Kingdom Keepers: The Return Book Two: Legacy of Secrets Read Online Free Page A

I were stuck in Walt’s closet, I heard two maids mention that they were searching for a wand.”
    “A wand?” Wayne asked. “That’s an oddball thing to say.”
    “Mickey’s wand,” Maybeck muttered. “Like you said earlier.”
    “They were following orders, these two,” Willa said. “The OTs, or a force like them, are already here. They’re after the magic. They want to control it.”
    “A man named Hollingsworth met up with them.” Finn felt unreasonably small, like the air around him was suddenly heavier.
    “Hollingsworth?” Wayne said. “That can’t be right. He was fired by Mr. Disney. He’s been nothing but trouble for the company.”
    “Guys,” Willa said, “Disneyland opened today for the first time. That means as of today, the Disney villains are no longer just movie characters or fairy tales. Today—”
    “—They’re for real,” Philby finished her sentence as his projection went pale.
    “They have purpose,” Willa said ominously. “They have a place, a way to get organized. And I’m afraid that whoever—whatever—is behind them is just getting started.”

W RAPPED IN THE SHADOWY DARKNESS inside an Indian Encampment teepee, Philby kept examining his own hand. “Here’s what I find interesting,” he said.
    “No one asked,” said an irritable Maybeck.
    “Because no one has thought of it but me.”
    The teepee was one of a cluster in an Indian village visible from the Mark Twain Riverboat cruise ride. Surrounded by spare bushes and trees that had been transplanted only a month before, the setting lacked the lush, dense feel of its duplicate in present-day Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. All five Keepers were hunkered down inside the center teepee nearest the campfire circle, a place young Wayne felt they could safely spend the night. Finn and, later, Willa had tried to explain to Wayne that DHIs didn’t sleep, but regardless of their nighttime habits Wayne wanted the five somewhere they wouldn’t be found. The problem was, the Keepers had a history in the teepees, and not a pleasant one.
    “Please!” Maybeck said. “We all appreciate what you bring to the table, Philby. But why you feel the need to keep reminding us of your brilliance is beyond me. We all bring stuff; every one of us.”
    “Think about it,” Philby said, as if not hearing Maybeck’s rebuke. “Look at your hands.”
    On cue, the rest of the Keepers held their glowing hands in front of their faces.
    “So?” Maybeck said.
    “Anyone remember our little visit from Maleficent last time we were in the teepees? What happened? What saved us?”
    “DHI shadow,” Willa responded, like a pupil in the front row.
    “Which is?” asked the professor.
    “The blocking of, or radio interference with, the hologram projection system.”
    “Yet?” Philby said, moving his hands in front of his body, mimicking the others.
    “Oh my gosh!” Willa said. “It’s 1955. We have maybe one-tenth the projection technology, hence the two dimensions, not three. The kind of washed-out colors and low resolution. But here we are, inside a teepee, where the most sophisticated technology available could not reach, and yet our hands and everything about us look perfect.”
    “Voila!” said Philby. “Care to hazard a guess?”
    Willa shut her eyes and considered. “It’s the transmission. Wayne must have us on television radio waves, not hologram projectors.” Philby nodded. “He’s created his own little TV station.” Another nod. “Which means we won’t get caught in DHI shadow, because it’s not optical, it’s radio.”
    “Correct. And we need to test how far his transmission reaches,” Philby said. “At some point our images will start to break up and disintegrate.”
    “That could actually help us!” Charlene said. “If someone’s after us and we run past that line, we could dissolve and become invisible.”
    “Nice,” said Maybeck. “I volunteer to test it.”
    “It’ll work best with two. One in