The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

“America?”

“For the last nine years your mother has saved all her prize money from the County Grind Fair oat-cooking competitions, and we’ve now got the money to send you abroad.”

“Wait. She’s been saving up to get rid of me since I was three years old?”

“No, no, no, laddie. That’s just the first time she won any prize money. Lord love ye, we’ve been trying to get the cost of the ticket set aside since you were four months old and reached for your first meat cleaver. And especially since our farmhand Tommy O’Doul disappeared. By the way, you don’t happen to know where Tommy is, do you, laddie?”

“I categorically deny all accusations, and I refuse to answer any questions on the grounds that it may incriminate me,” Paddy said.

“Ah, you’ll do just fine in America.”

Which is how Patrick “Paddy” Trout came to leave Loathbog and County Grind and took ship for the land of opportunity.

Chapter Five

Back in Beijing, Stefan and Jarrah took a cab to the brand-new Nine Dragons Hotel.

It was a stunning hotel. Beautiful. Expensive. Swank. All those things. Mack woke up in the elevator, moaning and whining about blue cheese, so as soon as they got to their room, Stefan dragged him to the bathroom, turned the shower on, and tossed him in.

Mack showered using several cleaning agents: hand soap, bath soap, tangerine body wash, and shampoo. Then he started it all over again. And finally he felt clean of the awful blue-cheesy-guts stuff.

He emerged scrubbed and pink, swathed in a plush bathrobe, and far less likely to whine.

Jarrah had snagged a candy bar from the minifridge and was standing beside Stefan, who was looking out one of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“You know, you boys didn’t mention there was a crazy old loon trying to kill you,” Jarrah accused.

“I didn’t think he’d come after us,” Mack said. He flopped back onto the bed, which was amazingly soft. There were two beds in this room, and another bed in the adjoining room. “I thought Grimluk might have said something about a trap. It wasn’t clear. I thought I was imagining it. But I guess that was the trap.”

“The possibility of a trap is something you definitely want to mention,” Jarrah said. “Still and all, here we are, right as rain. No worries.”

Jarrah was a cheerful, optimistic sort of girl. Mack wished he could be like that. The cheerful, optimistic part, not the girl part.

Stefan was looking at the room service menu. “I can’t read this.”

Jarrah took the menu from him, flipped from the Chinese-language pages to the English-language pages, and handed it back.

“Huh,” Stefan said.

“That was weird, wasn’t it?” Jarrah said thoughtfully. “I mean, so I say these Vargran words, and stuff happens. I mean, that’s weird, right?”

Mack lifted his head. “Some people might think so. Like, sane people. They would think so.”

Jarrah took a thoughtful bite of her candy bar. “I mean, what’s weird is that I’d spoken Vargran before. While I was with me mum and she was working on the Uluru cave wall. We’d puzzle words out. But nothing ever happened before. Not like that. Not something supernatural.”

Stefan said, “It’s all Chinese food. Except the club sandwich.” He tossed the menu aside and turned on the TV.

“I think there’s some kind of match-up between the person and the things they can do with Vargran,” Mack said. “I don’t know. I tried Google, Bing, Wolfram|Alpha, all the search engines. There isn’t much about Vargran.”

“You think they’ll eventually shrink back? The Lepercons, I mean?”

This book is about Mack, not about me. I’m just his golem. So you don’t have to read this part. Unless you want to. Do you want to? Are you holding the book sideways so you can read it?

Are people staring at you because you’re reading a book sideways? Do you feel kind of silly? I feel silly a lot. Like the other day when it rained and my feet got wet and started dissolving. I was running late, so no time to stop and re-mud myself. By the time I got to class, I was walking on my knees. I felt silly. Also short. Then kids started screaming.

Mack nodded at the TV, which was showing a news report. It was an exterior shot of the airport. There were police cars and ambulances with lights flashing.

A small army of workers pushed wheelbarrows full of goo that looked a bit like soft blue cheese. Firefighters had hooked up a hose and were spraying down some very disgruntled-looking people and their luggage.