Another Pan (21 page)

It was like they were some kind of underground organization. The questions would be in one language, and the response would be in another. Sometimes the subjects would be small-time, like “How do I get the change out of a soda machine?” And other times it’d be big enough to make John squirm: “Posting the blueprints to the prime minister’s HQ on secure FTP, encryption codes to follow . . .”

And it was always signed with
LB
and a number. All the texts went through Peter’s phone.
Geez,
thought John,
he’s not an RA. He’s the boss of an international syndicate
. The central hub. The center of the Lost Boys’ universe — not just at Marlowe; apparently, there were LBs all over New York, London, Tokyo, and a dozen other places. Knowing this made John feel a moment of admiration for Peter . . . but only a moment.

John scanned the contacts list again, then started reading more messages. Close to twenty more texts had shot back and forth. He took a few steps away from Peter and Wendy, who were now engrossed in a conversation about what to do with the open gate. Shrinking into a corner with the phone, John was tempted to text back, to write something to the LBs and be a part of it all — oh, and to screw Peter by infiltrating his network. But trying to enter the conversation was like trying to jump into those rivers at the water park that are always changing, always rushing ahead. He quickly typed out a message:
LBs in Marlowe. Damage under control. The Johnny
.

That was a pretty badass message. John was starting to get into this. He grinned as text after text started pouring in from all over:
The Johnny? Who is this? How did you hack the secure line? Has Magnus Unus been compromised?

“Magnus Unus?” said John. Do they
really
refer to Peter as the “Great One”? As John ate up the sudden infamy, he failed to notice the slow changes, the tiny shifts in atmosphere that were taking hold all around. He didn’t notice the lights dimming, didn’t bother to look down long enough to see the patches of stone taking over the floor, didn’t breathe in the rot all around, or see the moths, like curious minions, appearing in hidden corners. He was too busy imagining his name flying all over the servers, like Morpheus or aXXo. And as the room grew darker and darker, he had the light of the phone to read by.

He looked up just as his sister’s trembling voice traveled across to him in the now pitch-black basement. “Wh . . . where’s John?”

John held up the phone, trying to use it as a flashlight. He felt his way across the basement. “Wendy?” he whispered, forgetting his anger and trying to find his way to her. He could hear Wendy and Peter breathing, calling him to come to them. Or was that them? He couldn’t tell. He felt like he was in a stone prison, just like inside the labyrinth. Suddenly, everything felt scary and urgent. He couldn’t seem to swallow the pooling spit in his mouth. He just stared as an elegant shadow closed in on him.

In those brief moments, he thought perhaps he should run. But he didn’t have long enough to process the idea. Instead, random facts began to flutter through his mind, like the fact that the shadow looked like a woman, or the fact that it really
was
zeroing in on the three of them. The three who had been inside.

And then, in the dark basement, as the Dark Lady drew closer, John thought he saw a familiar face under the layers of coarse fabric. He squinted to try to get a better look, but something shiny caught his eye instead. She was holding something in her right hand.

By the time John snapped out of it, it was too late. His survival instinct kicked in and he whipped around to run up the stairs, but the figure was too close. She seemed to be whispering, and each time he turned to look, he saw that her steps were slow and almost painful. John thought he heard her cough, and he peered into her hood one more time. Her face was completely obscured by a cloud of moths. He whimpered and tried to run again, but as he did, his hand brushed the fabric of her sleeve and he felt her cold flesh . . . and something else . . . something hard and metallic. It was some kind of hook.

A second later, John let out a horrible shriek.

For a few agonizing seconds, John leaned forward, halfway up the staircase, his body slumping over the banister, his arm caught between here and another place, an agonizing place made of pain and fire and torture. He saw blood spilling from the part of his arm that was still connected to the sharp hook, and now it was pumping in spurts from his veins, to the beat of his quivering heart. The pain was hot and cold, white and black, mute and shrill, all at the same time. John felt his body going into shock. His knees were giving out. He was losing too much blood.

Self-preservation was the only instinct left. Before he passed out, John made one last effort. He yanked. With everything he had left, he yanked his arm free of the hook’s grip. The meat on his arm was stripped like a kebab and he fell forward. And John’s limp form went tumbling down the stairs.

As the figure approached them, Wendy stood crying, with her hand on her mouth. She wanted to run and help John, but Peter was holding her back.

“Come on, now,” said Peter. “We both know you’re looking for me.”

“What are you doing?” Wendy asked.

“I have to go in,” said Peter. He looked ashen, like a kid about to get his punishment.

“What?”
Wendy panted, looking up at the moths that were now circling them overhead.

“She wants
me
. She’ll follow me, I promise. It’s the only way.” He looked up at the moths as if he expected them to be watching, and then, in an instant, he was gone. He just stepped through the door with the eye and vanished.

The lights flickered once. There was a brief pause, and the room was bright again. The smell was gone; the patches of stony floor disappeared as if it had been a mirage. Even the moths in the corners had gone. The figure hobbled into the gate behind Peter.

Wendy wondered if she should shut it.
Yes,
she thought, remembering what Peter had said.
He can just get back to the overworld by saying the name of the hour
. Peter had every name and secret and story in the book memorized. Though she hated closing the gate behind him, Wendy ran over and slammed the door shut, watching the eye disappear over the threshold. Then she rushed to John. She was overcome by guilt. How could she have been so cruel to him? And now he was lying here, his arm torn to shreds — the same arm she had so violently squeezed just a few minutes before.

Wendy felt her brother’s cheek, tried to take his pulse. She would have thought he was dead if not for the barely perceptible movement in his chest. His arm was almost completely stripped. It was bone with a few threads of white pulp. Wendy winced. It reminded her of a twig after it’s been used to roast a marshmallow. And it was her fault.

Wendy sat there next to John, waiting, trying to figure out what to do. She considered going upstairs to find a teacher or the school nurse. Instead, she found a cloth in the exhibit cleaning supplies and wrapped it tightly around his arm. Five minutes passed and Wendy began to panic. She was about to leave the basement when suddenly Peter came bounding down the staircase, shouting triumphantly as if he’d just won a tennis match.

“Where were you?” Wendy shouted.

Peter was taken aback, as if he expected her to rejoice with him. “You shut the gate, remember? Good job, by the way. But I had to get away through the labyrinth. I opened a gate at the first possible chance and ended up in the art studio upstairs.”

Wendy had stopped listening halfway through the explanation. She began to shake John. “Wake up. Please, John, wake up. I’m so sorry.” Then she looked at Peter. “Peter, we have to get him to a hospital.”

But Peter didn’t seem to grasp the urgency of the situation. He walked over to the
Book of Gates
and closed it gently. He set it on its stand before wandering over to John’s body.

“Come on,
hurry,
” urged Wendy.

“Don’t worry so much,” said Peter.

“He might die,” said Wendy. She noticed she was trembling when Peter put his hand on her shoulder to steady her. She looked up at him.
Why is he so calm? Doesn’t he care?

Peter knelt down beside John. Wendy tried to regulate her breathing. But instead of tending to John, Peter reached down and grabbed his phone from the floor next to John. He was checking his messages.

“What are you
doing
?” said Wendy.

“Shh, shh, this one’s important.” Peter quickly texted something, oblivious to Wendy’s panic. “The prime minister. That’s good.”

Peter looked up from his phone. Wendy was dumbfounded by his callousness. “Oh, right,” said Peter, turning his attention to John. He dug into his pocket and brought out an item wrapped in gauze. From the other pocket, he pulled out a multi-tool. Wendy watched with curiosity as Peter slowly unwrapped the gauze around the item to reveal a stubby rock, or maybe a dried mushroom. Wendy leaned in. “It’s a bone,” said Peter, “from a toe.”

He pulled out a nail file from the multi-tool. Carefully, very carefully, Peter started to grate the bone over John’s thrashed arm. A fine dust began to snow, and Wendy gasped, finally realizing what she was witnessing.

At first, nothing happened. But soon, as the dust settled and soaked in, John’s wound began to heal. A ripped strand of muscle began to grow like a cartoon vine, wrapping itself back around the bone. John let out a weary groan as he gained consciousness. Wendy gaped as she watched veins and tendons growing in John’s arm. And just as the final layer of skin wrapped itself tightly, a rush of blood coursed through the tissue, swelling it up like a sponge.

And then it was back to normal. Peter immediately stopped grating. He didn’t waste a single speck. He wrapped the remainder of the petrified toe and put it back in his pocket. They’d have to clean the bloody mess, but John was perfectly fine. They’d also need to get rid of his blood-soaked clothes. But for now, Wendy was overjoyed. She helped John sit up. And while John got his bearings, she threw her arms around Peter.

“
Thank you,
Peter,” said Wendy. Her face was buried in his shoulder, and she felt him tap her absentmindedly on the back, the way he had done to Tina. She lifted her head slightly to look at him, hoping that his mind wasn’t with myths or bonedust or some other faraway distraction. For the first time, that feeling of mistrust that Wendy had toward anyone who showed interest vanished. She didn’t think about being left behind or betrayed. She didn’t think about Connor or how this moment with Peter would stack up in her life’s quest not to be like her mother. She watched Peter’s smirk, a self-satisfied, happy grin — maybe he was happy
for her
. Wendy didn’t move. She just waited, her face inches from Peter’s.

After a slight pause, the smirk left Peter’s face, and she thought she felt him inching forward, his hand creeping toward her neck, so that she could feel the first tickle of warm breath — when John moaned, “Gross.”

Wendy jumped back, only now realizing what strange timing this was for Peter to try to kiss her. She didn’t care. She didn’t even allow the niggling thought that Peter might be the type of guy who got kissed whenever and wherever the idea struck him.

“I’m so sorry, John,” she whispered, falling on her brother and hugging him.

John pushed her off and shrugged the way he always did when he wanted to say it’s OK.

“
The Johnny
speaks,” said Peter, looking at his phone. The idea of a kiss seemed to have flown out of his mind just as suddenly as it had flown in.

John sat up and examined his arm, then his bloody clothes with increasing alarm. “H-how —?” he asked, gawking at his tattered shirt with awe.

Wendy eyed Peter. “Someone neglected to mention he has bonedust.”

Peter put his hand through his hair. “You put it together, did you?”

“How else could you heal a wound like that?”

“Maybe I’m Superman.”

“Superman can’t regenerate carbon-based tissue,” said John in a still-groggy voice.

“Wow,” said Peter. “He’s even dweeby in his sleep.”

Wendy changed the subject. “So Daddy wasn’t just
right
about the legends and the five mummies; he was close to finding where they were! He’s the one who said that the book holds the key to the mysteries of bonedust. And he commissioned these artifacts from the British museum. Do you think he knew about the labyrinth, or do you think he expected to find a treasure map or something? Like, a more . . . um . . . earthly one . . .”

“Your pops isn’t as crazy as everyone thinks,” said Peter.

“We saw one of them,” said John, perking up. “The pyramid with five pillars, that must have been —”

“The temple Elan built,” said Peter. “That’s where I got the first bonedust. The toe was all that was left of him.” He tapped his pocket. Then he turned to Wendy, a look of hungry curiosity on his face. “So at Marlowe, the Elan temple is at the base? You said you went only to the
base
.”

Wendy shrugged.

Peter began mumbling to himself. “It can’t be,” he said. “How close did you get?”