“I didn’t know what I was doing at first,” he says finally. “My father told me to get Legacy from Wonderland and bring them here.”
“Get kids?”
“Legacy kids. I didn’t think it was a big deal. But then it all started to go wrong,” he says. “There was some kind of mistake.” He is quiet then, and it seems the whole Scar is waiting for his answer. “Magic,” he says. “It turns out you can’t bottle it. At least, not yet. It turns out when you try, it fights back.”
“You’re trying to bottle magic?” The idea is so ludicrous I want to laugh in his face, but Lucas isn’t smiling. Then I realize. The person who could bottle magic would rule the world. And then I don’t want to laugh at all.
“Of course we are,” he says. “The whole world is in a race to find it and claim it. And what would you do, Mary, if you found out there was a whole lake of its concentrate right there for the taking?” His mouth lifts on one side. It’s almost friendly. “Miracle Lake truly is a miracle. And it’s not just for Legacy, either, or it won’t be. It’s going to be in pill form, accessible to anyone who can pay for it. People are going to be so rich, and there’s nothing we Narrows like better than watching the numbers in our bank accounts go up and up and up.”
He is so settled, so at peace with it. And that is so dangerous.
“Why did you bring me here, Lucas?”
He shrugs. “You were getting too close. Just like James. He and his merry band of idiots were on the trail. That’s why I brought him here, too.”
I start and he looks at me inquisitively. “Oh, you didn’t guess that, did you? He’s here and was nice enough to lend me his phone so I could invite you to Wonderland. But it’s already too late.”
“Too late? What does that mean?”
“It means he’s already been given the dose. I had to do it. I couldn’t get him to stop fighting. It works so fast.”
“Miracle is deadly,” I say, trying to fully understand what’s happening and perhaps distract him enough to get control of this situation. “It’s not magic.”
“Miracle is deadly to the skin. It’s deadly to the outside. People said Miracle was the blood of Wonder and they couldn’t have been more correct. Magic runs under this city, and Miracle Lake tipped us off. Taken internally in micro quantities, that water isn’t deadly at all. The bitch of it is, it only works on Legacy so far. That, and we haven’t figured out the right dosage. So it’s doing something to the people who take it. They’re becoming monsters, truly evil. Not evil in the human way. Evil in the magic way.”
Ursula. James. What if I’ve lost them forever?
“How do you undo it?” I say. “Tell me, Lucas. Let them go. I’ll fix it and we’ll leave you alone and you’ll never have to hear from us again. We’ll leave the Scar, whatever you want. Anything! Just please let them go.”
He looks at me, confused, then says, “You can’t. They will never go back.”
“Well, then, why did you bring me here? What’s the point?”
His eyes widen. “Oh, I thought you understood. I brought you here because I wanted to try a new dose. I think I figured it out.”
I look toward the mirror, wonder how strong it is. Ursula and Mally both beat the glass and it didn’t break. But I have to bust myself out of here before Lucas has the chance to give me whatever it is. Then I’ll figure it out. Someone in the Scar has the answer. The Scar knows magic. There has to be a way. I could be sharing a wall with Mally or Ursula. Can I bust myself through it? Ursula’s tentacle only slapped on the glass, but there was so much force behind it.
“There’s no stopping this,” Lucas says, guessing at my thoughts. “Don’t even try. The people in power want magic and they want it for themselves at a very high premium. There’s not going to be any solving of this case because they won’t stop until they have what they want.”
“Lucas,” I say, desperate, “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but you have the chance to fix this before it goes too far. Nothing is doomed yet. I don’t know how, but I know this can be fixed. All I need is for you to let me go.” I say this as gently as possible.
“Oh no, that’s impossible. If I let you go and you told them, they’d kill me. When there are billions of dollars and a global economy involved, not even being a blood relation will keep them from doing it.” He lets out a puff of air. “Even I know how I stack up against the power of money.”
“I won’t say anything, I promise. Not a word about you.”
He seems to think about this. His face softens and I think maybe I’ve convinced him, but then he says, “No. And anyway, it’s too late.”
“Too late?”
“I already gave you the first dose from the new batch. Let’s hope they did a better job with the formula than what I gave James. That one was a real mess.” He looks over at me, almost tenderly. “I’m sorry, Mary, for whatever is about to happen to you. Really I am. But you never know…Maybe I got it right this time.”
I try to lunge at him, but I’m so weak from whatever he gave me and my pounding skull, I fall to the ground in a heap.
“Give in,” he says. “Takes about ten minutes, then you’ll be…I won’t say fine. You’ll be whatever you’ll be. It will make this so much easier if you don’t fight.”
AS LUCAS EXITS THROUGH THE SLIDING DOOR, there’s a quick thump of impact, and his body slumps in the doorway, so the automatic door pushes at him repeatedly as it tries to close. My stomach cramps and my whole body hurts. I retch, but nothing comes out. I haven’t eaten since the bear claws this morning, and they were digested long ago.
I try to brace myself for whoever is coming in, but when Bella comes around the corner I almost cry.
“Oh, fairy dust!” Bella says. “This is not good.”
“Bella.” My voice is strangled. “Lucas…”
“I know. I saw it through the window. I even got to hear some of his villain monologue. It was riveting.”
“He…he…”
“Yes, he’s an enormous cow pie,” she says, hitching her shoulder under my arm to lift me. We exit the room and Bella takes the Taser thing from Lucas, who is completely unconscious.
“Who knows how long he’ll stay out,” she says. “We need to move.”
“James,” I say. “Ursula.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. We know where she is now. I went to Wonderland after you left. It took me a while, but some girl named Joanie or something—”
“Josey,” I say.
“Right. She told me she saw you getting in a car with Lucas Attenborough, and then the pieces started coming together. His father, Kyle Attenborough, has real estate dealings in the Scar. And then I remembered this building being under construction, how close it is to Wonderland. When I got here I could see there were only lights on one floor.”
“Bella,” I say breathlessly. “We need to set them free.”
Bella doesn’t say anything, only drags me down the hall toward the exit.
She stops suddenly. “Ursula,” she whispers. “Oh no.”
I look over to the cage that’s just coming into view. Ursula is in a giant pool of water that takes up most of the room. She’s inside it, and her hands are shackled by some sort of metal cuffs.
“Ursula!” I shout. My voice is coming back, my legs feeling a little stronger. I let go of Bella and stand on my own.
Ursula lifts her head.
“No,” I whisper.
Her eyes glow yellow. I can only see a shadow of the person who was once my best friend. When she opens her mouth, her teeth are sharp and she says, “Mary, is that you? Mary Elizabeth, please get me out of here. I need my hands! Give me my hands!” She pulls at her restraints. That snaps me out of my fear. Her voice is the same as it always was, recognizable as the same one that has comforted me and been by my side for most of my life. I don’t care what she looks like. I can fix it if I can just get us all out of this place. We just need to get out.
“Ursula, can you
hear me? I’m coming for you.”
Ursula grimaces. She lifts a tentacled leg and tries to climb out, but she can’t. The handcuffs keep her bound and in the water, hands separated. “I can’t move,” she moans.
“We’re going to help you.” I search for a latch, something, anything to get her out of here. “I’m trying, Urs.”
“Mary!” Bella calls. “I think I found something down here. There’s a button I think opens the cages.”
“Well, push it!”
“We need time to think about this. What if she’s not…you know…We don’t know what’s happened to her. To any of them. Maybe we should call for backup now. I think we should have people here before we do this.”
I shoot Bella the dirtiest look I can manage. “You’re the one who said not to tell them. You’re the one who said we couldn’t trust them. Who knows what the chief is up to? For all we know she’s in cahoots with Lucas’s dad. Ursula is my friend. If there’s something wrong with her, we can fix it. It’s not her fault they did this to her.” Before Bella can protest, I call out to Ursula, “I’ll be right back, Urs.”
“Mary Elizabeth,” Bella says when I get to her. She’s frozen and speaking carefully, but I can see the fear in her eyes. “I have to tell you something before you turn around, and I need you to remain calm.”
“What?”
That’s when I hear the slap of something against the glass behind me and I whirl around, ready to attack, and let out a cry.
It’s James, his head slowly pounding against the glass. His hands are cuffed with a long rod between them, keeping them apart.
“James!” I flatten myself against the glass, but of course even though our bodies are separated by less than an inch, I can’t get to him.
“Mary?” He stops and looks at his own reflection but as though trying to see past it. “That’s you? I thought I was dreaming.” He shakes his head. “Get us out, Mary Elizabeth. I don’t want to go in the chair.” He’s overheated, feverish with excitement. “No, no, don’t get upset, Mary. This is going to be fine. You should see what I got in the exchange. It’s amazing what you can discover, left to your own devices for a few hours.” His expression darkens. “But locking us up in here was a mistake. You need to let us out so we can get to safety, and then I’ll show you what I can do.”
“Hey,” a voice calls from the next cell down. “If you let us out, I promise you’re going to get the show of a lifetime.” The voice is measured, cold. It’s Mally.
I don’t want to leave James behind, so I keep a hand on the glass in his cage and move to where I can see her. Her horns have tripled in size since yesterday. She is wearing the same dirty pair of scrub pants, and her eyes are a swirl of yellow and purple. Her hands, too, are handcuffed apart. “Be a dear and let me out of here,” she says as though she’s asking for a cup of tea.
Hands. All their hands are held apart. I press mine together and think about James and the blue light and our kisses and the girl in the mirror at Wonderland and I think about going through the mirror.
“Go through,” I say. Blue light shoots from my hands into the glass, which dissolves like melted ice and pools at my feet.
“Did you see that?” I say. “Did you?”
“I did, baby,” James says. “This is going to be so good.”
I smile and let out a sigh. That felt good. Better than good. It felt really naughty.
“Mary, what did you do?” Bella says.
Just then, the door we came through opens and Kyle Attenborough rushes in with two men behind him. “No! They’re dangerous.”
“Perfect,” Bella says.
“James!” I scream. “You have to go get Ursula!”
Then Kyle and his men are on us and I am fighting as hard as I can. And I find that it’s a lot more than I could fight yesterday. I kick the gun out of one man’s hand and then punch and duck and swerve but feel something hit my chin and something else grab me by the back of the head. Now would be a great time for some kind of freaky thing to happen, like levitation and/or some sort of ability to stick my finger through solid objects such as monumental jerk face’s body armor, but I am a total panicking dud right now.
Bella slams the button and Ursula’s cage opens. Right behind her is Lucas with the Taser.
“Ursula, look out!” I yell, but it’s too late. Lucas has pushed the button.
Instead of Ursula collapsing like I expected, her hands are freed. It wasn’t a Taser at all.
It was a key.
I look at Lucas, who shrugs. “I’d rather have you win than him, I guess. You guys figure it out.”
Mally and Ursula run down the hall toward the men who are still attacking James and Bella and me. Ursula slaps her hands together and Mally and James are freed of their restraints. Now all of them slap their hands together. Blue light rises in orbs between their palms.
“Get away from my best friend, you morons!” Ursula raises her hands and Kyle flinches. Blue light flashes from her fingertips, and Kyle and his men are slapped to the side of the hall, bound by giant slithering eels. “Be good boys and stay right there until I tell you to move.”
“Boo,” Mally says. “I wanted to play, too.”
“Don’t worry,” James says, bringing up the rear. “We’ll have plenty of opportunity. Come on, we have to go.”
When I look up, Kyle Attenborough’s eyes are moving strenuously, but the rest of his body appears to be frozen in place and he’s moaning.
James’s arms wrap around my waist. “Freak out later. We have to go,” he says. Then, like he can’t resist getting the last word, he stands over Kyle. “You thought you had us beat, thought you could put us in chains and lock us up and forget about us,” he spits. “You would have killed us if you could. But you couldn’t, because magic doesn’t belong to cowards. It belongs to Legacy.”
“Let’s go.” Ursula is beside us now. “I’m not getting put back in that tank.”
More men burst through the door.
“They have the serum,” Ursula says, and sure enough one of them has a syringe in hand.
“There you go, Mal,” James says. “Just in time. Have at them.”
She swings her arms out and the men go flying, making hard thudding noises as they hit the wall. She makes a rising motion and the men get up like marionettes, doing jigs. They are horrified and helpless as their bodies are flung to and fro. “Fools,” she says.
“You’re magnificent.” The words slip out before I can stop them, but it’s true. She is really a sight to behold. And I would have thought she couldn’t get any more frightening.
Mally lifts her shoulders, standing impossibly straight. “I am magnificent, aren’t I?” She brews a new ball of blue between her hands and gives me a small smile. “I like that. Magnificent Mally F. Saint. Maleficent.” Her smile grows wider. “I think I’ll keep it. Maleficent. I like it. Now that’s a name.”
The men squirm, making helpless noises.
Mally or Maleficent or whoever she is pokes at the men with beams of blue that seem to zap them. They scream as their eyes fill with terror.
“Aw, it’s not nice to play with your food,” Ursula says, clapping. “Do it some more.”
“Ursula, what’s wrong with you?” I say.
“So much.” She lets her hands drop. “So much you have no idea.”
“Why don’t we have this discussion later? Right now it’s half past time to get out of here. This way,” James says, looking at his watch.
Ursula slops forward, her tentacles sticking. They propel her fast as a spider to a large metal door. She yanks and pulls the door off its hinges.
Then they’re gone, into the blackness, all but James, who grabs me around the waist, pulling me off my feet and dragging me into the darkness behind them.
“HEY!” I TRY TO SQUIRM OUT OF HIS GRASP, BUT JAMES is far too strong, and anyway, he’s whipping through this tunnel at a speed I could never get to. “Let go of me! Bella!” Last I saw her she was slumped in
a corner, and I don’t know what Kyle’s security henchmen are going to do to her.
“I don’t think you want me to put you down,” James says. “The spell is going to unbind any second now and you don’t want them shooting you with that stuff. You’ll be unconscious for days.”
We’re so far down the tunnel now the light has faded. It’s amazing how fast I’ve gone from being terrified I would never find James and Ursula to being terrified at what I did find. I lean my chin on James’s shoulder. No matter what’s happening to him, I know he would never hurt me. James comes to a sudden stop and Ursula says, “Now.”
James lets me slip from his arms. We’ve reached a door. As I recognize it, my breath shortens.
“Pull it together, honey,” Ursula says, giving me a harsh side eye. “This is not the time for a panic attack.”
In the space at the bottom of the door I see flashing lights, and I hear the thump of music.
“We’re at Wonderland,” I say, trying to keep from passing out with the effort of absorbing everything that’s happened tonight.
“How do you think they funneled everyone through to the lab?” Maleficent grimaces. “But don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, because we’ve got plans for them. Not much else to do in that glass prison besides make plans.” She flicks the huge metal lock and it disintegrates.
“Everyone is going to see you,” I say, too afraid to touch her but wanting to hold her back.
“We’re counting on it,” Ursula says.
James kicks and the door opens.
“Stop!” I hear. It’s Kyle Attenborough coming around the corner. “We can help you. I can undo this! I just need a little time.”
Ursula gives him one chilling smile before she slithers into Wonderland. The screaming begins right away. I can only imagine what the Legacy kids must be thinking, seeing a monster climbing the stairs on suction cups. The flashes of blue light erupt all around us.
City of Villains Page 20
