The Power (The Magnificent 12 4)

“Ti(ch) azor,” Xiao suggested.

“Okay, then all together, focused, all our power,” Mack said. “The spell will be, Exah-ma ti(ch) azor. Ilya, Hillary, and José, you’ve never done this before. So just focus all your thoughts, picture a hurricane, and repeat all together.”

“Exah-ma ti(ch) azor!”

Twenty-four

MEANWHILE, IN SEDONA

“You call this terrifying people?”

Risky had arrived without her usual fanfare, just walked up to the school. Or what was left of the school. Because Richard Gere Middle School42 was a very large heap of rubble.

Risky approved of the destruction. But she did not approve of the way people were standing around watching. She was quite frankly disturbed by the way someone had set up a hibachi and was cooking popcorn in a large kettle and selling it for a dollar fifty for a one-gallon Ziploc bagful.

“This is not terror,” Risky complained. “This is just destruction.”

The gole— er, Destroyer looked as sheepish as it is possible to look when you’re ten feet tall and incapable of facial expressions.

Risky stood with hands on hips and glared at him. “How many people have you killed or dismembered?”

“Urrrr,” the Destroyer mumbled.

“Do not stand there and tell me you haven’t killed or dismembered anyone,” Risky raged. She was shaking her finger in his face.

“Hey!” Camaro Angianelli arrived back from the popcorn stand. She set her popcorn down, cracked her knuckles, rolled her shoulders, stretched her Achilles tendon, and generally got ready for a fight. “You don’t yell at my boyfriend!”

“Your . . .” Risky was speechless for a moment. Then she laughed. It was one of those brittle, phony, forced laughs, not something that came from a deep well of inner mirth. Risky’s innards were mirthless. This was one of those insulting laughs. “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.” That went on too long. “Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho. You think he’s your boyfriend?”

“I know what he is,” Camaro said. “He’s the golem who’s covering for Mack while he’s off saving the world.”

The crowd that had gathered to watch the destruction included a number of Mack’s friends—his friends were for some reason especially enthusiastic about the destruction of the school. Plus, Mack’s parents had both just pulled up, gotten out of their car with the thought of stopping this destruction, and then been seduced by the smell of popcorn.

All these people—Mack’s friends and parents—all said various versions of, “What are you talking about? Mack’s not off saving the world.”

Camaro sighed, did a facepalm,43 and pulled out her phone.

“Do none of you people ever go on the internet?” She began loading Mack’s latest YouTube video. Which happened to be the one where he appealed to any hidden Magnifica out there.

She held it up and said, “See? Mack. This”—she indicated the Destroyer—“is a golem who has been covering for Mack.”

“Nonsense,” Mack’s father said. “We would have noticed.”

“Well,” Mack’s mother said, making a worried face, “he has been acting strangely lately. Remember how he started dripp

ing mud when you turned on the sprinkler?”

“Also,” one of the kids said, “he never used to be able to change size.”

Meanwhile on the tinny little speakers of Camaro’s phone, Mack was saying something in a very weird language. It sounded like, “Fla-ma ik ag San Francisco!”

Risky just shook her head in disbelief. “Seriously? You people are too dumb to be free. You deserve to be dominated by a ruthless overlord who will crush your pitiful spirits and turn you into terrified slaves who worship her like the goddess she is.”

When everyone looked puzzled, she said, “Me. Me, duh. That’s who you’re going to worship. Me. But first . . .” She sighed. “I swear, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

She began to change then. Her lovely, pale, barely freckled skin turned a deep red. From her slender body thick limbs protruded, seeming almost to rip out of her, or to grow like some sped-up tumor.

She fell from upright to sprawled-out and rose again on six insectoid legs. Mack wasn’t there to see it or he would have said, “Oh, yeah, that’s the firebolt-shooting thing from the causeway.”