The Key (The Magnificent 12 3)

“Mmm-hhhh-nnn,” Mack moaned without realizing it.

What goes really badly with being buried alive?

Rats.

And something out there in the dark was making scritchy-scratchy little noises.

Scritchy.

“Mmmm-rrrr-nn

nhhh!” Mack said more urgently.

Stefan clamped a hand over his mouth about a millisecond before Mack was going to let go with a moan that turned into a kind of trilling scream.

“Mmmph!” Mack said.

“Yeah,” Stefan answered.

In a matter of seconds Mack was going to start squirming and thrashing. If necessary, Stefan would punch him in the head and either stun him or knock him unconscious. Neither was a great choice from Mack’s point of view.

“Here,” Sylvie said. They stopped, and in the sudden, profound quiet—the quiet of the grave, if I may—they could hear the sound of slow-moving sewer water and, ever more clearly, the sounds of rats.

Sylvie aimed her phone light at the wall. There was a slot. She stuck her hand in. And pulled on an iron lever within.

Suddenly bright light formed a tall rectangle.

“It’s me, Sylvie,” she said into the light.

And the rectangle grew until it was revealed as a doorway. They stepped into a room with tall stone walls. Also, a flat-screen TV mounted on one of those walls. It was showing an old Fairly OddParents cartoon. But everyone was speaking French. Even Timmy.

Two kids stood within that room, eyes wary, poised to fight or flee.

One was a tall, painfully thin boy with brown hair and a sharp-featured, handsome face. He wore stylish glasses and had the collar of his shirt turned perfectly to frame his jawline.

The other boy was shorter, a bit stout, with full lips and a look of interested but sarcastic intelligence about him.

“We weren’t really watching that,” Rodrigo said, pointing his male-model chin at the TV.

“Actually, we were,” Charlie said. “Because we only get the one channel down here. And no one thought to set the place up with books or games, so we’re going slowly out of our minds and we would watch anything, anything at all.”

“Except Jersey Shore,” Rodrigo interjected. “I’ll turn it off.”

“No!” Mack said, way too urgently. “No, no. It’s … soothing.”

Obviously Stefan had let go of Mack. Stefan had a pretty good grasp of Mack’s phobias by this point. He wasn’t academically gifted, Stefan, but he had a certain intuitive grasp of other people’s weaknesses. He got Mack. And so he knew that a well-lit underground room, especially one with a TV, was manageable for Mack. After all, no one ever got buried alive with a TV and Nicktoons playing.

Sylvie did the formal introductions. And she gave a brief explanation. “Long ago this was a secret place for people hiding from the king.”

“Which king?”

“All of them, really. All of them tried to kill their enemies.” Sylvie shrugged. “Kings. It’s what they do. Later they hid from the emperors. And various invaders. Most recently cheese makers have used it to hide from health inspectors from Brussels. And now, we use it.”

“How did you know you had to hide?” Mack asked, feeling the panic sweat begin to cool.

“A creature that fires tiny arrows out of its fingers shot me once here.” Rodrigo pointed to his left bicep. “And would have shot me many more places except that I jumped out of a second-floor window.”

“I wonder if those are Bowands,” Mack said wearily. He hadn’t seen them, just heard of them in one of Grimluk’s grim perorations.32