The Key (The Magnificent 12 3)

Nessie didn’t notice right away. But it was hard to miss if you were watching in wide-eyed terror.

Then her toothy dinosaur jaw began to stretch and flatten.

That, Nessie noticed.

And she noticed the way her forward fin-arms melted and were then covered with feathers.

“That’s not rocks!” Xiao cried.

And Nessie’s rear fins spread wide and became leathery triangles. In fact, became the world’s largest duck feet.

In desperation she lashed her tail forward, snapping it like a bullwhip. But in midsnap the tail shrank and disappeared altogether.

The boat roared away as Nessie fell behind.

She was a duck. A very, very big duck.

“Oh,” Mack said. “Now I see it: the long rock is the body and the little rock is a head and … ah.”

Nessie, her eyes filling with horror and frustration, let loose a terrifying cry of hatred. “QUACK!”

Stefan slowed the engines when they were a few hundred yards away. Mack and Xiao crept into the shattered cabin to find a bloody but unbowed Dietmar and a battered but defiant Sylvie.

The shaken, drenched Magnifica stared in amazement at a duck the size of a cabin cruiser.

The fight was gone from the All-Mother.

Jarrah looked sidelong at Xiao and Mack. “Did you guys mean to turn her into a duck?”

Together Xiao and Mack nodded. “Yes. Absolutely.”

“Because?” Jarrah asked.

“Plenty of time to discuss that later,” Mack said. “Stefan,” he yelled up to his friend. “Take us back to the dock. We need a hospital.”

In despair, realizing now that she would likely never be free to wreak revenge, the duck-formerly-known-as-Nessie let go a pitiful quack of sadness.

And what is sadder than a sad, sad quack?

* * *

Fourteen

* * *

MEANWHILE, IN SEDONA, ARIZONA

The golem was sent home for largeness.

There had never been a kid sent home for largeness in the history of Richard Gere Middle School.21 Then again, no other kid had ever broken the Chair of Doom.

The office staff had called the school custodian to unbolt the desk and remove it from around the golem’s waist. It now lay in pieces. That was not the Chair of Doom, that was just the Desk of Disassembly.

The Chair of Doom was what kids called the chair placed directly in front of the assistant principal’s desk. It was the chair you sat in when you were in trouble and about to be expelled, suspended, assigned extra study hall, or, in a harsh punishment unique to RGMS, forced to endure an hour of hot yoga.

The golem had managed to wedge his largeness into the chair. But he had continued getting bigger as he sat there, and soon the arms of the chair pushed outward. And then the legs collapsed.

Then the golem jumped up out of the collapsed chair and smacked his huge head into the ceiling tiles.