Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (31 page)

Scott glanced back at Biggs, but Biggs wasn’t there.

Then something pink, something big, began to emerge from backstage.

The little egg man snored on the cold marble.

“Emily,” said Erno. “I’m really, really sorry—”

“Forget it.”

“I
had
to say those things. To scare you. Do you understand?”

Emily sighed and looked around.

“I turned the lights off,” she muttered. “I set a fire and turned a man’s head into a flower.”

“Yeah.”

Emily shook her head as if someone had told a bad joke.

“I know it’s usually my job to make you feel better,” said Erno, “not worse, but—”

“Your
job
?”

“Not … not a job like I don’t want to do it, I just mean—”

“Yes. Fine. I understand why you did it. Good plan. Can we escape already? I really have to go to the bathroom.”

Erno had to go as well—it hadn’t occurred to the Freemen to take them, or they just hadn’t cared.

“When we’re outside we can run to the train station,” he said, and moved toward one of the room’s four exits.

“No. Not that way. The Freemen left by three different doors, but nobody went through that one.” She was right: at three compass points the rooms were appointed with tall, stately double doors. The fourth door was plain, unpolished, designed as though meant only for servants or inferiors. It wasn’t even as tall as a normal door.

They stepped through it and into a stairwell.

“We’re upstairs,” Erno said, and then the memory—of being inside the cage, tilted then turning, tilted then turning—came back to him.

“We’re on the third floor,” said Emily. “Facing east. If we can get all the way down to the basement, we should. Buildings this old all had coal chutes. Might be more discreet than just trying to walk out the front door.”

“You’re doing good now,” said Erno, and he smiled. But behind the smile he was gagging a little on sour disappointment. He deserved this—a bossy Emily was just the right punishment for the way he’d talked to her in the cage. But he hated himself for wanting her to fall apart again, just a little. If Emily was suddenly going to be so
brave all the time, what did she need
him
for?

“I just have to keep it together a little while longer.”

They hustled down the stairs listening for voices, other footsteps. On every landing there was a narrow window, taller but no wider than those that had been in their cage. They descended past the basement, hit bottom, and pushed cautiously through the only door.

It was a boiler room. Dark, hot. Lit like a dying fire. Floor to ceiling it was blackened concrete and stone, vaulted with a rib cage of dark metal girders. Five ancient gray boilers like massive skulls lined the floor, with bars for teeth and eyes that were shuttered by thick iron doors. A tangle of pipes wormed up through the ceiling.

“Let’s go down to the basement, says Emily,” Erno muttered. “It’s not like it’ll be the scariest room you’ve ever seen.”

“
Shh
.”

They crept inside, Emily peering all around in search of the coal chute or any other way out. Erno couldn’t stop looking at the boilers. They were all lit like jack-o’-lanterns, with red-orange fire behind their teeth. Except for the middle one, which glowed blue. And where the others’ fires were warm and even, the middle fire was fitful and inconsistent: it went perfectly dark, then flared up, then went dark again. It didn’t seem to be working right.

“There’s the coal chute,” said Emily. It was, unsurprisingly, above a large pile of coal. Erno motioned her over.

“Why is that one different?” he asked, pointing out the blue boiler.

“They must have retrofit it for natural gas,” Emily said. “They should have fixed all five up that way. Coal is really—”

Erno would have to learn about coal another time, because just then they heard shuffling outside a second door on the other end of the room. They scrambled behind the nearest boiler, crouched down low, and felt its devilish fever against their cheeks and ears. A man entered the room. An astronaut.

No, that wasn’t quite right. He was dressed from head to toe in silver foil, with a shiny bucket helmet with a reflective gold visor and a pair of gloves that were like oven mitts that went up to the elbows.

“I blame our upbringing,” Erno whispered, more to himself than to Emily. “If we’d been allowed to watch scary movies, we’d have realized we’re the stupid kids that get killed right away.” Beside him, Emily’s breathing quickened. She touched Erno’s hand, and he felt an ugly sense of satisfaction.

The tinfoil man was carrying an odd box. It was like a gray lantern with a cakey brick texture. There was a metal door on one end and a hook in the top. And a coiled metal whatsit jutting out the bottom. He carried this thing over to the middle boiler and knelt on the floor.

“You behave now,” he told the box, or the boiler, or possibly himself. Then he opened the barred doors at the base of the furnace and thrust in his gloved hand.

“What is he…?” whispered Erno.

The tin man fished around inside the mouth of blue flame until he found what he was after, and this he withdrew and stuffed inside the lantern-box. It was small. Erno almost thought he’d seen what it was, but no—he
couldn’t
have. He couldn’t have seen what he thought he saw.

The man closed the boiler, rose, and walked back the way he’d come. “Showtime, you little firecracker,” he said to himself, or to the thing in the box. But he might as well have been speaking to a spark, just now growing in Emily’s chest, that wasn’t going to let her leave the temple without some answers.

“Slow down,” hissed Erno. “We have to be more
careful
.”

“I told you to go to the train station,” Emily whispered as she scurried through the halls of the temple. “I didn’t ask you to come.”

“We were almost free.”

“You heard the Freemen earlier. They’re all in some ceremony. There’s no one to stop us from going through their things. I want to know what’s going on,” Emily answered, and Erno cursed himself once more for losing Mr. Wilson’s notes.

This corridor was paneled shoulder-high with oiled wood and wallpapered scarlet to the tin-tiled ceiling. It was lined with painted portraits of serious-looking men in robes and fez hats. The frames bore plates that said things like
ASA STANDISH, GRAND AMBROSIUS
1893–1905.
WHITEHEAD WILLETT, GRAND AMBROSIUS
1879–1893. If you ran by them fast enough it was like a flip-book of facial hair. At the end of the hall was a pair of ornate doors that looked promisingly important.

Erno tried one of the handles, then the other, but the doors were locked.

“Office of the Grand Ambrosius,” Emily read off the door. “He’s the leader of all the chapters. The top Freeman in the country.” She glared at the locks as if all the answers she’d ever wanted were behind these doors. Her whole stupid life explained.

“It’s just a simple tumbler lock,” she said finally. “I could pick it with a hairpin.”

“Do you have a hairpin?”

“No.”

“Maybe I could shoot it off for you, eh?” said someone behind them.

The kids turned. At the other end of the hall was an old man with a gun. The same hunter they’d seen quibbling over custody of Biggs back in the surgery. He walked slowly toward them, in no hurry at all. Or rather, thought
Erno, like someone trying to come off as unhurried and self-possessed even as his blood raced inside him. The man’s hands shook. His face appeared watery and fragile. But a nervous villain with a gun wasn’t any more of a comfort than a confident one.

“I’d tell you to call me Papa,” said the hunter, “but I’m told papas are a bit of a sore point for you two.”

Erno stepped in front of Emily.

“Chivalrous,” said Papa. “Good lad.”

The gun looked like an antique, but a well-cared-for antique. It probably shot antique bullets and everything.

“They haven’t given you your Bigfoot yet,” Erno said, just as he realized it. That was good.

The hunter was only a handful of feet away now. Even with trembling hands he was unlikely to miss. “No. It seems they thought all their old test subjects from the sixties were dead, but now they’ve grasped that your nanny was one of them, and they want to hold him for observation.”

“Probably want his appendix,” Emily growled.

“Undoubtedly, though I shudder to think what they want it
for
. Regardless, they are playing hardball, as I believe you Yanks say. So I’ve come up here looking for something of theirs to take. Some bargaining chip. But you two will do splendidly, wot?”

“You’re not a Freeman,” asked Erno, stalling for time. “Who
are
you?”

“Last of the great white hunters. The Freemen and I used to be bitter rivals, you know: they wanted the fairy-tale creatures; I wanted the fairy-tale creatures. In recent years we’ve come to a gentleman’s agreement: I hunt the occasional snipe for them, and they let me shoot the dumb animals after they’ve milked the magic out of them. But now they’re getting greedy and making me resort to common kidnappery. It’s unsportsmanlike.”

It wasn’t easy keeping his cool in the face of this man and his gun, but now Erno looked past him and relaxed a bit. “We’re not going anywhere with you.”

“You are, and consider this: it is my understanding that Goodco only
really
needs the girl. So, manners. Manners, and you’ll come through this sound as a pound. And I’ll see my Bigfoot again.”

“Sooner than you think,” said Erno.

“Eh? What?”

“He moves really quietly, you know.”

Papa frowned, but the frown soon dissolved with understanding. “Oh balls,” he said, and turned just in time to be socked in the face. He dropped at once.

“Biggs!” Emily cheered, and rushed forward to hug the big man. “How did you find us?”

“Tracked your scent.”

Erno grimaced. “Mine or Emily’s?”

“Yours. Smells like milk.”

“It does not.”

“Biggs,” said Emily sweetly. “I’d like to see what’s inside this door. Would you rip it off its hinges for us?”

It advanced through the backdrop, the enormous pink head, the enormous pink neck of an enormous pink dragon. A dragon only slightly less intimidating for being constructed out of fabric, wood, carnations, and wire. The chorus sang,

Scott turned to Mick. “Saxbriton? Isn’t that the dragon from your story?”

“Aye. Mightiest dragon in all the land.”

“And she’s pink? Just like the dragon in the Goodco
logo? How have you not mentioned this?”

Mick shrugged. “Lotta dragons ’re pink. That is, lotta dragons ’re red an’ lotta dragons ’re white, an’ …
ahem
 … when two dragons love each other very much—”

“I don’t need the birds-and-the-bees talk, thank you.”

“Sapphire fire?” whispered Mick.

At this, as if on cue, the puppet dragon lifted its head, parted its jaws, and released a plume of brilliant blue flame.

“Did yeh see it?” Mick jumped. “That blue fire!”

“It’s a gas fire,” Scott said sagely. The Doe family had a gas stove.

“No. No gas fire is so blue. Not
that
blue…”

Two new backdrops descended from the rafters. They were not as wide as the painted forest—just narrow strips, really, made to look like yellowed paper and hanging to either side of the dragon’s head. Two hundred names were inscribed on these banners—a list of knights, it seemed. Sir William Marsters, Sir Patrick Stevenson, Sir Sanjay Applethwaite…

“My dad,” Scott breathed. “My dad’s name is written on the one on the right.”