“We should be asking Daphne that question,” said Squirt. He folded his arms and narrowed his eyes.
Daphne looked at them both and twisted her hair. “If Anni gets into a tight spot, she can use it to sort of blend into a background without being noticed, so long as she doesn’t move. It’s not a big deal. Fort and Knox wear it, too; it isn’t as uncommon as you think. Actually, you’re missing the point; the reason why she’s wearing it is the fibers are impenetrable. It will hold in and mask her Funk.”
“But if she gets caught in this,” said Squirt, “she’d get into major trouble.”
“Daphne’s right. What’s the big deal?” asked Anni.
“The big deal is that Dwarrow hair comes from Metal Elementals,” said Brat.
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Squirt. “They’ve been pushed off into the human realms because they sold secrets to the Fectus.”
“Don’t tell her that; it’s total discrimination. You heard what Diana said. All the Elementals need one another to survive, and they can’t without the Metals,” said Daphne.
“Yeah, but it’s true. Anyway, regular Elementals aren’t supposed to hang out with Metals,” said Squirt. “They’ve metal fingernails, too.”
Anni remembered the hand with golden fingernails reaching through Mabel’s trunk.
“How do you know you haven’t already made friends with one? Huh? Anyway, there are exceptions to that rule,” said Daphne in a huffy tone that bordered on disappointment. “And you should talk, Mr. Eaves-Dropus. That illegal hybrid could get you in more trouble than Anni and me combined.”
“What hybrid?” asked Brat. “I’m gone for two days, and now you two will be arrested before me.” He sighed. “At least I’ll have company in the Egghouse.”
“We should talk about tomorrow,” said Anni.
“She’s right,” said Daphne. “We can find a way to use Squirt’s plant. There are four rooms where the meeting might take place.” Daphne used her Omninav to pull up the blueprints of the seventeenth and nineteenth floors, including the specs for the air ducts. “Anni, you and Squirt will be here and here on the seventeenth floor. Brat, since you can fly, I thought you could monitor these two rooms on the nineteenth. Does that work?” Everyone nodded. “My guess is that S.E.C. members will be traveling old-school, Imago. Anni, that’s traveling through paintings.”
“Didn’t the Elofficium decommission most of them ages ago?” asked Squirt.
Anni said, “I think I saw Zelda do that in Mabel’s apartment.”
“Well, it makes sense,” said Brat. “If you were from an old Elemental family and still had one, wouldn’t you still use it?”
“Good point,” said Daphne. “Okay, back to the plan. I’ll find a safe place to hide on the eighteenth. From there, I can use my Omninav to direct you through the air ducts. Squirt, can you have four Eaves-Dropus ready by tomorrow?”
“They already are, Daph.”
“Tomorrow, Operation Air Ducts meets here at ten a.m.,” said Daphne.
“Yeah,” said Anni. “And let’s just hope we don’t get caught.”
OPERATION AIR DUCTS
That night, Anni bolted the attic door shut and Brat stayed with her. She had a restless night, tossing and turning until six in the morning, when she finally gave up on sleeping. Brat, on the other hand, slept like a log.
Anni triple-checked her new backpack, making sure the doll was still inside. Her hair had turned pale pink, which was Lexi’s favorite color; Anni only hoped it was a good omen. She joined Fortensia for breakfast, realizing that it was the last one they’d share together. Anni had a hard time keeping her jitters at bay, and although Fortensia gave her funny looks, she didn’t say a word. Once Fortensia left, Anni and Brat made their way to the Manor.
Squirt was outside the greenhouse at nine. He had two heavy bricks holding down the wonky hover cart. “Good timing,” he said. “I wanted to get this in place under the chute, but first, I’ll need to clear a path through the compost. Want to help?”
“Sure,” said Anni, grinning. “And it’s the last time I need to shovel that stuff.”
They walked over to the compost heap with shovels in hand, excited and nervous about the afternoon. They had reached the low brick wall when they heard Knox say, “Aw lookie ’ere, I got me an Eggwit first thing in the mornin’.”
Squirt puffed out his chest. “She’s helping me.”
“Not today, she don’t. And neither do you if you gets me drift. Manor’s shut up. Village, too.” Knox pointed at the solarium doors. They were chained shut.
Anni’s mouth fell. This wasn’t happening.
Squirt grabbed her hand. “Come on.” He waited until Knox was far enough away. “Let’s go to Yugi’s. Daphne will find a way around these goons.”
Brat flew ahead of them through the shed passageway. When they entered Yugi’s lower garden room, they found Daphne pacing and talking to herself.
“What’s going on?” asked Anni.
“I left the Manor this morning to go to Haberdashers to work on a few final things, but my key didn’t work. When I got back to the Manor, they had already ushered all staff out. They refused to let me in, and every exit is sealed until five p.m. tonight.”
“What?” asked Anni.
“No,” said Brat and Squirt simultaneously.
“But we’ll miss it! This can’t be happening,” said Anni.
“Daph, is there another way in?” asked Squirt.
“No, not that I know of.”
Anni walked past Daphne and threw herself onto a wooden bench, her hands over her eyes. She felt like crying, but no tears came. Squirt sat close to her, and Daphne joined him. This was the worst news possible.
Eleven a.m. came and went.
“Brat,” said Daphne, “could you sing the song again?”
“Salt in wounds, Daph,” said Squirt, gesturing at Anni. “Come on.”
Anni didn’t say a word, but she nodded to Brat as if she was saying, “Go ahead.”
Brat sang the song one more time and Daphne screamed, “It’s not over! We still have a chance. How could I have been so stupid? I mean, all the other hints were right in front of my eyes. How could I be so literal?”
Daphne started to laugh hysterically. Squirt and Brat looked really concerned when she started flapping her arms wildly around the room like a goose.
“Daph,” said Squirt in a calm voice, “maybe you should sit down.”
“No. I can’t. This is important and unbelievably simple.”
“Moppins, get on with it already and tell us.”
“Okay,” she said. “Do you remember the last line of the song? ‘Betwixt and between noon’…I can’t believe I fell for it.”
“Fell for what?” asked Anni, starting to hope.
“Noon isn’t referring to the afternoon like we thought, but to the number twelve. Betwixt and between refers to midnight, when the veils between worlds and dimensions are the lightest. Don’t you see? We still have another chance. Tonight at midnight!”
“Excellent!” said Squirt. “Operation Air Ducts is back in business!”
A chill of foreboding arrived long before midnight.
Anni didn’t take any chances once the doors opened at five p.m. Although relieved to have the protection of Daphne’s somasuit to block out her Funk, Anni didn’t like leaving behind the backpack with Lexi’s doll. Squirt promised to hide it safely at Yugi’s place before he, Brat, Daphne, and Anni made sure their Eaves-Dropus ear buds were working and they could all hear one another.
The second the Elementals were allowed back inside Moon Manor, Anni turned her somasuit to its reflective mode. Brat hid inside her hood, concealed and on the lookout, while she and Squirt wrangled the wonky hover cart out of the tool shed with a thick, heavy rope and pulled it through the compost heap into the ready position before she got on it. The smells of rotting fruit wafted into the air as Squirt struggled to hoist the hover cart up inch by inch until Anni was able to climb
into the rubbish chute.
Daphne hid inside a closet on the eighteenth floor. Everyone had trackers, so it was easy for her to follow them on her Omninavigational device and give directions through the air ducts. Anni wanted to tell Daphne not to talk so much as she scaled the dark, stinky, slimy metal rubbish chute; she had to concentrate and move slowly in order not to slip. One loud bang would reverberate into the kitchen, and the last thing they needed was a chef’s assistant to poke his or her head inside the chute and see Anni’s face looking back.
It took thirty minutes before she reached the third-floor maintenance room. It turned out that Daphne’s instructions were perfectly timed because as soon as Anni emerged from the chute into the maintenance room, the service lift opened, and Squirt was on it. From there, they went up several flights. Anni got off on the seventeenth; Squirt took Brat up to the nineteenth, and then he went back down to the seventeenth.
Ten minutes to midnight, all three of them were on their respective floors and in position. Anni inched her way closer to the ventilation grate. From there, she had a good view of a dark mahogany room, walls decorated with different paintings of what looked like the same man, and a vast oval conference table in the center.
“Anni, when the meeting starts, get as close to the grate as possible,” said Daphne. “The air ducts act like a microphone; they’ll pick up everything, even your breathing, Squirt.”
Squirt and Daphne argued about ambient noises until Brat told them to shut up. It reminded Anni how serious it was; getting caught was not an option. Sweat dripped from her brow; either it was the somasuit or her nerves. She didn’t know which.
“I’m picking up commotion on nineteen,” said Daphne. “Brat, be ready.”
“Oh, thanks for giving me the non-action floor,” whispered Squirt.
It was then that Anni noticed a small extra room through a second vent that wasn’t on Daphne’s blueprint. This antechamber wasn’t joined to the conference room by a door or a hallway. The antechamber appeared accessible only by a life-sized portrait of the same man in all the other paintings. The inscribed nameplate on the frame read: Alejandro Sune.
Sune was the same name used at Haberdashers. Anni whispered this to Daphne.
“Alejandro Sune! ‘Don’t forget never fret or it’ll be to Sune.’ That’s it,” said Daphne. “Squirt, find Brat, come meet me. Anni, I’m going silent until the meeting’s over.”
Anni didn’t expect Elementals to arrive through the room’s actual door, but the first person who did gave her a shock. Wearing a long brown cloak, Oliver Monday set down a tray with a pitcher of water and empty glasses. He pulled up his hood just before more Elementals arrived through the different paintings.
Anni watched as they gathered in small clusters, possibly greeting one another before sitting around the table. It was then that she noticed someone move inside the small antechamber room. A broad, stocky-looking Elemental, possibly a man, also cloaked from head to toe, stood silently like he was watching the S.E.C. members. He flipped something shiny in his hand as he observed the arrival of the Secret Elemental Council members, and when the members took their seats, he walked through the Sune portrait. Anni thought that maybe he could have been the leader, because as soon as he entered the room, everyone went silent. He took the seat closest to the vent and rested his hands on the table.
Anni gasped. He was the man with the golden fingernails!
WHIFFLE STRIKES AGAIN
Anni’s heart pounded, full of fear and wonder. She wanted nothing more than to interrupt the meeting and demand that the man with the creepy golden fingernails give her Mabel’s locket. Despite her anger, she noticed the back of his cloak sported a giant golden image of the Bee. It was an exact replica of the golden-threaded patch she had sewn onto her tank top, and identical to that stolen Elemental Artifact, the Golden Bee, the same Elofficium banned image in the Elemental newspaper that was plastered all over town in every window shop. Daphne was right; the Golden Bee was the S.E.C.’s symbol, which meant that all of the cloaked members had to be S.E.C. members.
Who was this man? Why did he take Mabel’s locket? She wondered what Lexi knew about this. She had known the Bee was important enough to want to take her to Mabel’s and show her. Was this the final proof that Lexi was an Elemental? Anni wasn’t going to believe anything until someone told her face to face. She needed to hear it from her first before she would believe that. Even though most of the clues pointed to yes, there was still so much she didn’t understand. At least she knew one thing: she was a human—that was an unmistakable fact that everyone here was quick to remind her of.
The Council had starting talking. Anni’s mind was racing. She was keeping an ear out for Lexi’s name, but mostly they discussed Elofficium leads and protocol. Not once did they mention Teddy, Mabel, or the fact that the Golden Bee Artifact had been stolen from the Brazilian Museum. It wasn’t until just before everyone got up to leave that two Elementals confirmed a latitude and longitude of the place where “the girl” was last seen.
Anni hoped that “the girl” they referred to was Lexi, but she couldn’t be sure because the meeting adjourned much faster than she expected. She prayed that Daphne got the numbers as Elemental after Elemental passed through the wood panels, one by one. Only the man with the golden fingernails waited until everyone else left the room before he placed a small, oval object on the table. Then he, too, went through the portrait and into the antechamber. From there, he vanished into another wooden wall and was gone.
Anni’s breathing got heavy and she could feel her whole body start to shake when the realization hit: the oval disk on the conference table was Mabel’s locket. Did the man with the golden fingernails leave it behind on purpose?
Without hesitation, she pried open the ventilation grate and lowered herself onto a low cabinet just below. She jumped down, grabbed the locket, and held it in her hand to be sure it was the real thing. It was.
Happy memories of Mabel flooded her mind before alarms blasted all around her. Just over the din, she heard shouts and footsteps pounding down the halls.
Locket in hand, she scrambled back up into the air duct. She closed the grate just in time, before the door to the room burst open. Krizia charged inside, followed by Maeleachlainn Leach Spongincork, and Van.
The alarms echoed off the air ducts, making it impossibly loud for Anni to hear anything else. Sweating like mad, she didn’t dare move a muscle. The idea of getting caught was not an option.
“A human set off that alarm,” said Krizia to Maeleachlainn. “Find her.”
“As you wish,” said Leach, and he dashed out of the room.
“Ornella, my love,” said Van in a simpering tone, as if Krizia were five years old. “You really mustn’t…”
“Hush. Make yourself useful.”
“But honeykins, how do you know…”
Anni had to escape, but she couldn’t turn around inside the air duct without making noise. Her hands were drenched in sweat, which made it hard to get a grip on the metal ducts. She shifted backward and kept moving without knowing where she was going. Disoriented, she inched along for what felt like an hour. Worst yet, she had lost all contact with Daphne and Squirt and had no idea how to find them.
Sweat pouring down her back, the somasuit constricted around her ribcage as if her perspiration had shrunk the fabric. Up ahead, she spotted a vent that curved down just like the one she had entered through the maintenance room. It probably wasn’t the same one, but she didn’t care. She wanted to get out of the air ducts before someone found her.
Anni inched past a vent that overlooked a hallway below, but when she spotted Krizia, she froze. Krizia had a grin on her face, and it appeared that Van had caught someone. He pushed a reluctant pair toward Krizia. Anni swallowed hard. It was Daphne and Squirt. They must have gotten caught when the alarms went off.
“Having a late night party?” Krizia asked. “There’s only one person on this Zephyr that could set off those alar
ms, and I believe you two can answer that question.”
“Uhh, I uhh,” Squirt stammered.
“Actually, it’s just me and Squirt. We lost track of time. Nobody else is with us. I swear,” said Daphne, pink-faced.
Anni felt terrible. The only thing she could do to save them from getting into more trouble was to escape without being seen. The question was how.
“Van, take them to my office. I’ll deal with Anni myself.”
Anni waited for them to leave. She slid out of the air duct and ran blindly down the first deserted hallway she saw. The seventeenth floor was a maze of halls, with few doors and dozens of dead ends.
There were no windows, so she couldn’t orient herself to where she was. When she saw two double doors, she ran, hoping that once inside, she could find a window, but they were locked. She spun around, making sure there weren’t any other doors. Only a huge painting hung at the end of the hall. Underneath stood a low table with a vase of flowers on it. There was no place to hide.
“Stop!”
The sound echoed through the halls. Anni went cold; it was Krizia. She was close—too close—and Anni heard Van’s mumbling voice somewhere close by.
Panicking, Anni pressed her sweaty thumb to the somasuit’s sleeve to turn on the reflective mode. A crackling noise rippled through. It short-circuited. With nowhere to go, Anni was stuck. Krizia would turn the corner any second. She was going to get caught. All Anni could think about was letting everyone down, especially Lexi.
“Jump into the painting,” commanded Whiffle.
Anni spun around. A wide painting hung over a small table at the end of the hall.
“Ornellipoo,” simpered Van. “There’s no one else here. You need your rest.”
Anni watched as Krizia’s foot stopped around the corner of the wall and waved her arm as she said, “I’ll rest after my Death Date. Go turn off the alarms!”
Anni Moon & The Elemental Artifact: An Elemental Fantasy Adventure Series: Book For Kids Ages 9-12 (Anni Moon Series) Page 21