“Yeah, I do to.”
“And we need to start being a lot nicer to Latty, after all she’s done—”
“You mean like letting us almost get killed two hundred times?”
“She’s been doing the best she can, Dex. And she said she’d never let it happen again.”
“I know,” Dex conceded. Why did the negatives always come to mind first when he thought about anything?
The twins ate for a while, until Daphna finally said, “She might not call for days.”
Just then, the phone rang.
Dexter lunged for the one on the wall. Daphna snatched up the cordless she’d set on the table.
“Latty!” the twins both cried. But it wasn’t her.
A grinding voice came over the line. It belonged to Adem Tarik.
“Children,” he said, “I have some wonderful news for you. I am sorry I was unable to share the truth with you when we last spoke. Now, I can. Your mother is alive. She is on her way to join me here in my Library, now, even as I speak.
“I apologize for letting you believe I did her harm. I had no choice but to mislead you.I’d like to prove to you once and for all that I am not a bad man. Come and see your mother. She will explain everything. I’m sure you can find me if you put your minds to it.” There was the sound of a deep rumble in the background, then a click and the dial tone.
“M—Mom!” Daphna blurted. Tears had leapt to her eyes. “Alive?”
“He’s lying,” Dexter said, but his heart was throbbing every bit as hard as his sister’s. “He’s trying to lure us there. And if it’s true, Latty will find out and tell us. We have to wait for her to call.”
“But what if she doesn’t? What if something happened to her? What if Mom really is there!”
“She’s not, Daphna.”
“Why not? No one ever found her body in the collapse! Everyone else keeps popping up that’s involved in this mess! Why not?”
“Because she’s dead, that’s why. He’s counting on us reacting like this and rushing in there. It’s a trap! Whatever he’s been setting up over there is ready.”
“I don’t care!” Daphna shrieked. She got up and paced around the kitchen like a rabid dog. “Dex, you’re forgetting we know he can’t use the First Tongue. That’s our secret advantage! Let’s just go there and see. You can be invisible if you want, but we don’t even need that! We can just walk right in there and make him jump off a cliff or something. We should at least make him give up his stupid plan.”
Dex saw the sense in this.
“I guess you’re right,” he admitted. “But, we shouldn’t rush in without thinking everything out first.” A strange feeling came over Dexter as he spoke these words. He realized what it was right away. He and his sister had switched roles.
“We’ll be careful, Dexter!” Daphna promised. “I’m not really suggesting we just barge in there like a couple of idiots!”
“Okay, so what are we going to do?”
“Well,” Daphna said, trying to calm down, “here, let me try something. Stand up a sec.”
Dex stood up and stepped away from the table. Daphna approached him and took his hand. They hadn’t held hands since their father first wound up in the hospital with his broken hip. Dex, uncomfortable this time, looked at his sister, but noticed at once they were no longer in the kitchen. They were in the living room.
“It does work,” Daphna said. “I can take you with me.”
“Okay,” Dex said. “So we’ll teleport to Turkey. Do you have to know exactly where they are?”
“I’m not sure. Here, I’ve got another idea. I’m going to close my eyes. You go somewhere in or outside the house, but don’t tell me where.”
Dex understood. “Okay,” he said and then tiptoed back into the kitchen. He opened the back door and stepped outside, but then stepped back in and walked softly down the steps to his room. He’d only just reached the floor when Daphna suddenly appeared in front of him. She scared him, of course.
“I don’t need to know,” she concluded. “I just thought your name, and here I am.”
“Great,” said Dex, feeling a bit more confident about their hasty decision. “So, all right, let’s go to where Latty is. We can tell her what’s going on if she doesn’t already know, and she can help us come up with a plan. But you better not really believe Mom is going to be there, too.”
“I don’t believe anything anymore,” Daphna said, “except that it’s time to end Adem Tarik’s plans once and for all.”
“Good. I’m with you on that one.”
Daphna took up Dexter’s hand again.
“Ready?” she asked.
“No,” said Dexter, “but go ahead any—”
CHAPTER 27
in the dark
The darkness was total. It was so dark, in fact, that the twins had the feeling they were nowhere. Only by squeezing each other’s hand did they have any sense of their own bodies.
Once they realized they were somewhere, Dex and Daphna noticed it was cold, very cold, and this lead to an awareness that whatever they were standing on wasn’t firm footing. It was uneven and sharp.
“Dex?” Daphna whispered. Her voice echoed all around.
“I think we’re in a cave,” Dex answered. “We must be in Turkey. This is incredible. I didn’t feel a thing. I’m afraid to move, though. I can’t even see my feet.”
“But where’s Latty? I teleported to her.”
“Maybe it didn’t work.”
“It works, Dexter.”
“So, where is she?”
“Latty?” Daphna tried. She didn’t have to raise her voice much to send it what seemed a great distance. No one answered the call.
“Latty?” Dex repeated, but the results were the same.
“You know what this means, don’t you, Dexter?” Daphna whispered, her voice shaking.
“What?”
“He killed her in here, just like Mom.”
Dex refused to accept this. “No,” he said. “There’s another explanation. He didn’t kill Mom, right?”
“I know he was lying, Dexter. Mom is dead. She’s probably buried in here, too. I’m scared. This was a bad idea. Let’s go back.”
“No,” Dex said again. He let go of Daphna’s hand to make sure she wouldn’t teleport them away. “Let’s at least see what’s going on,” he insisted. “What’s the worst that can happen? You can always take us right back if you have to. I can turn invisible, and we can both make Adem Tarik do whatever we want. Just like you said. Don’t worry. We’ll find Latty, and we’ll find out if Mom really is alive, and we’ll get out of here. Can you get us out of this cave?”
“I guess,” Daphna said, “but to where? I could teleport to Mom, if she’s really alive, but we might wind up right in front of Tarik. There’s probably some kind of trap. Maybe we’re already in a trap.”
“I don’t think so,” Dex said. “Let’s try to find a way out of here on our own.”
“Okay. You don’t think there are any spiders in here, do you?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Daphna, this is no time for—Wait, I have an idea. If I can find a way out, you can teleport to me, right?”
“Yes!” Daphna said, grasping at the idea like a lifeline. The thought of crawling through the darkness with ten billion spiders lurking everywhere made her dizzy enough to fall right where she stood.
“All right then,” said Dex. “That makes more sense anyway. It’ll be hard enough for one of us to get anywhere in here. If we both go, that doubles the chances of a fall.”
“Just be careful,” Daphna urged. “But on the other hand, hurry. I feel like I’m in a black hole or something.”
Dex squatted down to feel the ground. Jagged angles of rock face were all around. There was no way to tell if they were on a broad floor or the edge of a precipice, so Dex sat on his behind and felt forward with his heels, keeping his weight back. It was solid ahead. He slid his behind forward and felt ahead again with his feet. St
ill solid. It would be ridiculously slow to move this way, but it was the only way.
“Tell me when you’re somewhere safe, and I’ll catch up to you,” Daphna called out after Dex had inched his way forward for about five minutes. He hadn’t gone far.
“Okay,” he replied, “but don’t talk anymore. You scared me for a change.” Dex closed his eyes, though that made no difference whatsoever. He told himself he was back on the loft of the ABC, spying on Rash, which seemed like child’s play now.
“Okay!”
“What?” Dex cried. His heart had leapt to his throat.
“Okay, I won’t say anything else.”
“Good!” Dex pushed out a breath, then continued moving deliberately forward. The process was as painful as it was difficult because he kept scraping his palms and behind on sharp protrusions. He pressed on anyway, listening to Daphna’s poorly controlled breathing behind him. After what seemed like well over fifteen minutes, he came to what felt like a wall. Feeling blindly ahead revealed that it turned a corner.
“I couldn’t wait anymore,” Daphna said. She was suddenly there, standing immediately behind Dexter, who’d been sliding his heels forward to check the floor around the corner.
He jerked ahead in alarm when he felt her legs touch his back, and now his legs stretched into nothingness, pulling him down. Only a desperate, backwards grab at Daphna’s ankles prevented him from going over, but it sent her off balance. She cried out as she tipped forward over his back. Dex shouted for her to get off. He was being bent painfully forward and pushed toward the edge.
Daphna, panicked, scraped her hand along the wall she hadn’t known was there. She felt the skin on her fingertips tear on the stone, which made her cry out again, but her fingers found a hole. Her grip was weak, but she was able to pull herself up enough for Dex to force himself back, which pushed her all the way upright. Daphna stepped away, pressed her back into the wall and then slid down next to Dex.
The twins sat silently for a moment, breathing heavily.
After a minute, Daphna gasped, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I thought something was crawling up my leg back there.”
Dex was too relieved to rebuke his sister. “Maybe you saved me,” he said. “We’re on some kind of ledge. It goes around a corner. I might have gone over on my own.”
“It does,” Daphna confirmed. “Go around a corner, I mean. I saw something when I almost fell. There was some light.”
“Can you teleport us to it?”
“I guess, but I didn’t see any ground,” Daphna warned. “It might just be a hole in the side of a wall. If we go to the other side, Tarik might be sitting right there.”
“Can you lean out again, if I hold you?”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I’d let you hold me, but a spider might—”
“All right. Let’s do it quickly. Here, grab my belt loops.”
Dex carefully got to his knees. The ledge they were on didn’t seem all that narrow, but there was no way to be certain. He grabbed two of Daphna’s rear belt loops.
“Okay,” he said.
Daphna licked her suddenly dry lips and felt around until she found the hole in the wall again. This time she got a good grip inside it with her abraded right fingers, and then, with her left hand, felt forward for the corner of the wall. Once she’d found that, she leaned forward slowly, trying only to let her head tip past the edge.
The entire process was disorienting. In the all-encompassing darkness, it was nearly impossible to keep her bearings. As her body moved, it felt like she might already be falling. It made her lightheaded, then dizzy.
Determined to fight through it, Daphna stretched out further past the corner, still unable to see the light she’d noticed. But the vertigo was too much. She lost her grip again. Daphna screamed and scrabbled at the wall, but her fingers felt like they’d been set on fire.
Dex screamed, too. He was being pulled forward, scraping his knees. Daphna was dragging them both over the edge. Forcing all his energy into his fingers, Dex yanked on the belt loops while heaving his weight back. Daphna stopped falling, but a ripping sound came as the loops began to tear.
Dex pulled again, this time hard enough to lift Daphna’s lower half right off the floor of the cave, causing her to fall flat. She kept screaming because now her head and torso were hanging over the edge.
Dexter kept his grip, but he had no leverage with which to haul Daphna up. “Help me!” he screamed.
Daphna waved her arms forward until she felt the wall of the drop-off beneath her. She dug at it, ignoring the pain in her right fingers and skinning the ones on her left. She pushed upward, and this gave Dex the support he needed to drag her up. All at once, Daphna was laying on her side with her face pressed into the wall.
The twins took several minutes to recover this time.
“Well,” Dex finally wheezed, “if we try one more time, I’m sure we can manage to fall.”
“That’s so funny I forgot to laugh,” Daphna said feebly, gingerly getting back into a sitting position next to her brother. But then she heard herself laughing. Dex was laughing, too. Somehow, it helped them settle their nerves.
“See anything?” Dex asked when they calmed down.
“Actually, yes,” said Daphna. “It was definitely a light. It’s coming from the top of a big pile of rubble. I can get us onto the pile, no problem. I just don’t know what’s around it. Dex, if we can’t get through, we’re going home.”
“All right.” Had Daphna insisted they go home right then, Dex would have agreed.
“Just give me a few more seconds,” Daphna said. “I’ll teleport over to make sure it’s stable.”
“Sure, okay.”
Daphna needed more than a few seconds, but when she felt able, she spoke her Word and vanished. A minute later, she was back.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I think it’s all sitting on a shelf, or ledge, but it didn’t move when I was on it, and the rocks looked pretty loose near the top where the light is coming through. I think we can get through there, to what I don’t know. I can’t tell if the other side is outside or not. Ready?” Daphna asked, but she grabbed Dex’s arm without waiting for an answer. She had to get out of that darkness.
“Ow!” Dex yelped. A sharp rock was suddenly jabbing into his thigh. But there was a dim light, just above him. They were on the pile. It was rubble, and it was apparently clogging a hole leading, perhaps, outside.
Painstakingly, the twins got to their knees and, leaning on their stomachs, started slowly pulling smaller stones away from the hole. The first stone Dex moved aside rolled down the pile and plummeted downward a great distance below. They couldn’t hear it hit bottom.
“Don’t think about it,” Daphna warned as she continued moving stones. “Can you stick an invisible head through there?”
Dex spoke his Word, then put his head through the opening they’d made. He peered around tentatively, then pulled it back in.
“It’s not outside,” he said. “It’s a huge cave full of—stalagmites, I think they’re called. Some light’s coming down from above, I think. Let’s go through. I didn’t see anyone in there.”
Daphna eagerly agreed, so the twins began pulling more quickly at the rocks around the opening. Soon enough, the space was big enough to fit through. Dexter clambered into the cave first, relieved to find the ground smooth and flat inside. Daphna came through right behind him, and once she was in, she let out a long, shaky sigh.
The twins looked around. They were in a monumentally large cavern, far bigger than Dex had imagined. It opened up around them like a fortress, reaching up hundreds of feet into the air. They could see the sky above through several large, jagged openings at the top.
Covering the ground all around the twins were not stalagmites but books, heaps and heaps of books. They were everywhere, reaching up to various heights like broken pillars. Around the walls of the cavern were dozens of darkened cave entrances. They all looked foreboding, l
ike the thresholds of other, sinister worlds.
While the twins were still looking around, the sound of a match striking drew their attention across the cavern. A figure was standing in the shadows lighting a candle. Instinctively, Dex and Daphna grabbed hands.
“Welcome, children,” said Adem Tarik, walking toward them. “Words cannot express how glad I am you came.”
CHAPTER 28
not a bad man ii
The twins stared at the strange, sputtering light coming toward them. It wasn’t any kind of normal candle. Neither of them thought whether it would be best to run or attack. It was all happening too quickly.
Adem Tarik was walking swiftly, weaving around piles of books. When he was about ten yards away, Dex and Daphna saw that what he was carrying was no candle at all. It was a thin stick of dynamite. They cried out and raced away, but Tarik wasn’t coming after them.
Instead, he walked to the hole in the wall they’d come through. Dex and Daphna stopped in the center of the cavern and watched him jam the dynamite somewhere into the pile of rubble on the other side. Then he straightened up and walked back in their direction.
The twins looked fearfully around at all the cave openings encircling them. They ran toward one, but before they reached it, the dynamite exploded. It was loud, but not nearly as powerful as they feared it would be. Some dirt and dust was shaken from the cavern walls, but the brunt of the blast was directed into the caves they’d come through. Dex and Daphna, who’d stopped and looked back, could hear the sound of rubble falling into the depths behind the hole.
Tarik was still walking toward them, and seeing this, the twins peered into the mouth of the cave they’d approached. Nothing whatsoever was visible more than two feet inside. They looked into the adjacent caves, but they all seemed to promise disaster.
“I wouldn’t try any of them,” Tarik warned, coming near. “Deathtraps, every one.”
“If you think we can’t get out of here, you’re in for a serious surprise,” Daphna snapped. Saying this reminded her, and Dex as well, that they were the ones with the upper hand. They were the ones who knew the First Tongue.
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