The Magnificent 12 (8 page)

Fifteen

T
he Magnificent Eight . . . Wait, let's check that: Mack, Jarrah, Xiao, Dietmar, Sylvie, Rodrigo, Charlie, and Valin. Yes, eight.

The Magnificent Eight plus Stefan were face-to-face with the reality that time was just about up. And they were still eight and not twelve. If you know anything about math, you'll agree that meant they were short by four.

And bad things were brewing. The news report on the hotel TV was alarming enough even if you didn't suspect what was behind it: a volcano was forming in the ocean off San Francisco.

You know the last time a volcano formed off the coast of San Francisco? Probably the Jurassic period. There would have been dinosaurs saying, “Hey, what's that?”

There were no dinosaurs around now, just the BBC on the television at the hotel where most of the Magnifica had spent their time trying to figure out what had happened to Mack, Xiao, and Stefan.

“The dome is growing at an incredible rate, according to volcanologists. The ash plume is already drifting over the city, and California may experience major earthquakes and tidal waves. But first, we have the results of the cricket match between Kenya and Sri Lanka.”

“Are you guys thinking what I'm thinking?” Mack asked.

“That I never did get those lentils?” Stefan said. He nodded angrily. “Yeah. That's what I'm thinking.”

“Could this volcano be a manifestation of the Pale Queen?” Xiao suggested.

“It's awfully coincidental,” Charlie said.

Sylvie said, “Can it not be said that all of life is a coincidence?” Then she thought it over and answered her own question. “No. I think this is the Pale Queen.”

“Then we know where we have to go. But we don't have time to search the world for the remaining four.”

“We fight the Pale Queen with just the eight of us?” Dietmar asked skeptically. “I understood that even with all twelve we would be unlikely to win. With eight we are surely doomed.”

“That's right, Captain Optimist,” Jarrah said.

“Here's my idea,” Mack said. “We know we're being followed on YouTube by all kinds of people. For example, the Lepercon battle has been viewed more than ‘Nyan Cat' and a quarter as much as ‘Gangnam Style.' And the Eiffel Tower thing is really blowing up, too.”

“It was trending on Twitter for days,” Rodrigo said. “Up until the Taylor Swift slap fight with Justin Bieber.”

“Then it's time we put all that fame to use,” Mack said. “We need to send out a call for the remaining four to get to San Francisco!”

“But a bunch of nerds and weirdos will show up,” Charlie argued.

“He's right,” Dietmar said. “How do we make sure only the right people, the four who possess the
enlightened puissance
, show up?”

“Simple,” Valin said, speaking up for the first time. He was not the least abashed about having practically tortured and nearly killed Mack. He seemed to think all was right with the world now. “If I understand Mack, he's suggesting we make a YouTube appeal. Well then, we give them a Vargran spell that will transport them to San Francisco. It will only work for those who have the true
enlightened puissance
.”

Everyone nodded. Mack was even less happy about Valin coming up with a smart solution than he was when Dietmar did it. Dietmar was annoying, but he had never tried to get ants to bite Mack to death.

“Yes,” Mack said. “We put out a video. Like I said.” Then added, “It was my idea.”

“It will need to attract attention,” Rodrigo argued. “It will have to be something people want to watch.”

“Huh,” Stefan said, and snapped his fingers. What he meant was, “We get Taylor Swift to slap Mack!”

“Um . . . maybe not that,” Mack said. “We need to figure out the Vargran we need to transport ourselves to San Francisco. And then? We just keep the video rolling.”

“Who has the longest arms?” Jarrah asked.

That turned out to be Stefan. So Stefan held the phone out at arm's length, and the nine of them crammed close together to all get into the picture. And once the video was rolling, Mack looked at the camera and began to speak.

“We are the Magnifica. Well, plus Stefan here. You may remember us from such videos as ‘Flying Eiffel Tower' and ‘Loch Ness Duck' and, especially, ‘The Cheese-filled Lepercons of Beijing.' Well, now we have a great opportunity for you. There are four more of us out there, somewhere. Four twelve-year-olds with the
enlightened puissance
. We need you to join us in a final battle with the terrifying forces of evil that will almost certainly kill us all. So if that sounds like a good time . . .”

This was not coming out quite the way he had planned.

“But we also have some fun together,” he added lamely. “It's not all danger and death. Anyway, look, unless you want to spend the rest of your life being dominated by the Pale Queen and her evil—attractive, sure, but evil—daughter, Risky, you have to come and help us.”

At this point Xiao took pity on Mack's rambling and laid it out. “We will give you words of the Vargran tongue. If you speak them, and if you have the
enlightened puissance
, they will be a magical spell that will transport you instantly to San Francisco.”

“Just like we're about to do,” Dietmar said. “If you don't believe us, just watch.”

At that point Stefan shifted the camera because his arm was getting tired. The Magnifica formed up again, and Rodrigo did a countdown.
“Tres . . . dos . . . uno!”

Eight voices chanted the words as one:
“Fla-ma ik ag San Francisco!”

And just like that—as the soon-to-be-famous video showed—they were in San Francisco. In fact, they were in Golden Gate Park, where a thrown Frisbee hit Mack in the back of his head.

“We could have spared ourselves a lot of airline miles if we'd thought of that earlier,” Jarrah pointed out.

“Upload that video,” Mack instructed Stefan. “Then let's find some food.”

Lingering in the restaurant after a massive lunch of sourdough pizza, sourdough soup, sourdough cioppino, and sourdough bread pudding—they'd been through a lot, so they were entitled—they checked the YouTube video. It already had tens of thousands of hits. And many comments, most of which were along the lines of, “This is a fake!” And also, “I tried the stupid spell and it didn't work!” And of course, “Aaaarrggh GUHGUHGUH Pooooooo!”

But then, the YouTube comments section is not a place where geniuses hang out.

Xiao said, “Where might these new Magnifica arrive? It's a big city, after all.”

“Right where we popped in?” Jarrah suggested.

“Maybe,” Dietmar said doubtfully.

Valin, with a mysterious look, said, “They will arrive where most needed.”

Sylvie rolled her eyes. Valin might be her half brother, but he had tried to kill Mack, and she did not like that at all. “That is wishful thinking. A superficial analysis at best.”

“Ha. I am descended from Taras Bulba. Don't tell me I'm superficial!”

Xiao and Mack exchanged a guilty look.

Then Mack glanced up from the table to notice that three separate smartphones were taping them. “It seems like we're being watched everywhere now.”

“Makes it easy for other Magnifica to find us,” Charlie said. “Of course it makes it easy for the bad guys, too.”

There was a television above the bar and Dietmar said, “Shush!” in that pushy way he had. And then, equally pushy, he said loudly, “Can you turn it up, Mr. Tavern Keeper?”

The man at the bar stared hard at Dietmar but turned up the TV anyway. What had drawn Dietmar's gaze was a newscast. The video was amazing: in just the space of a few hours the boiling water and plume of ash had become a definite volcanic cone sticking up out of the ocean.

And something else: a ridge of rock was rising from the sea as well, a long spur of wave-washed stone running straight as an arrow and pointing directly at San Francisco.

Just then the ground shook beneath their feet. Dishes rattled, a bottle of soda toppled over, a waiter lost his balance and dropped his tray, and food went flying.

“That felt like a five, maybe five point one,” the bartender said.

The waiter, already busy picking up the dropped dishes, said nonchalantly, “Nah, four point eight, tops. I can't believe I dropped a tray for a lousy four point eight.”

The TV, which had wobbled a bit during the brief earthquake, had switched to an aerial shot that clearly showed the stony ridge as a long line of gray rocks, some already above water, much just a shadow beneath the water, and the rest only implied.

“She's building a path, a bridge,” Mack said. “She's coming right this way. The Pale Queen will come out of that volcano and head straight down that rocky bridge!”

Xiao frowned. “What was it Grimluk told you? About a bridge?”

“Different bridge,” Mack said. “He was talking about the Golden Gate. That's why we came to San Francisco.”

“Yes, but didn't he tell you that's where we would find the remaining Magnifica?”

“Do you think he meant specifically the bridge? The bridge itself?” Mack looked around to see if anyone had any better ideas. None did.

“It will take a while for the YouTube to reach—” Valin began, but at that moment the ground beneath their feet seemed to leap to life.

The entire table jumped. Sylvie fell off her chair. Jarrah jumped to her feet but her knees buckled. Bottles and glasses fell all around them. The plate glass window cracked.

The TV went dark; the lights wavered, brightened eerily, then went out altogether.

People screamed. One of those people was Mack, who now found himself in a tangle on the floor with Sylvie and Xiao. And that floor was still very active, bucking like a rodeo horse, bruising Mack's knees and the palms of his hands. He wanted to use his hands to cover his ears because the shaking, rumbling, and groaning of the earth sounded like the end of the world.

The quake went on forever. Or maybe three minutes. But it feels like forever when you're in the middle of an earthquake.

The floor tile between Mack's hands cracked and split, revealing the wood beneath.

The quake stopped suddenly.

Mack was breathing hard. All of them were breathing hard. Dietmar looked as pale as a ghost. He was always pale, but now even his lips were the color of vanilla ice cream.

Mack climbed shakily to his feet to see Jarrah high-fiving Stefan. “Now that was a quake!” she said excitedly. “I hope no one's hurt.”

“Yeah. As long as no one's, like, dead, it was way cool,” Stefan agreed.

Because honestly, those two? They were just not hooked up right.

Even Valin looked upset. And he was still at least 50 percent evil, so you'd have thought he wouldn't be upset. But he was. He had his sword drawn and was jumping around all twitchy like he was expecting an attack.

“Now, that'd be a good six point four,” the bartender said, beginning to reshelve some bottles.

“Five bucks says it's not that high,” the waiter demurred. “Okay, six point three is the over-under. Six point four or over, and you win.”

“Deal,” the bartender said.

San Francisco folks can be strange.

“Are you kidding?” Mack cried shrilly. “That was a huge earthquake!”

The waiter looked at him pityingly. “Young dude, that was a big one, but that was not the Big One by a long shot. Every full point on the Richter scale is an order of magnitude bigger. So, like, a five is not just a little bigger than a four. A five is ten times bigger than a four. Now, if the Big One ever hits, that'll be more like an eight point five. Maybe even an eight point seven. Get to nine and the whole city slides into the bay.”

The bartender nodded. “Yeah, kid, if you're cleaning up broken glass, it's not the Big One. When the Big One comes, we'll be cleaning up bodies.”

Despite this cheerful talk, the eight Magnifica plus Stefan decided to pay their bill and get out of there. Out on the street Mack saw very little evidence of the quake. Maybe a new crack in the street. But suddenly the horror of their situation was coming home to him in a very real way. He looked around at the buildings, at the street, at the cars, and especially at the people—none of whom were panicking but all of whom looked shaken up—and realized that what was coming was infinitely worse. Many orders of magnitude worse.

A thousand times worse.

And it was his job to stop it from happening.

“We can't just wait here eating sourdough bread and crabmeat,” Mack said. He crossed his arms over his chest and planted his feet wide. People seeing this probably assumed this was his “strong leader” look. In fact his feet were planted wide apart in case the ground started moving again. And his arms were crossed because they were trembling so badly it was the only way to avoid looking like some twitchy crazy person.

He was scared. The locals might be able to shrug off an earthquake, but that was because they thought it was all over.

It was far from over.

It hadn't even begun. And when it did truly get going, when the hordes of the Pale Queen reached this city, there would be screams and terror, blood and pain and death.

“We can't just wait for her to come. We're going after her,” Mack announced.

“But we are still just eight,” Charlie pointed out.

“Eight is better than none,” Mack said. It made no sense, really, but he said it with a very firm jaw and a very resolute voice, so it would go down in history as one of those things great heroes say that are kind of dumb but sound cool anyway.

“We are going to fight her every step of the way,” Mack said. “We're going to need a boat.”

Which is how the Magnificent Eight ended up on a sailboat named
The Cornucopia
captained by a woman named Grace—who accepted a cool fifty grand charged to the million-dollar credit card—and headed that lumpy craft into the bay, and beneath the majestic Golden Gate Bridge, and straight out into the Pacific Ocean.