She would not give him that chance.
Gwen waited until they were well out of shouting distance from the surface and then whipped the scarf from her neck, raising her big steel torch like a war hammer. “Yaa!”
The scarf froze in midair, curled for a snap that would never be.
“What on—?” She tugged with all her might, but the scarf hung there, as rigid as iron. “All right, then. Plan B.” She chucked the torch at his shiny bald head.
The spook let go of the lantern, which remained where it was, hovering above him, and caught Gwen’s weapon in his clockwork hand. He brought the torch around to his eyes, examined it with mild interest, and crushed the steel shaft like a soda can.
“How unfortunate,” he said, turning and letting the torch fall to the dirt with a disappointed thud. “It will be so much work dragging your lifeless body the rest of the way.”
Gwen’s scarf recoiled on its own and wrapped around her neck, one end stretching to the ceiling to lift her off her feet. She clawed at the wool and finally grabbed the vertical portion to ease the pressure on her throat.
The floating lantern followed Gall as he approached. He gestured at the empty black walls within the circle of its light. “I intended to wait for comfortable surroundings, with a nice chair for you to sit in, some soft leather straps to hold you down.” He sighed. “But you, my dear, like the rest of your generation, lack patience.”
Gwen strained for every minuscule breath, arms aching, toes scratching at the floor. She tried to tell Gall what he could do with his leather straps, but all that came out was a quiet “Ahhhgggg.”
He nodded. “Yes. I know. You have . . . mixed feelings about me.” His good hand lit up with white fire, and he reached for her head. “Yet you will tell me everything you and Mr. Buckles know about the Qin artifacts. And then you will be bait. You will lure your friend Jack to his ultimate demise.”
The flaming white fingers touched Gwen’s forehead. She felt them penetrate into her brain, bringing Gall’s voice with them, a hundred questions all at once. Her hands slipped free of the scarf, letting her neck take her body’s weight. The noose tightened. Her vision grayed.
“That’s right,” said Gall in a soothing tone. “It is time to give in.”
But Gwen had no intention of giving in. While Gall remained focused on probing her mind, she lowered one hand to her pocket, stretching her fingers until they brushed against Spec’s pillbox. As the gray in her eyes became darkness, she flipped open the catch.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
JACK GLARED AT LIU Fai. “Why have we stopped?”
The emissary had traded the discomfort of the washboard road for the unbearable slowness of a steep, rocky jeep trail, and they had climbed for nearly an hour. Now, in a clearing of red dirt and wild grass, they had come to a complete halt.
Liu Fai killed the engine. “The path to the hermit’s dwelling is too rough and overgrown for a motor vehicle.” He kicked open his door. “From here, we walk.”
While Jack paced, Liu Fai lifted backpacks, bedrolls, and cooking utensils out of the jeep and piled everything against a tree. Jack expected him to secure the bedrolls for hiking. Instead, he dug out a dark wood cube. He studied its bronze inlays for a few seconds, then rotated a disk on one side until a little hatch popped open from the bottom. A tiny key dropped out into his palm.
Jack stopped his pacing. “A Chinese puzzle box.”
“A ‘Chinese puzzle box’ is a figment of Western fancy, a souvenir for holding shiny trinkets.” Liu Fai turned the cube over, inserted the key into a slot, and gave it a twist. Tight rolls of gold silk emerged from hidden chambers on all four sides. “We have our mystery boxes in China, but if you are fortunate enough to get a peek inside, you will most often find a cricket.”
This caught Sadie’s attention. “Is there a cricket in that one?”
“No.”
Liu Fai twisted the key the other way and a spike stuck out from what was now the bottom. The cube shook and rattled in his hand. He planted it in the dirt, and the top half shot skyward on a telescoping pole, dragging the silk with it. The fabric wavered. With a sharp whoomp, it snapped out into the taut sides of a rectangular pyramid.
“A tent?” asked Jack, dropping his hands. “You’re making camp? What about Gwen?”
“It is growing dark.” Liu Fai returned to the pile of gear and picked up a bedroll. “The climb will take another half day”—he glanced at Sadie—“assuming your sister can keep up.”
Sadie looked down at her toes, clearly upset by the implication that she was dead weight.
The trailhead had already begun to disappear in the fading light. Liu Fai gestured with the bedroll. “If we attempt that path in the dark, we will get lost. And we will spend the next week finding our way down.” He brushed past Jack and tossed the bedroll through the tent flap. “Sometimes the fastest route is no route at all.”
“How quaint. Did your dad teach you that?” Jack regretted the jab the moment it left his lips, but he was angry about pausing Gwen’s rescue.
Liu Fai’s expression darkened. He ducked into the beautiful tent. “Yes. He did.”
Once the bedrolls were all set up, Liu Fai built a fire, spreading some of that long wushi fire-goo on the wood, but he could not find any matches in the backpacks. With a wince and flop of a frosty hand, he motioned for Jack to take care of it.
Jack struggled to comply. Without the adrenaline-pumping threat of getting fricasseed by a crazy metal dragon, he found it hard to make fire. After several disappointing sparks, he generated a flicker barely worthy of a candle and dropped it onto the pile of wood.
They ate a porridge of barley and dried meat rations and watched the crackling fire like a family watching late-night TV. The shifting colors, the dance of the flames and smoke, had its own music in Jack’s crisscrossed senses.
“Jack?” asked Liu Fai, breaking the trance.
“Yeah, Frosty?”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“Right. Sorry.”
A short pause.
A sigh. “Did your father’s poem say anything else about me?”
Jack hadn’t seen that question coming. He let the lines float through his brain, avoiding the one about Gwen and the Archivist. “Not really. Why?”
“No reason. Forget it.”
Jack turned back to the fire, then cocked his head. “You know what? The poem might mention the three of us together.” He recited the lines.
“Fear not boys, the girl who sees
Will save you from the ghostly thief.”
“The ghostly thief.” Liu Fai echoed the last line. “What does that mean?”
“I can’t be sure, but there is this girl who called herself—”
The fire guttered. A flash of shadow knocked Liu Fai off his log. Rough hands grabbed Jack’s jacket, and a concussion wave blasted through his gut. His back slammed against a tree twenty feet from the fire.
Teleportation. Violent, unnatural teleportation.
Jack grunted out the last of his answer. “Raven.”
She held him against the tree, her face half shrouded by a hood. “I told you before, Jack. Call me Ghost.”
Chapter Forty
“WHERE IS IT?” GHOST, as she preferred to be called, shook Jack, pressing him up against the tree. Her beauty, drawn from her Indian mother, had not waned since he last saw her, but it had hardened. On the left side of her face, she still bore the scars from the bomb that had killed her brother—ordered by Gall and planted by Tanner in a Moscow hyperloop station.
A ball of ice exploded against the tree, showering them both with snow. “Let him go!” Liu Fai held both hands straight out, the heels of his palms pressed together.
Ghost glanced at him and smiled.
Another blast wave punched through Jack’s gut. Another tree slammed into his back, and suddenly he was on the opposite edge of the fire’s light.
Ghost pressed a hand into the left pocket o
f Jack’s coat, digging around. “I asked you a question, yeah? Where is it?” Her eyes were sunken, the whites shocked with red. There was a time when Jack had been mesmerized by the purple of her irises, but her pupils were so wide he could hardly see them. In her left hand, she clutched a device shaped like a stopwatch—the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Gall had gifted it to Ghost and her brother to help them frame Jack for multiple jewel heists. Back then, she had gone by the name Raven, and she’d smiled a lot more.
“I knew you were following me,” said Jack. “You were in the square in Chinatown, and you caused that avalanche in the Alps.”
“That was an accident. This isn’t.”
Zzap.
She slammed Jack against another tree. “I need that sphere, Jack.”
Beyond the thief, Sadie quietly got up and wandered off into the trees. Where did she think she was going? Liu Fai moved as well, lining up another shot, but Jack waved him off. He narrowed his eyes at Ghost. “Why? You working for Gall again? The man who murdered your brother?”
“He wants the Mind. I can use it to get close to him.”
“So you can kill him.”
Ghost said nothing.
Jack frowned. “No. That’s not how we’re taking him down.”
“Oh, Jack . . .” Ghost softened her expression and leaned close, pressing her cheek to his. Her lips were at his ear. “Do you really believe I care what you think?”
When she pulled back, Ghost was holding the Mind. She had slipped a hand into his other pocket, and Jack hadn’t felt it despite the power of his senses. She winked. “Be seeing you, yeah?”
Zzap. She was gone, leaving nothing behind but a stir of red dust.
An instant later, Jack heard his sister’s voice from the trees. “I’ll take those, thank you.”
Sadie came running into the firelight holding the Mind and the Bridge with Ghost at her heels. She had predicted the spot Ghost would jump to, the way she’d predicted the flight path of the artifacts their dad had chucked across his bedroom. And she had stolen them from the thief.
Fear not boys, the girl who sees
Will save you from the ghostly thief.
So that was another part of the riddle answered.
Sadie had a good lead, but Ghost was faster. The thief’s hand, bent like a claw, got within inches of her shoulder.
“Look out!” Liu Fai fired a stream of frost at Ghost’s legs, and she tumbled, missing the fire circle by inches.
“Oooh!” Ghost growled at Sadie, pushing herself up. “I’ll tear you apart, yeah? You—”
A spout of flame torched the grass between them.
Sadie giggled—giggled—which kind of messed with Jack’s perception of the whole situation. But then Laohu settled to the ground beside him.
Fire ready.
Good.
Watch thief.
Glancing down, Jack saw that he’d conjured up a blue-white ball. Far from the struggle he had faced trying to light a simple campfire, this flame had arisen on instinct.
Biyu coiled her tail protectively around Sadie, floppy feet hovering above the grass. The tips of her carplike whiskers floated a millimeter from Ghost’s chin. She growled.
Ghost let out a tiny whimper, fist rapidly clenching and unclenching, trying to activate a wormhole device that wasn’t there.
“How—?” Liu Fai was too stunned to finish the question.
“The dragons?” asked Sadie. “I called them, you know, with my thoughts. Well, I called Biyu. I didn’t want to slow you down, and I thought she could help me up the mountain.” She patted the dragon’s red scales. “Looks like she brought some friends.”
On cue, Xiaoquan floated down into the clearing, still in his oversize balloon-animal form. Two geysers of steam erupted from his nostrils, pale blue eyes smiling at Jack. A fourth dragon descended beside him, one that might easily have been mistaken for a tree after a forest fire. Her scales were like blackened bark, with an orange glow in the fissures between. She roared to announce her arrival, unleashing a windstorm of smoke and burning embers.
“The tree dragon?” asked Jack, shielding his face from the heat.
“Yes,” said Liu Fai. “With her fires lit. It seems Laohu shared his good fortune. We call her Meilin.”
“Uh. Jack? A little help, yeah?” Ghost could not tear her gaze from the dragon staring her down. A red glow flickered behind Biyu’s fangs. “Give me the sphere and the Bridge, and I’ll leave. You’ll never see me again, yeah? Please, I have to avenge my brother.”
Jack shook his head. “No way.”
Biyu withdrew and Ghost backed away. Her hood had fallen, and in the firelight she looked so much like the ghost she wanted to become. Her jet-black hair, once streaked with red, was now tipped with white. Her neck had thinned so much that her jawline and collarbone threatened to break through her skin. The Bridge had not been kind.
Not so long ago, the Mind of Paracelsus had done much the same to Jack. “Come with us,” he said. “Bring Gall down the right way. He took Gwen, Ghost. I’ll bet you know where.”
Whatever Ghost said in answer was drowned out by another roar, so much louder and deeper than the tree dragon’s.
Jack’s tracker senses snapped the world into slow motion. A shower of dark blue flame, peppered with stars, obliterated a grove of trees, and the massive dragon from the long wushi well dropped into the empty space that remained, shiny black claws pounding deep into the soil.
The other dragons lowered their heads and backed away. Ghost fled into the trees—scarpered, as Gwen would say.
With a twisting, sideways motion of her neck, the dragon brought her head down to Jack’s level, scales reflecting the firelight in the darkest purple. Her eyes were no longer coal black. They were as deep blue and starry as a mountain sky at midnight.
A whisper from Liu Fai found its way to Jack’s ears. “Run, Jack. Run now.”
Chapter Forty-One
JACK DID NOT RUN—NOT because he was brave or anything. His legs wouldn’t move. The trees that had been there a moment before had not been simply destroyed—broken to pieces or reduced to ash. They had been removed from existence, along with the sod and their roots. A dark blue glow lit the scales at the dragon’s throat. The heat of her breath threatened to cook Jack where he stood. And then a powerful thought shook his brain.
Friends.
The force of the word almost knocked him over. The blue glow at the dragon’s throat subsided, and she raised her head to look into the clearing, right at Sadie.
Friends. We’re all friends. Sadie paced forward. Biyu tried to corral her, but Sadie pressed her back with a wave—eyes never leaving the obsidian dragon, thoughts pounding the very air. Friends. Yes? She walked past her brother, and the dragon lowered her head, letting Sadie rest a hand on her muzzle. That’s right. Friends. All friends.
Giant dragon and little girl remained motionless together for some time, until the creature lifted her head, let out a deep, crackling bark, and leaped into the night sky.
Sadie’s hair was still blowing in the rush of the dragon’s wings when Jack lifted her out of the dirt. He rushed her back to the fire. “What were you thinking?”
“She needed a friend,” said Sadie, giving him one of her matter-of-fact smiles.
Liu Fai looked from one to the other. “Your family has issues.”
“All families have issues,” countered Jack.
“Not like these.”
They settled down as best they could for the remainder of the night. Ghost had fled, but she would not have gone far. Fortunately, they now had dragons to guard the camp. All four either paced or hovered at the perimeter. Restless.
There were only two bedrolls. Jack gave his to Sadie. The dirt beneath the silk was soft enough, anyway. He pushed himself up on an elbow to look over at Liu Fai. “So . . . What was that thing?”
“The big dragon?”
“Was there some other big scary thing?” Jack settled back and looked up at the blac
k silk of the tent, decorated with creatures that bore a strong resemblance to Laohu. “I know she was the dragon from the long wushi well, but do you have a name for her?”
“We call her Nu Jiazhang. You would say matriarch.”
Matriarch. The name rolled around in Jack’s mind as sleep took him. Did a second matriarch lie at the bottom of the Archive? Or was it something else?
* * *
The first light of dawn married Laohu’s floating shadow to the golden dragons on the silk. Floating dragon. Jack sat up with a new idea. Sadie had used her Merlinian abilities to call for Biyu, asking for her help to get up the mountain. And like any thoughtful camper, Biyu had brought enough dragons for everyone. He glanced at Liu Fai, who was already rolling his blankets. “Hey.”
Liu Fai pressed his eyebrows together, clearly suspicious of Jack’s tone. “Hey.”
“I have a new plan.”
“Of course you do.”
“To your knowledge,” asked Jack, grinning despite Liu Fai’s sarcasm, “has anyone ever ridden a dragon?”
Chapter Forty-Two
“YEAH!” JACK BENT DOWN to snatch a leaf from the forest canopy and let it flutter off behind him, whisking between Sadie and Liu Fai.
Since Jack had first fallen in with the Ministry of Trackers, he had experienced a few nontraditional forms of flight. He had flown a gaudy airship over the Russian tundra, hung on for dear life as a quantum electrodynamic drone whipped him across moonlit London, and rocketed out of a collapsing ruby mine on ankle thrusters. But dragon flying became an instant favorite.
Laohu’s flight path had an undulating quality that matched his serpentine form, as smooth and powerful as an ocean wave. Jack could steer him with thought, though nothing so cumbersome as thinking Go left, or Go right. Jack looked where he wanted to go, and the dragon followed.
Most of the time.
This thought-steered dragon had a mind of its own. Occasionally, Laohu performed an uncommanded barrel roll or veered off course to chase Xiaoquan through a waterfall.
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