Johnny Graphic and the Etheric Bomb (31 page)

Chapter 61

Mel ignored Johnny’s entreaty. “Please believe me
,”
she begged the Steppe Warrior. “You’ve been deceived about the bomb. I’m telling you the truth.”

The Steppe Warrior grinned his skeletal grin and shook his head. “I should trust you instead of the khan?”

He paused for a second, then snapped his left hand open. Something flew out of it, fluttering next to him.

Johnny squinted hard. It was a miniature, one-armed Steppe Warrior. Only a few inches long.

Johnny remembered her from the fight in the upstairs hallway. Checheg.

He knew that ghosts could control their size, but he wasn’t sure what good a dinky little ghost like her could do in a fight. Why would she be so small?

Then a dreadful thought occurred.

What if she were the trigger! What if she had shrunk down small enough to squeeze into the great diamond and set off the explosion!

As if to confirm that horrible intuition, Checheg made a beeline straight at Dame Honoria and the Star of Gilbeyshire.

Bursting balloons under foot, Johnny bounded toward the tiny, flitting etheric figure.

The shrunken ghost of Checheg tried to dodge him. But too late.

Johnny swung his folding chair as hard as he could, as high as he could.

With a sickening
thunk
, he walloped the tiny wraith straight through the giant mural behind the bandstand.

Johnny’s momentary triumph was interrupted by a screeching voice that sounded like his sister. “Johnny, look out!”

He twirled to see the eyeless Steppe Warrior charging at him, curved blade upraised.

Johnny hefted the folded chair out in front of himself just in time to receive Burilgi’s first overhand strike.

The blow rattled Johnny right down to his toenails. Flakes of paint and chips of wood flew everywhere, and even his unetheristic friends shuddered to see the chair vibrating violently in thin air.

Johnny returned the favor by jamming the chair into the Steppe Warrior’s face—again and again in rapid succession. The assault bashed Burilgi’s nose flat and blocked his sword arm.

The empty-eyed specter backed away, intending another charge. What he didn’t count on was an attack from his left.

It came suddenly, shockingly.

Bao flew at him wielding a weapon that she had found nearby—an abandoned tenor saxophone. Swinging it with the unexpected form of a home run hitter, she smashed it into his left knee with every drop of energy that her little body possessed.

Burilgi rounded on Bao as she flitted away, only to be hit a glancing blow on the top of his head by Johnny and his folding chair. The impact made the Steppe Warrior’s leather helmet fly off his head.

Burilgi leapt high into the air and came down on the scurrying girl ghost. He kicked hard, connected with Bao’s head, and sent her scudding away—struck senseless. Then the Steppe Warrior climbed like a monkey up toward the ceiling, and dived at Johnny, his blade extended.

Johnny saw Burilgi coming. He tried to lift the battered chair up over his head, but it slipped out of his grasp, breaking several balloons with loud pops as it hit the floor.

He heard Mel shriek, “
Above Johnny’s head
.
Now!”

Out of the corner of his eye Johnny saw Uncle Louie—a hammer thrower back in high school—grunt and heave one of the folding chairs. Johnny’s only thought came in a flash: hope it doesn’t break my skull.

The piece of party furniture made for an ungainly missile. But Uncle Louie was so strong that it covered the distance in just two seconds, in a flat, neat trajectory.

It winged the Steppe Warrior’s sword arm. Deflected him just enough to keep the blade from piercing Johnny’s neck.

But not enough to prevent a nasty slice across Johnny’s chest, cutting open his tuxedo, shirt, and undershirt, lightly skittering over his ribs.

Suddenly bloodied, Johnny hollered in pain, frustration, and rage.

Kicking off her fancy shoes, Mel rushed forward to help him. Uncle Louie and Danny followed close behind. The two men tugged Johnny back toward the table. Meanwhile, Mel stopped to help a woman who was lying amid the balloons, holding her leg and sobbing dreadfully.

Sitting in the chair, dazed from the pain of his wound, Johnny watched as Dame Honoria—with a kind of steely calm—slipped her silk brocade jacket back on, then buttoned it up. She took Nina’s hand with both her hands and whispered something in the girl’s ear.

Nina looked up at Dame Honoria, then at Johnny—who was blinking back at her, his hands stained with blood from his chest wound. He was afraid Nina might start to cry, as she reached into her purse. Poor kid. She never deserved to get caught up in this mess.

Nina fussed around with her purse’s contents, then withdrew a handkerchief, which she handed to Johnny.

As he muttered a curt thank you and wiped his hands, he looked back in the direction of the bandstand and groaned, “No!”

Burilgi had somehow captured Mel and held her from behind—in a deadly embrace.

His dagger was pressed to her throat, where it drew a bead of blood.

Chapter 62

Seeing the blood on his sister’s neck, Johnny thought about rushing to her rescue. But that adult voice in his head told him, not so fast. If you try anything heroic, Mel could get badly hurt. Or worse.

“Dame Honoria, come over here!” Mel wailed, her features a picture of dread.
“Please!”

“Of course, my dear,” Dame Honoria answered. She turned her head sideways. “Come with me,” Johnny heard her whisper to Nina, “but draw no attention to yourself.”

The two walked slowly toward Mel and her captor, wending their way amid the debris.

Johnny, Danny, and Uncle Louie shuffled along behind them, utterly disheartened and exhausted. Flo Zuckerberg, for her part, looked as though she wanted to kill someone but didn’t know whom or with what.

By this time the colonel and the sergeant had managed to dispense with their adversaries. They stood a dozen feet from Mel, helplessly eyeing the wicked blade held directly over her jugular vein.

As Dame Honoria and Nina came up within a few feet, Burilgi hissed, “Give me the diamond, old woman. Now!”

Dame Honoria eyed the ghost and Mel.

“It was around my neck just a few minutes ago,” she whimpered, sounding weak and beaten. “Now it’s gone. Came off somehow. Clasp broken. Somewhere around here.” She turned and swept a hand across a landscape of overturned tables, mangled chairs, and many, many balloons.

By now almost every other party-goer had escaped. At the far end of the ballroom, by the entrance doors, Carlton Cargill was trying to keep several police officers from barging in.

The Steppe Warrior betrayed no emotion. He seemed to be pondering Dame Honoria’s revelation.

“Perhaps you’ve hidden it in your jacket, old woman,” the ghost said in a tone as cold as ice. “Let us see what’s inside your pockets.”

Dame Honoria obligingly turned her pockets inside out, revealing no necklace. “And I suppose,” she said with a sigh, “you’d like to see what I have in my handbag.”

Looking every inch the defeated old crone, Dame Honoria unsnapped the top of her black sequined purse and held it open for viewing.

Burilgi seemed almost to be squinting, as he looked inside the bag. “Empty it.”

Dame Honoria nodded and pulled item after item out of the handbag and threw them aside.

A small mirror. Several tissues. A compact. Reading glasses. Lipstick. A tiny bottle of Gorton’s aspirin. Then she tipped the bag upside down, to prove there was nothing else inside it.

“The diamond must be somewhere around here,” Dame Honoria said, scanning the floor nearby.

Suddenly Burilgi’s head shifted slightly to the left and down. If he’d had eyes, they would have drilled holes right through Nina Bain. “You, girl,” he pronounced with frightening intensity, “open your bag.”

Dame Honoria flinched and Johnny suddenly realized what she must have done. She had to have given the diamond to Nina for safekeeping. And now the ghost had her in his crosshairs.

With a look of terrible sadness, Dame Honoria conveyed to Nina what the ghost wanted.

Nina’s eyes opened wide as windows and she stammered, “M-m-m-me?”

“Open it now,” the ghost ordered, “or my dagger slices a little deeper.”

Mel quaked uncontrollably, her face a deathly white—a terrible contrast to the very red blood trickling down her neck.

Dame Honoria repeated what Burigli had said.

“
Please, Nina
,” sobbed Mel.

“There’s nothing…in here…but my things,” Nina said breathlessly.

“Tell the girl to show me,” Burilgi growled. “
Empty the bag
.”

Johnny transmitted that order.

“Okay,” squeaked Nina, unsnapping her purse.

Johnny shut his eyes for a few seconds. He couldn’t stand to see what was about to happen. Then he thought the better of it. Eyes shut or open, it doesn’t matter. Hold it together. Be strong.

Nina pulled open the top of her purse and removed its contents.

Out came a tiny vial of perfume. A tin of breath mints. A compact. A coin purse. Then a pair of gloves that matched the color of her dress.

“That’s all I have,” said Nina, looking defiant. “See?” Gulping, she walked up closer to Mel and the specter that she couldn’t see. She spread the top of the purse wide open with both hands. The spook peered intently at the inside. Then she tipped and shook the thing again, to make her point. All that wafted out were a few flecks of lint.

Johnny was astonished. He was torn between relief that the diamond might be safe and dread that his sister might die.

But what had Nina done with the Star of Gilbeyshire?

Did she even have it in the first place?

And
where is it now?

Chapter 63

Wherever the giant black diamond might have gotten to, Johnny’s most pressing concern now was how to save his sister’s life. And, as his brain churned, he had to admit that he had only one idea. And not a very good idea, at that.

Johnny managed to make eye contact with Colonel MacFarlane—who looked as if he were about to explode with frustration. Because he couldn’t think of anything else, Johnny made a fist with his right hand and punched it an inch or two forward. Which he hoped the colonel would interpret to mean “Attack!” The ghost soldier understood, but subtly shook his head. Just then a voice like a dull ax scraped over slate startled Johnny to attention.

“You have five minutes to find the jewel, or the girl dies,” Burilgi announced, squeezing Mel even more tightly.

Dame Honoria nodded, wiped her profusely sweating brow, and repeated Burilgi’s demand.

Johnny and Nina and the others began to sift through the debris that littered the ballroom floor near their table, when another voice cut through the gloom.

“No!” Mel yelled. “Stop! All of you!”

Startled, Johnny and the others pivoted around to stare at the captive young woman. What could she possibly be up to?

“What happens to me isn’t important,” Mel said. “You can’t let this monster have the diamond!”

In response to Mel’s outbreak, Burilgi growled and lightly flicked the edge of his dagger against another spot on her neck.

Mel winced in pain but didn’t scream. She kept talking, though so quietly and delicately that Johnny had to strain to hear her. As if she were speaking only for the ears of the empty-eyed wraith.

“We etherists have tried for years and years to convince the living that ghosts shouldn’t be feared, that ghosts were just like them—only dead. We’ve tried to give ghosts purpose and fulfillment. Something to make the emptiness tolerable.

“But in a few short weeks you and Percival Rathbone and your other ghostly thugs have frightened millions. Killed innocent people who loved and cared for ghosts. Condemned thousands of specters to a doom worse than anything they could have imagined. Now even more people hate ghosts, fear ghosts. The damage you’ve done will take years to mend.”

The dagger seemed to move, and the thought flared in Johnny’s brain: Is this the fatal cut?

But nothing more happened. His racing heartbeat slowed slightly.

“And your so-called khan?” Mel continued. “A fraud, a charlatan, a confidence trickster. Nothing he’s told you is the truth. He’s just a wretched, despicable human being. Well, former human being.

“And you threaten my city with utter destruction.
My city!
Well, go ahead and kill me and be damned, you miserable excuse for a ghost. But when you do, don’t expect any mercy from my troopers here.”

Colonel MacFarlane and Sergeant Clegg both nodded: order received and understood.

In the midst of all this, Johnny heard the bullhorn voice of Carlton Cargill from across the ballroom. He was arguing with the police chief. “Listen, O’Reilly, you all charge in there and you’ll get that girl killed!”

The Steppe Warrior pulled himself taut. “A very pretty little speech. But unless I get that jewel,
you die in one minute
.”

At just that instant Mel’s face changed utterly.

Her mouth opened in a gasp of surprise.

Her eyes widened.

A shudder resonated through her whole body—as if she were about to have a seizure.

Burilgi seemed taken aback and he loosened his grip on Mel.

Then the most remarkable and wonderful thing Johnny had ever seen in his entire life happened.

Two small, ghostly hands popped straight up out of Mel’s chest.

They grabbed the Steppe Warrior’s etheric dagger.

They yanked it out of his hand.

Then, bearing the blade, Bao shot up toward the ceiling like a rocket.

With a furious grunt, Mel twisted violently and slipped from the grasp of a startled Burilgi. She part-danced, part-staggered away, screaming, “
Get him, get him!”

Both the colonel and Clegg came at Burilgi with flurries of powerful roundhouse punches. The Steppe Warrior hadn’t even the time to draw his sword.