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The Key
Michael Grant


Sometimes one hero isn't enough – sometimes you need a full dozen. Mack’s search for his dazzling dozen continues in the third instalment of this hilarious, action-packed fantasy series by the New York Times bestselling author of GONE.Time is short for Mack MacAvoy! He has less than 30 days to round up the rest of the magnifica and defeat the Pale Queen and her evil daughter Risky.It seems that the only way to do this is to learn the magical language of Vargran, and to do THAT they must travel to Europe to find the Key – an ancient engraved stone that will unlock its power.But can Mack, Jarrah, Xiao, Dietmar and Stephan locate the invisible castle of William “Blisterthong” MacGuffin, who guards the Key?And will The Key hold the power to save the world?The Magnificent 12: The Key is another fast-paced episode in bestselling Michael Grant’s hysterical fantasy adventure.













For Katherine, Jake, and Julia


Contents

Cover (#u133f5e8b-9fbc-5459-b25b-5d3bcafbaab3)

Title Page (#uadd86f92-ba91-5c1e-b578-756b18237242)

Dedication (#u892748c8-058f-5d4b-b91b-3f051c08f782)



One (#ulink_bdd306ef-ee56-5b21-a52d-bf0b2a59beeb)

Two (#ulink_81d5ff3d-5007-57ef-abc4-c78213dfa553)

Three (#ulink_3e3bd737-db7e-5c23-a850-d697b6d0a197)

Four (#ulink_71bb280e-5951-564d-bc38-827eb9b26299)

Five (#ulink_ba6b8448-4626-50ed-843d-b979cc897184)

Six (#ulink_e69c8c4c-074e-564e-bd87-9d8b49044251)

Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-three (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-four (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-five (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-six (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Twenty-eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Last Chapter Before the Next Book (#litres_trial_promo)



Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

Other Magnificent 12 books by Michael Grant (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)





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Let me out of here, you crazy old man!” Mack cried.

“Ye’ll ne’er lea’ ’ere alive. Or at least ye wilnae be alive fur lang. Ha-ha-ha!” Which was Scottish, more or less, for, “You’ll never leave here alive. Or at least you won’t be alive for long. Ha-ha-ha!”

The Scots are known for butchering the English language and for their ingenuity with building things. The first steam engine? Scottish guy invented it. The first raincoat? A Scot invented that, too. The first television, telephone, bicycle—all invented by Scots.

They’re a very handy race.

And the first catapult designed to hurl a twelve-year-old boy from the top of the tallest tower in a castle notable for its tall towers? It turns out that, too, was invented by a Scot, and his name was William Blisterthöng MacGuffin.

The twelve-year-old boy in question was David MacAvoy. All his friends called him Mack, and so did William Blisterthöng MacGuffin, although they were definitely not friends.

“Ye see, Mack, mah wee jimmy, whin ah cut th’ rope, they stones thare, whit we ca’ th’ counterweight, drop ’n’ yank this end doon while at th’ same time ye gang flying thro’ th’ air.”

Mack did see this.

Actually the catapult was surprisingly easy to understand, although Mack had never been good at science. The catapult was shaped a little like a long-handled spoon that balanced on a backyard swing set. A rough-timbered basket full of massive granite rocks was attached to the short handle end of the spoon. The business end of the spoon, where it might have contained chicken noodle soup or minestrone, was filled with Mack.

Mack was tied up. He was a hog-tied little bundle of fear.

The spoon, er, catapult, had been cranked so that the rock end was in the air and the Mack end was down low. A rope held the Mack end down—a rope that twanged with the effort of holding all that weight in check. A rope whose short fibers were already popping out. A rope that looked rather old and frayed to begin with.

William Blisterthöng MacGuffin, a huge, burly, red-haired, red-bearded, red-eyebrowed, red-chest-haired, red-wrist-haired man in a plaid skirt1 (#litres_trial_promo) held a broadsword that could, with a single sweeping motion, cut the rope. Which would allow the rocks to swiftly drag down the short end of the spoon while hurling Mack through the air.

“Ye invaded mah privacy uninvited, ye annoying besom. And now ye’ve drawn the yak o’ th’ Pale Queen, ye gowk!”

Or in decent, proper English, “You invaded my privacy uninvited, you annoying brat. And now you’ve drawn the eye of the Pale Queen, you ninny.”

How far could the catapult throw Mack? Well, a well-made catapult . . . actually, you know what? This particular kind of catapult is called a trebuchet. Treh-boo-shay. Let’s use the proper vocabulary out of respect for Mack’s imminent death.

A well-made trebuchet (this one looked pretty well made) can easily hurl 100 kilos (or approximately two Macks) a distance of 1,000 feet.

Let’s picture 1,000 feet, shall we? It’s three football fields. It’s just a little less than if you laid the Empire State Building down flat. It’s long enough that if you started screaming at the moment of launch, you’d have time to scream yourself out, take a deep breath, check your messages, and scream yourself out again.

That would be pretty bad.

Unfortunately it got worse. The castle tower was about 300 feet tall. The castle itself sat perched precariously atop a spur of lichen-crusted rock that shot 400 feet above the surrounding land.

So let’s do the math. Three hundred feet plus 400 feet makes a 700-foot vertical drop. And the horizontal distance was about 1,000 feet.

At the end of all that math was a second ruined castle, which sat beside Loch Ness.

In Loch Ness was the Loch Ness monster. But Mack wouldn’t be hitting the lake; he’d be hitting the stone walls of that second castle, Urquhart Castle. He would hit it so hard, his body would become part of the mortar between the stones of that castle.

“Dae ye huv ony lest words tae say afore ah murdurr ye?”

“Yes! I have last words to say before you murder me! Yes! My last words are: don’t murder me!”

Mack could have used some magical words of Vargran. He was totally capable of speaking it. Totally.

If.

If Mack had taken some time to study what words of Vargran had been given to him and his friends. Sadly, when Mack might have been studying he rode the London Eye Ferris wheel instead. And the next time he could have been studying he downloaded a game on his phone instead and played Mage Gauntlet for six hours. And the next time . . . Well, you get the idea.2 (#litres_trial_promo)

So instead of whipping out some well-chosen magical words, Mack could only say, “Seriously: please don’t murder me.”

Which is just pathetic.

Look, we all know Mack is the hero of the story. And we all know the hero can’t be killed. So there’s no way he’s just going to be slammed into a ruined castle and—

“Cheerio the nou, ye scunner,” MacGuffin said, and he swung the sword.

The blade parted the frayed rope.

But wait, seriously? Mack’s going to die?

Gravity worked the way it usually does, and the big basket of rocks dropped like a big basket of rocks.

Hey! If Mack dies, the world is doomed and the Pale Queen wins!

“Aaaahhh!” Mack screamed.

He flew like a cannonball toward certain death.

Let’s avert our gazes from the place and moment of impact.

No one wants to see what happens to a kid when he hits a stone wall—it’s just too gruesome and disturbing. So let’s back the story up a little and see how Mack got himself into this mess to begin with.

In fact, let’s do some ellipses to signal that we are going back in time . . . to the day before . . .

Before . . .

“Ahhhhh!” Mack cried, gripping the dashboard. He was seated next to Stefan, who was driving.

“Aieeee!” Xiao cried, gripping the back of Mack’s seat.

“Acchhh!” Dietmar cried, hugging himself and rocking back and forth.

“Yeee hah!” Jarrah shouted, flashing a huge grin as she pumped her fist in the seat behind Stefan.

A car—it happened to be yellow—roared straight for them, horn blaring, headlights flashing, driver forming his mouth into a terrified O shape.

Stefan jerked the wheel left and stomped on the gas. This was accidental. He had meant to stomp on the brakes but he was confused. He didn’t really know how to drive.

“Other way, other way, otherwayotherwayother-way—aaaaaaaahhhh!” Mack yelled as Stefan drove the rented car into a traffic circle.

Now, in most of the world the cars in a traffic circle go counterclockwise. The exceptions are England, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, a few other countries, and Scotland.

This happened to be a Scottish traffic circle.

Those of you who’ve read the first two books about the Magnificent Twelve may recall that our hero, Mack MacAvoy, was twelve years old. In fact, being twelve was an important part of being a member of the Magnificent Twelve. Because it wasn’t just any random twelve people. It was twelve twelve-year-olds, each of whom possessed the enlightened puissance.

And remembering that, you might also be thinking, Who rents a car to a twelve-year-old?

Well, perhaps you’re forgetting that Stefan was fifteen—although he was in the same grade as Mack. Stefan, not being one of the Magnificent Twelve, but more of a bodyguard, could have been any age. He happened to be fifteen, and he looked eighteen. Which is still not old enough to be renting a car. Especially when you don’t have a driver’s license.

But you may also remember the part about Mack being given a million-dollar credit card.

Cost of car rental: 229.64 GBP.3 (#litres_trial_promo)

Cost of the gift certificate to Jenners department store in Edinburgh in the name of the car-rental clerk: 3,000.00 GBP.

Yeah: it’s amazing what you can do with a million dollars. Renting a car is the least of it.

“There’s a truck!” Mack shouted.

“It’s called a lorry here!” Dietmar yelled in his know-it-all way.

“I don’t care if it’s called a—”

“Jog a little to the right there,” Jarrah suggested quite calmly, and put her hand on Stefan’s powerful shoulder. Stefan did as he was told.

The truck or lorry or whatever it was called let go a horn blast that could have shattered a plate glass window and went shooting past so close that, bang, it knocked the left side mirror off the little red car.

“The mirror!” Xiao cried.

“Enh,” Stefan said, and shrugged. “I wasn’t using it anyway.”

He wasn’t. As far as Mack could tell, Stefan wasn’t even using the windows, let alone the mirrors, and was more or less driving according to some suicidal instinct.

The car had seemed like a bad idea from the start, but Mack didn’t like to come across all bossy, or like he was a wimp or something. One of the problems with having twenty-one identified phobias—irrational fears—is that people tend to think you’re a coward. Mack was not a coward: he just had phobias. Which meant there were twenty-one things he was cowardly about—tight spaces, sharks, needles, oceans, beards, and a few others—but he was brave enough about most things.

So when it had been pointed out to him that having made it by train from London to Edinburgh, Scotland, the best way to get from there to Loch Ness was by car, he’d gone along. To demonstrate that he was not a huge wimp.

How was that going? Like this:

“Gaaa-aah-ahh!” Dietmar commented.

BAM!

Rattle rattle rattle rattle.

Thump!

The car hit the low curb guarding the center of the circle, bounced over the lumpy grass, swerved around some sort of monument, narrowly missed a pair of Mini Coopers—one red, one tan—and bounced out of the other side of the circle and onto the main road.

Mack, Xiao, and Dietmar all took the first breath they’d inhaled in several minutes.

Stefan said, “Is there a drive-through in this country? I’m starving.”

And Jarrah said, “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse and chase the jockey.”

Jarrah and Stefan: obviously they were not quite normal.

Having survived the traffic circle, the gang found a gas station that also had food. They bought prepackaged sandwiches and sodas. They topped the car off with gas. And that’s when Mack noticed a van he had noticed earlier. There was nothing remarkable about the van—it was beige, which is the world’s least noticeable color. But Mack was a kid who noticed things and he noticed that this van had a dent on one side. A small thing. But what were the odds that there were two tan vans with the same dent?

He had first noticed this van way back just outside Edinburgh, and now that Mack looked closer, it seemed the windshield was tinted. Which would be a perfectly normal thing where Mack was from—the Arizona desert, where the sun shone 360 out of 365 days—but was pretty strange here in Scotland, where the sun shone 5 days out of 365.

“That van has been following us,” Mack said as the five of them leaned against their car eating.

No one questioned him. They’d all learned that when Mack noticed something, he noticed it right.

So they leaned there and watched the van. Which maybe was watching them back.

“I’ll go ask them what’s up,” Stefan said.

“No,” Mack said, shaking his head. “Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe they’re just going to the same place we are.”

“That is perhaps likely,” Dietmar said. “Loch Ness is very famous, and people will be coming from all over to see it.”

Dietmar spoke flawless English but his accent was strange at times, and Mack had to struggle to resist mocking him. As leader of the group, Mack had to behave in a very mature way. Mostly he did. But in his mind he was saying, “Zat iss peerheps likely,” in a snooty voice.

He didn’t dislike Dietmar; Dietmar was fine. But it wasn’t possible to like everyone equally. Dietmar was very smart and made sure everyone knew it. And he was better-looking than Mack—at least Mack thought so, since Dietmar had perfectly straight blond hair while Mack had boring curly brown hair. As a result of that, Mack was pretty sure Xiao thought Dietmar was fascinating.

Mack, however, found Xiao fascinating. So he didn’t really want her to find Dietmar more fascinating than him. Mack wasn’t exactly sure why he found Xiao so interesting. A year ago he would have barely noticed her if he’d met her. But lately he had looked with slightly more interest at girls. It wasn’t a really focused attention just yet. But it was attention.

Possibly it was because he had seen Xiao in her true form. She was, after all, a dragon. Not a fire-breathing, leathery-winged type, but the less terrifying and more spiritual Chinese dragon, with a father and mother who didn’t need to breathe fire to scare the pee out of Mack.

Xiao could turn effortlessly into her current form: a pretty girl. But she insisted the other shape, the somewhat large, turquoise, snakelike form was her true self.

“Dietmar,” Xiao said, “what do you think we should do?”

“Me?” Dietmar squeaked. Because he did that sometimes when Xiao talked to him. Squeak.

It was really annoying.

“Yes, Dietmar, I am asking your opinion,” Xiao said patiently.

“I think we should not confront them. We should merely watch and be prepared.”

“I agree,” Xiao said.

“I think Stefan should go knock on their window and ask them what’s up,” Mack said. That was not what he had thought or said, oh, sixty seconds earlier, but it was what he thought now.

Stefan hesitated. He looked at Mack. Then he looked at Jarrah, who gave a brief nod.

The Aussie girl and Stefan had a special bond. It was the mystical bond that joined the kind of people who think it would be fun to strap rockets to bikes and fly over the Grand Canyon.

That’s not some made-up example. That’s from an actual conversation between Stefan and Jarrah.

Stefan swaggered over to the van and tapped on the window with his knuckles. Mack tensed. The van window rolled down.

Stefan talked to someone, leaned in to listen, then stepped away as the window rolled back up. He came back to report to Mack.

“It’s a bunch of fairies.”

“Fairies?”

“Like with wings?”

“I think so,” Stefan said. “They say they have a proposition.”

“A proposition?” said Mack.

“That’s what they said,” said Stefan.

“A van full of fairies,” Mack repeated.

Stefan nodded. “They want to talk to you in a safe place. Someplace neutral. That’s what they said. They said there’s a magical woods down the road.”

That left them all staring blankly at Stefan.

“What do they want?” Jarrah asked.

Stefan shrugged. “They want Magnum bars. Five white chocolate and one Mayan Mystica. They said they’re for sale in the mini-mart here. They can’t go in themselves. Because, you know, they’re fairies.”

“We should buy them these ice-cream bars,” Dietmar said. “Then we should talk to them and see what they want.”

This was a problem for Mack because he agreed with Dietmar. But he didn’t want to look like he was following Dietmar’s lead. But there was no way around it: if a vanload of fairies wants to talk to you, you can’t exactly blow them off.

So the Magnifica plus Stefan went in and bought the Magnum bars. Except for the Mayan Mystica because the store was out of that flavor. Stefan had to be sent back to the van to learn whether a dark chocolate would do. (Yes.)

Stefan delivered the ice cream to the fairies.

Spent at Shell station: 11.15 GBP.4 (#litres_trial_promo)

They waited for several minutes while, Mack assumed, the fairies ate. Then the van pulled out smoothly, and with a lurching of grinding gears, a crushed trash can, and a scream of terror from a mother pushing a stroller, Mack and his crew followed.

They drove for about a mile before pulling up in sight of Urquhart Castle, an ancient ruin that perched picturesquely beside Loch Ness. The van slowed to a stop in a place where there quite clearly were no woods.

The van waited and Mack and the Magnifica waited until several cars passed by. Then, when the coast was clear, the van drove straight into a stand of trees that had absolutely not been there ten seconds earlier.





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Mack didn’t know much about trees. Unfortunately, Dietmar did.

“These are holly and rowan. Superstitious folk believe they have magical properties.”

“Well, since this forest wasn’t here until, like, just now, I guess maybe they’re right,” Mack said.

Even though the day was weakly sunny, it was dark in the woods. The van rolled to a smooth stop on a bed of fallen leaves. The car rolled into a bush, sending birds squawking away in terror. The car jerked hard a few times. Then it emitted a disgruntled farting sound and finally stopped.

The window of the van rolled down again, and out flew things sparkly and golden: the ice-cream bar wrappers.

The door opened. The fairies did not step out; they flew, six of them in all.

Having by this time been in close contact with insectoid Skirrit, treasonous Tong Elves, and disgusting Lepercons, not to mention several horrifying monsters that Risky had morphed into, Mack was ready for just about anything. So it surprised him that the fairies looked almost exactly the way he expected fairies to look.

Three were male, three were female, and all had toned little bodies clad in earthy colors. They had double wings, like dragonflies, that made a buzzing sound (again, like dragonflies) as they flew. They were all roughly the same size, each maybe half a kid in height. Or at least half a Mack. Maybe a third of a Stefan.

The surprise was not in their look: these were definitely garden-variety, standard-issue fairies. The surprise came when they opened their mouths.

“I’m Frank. This is my crew: Joey, Connie, Pete, Ellen, and Julia.”

“These are not proper fairy names,” Dietmar observed.

Frank squinted. “What are you, the fairy police? Our names are whatever we say they are.”

But Dietmar wasn’t having it. “A fairy should be named after a flower or a tree, or something in the natural world.”

“And a kid should learn to keep his mouth shut,” Frank snapped. And with that, he drew what had at first looked like a small sword hanging at his side. It turned out to be a droopy sort of wand.

“You like flowers? Be one,” Frank said. He waved his wand and said, “E-ma exel strel (click)haka!”

“That’s Vargran!” Jarrah said.

And Dietmar probably would have agreed except for the fact that his body had turned green and very thin. Tubular, one might even say. His arms flattened into graceful leaves. And his head formed first a tight, green bulb and then exploded outward as the petals of a magnificent-looking sunflower.

From the seedpod at the center, Dietmar’s two eyes stared in shock. Frank did not seem to have bothered to give him a mouth.

Mack was torn between terror—understandable—and a feeling of glee—also understandable but not really admirable.

Xiao’s eyes narrowed, and already blue scales were covering her body as she—

“Uh-uh-uh!” Frank warned, shaking his finger. “That would be a bad move, dragon girl. Your kind signed a treaty a long time ago. This is western dragon territory.”

Reluctantly Xiao melted back to purely human form.

“Now, can we talk business?” Frank asked.

“You have to change Dietmar back to normal,” Mack demanded, somewhat forcefully, almost as though he meant it.

“When we’re done talking business.”

“Okay, what business?”

Frank shot a coy look at his crew, who fluttered slightly, then settled toward the ground. The instant their bare toes touched the lush grass, their wings rolled up. Like rolling up a window shade. Just rolled up. Whap.

“We hear you’re looking for someone,” Frank said.

They were, in fact, looking for the Key. The Key to Vargran spells and curses. So far they’d found bits and pieces of Vargran, but now, as they neared the fateful confrontation to save the world from the Pale Queen, they needed more. A lot more. And the Key was . . . um . . . the key.

That’s right: the Key was the key.

The Key had two parts. The first had been given to them by Nott, Norse goddess of night. And if you believed Nott (and seriously, how could you not believe a mythical Norse goddess?), the second and final part of the Key had been buried with one William Blisterthöng MacGuffin.

“Maybe,” Mack said cautiously.

“No maybe about it, kid. You’ve been asking around about someone no one has seen in a long time. We have good sources.”

Mack glanced at his companions. Jarrah shrugged.

And Mack’s iPhone chimed with the tone it used to signal a message.

Mack ignored it, but it was an edgy sort of ignoring, like he was forcing himself to ignore it, which just made everyone uncomfortable, and finally Frank said, “Oh, just go ahead and get it.”

With an abashed smile, Mack pulled out his phone.

“Well? What is it?” Xiao asked impatiently.

Mack sighed. “It’s my golem. He’s refusing to shower in the boys’ locker room.”

“Lotta dudes are bashful about that,” Stefan said, and no one thought he was talking about himself because Stefan was incapable of bashfulness.

“It’s not about being shy,” Mack said with a sigh. “He’s made out of mud. That much water . . .”

“Kind of busy here,” Frank interrupted impatiently. “Anyway, it’s best not to coddle golems. They just get needy.”

“I’ll just take a minute to . . .” His words faded out as he thumbed in a response:



You have got to handle these things yourself. You have got to be a big boy now.



“Sorry,” Mack said of the interruption. “You were saying?”

“We were saying you’re looking for someone who’s been gone a long time.”

“Let’s say we are,” Mack conceded. In the back of his mind he was wondering whether he’d been too harsh with the golem.

“Well, the someone you’re looking for is hidden by fairy enchantment. Been hidden for more than a thousand years.”

“Are we talking about the same man?” Jarrah asked.

“If it’s William Blisterthöng MacGuffin, then we are talking about the same man,” Frank confirmed. His eyes narrowed and his sharp little fairy teeth showed behind tightened lips. “And you’ll never find him. Never! Never . . . without our help.”

“Why would you help us?” Mack asked.

Frank shrugged. “A friend of ours wants something in return. Something you might be able to get for her. One hand washes the other. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Tit for tat.”

“Can we stop being cryptic, please, and get to the point?” Xiao asked politely. “My friend is not happy as a flower.”

Dietmar was unhappy with good reason—a pair of crows came swooping down and lit on Dietmar’s huge petals and began to pick at the seeds.

“Hey, hey, get out of here!” Jarrah waved them off, but they retreated only as far as a low tree branch and from there kept a close eye on Dietmar’s sunflower seeds.

“You tell the tale, Connie—you tell it best.” Frank indicated one of the female fairies, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, tiny little beauty in a deep-green formfitting outfit.

“How do you suppose MacGuffin came to be called Blisterthöng?” Connie asked rhetorically in an enchanting fairy voice. She kind of writhed or danced as she spoke. It was a sort of dramatic interpretation: she used sweeping hand gestures, and sometimes lowered her head in sadness, or threw open her arms to show joy. “For many long years after the Romans left, and after the druids faded, and as the new faith was coming to Scotland, the fairies lived in peace. We are a peaceable folk. No fairy has ever raised a hand in violence against another!” She made a very dramatic upraised-fist move on that last line.

Mack nodded thoughtfully because that seemed like the thing to do.

“Except for the Seventeen Year War,” Pete the fairy interjected.

“And the War of the Sweltering Cave,” Julia added helpfully. “And the Rabid Peace of Kilcannon’s Bluff.”

“With those few exceptions, no fairy had ever raised a hand in violence against another,” Connie reiterated, again with the upraised fist of forcefulness. “Unless you’re going to count the Battle of the Pretenders.”

“Or the Flaming Disagreement,” Frank said.

“Or the Pantsing of Fain’s Firth.”

“Or the Castle-Whacking Unpleasantness.”

“Or O’Toole’s Tools of Terror.”

“Or the War of the Noses.”

They went on like this for quite a while. And Mack began to wonder if the fairies were exaggerating their peacefulness.

“Or the Frightful Fruit Fight.”5 (#litres_trial_promo)

“Or Little Dora’s Comeuppance.”

Finally, after about ten minutes, they ran out of wars, skirmishes, misunderstandings, slaughters, backstabbings, and murdering peaces, and Connie got back to her main theme, which was, “Aside from those few6 (#litres_trial_promo) minor matters, no fairy has ever raised a hand in violence against another.”

Fist for emphasis.

“Until . . . ,” Frank interjected with great drama and a dramatic flourish of his wand.

“Until William MacGuffin stole the Key and used it to take sides with the fairies of clan Gorse against clan Begonia.”

A strangled sound—much like a high-pitched human voice coming from inside a flower—came from the giant sunflower. Lacking lips, tongue, or teeth, Dietmar had a hard time expressing himself clearly, but it was something like, “See! I told you so. Those are flower names!”

Mack ignored him and waited for Connie to finish her story.

The crows looked speculatively, wondering if they could make a quick in-and-out dash. Some seeds, maybe a little eyeball . . .

“MacGuffin wanted gold, and as you know, fairies have plenty of it,” Connie said. “So for thirty pieces of gold MacGuffin gave the Gorse King new and more dangerous Vargran curses. Curses that gave the Gorse King power over the Begonias and our beloved All-Mother.”

“Is there any way we can hurry this along?” Jarrah complained. “I’m beginning to regret we didn’t eat those ice-cream bars ourselves.”

“MacGuffin helped the Gorse to formulate a terrible, terrible curse.” Connie made an interesting move here, jabbing her hands forward away from her mouth, like stabbing finger-tongues. “It was a curse that caused a hideous rash in the form of rose thorns to grow in the sensitive parts of a fairy body.”

“Yeesh,” Mack said, and winced.

“Ah,” Xiao said, nodding her head almost as smugly as Dietmar sometimes did. “Hence the name Blisterthöng.”

“For a thousand years we of clan Begonia have thirsted after his blood so that we might have our revenge,” Frank said, shaking his little peace-loving fist and baring his sharp peace-loving teeth.

“Because of your peaceful nature and all,” Mack said dryly. “We thought MacGuffin was dead. It’s been a thousand years.”

“No, he’s not dead. He’s concealed by a powerful spell of the Gorse King. His castle is invisible to human eyes. Only those with the enlightened puissance—and few humans possess it—can see him or his castle.”

“That’s why you need us.”

“Yes, Mack of the Magnifica. You and these others—but not you,” Frank said, pointing out Stefan, who shuffled in embarrassment, “possess the enlightened puissance. I can make it possible for you to see the Concealed Castle of MacGuffin. And I can make it possible for you to see the All-Mother, whom only a few have seen before. And even fewer have photographed. You must take the Key from MacGuffin. And you must swear to free the All-Mother from the Gorse King’s spell.”

“Wait, I’m losing track,” Jarrah said. “This All-Mother of yours has the Blisterthöng rash?”

The fairies looked at her like she was an idiot. Which Mack thought was unfair since he had wondered the same thing.

“No. Duh,” Frank said. “She’s trapped in the body of a sea serpent.”

It took a moment for the reality to percolate up through Mack’s brain. Don’t blame him for being a little slow. He was very bright, and very attentive, but already the day had involved near death-by-car-accident and a vanful of fairies. So if he was a little slow, hey, give him a break.

“Are you talking about the Loch Ness monster?” Mack asked.

Frank bridled a bit at that, unfurled his wings, and rose a few feet into the air. “She is Eimhur Ceana Una Mordag, All-Mother to clan Begonia, as well as Beloved of the Gods, the Ultimate Warrioress, and a past holder of the record for longest sustained note on the bagpipes—they say many who heard were driven mad.” Then he settled himself down and, with a shrug, said, “But yes, most know her as the Loch Ness monster.”

“Well then,” Jarrah said briskly, “magic castle, some old dead fart who makes fairies get rashes, and the Loch Ness monster: all in a day’s work.”





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Meanwhile, at Richard Gere Middle School7 (#litres_trial_promo)

The golem stared at the phone. The message from Mack was very clear.



You have got to handle these things yourself. You have got to be a big boy now.



Yes. As usual, Mack had the right answer.

It was amazing, really, how right Mack was about, well, everything.

Clearly if the golem was a “big boy” then he could survive the shower. How much bigger? That was the question.

The golem began to text this question to Mack, but then stopped himself. You have got to handle these things yourself.










Yes, that was true, he supposed: responsibility. He would have to work it out himself.

Morning at school was always a confusing time for the golem. There were so many kids rushing this way and that, many saying, “Hi,” or, “Hey, weirdo,” or, “Get out of my way, you freak.” He tried to be pleasant to each and smile or say, “How are you today?” But it was hectic. Especially on days when Matthew Morgan would chain him to the bike rack or Camaro Angianelli would throw him into the bushes.

The golem didn’t quite understand what was going on—he was passing as Mack but he didn’t quite have Mack’s brains—but it seemed there was a sort of bully war going on at Richard Gere Middle School.8 (#litres_trial_promo) Since Mack had left and taken Stefan Marr with him, the carefully negotiated bully peace had broken down.

Stefan had enforced peace among bullies by working out a complex system of assigned victims. Thus, under Stefan’s regime, there had been a bully for nerds, a bully for geeks, a bully for stoners, a bully for emo kids, a goths’ bully, a skaters’ bully, a rich kids’ bully—each bully with his or her own population of victims.

And of course one bully to rule them all, one bully to bind them, one bully to bring them all and in the darkness pound them. Which would be Stefan.

That system had worked surprisingly well. It kept kids from being “overbullied.” It wasn’t like just any bully could push a nerd around—only the designated bully of nerds could do that. And Stefan had established some limits. He had even conducted a bullying seminar, laying out what was and what was not acceptable bully behavior.

Yep. Those were the good old days.

Now, with the King of the Bullies off saving the world with Mack, everything was chaos. Suddenly bullies were trying to expand beyond their usual victim group. The emo bully had tried to claim that anyone who went to Hot Topic was, by definition, one of his rightful victims. This was opposed strongly by Ed Lafrontiere—the current Twilight fans’ bully—and this had set off a power struggle as various bullies tried to take over the title of King of the Bullies (or in the case of Camaro Angianelli, Queen).

Somehow the intrabully war had resulted in a sort of competition to see who could be the biggest bully to Mack. Or in fact: the golem.

His mom usually drove him to school in the morning. If by his mom, you meant Mack’s mom. The golem didn’t really have a mother, or a father. This was the first time in his brief life he’d had any sort of family, and they weren’t really his.

The golem had been formed and given life by Grimluk. He had suddenly opened his eyes in a tiny stone house on a distant hillside in . . . well, now that he thought about it, the golem wasn’t really sure where it was. Not around here, anyway.

He had begun to achieve consciousness when his head was formed. He had opened his eyes to see Grimluk’s ancient, grizzled, wrinkled, rheumy-eyed face staring down at him. Grimluk’s gnarled fingers had literally smoothed the mud that made the golem’s forehead.

The golem had blinked and looked around, confused. He was in some ways no different from a newborn baby.

He had looked down to see that his body was nothing but some tree branches—bark still on for better mud adherence9 (#litres_trial_promo)—tied together with rattan to form a sort of bare scarecrow form.

There was a massive wooden tub full of mud. And a smaller crockery pot with more sticks and loops of rattan.

“I’m getting too old for this,” Grimluk had muttered.

“Mama?” the golem had asked, gazing up hopefully.

“No, fool. You’re a golem. You have neither father nor mother. You have a maker. That’s me.”

“I . . . I feel like . . . like we should hug,” the golem had said.

Grimluk had been somewhat taken aback by this. But after he’d harrumphed a bit and chewed on his lip and forgotten what he was doing a few times and made some grunting noises and scratched and hitched up his robe, he’d finally said, “Eh? Let’s shake hands.”

Then after Grimluk had packed mud onto the golem’s stick arm and stuck in five twigs to act as supports for fingers and then carefully formed the hand, the golem had shaken hands with his maker.

“What’s my name?” the golem had asked.

“You don’t have one. Until I place the scroll in your mouth—and then you’ll know what part you are to play in the great events that rush toward us like an enraged boar.”

“What’s an enraged boar?”

“An angry wild pig.”

“What’s a pig?”

Grimluk was not a great teacher. The golem never did find out what a boar was. But Grimluk was a good golem maker.

When at last the golem was completed and stood on his own two muddy feet, Grimluk smiled a toothless smile. “All right, then.”

The golem had watched, mystified but also hopeful, as the elderly Magnifica, the sole surviving member of the first Magnificent Twelve, wrote two words on a slip of parchment.

The words were “Be Mack.”

“I don’t understand,” the golem said.

“You will,” Grimluk said. “Open your mouth and stick out your tongue.”

“What’s a mouth?”

Grimluk helped him understand that. Then he placed the scroll on the golem’s tongue.

What magic then!

The transformation was miraculous. The creature of mud and twigs suddenly had skin. He had eyes with whites and colored irises. He had hair. Fingernails.

Now, granted, Grimluk had sort of glossed over the internal organs—the golem would have to dig some of those out himself—but the result was a creature that looked very much like Mack MacAvoy.

So much like Mack that Mack’s best friends—those who knew him really well—were only a little suspicious. And his parents never guessed at all.

And then, he had met Mack face-to-face. A real human boy. The boy he was to be for however long it took Mack to save the world.

That had been kind of wonderful, meeting Mack.

But right now, here, today, he had no time for more nostalgia. He had to be a big boy now.

The question was: just how big?

He looked down and noticed that the mud-passing-as-flesh was oozing out over the tops of his shoes. And his jeans were already tight.

Yep: time to be a big boy.





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William Blisterthöng MacGuffin’s castle turned out to be right there in the open atop a sheer outcropping, less than a quarter mile from Urquhart Castle, which was right beside Loch Ness.

Frank had chanted a Vargran spell over the Magnifica and Stefan, and the castle had appeared in perfect clarity. Big as life.

Then the fairies had urged them forward with encouraging words.

“Wait, you’re not coming with us?” Mack demanded.

“This could get violent,” Frank pointed out, “and we are peaceable folk.”

“No fairy has ever—” Connie started in, and Xiao, who was usually very polite, said, “Yeah, right.”

Over the years rare individuals who possessed just a little of the enlightened puissance had caught vague, fleeting glimpses of the castle. But when they reported this, they were condemned as drunk or crazy. Or as crazy drunks.

It was even worse for those few who would also report having seen a sort of sea serpent swimming around in Loch Ness. Those people were also derided as drunk or crazy or both, plus they were often compelled to write books and set up websites in a desperate attempt to prove that they were right.

They were right. But merely writing a book doesn’t prove you’re sane or sober (more the opposite).

Here’s what the local folk and passersby saw as Mack, Jarrah, Xiao, Stefan, and a nonflowery and rather annoyed Dietmar climbed the incredibly steep face of the hill: nothing. That’s what. Once Mack and the gang had come within a hundred feet of the massive promontory (there’s a word to dazzle your teacher with), they simply slipped from view. A person watching from the road would have seen five kids crossing a field and passing beneath a small stand of stunted trees, and then . . . nothing.

And here is what Stefan saw: also nothing. Because although Stefan had many great qualities, like, um . . . toughness and dangerousness . . . he did not possess the enlightened puissance. In fact, as far as Stefan could tell, the rest of them were crazy people gazing up at nothing.

This made it very difficult for Stefan to climb. He could feel the ground under his feet, he could even climb, but it was sketchy work. Try climbing something you can’t see. Go ahead, try. The story can wait.

See? It’s not easy, is it?

The climb was mostly over tumbled boulders. At some point back in history, the side of the mountain had crumbled. The other sides were all still nearly vertical cliff. But this side offered some possibilities for ascent.

So Jarrah held Stefan’s hand and guided him every step of the way with comments like, “Here you go, upsy-daisy, eh?” And, “Come on then, mate, just jump it.” And, “Nah, you won’t fall more than twenty feet, and that’s nothing.”

“I could fly up there in two seconds,” Xiao muttered. “Stupid treaties. Like I would be any kind of threat to those big, leathery, murderous, fire-breathing western dragons.”

“Still, it is a sort of law,” Dietmar said. “And we must obey the law.”

That remark seemed to lessen Xiao’s affection for Dietmar substantially. Xiao could get a very hard look in her eyes and set a very determined jaw when you annoyed her.

Mack brought up the rear, stepping cautiously and gazing up anxiously every few seconds to see just how little progress they had made. It was also his job as the leader to think of a plan for dealing with MacGuffin once they found him. So far his plan was to ask him very politely if they could have the Key, and would he mind releasing the Begonia clan’s All-Mother.

He did have one other idea. He yelled to Jarrah, who was at that moment in midair between boulders. “Jarrah, make sure your mom gets you the latest Vargran.”

“Done,” Jarrah said. She landed like a cat, stood up, pulled out her iPhone, and pointed to it with her free hand. “Nothing new: Mother is on holiday with Dad.” Then she was knocked over by Stefan, who had come to kind of like jumping over invisible boulders. From his point of view he was climbing in midair.

Vargran was the magical language, long forgotten, and only really useful to those very few who were born with the enlightened puissance. Jarrah’s mother was an archaeologist in Australia, where she had discovered some bits and pieces of Vargran carved into a cave wall inside the massive rock known as Uluru.

So far they had learned that Vargran had sounds that included a throat-clearing sound (ch), a click, and a sniff, as well as more normal consonants and vowels. And they had learned that Vargran had four basic verb forms: infinitive, past, future, and or else.

Generally magical spells involved the “or else” tense, which added a ma on the end.

To date they had used Vargran to make a small sun, to cause blue-cheese-filled Lepercons to grow, and to go shopping at Harrods department store, although they hadn’t really intended that last one.

The whole experience had not been very satisfying. Which was why they needed the Key. With MacGuffin’s key matched to the earlier piece of the key—the part they’d obtained from the goddess Nott—they would be able to learn a whole lot more Vargran. The language was, after all, their only weapon, and they didn’t have a lot of time left to assemble the rest of the twelve, somehow convince the traitorous Magnifica Valin to switch sides, and stop the Pale Queen. They needed Vargran. And no: there was no app for that.

About halfway up the mountain they had a lucky break: a stairway, carved into the cliff face. It had once gone all the way down, but when the mountain collapsed, so had the bottom half of the staircase—a fact that made Mack a bit nervous as he climbed his weary way up the narrow, overly tall steps.

It was a good thing they found the stairs because the sun was setting and casting very long, deep shadows all around them, turning every jagged rock into a monster’s head. (Not literally, that was a simile. Or possibly a metaphor. One of those.)

The staircase ended in a stone guardhouse. To their immense relief there was a fountain spouting what they fervently hoped was water. It wasn’t warm in Scotland, but it was humid, and they were all sweating and huffing and puffing, so they plopped down on stone benches, cupped water with their hands and drank, and gazed out across the landscape below: the road, Urquhart Castle, and the loch beyond.

Mack caught Stefan’s eye, and the two of them went to take a look up at MacGuffin’s castle. Darkness was falling fast. It was autumn in Scotland, when days are short and nights are long.

The castle was in perfect repair, not a ruin like Urquhart, which looked as ancient as it was. This castle looked as if it had just been built last week. The stone was clean and lichen-free. The mortar was all fresh. Even the grass below the walls looked green and new-mown.

Also, the row of skulls used to outline the massive timber door was impeccable. They stood out white against dark stone.

“Any way we can sneak in?” Mack wondered aloud.

“I can’t see anything,” Stefan pointed out. “It’s like I’m standing in the air looking at a cloud.”

“Ah. Right. Well, it’s got high walls, a couple of giant towers, and a massive wooden gate.”

“Human pyramid?” Stefan said, and for a moment Mack wasn’t entirely sure it was stupid.

“The walls are too high,” Mack said regretfully. “We need him to open the door. We need a diversion. We need him to come out after some of us while the rest sneak in and find the Key.”

Then, suddenly, without warning, came a sound so terrible Mack felt as if his blood had frozen solid in his veins.

Bleeeeeaaaat-skurrrreeeeeeeeee-waaahhhhhh!

“Oh my God, what is that?” Xiao cried. She had come running. “It sounds as if a goat is being tortured!”

“It sounds like all the pain in existence since the dawn of time!” Jarrah said.

“It sounds like the cry of a newborn demon ready to destroy all peace and love!” Dietmar said. “But I believe it is merely a bagpipe.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mack said. “A bagpipe. I was going to guess that.”

“So, who is going to be the diversion?” Jarrah asked after Mack described his plan, which wasn’t really much of a plan.

“You know . . . ,” Mack said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Something just occurred to me: maybe the door isn’t locked. I mean, it’s not like he gets many visitors up here. Why would he lock a door no one has come to in a thousand years?”

So they crept forward in single file with Mack in the lead. The bagpipe did not play again. There was a deep silence everywhere and the stars were beginning to blink on in the dark blue sky overhead.

The door was about ten feet tall, maybe eight feet wide, and made of wood that looked like it could be two feet thick. It was the kind of door Mack wished he had on his room. Maybe without the skulls grinning down. That was a little too much.

There wasn’t a handle, really, or a knocker or a bell. So Mack simply pushed on the wood where a handle might have been.

Instantly the bagpipe screeched, and this time that horrifying sound was joined by a chorus of shrill, high-pitched voices. It sounded like a church choir of toddlers cranked up on soda and Smarties trying to sing along with a howling devil.

“Interesting doorbell, eh?” Jarrah said. She was acting tough, but the noise had scared them all. All except Stefan, who yelled, “Hey, shut up!”

The chorus was instantly silenced. The door moved on its own, slowly widening the gap.

Mack was pretty sure duty required him to be the first one through, but fortunately Stefan pushed ahead. Stefan wasn’t good at fear. He just didn’t seem to get it. Even when he couldn’t see anything but the night sky.

Mack was right behind him, shoulder to shoulder with Jarrah, with Dietmar and Xiao following closely. They formed a little knot of scared kids.

The door slammed behind them.

They found themselves in a dark courtyard. Only the faint starlight revealed tall, crenellated walls and arches, with hard-on-the-feet cobblestones underfoot.

“Hey! I can see it now,” Stefan said. The spell of invisibility only worked on the exterior of the castle, like a coat of camouflage.

“Um . . . ,” Mack said.

Before he could finish his thought (and we’ll never know what it was), a torch burst into wild orange flame. It was about eye level on the wall to their right.

Then a second torch. Another. Another.

A line of torches moved from right to left, turned the corner to cross the facing wall, then came around to trace the left wall.

The torches whipped frantically as though they were in a strong wind, but it was perfectly still in the courtyard.

In the flickering orange glow they could see quite clearly. Yes, there were tall walls all around. And gloomy arches outlined in gleaming white skulls. Mack noticed—because Mack noticed things—that not all of the skulls were human. There were some that were too small to be human. There were others too large, far too large, and with teeth where teeth had no business being.

Against the facing wall, flanked on both sides by shadowed arches, a rough-hewn throne sat atop a platform. And on that throne sat a man. He was wearing a skirt. And every one of the Magnifica and Stefan had the identical thought: I hope that dude keeps his legs crossed.

The man was built as wide as he was tall, but he was still plenty tall. He had extravagant red hair pushing out from beneath a too-small cap. His massive hands gripped the arms of the throne as if he would—and could—rip them right off at any moment.

He stared with eyes that glittered from deep, torch-cast shadows.

“I am the MacGuffin,” he announced in a heavily accented speech. “Wha urr ye, ’n’ how have you come ’ere uninvited?”

The stones seemed to shake when he spoke. Or maybe it was just that Mack shook. Mack was not fond of beards. In fact, he suffered from pogonophobia—an irrational fear of beards, which only distance could keep under control.

“We’re, um . . . ,” Mack began, before faltering. He glanced aside and happened to see Dietmar. Somehow now Dietmar wasn’t all that interested in taking the lead. “We’re, um, hikers. Is this Urquhart Castle? Because that’s . . . that’s where we . . . um . . .”

“Urquhart Castle, is it?” MacGuffin demanded, and gnashed his teeth. “Di ah keek lik’ a Durward?”

“A what?”

“A Durward!” MacGuffin shouted.

“What’s a Durward?”

“Th’ Durwards ur th’ family that runs Urquhart Castle, ye ninny.”

Dietmar got a crafty look on his face. “Shouldn’t Urquhart Castle be run by a family named Urquhart?”

“Na, you great eejit!”

Dietmar did not like being called a “great eejit” so soon after suffering the indignity of being transformed into a sunflower. And, as Mack noticed grudgingly, Dietmar had some spine. The German boy was not a wimp, and he was getting ready to say something forceful to MacGuffin.

But there was something crazy in MacGuffin’s eyes, which perfectly reflected the light of the torches from under bushy eyebrows, and Dietmar chose to do the wise thing and fall silent.

MacGuffin leaned forward and glared at Mack. “Ah ken how come yer ’ere. Ye huv come tae steal mah key.”

“Key?” Mack said disingenuously. “What key?”

“Dinnae tak’ me fur a gowk. Ye huv th’ enlightened puissance or ye wouldn’t be ’ere. Ah ken th’ Pale Queen rises, wee jimmy. Ah ken wha ’n’ whit yer.”

Or, in regular English, “Don’t take me for a fool. You have the enlightened puissance or you wouldn’t be here. I know the Pale Queen rises, boy. I know who and what you are.”

And it was at that heart-stopping moment that Mack’s phone made an eerie sound. The sound of an incoming text message.

Slowly . . . slooooowly . . . cautiously . . . Mack drew out his iPhone.

MacGuffin stared at the oblong object in Mack’s hand. Stared at it as if he was seeing a ghost.

“Whit’s that black magic?” MacGuffin demanded in cringing horror.

See, that’s the problem with being stuck in an invisible castle for a thousand years: you miss out on a lot of new technology.

Mack did the thing that really should have saved his life. “This!” he cried, holding up the phone and glancing at the message—which was from the golem, and which said, “Pocket lint is tasty”—“Is the mighty iMagic of . . . of Appletonia! If you harm me or my friends, I will use it to destroy you!”





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Meanwhile, at Richard Gere Middle School10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Thousands of miles away, Mack’s golem was eating lint from his pocket and growing larger. The lint happened to be mostly blue because he was wearing blue jeans, but there was some white as well. For variety. And it had a lingering flavor of garlic because, while Mack’s mom had washed these jeans after the golem misunderstood the name Hot Pockets and stuffed a microwaved pizza-flavored Hot Pocket into his pocket, some of that flavor had survived.

When Grimluk tapped Mack to go off and save the world, he gave him the golem to fill in for him at home. The golem now looked exactly like Mack, albeit somewhat muddier, and quite a bit less, um, how to put this gently?

Um . . . okay: Mack was a pretty smart guy. His golem? Not as smart. There: it’s been said.

So the golem attended Mack’s school and took Mack’s classes and wrote Mack’s papers. His latest effort, six pages on the history topic “Maybe Abraham Lincoln Had Mice Living in His Beard,” had consisted entirely of the sentence, “He could have, no one knows,” written in various fonts and in various type sizes. On page four, for example, the font was so large that the entire page just read, “HE COULD HA.”

It’s a good thing all that stuff about a “permanent record” is just something made up by teachers. Because the golem had caused Mack’s steady B+ average to drop somewhat.

The only class where the golem was actually outperforming Mack was gym. He was helped by his ability to physically absorb dodgeballs, draw them into his body, unhinge his jaw, and shoot them back out of his mouth at supersonic speed.

He had an A+ in gym.

And if there was a dodgeball team choosing sides, the golem was always picked first.

The only problem the golem had with gym was the showering part. Water had a tendency to wash him away. Imagine mud. Now imagine mud with a sort of coating of fleshlike paint. Now imagine streaming hot water. You can see the problem for yourself. A kid had once caught sight of the golem’s face after a shower, and that kid now lives with his father in another state.

Where he sees a therapist three times a week.

And wakes up screaming.

But! If there were more golem to begin with, the water wouldn’t be able to wash him all down the drain. It would wash some of him away, sure, and that could be pretty unsightly. But if he were a really big boy, the water would only damage a tiny bit of him.

That was math, and the golem liked math.

In addition to school, the golem also filled in for Mack at home. He performed all of Mack’s important family duties: finding the remote control, nodding solemnly during parental lectures, pretending to do homework, wearing the same socks every day for weeks, taking out the trash after being asked exactly seventeen times, and heatedly pointing out examples of parental hypocrisy. Such as, “You say don’t eat the leather sofa cushions but you eat bacon, which is the same as leather!”

There were days when Mack was ambivalent about saving the world, because if he did, he’d sooner or later end up back in Sedona with a lot of explaining to do.

And there were times when the golem had just the most fleeting thought11 (#litres_trial_promo) that if Mack succeeded and returned to reclaim his life, it would be the end of a very happy time for the golem.

He wasn’t sure what happened to golems after they completed a mission. Maybe he would be sent off to “be” someone else.

Then again, maybe he would just return to being unconscious mud and twigs.

Meanwhile, the golem was showing up for school, pacifying Mack’s parents, and kind of dating Camaro Angianelli, one of the bullies at Richard Gere Middle School (Go, Fighting Pupfish!).

Camaro found the golem very sensitive and insightful and an amazing dancer. And no one could take a punch like the golem.

She was punching him right now, in fact, as he changed classes. “You look like you’re putting on weight,” Camaro said. And she punched him in the stomach to illustrate. Her fist went all the way in, all the way up to the leather bracelet on her wrist, before bouncing back out.

“Yes. I am going to be a big boy,” the golem said.

Camaro looked up at him speculatively. “Are you any good at punching people out? Because when I make my play for supreme bully power and try to take over Stefan’s old job, I could use a big boy backing me up.”

“I will be big,” the golem confirmed, and grinned.

“You have a twig in your teeth,” Camaro pointed out.

“Yes. I do,” the golem said proudly.

“I like that about you, Mack: you rock your own special style. No one else has twigs in their teeth. It’s a built-in toothpick.”

The golem had to think about that for a moment before finally saying, “Yes.”

“So,” Camaro whispered conspiratorially. “Sometime within the next few days, it’s me and Tony Pooch at the usual place.” She cracked her knuckles, flexed the biceps displayed by her sleeveless T-shirt, gave her neck the old, familiar Stefan Marr warm-up twist, and spit a wad of gum at a passing geek.

“You’re going out with Tony Pooch?” The golem was bothered by this. He enjoyed spending time with Camaro—he found her random destructiveness charming. He almost felt jealous. Yes. Almost.

Camaro threw back her head and laughed. Then she gave him an affectionate punch in the arm—a punch that would have reduced anyone else to whimpering and a possible blood clot—and said, “No, no, Mack. I mean I’m going to kick his butt.”

“Ah.”

“I’m your girl,” Camaro said affectionately, and followed that statement up with a snarling warning that he had better never forget it. Not if he wanted to keep all four of his limbs.

He did want to keep all four of his limbs because it was crucial to passing as Mack. Coming home without an arm would definitely generate uncomfortable questions from Mom. And if he lost two or more limbs, even Dad might notice.

“You’re my girl,” the golem said contentedly. “And I’m your big boy.”

Mack was going to have a lot of explaining to do when he got home.

But at the moment the golem had given him an opportunity. . . .





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I am the Wizard of the iPhone!” Mack cried, sounding a little desperate. “Gaze upon this and be afraid, William Blisterthöng MacGuffin! Behold, as I kill a pig using only an angry bird!”

MacGuffin sat back hard when he saw that. Then he leaned forward to look closer, because the screen was pretty small. But Mack could see the fear in the old ginger’s eyes.

“I, too, am a wizard!” Jarrah cried, getting into the act. “I can make nanobots take over a human brain!”

“And I can look up words and translate them from German to English!” Dietmar announced.

This assault of smartphones baffled and amazed the thousand-year-old man. In MacGuffin’s world the very height of technology was the windmill, the crossbow, and something very new and exciting: the fork.

He had never seen a phone, let alone a phone that contained tiny people within it and could play music. From his point of view, Mack and his friends were indeed magicians. Wizards! Who else could cause rectangular lights to appear in their palms? Who else could plant tiny crops of wheat and corn inside that rectangle of light? Who else could reveal pictures of themselves playing volleyball at their cousin’s birthday party?

“Give us the Key, William Blisterthöng MacGuffin, or we will unleash the power of the iMagic to shrink you to the size of one of these captive pigs, and we will pelt you with the angriest of birds!”

Mack put that out there in his deepest, most impressive voice, and he wore his most serious and solemn expression.

And it would have worked. Maybe.

Except that something like a very large dragonfly suddenly zipped into the torchlight.

“It’s a trick,” Connie the fairy said. “Don’t believe them, Willy.”

MacGuffin leaped from his chair. He stood there and stared, stared hard like he was seeing the end of the world or maybe like he was seeing something impossible or maybe like he was seeing another Transformers sequel and just not believing it.

His mouth moved but no sounds came out.

And then a single great sob.

“Con?” he said through quivering mustachioed (top and bottom) lips.

“Yes, Willy, it’s me. It’s me, your Connie.”

“Efter a’ thae lang years, mah yin true loue?”

Which, to the amazement of absolutely everyone, even Stefan, meant, “After all these long years, my one true love?”

The fairy flew—that’s not a metaphor, she flew—to him and wrapped her arms around his hairy red head, and MacGuffin lifted a massive paw with amazing gentleness to cradle her tiny face.

“Willy, this is all Frank’s doing,” Connie said, and made the fist of forcefulness again. “He’s shown them the way to take the Key. In exchange, they’ve sworn to release the All-Mother.”

“She wha haes vowed tae string a fiddle wi’ mah tendons, then speil a jolly tune ’n’ dae a jig?”

(“She who has vowed to string a fiddle with my tendons, then play a jolly tune and do a jig?”)

“Aye, my love,” Connie said, stroking his Gandalf eyebrows.

They gazed into each other’s eyes with the tenderest of love. Such love.

With sinking heart, Mack faced the terrible truth: Connie had betrayed her fellow fairies.




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