Seven Wonders Book 2: Lost in Babylon (37 page)

“That was a woman?” Cass asked.

“And she told you her name?” Aly added. “She didn't tell me.”

“Or me,” Cass said.

I thought back to that day. To what the woman had said. The words were so strange. “There was another name, though. Morgana . . . Margana? It's not here in these numbers, but she mentioned it to me.”

“Huh,” Cass said, his head cocked. “Which, by the way, is ‘huh' backward. But here's the weird thing.
Margana?
Did she really say that? Because that's
anagram
spelled backward!”

An anagram.

The person—the weird voice—had added the word to the end of her name. Why?

I wrote out the name NANCY EMELINK in big, block letters. Immediately Aly went to work. I could see her writing AMY CLENKINEN, LYNN MCANIKEE, and a bunch of others.

But I could not bring myself to pick up a pencil. The letters seemed to be dancing on the paper, rearranging themselves in my own mind.

I felt a sharp sting of cold at the base of my spine, running up to my neck.

“Stop,” I said.

Aly looked up. “Say what?”

“I said,
stop
!”

I grabbed the pencil from her. My hand shook as I separated out the letters that I was seeing.

“What?” Aly said. “Is this some kind of joke?”

Cass peered over my shoulder. “There are some letters left,” he said. “N, A, E, N . . .”

They danced around in my head, too. And as they did, I felt the blood draining from my body to my toes. “Give me the phone,” I said, my voice dry and parched.

“Jack . . . ?” Aly said.

“Just give it to me!”
As she handed it to me, I tapped the screen. The big eye was still staring up at me. The iris that got us into the secret room. The reason we were here, safe and sound.

I put my thumb and index finger on the screen and pinched in. A forehead and nose appeared. I pinched again—the eye zoomed downward and became part of an entire person. A woman in an elegant dress. She was standing in a group, with Brother Dimitrios, Yiorgos, and Stavros.

She was smiling. I knew the smile.

It can't be
.

I pinched outward again, slowly, enlarging the woman until only she filled the screen.

Welcome to have you back
.

The head of the Massa had said that. She had used those very words. It hadn't been easy to understand, and I'd been so angry I hadn't really listened closely.

It was a phrase I'd only heard one person use.

My fingers slackened. The phone slipped out, falling to the floor. I tried to move my mouth to talk, but I couldn't. The eye had belonged to the person in the photo. A person who couldn't have been there. Someone who died many years ago.

“It's
Anne
—the letters spell Anne McKinley . . .” I said.

I couldn't bring myself to continue. But Cass and Aly were staring at me in total bafflement. The words needed to be said aloud. I swallowed hard.

“The head of the Massa,” I said, “is my mom.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

PETER LERANGIS
is the author of more than 160 books, which have sold more than five million copies, including two books in the
New York Times
bestselling series The 39 Clues.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

 

S
EVEN WONDERS BOOK 2: LOST IN BABYLON
. Copyright © 2013 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress catalog card number: [TK]

ISBN 978-0-06-207043-2 (trade bdg.)

EPub Edition August 2013 ISBN 9780062070432

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CG/RRDH
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FIRST EDITION

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