Finders Keepers

by Peter Speakman

  Copyright © 2017 by Michael M.B. Galvin & Peter Speakman

  Cover design by Tyler Nevins

  Cover illustration © 2017 Owen Richardson

  Designed by Tyler Nevins

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-4231-8768-4

  Visit DisneyBooks.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Memo

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  For my parents—the ones who started this in the first place.

  —P.S.

  For Chelsea and anyone else who likes magic and mayhem.

  —M.M.B.G.

  MEMO

  FROM AGENT TO SAC (SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE) .

  RE: OPERATION “ALADDIN”

  SAC :

  It took some legwork, but our agents have finally pieced together the chain of events that led to the carnage on the Cahill University campus four months ago. Until the full report clears the vetting process I’ll just say it’s what we suspected: this was the first confirmed confrontation between genies on American soil, and it was a doozy.

  We’ve established the involvement of New Hampshire middle-schoolers Parker Quarry (case file RX828), Marisa Lorden (case file RX830), and Theo Merritt (case file RX829); the genie Fon-Rahm (case file XX001); and Professor Julia Ellison (case file KX471.1). Agents in the field confirm that the genies destroyed were Xaru (case file XX002), Rath (case file XX008), and Yogoth (case file XX004). If we’re to believe what we’ve found in the ancient texts that means ten genies are still out there. We have no way of knowing how many are free and how many are still trapped in their “lamps.” Trust me, we’re working on it.

  In the meantime, Quarry and his genie continue to operate virtually in the open. Fon-Rahm has the ability to grant his master knowledge and skill, albeit temporarily. Evidence also suggests that the genie can conjure up physical objects. Our drones have found trace remains of a high-powered sports car and even a “monster truck” near the Merritt farm. It’s a wonder these kids haven’t killed anybody yet.

  That said, I still think it was a mistake to activate as a D.E.N.T. operative.

  lacks the training to carry out a mission of this importance and complexity. I have concerns, both for our new operative’s safety and for a mission whose success is vital to the nation’s security.

  The department’s history of quashing extra-normal threats and suppressing evidence of the Nexus’s existence dates back to the Civil War, and this is the first time a civilian is being placed directly in the line of danger. I know is in a unique position to gain access to Parker Quarry and his friends. I’m still against it. You and I and every other D.E.N.T. agent who ever worked in the field went through a rigorous training program and withstood some of the toughest psychological testing the government geeks ever devised. is smart and resourceful, but our new recruit is no trained spy. The department has never lost an agent on duty and I’ll do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen on my watch, but that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.

  As for the mission, I prepared the brief myself. is directed to infiltrate Parker Quarry’s group and learn as much as possible about the source of Fon-Rahm’s power and the genie’s intentions. To aid the mission the operative has been issued a series of magical objects and has been given instruction in their use. It’s risky to have these relics out in the field, but we can’t send in empty-handed.

  Under no circumstance is to engage. This is strictly an observe-and-report job. At the first sign that is stepping over the line we’ll send in a cleanup team and the mission will be scrubbed.

  One more thing: according to our research, energy released when the genies Xaru, Rath, and Yogoth were eliminated might have been returned to the wizard Vesiroth (case file KX256.1). As of yet there is absolutely no proof that he’s been resurrected, but any reports of Vesiroth sightings should be taken very seriously. Everything we have on Vesiroth tells us he’s incredibly powerful and without a conscience. He’s the most dangerous man who has ever lived, and if he is back we’re all in deep, deep trouble.

  Sincerely,

  E.C.

  BCC: THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, EYES ONLY.

  PROLOGUE

  RONNIE GRIMMER STRETCHED OUT ON his floating lounge chair and let out a satisfying, stenchy burp.

  He sighed as the smell drifted away. The sun was shining, the water was warm on his butt, and he was the richest guy in the whole town. Maybe even the richest guy in the whole country. There was a brand-new Ferrari in his garage, and that was next to a brand-new Bentley, and that was next to a sinister-looking Ducati motorcycle painted flat black everywhere but the lights and the tiny windscreen. The Ducati salesman had told him the bike would do a good hundred and eighty miles an hour, but Ronnie never rode it, mainly because he weighed almost three hundred pounds and could barely balance on the thing even when the kickstand was down. He didn’t need to ride it. The bike was, along with the house and the heated pool and the state-of-the-art stereo system and the computers and the stainless-steel refrigerator, just a way to remind everyone in Mudgee that he was no longer just a fat bludger with a lousy job and bad skin. He was a new man. He had won the lottery, both literally and in a more symbolic way, and in the three weeks since it happened he had told off his boss at the carpet store, bought a restaurant just so he could fire a waiter who had made fun of the way he had mispronounced fajitas (how was he supposed to know? This was Australia, not Mexico), and lined up a date with a girl who had been ignoring him since grade school. Life was going pretty good for a guy who pretty much everybody agreed would never amount to anything, and it was all thanks to one very, very special new friend.

  The church rummage sale seemed like a lifetime ago. Ronnie had been just about to leave when he spotted the weird metal cylinder poking out of a cardboard box filled with old TV remotes and broken desk lamps. Ronnie didn’t have much use for gewgaws, but there was something about the tarnished metal tube that had appealed to him. It was covered in letters he didn’t recognize, and when he looked closely he could swear he saw something glowing inside of it. He liked the way the bare metal had felt warm in his hands even though by all rights it should have been as cold as the business end of a sledgehammer. So he had dickered with the
hardcase nun until she finally dropped the price from six bucks to three. As it turned out, throwing a little money into the pockets of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow was the single best investment Ronnie ever made.

  He had been watching trashy TV in his shonky apartment and absently turning the end caps of the cylinder when the thing opened and Syphus first appeared. Ronnie was terrified at first, of course. Who wouldn’t be? But it wasn’t long until he realized just what he had lucked into. And look at him now.

  From somewhere deep inside the house, Ronnie heard the doorbell ring. He turned his head and thought briefly about having Syphus answer the door. No dice. Ronnie laughed as he imagined the looks on his visitors’ faces when they came face-to-face with whatever Syphus was.

  Ronnie stuck his hands in the water and paddled his way over to the side of the heated pool. With as much grace as a wounded moose, he climbed out of the floating chair and onto his brick patio. He wrapped a blue-and-white-striped towel (the absolute best kind they sold at the mall) around his waist and walked through the sliding glass doors and into the mansion, leaving wet footprints on the marble floor behind him. He was always careful to note that Syphus, silent and staring, followed behind him, far enough to keep out of Ronnie’s way but close enough to avoid the pounding headaches they both got when they split up.

  Being so near Syphus all the time was a small price to pay, he thought, although sometimes just looking at him was enough to make Ronnie shudder. Ronnie had never given much thought to what genies were supposed to look like, but if you had asked him before all this happened he would have conjured up an image of a bald, blue-skinned man with harem pants and a booming laugh. Maybe a monkey would be involved somehow. He never would have come up with something like Syphus in a million years.

  Ronnie walked by his new leather couches, a rec room stocked with full-sized arcade games and a pool table that once supposedly belonged to one of the guys in AC/DC, and a framed lotto ticket hanging on the wall of the hallway. He was particularly proud of that little detail. Instead of just wishing for a truckload of hundred-dollar bills he had ordered Syphus to rig the lottery. That way, nobody would come snooping when he started blowing cash all over town. Ronnie was a lot smarter than people gave him credit for. Would his sister, the big-shot lawyer, have thought of the lotto trick? Not a chance. She would have just started wishing for stuff left and right, never stopping to think about how it might look to other people. It took street smarts and imagination to manage something like this, not the kind of lessons you picked up in books or six years at a university.

  Ronnie reached the cavernous atrium inside his front door. He made sure the genie was out of sight (Syphus had been trained to stay hidden until his master called for him) and opened the door.

  “G’day,” he said, before a skateboard smashed into his face and left him staring up at the ceiling in the entryway of his grand house, flat on his back and gasping for breath.

  “Hi!” said the ten-year-old who’d hit him, admiring the chandelier that hung from the vaulted ceiling. “What a great house!”

  Before Ronnie could even sputter out something supersmart like “What are you doing here?” or “Why did you hit me?” or even “Who are you?” the kid jumped over Ronnie’s belly, landed on the board, and skated across the Italian-marble floor and into the den to the right of the atrium. “Come on in, guys!” the boy yelled. He was dressed in shorts, a neon-yellow T-shirt, and sunglasses with hot-pink frames. He spoke with an American accent and was chomping on strawberry bubble gum. “You have to check out the TV in here! It’s as big as a bus!”

  Ronnie craned his neck as two men in identical black suits came through his front door. They didn’t even glance at him. They were too busy assembling some kind of strange contraption made of old metal posts and what seemed to be chunks of green rock.

  The shock was wearing off and Ronnie was starting to get angry. Who were these people invading his home? He didn’t have to take this! He was rich! And besides, he had a secret weapon that would make these yobbos sorry they’d ever crossed paths with him. All he had to do was give the command and Syphus would do the rest. He almost felt sorry for the invaders. They would never even know what hit them.

  He clambered to his feet, but before he could cry out for his pet genie, a hand reached around him from behind and covered his mouth. Ronnie looked over his shoulder to see who was holding him and froze with terror.

  It was a man with piercing eyes as dark as black holes. He wore a fitted robe of shimmering black, and a silver pendant shaped like a spike hung from a string of leather around his neck. The right side of his face was horribly scarred. He was a man who radiated power and menace.

  The man called out, “Duncan!” and the ten-year-old popped his head out of the TV room.

  “Yeah, boss?” he said.

  “Are your men prepared?”

  Duncan stepped into the entryway and looked over the men in suits and their creations, which turned out to be elaborate metal staffs covered with branches sticking out at odd angles and topped with priceless jade globes. He popped a bubble with his gum. “Sure looks like it.”

  “Then we proceed.” The man with the burned face leaned in and spoke directly into Ronnie’s ear. “If you would be so kind, please invite your friend to join us.”

  The undying wizard known as Vesiroth removed his hand from Ronnie’s mouth and took a step back.

  Ronnie was scared. He was confused. He was still wet from the pool and somewhere along the way he had lost his towel. He had never felt more helpless in his life. “Sy…Sy…Syphus!” he cried. “Protect me!”

  The genie appeared from out of the shadows with a terrifying hiss. Syphus was eight feet tall, with black hair that fell in scraggly clumps around his face and one oversized eye set right in the middle of his forehead. He wore tattered red pants and was covered with arcane tattoos of opposing armies that moved across his chest and arms in a battle that had been raging for thirty centuries. He was always surrounded by a glowing purple mist. The smell of old smoke that came off of him was so thick you could taste it.

  Syphus screamed, “You leave Master alone!” and unleashed a torrent of psychic energy from his misshapen eye that distorted the air as it cut through the room. Duncan ollied out of the way but the men in suits were knocked across the atrium, their staffs clanging uselessly to the floor.

  The Cyclops genie aimed another psychic burst at Vesiroth. The burned sorcerer wrapped his fist around his silver pendant and chanted something in a language lost for millennia. The attack from Syphus bounced off of Vesiroth and straight up, where it ripped a hole through the ceiling. The genie howled with rage.

  Vesiroth called out, “Stand and wield your weapons!” and the men in suits scrambled to their feet. They grabbed their staffs and pointed them at the genie. The jade glowed and bright green beams struck Syphus, causing the one-eyed creature to writhe in agony.

  “He doesn’t seem to like that,” said Duncan, watching in fascination.

  “Genie!” said Vesiroth, staring at the tortured creature. “Third of the Jinn! You were created from my very life force, and I call upon the power of the Nexus to unmake you. Begone from this earth and exist no more!”

  Vesiroth raised his hands in the air and brought them down as fists. Ronnie covered his ears and closed his eyes tight as the genie let out a high-pitched shriek so loud that the chandelier shattered and crashed to the floor. Then, with one final blink of his single eye, the genie imploded in a cloud of white ash.

  Ronnie opened his eyes tentatively. He turned to Vesiroth and saw that the wizard’s hands were shaking.

  Duncan popped off his skateboard. “Um,” he said, “I think it would be a good idea to, you know, let the big guy have a little alone time.” The men in suits followed Duncan deeper into the house as Vesiroth began to convulse. Ronnie threw himself to the floor behind a thick table just as Vesiroth let out a scream of his own and released a blizzard of chaotic energy, uncontrolled and unf
ocused, as he reabsorbed the life force from the vaporized genie. The windows of the house shattered. Paint peeled from the walls. The staircase collapsed in a pile of gold and marble. The TV exploded, the arcade games burst into flame, and the water in the pool outside began to boil.

  And then, as soon as it had begun, it was over. The silence was deafening. Ronnie poked his head up. The men in suits had made their way back to disassemble their staffs.

  Vesiroth, battered into exhaustion from his ordeal, was slumped against what remained of the staircase. Duncan bounced over and helped the wizard to his feet.

  “I got you, boss,” he said cheerily as he wrapped his arm up and around Vesiroth’s waist. “Let’s get out of this dump.” As Duncan helped a stumbling Vesiroth toward what was once the front door, he stopped and considered the pudgy Australian in swimming trunks cowering on the floor. The kid held up his free hand and Ronnie gasped as a glowing knife as shiny as a mirror magically appeared, the point just a breath away from the tip of Ronnie’s nose.

  “I guess I should kill you,” Duncan said. His eyes were so dead. How could a ten-year-old have such dead eyes? “But I kind of have a lot on my plate right now. I suppose I could always come back.” He thought for a minute. “I’ll tell you what. You just wait here and in a week or two I’ll try to fit you into my schedule. See you then!” The knife vanished back into thin air and then Duncan, the spent wizard, and the men in suits were gone.

  Ronnie slumped to the ground. He curled himself into a ball in the ruins of his massive house and began to cry. His luck had never changed at all.

  1

  THE MAGIC ACT WAS NOT GOING WELL.

  The auditorium at Robert Frost Junior High was packed. Parker’s mom, Kathleen, was in the seats along with his aunt Martha, his uncle Kelsey, everyone in his seventh-grade class, and his math teacher, Mr. Rommy. The annual Spring Talent Spectacular wasn’t necessarily the Grammys, but Cahill, New Hampshire, was a small town, and what kind of monster doesn’t like to see kids put on a talent show? The pressure was on and it had to be said that Parker Quarry, late of Los Angeles, was tanking. Big-time.