“What do you mean?” his mother asked.
“Our quest,” Joey said. “It’s over. I lost the map.”
“What?” everyone exclaimed at once, staggered by the news. Shazad was more surprised than anyone.
Joey gave Shazad a subtle look telling him to go with it. He could take the heat for losing the map. He was fine with it. His parents weren’t in the tent. No one there could punish him.
Shazad’s father turned his intense, penetrating eyes on Joey. “Aren’t you the same boy who lost Houdini’s wand?”
“No,” Shazad said before Joey could answer. “I mean, yes, he is. Dad, this is Joey. And this is Leanora,” he added, pausing to introduce everyone. “Guys, this is my father, Ahmad ibn Jabari ibn Amon al-Hassan.”
“Mr. Hassan is fine. It’s nice to meet you both,” Shazad’s father said with a genuine but rushed friendly tone. He was understandably impatient to get back to the matter at hand. “Can one of you please tell me what’s going on?”
“What’s going on is Joey didn’t lose the map,” Shazad replied.
“Shazad,” Joey said. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes I do. Thank you, Joey, but I have to take responsibility. I lost the map. I was holding it. It was my fault.” He looked up at his parents, ready to face the consequences of his actions. “Joey’s just trying to keep me out of trouble. The map’s gone because I couldn’t hold on to it. No other reason. I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Joey said. “It could have been any one of us.”
“It was all of us,” Leanora said. “We got the map together. We lost it together. That’s the truth.”
Shazad’s father looked at all three children, making eye contact with each of them one by one. Joey saw appreciation for their solidarity and friendship in his expression. “I think you’d better tell us everything,” Shazad’s father said.
They told the story together, recounting their quest for Camelot, starting with the trip through the Devil’s Teeth and the journey into Transylvania. Both sets of parents were amazed by their descriptions of the hidden magical gates and enraged by their accounts of the confrontations with the Invisible Hand. Shazad and Leanora left out the things Scarlett had said about their families but described in detail what she had done to Joey. They finished the tale with how they had outwitted Scarlett, discovered Celestia’s doorway to the stars, and walked across the universe before falling back to Earth.
“Unfortunately, that’s the end of it,” Shazad said. “We don’t know where to go from here. Not without the map. It was fuzzy in England, but I was hoping it would clear up once we got here. Now we’ll never know.”
“You said you’ve been looking for us since yesterday,” Joey said, hoping to find a silver lining. “I don’t suppose you saw anything out there…”
“That looked like Camelot?” Leanora’s mother asked. She looked at Joey sideways. “Sorry, no,” she said with a smile.
Joey looked down, disheartened. “That’s too bad. I really wanted to find it.”
“It’s the end of the road,” Leanora said, disappointed. “No map. No shield. No Camelot. Nothing.”
“We don’t need Camelot, Lea,” her father said to her. “We just need this.” He drew Leanora and her mother close to him. “Family. This is what matters.”
“My family doesn’t even know I’m here,” Joey said. “They think I’m in a lab with Janelle, trying to save the planet. I should call them. What day is it again?”
“Wednesday,” Shazad’s mother answered.
Joey fished around in his pocket for his phone. “I need to text Janelle and tell her I’m coming to California. Can you guys get me there in a hurry?” Leanora’s mother told Joey he was approved for travel as soon as his arm was fully healed. He thanked her, flexing his fingers a little bit, grateful that he was on the road to wellness. “That’s it, then. While I’m there you guys can divvy up what we’ve got in the theater,” he told Shazad and Leanora.
Shazad looked at Joey, stunned. “Are you sure? Even after what Scarlett said?”
Joey shrugged. “What else can we do? The theater’s going to be unprotected soon. At least with your families, it’s got a chance. You can split everything between you.”
“Split up what?” Leanora’s father asked. “What are we talking about here?”
“The magic items in the theater,” Joey said. “What Redondo left us. I thought you guys wanted them.”
Leanora’s mother looked lost. “This is the first I’m hearing about it.”
“What?” Shazad said. He and Joey looked back and forth between Leanora and her parents, thoroughly confused.
“The stuff in the theater,” Joey said again. He pointed at Shazad and his parents. “They wanted to protect the items from the Invisible Hand,” he said, sounding unsure. “You guys wanted to use them to amp up your shows and fight the Invisible Hand. Didn’t you?”
Everyone turned to Leanora for an explanation. She was turning red.
“Not exactly,” she admitted, now that she was busted. “Bringing the items back from the theater… that’s what I wanted to do. I thought if I could do that, I could convince my parents to go bigger with our shows. No more low profile. I wanted us to make a difference in the world.”
Leanora’s father smiled, understanding everything. “Our Lea is a fighter,” he explained. “That is not our way. We aren’t looking to make a ‘big splash,’ ” he said, making air quotes with his fingers. “We just want to do what we love. Make magic. Play for the people.”
“But you sent her to get Houdini’s wand,” Shazad said.
“Ha!” Leanora’s father looked at his wife. “He thinks we could have stopped her!”
“You don’t want to use the items the children have in the theater?” Shazad’s mother asked Leanora’s mom and dad.
“Better you should keep them,” Leanora’s mother replied. “If the Invisible Hand is going to come for them, they’ll be safer with you. We have plenty of magic in our family. Enough for us, and more important, enough to share. We do make a difference,” she told her daughter. “We don’t need Camelot for that. We just need one another. If we can open the eyes of one person in the audience every night and light them up inside, that has an impact. That matters.”
“I don’t get it,” Joey said. “Leanora said you’ve been looking for lost magical cities like the places we found on the map. You’ve been looking for Camelot too, haven’t you?”
“Of course,” Leanora’s father said. “The world is a magic place full of wonder. We want to see as much as we can. But the quest to find such places is not a race you win. It’s not about the destination. It’s the journey. We look for magic wherever we can find it, and we do find it every day. In little, small miracles. Tiny moments that astound and amaze. We share those moments onstage with the people we meet, and when they leave our shows, they take magic with them. Inside.” He tapped his chest. “They pass it on to others, each in their own way. I’ve seen it. They make their own brand of magic and we help them do it. We give the world magic every day, and we’re not alone.” Leanora’s father gestured to the Hassans. “Our friends here do the same good work in their own way.”
“Thank you, Dimitry,” Shazad’s father said. A look of mutual understanding and respect passed between both sets of parents before Shazad’s father turned his attention back to the children. “Our family saves magic items, but only that which is worth saving. There are magical artifacts in the world that serve no good purpose: Pandora’s box, the Casket of Ancient Winters, Fabergé eggs… Even after everything you’ve been through, you haven’t had to face anything like them.”
“Did you say Fabergé eggs?” Joey asked. “Weren’t those, like, jeweled Easter eggs?”
“Given as gifts to the Russian tsars in the last century,” Shazad’s mother confirmed. “But some of them were much older than that. If I told you what was inside them, you wouldn’t sleep.”
“I think t
he less said about them the better,” Leanora’s mother said.
“It’s enough to say that some things exist only to unleash evil and suffering,” Shazad’s mother agreed. “We make sure lost items like that stay lost, and when we have to, we eliminate them. We’ve done this for generations.”
“I thought you just collected things like a museum,” Leanora said.
“We collect benevolent magic items, because their power is required to wipe out malignant dark magic,” Shazad’s father explained. “The Invisible Hand claims to have a similar mission, but we all know that’s not true. They hoard magic. We do the real work of protecting magic. Virtuous, life-giving magic. That matters too. We do what we can, and we hope it’s enough to keep the world turning, but I know one thing for certain: whatever magic items you have in the theater will be safe with us. I give you my word. All of you.”
Joey thought carefully about what Leanora’s and Shazad’s parents were saying. They were noble sentiments, and there was definitely some truth to their words. Redondo had once told Joey about the vital importance of magicians and why they kept magic a secret. Joey had appreciated the idea at the time, but that explanation wasn’t enough for him anymore. He understood that Leanora’s family spread magic around, changing the world for the better, but it was progress by inches. They weren’t pulling a big lever, and from the sound of it, they didn’t want to. Shazad’s family was the same. They protected magic and kept it out of the wrong hands, but their work didn’t change the world. They just kept everything the same. Scarlett had told them the truth. It was up to them. Joey, Shazad, and Leanora were the ones who were going to change the game. They were going to find Camelot and open the world’s magical floodgates. They were going to use the Caliburn Shield to protect the Majestic Theatre, or even better, he and Janelle would find a way to use it to give the world magic for real. But none of that was going to happen now. It was over. They weren’t the Order of the Majestic. They were failures.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Leanora’s father told Joey. “Magic can change the world. We can do more. Lea tells us this. She tells us all the time. That we have to fight the Invisible Hand.” He pffed his dismissal. “They aren’t as powerful as you think they are. They don’t understand magic. What it’s for. What it’s worth. The Invisible Hand can’t keep magic from the world. They can try to control it, but it’s always going to be there. Those of us who go looking for it—really go looking for it—are always going to find it.”
“I wanted it to be us who found it this time,” Shazad told his parents. “I wanted to find Camelot and make you proud.”
“That was your mistake,” Shazad’s father said. He went down on one knee and looked his son in the eye. “You don’t need to do anything to make us proud of you. We’re already proud of you. We always have been.”
“If Camelot is lost, then it’s lost,” Shazad’s mother said. “So be it. I’d rather it happen this way than lose it to the Invisible Hand—or worse, lose you.”
Shazad nodded, holding back tears. His parents pulled him into another hug. There was a lot of hugging going on. It was all very touching and made Joey think about his own parents. He felt guilty that he hadn’t spoken to them since Monday, and also for asking Janelle to stand in for him via text. His mom and dad were probably driving her crazy trying to get him on the phone. Sure enough, when he turned his phone back on, he had a dozen text messages from Janelle. The most recent one read:
Your parents are blowing up my phone. WHERE ARE YOU???
Srsly, U OK?
Joey put the phone away. “I think it’s time for me to go.” He jiggled his arm. “How long do I need to wear this?”
“That depends,” Leanora’s mother said. “How does it feel?”
Joey lifted his arm, bending it at the elbow as much as the tight wrapping would allow. “It feels great, actually. I mean, it’s a little stiff, but I couldn’t move it at all before this. It was deadweight.”
“Good. Let’s see how we did.” Leanora’s mother removed the bandages, starting with his hand and working her way up the arm. With every length of enchanted red linen she peeled away, more healthy pink skin was found underneath. Joey’s spirits soared as he wiggled his fingers and twisted his wrist around with newfound appreciation. Leanora’s mother asked him to keep still, and also to take his shirt off so she could unwind the wrapping from his shoulder. When she was finished, Joey didn’t have a single mark on him. He was cured.
“Wait a minute—what’s that?” Leanora asked, pointing out a black dot on his collarbone the size of a mole. No sooner had she asked the question than a torrent of black paint gushed out of the dot, covering every inch of his arm and half of his chest.
“No,” Joey said, crushed. His arm was numb again. So was most of his torso. He wasn’t better; he was worse. A horrible thought took root in his brain. They can’t fix me. They can’t help me! For all he knew, no one could.
“What am I going to do?”
Leanora’s mother studied Joey’s blackened arm with a frown. “Put your shirt back on,” she told him. Joey couldn’t move his right arm, so she had to help him cover up. “I was afraid of this. If these bandages can’t remove this curse, we’re going to need the item that put it there to fix this.”
“We need the paintbrush,” Leanora said, a determined look on her face.
“How are we going to get that?” Shazad asked.
“We need to find Scarlett,” Leanora replied.
“That’s great,” Joey said. “What happens if she finds me first?”
“You don’t have to wonder,” Scarlett announced. Joey spun around and saw her standing by the entrance to the tent. She was painting large blue waves with white caps in the air. Like everything else she painted, it was a re-creation of someone else’s work; a famous Japanese print Joey had seen many times before. However, what Scarlett lacked in originality she made up for in effectiveness. The wave came crashing down with the force of a battering ram, knocking everyone off their feet. Tables and chairs went flying and a boat inside the wave ripped through the room, collapsing half the tent. As the water drained out into the field, Joey flopped around, coughing up salt water and trying to stand. Scarlett dragged him out of the tent and into a frame outside the door.
16 The Imaginary Vortex
The tent was gone. Joey’s friends were gone. He was disoriented and had no idea where he was. All he knew was that he was soaking wet and Scarlett was pulling him by the collar through another empty field, this one scattered with medieval ruins. “Did you like that?” she asked him. “That was The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. I mean, he’s no comic book artist, but I think his work is pretty powerful.” Joey whipped his head back and forth, looking for a way out. The picture frame he had just been forced through was still there behind him. In a desperate move, Joey wrestled free of Scarlett’s grip and tried to run back to it. Rather than chase after him, she took careful aim with her brush and gave him a jolt of pain that stopped him dead in his tracks. For a second, half of Joey’s body was on fire. He dropped as if he’d been shot. The pain was gone before he hit the ground. Scarlett told him it was just a taste. A little something to make him behave. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” she said. “It’s up to you.”
Joey watched the picture frame fade into nothingness, taking with it any hope of escape. He balled a fist with his one good hand, but it was no use fighting. He couldn’t fight her head-on. Not as long as she held that brush. He pushed himself up and agreed to come quietly.
Scarlett told Joey to head for the ruins, and he did as he was told. She followed behind him, keeping her paintbrush trained on him like a pistol.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“Just keep walking.”
Joey tried to figure out what the ruins were on his own. The foundation of an old castle or some kind of defensive barrier were the only things that came to mind. Ancient stone walls had been built in a wide circle,
three hundred feet in diameter. There were eight chunks of wall, each of them ten feet high, spaced evenly around the circle with gaps in between them that were big enough to drive a truck through. Scarlett directed Joey to a path that led to the top of one of the sections of wall. Inside the circle of stone, the ground dropped down another twenty to thirty feet, but it wasn’t a sudden drop-off. The other side of the wall went down in steps like seats in an amphitheater.
DeMayne was there, sitting on the top step, facing the open field. He turned his head as Joey arrived. “There you are, Joey. Glad you could join us.” He wasn’t alone. There were about fifty people inside the circle with him, also sitting on the steps.
“Who is this?” Joey asked. “The rest of the Invisible Hand?”
DeMayne tilted his hand from side to side as if to say, Yes and no. “Not in the way you’re thinking. They’re with me, but they’re not magicians. Just some locals who are helping out. Norms, if you’ll excuse the term.” He stood up and dusted himself off. DeMayne was dressed in another one of his fantastic custom-made suits. “With the Hassans and the Nomadiks in the area, I thought it couldn’t hurt to have a little extra muscle on hand.”
Joey took a closer look at the people on the steps. They were civilians. Old men and women from the local villages, adult tourists his parents’ age, teens, and even little kids. They all had shovels, bats, sticks, and rocks in their hands. Everyone had some kind of weapon and looked ready to use it. Not because they were angry. They weren’t itching for a fight. They looked blank and empty, like machines waiting to be turned on. Their eyes were jet-black with the white parts completely filled in.
“What did you do to them?” Joey asked.
DeMayne held up his hand. “You see this?” He wiggled his fingers, showing off a black ring on his right hand. “The Ring of Ranguul. I took it off a small-time con man ages ago. The fool didn’t even know what he had. If I shake someone’s hand wearing this ring, they become very susceptible to suggestion. It doesn’t always work on fellow magicians, but people like them?” He nodded to the local townspeople assembled on the steps. “They’ll do whatever I say. I’ve been out here shaking hands all morning. I felt like a politician running for office, but it was worth the effort. Believe me, I’ve got their vote.” He gestured to the helpless and hypnotized people in his thrall. “These ‘sheeple’ will die before they let anything happen to me, or let you get away. I tell you this just to let you know that you’re not in a position to help yourself, so don’t get any ideas.”
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