Another Pan (50 page)

“Run, Wendy!” shouted Peter, pointing at the wall of flies and moths that were blocking the door, as if he wanted her to take her chances trying to break through. But Wendy was too busy struggling with the zipper of the gym bag.

“No,” said Wendy, “it’s the bones. She’ll be weak to the bones.” In the pressure of the moment, Wendy couldn’t open the bag. The sickly nurse, the plain-faced ageless woman, came nearer and nearer, coughing as she struggled forward. Wendy closed her eyes and winced, but the strike she expected never came. The goddess of death passed her by, and suddenly, Wendy knew —

“John!” she screamed. She knew that the Dark Lady had only one purpose: death. And those who cheated her by using the bonedust were all she cared to reckon with. She knew why Layla’s windstorm — back when Simon had stolen the fourth mummy — had held back only John and Peter but didn’t bother her or Simon. John had been the only other person to use the bonedust, to repair his arm, maybe even to escape death, and now
that
death was coming for him.

“John! Run!” screamed Wendy. But John was staring into the bewitching eye, mesmerized. He never saw the shimmer of the hook, hidden beneath a blue cardigan, slicing through the air. He realized what was happening too late, when death’s cold stride had brought her across the room and gouged her hook into John’s stomach. Silence. The nurse’s branded eye twinkled with the light of John’s life. With an detached shrug, the old demon governess let the boy’s body slide off her hook, her gruesome medical instrument, and onto the floor of the office, on a discarded pile of gauze.

John looked up, blinking at his sister, then Peter and Tina. A dry heave seized in his throat. As he hung on death’s edge, he said, “Front pocket . . . my bag . . .”

Wendy was struck mute. She could only stare at the horrifying sight and wish that it weren’t true. Shell-shocked, she stood quivering. She would rather have had any thought shouting in her mind. Absolutely anything. Any thought would have been happy compared to this one. Her brother, John, was dead.

In the moments directly after John died, Peter and Tina were — maybe for the first time ever — unable to come up with something to do. For Tina, it was the reality of all that blood pooling under John and the regret that she had been so mean to the little nerd.

For Peter, it might have been the unexciting manner in which the school nurse walked up and put the hook into the kid’s gut. There was no sense of climactic flare. No real nod to heroic convention. It was so utilitarian, so unfun. Frankly, it was a really boring way to play a swordfight, and he resented letting such a mousy-looking wench have it. But he knew better than to say any of this in front of Wendy.
Poor girl,
he thought. She really was the best one of all the girls he had known.

But Wendy, who was most ravaged by the sight, who was most wracked with tears, who was the only older sister John ever had and the only one who could have protected him — Wendy never stopped trying.

As soon as Nurse Neve walked past her toward John, Wendy had struggled with the gym bag’s zipper. As the hook had punched the hole in John’s belly, Wendy had yanked at the bag’s seams and stuck her nails into it with grief. And as the feeble-looking nurse stood above the body and placed her black loafers on either side of a heap of soaked gauze, content to have avenged herself on a user of the bonedust, Wendy finally ripped open the bag and grabbed the mummy of the baby king.

Wendy threw herself toward the nurse, with an agility that could only be attributed to her rage. She held the skeleton above her shoulder, like a cannonball. Peter realized her plan and screamed, “NO!” He scrambled to intercept her, but he was a few steps behind. It took a split second for Wendy to bound toward the deathly nurse, for the nurse to see her and turn, and for Wendy to smash the mummy into her face.

The bones of the mummy immediately burst into a fine dust, a shimmering cloud enveloping the lady and all her many insects. There was a shriek. The branded eye shot out a light. Her hands tore at the flesh of her own face.

“No,” said Peter, rushing up to Wendy. “NO!”

But it was too late for Peter to save the dust, and it was too late for the goddess of death to escape it. The life trapped in the bones of the fifth mummy had infected her. She stumbled to the floor, like a feeble old woman looking for her cane. She crouched in a corner, twitching, her every movement confirming the fact that death cannot die. That she was only temporarily down.

Wendy wasted no time rushing to John’s body. She knelt down in the blood to check for a heartbeat. But that was futile, and even she knew it. Peter, too, was hysterical, looking for remnants of the dust.

“I can’t believe this,” he said, almost screaming at Wendy, who was shocked at this new treatment. “You destroyed the bonedust. That was the
whole
point!”

Peter roared with frustration. He put his ear to the ground, looking for any dust particles that might have settled. When he saw the gym bag lying on the floor, he seized it.

Tina walked over to Wendy, knelt down, and put her arms around her. Cornrow cautiously swatted his way through the now disbanding wall of moths blocking the door.

“We have to hurry,” he said. “We probably only have a few minutes.”

“Ah!” said Peter, with relief. “Look at this.” Wendy and Tina looked up to see Peter fishing out a small piece of bone from the bottom of the gym bag. “It’s just enough,” said Peter. “One helping of eternal youth, as soon as I get my hands on that Simon.”

Wendy barely heard Peter. She looked at John’s helpless form and tried to make sense of the last words he had spoken.
The front pocket
.

Peter examined the tiny piece of the fifth mummy. He dropped the gym bag, and Wendy rushed for it, suddenly realizing what John had meant. She unzipped the front pocket and stuck her hand inside, desperately feeling around for an answer.

Then her hand found something hard, like a baseball bat. Except it wasn’t a bat. Wendy looked inside. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

It was the bandaged leg of Marcus Praxis. The fourth bonedust.

John must have taken it from Simon during one of the afternoons they spent together playing video games or sorting through the exhibit. All that time when Simon thought John was his stooge, his follower, his worshipful disciple. Simon must have left the bone somewhere John could easily have access to it. “Genius.” Wendy marveled at her little brother.

Wendy felt a breath over her shoulder. She clutched the leg to her chest and turned to find Tina hovering over her. “What do we have here?” Tina said. Wendy was too overwhelmed to speak. “You know,” whispered Tina, “the bonedust can bring your brother back.” Tina nodded in the direction of Peter, who was wrapping the other four bones together.

Wendy took the leg out of the gym bag so that it was in plain sight. It took Peter only about three seconds to see it and come barreling toward them. “Is
that
what I think it is?” He grabbed the leg, and without another word, Peter pulled out all the other bonedust. It seemed he didn’t want to wait another second to mix his immortal cocktail.

“John,” whispered Wendy. She allowed new hope to spring in her heart, and new gratitude, for all that Peter had done. For the way he always seemed to save the day, like John’s favorite heroes. He had saved John’s life once before, and he seemed to always be there for her. Even at a time so crazy and desperate as this.

Wendy stayed with John’s body, holding his head in her lap, while Peter pulled out the four other bones and began grinding them and mixing them in a glass vial. She watched Peter’s face, furrowed with concentration, as he hovered over his instruments. His sweat had stuck a few curls to his forehead. His jaw was adamant. But even so, he still had that boyish smirk.

Finally, Peter sat up and said, “Done.” He held up the vial, shaking it a little for show. Inside, it looked like diamond powder. Wendy was almost shaking with joy with the idea that she would have her brother back, that he would be healed right here in this nurse’s office, and that they would grow up together, that she wouldn’t have to go back to her dad and tell him the unbearable news.

Then Peter stood up, wiped his knees, and said, “All right, let’s get out of here.”

Wendy was confused. She sat there gaping at Peter, who was obliviously putting what remained of the mummies back in his satchel. The toe he had used for decades was finished, as was the tiny morsel of the fifth bonedust, so only three members of the House of Elan remained. Wendy was still baffled.

Peter looked from Tina to Wendy and said in a cheerful tone, “Well? Everybody ready?”

Tina was the first to speak. She took an unsure step toward Peter and said, “Uh, Peter, what about the vial?”

Then Wendy added, “Are we going to take him to a safe place first?”

It was Peter’s turn to be confused. “Who?”

“John,” said Wendy.

“I don’t know,” said Peter in a reflective tone. He sat beside Wendy and put an arm around her. “How do you want to tell your dad?”

Peter looked back and forth from Wendy to Tina, trying to gauge whether this was the right answer. But watching him flounder like that, completely unaware of what they expected, was enough to break Wendy’s heart. This whole time she had cradled John, expecting Peter to come to the rescue. The whole time they had known each other, she had become more and more infatuated, letting him further and further in. She knew she had trusted him more than anyone.

And now Peter had shown himself to be untrustworthy. To Wendy, that was a horrible feeling to have again. That feeling that she was worthless. That feeling that she was so common, so stupid, that no one felt any reason to love her. That feeling that she wasn’t really needed by anyone and that she had left the one guy who cared about her for something entirely physical. Wendy felt her cheeks flush, her eyes bubble with hot tears.

“Peter,” said Tina, “wouldn’t the vial bring John back to life?”

“Well, yeah,” said Peter, “but there’s only one.”

“So?” said Tina, trying to emphasize with her tone the gravity of the situation.

“So?” repeated Peter. “It’s mine. It wouldn’t be fair.” Peter was gnashing his teeth. He turned to Wendy. “I’m sorry. You know how I feel about you. You know I would have shared it. I even offered once, remember? But there’s only enough for one person, and
I’m
the one who’s been searching for it all these years. I’m sorry, Wendy.” He tried to hold her against him, but a guttural sob escaped her lips and she pushed him away.

Peter looked like a little boy, hurt at her rejection and determined to have his way all at the same time. It seemed that he had no idea how big a consequence this was. He looked as though he thought himself innocent, as if he believed that he had acted fairly and that it was
he
who was being hurt by Wendy’s cruelty.

Tina tried to intercede. “Peter, he’s —”

But Peter interrupted her, his voice much harsher than it had been with Wendy. “No. It wouldn’t be fair. We’re leaving.” He took a few steps away from them.

As Wendy watched the exchange, she felt the betrayal and sadness turn to fury. He actually wanted to leave John dead on the ground. He actually thought it would be the right thing to do. Wendy rose to her feet and walked to Peter with tears still pouring from her eyes. When she reached him, her shoulders were still heaving. Then, in a low rumble, she said, “I trusted you.” Without any fanfare, she slapped Peter across the face.

Peter just stood there, shocked.

“But you’re just a childish, selfish son of a —” She slapped him again, then again. It was the only sound in the awkward silence of the room.

Wendy yanked the vial from Peter’s hand and walked back to John, holding her thumb tightly to seal the top. Peter leaped toward Wendy and grabbed her by the legs so that she fell forward and hit her arm hard against the sickbed. All the sweet charm of the previous weeks suddenly vanished. When she was on the ground, Peter grabbed Wendy’s arm and swung her around, so she was facing up, then pinned her down with both his legs. She winced in pain, then pulled away, kicking hard at his legs while holding tight to the vial. She hoisted herself up on her elbows and spat in Peter’s face.