Island of Fire (The Unwanteds) (10 page)

Stricken with fear, the workers began at a frantic pace to disassemble the remaining blocks. Behind Aaron, the guards
drove off with Mr. Stowe, the man’s bowed head visible through the back window. As soon as the noise of the jalopy had quieted, Aaron turned back to the palace and stomped inside to his office.

“Secretary!” he screamed. “Come at once!”

Eva was there in a flash. “What is it?” she asked, alarmed.

“I’ve sent my father to the Ancients Sector.” He looked at her, and now he couldn’t stop the fear that bled into his eyes. “He was disrespectful.”

“Your father?”

“He was one of the workers.”

Eva had to work very hard not to react. What she really wanted to do was punish the spoiled boy herself, right that minute. But all she said was, “I see.”

Aaron turned and began to pace. “He didn’t address me properly! He made me look like a fool!” He swiped his hand across his desk, sending papers flying. “What else could I have done?”

Eva didn’t think he wanted an answer. “If you want me to tell you that you did the right thing . . . ” She didn’t finish, for fear it would get her sent to join Mr. Stowe.

Aaron rounded his desk and gripped the back of his chair,
muttering to himself. “He deserved it. He knew very well what he should have done.”

Eva closed her eyes briefly and sighed, not loud enough to be heard.

“Even if he was right, he shouldn’t have said it like he said it.” He began pacing again.

Eva waited until Aaron had finished muttering, and then she said, “Shall I send a vehicle to retrieve him, High Priest?”

Aaron’s face twisted in indecision. He pounded his hands on his desk in anger. And then he pressed his fingers to his temples. “Yes,” he said finally. “Send him home, on the condition that he remains silent on the matter.”

Eva Fathom nodded and set off to stop an untimely death.

“Wait,” Aaron called after her, and she stopped and turned to look at him.

“There is one more condition. Tell him that he and my mother and any future . . . children . . . of theirs must be loyal to Quill. They will make an oath never to pledge loyalty of any sort to my brother, or to Artimé, as long as they live.”

Eva waited to make sure he was finished, and then she said, “I will see to it myself.”

Eva left the palace and Aaron went again to the window, watching her go, watching the other men working and struggling below to finish their job before they collapsed.

He was so deep in thought, he didn’t notice that a little gargoyle statue named Matilda had climbed up and out of a box in the closet and now stood very still, ear pointed at the opening in the door.

S
ean met Alex, Simber, and Sky at the door to the mansion. Hundreds of Unwanteds celebrated beyond the entryway, spilling out of the dining room and kitchen. “Simber!” Sean exclaimed. “Man, I’m glad to see you.” But he looked more distracted than glad. He turned to Alex. “We’re missing people,” he said, getting back to business. “Meghan, Henry, Crow, Mr. Appleblossom, and dozens of others.”

Alex’s eyes widened. “Meghan? She was with me when I changed the world back.”

“Well, she’s not here now. She’s nowhere.”

“She was standing right inside the doorway of the shack,” Alex said, alarm growing in his voice. “Henry and Crow were sleeping on the floor inside. They can’t have gone far. Did you check their rooms?”

Sean reached out and shook Alex’s shoulders. “I’m obviously not explaining this right. Yes, we checked everywhere. They’re gone now. Everyone in the gray shack—all of them are gone. Disappeared. Wiped out.”

Alex gaped. “What?”

“Gone.”

“B-b-but,” Alex sputtered, “why wouldn’t the people inside the gray shack just turn up inside the mansion once Artimé is back? It’s basically the same house, isn’t it?” The Silent girl grabbed his hand and tugged at him.

Sean raised his voice. “They’re not here, Alex! That’s all I know. My sister is not here. I’ve been all through the place.”

“Okay, okay,” Alex said. “I’m worried too, I’m just trying to figure it out, is all. Did you call out for her or the others?”

“Of course I did,” Sean said, annoyed.

“What’s shaking the mansion?” Simber growled.

Sean turned to Simber. “I don’t feel anything shaking.”

Sky stomped her foot and jumped up and down, waving to get their attention. She pointed up the staircase.

“I think you ought to be paying morrre attention to the young woman,” Simber remarked.

The girl started up the stairs, looking over her shoulder to see if anyone was coming. Simber bounded up the stairs after her, with Sean and Alex right behind. As they neared the top of the staircase, they too could feel a bit of a tremble in the floor.

Sean and Sky stopped on the landing, the girl feeling along the wall where the mostly secret hallway was. Sean pressed his ear up against what was an open space to Alex. “It’s behind this wall,” Sean said.

Alex gave Simber a questioning look. Simber’s eyes narrowed. He nodded at Alex, urging him to take the lead.

“There’s a secret hallway here,” Alex said quietly to Sean and Sky. “Simber and I can see it. You guys stay here. If anything weird happens, or if we don’t come back, find Octavia and Florence. They can get in too.”

Sean raised an eyebrow. “Well. I guess I never knew about that.” He seemed a bit put out.

Alex smiled grimly. “Not many people can see it.” He turned to Simber. “Let’s go.”

They entered the mostly secret hallway, leaving Sean and a very startled Silent girl watching them disappear through the wall.

Simber and Alex both glanced to the left at the door to Mr. Today’s private chambers. They caught each other’s eye but didn’t speak. They would have to pay a visit to that room eventually, when things settled down. But now Simber stopped in front of the door across the hallway from it. “Have you everrr been in herrre?”

Alex nodded. “Once. It’s the Museum of Large.” His memory of that visit was foggy after all he’d encountered in the past weeks.

“Can you get in?”

Alex thought hard. “I can . . . if I remember the spell.” He pressed his ear against the door but heard nothing, only feeling the shaking against his cheek. He racked his brains for the spell to get in. It had been so long since he’d been able to do magic, and such a long time since he’d had even a second to think about any spells other than the one to restore the world, that it took
him a while to engage that part of his brain. He turned to Simber. “Can you tell what’s going on in there? What if it . . . what if it’s dangerous?”

“That hasn’t stopped you beforrre,” Simber said. He sniffed under the door. “Something’s familiar . . . ,” he said, and then he shook his head. “But the doorrr is magically sealed. I can’t rrreally tell.”

Alex closed his eyes and let his forehead rest against the door, trying to picture his visit to this room with Mr. Today. What was that dratted spell? He mentally ran through all the museum’s items that he could remember in case they offered a clue. The library, the pirate ship, the whale, the gray shack . . .

“The shack,” Alex murmured. He opened his eyes and stared, unseeing, at the door. “Oh, say! The gray shack is in
there
,” he said, getting excited. “Whoa, wait. Let me think this through. When I was in here before, I remember seeing the gray shack, only it was behind this really awesome whale skeleton, and I didn’t go over to look at it. Do you think . . . ,” he said, and then he paused and started again. “Do you think that when Artimé disappears, all that remains on the plot of land is
the gray shack, and that when Artimé exists, the shack automatically stores itself in this room?”

“What
I
think is that you should open the doorrr,” Simber said dryly, but he looked relieved at Alex’s revelation. “The shaking is prrrobably a few dozen angrrry Unwanteds jumping up and down in therrre, trrrying to get ourrr attention.”

“Probably. Phew,” Alex said. And now that the pressure was off him, the spell filtered into his brain. “Ah, that’s right. I’ve got it.” He reached for the handle and muttered, “Door number one.”

When the door popped open, the sounds of fifty or more screaming Unwanteds pierced Alex’s ears, but none of them were jumping. Instead they ran about hysterically, being chased by an enormous mastodon statue, whose thunderous steps were doing all the shaking.

Alex and Simber stared at the scene, and then Alex gasped and pointed. The Silent boy, Crow, hung precariously thirty feet above the floor from one of the mastodon’s gleaming tusks.

A
lex and Simber charged into the room and assessed the situation at top speed. “Buckets of crud! When I brought the world back to life, I think it woke up this guy,” Alex yelled over the din.

“You
think
? Hey! Ol’ Taterrr!” Simber roared to get the statue’s attention, and then he turned back to Alex. “I thought Marrrcus got rrrid of him yearrrs ago.”

“He couldn’t stand to get rid of him!”

“Why am I not surrrprrrised?”

Alex nearly grinned despite the situation. “Okay, let’s get the people out of here. Then you distract him and I’ll see if I
can locate a spell in one of these books to . . . put him back to sleep.” He gulped.

The two bounded over to a huddled group of Unwanteds, Alex waving and pointing to the open door, and Simber racing around the perimeter of the museum, shouting instructions and nudging Unwanteds in the proper direction. Within a few minutes, the majority of the people had made it out into the hallway safely. There were a few injured, and after Simber had flown up high enough to wrap his jaws around Crow and pull him from the mastodon’s tusk, he deftly picked up the injured ones who couldn’t make it out on their own. Just as the last Unwanted exited the museum, Alex lunged and slammed the door shut—not that the creature could get through it, at his size, of course. But Alex wasn’t taking any chances on a stray tusk or a beefy leg reaching through the opening.

Simber raced around the museum like a kitten at play, letting the giant beast nearly catch him but getting away just in time, while Alex scrambled for the books, searching for spells that would be powerful enough to soothe this beast and turn him back into a nonliving statue.

“It would’ve been nice if Mr. Today had kept this place a little more organized!” Alex shouted.

“Orrrganized wasn’t exactly his modus operrrandi, if you know what I mean,” Simber said as he circled close to Alex.

Alex wasn’t sure what that term meant, but he liked how it sounded and vowed to look it up just as soon as everything calmed down.

The mastodon took a swipe at Simber and missed, tripping and falling into the whale skeleton and sending hundreds of bones flying in all directions.

Alex ducked as a rib flew past his ear, and he yelled, “Aw, man, that’s a pity right there!”

“You’rrre telling me!”

“Maybe you could keep him away from the breakables, eh?”

“Maybe I could let him crrrush you into tiny bits,” Simber replied, charging to the darkest corners of the museum where Alex hadn’t even begun to explore. The mastodon followed.

“Well, there’s always that,” Alex muttered, flipping pages.

Ten more minutes of tireless chasing had gone by before Alex happened upon a thin book called
Tater
. He whipped through the pages outlining diet, likes and dislikes, and disposition issues,
all the way to the end, where his eyes alighted on the one spell that might actually do him some good. It was a song spell called “Nighty-Night, Tater,” so he knew it was probably the right one. He studied it carefully, still not totally comfortable using spells without components to go with them—he never knew what to do with his hands.

Once he’d memorized it, he tossed the book over his shoulder and snuck between the enormous museum items to try to give himself a good angle. “Lead him back to this empty spot!” he shouted to Simber.

Simber did it, and when the mastodon was in the general area where Alex wanted him, Alex began to sing a little lullaby. It was undoubtedly the dumbest, most embarrassing song Alex had ever sung, but what choice did he have? He was glad almost no one was there to hear it. He took a deep breath and sang: