The Key (21 page)

And then, the dragon took aim and breathed a blast that was an inferno.

Risky's body burned, twisted, shriveled to something made out of charcoal dust, and then blew away on the breeze.

“She's dead!” Charlie exulted.

“Yeah, but not permanently,” Jarrah said. “She'll be back.”

The dragon returned and hovered in midair, obviously trying to avoid blowing them onto their backs. “Greetings, eastern cousin,” it said in a strained, unnatural voice that sounded like a garbage truck lifting a Dumpster.

“Greetings, western cousin,” Xiao said.

“This violation of the treaty was not our doing.”

Xiao bowed her head slightly. “You seem to have rectified the situation.”

The dragon … well, you wouldn't want to say he smiled because it was way too creepy to be a smile. In any case he said, “Rectified. Yes. Our eastern cousins are always good with words.”

“Go in peace,” Xiao said.

“For now,” the dragon rumbled. Then he turned and swept back across the city, knocking down the people who had just gotten up.

“We must set this tower down,” Sylvie said. “Let us place it in the Tuileries.” When she saw blank looks, she said, “Over there, in the large garden beside the river.”

Thus it came to pass that the Eiffel Tower, which had stood on the Left Bank of the Seine for more than a century, was relocated to the Right Bank.
³⁹

It's actually much more convenient.

And no one—not even conspiracy nuts—would be able to deny that something impossible, amazing, and absolutely magical had occurred.

The world would never be the same.

But at this particular moment, all of that meant very little to Mack.

With shaking fingers and his heart in his throat, he called the golem.

“H
ey,” Camaro said. “Don't be tearing up the school!”

To which the golem replied, “Gaaarrrrggh!”

“Seriously: if anyone is tearing up the school, it's going to be me,” Camaro insisted.

The golem stabbed his second lobster claw right at her. She jumped nimbly aside, and the claw ripped up the ground where she had been standing.

“Hey!” she yelled.

The golem … well, the problem with the golem was that he wasn't what he had been anymore. He was no longer Mack. He was no longer even a silly fraud trying to pass himself off as Mack.

He was the Destroyer.

The golem jumped. It was a stunning thing to see, because he leaped in a single bound from the ground onto the top of the school building.

“Grraaawwwr!” he roared.

He stabbed his lobster claw down into the roof and threw aside bits of tile and plywood as if he was tearing into nothing more substantial than a cardboard box.

Camaro did the only thing she could think of. She took off one of her steel-studded wristbands and threw it at the golem. She had good aim. It hit him in the eye.

No, it didn't stop him. But it did distract him so that he put down the boy he had just snatched up through the roof.

His face dark with rage, the golem flew through the air and landed almost on top of Camaro. The impact knocked her down. She tried to get right back up, but the lobster claw stabbed the ground on either side of her, imprisoning her against the grass.

The golem lowered his face to within inches of hers.

He opened his mouth, baring terrible yellow teeth. He bellowed into her face, “GRRRooowwwwrRRR!” with such force it made her cheeks and lips shake.

“Hey! Stop!” Camaro yelled.

The teeth came closer.

“Stop or I will kick your butt!” Camaro raged.

The huge mouth opened. It encompassed Camaro's entire head. In a second that head would no longer be attached to her neck.

“Oh, man,” she said. “And I really liked you.”

The golem did not bite down. Instead its red-rimmed eyes blinked.

“Groowwwr?”

“Really,” Camaro said to the inside of his mouth. “Look, maybe it's time I told you the truth....”

Some people might say it was a little late for Camaro to be confessing anything, but you have to understand: she was not a trusting sort.

“Look, I always liked Mack and thought he was cute. But I figured out a long time ago that you're not really Mack.”

“Grrruuh?”

“You're sweeter than he is, for one thing. Not right now you're not, but usually.”

The golem had now had her head inside his mouth and ready to bite for almost twenty seconds.

“I don't know what you are, maybe an alien or whatever, but I liked you. You know, before you became a ravening monster.”

“Unnh,” the golem said.

“Hey. Do you know there's a cell phone in here? In your mouth, I mean? Don't move.”

He didn't move. He stayed perfectly still, crouched over her in a killing posture. With some difficulty, Camaro managed to stick her arm into his mouth. The phone was right there, just sitting beneath his forked tongue.

“Hey, you've got a text,” she said. “‘Be the Destroyer'?”

With even more awkwardness, she managed to extricate both her arm and the phone.

The golem pulled back then. It closed its huge mouth but still crouched over the prone Camaro.

Camaro glared at the phone. “‘Be the Destroyer'? Hey, no one pushes my boyfriend around except me.” She hit the Reply button and typed in, “Drop dead!”

Now, here's the thing: there's never going to be any way to be sure about the exact timing. All we know is that at approximately the same time as Risky was falling, only to be incinerated midair by the dragon, Camaro hit Send.

Approximately the same time.

No one is saying for sure that the reason Risky wasn't able to nimbly escape the dragon is that Camaro had sent her a fatal text on an enchanted phone.

But it would absolutely serve Risky right.

Camaro sat up, wiped away some monster saliva, and took a long, hard look at the creature before her. He was no longer the Destroyer. He also wasn't Mack.

He was a muddy-looking creature with only the barest of features. He looked like something a child would fashion out of dirt and twigs.

“So. What are you exactly?” Camaro asked.

“I am … I am a golem. I am whatever I have been told to be. First I was told to ‘be Mack.' Then I was told to ‘be the Destroyer.'”

He shrugged, obviously a little embarrassed. (Understandable, really, since the entire student body of Richard Gere Middle School
⁴⁰
was fleeing out of the other side of the somewhat damaged building.)

“You're covering for Mack, huh?” she asked.

“That's what I was made to do.”

Camaro thought about that. And she sighed. “Well, like I said, I like Mack. So keep covering for him. But, dude: be yourself.”

“I … I don't know what myself is like.”

She nodded as though this was wise. And it kind of was. “All right then, be Mack. But when you're done being Mack, hang out with me; I'll get you straightened out.”

Of course she ended up having to write that down. Because it doesn't matter if it's a tiny paper scroll or a text message: if you want to get a golem to do something, you have to put it in writing.

On a small scrap of paper Camaro wrote, “Be Mack. Also my friend.”

Just then the golem's other phone—the nonmagical one—rang. Camaro answered it. The golem was busy returning to his Mack-like appearance.

“T'sup, MacAvoy?” Camaro said.

She enjoyed the long silence on the other end.

“Um …,” he said at last.

“Don't worry. I got this,” Camaro said, and hung up the phone.

H
eadlines from the next day's websites and newspapers:

New York Times
:

E
IFFEL
T
OWER
R
ELOCATION:

A
RCHITECTURE
C
RITICS
W
EIGH
I
N

Le Monde
:

T
OURISTE
A
MERICAIN
V
OLE
T
OUR
E
IFFEL

Fox News:

E
RESKIGAL
W
OULD
R
AISE

T
AXES ON
J
OB
C
REATORS

High Times
:

N
O
W
AY!
W
AY?
N
O
W
AY!

Deadline Hollywood:

O
NE
P
ERCENTERS ON
T
RAIL OF
M
ACK
R
IGHTS

Huffington Post
:

P
ALE
Q
UEEN
S
EEN AT
R
EPUBLICAN
R
ALLY

Wall Street Journal
:

E
XCHANGES
O
PEN
L
OWER ON
A
POCALYPSE
F
EARS

The Sun
:

F
ROGS IN
A
WFUL
E
IFFEL
M
IX-
U
P

The clearest of the many YouTube videos had 17,903,022 hits. Most commenters believed it had been faked.

An exhausted Mack was in the very posh bathroom of a very nice room in a very nice Paris hotel. The police had decided against arresting him and his friends—for now. But they were definitely not supposed to leave the city.

Mack wasn't too worried about that. He and the others had just flown the Eiffel Tower across Paris: they could deal with some cops.

He took a shower, toweled off, and got dressed.

Then he caught a reflection in the chrome pipe at the back of the toilet.

He sighed.

“Where have you been?” he said, and crouched down to better see the wavy, uncertain image there.

Grimluk—looking as grim as ever—said, “My time is shoooooort, Mack. I am weak … I fade....”

“Yeah, well, you know what? I feel the same exact way, dude.”

“Bad day?”

“Yes. Very bad.” But then he grinned. “On the other hand, we have seven of us now. And the whole world has been warned about what's coming.”

“The whole world? But that would take many messengers, riding for months to the far corners of the earth to spread the word. To far-off Azkebal and frigid Gramaton, and steaming Bakersfield and—”

“Also, we have the Key,” Mack said, interrupting what sounded like a list that might go on for quite some time.

Grimluk blinked as Mack pulled the two parts of the Key from his backpack hanging on the door. “See? Also, the Loch Ness monster is a duck now … long story.”

“Very well done, Mack of the Magnifica.”

It occurred to Mack that it was the first compliment he'd ever gotten from Grimluk.

“Now what?” Mack asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“Now, Mack, you must find your own roots. You must learn the truth of your own distant past. For only then will you understand Valin's treachery, and only then can you hope to assemble … the …”

And then Grimluk disappeared.

Mack sat down backward on the toilet and waited. In a few seconds Grimluk faded back in.

“… let me go to my final rest,” the ancient, gnarled, wrinkled, dusty, green-toothed, hunched, milky-eyed old apparition said.

“What was that?” Mack asked, frowning.

“… past is in far Punjab … bury me …”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa there, Grimluk. Hey, what's this about burying you? You're supposed to be running this whole thing!”

Grimluk almost smiled, which was close enough given the state of his oral hygiene. No one wanted a better look at those choppers.

“It is foretold: before the Pale Queen rises, the last of … must die.”

“You are in and out, try again!” Mack urged, gripping the pipe.

“I fade … weak …”

“Hey! Hey!”

But Grimluk did not reappear.

Mack finally gave up and went into the living room, where the others were eating a breakfast of croissants, brioches, jam, and hot chocolate.

“You look as if you have seen a ghost,” Sylvie said.