“For the Pale Queen,” Nine Iron croaked, and leaned forward. “And for my one true love!”
“Well, let’s give it a birl,” Jarrah said.
Chapter Thirty-three
Jarrah gave it a birl, which is Australian for “gave it a try.”
“Arb harid fie-ma!” Jarrah shouted.
And instantly nothing happened.
“Arb harid fie-ma!” Jarrah cried again.
And still nothing.
“My enlightened puissance is run down!” Jarrah cried. Which was a sentence she had never imagined she’d say. “Mack! You try it!” Jarrah shouted.
Nine Iron said, “Now ends the . . .” He paused, fumbled with his free hand for his oxygen line.
“What is it again?” Mack cried.
“Arb harid fie-ma!”
“. . . last hope of . . .” Nine Iron wheezed.
“Arg?”
“Arb!”
“. . . humanity!”
“Arb harid fie-ma!” Mack cried.
And Nine Iron shoved the blade into . . . Well, we’ll have to assume he shoved it into the ground. Because Mack was no longer staring up at a triumphant Nine Iron.
He was staring up at a tall, ghostly white woman with no eyes, mouth, nose, or hair. She had hands like flippers.
Mack blinked.
It was a mannequin.
A mannequin wearing a green dress and standing beside another mannequin wearing a purple dress.
Xiao was sprawled across a table piled with sweaters.
Dietmar stood nearby, blinking at the same mannequin as Mack.
Jarrah was still staring at her phone.
The four of them were in a department store. The women’s department.
Xiao quickly resumed her human form.
The store did not seem to be open. There were no customers. No clerks. And the lights were low.
It would take some time for them to figure out what had happened. The short version is: it’s best not to use magic words you don’t know very well.
Because what Jarrah had asked her mother for were the words to say “Restore my friend,” meaning “Return Stefan to his normal size.” That would have been Arb harut-ma.
Whereas harid is the Vargran word for store. Not re-store. Just store.
And of course, since she’d yelled at her mother that she had to go, her mother had texted back the word fie-ma, which as we all know is the Vargran form of the verb “to go.”
So what she had said in effect was “Friend store go!”
Her friend was now, in fact, in a store. All her friends were. They were all in a large London department store called Harrods. Which, to be fair, did sound a lot like harid.
We can’t really blame Vargran for any of this. And on the plus side, the proper Vargran words, properly pronounced, did restore Stefan to normal size.
With two careful, delicate fingers, Jarrah drew a butterfly-sized Stefan from her pocket and set him atop a soft silk scarf.
She dialed her mother back and said, “One more time, eh?”
Once the store opened, they were able to buy a shirt for the newly normal-sized Stefan.
Mack’s phone chirped for a text. He read,
Mack, what should I wear?
Mack frowned and said, “What?” Then he texted,
What?
And then the golem texted back the words that would strike terror into Mack’s heart even from a distance of five thousand miles, and even after all he had endured.
Camaro asked me if I know how to dance. I do know how to dance. All golems can dance. On the floor. On the walls. On the ceiling. In fact, we can detach our legs and let them dance all by themselves. I said, “Yes.” So she said, “Then you’re going to dance your feet off. Saturday night.” This worried me because as I mentioned earlier, I got into trouble when I came to school without feet. I decided to call Mack, but he didn’t answer. So I sent him a text.
2 the dance w/ Camaro. It’s Friday night and I don’t know what 2 wear.
Camaro wasn’t making the golem dance. She had asked him to a dance. Camaro had always thought Mack was cute, and now . . .
“Mack, you look pale,” Jarrah said.
“I’m dating Camaro,” Mack said with a whimper. “She . . . she’s built like Thor.”
What good would it be saving the world if he got home someday only to find himself in a relationship with Camaro Angianelli?
They all stepped out of Harrods onto the street.
They headed down Victoria Street, walking off the terror, walking off the ickiness, trying to get their wits together. Every now and then Mack would mutter “Camaro” in a despairing tone.
But that was a problem for another day. Maybe, Mack reflected, the Magnificent Twelve would fail, the world would be conquered, and he would never have to find a way to break up with Camaro.
For now, it seemed he would have to get to the tomb of William Blisterthöng MacGuffin. And then dig him up. Which oddly enough did not sound as frightening as dating Camaro.
As they walked, they exchanged solemn vows that they would never let themselves be caught unprepared in such a deadly mess again.
They agreed that they should instantly move on to locating MacGuffin. They agreed that once they did that, it would be time to really buckle down and learn all the Vargran they could. And really understand the enlightened puissance.
“Okay, so we’re agreed,” Mack said.
“Absolutely,” Jarrah said.
“We must find this second disk and study very hard,” Dietmar said. “We don’t know enough words.”
“And we don’t know all the rules,” Xiao said. “Why was Jarrah unable to use the spell, but it worked when Mack said it? Only by learning can we hope to survive.”
“And we have only thirty-three days left,” Mack said grimly.
But then they reached the river Thames and saw the massive Ferris wheel called the London Eye.
“Huh,” Stefan said.
“Cool, huh?” Mack said.
Dietmar said that they should very definitely buckle down and study, not go off to ride some silly Ferris wheel.
It would be very stupid to go and play when they should be learning, Xiao said.
So they blew off studying and crossed the bridge to the Ferris wheel.
Which did end up being a very, very stupid choice. But that’s another story.
The dance was not as much fun as I had hoped. Camaro had told me to wear something leather. So I wore two of the cushions from the sofa. Now I have triple detention. Also I have counseling sessions. Mack’s father told me I need to straighten up and fly right. So now I’m trying to find enough mud to make wings. I don’t want Mack to be in trouble when he gets home.
About the Author
MICHAEL GRANT has spent much of his life on the move. Raised in a military family, he attended ten schools in five states, as well as three schools in France. Even as an adult he kept moving, and in fact he became a writer in part because it was one of the few jobs that wouldn’t tie him down. His fondest dream is to spend a year circumnavigating the globe and visiting every continent. Yes, even Antarctica. Michael is the author of the bestselling Gone series. He lives in California with his wife, Katherine Applegate, and their two children. Visit Michael online at www.themichaelgrant.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Also by Michael Grant
Gone
Hunger
Lies
Plague
The Magnificent 12: The Call
Credits
Jacket art © 2011 by David McClellan
Jacket design by Amy Ryan
Copyright
The Magnificent 12: The Trap
Copyright © 2011 by Michael Grant
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to acc
ess and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grant, Michael.
The trap / Michael Grant. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (The Magnificent 12 ; 2)
Summary: Mack MacAvoy, an average-seeming twelve-year-old boy who happens to have special powers, travels to China in an effort to assemble an elite team of his peers to help him thwart the evil Pale Queen.
ISBN 978-0-06-183368-7 (trade bdg.)
[1. Fantasy. 2. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 3. Good and evil—Fiction. 4. Humorous stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.G7671Tr 2011
[Fic]— dc22
2010040580
CIP
AC
* * *
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062093370
11 12 13 14 15 LP/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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