The Key (The Magnificent 12 3)

The walls of Urquhart Castle were so close that Mack could see ants crawling up the rock when all of a sudden he was free of the rope and his arms spread and caught the wind.

The wind filled his wings and he soared!

His what now?

His wings!

It strained very muscle fiber in his body. It was like he was being stretched on a rack, but his wings took the wind, filled, shot him up, up, up past the wall, so close that the tip of his nose scraped the rock, and then he was up over the walls, up in the air, zooming up into the sky.

Up and up until momentum died away and he sort of hung there between acceleration and gravity.

Gravity gently tugged at him, and he began to fall. But his wings—they were like a seagull’s wings, actually, white and swept back, but as wide in span as the largest condor’s—held him aloft.

His feet were melted together and had sprouted a wide fan of feathers. The rest of him was pretty much regular old Mack.

He caught an updraft and swooped low above a crowd of utterly amazed faces, all turned skyward.

He would have liked to land, but no feet.

So he hovered in the sky, riding the thermal,18 floating on an updraft of warm air rippling up from the grassy field.

A girl with black lipstick dressed in black, white, and a few strategic accents of red, looked up at him and said, “Say, ‘Halk-ma simu (ch)ias!’”

So because she seemed to know what was going on, Mack said, “Halk-ma simu (ch)ias!”

And with that his wings folded in on themselves. And the feathered tail split again into legs.

Unfortunately he was still about twenty feet in the air, so he dropped like a stone.

Stefan leaped and caught him before he hit the ground.

“Dude,” Stefan said, and set Mack on his feet.

Mack’s legs felt like they might buckle. He had had a pretty bad twenty-four hours, really, and shakiness was natural.

“Thanks,” Mack said to Stefan.

“You’re alive,” Jarrah said with a satisfied grin. “Was it kind of cool?”

His friends rushed to embrace him. Even Dietmar. And after some backslapping and whatnot, Mack disengaged and went to the goth girl.

“You saved my life,” he said.

“Oui,” she said. Which is French for “yeah.”

“You’re one of us,” he said.

“Yes, I am.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sylvie Zola de Rochefort,” she said. It was a lot of name for a girl who wasn’t very big. She was definitely smaller than Jarrah and even smaller than Xiao.

Her black hair was cut to chin length. Her eyes were dark and somewhat sad-looking. Her lashes were absurdly long and curved up to add a quizzical air to the sadness. Her skin was naturally pale—she didn’t seem to be wearing goth or emo white makeup. But her lipstick was black and her fingernails were bloodred.

“My name is Mack. This is Jarrah, Xiao, Dietmar, and my friend and bodyguard, Stefan.”

“Good catch, friend and bodyguard,” Sylvie said to Stefan.