The Key (The Magnificent 12 3)
“The phones,” Mack said, his voice hard.
A fairy hand pushed a burlap bag out of the door, then withdrew.
The door slammed shut.
Mack turned to the somewhat disappointed tourists. “Listen, folks: we’ve got what we came for. We have to go. But you can all stay and drive that guy crazy.”
No one likes a spoiler, but no one likes a story that skips over an interesting development, either. Mack and the Magnifica have to move on. But just so you know: within a few days MacGuffin had cracked and opened his castle for regular tours. In fact, he was making a pretty penny from a gift shop that featured William Blisterthöng MacGuffin dolls and a recording of MacGuffin’s craziest rants.
Connie appeared in the background of a YouTube video but was never seen by the public. The rumor is that she moved to Ireland to avoid Frank’s revenge.
As for Mack, he would be going to France. Why? Because Sylvie said, “There are two others like us, Mack. They are hiding in Paris. I risked everything to join you so that you and your friends might save them.”
“Save them from what?” Mack asked.
“They have all come to Paris, Mack, all the forces of evil. They knew there were three of us who had gathered there, so they came to Paris to kill us and leave you powerless to complete the Twelve.”
“When you say, ‘They have all,’ what do you mean by that?”
“The Tong Elves. Bowands. Skirrit. They say there is even a Gudridan—a giant—and maybe more. All under the command of two people: the man in green and his apprentice—he who is the twelfth of us.”
“Valin?”
“Yes,” Sylvie said. “My half brother, Valin, the twelfth of the Twelve.”
* * *
Twelve
* * *
Sylvie had a short and emotionally repressed parting from her grandparents, who apparently understood that she would have to be gone for a while saving the world. There were shrugs, a few small hand gestures, and they did the kiss-kiss-on-the-cheeks thing.
The now–Magnificent Five plus Stefan crammed back into the car and drove with their usual destructiveness—two sideswiped cars, a crushed stop sign, and a young woman on a bike who had to plow into a ditch to escape injury19—to reach the Clansman Hotel, where a boat could be found to take them out onto Loch Ness itself.
Normally the boat would take a whole load of tourists, but the tourists were all still busy at Castle Blisterthöng—as it would come to be known—so Mack and his friends had the boat to themselves.
The captain was extremely reluctant to allow them to stop in the middle of the loch and use his megaphone to begin shouting at the water. But, as you may recall, Mack had a million-dollar credit card and, again, it’s kind of amazing what you can get people to do when you have that much money.
Boat rental: 500 GBP.20
So the boat, HMS Heather Lochlear, stopped and wallowed in the midst of Loch Ness. It’s a fairly narrow lake—you can see both sides at once—but quite long, so you can’t see end to end. They could see Urquhart Castle quite clearly and Blisterthöng Castle beyond—a sight that had the captain losing his meerschaum pipe into the water when his jaw dropped in amazement.
He had a bit of the enlightened puissance, the captain had. After all, you don’t spend your life floating around and looking for the Loch Ness monster without possessing a powerful imagination.
After seeing the castle that had never been there before, the captain was very cooperative.
Mack had no clear idea how to let the All-Mother, aka the Loch Ness monster, know that he had the two pieces of the Vargran Key in his possession and was now ready to free her from the curse that had been placed on her.
If you think about it, talking to a sea serpent whose very existence is in doubt is not an easy proposition.
So he borrowed the captain’s megaphone, climbed out onto the very tip of the bow, and yelled, “All-Mother. I have what you need!”
When that didn’t work, he yelled, “Frank the fairy sent me!”
Which also didn’t work.
“Her names,” Dietmar said. “Frank told us her names. Maybe they have the power to summon her.”