The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

century absolutely no one was worrying about the imminent release of the Pale Queen from the World Beneath, where she’d been imprisoned for three thousand years.

It’s always the thing you’re not worrying about that gets you. You’d think Mack would have realized that before most. After all, Mack suffered from a whole long list of phobias.

He had arachnophobia, fear of spiders. Dentophobia, fear of dentists. Pyrophobia, fear of fire (which was ironic considering he’d used a Vargran spell to turn into a sort of minisun while fighting Ereskigal at one point).

He had pupaphobia, fear of puppets; trypanophobia, fear of getting shots; thalassophobia, fear of oceans—which led fairly naturally to selachophobia, fear of sharks.

And as mentioned earlier, phobophobia, which is the fear of developing more fears.

The mother of all fears for Mack was claustrophobia, fear of small, enclosed spaces. Of being buried alive. Not that anyone would exactly enjoy that, but Mack could freak out just thinking about it.

But despite his close relationship with fear, Mack hadn’t known there was a Pale Queen about to be released from the World Beneath.

(By the way, if you know all this because you read the first book? You can skip this chapter and go to the next one. My feelings won’t be hurt.)

Mack’s part in that three-thousand-year-old story began when he was about to get the snot—excuse me, mucus—beaten out of him by Stefan Marr, King of All Bullies at Richard Gere Middle School. (Go, Fighting Pupfish!)

Just as the beating was scheduled to start, Grimluk appeared. Ghostlike. Special effects time. Booga booga.

Grimluk’s appearance froze time for a few seconds while he began to lay out the bad news for Mack. In effect, “Dude, you are one of a select group called the Magnificent Twelve. You need to drop out of school, assemble the rest of the Magnifica from the four corners of the Earth, learn this magic language called Vargran, and take down the Pale Queen when she emerges from her underground lair.”

Those weren’t Grimluk’s exact words. For one thing, Grimluk would never say “dude.”

Unfortunately Grimluk wasn’t able to sit down and have a nice long chat and explain everything since he could only appear briefly—usually in the reflective chrome surface of a bathroom fixture. So Mack had to operate on very limited information.

The golem that Mack discovered living in Mack’s room didn’t fill in too many details, either.

A golem, as you may know, is a sort of robot made of clay. The golem maker writes down an instruction and puts it in the golem’s mouth. Then the golem comes alive and does whatever the instruction says.

In the case of the golem in Mack’s bedroom, the message said, “Be Mack.” So the golem had done its best to look and sound like Mack. He might not be good enough to fool a really close observer, someone who really knew Mack well, but he fooled Mack’s parents.

Still, even with a golem, Mack didn’t go rushing off to save the world, not right away, because although Mack was open-minded about the whole ancient, smelly, Grimluk-manifestations thing, he wasn’t stupid. He needed more information before doing something reckless.

The “more information” came in the form of Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout trying to assassinate Mack by pushing a basketload of highly poisonous snakes into Mack’s house. And later, that same Nine Iron tried to run Mack through with a sword while Mack was taking a . . . um . . . utilizing the wall-mounted facilities in the boys’ bathroom.

Having escaped the snakes and the sword, Mack was set upon by two Skirrit, who invaded the school and tried to kill him. Skirrit are one of the evil races that obey the Pale Queen. Think really large grasshoppers walking erect. Grasshoppers or maybe praying mantises, possibly cicadas. Anyway, insectlike and as tall as a short man.

Clearly Richard Gere Middle School needed some new signage. They had a sign forbidding drugs, cigarettes, guns, and alcohol. They had another sign forbidding bikes, skateboards, rollerblades, and scooters. And a third sign forbade iPods, iPhones, and anything else “i.” They even had a sign proclaiming the school a nuclear-free zone and a peanut-free zone.

Which was good in case terrorists ever came up with a nuclear peanut.

But there was no sign forbidding Nafia assassins or evil insectoid species in service to the Mother of All Monsters.

Being almost killed by snakes and then chased into a limousine by the Skirrit definitely helped convince Mack to save the world. Plus, in the limousine was an elegant young woman named Rose Everlast, who worked for a very respectable accounting firm. Rose handed Mack and Stefan passports under fake names, and a credit card tied to a million-dollar account.

So, that’s where we are. Everything explained.

Except for Princess Ereskigal, known in Greek mythology as Persephone and in Norse mythology as Hel. Not a real popular person, whatever name she used.

Fortunately Mack had used some words of Vargran and turned Risky into burned toast. She was gone. Dead. Vapor. No longer a worry. A ghost. History.

Are you buying that? No?

You’re wise to be suspicious. Because Princess Ereskigal is very, very hard to kill.

Chapter Four

ABOUT A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, GIVE OR TAKE . . .