The Key (The Magnificent 12 3)

“That was both brave and self-sacrificing, Mack,” Xiao said, sounding a bit too surprised.

“Let’s get out of here,” Mack said. He was troubled. Jarrah was right, it had been easy. Too easy.

They passed their tickets through the ticket reader and found their way to the right platform. The light was cold and gray. The white tile was grimy. The only color came from large posters that followed the curve of the walls and advertised banks, tours, sneakers, and movies.

The train came in a whoosh of fetid air and screeched to a stop. Doors opened. Glum-faced people stepped off. Other glum-faced people got on, along with Mack and his friends.

The train was crowded—standing room only—which seemed odd this late. Maybe all the people were coming from some special event.

The six kids were soon separated. Mack found himself clinging to a chrome pole he had to share with four other hands. People pressed close around him as the train lurched away from the station.

Mack felt a hand touch his on the rail.

He moved his hand away an inch (or 2.5 centimeters since it’s France).

This time the hand—a delicate, pale, female hand—covered his. He followed the hand to the wrist. Then the wrist to the arm. The arm to the shoulder. To those eyes. Those impossibly green eyes.

“Bonjour, Mack,” Risky said.

* * *

Seventeen

* * *

MEANWHILE, IN MACK’S BEDROOM IN SEDONA

The golem lay on the wall of Mack’s room. He had never gotten entirely used to sleeping on the bed. Or horizontally. There was just something about lying flat against a wall that felt comfortable and right.

But this night he was having a hard time getting to sleep. He was tossing and turning, sometimes rolling all the way up to the ceiling.

The golem wasn’t a thoughtful creature.29 He didn’t normally lie awake wondering what to do about the deficit or pondering the nature of existence or wondering why any human being would willingly consume CornNuts.

He was not a philosopher, and those questions were beyond him.

But the encounter with Risky had gotten him thinking. There was something wrong about that girl. The thing she had done with the phone in his mouth … He hadn’t decided to shrink back to normal; she had sent a text and it had worked just like the scroll that Grimluk had placed in his mouth at the moment of his completion.

He still had the phone. It was sitting on his—Mack’s—desk. He wondered if she would ever call him.

He wondered if he would be able to resist if she told him to put the phone in his mouth.

He wondered whether he would have to become whatever she texted.

The idea was troubling. The golem furrowed his brow, a phrase he had learned in school. He furrowed his brow thoughtfully, and then became distracted for a while with the realization that furrows are what farmers form in the fields. They plant corn and soybeans and beets30 in the furrows. And should he try doing that with the furrows in his forehead? Would Camaro be impressed that he could grow tiny corn in his forehead?

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; Thinking of Camaro just made him toss and turn some more, and he finally got up and paced around the ceiling for a while. He had promised to be a “big boy” when she did something—he wasn’t quite clear on what—with Tony Pooch.

Now he was no longer a big boy. Although maybe he could become big again. He thought about testing it out, growing a little. But he was afraid to try. What if it didn’t work?

In some strange way, Risky taking him over had changed his outlook on life. He’d always been content to just “Be Mack.” Those were the words on the scroll, and he had never questioned them.

But now … now he had been forced to change, and that changing thing, becoming something different—even for just a while as he shrank—had broadened his outlook. It had introduced … possibilities.

If she called … he would try not to obey.

What a crazy thought! How could a mere golem refuse to obey the words of power placed in his mouth?