Gwen spread her arms wide as she reached the top of the stairs behind him. “You wanted your family’s locker.”
He nodded, turning in a slow circle. He couldn’t see any containers or hiding places, no chests or cabinets. Even the small writing desk beneath the window had no drawers. “But where would Johnny Buckles have hidden the Ember?”
“How should I know? I’ve never been here before. To be quite honest, I’m absolutely stunned we made it this far.”
There had to be a hidden nook or chamber, a door that Jack wasn’t seeing. He walked to the center of the study and took in the room.
Desk: empty except for a writing pad and a painted wooden globe, floating in midair above its base—cool, but not what he was looking for.
Window above the desk: gold stained glass depicting a falcon in flight—ancient and streaked with minerals, like the stained glass at Barking Tower.
A glow: a purple light coming from underneath the bookcases that covered one wall—so dim as to be almost invisible.
Jack approached the shelves and scanned the books, settling his gaze on a large black volume near the joining of the two center cases: The Polymerase Chain Reaction and Other Great Tales. Beneath the title was a big silver thumbprint. Jack raised his hand, hesitated because he felt foolish doing it, then pressed his thumb into the binding.
“Welcome, John Buckles.” The revolving-door-Tube voice spoke from behind the bookcases. Jack heard a hum very much like the maglev, and the cases before him parted, forcing him to back up. The two great halves of the wall of bookcases swung out, folding at the breaks to form a partial room. White lights flickered on. Long pieces of the floor rose up and tilted out into rows of canted tables, covered in green velvet and packed with shining gear.
“Now, this is a locker,” breathed Jack, stepping inside.
Racks of vintage clothing filled the left side of the secret room. Jack ran his hand down the sleeve of a red suede duster, his dad’s favorite. He’d never realized there was more than one. Next to the duster hung a leather jacket that looked his size. Without really thinking, he slipped off the used coat Gwen had given him and tried it on. The fit of the silk liner felt perfect, tailored just for him. He pulled a bowler hat down from the shelf above.
“Ahem.”
Jack turned, bowler touching his hair.
Gwen was shaking her head. “There are very few men in the world who can pull off a bowler hat, Jack Buckles. And there are precisely zero teenage boys who can.”
“Right. Sure.” He felt his cheeks redden as he set the bowler back on the shelf. “Maybe just the jacket.”
The vintage clothes were the least of the secret closet’s treasures. Swords and matching daggers hung on the back wall, alongside pneumatic dart guns and ornate canes with glowing chambers in the shafts. All sorts of gear were pressed into the velvet of the tables. There were magnifying glasses with carbon-fiber handles, brass spyglasses and compasses, and several disks and spherical devices that Jack did not recognize. In the middle of the central table was a small sphere of translucent red stone, inlaid with gold lattice. Jack lifted it from its form-fitted impression, holding it up for Gwen to see. “What do you suppose this is?”
“I’m not sure. It may be a scout. They come in a variety of configurations. Scouts are tracker recording devices, from a time before there were apps for that sort of thing.” As Jack lowered the sphere, she gazed around the room. “I thought I knew all there was to know about the tracker houses, but this . . . this is amazing.”
“And yet there’s still no sign of the Ember. Maybe I was wrong.”
“Jack. Look at that.” Gwen’s roving gaze had fixed on the right end of the room, where a large mirror hung on what had previously been the back panel of a bookcase. The sculpted gold frame twisted out into curved handles on either side. At the center of each was a vertical eye, set with a pale green gem as large as the sapphire in the king’s medallion.
They exchanged a glance.
Gwen gave him a little shrug. “Why not?”
Jack took hold of both handles, palms pressed into the green gems, and felt himself yanked straight into the bookcase.
Chapter 52
JACK JERKED TO a stop in total darkness, suspended in black space with nothing but the mirror before him. His own reflection had fled the glass, leaving behind an aged man with long gray hair. Jack knew him from his vision at the tower. Johnny Buckles. The tracker’s eyes flashed with a hint of recognition. “My son—”
Even as the elder Buckles spoke, Jack shot backward through the dark. The face in the mirror changed as he flew, rapidly shifting through a dozen versions of John Buckles. Some wore a thin smile, some looked grave, but every one of them began a solemn statement with My son, John, or—
“Jack.”
He stopped again, suspended in the void, staring at the image of his father.
“If you’re seeing this, it means I never came home from that trip to London—the one I took when you were thirteen. And it means you’re in the Keep, so I guess you know the big family secret everyone has worked so hard to keep from you. What you may not know is that every John Buckles leaves one of these messages for his son.” John Buckles Twelve let out a rueful chuckle. “Although, I never expected to leave mine so soon. There’s so much I want to tell you, but I’m out of time. I can’t let the man who’s after me figure out that I’ve come here.
“You see, Jack, I opened Pandora’s box. And now I have to deal with the consequences. It seems the first John Buckles understood that powerful men would always want more power. He knew they would always covet what was inside Pandora’s box, wherever they came across it, so he hid this particular version, taking the secret of its existence to his grave. And now, through ignorance and carelessness, I’ve exposed that secret.” He paused to scratch his head, tilting the bowler with his knuckles the way he used to tilt it when Sadie asked him a tough question. “Someone is coming for the box, Jack, and if I don’t lead him away, millions will pay the price.”
Jack couldn’t bear being so close to his dad—so close to the moment when everything changed—and not being able to stop him. Where is it? his thoughts screamed. Just tell me where the Ember is and I’ll come get you!
It was almost as if his dad had heard him. “The ministry will be looking for the Ember after I’m gone. Maybe that’s why you’ve come to the Keep. Maybe they brought you in to help. But I can’t tell you where it is, son. I won’t. You have to leave it be. You have to let me go.” He glanced down, as if checking his watch. “Tell your mom and your sister I love them. I love you, too, Jack. I’ll always love you, no matter where I am.” He smiled that same sad smile that belonged to Jack’s mom. Then he kissed his fingers and pressed them to the mirror.
Don’t go, Dad! Please, don’t go! Jack tried to press his hand against his father’s, releasing his grip on one of the handles. Instantly he was yanked back through the void, right out of the bookcase. His dad was gone, replaced by the reflection of his own tear-streaked face.
Gwen was in the mirror as well, at his shoulder, deep concern in her eyes. “Jack, I—”
He turned away, holding up a hand to stop her as he passed and wiping his eyes with the other sleeve. “My father left a message in the mirror—a good-bye. He found the Ember. But he wouldn’t tell me where it was.” Jack sniffed and dropped his hands. “Why wouldn’t he tell me?”
“I think you know the answer. Your dad didn’t want to put you in danger, Jack. Or any civilians. He was ready to make a final stand.”
A final stand. Jack turned, slowly shaking his head. “No. He wasn’t. Not entirely.”
“You just told me he said—”
“This isn’t about what my dad said, Gwen. It’s about what he did. Dad took precautions. He planned to survive the Clockmaker’s flamethrower. He got help. I know he did.”
“How do you know? Did he say that in his message?”
“No. But he was wearing a red scarf.”
&n
bsp; Jack left her standing in the equipment room and walked out into the study. “The Ember has to be here somewhere. All I have to do is spark. I can watch Dad’s movements from a few days ago. Let him lead me to it whether he wanted to or not.” He searched the room for metal objects.
Globe: wood.
Desk: wood.
Swords: hidden behind the bookcases, which were all made of wood.
Everything in the room was covered in wood, cloth, or paper.
Jack let out a frustrated growl.
“Your dad didn’t want you to find the Ember,” said Gwen, more forcefully than before. “He didn’t want you coming after him. Jack, this was his choice.”
Jack’s gaze settled on the falcon in the stained glass window, and a solution hit him. It had worked before. He glanced back at the clerk. “Yeah, well, this is my choice.” Before she could react, he rushed forward and pressed his palm against the glass.
Chapter 53
CHAOS. TOTAL BEDLAM, like before in Barking Tower.
Jack’s head screamed. A roar of multicolored sound attacked his mind. Intense light smashed against his vision. He had no eyelids to shut it out. Everything was squeezed into a two-dimensional plane. And Jack’s consciousness was squeezed in with it.
This time, however, he understood what he was facing.
Gwen was wrong. Glass, stained glass at least, reflected, amplified, and confused, but it could record as well, like the sapphire in the Tower and the green gems on the mirror. Three hundred years of sight and sound were recorded in the silicate—all melted and jumbled together, but they were there. All Jack had to do was unscramble them. He had done it before.
Maybe he had done it. Or maybe Gwen was right. Maybe what he saw was an illusion. Maybe he had succumbed to the chaos, and the fire and the wraith he saw in the Great Fire glass were nothing more than the creations of his own subconscious.
Jack pushed, the way he had pushed before, and the chaos pushed back. The light brightened to pure white. He felt like his skin was stretched against his skull, so taut that his cheeks might split open. Then a string of lilting blue appeared, quickly contorted into a shriek by the glass. Gwen was shouting at him, adding to the chaos, trying to pull him out of the spark.
He fought against her. His choice. That’s what he had told her. Suddenly Jack found his own voice and screamed. The bedlam shattered.
The barrier in the Great Fire glass at Barking Tower had dropped away in a hundred shards. This one exploded into a million—a sparkling glass mist. When it finally settled, all that lay beyond was darkness. For a moment, Jack wondered if he had really won, or if the glass had killed him.
As the pain receded, though, detail appeared in the dark. Jack was looking up at the domed rock ceiling above Tracker Lane, except the gargoyled crown of the Keep that should have jutted down through the center was missing. In its place was a vertical cavern, rising up beyond the limits of vision.
Jack’s perspective began to shift, lifting and turning, floating through the cave. He saw workers, and a crane of wood and iron. They were lifting the window into place, and him with it. He had gone too far back—way too far. He had wanted to watch his dad’s last moments in the Keep. Instead he had sparked back to the day House Buckles was built. Jack had overshot his goal by more than three hundred years. He tried pulling with his mind, trying to rise up through the centuries, but to no avail. After everything he’d been through, he still couldn’t control his sparks. Jack was stuck.
The men worked by lantern light. The gas lamps had not yet been installed, nor had the other houses been built. But the fountain was still there, at the center of the cave, and Johnny Buckles paced around it. He was not much older than he had been when the king entrusted him with the Ember. He directed the work on the house, motioning to the crane operator until Jack’s window was in place, giving Jack a useless view out over the cul-de-sac instead of into the study. Not only had he overshot his time period, but now he was facing the wrong way.
Jack pushed and pulled, and pushed again, and he suddenly shifted, a sideways rush of black rock and orange lantern light. When he settled, the workers were still there, building a second tracker house. He heard the sounds of construction above him as well. The Keep was under construction within the vertical fissure. His efforts had worked, sort of.
Jack pushed and pulled again, and again he shifted a little ways through time, to another stage of construction. He repeated the process over and over until the gas lamps burned and the glossy gargoyles snarled down from their inverted perches beneath the finished Keep. All the while, Johnny Buckles aged, his hair growing white. But he never stopped pacing around the cul-de-sac, one eye on the construction and the other—
The gold sheen of the stained glass falcon filled Jack’s vision, flying away from him. Then he realized that he was the one flying. Jack flew backward, the angry scream still pouring from his lungs, until he hit the wood floor with an abrupt “Oomph!”
Gwen hit the floor with him, arms wrapped around him in a bear hug. She rose up on an elbow and punched him in his bruised arm. “What were you thinking? You could have put yourself into a coma!”
“What’s going on?” Both children turned as Mary Buckles crested the stairs. “I heard shouting.”
Gwen quickly sat up, backing away from Jack. “Mrs. B. I—”
“We’re fine,” said Jack, pushing himself to a sitting position. “I fell, that’s all. I’m okay.”
His mom clearly did not agree. Her face went white as a sheet. Gwen turned back to see what was the matter and drew in a short breath, biting her lip. She reached into her pocket and produced a pale purple handkerchief. “Here, use this.”
“For what?”
She put the kerchief in his palm, then gently pressed both his hand and the kerchief up under his nose. When she released him, Jack pulled the kerchief away and saw that it was filled with blood.
His mom rushed over and helped him to his feet, taking over the job of cleaning up his face in a way that he found incredibly embarrassing. “What did you do?” she asked, still dabbing at his nose, though the flow of blood had stopped.
“I took a risk, Mom—like Dad would have done.” Jack pushed her hands down. “And it paid off.”
• • •
Jack hurried out into the courtyard, carrying a bronze falcon-head cane in one hand and a sword as tall as he was in the other. He wasn’t sure which one would do the job.
“What did you see?” asked Gwen, jogging next to him, with Sadie and Jack’s mother following right behind. The clerk had asked the same question in the study and on the stairs, but Jack was in too much of a rush to answer.
He stopped at the fountain, a simple urn with water bubbling out from a quarter-size hole, spilling over into the small pool at its base. Jack handed the cane to his mother and held his fingers under the water. He smiled at Gwen. “Feel it. The water’s warm.”
“Of course it’s warm. That’s a geothermal spring, Jack. Are you certain you’re all right?”
He raised his eyebrows, leaning on the sword. “How do you know it’s geothermal? This isn’t exactly Yellowstone. I’d bet it’s a groundwater spring, powered by gravity.”
Gwen’s eyes shifted to the urn. “And you think the Ember is inside, heating it up.”
“In the spark from the stained glass, I saw Johnny Buckles overseeing the construction of this place. The workers didn’t dig a hole for the Keep beneath Baker Street. The cavern was already here. My ancestor hid the Ember in the deepest, darkest place he could find. But what if once King Charles commissioned the Ministry of Trackers, Johnny Buckles realized that same deep, dark place could serve as the perfect headquarters?” Jack inclined his head toward the fountain. “Gwen, this fountain was already here, before construction on the houses or the Keep began.”
The clerk slowly nodded. “So the Ember is in there.” Then the pace of her speech began to quicken. “The mechanism for getting it out must be particularly cunning. Johnny B
uckles would have made it nigh impossible to open the urn. Perhaps it’s hydraulic. Yes. We stop up the flow and the pressure will open the hatch. No. Too easy. Come on, Kincaid. Anyone could have thought of that one.” Her eyes widened. “Oh! What about static electricity? I think I saw a pair of electrospheres in your dad’s armory. We could—”
As Gwen chattered, Jack gently guided her to the edge of the cul-de-sac, entrusting her to his mom, who gave him a knowing nod. With the other three safely out of the way, Jack returned to the fountain and raised the massive sword, hauling it back as far as he dared.
“What are you doing?” shrieked Gwen, just as the blade made contact.
The urn shattered in an explosion of water and wet stone, sending fragments out into the cul-de-sac. A blue-green box sat within the broken bowl that remained, water bubbling up all around it. Jack dropped the sword and gently lifted the box from the debris. It was warm, almost hot to the touch. He paused only a moment, then unhooked the catch. He had to. He needed to make sure the jewel inside really was the Ember. At least, that’s what he told himself.
As Jack drifted back toward the others, he raised the lid. A faceted black gem, a little smaller than his fist, shined back at him from a tight housing of the same blue-green metal. The jewel had the look of obsidian, until glowing veins of orange appeared beneath its surface—growing and connecting, pulsating like the coals of a dying fire fanned by a nighttime breeze. In less than a second, the whole Ember gleamed yellow. Jack could feel the heat of it on his face. He snapped the lid closed and looked up, only to find his path blocked by a wall of tweed.
The Lost Property Office Page 19