A Hold on Me

by Pat Esden

  I shook my head. No. This was very real. I couldn’t allow myself to think it was a story or a game, even for a second. I had to stay sharp. I couldn’t be afraid.

  We found Grandfather in the study. His tweed jacket was draped across the desk, and he was putting on a shoulder holster, like a television detective getting ready to hit the streets.

  Chase shut the door behind us. “Everything’s all set,” he said.

  “Good.” Grandfather picked up a handgun from the desk and secured it in the holster.

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Grandfather’s gun. Chase’s knives. I couldn’t help but wonder if they realized how useless I’d be in a fight. I sure did.

  BAM! The door to the hallway slammed open, almost making me jump out of my skin.

  Tibbs staggered in. Blood gushed from a gash in his forehead and smeared his bruised face.

  I caught his arm and half-carried him to the closest armchair. “What happened?”

  “Your father—he wanted to see the tires I put on the Mercedes. He hit me—something hit me. I thought he was going to kill me,” he babbled, his eyes slightly unfocused and wide with fear.

  Grandfather crouched in front of Tibbs. “Did you see which way he went?”

  “No. I don’t know. He hit me with a tire iron. I was unconscious.”

  My breath hitched. He must have been lying there when Chase and I checked the garage.

  Chase handed Tibbs a wet cloth from the bathroom. “Was he alone?”

  Holding the cloth against the gash, Tibbs bobbed his head. “There were shadows.”

  “How many?” I asked. My fingers gripped the messenger bag so tight they began to shake. Hopefully, there weren’t more than we suspected.

  “Two,” Tibbs said.

  Chase let out a relieved breath. “Just Culus and his henchmen.”

  Grandfather took his phone out. “I’ll get Olya to come up and take a look at you. We have to figure out where James went. If he’s already at the mausoleum, then—” His phone buzzed and he answered it. “Zachary? Slow down, boy. Your mother? You need to calm down. Tell your sister to put pressure on the wound. Kate? He took Kate! What do you mean? All right. Hang in there. I’ll phone your father. He’ll be right down.”

  For a second, panic seized me. “What happened?” I finally managed to choke out.

  “We found your father. He and the two shadows have taken Kate.” Grandfather closed his eyes. “We underestimated him—or Culus. How did you get up here after you left the research room?”

  “Kate said she was coming upstairs, right behind us,” I said. “We took the elevator. We didn’t see anyone in the kitchen.” I bit my tongue to keep from rambling.

  Chase’s voice was steady as bedrock. “They must have taken the servants’ stairs down to the basement or been hiding in the maintenance room when Annie and I went through. He could have picked the lock. They probably surprised Kate in the hallway or coming out of the research room. She has full access, right?”

  “To everything.” Grandfather held his phone back up to his ear. “David. We have a situation.”

  While Grandfather told David what had happened and asked him to call the Professor, I ran to the bathroom to get another wet cloth for Tibbs.

  Tibbs would be okay. But Kate. It was my fault she was in danger. And I was certain there wasn’t anything Culus wouldn’t do to make her cooperate. Worse yet, I suspected the more agonizing it was for her, the more he’d enjoy it.

  I trembled. Dad never would have hurt Tibbs’s or Olya. He hated Kate, but he’d never hurt or murder her. But Dad’s body wasn’t his own anymore. Culus was in control.

  “You’re going to have to shoot him”—Tibbs’s words made my chest clench—“and his shadow buddies, too.”

  Grabbing the cloth, I dashed from the bathroom. Grandfather was shoving the phone in his jacket pocket. “We should have used the poison,” he said dryly.

  Guilt knotted inside of me. But, as the weight of the messenger bag tugged at my shoulder, an idea formed. Clearly, Culus had figured out that Dad wouldn’t be able to find the treasury because the tunnels had been remodeled, but Kate knew where everything was and had access.

  “Dad and Kate must be somewhere in the passageway near the research room,” I said. “But the real treasury and lamp are in the area beyond the mirrors, right?”

  Grandfather’s head snapped up and he blinked in surprise. “That’s right. But how did you—” He shook his head. “You know what, it doesn’t matter.” His eyebrows furrowed. “What are you thinking?”

  “Is there a shortcut to get from here to the treasury?” I patted the messenger bag. “We could still swap the lamps. Kate knows what we were planning. And I’m willing to bet she won’t take Culus by the fastest route. She knows what the fake lamp and the real one look like, but Dad and Culus don’t. They won’t kill her until after they get into the treasury. As long as we have you, Grandfather, we’ll have full access as well.”

  “It’s a good plan,” Chase said. “While they’re in the treasury, the warding spells and salt will weaken Culus and the shadows. Culus won’t risk leaving James’s body, not until they have the lamp and are out of there.”

  Tibbs took the cloth away from his nose and glanced at Chase. “If it’ll weaken them, then won’t it—”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Chase snapped.

  “There is a shortcut,” Grandfather said. “But I’m not as fast as I used to be and it isn’t a lot shorter.” His gaze went to Tibbs. “I hate leaving you like this.”

  Tibbs rested his head against the back of the chair. “I’m all right. Just kill the bastards.”

  “Let’s go, then.” Grandfather motioned for us to follow him and beelined for the bathroom. I would have thought it was a weird move, but I had a good idea what he was up to.

  Once we’d gathered in front of the bathroom’s full-length mirror, he turned to me. “Before we do this, there is a problem you should be aware of. Without your DNA in the system, if something happens to me, you won’t be able to get out by chopping off my fingers and using them. The system is calibrated against the use of blood or body parts—as a safety precaution. And Chase doesn’t have access where we’re going.”

  I bit my lip. That wasn’t very comforting, but there were other sources of DNA.

  I scanned the bathroom. There might be a dirty tissue in the wastebasket. It would be gross, but not blood. I spotted the basket of toiletries on the stand. Rifling through it, I snagged Kate’s lipstick. “How about this? It should be covered with Kate’s DNA.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea,” Grandfather said as he faced the mirror. “Now, Chase, since you know the drill, you go first. Annie, you wait. Only one person can make it through at a time, another of my damn safety precautions.”

  Grandfather breathed on the mirror, fogging a patch of the glass with his breath. “Go,” he said to Chase.

  Without hesitating, Chase stepped toward the mirror. For a heartbeat it looked like he was going to smash into the glass. Then the mirror shimmered and liquefied, re-forming as he passed through.

  Grandfather nodded at me. “Your turn.” He took a deep breath, readying to fog the mirror again.

  “Wait a minute.” I put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “I want to see if my idea works.” Taking off the lipstick’s cover, I made a Zorro zigzag on the glass, then stepped sideways into it. Better to hit my shoulder than break my nose on the glass. Oh, God. Here goes nothing.

  It was like walking through a wall of super-cooled, burbling Jell-O.

  Next thing I knew, I was on the other side, standing in what looked like the torch-lit hallway of a medieval castle, except a massive Easter Island–type stone statue glared at me from the farther wall and the torches were some kind of glowing crystal.

  Chase took hold of my arm and yanked me aside as Grandfather came through what on this side appeared to be a gold-framed looking glass.

  “That was—this is amazin
g,” I said. I knew we were short on time, but I couldn’t help being awestruck.

  Grandfather smiled. “It is. So is your lipstick trick. Though I imagine you only have enough of Kate’s DNA for a couple of uses. Don’t squander it. But if something happens to me, take the real lamp, use the lipstick, and get it out of here as fast as you can.” He waved his hand down the hall. “This way.”

  As Chase strode ahead, I hung back with Grandfather. He scuttled along amazingly fast for an old man, but sweat dribbled down his face as we hurried.

  “This isn’t exactly what I expected,” I said, looking down at the unpolished stone floor. “I guess I thought the remodeled tunnels would look new.”

  “My dear, this is the oldest section. Much of it dates back to a long time before the Pilgrims.” His voice lifted with pride. “It was deserted for centuries and looked much worse, until I gave it a facelift.”

  I stared at a mirror-bright suit of gold armor. “It’s like a fairy-tale castle.”

  He chuckled. “More than you know, my dear.”

  The hallway narrowed. We dashed past an enormous stone panel with symbols carved into it and a frightening face at its center. My mouth dropped open. I glanced at Grandfather.

  “An Aztec calendar stone.” He confirmed my suspicion, before I could ask. “Your father is responsible for it being safeguarded. He was your age when he rescued it.” As we neared a small niche with a glass front, he called out to Chase. “Wait. I need to show Annie something. You should see it too.”

  Chase turned around and jogged back. “Do we have time for this?”

  “It’s important.” Grandfather puffed a couple of times to catch his wind, then pointed to a bee carved into the wall over the niche. “If something happens to me, follow the bees. They will lead you to the correct treasury. There are four entries into it. Two are mirrors. The third is a hallway like this one. I’m quite certain they’ll come through a mirror.”

  “There’s more than one treasury?” I asked, though I probably should have realized it.

  “No time for questions. Listen carefully. There’s something else I need to tell you.”

  While Grandfather took another quick breath, I gazed past him to the contents of the niche: a large, hand-forged nail, brightened by a single blue spotlight. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what was so important about it or why we’d stopped to look at it.

  He pulled out a hanky and dabbed the sweat off his face. “Chase, you’ll wait outside the treasury. Annie, you and I will go inside. I’m depending on you to switch the lamps while I keep watch. Once you’ve got the lamp in place, you and I will get out of the treasury and hide. When Culus arrives, Chase will call him into the hallway with a challenge. When Culus emerges from your father’s body, I’ll leave hiding and trap him in the ring.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  Chase frowned. “It’s safer if I go with you into the treasury. Just in case.”

  “No.” Grandfather’s voice was firm. “You’re not to go beyond the marks at the entry, understood?”

  Chase dipped his head. “I don’t agree, but I’ll do it.”

  “Now that we have that settled.” Grandfather pressed his hand flat against a dime-shaped indentation in the wall and the niche’s glass cover rose. He turned his hand over, revealing to me that his gold wedding band was actually a signet ring with a purple stone, which he wore with the decorative side concealed. He wriggled the ring off his finger and held it out to me. “You’ll need this to open the case the lamp is in. And you may keep it afterward.”

  Taking the ring, I studied it. A bee within a circle of pyramids and Fs was etched into the stone. I’d seen a ring like this before. “It’s like Kate’s.”

  “By all rights I would have given one to your father by now, if he hadn’t chosen to leave us.” Grandfather nodded at the wall. “Try closing it.”

  The ring was too large for my fingers, so I held it and pressed it against the indentation in the wall. The glass slid back down.

  Grandfather restlessly drummed his fingers on his leg. “The lamp’s case will open the same way. But now we have to get going, or we’ll be too late.”

  He scurried off like a man who’d definitely caught his breath, while I took a second to slide the ring into the messenger bag.

  “Let’s go,” Chase said, touching the small of my back.

  As we jogged to catch up with Grandfather, I held the messenger bag against my chest. I had no problem going into the treasury and swapping the lamps. But I still didn’t know how to fight. I didn’t even have a weapon, other than Dad’s razor.

  “I think you should come in with us, too,” I said to Chase.

  “No. Your grandfather’s right.” His tone told me he’d rather do the opposite.

  I stole a sideways glance at him. In Kate’s study, Chase had said Culus and the shadows would be weaker in the treasury. And Tibbs had replied, “If it’ll weaken them, then won’t it—” He hadn’t finished because Chase cut him off. But had Tibbs meant that Chase would be weaker in the treasury too—like Culus and the shadows?

  Chase’s jaw tensed and his eyes stared straight ahead.

  The blue aura. Him being able to see in the dark. His sharp sense of hearing. His stealth-mode movements. I was sure my heart didn’t want to hear the answer to the question my head needed to ask.

  “Why?” I said softly, wishing we had privacy, knowing I couldn’t wait until later to ask. “Why shouldn’t you go into the treasury? Is it the same reason I shouldn’t get involved with you?”

  Chase’s pace didn’t slacken. His eyes remained focused on what lay beyond Grandfather. When he spoke, his voice lacked all emotion. “In the gallery, you asked if Malphic was your father. He isn’t. But he is mine.”

  I swallowed hard. “Culus is your brother?”

  He looked back at me. “Half-brother. His mother is a genie. Mine was human. Still, the salt weakens me as it does him.”

  “That’s why Culus hates you?”

  “One of the reasons.”

  “And the aura?” I had to ask.

  “Smokeless fire, that’s what genies are,” he said.

  We were beside Grandfather now, the three of us hurrying down a grim hallway, the fake torchlight scarring our faces with flashes of orange and yellow. Chase was part genie. It made no sense. It made perfect sense. The salt. The scimitar. In a way, it was what I’d feared all along, that Chase was more than just a slave. And now, he was about to face a man who hated him. A man inside my dad.

  I didn’t want to lose Dad. Or Chase.

  Or even Grandfather. Or Kate.

  I glanced at Chase, every inch of him looked tense and battle ready, except—

  I frowned and moved closer. Were those tears glistening in his eyes?

  I reached out and laced my fingers with his.

  His fingers tightened around mine, and he gave them a quick squeeze.

  One of us was going to die. I was certain of it.

  CHAPTER 25

  Listen to the old tales, for in them

  tomorrow’s truths shall be revealed.

  —Epitaph on Harmon Freemont’s gravestone

  A few yards ahead, Grandfather veered to the left and down a narrow passage, his pace slowing.

  Packing crates and rolled-up carpets littered the passage’s floor. Hundreds of skulls with symbols painted on them leered at us from niches in the walls. These had to be the skulls Zachary wanted to visit. A shudder slipped down my spine. It was beyond me why anyone would long to see them. They were beyond creepy.

  After only a short distance, the passage tapered and became even more cluttered. We shimmied past a black sarcophagus and the skeleton of a man with a doglike skull.

  An old fear replaced my bone-chilling certainty that someone was going to die.

  I slid my hand into my jeans pocket and felt the shape of my flashlight. Although I couldn’t sense anything that made me think Culus’s henchmen were close by, there was still plenty o
f darkness in the corners and rippling through the flickering torchlight, waiting to cripple me. I gritted my teeth. I couldn’t let the dark get to me. It was supposed to be on my side this time. “Are you sure this is the way?” I called out to Grandfather, so I could hear a voice.

  Grandfather raised his hand to hush me, then took a couple more steps and stopped next to a wardrobe with a cross carved into its door. He whispered, “Chase, you wait here. The treasury’s just ahead.”

  Chase pulled off his hoodie, the scimitar glinting in the shadowy light. “There’s not much room for fighting,” he grumbled.

  “But there are places for me and Annie to hide. And if Culus sees only you, it’s less likely he’ll retreat before I have time to use the ring and trap him.”

  The knots began twisting in my stomach again. “Let’s get this over with,” I said.

  Grandfather rested his hand on my arm. “We’ll be in and out before you know it.”

  “Run if you hear or smell anything out of the ordinary,” Chase added.

  My leg muscles resisted as Grandfather and I slipped out from the shelter of the wardrobe. For a couple dozen yards, the passage was eerily desolate. Then it ended at a wide-open doorway. Pentagrams, triangles, and bees decorated the stone floor and arched around the opening; those symbols had to be the marks Grandfather had mentioned—which explained why so many of the doors at Moonhill had them. Still, they didn’t seem to keep much out.

  As we passed under the marks, the air took on a salty taste and a prickly sensation raced up my spine and across my scalp. The prickles became full-fledged jitters when we stepped into the treasury, a small circular room with a high arched ceiling.

  On the far side of the room another entryway gaped. Twin mirrors hung on either side of it. Brightly lit display cases with black stone bases dotted the entire space. One case contained a beagle-size scorpion with glistening eyes. Another held a glowing orange crystal. In the middle of the room a small terra-cotta oil lamp occupied a globe-like case.