Dedication
For Ned
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Epilogue
About the Authors
Books by Chris Columbus and Ned Vizzini
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Brendan Walker knew this story wasn’t going to have a happy ending.
He stood on the beach near his home on Sea Cliff Avenue with his sisters, Cordelia and Eleanor, and stared out at San Francisco Bay. Not at the whole bay, but rather at the exact spot in the water where they had just seen their friend, a colossus named Fat Jagger, standing a few moments ago.
Cars were stopped on the Golden Gate Bridge. Several people peered over the edge, likely wondering if they had really just seen a massive, fifty-story tall, overweight version of Mick Jagger in the middle of San Francisco Bay, howling at the moon.
But it simply couldn’t have been possible. Fat Jagger wasn’t real, at least not in the same way that Brendan and his sisters were. Fat Jagger was just a character in an old novel by Denver Kristoff. Or so Brendan had thought. Then again, the Walker children had witnessed enough “impossible” things in the past few months to convince them that literally anything was possible.
Most kids would probably run away screaming if they saw a huge colossus wearing a loincloth rise up out of the ocean. Or at the very least, call 911. They certainly wouldn’t try to lure the massive giant even closer. But the three Walker children were definitely not like most kids. At least, not anymore. Not since they had moved into the Kristoff House and found themselves thrown into the magical world of his books—engaged in a seemingly endless battle with the evil Wind Witch, frost beasts, Nazi cyborgs, bloodthirsty pirates, and a variety of other horrors from the depths of the author’s imagination.
“Well, now what?” Brendan asked. “We could call my English teacher, Ms. Krumbsly, to lure him out. She’s still single and almost as big as Fat Jagger. They might make a cute couple?”
His younger sister, Eleanor, slapped his arm. “Bren!” she scolded. “Fat Jagger’s our friend! You should be nicer to him; he did save our lives a couple times. Ms. Krumbsly is way too mean—I wouldn’t even wish her on my worst enemies.”
“Yeah, I know, Nell,” Brendan said. “I guess what I’m saying is that we don’t exactly have a good plan.”
“Since when have you ever worried about having a well-structured plan in place before acting?” Cordelia asked.
She was the oldest of the three Walker kids at nearly sixteen, although she tended to sometimes talk and act like she was at least twice her age.
“Hey, I can make plans and be the leader sometimes too,” Brendan protested. His sisters just looked at him. They knew, as well as he did, that he was much better at making jokes.
The three Walker children were standing on the beach directly below the cliff upon which the Victorian, three-story Kristoff House was precariously perched—the same house that they would only be able to call home for one more night. Because after once again barely escaping from the fantastical book world with their lives, they had returned to a reality in which their father had managed to gamble away a ten-million-dollar fortune. And so the next morning they’d be moving back into a cramped apartment near Fisherman’s Wharf.
“Come on,” Cordelia said, pulling her coat closed to fend off the biting ocean breeze. “Let’s at least try to get closer to the bridge, in the vicinity of where he surfaced. Standing around talking certainly isn’t going to accomplish anything.”
Brendan and Eleanor followed Cordelia along the beach toward the bridge. There was still no sign of Fat Jagger.
As the three Walkers moved farther along the beach, they passed a homeless man with a long gray beard sitting in the brush at the base of the cliff. He watched them walk by, but said nothing. The moonlight seemed to make his eyes shine like diamonds in the darkness of the shadows. For a split second, Brendan thought it was the Storm King, which was what Denver Kristoff had been calling himself ever since The Book of Doom and Desire had corrupted his soul years ago.
But that book was gone now; Eleanor had banished it forever, using its own magic against it. And so was the Storm King. The three Walker siblings had seen him get hit and killed by a city bus outside the Bohemian Club in downtown San Francisco—killed by his own daughter no less, Dahlia Kristoff, aka the Wind Witch. But in spite of the online news article claiming his body had been buried in a nearby mausoleum under an assumed identity, Brendan wasn’t completely convinced that the crooked old wizard was actually dead.
“Fat Jagger!” Eleanor screamed, shaking Brendan from his thoughts.
For a moment, he thought the colossus must have reappeared. But Eleanor shouted his name again, calling out across the bay like she was looking for a lost dog.
“Fat Jagger, come out, we can help you!” Eleanor yelled.
Cordelia cupped her hands around her mouth and joined in. “Fat Jagger, we’re here now!”
“Come on out, Fat Jagger! I
t’s us, the Wallllk-errrrs!” Eleanor shouted, drawing out the pronunciation of their last name the way he always did.
“Nice Fat Jagger impersonation,” Brendan said as he looked around the beach. “Let me try.”
Brendan stepped up to the water and began to sing,
“If you start me up, if you start me up I’ll never stop . . .”
“Just because you were a rock star when we traveled to ancient Rome doesn’t mean you’re a great singer back in the real world,” Eleanor said.
“You’re just jealous of my sterling pipes, Nell.”
Eleanor didn’t bother responding.
A young couple jogging along the beach slowed and watched the three kids warily. They kept a safe distance from the Walkers as they passed.
The water lapped gently at the kids’ feet as they continued to shout, but there was still no sign of their friend. Several other people taking an evening walk on the beach were now looking at them with a mixture of curiosity and confusion.
“Guys, let’s take it easy with the shouting. People are going to think we’re a few noodles short of a spaghetti dinner,” Brendan said, borrowing one of his dad’s favorite lame jokes.
The first few times Dr. Walker used that line, Brendan had groaned. But after hearing it at every holiday and birthday party for so long, he had come to love it. Those had been simpler times back then, though. Back before the Walker family was in financial ruins, before they had gotten themselves tangled up in the dark magic and secrets surrounding Kristoff House. Back before the three kids had to spend their evenings on a beach trying to lure a fifty-story colossus named Fat Jagger out of San Francisco Bay.
“What are we going to do?” Cordelia asked. “Why won’t Fat Jagger surface again?”
“Maybe he can’t hear us?” Eleanor suggested, fighting tears. “Under all that water.”
“Maybe we never even saw him at all?” Brendan said. “Did we just imagine him?”
“You’re not helping,” Cordelia scolded. “We all know what we saw. Even if one of us imagined it, there’s no way we all did simultaneously. Three people don’t just randomly have the same hallucination!”
Brendan sighed. She had a point.
“Well,” he said, “we know Jagger can hold his breath for a really long time. So he probably won’t drown.”
“That’s right,” Cordelia said, turning toward Eleanor’s panicked face. “Remember? The first time we were sent into Kristoff’s books, Fat Jagger walked all the way across the huge sea to Tinz . . . just to save us.”
Eleanor nodded and took a few deep breaths, still struggling to fight back her tears. She didn’t quite know what it was about Fat Jagger that she connected with so much, but she had truly come to view him as one of her best friends, in spite of the fact that they’d never really had a conversation longer than one or two words.
“I mean, we could try to go fishing for him or something,” Brendan suggested, only half kidding. “We could use one of Mrs. Deagle’s cats as bait . . .”
“That’s horrible!” Eleanor shouted.
“But she’s got like twenty-seven cats,” Brendan said. “She’ll never miss one!”
“Not funny, Bren,” Cordelia chided.
“Sorry, comedy is in my blood.” Brendan shrugged. “I can’t just switch it off.”
“I would hardly call it comedy,” Cordelia muttered.
Eleanor wasn’t really listening to her older siblings squabble. She was lost in her own thoughts. And then the solution suddenly hit her—she knew how they could lure Fat Jagger out of the bay.
“I’ve got it!” Eleanor said. “I just need to get to a Safeway.”
“Nell, we can eat later,” Brendan said, but then put a hand on his stomach. “On second thought . . . now that you said it, I could go for a couple Lunchables.”
Neither Cordelia nor Eleanor had the chance to respond, because their mother’s voice called out from behind them.
“Kids, there you are!” she called. “Don’t sneak off like that; I’ve been looking everywhere for you three! Let’s get back home. Our plans have changed.”
“We can’t yet!” Eleanor said. “We’re, uh . . . not finished saying good-bye to the neighborhood!”
Eleanor knew she needed to buy more time to execute her plan to lure out Fat Jagger and get him away from the city, to head north up the coast where he’d be less likely to get spotted. She had seen enough movies to know that a colossus running loose in San Francisco would not end well. She could already envision Fat Jagger chained up and on display as a part of some sort of traveling freak show. Or even worse, swatting at fighter jets as they swooped in to destroy him.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, there’s no time!” Mrs. Walker said, crushing Eleanor’s hopes. “Things have changed and we need to move into the apartment tonight. The moving truck is waiting for us. We’re leaving right now.”
The Walker kids looked at each other with expressions that ranged from complete despair to outright panic. Their looks said:
Now what would they do?
How could Fat Jagger possibly stay hidden throughout the night?
Man, I could really use a Lunchable.
But they had no choice. Mrs. Walker clearly wasn’t going to allow any debate on the matter, and she already looked harried enough as it was. So they slowly followed their mother up the hill toward their street, Sea Cliff Avenue. Or, more accurately, their former street.
As they trudged up the steeply sloping hill, Eleanor took one last look back at the bay. That’s when she saw a disturbance in the water out near the center of the bridge. At this distance, it looked like a small ripple, perhaps just a swirling current, or a seal or dolphin. But she knew better. To her, the ripple had looked more like a pair of pronounced colossus lips poking out of the water to get another breath of air.
As they followed Mrs. Walker back toward the Kristoff House, the three kids lagged a few feet behind. Brendan and Cordelia were surprised to see Eleanor smiling.
“I just saw Fat Jagger poke his lips out of the water to breathe,” she whispered to them. “Which means I think he knows that he needs to stay hidden. If he can just stay out of sight until tomorrow morning, I have a plan to lure him out.”
“But what are we going to do even if we get Fat Jagger to shore?” Brendan asked dubiously. “Invite him over for a slumber party? Play Twister, make microwave popcorn, and then spill our most embarrassing secrets?”
“We could bring him to school!” Eleanor said excitedly, totally missing her brother’s sarcasm.
Brendan imagined Jagger rolling up the school bully, Scott Calurio, between his thumb and forefinger like a booger and then smashing him to the side of the school building.
“That would be pretty cool,” Brendan admitted. “Plus, he would absolutely crush it in lacrosse.”
Cordelia glared at Eleanor and Brendan, but before any of them could say anything else, their mom interrupted the conversation.
“Kids, there’s something else I have to tell you,” Mrs. Walker said, looking a bit nervous. “It’s certainly not going to be easy—but it’s for the best. It’s the reason we need to move tonight instead of tomorrow.”
The Walker kids stopped and waited anxiously for her to deliver the news.
“I know this will be hard for you, and it is for me too,” Mrs. Walker said slowly, her eyes looking red and tired. “But tomorrow morning, your dad is going away for a few days, or maybe even a few weeks. To a gambling addiction treatment facility.”
“Wait, Dad is a gambling addict?” Cordelia asked.
Guilt began to stir inside of her as she realized that her first thought was how this was going to affect her—what would people think? Would all the prestigious colleges she hoped to get into somehow find out that her dad spent time in treatment? Cordelia had always focused on her future, doing everything the “right” way and trying to be the best. But now she saw her dreams quickly fading in the face of this news. Did kids with addict fathers ac
tually get into places like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford?
“Dad is going away?” Eleanor asked, her voice breaking. The thought of potentially losing Fat Jagger and her dad in one night was more than she could stomach.
“Don’t worry, baby,” Mrs. Walker said, pulling an arm around Eleanor and trying to force a smile. “It’ll just be for a little bit, and we can visit him this weekend. And when he gets back, everything will be so much better. I promise. You kids are so strong and independent; you always have been. I know you’ll . . . we’ll get through this, together.”
“But what will we do for money?” Brendan asked.
“Brendan!” Mrs. Walker said, glaring at her son. “Is that all you can think about right now?”
Brendan hesitated, perhaps a moment too long, before finally shaking his head no, feeling bad that he was more worried about family finances than his own dad’s mental health.
Of course, there was always the Nazi treasure map they’d brought back from the book world. But that was a long shot. According to the red X on the map, the treasure was hidden somewhere in Europe. Which, the last time Brendan had checked, was a long way away from San Francisco. Plus, they still had no idea if the treasure would even be there in the real world at all. It might only exist inside one of Denver Kristoff’s fictional books.
“In the meantime, I am more than capable of taking care of our family,” Mrs. Walker continued, struggling to sound positive. “Which is why I will be starting a new job in the shoe department at Macy’s tomorrow.”
Just a few weeks ago the family lived in a beautiful Victorian home overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and had a ten-million-dollar bankroll. Now they were moving into a tiny apartment with virtually nothing to their name. Well, except the embarrassment that their father, Dr. Walker, had brought by losing his medical license and then gambling away all their money in just a few short months. The family still had that to their name, of course.
Brendan suddenly felt horrible giving his mom such a hard time about money. None of this was her fault, after all. She was the one Walker who was probably least responsible for any of the family’s recent and ongoing problems.
“Well,” Brendan said, “if you need your first customer, I’ve got some birthday money saved up. I always wondered what I’d look like in a pair of red heels.”
In spite of the somber mood, all the Walkers laughed. The sound of their laughter almost seemed to lift some of the darkness draped across Sea Cliff Avenue that evening. As if the moon had suddenly switched to a higher setting.
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