“Is he nice?”
“Yeah. I mean, he’s a huge nerd, but he’s pretty great.”
“I’m glad.” Reese picked at a blade of grass.
“I just want to have a normal life. No more spying. No more lies. I want to have real friends.”
“Well, you’ve got one.”
One side of Naomi’s mouth curled up. It was almost a smile.
“Do you think your folks will let you come and visit?” Reese asked.
“I don’t know, Reese,” Naomi said, looking out over the house where she’d lost her friend Theo. “New Hampshire is kind of dangerous.”
38
“HE LOVED THE NEW ENGLAND Patriots and the Boston Red Sox,” the reverend said. “He spent hours practicing with a glove and a bat so that he might someday take his place as a left fielder in the shadow of the Green Monster. He had an infectious laugh and a love of life that showed whenever he ran, or jumped, or smiled. Theo Merritt was an athlete. He was a student. He was a son. He was a friend.”
Martha Merritt let out a choked sob. Her husband, uncomfortable in his only suit, hugged her tight. His face was blank. He had missed a spot shaving. He wanted more than anything to learn that this was all a mistake or a bad dream that would vanish when he woke up. He wanted everyone to be wrong.
The memorial service was being held outside, on the very spot in which Theo had disappeared. When the parents of Cahill heard about Theo’s death they clucked and warned their own kids, again, not to swim in the Conway quarry. It was a death trap. A total of seven kids had drowned there since 1978. Theo’s body had never even come up. Divers had scoured the bottom of the quarry for days before calling off the search. It was just too deep.
Almost all of Theo’s classmates from Robert Frost Junior High were there. Parker could hear the girls sobbing behind him. Sure, he thought, they never cared about him when he was alive, but now that he’s dead…
He shifted in his wobbly folding chair. He wanted desperately to take off his stupid tie and put on a T-shirt. His mother sat on one side of him, holding so tightly to his hand he was afraid it would fall asleep. Even if it did, he wouldn’t complain. He would just sit there with a numb hand. He could take it.
Reese sat with her parents. Parker caught her eye, but only for a second. She turned back to the reverend and focused on his stupid speech.
“Theo was kind, and gentle, always ready to help out around the house or carry someone’s bags from the store or blah blah blah blah blah…”
Parker tuned him out. The guy didn’t know anything about Theo. The Merritts never even went to church. They’d gotten the reverend to talk because Cahill was a small town and this was the kind of thing that reverends did. He didn’t know the real Theo. Hardly anybody did. How could they?
Parker resisted the urge to turn around and look for Fon-Rahm. The genie (was he still a genie? What do you call a genie without any powers?) was standing near the back of the crowd, silent and alone. Parker knew that Professor Ellison was there, too, somewhere. She pretended she didn’t care about anybody but Parker had a sneaking suspicion that she blamed herself for Theo’s death. Parker knew how she felt.
Kathleen let go of Parker’s hand to wipe her eyes with a tissue but clutched it again as soon as she was done. As if the loss of her nephew wasn’t enough, her husband was back in a California prison. Everything good in her life seemed to have vanished overnight.
The drowning story had been cooked up by the D.E.N.T. The nation would panic if word got out about what really happened at Professor Ellison’s house. Markets would crash, economies would fall, a new arms race centered on magic would consume the world. No one could know just how close mankind had come to falling under Vesiroth’s rule. In order to keep the incident under wraps, Agent Cook had concocted a cover story: Parker and Theo had lied to their parents and had snuck down to the Conway quarry to go swimming. In an effort to impress his cousin, Theo had taken a dive off the quarry’s highest point. He hit the water and disappeared. The police and rescue crews used searchlights and boats but they had turned up nothing.
It was a solid story, but it took a heavy toll on Parker. He knew that his aunt and uncle blamed him for Theo’s death. He wanted so badly to tell them the truth, but he had to keep his mouth shut. Agent Cook had told him that sticking to this narrative would be the hardest thing he would ever do. She was right. It was awful. Parker felt like it was killing him.
The service was finally over. Parker, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his new sport coat, stood talking to Reese, Fon-Rahm, Professor Ellison, and Maksimilian, who had cut short a complicated and shady scam in Eastern Europe to pay tribute to a boy he had considered a friend. “They all think it’s my fault,” Parker said as classmates and adults walked back to the cars, avoiding his eyes. “They think I let Theo drown because I was scared.”
“I wish they would have let me be a part of the story,” said Reese. “There’s no reason I couldn’t have gone swimming with you guys. We were together all the time.”
“There was no point in both of us feeling like crap for the rest of our lives.”
She nodded. Her dress was simple and black. For the first time in years there was no added color in her hair. She wanted to blend in with all the other mourners. She wanted to be unseen.
“I always liked the lad,” Maks said. He had tidied up for the occasion. “I would say he reminded me of myself when I was that age but I was never that brave. I should have stayed and helped. If I had been there…” He trailed off and looked up into the sky. “Maybe I could have made a difference.”
“I warned him not to touch the Helm. He never listened to me. I told him to…” Professor Ellison stopped talking. For a second, Reese thought the professor was going to tell them all that she loved Theo like the son she never had. She was going to turn away from them so that they wouldn’t see her tears. She was going to drop the walls around her heart she had been building for three thousand years and let them see that underneath the spells and the relics she was a human being who needed other people around her, just like anyone. Instead, Professor Ellison sniffed and regained her aura of haughty superiority. “All that time I invested in him was for naught,” she said. “All that potential squandered.”
Reese felt anger rising inside of her like a volcano. She was going to really give the professor a piece of her mind when Parker said, “You might act like you don’t care, Professor, but you and I both know what Theo meant to you.”
Professor Ellison looked into Parker’s eyes. “I will not forget him. If I live another three thousand years I will not forget him.”
She turned to Maks. “I suppose we still have work to do. The war goes on.”
Maks nodded. As he and the professor walked away, he turned back to Parker, Reese, and Fon-Rahm. “There’s not a lot of magic left in the world, you know.” Maks pulled the flask from his pocket. “Less and less every day. Maybe it’s for the best, no? Maybe we’re the problem. Maybe the whole thing”—he gestured to include everything around them—“would work better without us.” He put his flask back untouched, gave Professor Ellison his arm, and walked with her to the parking lot.
Finally, it was just Parker, Reese, and Fon-Rahm, standing silently on the rim of the quarry. They all knew a piece was missing. They all knew there was nothing they could do to get that piece back.
“I have failed you, Parker,” said Fon-Rahm. “Your father is…gone, Theo is no longer with us, and without magic I am a newborn finding his way in a strange world. I would give anything to be able to grant you wishes now. I would give anything to ease your suffering.”
Parker shook his head. “There are some things magic can’t do, Fon-Rahm.”
“I’ve been having nightmares,” Reese said. “About Duncan. He knows he’s about to die. He reaches out for me but I just push him away. Then we both get swept into Vesiroth’s energy field and right before Vesiroth kills me I wake up.”
“Duncan would have ki
lled you,” Parker said. “He wouldn’t have given it a second’s thought.”
“It doesn’t make it any better.”
“So what are we supposed to do now? Just pick up where we left off? Go to classes, watch TV, and pretend that we don’t know what’s really going on?”
“The war is over for us,” said Fon-Rahm. “My creator is vanquished and my connection to the Nexus is gone. Professor Ellison no longer needs our help.”
“But there are still lamps out there. There are still genies waiting to be released. When they get out…”
“When they get out someone else will have to fight them. It is up to us to simply live our lives as best as we can.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
“I don’t see how we have a choice,” said Reese.
Fon-Rahm nodded. “We will move forward and we will remember. Theo gave his life to protect us. We owe him that much.”
“If I had just one more wish I wouldn’t ask for anything for myself.” Parker stared into the inky black water in the quarry beneath them. “I would wish that Theo was still alive.”
EPILOGUE
THEO OPENED HIS EYES.
He was in a bed in what was clearly a hospital, but it wasn’t like any hospital Theo had ever seen before. The paint on the walls was peeling off and the equipment seemed like it was all fifty years old. He could smell mold. Sunlight came through a window, but Theo could see the iron bars outside the glass.
He threw back the sheets and swung his feet over the side of the bed. He was wearing his regular clothes. He gave the room a quick once-over and spotted his shoes underneath a green metal chair. He tried to walk over to grab them but his knees buckled and he fell to the worn-out floor.
“You shouldn’t exert yourself. I imagine you’re still quite shaken from your ordeal.”
Theo felt his blood run cold. Vesiroth stood in the doorway.
The seventh grader tried to force his legs to work. He fought to his feet and frantically wracked his brain for a plan. He had no magical objects on him and he didn’t have the strength to call on the power that had caused so much havoc at the Merrimack River. He wished he had paid more attention to Professor Ellison’s lessons.
“Still spoiling for a fight, are we?” Vesiroth said. “I do admire your spirit.”
Theo willed himself to stand and stumbled toward the window. Maybe he could pry it open and run to safety. He got to the glass and stared out. He was on the upper floor of a building set in the center of a field of ice. There was nothing to be seen for miles besides gleaming drifts of frozen wasteland. He was in the middle of nowhere.
“Where am I?” he asked, still staring at the snow.
“Siberia. I’ve been using this old hospital as a base of operations since my…reunion with the world. No one ever comes here. It was shut down when they discovered abnormally high radiation levels. Of course, I had the place thoroughly scrubbed. It’s perfectly safe.”
Theo didn’t feel safe. “What am I doing here? What happened?”
“You really don’t remember?” The scarred wizard strolled into the room and sat on the bed. His suit was impeccable.
“Of course I remember!” Theo frowned. What did he remember? His brain was buzzing. He was at Professor Ellison’s house, waiting for the war everyone knew was coming. They had some kind of a plan to trap Vesiroth. Something about a shield? No, a helmet…
“You put on the Elicuum Helm and you unleashed a power you couldn’t control. You destroyed your professor friend’s house. It was really quite a show.”
Theo put a hand to his head. Why couldn’t he remember?
“The Helm fractured and the resulting explosion tore a hole in the Nexus itself. Can you imagine it? You and I were absorbed into the very fabric of the most powerful force in existence. We were floating in the cocoon of the Nexus for days. It took all of my strength to find you and break us both free. We wound up in the Sahara, but you wouldn’t recall that. You were barely alive. I had agents of the Path come for us, and now we’re here. The two of us have survived something no one else in history has ever experienced. Not even the Elders were exposed to the very essence of the Nexus.”
“But…I tried to trap you. Why did you save me?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Theo?” A ghastly grin spread over Vesiroth’s scarred face. “The Nexus isn’t finished with us yet.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Heartfelt thanks to Eddie Gamarra, Eric Robinson, Jeremy Bell, and Peter McHugh of the Gotham Group, Valerie Phillips at Paradigm, Jim Garavente, Russell Hollander, Faye Atchison, Kevin Lewis, Polly Watson, Tyler Nevins, Tracey Keevan, everybody at Disney • Hyperion, the one-and-only Ricardo Mejías, and of course our friends and our families. Your love and support mean everything to us.
MICHAEL M.B. GALVIN and PETER SPEAKMAN have worked together for seventeen years. Galvin is a native of Syracuse, New York, and attended Ithaca College before moving to Rochester, where he lives with his wife, Chelsea. Speakman is a graduate of UCLA and lives with his wife and two children on the central California coast. Together they wrote Rebels of the Lamp, the first book in this series.
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