The Specter Key

by Kaleb Nation

  “Blasted burning!” Polland yelped, sucking on his finger. “That’s probably it then. All this while, that key’s been the cause. You can pick it up but we can’t?”

  “Then your mother meant for you to get that key,” Adi realized. “Why else would she put that magic on it?”

  “But what is it?” Bran stammered. There was something more to the key, something beneath the surface that was pulsing with power and yet sedated and quiet at that moment. He understood that the box itself had never been cursed, for as it lay next to his knee all power seemed to have vanished from it. He knew there was something inside this key, some deep magic that hissed in his ear every time he looked at it.

  “I just don’t know what to do anymore,” Bran said. He set the key down, and they stared at it. He felt as if he had taken a step forward only to be thrown ten steps back. But he wondered just how lost he really was.

  “There’s a door, somewhere,” Bran said, “and this key fits its lock. That door has something to do with the Specters or where they’re trapped or something.”

  He shook his head. “Whatever it is, I’ve got to find out. What if I could speak to them, do something to convince them to give Astara back? Shouldn’t I have some way with them, since it was my mother who had power over them?”

  “Bran, you don’t even know if they can give her back,” Adi said quietly. “This is deep, dark magic here. The vision you saw might have not even have been Astara—it could have been your imagination or these Specters simply using her to lead you to them so they can take you as well. Even going any nearer to them could mean your death, with little hope at all of finding her.”

  “But it’s all I have to hold on to,” Bran said. “I can’t just give up now. It’s my only chance of getting her back. And if I don’t do it, I’ll never be able to forgive myself for not going after her—because she would have gone after me.”

  He looked at Adi, wishing to convince her. “Is there anyone who can help me, Adi?” Bran pleaded. “I just don’t know the magic, I haven’t learned enough. But there’s got to be someone who knows about this.”

  She couldn’t meet his eyes for more than a moment, looking torn between two parts of herself that argued for and against letting him go on. She looked at Polland, but he only shifted his gaze down. Finally, one part of her seemed to win out.

  “All right, then,” she whispered. “If you want to go on, I know someone who can find the door that matches that key.”

  Part II

  Chapter 19

  A Flight to East Dinsmore

  Before dawn the next morning, Adi shook Bran awake.

  “It’s time to go,” she told him, and he got out of bed without a word and got dressed. His hands shook as he zipped up the front of his jacket; it was still mid-August, but Adi had told him he would need it where he was heading. He carried his bag down the stairs. The strange key and his mother’s wand were both in its front pocket, so they were close at hand.

  Adi pulled out of the driveway and headed off toward Deeper Dunce, which was what many Duncelanders called the bustling and busy downtown region. It was misty and cool that morning, and the sky cast a dreary atmosphere over the city.

  “He’s my brother,” Adi finally said, breaking the silence. “He lives off the coast of East Dinsmore, in a place called Elsie Island. It’s a short flight from here, and you’ll have a driver take you from the city to his house.”

  “And does he have experience with things like this?” Bran asked. Adi smiled halfway.

  “With keys?” she said, seeming amused. “Bran, I don’t think there is anyone on this planet who is better suited to solving your dilemma than Gary.”

  Gary, Bran repeated the name in his head. He hadn’t known that Adi had a brother.

  “Is he a mage?” Bran asked.

  “He is,” Adi replied. “And a far more powerful one than I will ever be.”

  “You never told me about him.”

  “I haven’t spoken to him in many years,” Adi said, with a sigh. “In fact, he’s been entirely cut off from the outside world for over fifteen years now.”

  “Fifteen years?” Bran said with dismay, as Adi switched lanes. “He does know I’m coming though?”

  Adi shook her head, and Bran laughed. When Adi did not laugh back, he realized that she was actually being serious.

  “No, really?” Bran asked.

  “No, really,” Adi said with a strong nod.

  “How do you even know he still lives there then?” Bran said with panic.

  “Don’t worry, Bran,” Adi said. “He wouldn’t have left that house. He will be there when you arrive. And he will surely help you when he reads my letter.”

  At this, Adi removed from the pocket of her door an oversized red envelope with a thick, silver seal on the back holding it closed.

  “What’s in it?” Bran asked.

  “Just a few things Gary needs to know about you and the key,” Adi said quickly.

  “Can I read it?” Bran questioned. Adi shook her head.

  “It’s just something for my brother—there’s no need for you to pry into it. The seal is magic too, only Gary can open it,” she said, and the tone of her voice only made Bran all the more curious.

  “But trust me,” she went on, “he’ll take you in when he reads it.”

  Her words were meant to reassure him, but to Bran they sounded foreboding and made the envelope seem heavier when he took it. The seal bore a faint image of a crow with its wings outstretched as if about to take flight.

  “You’ll also need this,” Adi said, cautiously handing him something else. It was a business card but unlike any normal business card Bran had seen. In fact, though it was on very plain, solid black card stock, there were no words or contact information on either side. However, in the center of the card was a silver, embossed image of a crow. Bran softly touched the raised image, and the crow faded to black so that it was invisible, and behind it the gray image of a large key, spanning the card, appeared, as well as the single word: Gary.

  Bran removed his thumb, and the image returned to normal.

  “Do not lose that card,” Adi said. “It is your passage to, and into, his house, and without it there could be very dire consequences.”

  Bran didn’t really know how to reply to that. Adi exited the highway at a sign that pointed them toward the Hintons O’Guincy Airport, and a bustle of cabs and buses surrounded them, even so early in the morning. Adi instructed Bran to go through lane three in security and to quietly tell the woman working there that he had spiders in his bag—which, obviously, was some type of code to this security officer, a secret cohort sympathetic to the Mages Underground.

  “She’s helped us before, getting in and out,” Adi said. “She’ll make sure you don’t get caught up there with anything you’re carrying. If there’s any trouble at all, have her call me.”

  Bran nodded, and Adi seemed to hesitate, even as Bran slid out of the car and set his bag on the sidewalk. She stood across from him, trying to gather her words.

  “You know Astara means much to me as well,” Adi finally whispered, her voice unheeded by the passerby.

  “I know,” Bran nodded.

  “I’d go with you if I could,” Adi said, with a tinge of guilt. “I really would. But if I leave this town suddenly, especially after what happened on Bolton Road, it won’t just be the police who might notice, but the Mages Council—and I think it best we keep them out of this for now.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” Bran replied. “I’ve got to do this myself.”

  “But if you don’t get anywhere, Bran,” Adi said, “I don’t want you to feel bad either. We don’t even know if there is any chance of you getting Astara back, you know.”

  Bran shrugged. “But if I don’t try at all, I’ll regret it the rest of my life.”

  His words quiete
d Adi, so that she said nothing more but only gave him a hug and got back into the car, leaving him to go on alone.

  ***

  Bran made it through the airport with no trouble, going into the correct lane as instructed. He made it to his plane just as the final group was boarding.

  His seat was the farthest in the back of the plane, and he began to feel a bit nervous as he walked down the aisle, and the walls seemed to curve in a bit too closely over his head. At least it wasn’t as tight as a dumbwaiter compartment, but Bran still couldn’t help his minor claustrophobia. To his relief, he found that no one would be sitting beside him. He placed his bag under the seat in front of him and then unzipped the top pocket carefully. Nim was inside, in a small glass jar with no lid just to keep his things from accidentally crushing her, and she looked up at him excitedly when his face appeared.

  “All right?” he whispered at her, and she nodded.

  “Takeoff is soon,” he said. “We’ll be on our way.”

  He heard someone cough loudly and looked up to see two men in ripped shirts across the aisle from him staring in his direction. Both had muscles so big that their arms looked like strips of skin with baseballs stuffed underneath, and they had matching bleached hair and coppery artificial tans.

  “Do you have someone in your bag?” the nearest man asked, twisting his face up.

  “Um, no,” Bran said. Both men blinked.

  “Where you heading?” the other asked.

  “Elsie Island?” Bran stammered, not sure he remembered right. Both of them laughed.

  “Oh really?” the first said with a snort. “Elsie Island? Good luck getting there, buddy.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Bran returned, already disliking these fellows. They chuckled.

  “You can’t get to Elsie Island,” the second man said. “It’s got rocks all up and down the sides. What boat are you going to take to get down there? No one’ll do it.”

  Bran blinked, for he had no idea. Adi had simply told him that someone would be waiting for him at the airport when he landed.

  “See, he’s stupid,” the first man said, jabbing a thumb toward Bran. “Talking to his bag, and doesn’t even know where he’s going.”

  Both of them started to laugh as if this was the funniest thing they had ever heard, and Bran chose that moment to zip Nim back into the bag while they were distracted.

  It was still so dark outside that when the pilot turned off the overhead lights, everything was immediately engulfed in darkness save for a few night lamps. As the plane taxied to the runway, they started playing one of the propaganda videos the mayor had created specifically for flights originating in Dunce: the one about how gnomes could get into the engine, put ice on the controls, and subsequently down the plane. It was followed by an assurance that the Dunce Airway Patrol was always on the lookout but that if any citizens saw a red isosceles triangle during the flight, they should report it to the flight attendant, as opposed to firing off a volley of bullets in its general direction.

  As the plane climbed into the sky, Bran watched the city of Dunce disappear below. It was a breathtaking sight to behold. He watched all the sparkling lights from each little house and streetlamp. For a few moments, he was able to spot one of the larger streets that he took often to get to the bank, and he shifted his gaze and caught the Givvyng Tree, towering on the landscape below like a point on a map. A few minutes later, the pilot announced they had crossed the border of Dunce, and immediately two midgets who had been riding a few rows ahead flipped off their jacket hoods and popped on a pair of red, conical hats they had been hiding in their bags. They clapped their hands and chuckled at their clever escape from the city, while still making their Sevvenyears—the custom that required every gnome to visit the Givvyng Tree within the walls of Dunce every seventh year of their lives.

  The two men across the aisle from Bran were jointly furious.

  “Hucksters!” Bran heard one grumble lowly. Bran turned to look.

  “Hucksters, the whole lot,” he grumbled at Bran. “I knew they were gnomes! Sneaking into our city and then just waltzing out! Hucksters, all of them.”

  “Well, you don’t have to call them that,” Bran said. “I mean there are probably kids on this plane who can hear you.”

  “So?” the other man said, his lips twitching up. “They’re still hucksters whether the children hear it or not. Hucksters!”

  “Excuse me, sir,” the flight attendant came around the corner from the back kitchen. “Please watch your language.”

  Both men only became more incited by this and even more bent on using the derogatory term for gnomes as loudly as they could. “How can you let those vile hucksters on the same plane as us?” the first protested. “Don’t we have laws against this?”

  “We aren’t in Dunce anymore,” Bran hissed at him, trying his best not to cause a scene, though the men were doing very good jobs of it all by themselves.

  “Well, I don’t like this plane!” the other man whined at the attendant. “All these hucksters. I can’t even breathe without smelling huckster! I demand you let me off this instant!”

  “Well, I think the emergency exit is that way,” Bran pointed, feeling angrier. “Make sure you hold on to your seat cushion.”

  They glared at Bran for a minute, but Bran was not about to relent and had to restrain himself from doing something rash. They finally gave up, grumbling and muttering low enough so that Bran couldn’t decipher their words.

  Bran was finally able to settle back into his seat and saw that the two gnomes ahead of him had been watching, and they sent a little wave his way in thanks. One was a man, who had the usual beard, and the other was a woman, who had dark red and brown hair and a thick book in her hands.

  He made himself rest and awoke later with no real sense of how long he had been asleep. The plane had become colder, and he reached to take his jacket out of his backpack to use as a blanket. He found a sleeve and pulled it out—but as he did, something else came with it and fell right into his lap.

  It was a little, black ball that looked like one of Balder’s toys. He studied it in confusion, and as he turned it over, he saw that the surface of the ball was broken by a small, thick antenna sticking out like a miniature sail.

  “What…?” Bran said aloud. He hadn’t put that in his bag. He turned it over again but still didn’t recognize it.

  “It’s a GPS tracking device,” he heard a sharp whisper to his left. There was an elderly businessman in a suit across the aisle and one seat ahead from him, with a pair of headphones in his ears and a pillow against his neck.

  “A what?” Bran whispered back. The man nodded.

  “That ball there,” he said. “It’s connected to a computer somewhere on the ground. It uses satellites to tell them where you are.”

  Bran jerked his gaze back to the ball immediately, feeling his breath torn away. Someone was following him! But how? He couldn’t even fathom a single instant where anyone would have had a chance to place something in his bag since the night before.

  “I have one just like it, in my car,” the man went on. “If it gets stolen, all I have to do is go on a computer, and it tells me exactly where it is.”

  “But why…?” Bran said with confusion. The man shrugged.

  “Maybe your parents want to keep up with your whereabouts,” he said, leaning back and closing his eyes again. Bran was nearly petrified in shock. Sewey? Mabel? Wanting to know where he was going?

  Realization hit him before his previous thought had even finished: It wasn’t the Wilomases. It was Thomas.

  Chapter 20

  Oswald and His Cab

  The thought was so sudden and startling that Bran could only stare at the device. He shook his head. Thomas had left him there at the Nigels. His father didn’t want to see him. Why in the world would he put a tracking device into his bag?


  The answer came to Bran, so obvious that he knew he should have guessed it before. Back at the hotel, Thomas had only been acting like Bran didn’t matter to throw him off. Thomas was still following him.

  He’s got something planned…Bran realized, and a slight amount of anger rose up within him as he thought about it. Was his own father going to use him as bait yet again? He immediately felt as if he had been betrayed another time, and it caused him to despise the very thought of Thomas even more.

  He wasn’t about to let him get away with it, though, and now that he knew what was happening, he was intent on doing anything in his power to foil Thomas’s plans. Holding the tracking ball in his fist, he looked about for someplace to discard it on the plane. As if on cue, one of the rude men in the row across gave an enormous, plane-rattling snore. Bran checked the other passengers quickly, making sure no one was watching, and then deftly tossed the ball into the man’s open bag. Bran silently hoped the men were transferring flights to some faraway island and would lead Thomas on a wild chase across the world.

  He had gotten rid of the tracker just in time, for the pilot announced over the speakers that they were about to land in East Dinsmore. The plane rattled, and the rude man fell over, coming to in a fit of swearing. He glared at Bran, then glared at the other passengers, and then glared in the general direction of every other person in the world.

  “Sleep well?” Bran asked cheerily, thinking of the even grander annoyance the man was about to get when Thomas finally caught up with him.

  They landed, and Bran made his way with the other passengers into the bustling airport. The crowds were so varied and different, with red gnome caps poking out intermittently. It reminded Bran of Farfield, where he had first seen gnomes in public, though even here he could see a very obvious separation between the peoples: the humans kept three or four empty seats between them and the groups of gnomes. As he walked down the busy terminal, he saw that many of the restaurants had special sections set aside for people and gnomes, with signs pointing out which was which.