She showed him the open Symphony of Smells case and pointed to the empty slot. Max-Ernest quickly started overturning vials, reading labels.
“It has to be here. It has to—”
“Oh wait!” said Cass. She tore into her backpack, reaching down to the very depths, and pulled out a zip-lock bag full of old, smashed-up trail mix. Inside, there were five ancient, shapeless peanut-butter chips. Cass showed them to Max-Ernest.
“Think these will work?”
“I don’t know—it doesn’t really look like enough. How ’bout if you mix them with one of the others?” He looked through the vials and pulled one out. “Here. Butter-flavor.”
“Try it.”
“Me?”
Cass nodded.
Max-Ernest pushed the peanut butter chips into the vial, then held it over the open skylight.
“Here goes— Oh no!”
In his nervousness, he let it drop a little sooner than he meant to.
The vial veered off to the side and looked like it would miss the fire altogether.
At the last second, it hit the rim of the bowl and fell into the fire.
Cass and Max-Ernest waited breathlessly until a small yellowish flame flared up. Soon, the smell of peanut butter was released, not as strong as the other scents, but strong enough to waft all the way up to them.
Our two friends sighed in relief.
Down below, Dr. L staggered as if he’d been shot.
“Pietro! Fratello mio! Venga qua!” he cried. “Quanto tempo devo aspettare? Where are you? Speak to me!”
Completely overwrought, he spun around the altar, then looked up toward the skylight.
Cass and Max-Ernest jerked their heads out of view.
“You think he saw us?” asked Max-Ernest, panicking.
“No. He thinks we’re his brother. For sure.”
As if to underline her point, Dr. L shouted his brother’s name again. “Pietro! Pietro!”
“Is it really him? Are you sure?” asked Ms. Mauvais, almost as distraught as Dr. L. “Could he have survived?”
Dr. L didn’t answer. He ran off the altar—and out of the room.
“Everyone, please. Stay calm. Everything’s fine. We’ll be right back,” said Ms. Mauvais to their audience. Then she raced after him.
“C’mon. We gotta get down now,” said Max-Ernest, about to climb down the side of the pyramid.
”Yeah. But not like that.”
Cass reached into her backpack again and pulled out a coil of rope. Working quickly and professionally, she wrapped the rope around one of the lantern’s steel supports, and tied it with two half hitches the way Grandpa Larry had once shown her.
Then she dropped the free end of the rope through the skylight. It dangled over the fire, just out of reach of the flames. She tried not to look.
Max-Ernest stared, frozen.
“It’s the only way we’ll get down there before they reach us,” said Cass, more calmly than she felt.
Max-Ernest just shook his head.
“It’ll be easy. You just swing a little bit when you get to the fire. Then jump when it’s out of your way.”
Max-Ernest shook his head again.
“OK, you get caught if you want. I’m going by myself.”
“You mean without me?!”
Without answering, Cass lowered herself through the skylight. She knew if she hesitated she’d never do it.
Deliberating about whether or not to follow her, Max-Ernest looked down the length of rope—
“Cass—stop! Look!”
Cass looked down: the end of the rope had caught on fire and, like a fuse, the flames were advancing toward her. At any moment, they would reach her, and she’d fall to a fiery death.
The strange thing was she didn’t panic. Or rather, she did panic, but the part of her that was panicking was like another person—a child screaming next to her—while she figured out what to do. She was a survivalist, she reminded herself; this is what she’d been training for.
Cass tried to remember what she’d learned in gym about wrapping the rope around her leg as a brace—but she succeeded only in slipping down another foot.
So she abandoned technique and used her instincts.
If you’ve ever climbed up a rope, you know it’s a lot harder than climbing down one. But the possibility of being burned alive is a powerful incentive. Just as her feet started to feel the heat, she pulled herself back up to the top—and rolled away from the skylight.
“Wow. We almost added you to the Symphony of Smells,” said Max-Ernest, who looked like he’d barely escaped being burned alive himself.
“Very funny,” said Cass, on her back and still breathing hard.
Then she laughed. “Actually, that really was kind of funny. Mean. But funny.”
“Really? It was?”
“Uh huh.”
“So then—I made a joke?” asked Max-Ernest, beginning to smile. “How ’bout that?”
“Yeah, and it took me almost dying,” said Cass, sitting up.*
She smiled back at him to show she wasn’t mad. “By the way, thanks for saving my life.”
“You’re welcome,” said Max-Ernest, like it was no big deal. But of course it was. Cass didn’t say thank you very often.
“I didn’t really want to go down there without you—I thought you would follow me,” Cass added. “But I shouldn’t have gone anyway. I mean, since we’re collaborators and everything. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Max-Ernest, like this wasn’t a big deal either. But of course it was. Cass apologized even less often than she said thank you.
Down below, fire had spread to the pyramid walls. People were screaming and running for the exit-s. It was pandemonium.
“Okay, let’s get down there,” said Cass. “Your way.”
“Wait—what if Dr. L is on his way up?”
They peeked over the side of the pyramid.
Sure enough, Dr. L was running up the stone steps, with Ms. Mauvais just a few steps behind.
“Pietro! Pietro!” he kept shouting.
There was only one thing to do: go down the other side.
When they reached the bottom, Dr. L’s silhouette was visible atop the pyramid. Behind him, smoke and fire spewed out of the skylight.
“Hey—it looks we made a volcano after all,” said Max-Ernest, pointing to the pyramid. “Maybe we can turn it in for extra credit. How ’bout that?” He looked at Cass to see if she would laugh at this joke, too. But she hadn’t heard him.
She was staring at Dr. L, who was holding something in his hands—“My backpack!”
“You can’t worry about that now, we have to run,” said Max-Ernest—which, when you think about it, was quite reasonable under the circumstances.
“But the Symphony of Smells is in there!”
“C’mon, we have to run,” repeated Max-Ernest with a little more urgency.
“I know, it’s just—he’ll know it’s us!”
“C’mon!” Max-Ernest, repeated again, yelling this time.
“OK, OK. They’re gonna hear you—”
Cass and Max-Ernest ran along the edge of the moat until they got to the pyramid’s front entrance. The last stragglers were still coming out and Cass and Max-Ernest had to push past them to get inside.
By the time they stepped onto the altar, the room was empty.
Flames had crawled all the way up Cass’s rope as if it were a giant candlewick. The fire was now threatening to engulf the entire pyramid. The smell of sulfur was so strong it was almost unbearable.
The ruckus had finally wakened Benjamin Blake. He stared at the flames in front of him, confusion and terror evident in his face.
“Hey, Ben. Try to relax, OK? We’re going to get you out of here,” said Cass in a surprisingly gentle voice.
In reply, he mumbled something that sounded like a question, but was totally undecipherable.
Or would have been to anybody but Max-Ernest.
�
�You’re inside a pyramid,” Max-Ernest answered while Cass started unbuckling the straps that bound Benjamin to the chair. “Not a real pyramid—well, kind of a real pyramid. It has a real pyramid shape. But it’s not really in Egypt. And not in any other place they have pyramids, like Mexico or Peru. Anyway, the pyramid’s on fire, as you can see, and there’s people outside that want to suck your brains. But don’t worry about that—you’re going to be fine!” Max-Ernest concluded in as reassuring a tone as he could muster.
The last of the straps fell off—and Benjamin fell to the floor. Whatever Dr. L had done to him had left him very weak.
Cass and Max-Ernest pulled him up with difficulty. When they succeeded in getting him to stand, he mumbled again.
“What’s he saying now?” asked Cass.
“I don’t know. Something about mint-chip ice cream?”
“We’ll get ice cream later—lots,” Cass said to Benjamin. “But right now we have to walk, OK?— fast.”
Cass and Max-Ernest half pushed, half pulled, and half carried Benjamin across the tile floor. (I know, that’s three halves, which is an impossibility—but so was getting him out of there.)
When they got close to the entrance, Benjamin started mumbling again and shaking his head.
“He says we have to stop. There’s smoke—we can’t go through the door,” said Max-Ernest.
“But the fire’s in here, not outside.”
“He says not that kind of smoke. Gray smoke. The smoke is...Ms. Mauvais? Is that right, Ben?”
Benjamin nodded as vigorously as he could given his condition.
Then they heard Ms. Mauvais shouting outside the pyramid. “How could you be such an idiot? To fall for a trick like that!”
“Shut up! Or I’ll kill you, too—right after those wretched kids!” Dr. L shouted back.
The kids made a beeline for the pyramid’s back door.
They slammed it shut behind them just as Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais entered the pyramid.
Benjamin said something under his breath.
“He says ‘phew,’” said Max-Ernest.
“Yeah, I know. I got it that time,” said Cass.
Through the spy hole, they watched Ms. Mauvais scanning the room for them. Behind her, Dr. L gripped Cass’s backpack as if he was about to tear it apart.
“C’mon—” said Cass. “Before they see us!”
Coughing, the kids ran through the smoke-filled passageway. Lights flickered on and off.
“Stay low. That way you don’t breathe in so much smoke,” Cass instructed.
In the library, books were already starting to burn: tiny pieces of text floated upward as they turned to ash. Portraits of medieval monsters were devoured in flames. And bits of engraved bat wings flew through the smoke. It had been the best library of its kind this side of Budapest. Now it would be gone forever—and no one even stopped to look.
By the time they managed to get Benjamin outside, Cass and Max-Ernest were almost as exhausted as he was.
Around them: chaos.
The whole complex was on fire, and panicked guests were running every which way, ignoring the efforts of staff to herd them in a single direction. Two horses, now riderless, reared back, then bolted into the smoke.
“This way—” said Cass in an urgent whisper. “Here, take my hands so we don’t get separated—” She offered a hand each to Max-Ernest and Benjamin, and they all took off together in the direction of the spa’s front entrance.
With all the commotion, no one seemed particularly concerned to see them zigzagging through the crowd.
As they passed her room, Cass pointed to the body lying on the ground beside the door. It was Daisy, gagged and tied up in Owen’s place.
“I bet she was surprised!” Cass said admiringly. “Wonder how Owen got out. We tied him up so tight.”
Cass waved. Daisy glared in mute rage as she struggled to free herself.
The open gate loomed in front of them. They were seconds away from escape.
Then they heard Daisy yelling, “Stop them! They’ve got the boy! Close the gate!”
Somewhere, someone obeyed her—the gate closed.
Dozens of angry staff and guests started converging on them.
They looked back toward the pyramid. Fire raged. There was no retreat.
The frenzied crowd shouted “Get them!” and “Don’t let them go!” and “Throw them into the fire!”
And then they heard the sound of a car engine.
The kids braced themselves for the worst: the Midnight Sun limousine was barreling toward them.
“What did the Bergamo Brothers say again?” asked Max-Ernest. “I mean, when they thought the lion was going to eat them?”
“Arrivederci.” Cass squeezed his hand.
The limousine screeched to a stop, missing them by inches.
“Cass! Max-lad! Get in, ye all!”
It took the kids a second to realize it was Owen leaning out the window, now speaking with an Irish brogue.
And another second to realize they hadn’t been caught, they were being offered a ride.
Cass and Max-Ernest were barely able to get Ben-jamin into the limousine before Owen started backing up.
“Nice timing,” said Cass.
“Aye. So ’twas,” said Owen, with what might pass for a mischievous Irish grin.
Cass and Max-Ernest looked back through the limousine’s back window and saw Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais coming around the side of the pyramid.
“Stop that limousine!” shouted Ms. Mauvais. “Now!”
But by then the fire had jumped from the bridge to the outer buildings—and staff and guests alike were fleeing in all directions.
“If you don’t run after them, I’ll cut you all off! No elixirs for any of you!”
Nobody heeded her.
As the limousine crashed through the spa gates, Ms. Mauvais clenched her fist in frustration. Her perfect skin was stretched so tight it looked like her face might rip in half.
Disgusted, Dr. L hurled Cass’s backpack into the flames.
Inside the limo, Cass winced as if it were part of her that had been tossed into the fire.
Owen careened down the dark mountain roads at a maniacal speed, certain they were being followed.
But, gradually, he and his passengers started to relax. And the drive began to feel more like a road trip and less like a prison break.
“So are you going to keep talking like you’re Irish?” asked Cass. “I just want to know, ’cause if I meet somebody who’s like speaking German or Rastafarian or something, I want to know if maybe it’s you.”
“So I’m acting, am I? You think I’m not being the real Irishman?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“She’s a right clever lass, isn’t she?” said Owen, turning to look back to the others. Max-Ernest nodded, grinning.
Owen eyed Benjamin. “So that’s Ben, is it? What’s the story, Ben? You look mad out of it. What drugs would they be giving you back in there?”
Benjamin groaned incoherently.
“He says they didn’t give him anything,” Max-Ernest translated. “It’s just your driving,”
“Said that, did he?”
“No. I was just joking,” said Max-Ernest.
“Not funny,” said Owen.
“Well, I thought it was,” said Cass, laughing.
“Really?” asked Max-Ernest.
Cass nodded.
Max-Ernest grinned happily. “How ’bout that?”
Cass turned to Benjamin. “You know what— mint-chip is my favorite ice cream. We’ll get some soon, I promise.”
Benjamin smiled—and nodded off.
Even Cass and Max-Ernest started to get woozy as the adrenaline of the evening’s events wore off.
Noting that it had been months since he’d been able to listen to any “real music,” Owen turned on the radio—blasting hip-hop with lyrics that the kids were glad their parents weren’t around to hear.
With the road
as curvy as it was, there was no way they could have seen a vehicle that was more than a few feet ahead of them; with the music at such a high decibel level they couldn’t have heard the vehicle either.
So it was almost a miracle when Benjamin sat up in his sleep and screamed in his clearest voice, “Stop!”
Owen slammed on the brakes. The limousine skidded to a stop.
A few feet in front of them, a pickup truck was parked lengthwise across the narrow road and honking loudly.
“Who’s that? Are they from the spa?” asked Max-Ernest, now wide awake.
“Well, we’re not waiting long enough to find out, are we?” said Owen. “Hold on, ye all—let’s hope this limousine likes the bumps!”
He started backing up.
Then the honking was joined by a familiar and extremely loud bark.
“Wait!” said Cass. “That’s Sebastian!”
Owen braked again and everyone looked back at the pickup truck. Standing beside the truck were Grandpa Larry and Grandpa Wayne, waving like madmen.
Only bad books have good endings.
If a book is any good, its ending is always bad—because you don’t want the book to end.
More importantly—more importantly to me, anyway—endings are hard to write.
You try wrapping up your story, showing how your characters have grown, sewing up any holes in your plot, and underlining your theme—all in a single chapter!
No, really. Try.
Because I’m not going to do it.
(I’ll give you a hint about the theme of this book—it has nothing to do with the value of hard work. It isn’t “If at first you don’t succeed, try again,” or anything honorable and inspiring like that.)
Oh, I won’t leave you hanging entirely. There are levels of cruelty that even I am not capable of.*
As writing material, I will give you a few key incidents: things that happened after Cass and Max-Ernest were rescued, and that would have to be included in the ending of this book, if it had an ending.
To make it easier for both of us, I’m going to organize the material according to the characters involved. When these pages land in your hands, you can rearrange events as you see fit.
Owen
Let’s get rid of him first.
What I would imagine for Owen is a touching little good-bye scene in which he teases the kids about tying him up and says they better be careful because he’s going to get them back when they least expect it. Then he would leave with a tip of the hat, promising more adventures to come.
The Name of This Book Is Secret Page 17