The Specter Key (14 page)

A Flight to East Dinsmore

Before dawn the next morning, Adi shook Bran awake.

“It’s time to go,” she told him, and he got out of bed without a word and got dressed. His hands shook as he zipped up the front of his jacket; it was still mid-August, but Adi had told him he would need it where he was heading. He carried his bag down the stairs. The strange key and his mother’s wand were both in its front pocket, so they were close at hand.

Adi pulled out of the driveway and headed off toward Deeper Dunce, which was what many Duncelanders called the bustling and busy downtown region. It was misty and cool that morning, and the sky cast a dreary atmosphere over the city.

“He’s my brother,” Adi finally said, breaking the silence. “He lives off the coast of East Dinsmore, in a place called Elsie Island. It’s a short flight from here, and you’ll have a driver take you from the city to his house.”

“And does he have experience with things like this?” Bran asked. Adi smiled halfway.

“With keys?” she said, seeming amused. “Bran, I don’t think there is anyone on this planet who is better suited to solving your dilemma than Gary.”

Gary,
Bran repeated the name in his head. He hadn’t known that Adi had a brother.

“Is he a mage?” Bran asked.

“He is,” Adi replied. “And a far more powerful one than I will ever be.”

“You never told me about him.”

“I haven’t spoken to him in many years,” Adi said, with a sigh. “In fact, he’s been entirely cut off from the outside world for over fifteen years now.”

“Fifteen years?” Bran said with dismay, as Adi switched lanes. “He does know I’m coming though?”

Adi shook her head, and Bran laughed. When Adi did not laugh back, he realized that she was actually being serious.

“No, really?” Bran asked.

“No, really,” Adi said with a strong nod.

“How do you even know he still lives there then?” Bran said with panic.

“Don’t worry, Bran,” Adi said. “He wouldn’t have left that house. He will be there when you arrive. And he will surely help you when he reads my letter.”

At this, Adi removed from the pocket of her door an oversized red envelope with a thick, silver seal on the back holding it closed.

“What’s in it?” Bran asked.

“Just a few things Gary needs to know about you and the key,” Adi said quickly.

“Can I read it?” Bran questioned. Adi shook her head.

“It’s just something for my brother—there’s no need for you to pry into it. The seal is magic too, only Gary can open it,” she said, and the tone of her voice only made Bran all the more curious.

“But trust me,” she went on, “he’ll take you in when he reads it.”

Her words were meant to reassure him, but to Bran they sounded foreboding and made the envelope seem heavier when he took it. The seal bore a faint image of a crow with its wings outstretched as if about to take flight.

“You’ll also need this,” Adi said, cautiously handing him something else. It was a business card but unlike any normal business card Bran had seen. In fact, though it was on very plain, solid black card stock, there were no words or contact information on either side. However, in the center of the card was a silver, embossed image of a crow. Bran softly touched the raised image, and the crow faded to black so that it was invisible, and behind it the gray image of a large key, spanning the card, appeared, as well as the single word:
Gary.

Bran removed his thumb, and the image returned to normal.

“Do not lose that card,” Adi said. “It is your passage to, and into, his house, and without it there could be very dire consequences.”

Bran didn’t really know how to reply to that. Adi exited the highway at a sign that pointed them toward the Hintons O’Guincy Airport, and a bustle of cabs and buses surrounded them, even so early in the morning. Adi instructed Bran to go through lane three in security and to quietly tell the woman working there that he had spiders in his bag—which, obviously, was some type of code to this security officer, a secret cohort sympathetic to the Mages Underground.

“She’s helped us before, getting in and out,” Adi said. “She’ll make sure you don’t get caught up there with anything you’re carrying. If there’s any trouble at all, have her call me.”

Bran nodded, and Adi seemed to hesitate, even as Bran slid out of the car and set his bag on the sidewalk. She stood across from him, trying to gather her words.

“You know Astara means much to me as well,” Adi finally whispered, her voice unheeded by the passerby.

“I know,” Bran nodded.

“I’d go with you if I could,” Adi said, with a tinge of guilt. “I really would. But if I leave this town suddenly, especially after what happened on Bolton Road, it won’t just be the police who might notice, but the Mages Council—and I think it best we keep them out of this for now.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Bran replied. “I’ve got to do this myself.”

“But if you don’t get anywhere, Bran,” Adi said, “I don’t want you to feel bad either. We don’t even know if there is any chance of you getting Astara back, you know.”

Bran shrugged. “But if I don’t try at all, I’ll regret it the rest of my life.”

His words quieted Adi, so that she said nothing more but only gave him a hug and got back into the car, leaving him to go on alone.

***

Bran made it through the airport with no trouble, going into the correct lane as instructed. He made it to his plane just as the final group was boarding.

His seat was the farthest in the back of the plane, and he began to feel a bit nervous as he walked down the aisle, and the walls seemed to curve in a bit too closely over his head. At least it wasn’t as tight as a dumbwaiter compartment, but Bran still couldn’t help his minor claustrophobia. To his relief, he found that no one would be sitting beside him. He placed his bag under the seat in front of him and then unzipped the top pocket carefully. Nim was inside, in a small glass jar with no lid just to keep his things from accidentally crushing her, and she looked up at him excitedly when his face appeared.

“All right?” he whispered at her, and she nodded.

“Takeoff is soon,” he said. “We’ll be on our way.”

He heard someone cough loudly and looked up to see two men in ripped shirts across the aisle from him staring in his direction. Both had muscles so big that their arms looked like strips of skin with baseballs stuffed underneath, and they had matching bleached hair and coppery artificial tans.

“Do you have someone in your bag?” the nearest man asked, twisting his face up.

“Um, no,” Bran said. Both men blinked.

“Where you heading?” the other asked.

“Elsie Island?” Bran stammered, not sure he remembered right. Both of them laughed.

“Oh really?” the first said with a snort. “Elsie Island? Good luck getting there, buddy.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Bran returned, already disliking these fellows. They chuckled.

“You can’t get to Elsie Island,” the second man said. “It’s got rocks all up and down the sides. What boat are you going to take to get down there? No one’ll do it.”

Bran blinked, for he had no idea. Adi had simply told him that someone would be waiting for him at the airport when he landed.

“See, he’s stupid,” the first man said, jabbing a thumb toward Bran. “Talking to his bag, and doesn’t even know where he’s going.”

Both of them started to laugh as if this was the funniest thing they had ever heard, and Bran chose that moment to zip Nim back into the bag while they were distracted.

It was still so dark outside that when the pilot turned off the overhead lights, everything was immediately engulfed in darkness save for a few night lamps. As the plane taxied to the runway, they started playing one of the propaganda videos the mayor had created specifically for flights originating in Dunce: the one about how gnomes could get into the engine, put ice on the controls, and subsequently down the plane. It was followed by an assurance that the Dunce Airway Patrol was always on the lookout but that if any citizens saw a red isosceles triangle during the flight, they should report it to the flight attendant, as opposed to firing off a volley of bullets in its general direction.

As the plane climbed into the sky, Bran watched the city of Dunce disappear below. It was a breathtaking sight to behold. He watched all the sparkling lights from each little house and streetlamp. For a few moments, he was able to spot one of the larger streets that he took often to get to the bank, and he shifted his gaze and caught the Givvyng Tree, towering on the landscape below like a point on a map. A few minutes later, the pilot announced they had crossed the border of Dunce, and immediately two midgets who had been riding a few rows ahead flipped off their jacket hoods and popped on a pair of red, conical hats they had been hiding in their bags. They clapped their hands and chuckled at their clever escape from the city, while still making their Sevvenyears—the custom that required every gnome to visit the Givvyng Tree within the walls of Dunce every seventh year of their lives.

The two men across the aisle from Bran were jointly furious.

“Hucksters!” Bran heard one grumble lowly. Bran turned to look.

“Hucksters, the whole lot,” he grumbled at Bran. “I knew they were gnomes! Sneaking into our city and then just waltzing out! Hucksters, all of them.”

“Well, you don’t have to call them that,” Bran said. “I mean there are probably kids on this plane who can hear you.”

“So?” the other man said, his lips twitching up. “They’re still hucksters whether the children hear it or not. Hucksters!”

“Excuse me, sir,” the flight attendant came around the corner from the back kitchen. “Please watch your language.”

Both men only became more incited by this and even more bent on using the derogatory term for gnomes as loudly as they could. “How can you let those vile hucksters on the same plane as us?” the first protested. “Don’t we have laws against this?”

“We aren’t in Dunce anymore,” Bran hissed at him, trying his best not to cause a scene, though the men were doing very good jobs of it all by themselves.

“Well, I don’t like this plane!” the other man whined at the attendant. “All these hucksters. I can’t even breathe without smelling huckster! I demand you let me off this instant!”

“Well, I think the emergency exit is that way,” Bran pointed, feeling angrier. “Make sure you hold on to your seat cushion.”

They glared at Bran for a minute, but Bran was not about to relent and had to restrain himself from doing something rash. They finally gave up, grumbling and muttering low enough so that Bran couldn’t decipher their words.

Bran was finally able to settle back into his seat and saw that the two gnomes ahead of him had been watching, and they sent a little wave his way in thanks. One was a man, who had the usual beard, and the other was a woman, who had dark red and brown hair and a thick book in her hands.

He made himself rest and awoke later with no real sense of how long he had been asleep. The plane had become colder, and he reached to take his jacket out of his backpack to use as a blanket. He found a sleeve and pulled it out—but as he did, something else came with it and fell right into his lap.

It was a little, black ball that looked like one of Balder’s toys. He studied it in confusion, and as he turned it over, he saw that the surface of the ball was broken by a small, thick antenna sticking out like a miniature sail.

“What…?” Bran said aloud. He hadn’t put that in his bag. He turned it over again but still didn’t recognize it.

“It’s a GPS tracking device,” he heard a sharp whisper to his left. There was an elderly businessman in a suit across the aisle and one seat ahead from him, with a pair of headphones in his ears and a pillow against his neck.

“A what?” Bran whispered back. The man nodded.

“That ball there,” he said. “It’s connected to a computer somewhere on the ground. It uses satellites to tell them where you are.”

Bran jerked his gaze back to the ball immediately, feeling his breath torn away. Someone was following him! But how? He couldn’t even fathom a single instant where anyone would have had a chance to place something in his bag since the night before.

“I have one just like it, in my car,” the man went on. “If it gets stolen, all I have to do is go on a computer, and it tells me exactly where it is.”

“But why…?” Bran said with confusion. The man shrugged.

“Maybe your parents want to keep up with your whereabouts,” he said, leaning back and closing his eyes again. Bran was nearly petrified in shock. Sewey? Mabel? Wanting to know where he was going?

Realization hit him before his previous thought had even finished: It wasn’t the Wilomases. It was Thomas.

Oswald and His Cab

The thought was so sudden and startling that Bran could only stare at the device. He shook his head. Thomas had left him there at the Nigels. His father didn’t want to see him. Why in the world would he put a tracking device into his bag?

The answer came to Bran, so obvious that he knew he should have guessed it before. Back at the hotel, Thomas had only been acting like Bran didn’t matter to throw him off. Thomas was still following him.

He’s got something planned…
Bran realized, and a slight amount of anger rose up within him as he thought about it. Was his own father going to use him as bait yet again? He immediately felt as if he had been betrayed another time, and it caused him to despise the very thought of Thomas even more.

He wasn’t about to let him get away with it, though, and now that he knew what was happening, he was intent on doing anything in his power to foil Thomas’s plans. Holding the tracking ball in his fist, he looked about for someplace to discard it on the plane. As if on cue, one of the rude men in the row across gave an enormous, plane-rattling snore. Bran checked the other passengers quickly, making sure no one was watching, and then deftly tossed the ball into the man’s open bag. Bran silently hoped the men were transferring flights to some faraway island and would lead Thomas on a wild chase across the world.

He had gotten rid of the tracker just in time, for the pilot announced over the speakers that they were about to land in East Dinsmore. The plane rattled, and the rude man fell over, coming to in a fit of swearing. He glared at Bran, then glared at the other passengers, and then glared in the general direction of every other person in the world.

“Sleep well?” Bran asked cheerily, thinking of the even grander annoyance the man was about to get when Thomas finally caught up with him.

They landed, and Bran made his way with the other passengers into the bustling airport. The crowds were so varied and different, with red gnome caps poking out intermittently. It reminded Bran of Farfield, where he had first seen gnomes in public, though even here he could see a very obvious separation between the peoples: the humans kept three or four empty seats between them and the groups of gnomes. As he walked down the busy terminal, he saw that many of the restaurants had special sections set aside for people and gnomes, with signs pointing out which was which.

There was a giant sign that read
Welcome Ye to East Dinsmore
over the escalator. There was a long row of people in sharp suits and ties waiting at the bottom, holding signs with names of executives they were there to pick up in their sedans. They all looked alike—except one. In fact, he didn’t appear to be human at all. His skin was entirely gray in a sickly manner and hung off him in blobs of blubbery fat, poking out from under his dingy shirt, which was far too small to even cover his waist. He had the head of a man, though, with wild rolls of fat surrounding his neck, but where his arms should have been, he had six thin tentacles, three on each side of his body. The lower two sets were crossed impatiently, and the upper pair held a sign that read:
Barn Ha’brick
.

“Oh no…” Bran said to himself. One of the creature’s tentacles snaked around his back to lift up his pants, which kept falling down. Bran swallowed hard and approached him.

“I think you’re my…driver?” Bran said aloud. The squat man looked up at Bran.

“Eh?” he said, bending out an ear. “You Barn?”

“Bran,” he stammered in reply.

“Bran?” the creature said. “Eh. Oswald.”

One of the tentacles moved toward him, and Bran guessed that he was supposed to shake it. So he did with only a bit of hesitation, and it felt as if he was shaking hands with a balloon.

“Car’s out this way,” Oswald said in a nasally, snorting voice, folding the sign and waddling ahead toward the doors. “Got any bags on th’ wheel?”

“Not besides these,” Bran said, and Oswald took the heavier one right out of Bran’s grasp, lifting it onto his shoulder as he ambled along, the legs of his faded jeans swishing against the tile floor.

“Don’t plan on stayin’ here long then I suppose, eh?” Oswald said. “Not too much to be packed in ’er.”

“Hopefully just a day or two,” Bran said.

“Really?” Oswald replied, shooting Bran a strange glance. “And you’re visitin’ Gary down there? Would have thought you’d stay at least some, bein’s no one’s gone in so long.”

“No, just a short time,” Bran said, and Oswald dropped the subject as they went outside, where it was windy and cold. They crossed two lanes of bus and taxi traffic and came to the parking garage. Oswald led Bran down a way and stopped at his cab.

It was perhaps the most battered piece of machinery Bran had seen, and that was after years of suffering through Sewey’s Schweezer. The trunk lid was white and had the number 314 painted on it like a race car, and the hood was a slightly different shade of yellow than the body. The door on the driver’s side was purple, and attached to the back of the car appeared to be a large propeller from a boat engine. There were at least four antennae attached to the back, one nearly scraping the ceiling of the parking garage.

“Had Shirley here for nineteen years,” Oswald said proudly as he popped the trunk open. “There ain’t no cab in all of West and East Dinsmore that’ll take you where you need to be this morning.”

“And you drive this…for a living?” Bran said.

“Every day,” Oswald replied, slamming the lid with Bran’s bag inside. “Let’s head off before traffic gets bad.”

The tears in the seats scratched against Bran’s jeans, as did the holes in the carpet which were not quite being held down by the duct tape stretched across its tatters. There was a single, orange curtain on the far window, drawn aside on its rod so that Bran could see out.

Oswald was an adept driver, swerving around every car on the road, never staying in the same lane for more than ten seconds. There were at least fifteen times that Bran was certain they were about to run someone over, but the other drivers always got out of his way, as if they were very accustomed to this. Bran imagined Sewey and Oswald would make a perfect race car team.

The city sprawled out with skyscrapers and businesses all about, even busier than two or three Deeper Dunces put together. Oswald navigated it all by memory, heading across the city and never once having to stop for a red light.

When the buildings ceased to block Bran’s view, he saw to the west a giant bridge with at least twelve lanes of traffic going back and forth. It was painted bright yellow and crossed a wide, rushing river far below. The bridge separated East Dinsmore from West Dinsmore—but Oswald was not heading in that direction at all. He was pointed straight ahead toward a long, wooden dock, which poked out far ahead into the seemingly endless ocean. In the distance there was an island, and on the island was a lighthouse.

“There’s Elsie Island,” Oswald said, nodding. “I’ll have you there soon enough.”

“There’s a ferry?” Bran asked as Oswald roared around a corner so he could get to the pier. Oswald didn’t seem to hear him, because he didn’t reply. Bran looked ahead but could not see any large ferries docked there, and very few boats even.

“Is this the right place?” Bran asked.

“Eh?” Oswald replied. “Of course it is. Can’t you see Elsie right out there?”

Bran could not argue with this, but then the tires of the car met with the beginning of the dock, and the land disappeared behind them.

“What are you doing?” Bran shouted, but they were going so fast it came out as a garbled and embarrassing scream. Oswald looked in the rearview mirror.

“Eh?” he said. “What’s that now?”

“Look where you’re bloody going!” Bran roared, and Oswald obeyed, swerving back into the middle of the pier.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “We’ll be on our way in no time. Here’s it now.”

He waved one of his free tentacles toward the front window, though they were going so fast Bran could not see anything except for the end of the dock.

“Are we getting on a ferry?” Bran shouted.

“Eh?” Oswald replied.

“A ferry!” Bran said even louder. “Are we going to wait for a ferry?”

“No ferries here,” Oswald said. “What do we need a ferry for?”

“Because we’re surrounded by water!” Bran nearly screamed. Oswald shook his head, disregarding Bran entirely as they raced across the pier, the boards threatening to pop beneath them. The car just went rumbling on as the end got closer and closer with each second—until there was no pier left. The car left the ground and went soaring through the air. For a moment, Bran felt weightless, and he couldn’t draw in enough breath for a shout. They seemed to float there for a second, sailing like a glider, as Oswald calmly turned his radio dial to 88.1 FM and turned the volume all the way up.

The moment the radio was tuned, classical music blared out from the speakers in a fiery flash of pianos and trumpets, and at the same time, something happened to the outside of the car. There was a whoosh, and something invisible sealed the outside so that the air felt different; as the car tilted forward, Bran saw the water coming right at them and the hood break the surface and go diving down into the waters below.

It all seemed to happen in slow motion, but the moment they were under the water, time rushed back. The car dove so smoothly that it seemed it was far more accustomed to being below the water than above, and its motion was so effortless that if it had had a mouth and eyes, Bran felt the car itself might have been smiling with glee, as the violins and the horns and the flutes continued in victorious song.

***

Two men stood, shivering and yet sweating with terror, in a narrow alley of East Dinsmore, their hands bent behind their shoulders as if attached to the brick wall. Both had perfectly smooth, tanned faces, with bleached hair. But their faces were bloodied now as Joris stood before them, wielding his pistol as they tried to quiet their pained moans.

Elspeth appeared from the shadows with a look of calm annoyance on her face. She paid no heed to Joris.

“Look at me,” she hissed to the men, and they struggled to lift their heads in their painful, bent positions. They whimpered, breathing harshly as she looked upon them with disdain—the same gaze she had held when she had shoved them into the van at the airport, then pushed them into the alley, and then slammed their skulls and bodies against the bricks.

“I really, really want to kill both of you,” Elspeth said, her voice never rising. “I want to torch each of your bodies so no one even knows who you are anymore, then I want to put your remains into a dumpster where no one can tell the difference between you and the garbage.”

The men trembled.

“But that is so tiresome,” she said, putting one of her hands under each of the men’s jaws and lifting their faces. “I’ve got so many better things to do. And I would love to be distracted by them instead of having to entertain myself with you.”

She let their heads drop and lifted something in front of their eyes.

“How did this get into your bag?” she said. She held a small black ball with a miniature antenna. The men blinked at it, shaking their heads in denial.

“N-never seen it before,” the first man said shakily, sweat pouring down his face.

“You didn’t take it from someone?” Elspeth asked. “Not a boy, about fifteen years old?”

“No!” the man choked, his breath going in and out in quick gasps.

“Just kill them,” Elspeth hissed at Joris, and the men screamed terribly until the other man shouted.

“Wait, wait!” he said. “I do remember a boy though! He was on our plane!”

Elspeth turned to him. “What did he look like?”

“Brown hair,” the man stammered. “He was right across from us.”

“You know where he was going?” Elspeth pressed.

“Yeah,” the man wheezed. “He was heading off to Elsie Island. And we told him he couldn’t get there, but he said he was still going that way.”

Elspeth shifted, turning the man’s head higher so she could stare deeper into his eyes. He seemed to bend under the pressure of her gaze.

“But nobody ever goes out that far toward Elsie Island,” he went on, “because of the undertow and the rocks: it drowns divers and wrecks the ships.”

“And the ghosts,” the other man said. “The island’s haunted, they say. There’s light under the water there, you can see from far off on really dark nights.”

He nodded his head painfully toward the open end of the alley, where the outline of the Elsie Island lighthouse could be seen towering out of the mist, its bulb turning across the waters.

“It’s off limits, on account of the lighthouse,” the first man rasped. “They say there’s a man who lives there who keeps it runnin’, but he’s got special order to be let alone.”

The man whimpered, fear in his damp eyes. “I-I don’t know anything more.”

Elspeth gently stroked his cheek.

“Of course you don’t,” she said gently, and she gave a smile as if to reassure him that she was done. She turned to walk away. Joris lifted his pistol and shot twice, the sound of it silenced. The moment Joris finished, the gruner leapt at the head of the first man, ripping his body from the wall and tearing into his flesh with its teeth.

“How do we know they were telling the truth?” Joris asked Elspeth, moving to follow her as the alley filled with snapping and thrashings from the gruner as it fed. Elspeth did not answer him but stood at the end of the alley and stared, as if her piercing eyes might discover where Bran was hiding.

“He was,” she assured him after a few moments.

“How do we get over there then?” Joris pressed. Elspeth shook her head.

“Don’t worry,” she replied. “We won’t need to. Bran will come to us.”

“How?” Joris said.

“Thomas will make him,” Elspeth said. “And he will return with the missing piece.”

She looked to Joris. “Thomas has this going exactly according to plan.”

Joris didn’t like to hear her speak of Thomas in this way, with reluctant admiration. After a few moments, the gruner gave a low growling purr and slid against Elspeth’s leg, but she continued to stare into the waters, her eyes never leaving the waves as they crashed against the rocky walls of Elsie Island.