The Key (19 page)

Still no response from Mack.

He had been told—in very definite terms—not to call Mack, only to text or email. That instruction came directly from Mack himself, which meant it was right.

Unless it wasn't.

That was a crazy thought. The golem laughed.

But what if it was possible? What if Mack … was wrong?

The golem hit the home button, slid the bar aside, and punched in his password: 1111.
³⁵

T
he Eiffel Tower.

It's big. Especially when you're right up under it, which is where our wet, bloodied, scratched, scarred, scared, and very determined little band was.

There are four big legs to the tower. Each is planted on a massive concrete pedestal. Around each pedestal are the ticket booths, a place where you can buy snacks, the base of the elevator, and a lot of people craning their necks to look up.

The tower is built out of millions of individual pieces. It's not like they molded it all out of a single block of steel—you see each and every piece, every crossbar, every strut, every beam—15,000 pieces. And you see the fat rivets used to hold each piece in place. It's as if it were built entirely out of Popsicle sticks—if Popsicle sticks were iron and coated with thick gray-brown paint. But from a little distance it appears very delicate, as if it were made out of lace.

There are three decks on the Eiffel Tower. The first one is about a quarter of the way up. A second deck is closer to the halfway point. And the very top,
le tip top
, is 990 feet up there. Way up.

There's an elevator connecting the three decks. There are also stairs to the lowest two decks.

The whole thing is placed plop beside the river Seine, at one end of a long, rectangular field called the Champ de Mars, or the Field of Mars. Because the French love them some Mars bars.
³⁶

“Let's take the elevator,” Mack said wearily. “I don't think I could handle stairs.”

Easier said than done. There was a line, and tickets had to be purchased, and then another line. Finally the elevator, which, in keeping with the whole Eiffel Tower look, was an open iron cage sort of thing. It rose at an angle as it swept up the arc of the tower's leg, and straightened as the tower straightened.

Suddenly, as the iron-bound view of Paris widened, Mack was terribly homesick. He missed his parents. He missed his room. He missed his school. He even missed the kids at school. And he almost missed some of his teachers.

He hadn't wanted to look at any pictures from home because they would make him sad. But now he was weary to the point where sad would be a real improvement. He pulled out his phone and opened his personal photos. Pictures of kids at school. Pictures for some reason of the school bus. A picture of his parents playing volleyball at some beach somewhere some long, long time ago.

He tapped on his messages. The golem, of course.

Mack almost didn't open it.

Then he did.

I'm afraid. A girl named Risky was here. I think she will make me hurt people. Your golem. >:-(

Mack stopped breathing.

“Are we getting off here?” Xiao asked.

The elevator had come to a stop, and many of the people were exiting. It was the first level.

“Is this it?” Charlie prodded when Mack didn't answer.

Risky. She had been there. In his home. In his actual home!

I think she will make me hurt people
.

“Let's go on up to the second floor,” Jarrah said, speaking for Mack.

It had always been possible, Mack knew. Sooner or later they would go for his family. After all, Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout had already tried by shoving snakes in through the window of Mack's house.

But Mack had hoped that when he left Sedona they would go after him and him alone. Not his family.

He swallowed, but his mouth was dry.

Could the golem be made to hurt people? The golem was a sweet goof, not some kind of monster.

But Mack's logical brain argued back:
No, he's whatever he's made to be
.

And his logical brain was also replaying Risky's offer. Join her. Join her now and his family, maybe his whole town, would be safe.

Other families … Other towns …

“You okay, mate?” Jarrah asked him.

What had he thought? That this was all a game and that no one would get hurt? Had he imagined they'd leave his family alone? The Pale Queen would leave no one's family alone.

The elevator came to the second floor. Mack was swept along with the rest as they got out.

“Okay, now what?” Rodrigo asked.

“Mack.” Xiao put her hand on his arm.

They were all staring at him. There was no putting off the decision. A decision that might doom his family.

“Text message,” he said flatly. “Risky has been to my home. She got to my golem.”

“What? That is intolerable!” Dietmar cried.

Mack liked him for that. The German boy's outrage was genuine.

“What do we do?” Charlie asked. And Mack liked that, too.
We
. What do we do?

Mack took a deep breath. “We—”

His phone rang. His phone never rang. But it rang now.

He saw the caller ID. It was the golem.

“Yeah,” Mack said.

“Mack. It's me, your golem.”

“I know. I got your text.”

“Mack, I'm afraid. Risky has given me a second phone. I think she can use it to make me … to make me not ‘Be Mack' but be something else.”

“Listen to me: smash that phone she gave you.”

“I … I tried, Mack.”

“Smash it now, Golem. Smash it right now!”

“My hands won't....”

Mack closed his eyes and fought down a wave of panic. “Where are you?”

“At school.”

“Listen to me, Golem. Who can you trust there? Who can you go to? Who can help?”

The golem was silent for a minute. Mack waited, eyes closed, unwilling to meet the worried gaze of his friends.

The golem came up with a name.

Mack breathed. “Yeah, Golem. That's what you do. Right now!”

The line went dead.

“What must we do?” Sylvie asked.

With shaking fingers, Mack shoved his phone back into his pocket.

“We have a plan,” Mack said softly. “We carry it out.”

He walked on legs gone wobbly to the railing that looked down over the Champ de Mars. They were too high up for people down below to hear, but the kids had prepared for that.

“
Tine ovol ebway!
” Mack said in a loud, sure voice. In Vargran it meant, “Loud voice us.” It was the best they could do with the clumsy ancient tongue. They could only hope the meaning was clear, or clear enough.

No worries, as Jarrah liked to say: once he had spoken the words, his voice was suddenly as loud as if he were talking through a bullhorn.

“People,” he bellowed. “People down below. Cameras on!”

There were perhaps a hundred people down below on the concrete and a few spreading out onto the grass, and they all looked. And those who had cameras turned them on.

“People of Earth!” he cried. “We are here to warn you of a terrible danger. The Pale Queen rises after three thousand years of captivity to enslave the human race!”

Suddenly Sylvie was translating his words into French, her voice only slightly less loud. Not that the French people below didn't understand the English—of course they did—but, being French, they would be insulted that someone was bellowing at them in English from their greatest national landmark.

“
Liberté, egalité, fraternité!
” Sylvie cried. “
En danger!
”

“We know you won't want to believe us,” Mack cried. “We know you will need proof that magical and awful things are happening. So. We have arranged undeniable proof that nothing is like it was anymore.”

In French Sylvie warned everyone to get back from the base of the tower. Absolutely no one obeyed.

“Let us hold hands,” Xiao said, “and focus our power as one.”

She took Mack's right hand. Dietmar took his left. Charlie beside Xiao, Jarrah with Dietmar, Sylvie and Rodrigo last.

“On one,” Stefan said, conducting as agreed. “Three … two …”

Before he could say, “One!” the sky turned suddenly dark. A swirling cloud, almost a tornado, came down like a finger of doom.

“Is that us doing that?” Charlie yelled. “Because if it is, we should stop!”

“That's not our doing,” Xiao said darkly. “I sense a great evil approaching.”

“Then you should also sense me getting out of here,” Charlie said. But he didn't move. He stayed. They all stayed and held hands.

The tornado touched down amid the crowd below, scattering hats and coats and handbags and cameras. People were knocked down like bowling pins. Dirt and debris flew.

Then, through the storm walked two figures. The wind did not touch them. The debris sailed harmlessly past them. An old, old man in green, waving a sword, scaring people away.

And beside him, a boy in ludicrous pirate gear, brandishing a curved blade.

Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout. And the traitor, Valin.

And from the sky, descending from the tornado's funnel, as if she were careening down a slide, came Risky.

She landed on the railing, stood there effortlessly, wearing a shimmery green dress that brought out the amazing green color of her eyes. Her red hair was a tornado all its own.

“Mack, Mack, Mack. I thought you understood: fun and games are over, Mack.”

“Don't let her distract us!” Dietmar cried.

“Oh, shut up, Dirtmore,” Risky said, and her right hand stretched as if it were putty. Stretched into a tentacle that reached for Dietmar's throat.

Stefan leaped, grabbed the tentacle, and was tossed aside with such force Mack feared he must have been killed.

“Together!” Mack cried. “NOW!”

And the ancient spell, the tongue of power, the words of magic were chanted in shrill, frightened, but absolutely unshakably determined voices.

“Halk-ma exel azres!”

Risky's pearly white movie-star teeth turned into the glittering daggers of a shark.

“Excuse me, just a moment, Mack: I have to send a message.”

T
he golem knew of only one person he could trust. He found her in social studies class, where she sat in the back row, lounging in her chair, with her booted feet propped on the shoulders of the kid sitting in front of her.

“Camaro!” the golem cried.

The teacher said, “Young man, do not interrupt this …” And then the teacher realized who she was talking to, and who he was talking to, and decided whatever she had been about to say could wait. Indefinitely.

“T'sup, Mack?” Camaro asked.

“I need you. You're the only one I can trust.”

Camaro was fourteen. (She was really very bright, smart even, but she had been held back. Mostly because the high school she should have been attending—Shirley MacLaine High—had begged the school not to promote her. In fact, they had given Richard Gere Middle School a much-needed copier and a utility van to keep her.)

In all her fourteen years, Camaro had never, ever, not even once, heard the words
I need you
aimed in her direction.

The words
you're the only one I can trust
brought tears to her eyes.

She took her feet off the shoulders of the boy in front of her.

She stood up.

She straightened her leather jacket.

She adjusted the metal-studded leather strap on her wrist.

And she said, “I'm your girl.”

At that moment the phone buzzed. Slowly the golem pulled out his own phone.

Wrong phone. It was the other one that was buzzing.

His hand moved, as if of its own accord. It touched that terrible phone. Her phone.

“You have to stop me,” the golem pleaded.

He opened the message.

And then, slowly, unstoppably, the golem slid the phone into his mouth.

His last semi-intelligible words were, “Shlop e, uh-maro!”

“H
alk-ma exel azres!”

There was a cracking sound, like the earth itself was opening up. It was a sound like cars crashing, and a separate straining, snapping, twanging sound as the iron of the tower twisted.