of it being a surprise. Peter couldn’t go riding, after all, and that meant that they had to have something in place to distract him from the fun his fellow cabinmates were going to be having. Since Barnes was going to have to go riding to help corral the other boys with Ross, the plan was for Peter to spend that activity time at the waterfront where Katie could keep an eye on things with Phil and another SHIELD agent who was housekeeping that week near at hand in case anything came up. “We’ll have to find out, tomorrow.”
No sense letting Peter know before the other boys did.
“Maybe we can go looking for ghosts again,” Ned said in the dark.
Barnes decided that he sounded sleepy.
No big surprise, really, since the camp was doing a very good job of keeping the kids constantly moving around and active. Which was a great way to make sure they were tired enough to go to bed when they were supposed to do so.
“I heard we’re having a bonfire tomorrow night,” Carlos said. “I hope we have smores, again.”
There were plenty of murmurs of agreement to that.
“Go to sleep, guys,” Ross told them, his voice amused. “We’ll ask Gary about the chances of smores, tomorrow.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
Why not?
OOOOOOOOOOOOO
“How’s community service going?”
Strange rolled his eyes at the amusement in Wong’s voice.
“Don’t ask. Anything I need to know about?”
“Looks like someone let it slip that the Stark boy is there.”
“Oh? How do you know that?”
“Saw a post on Facebook.”
“Really I’m surprised that SIELD allowed it.”
“It wasn’t there long.”
“Then how did you see it?”
“I’ve been curious how Stark might keep the location of son a secret, so I’ve been watching for any indication that he’s doing anything with that incredible tech that he is supposed to have access to. The post went up – one of the kid’s parents posting about who his cabinmate is at camp – and then it was gone in minutes. Never to be mentioned, again.”
Strange didn’t ask how Wong tracked the post in the first place. Clearly he’d used magic, which was far superior to tech, obviously.
“Huh.” Despite that, they both knew tech was pretty impressive, too, and were assuming that SHIELD had a way of listening to any incoming or outgoing calls, so he didn’t say it aloud. “Well… that’s a SHIELD problem, not ours.”
“Right. Your friend hasn’t come home.”
Meaning the cloak.
“I know. Don’t even get me started on that.”
A snort of amusement.
“There are only a few days left. You’ll be fine.”
“Right.”