Another Pan (30 page)

“Nooo!” shouted Peter. He wrenched the hand of the skeleton, but the worm had bitten down on all the rest of the mummy. The mummy shattered at the wrist bone, leaving a severed hand in Peter’s grip.

They didn’t have much time. The worm’s mouth closed and just as suddenly burrowed back under the earth. The three of them dashed deep into the marketplace as fast as they could. The sand in the air scraped at their lungs. The worm chased after them. It knew that a piece of the mummy had been stolen. It would eat all three of them to retrieve it.

The mound gained on them with every step they took. Wendy closed her eyes and sprinted, tears squeezing out of her ducts. The mound was about to overtake them. Teeth punctured the earth’s surface to claw at their heels. John was calculating out loud, trying to figure out the location of the still-open gate. He yelled, “Jump!”

All three leaped blindly across some unseen barrier that only John’s calculations could have guessed. John prayed that he hadn’t made a mistake — that they were in fact jumping through the portal. They fell to the ground and rolled, waiting for the painful crunch of the monstrous teeth. But none came. Wendy opened her eyes. The mound was gone. They were lying on the cold floor of the dining hall, right next to the lunch line. Thankfully there were no students around. The book was lying next to John, and the kitchen door behind them was wide open. Without getting up, Wendy reached over and slammed it shut. Slowly, the Eye of Ra disappeared from the doorpost. Peter was looking at her, smiling wide. He had the bones in his hand.

John opened his eyes, too, and let out a relieved hoot. “We made it,” he said.

“We made it,” echoed Wendy, focusing only on Peter now that they were safe. Watching him lying there, clutching his prize with everything he had, Wendy was sure that she was falling for him, a lot worse than she had ever fallen for Connor. And judging from the way he looked at her just then, she was starting to believe that maybe he had fallen for her, too. But then Peter turned back toward Harere’s hand and his attention was gone. He looked at it with all the affection of a lost love.

In the quiet of the dining hall, once they had caught their breath, all three of them noticed that Peter’s handheld was beeping in twos and threes. He ignored it at first, too absorbed with the hand of Harere. Wendy nudged him, and finally Peter picked it up. He flicked through the messages with his thumb, then said, “The LBs are a go. We’re gonna get the second batch of bonedust back from Simon.”

“I’m getting out of here,” said John. He and Wendy got up and dusted themselves off. But, for the four and a half minutes it took to properly wrap and stow the hand, Peter sat still.

The nurse with the limp hair and dull eyes stormed through the ruined market in a rage. The underworld thundered and cracked under the weight of her fury. Billowing plumes of smoke suffocated the maze, filling up the labyrinth and seeping into the Marlowe school. After all these years, the third batch of bonedust had been lost.

Again, death had been robbed. The ageless demon was desperate to be rid of Peter — a boy who vowed revenge against the one who had raised him. In the daily hours she spent up above, she sat in her forgettable nurse’s body and watched the unhappy children that ran unguided in the halls of the school. She squirmed in her weak form, unable to see or hear more than ordinary human eyes or ears can. She hated covering her shattered eye, the one true part of herself . . . but not the
only
true part, because this pathetic form, this mousy wreck of a girl, was her original body. Not the beautiful governess Vileroy. Not the goddess of death. No, this brown-haired girl with dull eyes and thin lips was older than them all.

Up above, the Marlowe school was shut down for the afternoon in order to investigate strange fumes, air out the tufts of unexplained smoke, and find a solution to the rising humidity. Teachers and students walked around in a fog of gloom, wondering whom to call for an entire school afflicted with depression and paranoia.

Peter looked at the text message on his phone. The LBs were ready. The Garosh bone had been in the overworld ever since John used the priceless relic as a grappling hook. Now it was in the hands of an ambitious twit, who so far hadn’t figured out that it was more valuable than everything in the British Museum put together.

During his lecture, he’d used it as a pointer, a pretend drumstick, and a back scratcher. If he did manage to figure out the secret (for instance, if the bonedust miraculously healed him from his idiocy), then he’d never let it see the light of day again. Of course, he’d take it on
60 Minutes
and pretend he’d found it after years of research and digging in the Sahara. Or before that happened, the Dark Lady would ruthlessly kill him and take back the bone, which would guarantee that no one would ever see it again.

The next day, John, Peter, and Wendy hurried to the rendezvous point, a smoothie bar a few blocks away from Marlowe. When they arrived, Wendy spotted two of the boarding boys and Tina leaning on the fresh-fruit counter. The twenty-something worker was trying to pick up Tina, who, even in her advising uniform, looked good enough for clubbing. No guy at Marlowe — LBs included — was stupid enough to try to hit on her.

Tina glided over and wrapped her arms around Peter’s neck while Wendy glared.

The two LBs stepped away from the smoothie counter. One of them was the blond with cornrows, who had obviously risen to the top of the ranks. As far as guts and connections were concerned, this kid had it all. He was probably using his dad’s company to get funds to Peter by now. He was lanky; every time John saw him, the LB reminded him of the ghost twins from
The Matrix Reloaded
. “Everything’s in place,” he said to Peter.

The other LB was the rapper’s broad-shouldered son with thick-framed poet glasses. He spoke with a calm confidence. “We’re at launch sequence, T minus whatever.”

“Good,” said Peter, nodding like a unit commander. “Any variables?”

“None that we’ve reconned from the op site,” said Cornrow.

“Our point is a perimeter guard, code name: Poopinski,” said the buff Poet.

“The guard’s name is Poopinski?” asked Peter.

“It’s Roy Boykins, but we liked Poopinski,” said Poet.

“Hmm,” said Peter, weighing the comment, “I would have gone with RoyBoy.”

“We can switch to RoyBoy,” said Poet immediately. He put his hand up to his earphone and spoke, “LB29 to world, make Poopinski RoyBoy. Repeat. Poopinski is RoyBoy.”

“Never mind,” said Peter. “Don’t even worry about it.”

Poet broke off his transmission.

“Cancel that, world. RoyBoy is no go. Repeat, ixnay Oyray Oybay.”

“Why do you guys talk like that?” asked Wendy.

The two LBs and Peter turned from their strategizing. Wendy was looking at them as though they were little kids playing with LEGOs.

“What do you mean? It’s pig Latin,” said Peter.

“No, like
that
. Like soldiers in action movies.”

Peter’s eyes widened. Cornrow’s hand slowly came up to his ear. He whispered something into his iPhone.

“They
are
soldiers,” said Peter, still staring at Wendy.

“They’re boarding boys,” said Wendy.

“Oh, no, she didn’t,” said Tina under her breath. For the first time, Wendy saw a hostile look in Peter’s gaze.

Now Poet forgot about his earpiece and brought his phone to his ear. She heard him whisper, “Transmit happy thoughts, stat! For the love of humanity, launch the happy thoughts now, now, now.”

Peter’s phone was suddenly alive with buzzes and beeps. He broke off his stare, the hypertense moment between him and Wendy, to check it. Wendy spied text after text streaming into his phone from all over. One said:
The Highlander series just came out on DVD
. Another said:
Hollywood Rumor: Ra’s al Ghul is next Batman villain
. A text came in about Dracula, and another about Mrs. Whatsit, the immortal character from
A Wrinkle in Time
.

Peter’s scowl slowly turned into a wistful smile. By the time he had scrolled through every text, he seemed to have forgotten any angry feelings he may have had. When he looked up from his phone, he seemed almost surprised to see everyone. “Where were we?” he said.

Wendy wondered how often the boarding boys had to manage Peter’s moods.

Meanwhile, John shifted closer to Tina. He turned to her and said, “So, maybe you and me should find some time later.”

Tina looked down at him and chuckled. “Gimme a wildberry, large,” she said to the vendor, and walked away.