The Curse of the King Read online

  Feeling more comfortable, I began pacing. “Okay, let’s think about this. The intervals are irregular. Always have been. We know that.”

  “Yeah, but the older we get, the closer they should be,” Cass said.

  I couldn’t argue that. Professor Bhegad had warned us exactly that would happen as we neared the Day of Doom.

  Closer. Not farther away.

  “I think it’s the shards,” Cass said. “Remember, it was the Loculus of Healing. It was supposed to restore life to the dead.”

  “You mean shard,” I said.

  “Shards.” Cass shrugged. “I took one, too.”

  I looked at him. “You did? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think it was important,” Cass replied. “I just took it as a souvenir. It’s not as nice as yours. No designs or anything. I thought it was just a busted, useless piece of junk. But now . . .”

  He went to his desk and pulled open a drawer. From the bottom he took out a hunk of material maybe three inches long, wrapped in tissue. “It’s kind of ugly.”

  I heard a rustling noise from my pile of junk on my desk and jumped away.

  Cass dropped the shard. “Whoa. Did you bring in a mouse?”

  The rustling stopped. I darted my hand out and pushed aside some candy wrappers. No critters there.

  Just my shard.

  “Pick it up, Cass,” I said softly. “Your shard.”

  Cass swallowed. He lifted the little disklike thing from the floor. On the desk, my shard began to twitch like a jumping bean. “Whoa . . .” Cass said.

  I leaned over, peering closely at my shard, then Cass’s. “They’re not two random pieces,” I said. “It looks like they may have broken apart from each other.”

  “It feels warm,” Cass said.

  “Hold the long side toward me,” I said.

  As Cass angled his arm, I reached out to my shard and turned it so its longest side faced Cass’s.

  “Ow—it’s like a hundred degrees!” Cass said.

  “Hold tight!” I said.

  I felt a jolt like an electric current. As I pulled my fingers away from the shard, it shot across the room toward Cass.

  With a scream, he dropped his relic and jumped away.

  Bluish-white light flashed across our room. As Cass fell back on the lower bed with a shriek, the two shards collided in midair with a loud DZZZZZT and a blast that smelled like rotten eggs.

  Flames shot up from the carpet as the pieces landed. I raced to the bathroom for a glass of water and doused the small fire quickly. I could hear Dad yelling at us from downstairs.

  But neither Cass nor I answered him. We were too busy staring at what remained in the singed, smoking patch of carpet.

  Not two shards, but one.

  They had joined together, without a seam.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ALY-BYE

  “WAIT, THEY JUST flew together and joined in midair,” Aly said, “like snowflakes?”

  Her hair was purple now, her face pale on my laptop screen. Belleville, Indiana, may have been overcast, but the Los Angeles sunshine was pouring through Aly’s bedroom window.

  “It was more like massive colliding spacecraft,” Cass said. “Only . . . tiny. And not in outer space.”

  I held up the joined sections. Together they formed one larger shard. “You can’t even tell where they were separated.”

  “That’s awesome,” Aly replied, as her face loomed closer to the screen. “Absomazingly ree-donculous. It means that—” Aly turned away from the screen and let out a loud sneeze. And then another.

  Cass’s eyes widened. “Are you okay?”

  “A cold,” Aly said.

  “Because Jack and I were wondering, you know, about the treatments,” Cass went on. “It’s been a while since your last episode . . .”

  “It’s a cold, that’s all,” Aly said, clacking away at her laptop. “Let’s get down to business. I’ve been doing research. Tons. About the Seven Wonders. About Atlantis.”

  “Why?” Cass asked.

  “Because what else am I going to do?” Aly said. “I know you’re feeling bad, Cass. But I refuse to give up. We start by trying to get back in touch with the KI. They’re lying low, but I’m betting they’ll want to be in contact with us. Which means we need to protect our alibi. So I pretended to be, like, an evil spy searching for clues to break our story. All kinds of things didn’t add up. That doctor friend of your dad’s? His employee records showed he was in Mexico the day he supposedly treated Cass. And the convenience store where Marco was last seen? Its video feed showed a seven-foot-tall, red-bearded barefoot guy who bought three peanut butter sandwiches and a dozen doughnuts. The owner was suspicious, so he sent the feed to the local cops, who ran a primitive facial ID scan. They came up with three hundred and seven possible suspects. Including one Victor Rafael Quiñones.”

  “Who’s that?” Cass asked.

  “Tor from Victor, quin from Quiñones,” Aly said. “I’m figuring Torquin is a nickname.”

  “Wait. His name is Victor?” Cass said.

  “So of course I deleted the footage of Torquin from the FTP servers,” Aly said. “Even the backups. And I altered the doctor’s hospital records, too. I even hacked into his Facebook account and deleted the pictures of Mexico. I am covering our tracks so the alibi is clean. But the point is, I can’t do everything. Things can go wrong. What if there are off-line copies of the originals? Arrrrrghh!” Aly shook her fists in frustration. “Okay. Okay, Black, stay calm and hack. I will try to locate Torquin or anyone who seems connected to the KI.”

  “Is that possible?” Cass asked.

  Aly shrugged. “Anything’s—” She broke off in a fit of coughing, swinging away from the screen. All we saw now was her bookcase.

  “Aly?” Cass said.

  Something thumped. I heard a choking noise. A pounding on the floor. “Mo-o-om!” came Aly’s voice.

  A blur passed across the screen—a woman with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She passed from top to bottom, falling to her knees and out of the screen. “Aly? Aly, wake up!”

  I was on my feet now. “ALY!”

  The image on the screen juddered. And then all went black.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DOWN AND OUT IN LA

  “GALLUP, MCKINLEY!” Cass said, staring out the window of the jet.

  “I’m not piloting this plane, Captain Nied is,” Dad replied. “And he’s going as fast as he can.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Cass gestured to the distant ground below, which was clearly visible even in the dimming sunlight. “That little town near the river? It’s called Gallup, New Mexico. Right near the Arizona border. It also happens to be in McKinley County. So it’s Gallup, McKinley.”

  I took a deep breath. I could barely focus on what Cass what saying. Except for the “Gallup” part. Because my heart was galloping.

  “I think it’s named for US president William McKinley,” Cass said. “He was shot. But he didn’t die right away. He died because no one got to him in time.”

  “That’s cheerful,” Captain Nied said.

  “Cass,” Dad said softly, “we’re doing the best we can. We’ll get to Aly. She’s with the best doctors in Southern California. Dr. Karl has promised me she’ll see to her personally.”

  Dr. Karl was another college friend of Dad’s. She was the head of emergency medicine at St. Dunstan Hospital, where Aly had been taken. I was becoming convinced Dad knew at least half the doctors in the United States. In my left hand I clutched my phone. Before leaving, I’d sent Aly three unanswered texts. There was no cell reception up here, but that didn’t stop me from looking at the screen for about the thousandth time.

  In my right hand I turned the shard around and around as if it were a magic charm. As if I could somehow massage it to full size. “I wish we were taking her a whole Loculus of Healing.”

  “That wouldn’t cure her,” Cass said. “Or us. It takes seven of t
hese things to do that.”

  “Yeah, but it would buy some time,” I said.

  “You and I are feeling fine without a Loculus of Healing,” Cass remarked with a deep sigh. “Why us and not her? Why does she get the bad luck?”

  I stopped turning the shard. My hands felt warm. My first thought was body heat.

  My second thought was, Are you crazy?

  Spoons and forks didn’t heat up in your hands when you fiddled with them. Neither did joysticks, worry beads, action figures, whatever.

  I handed it to Cass. “Notice anything?”

  “Whoa,” Cass said. “Do you have a fever or something?”

  “It’s warm, right?” I said. “Like, unnaturally warm?”

  Cass turned it around curiously. “It looks smaller to me.”

  “Cass, what if that heat isn’t just heat?” I said. “What if it means something—like, it’s active in some way?”

  “Like, alive?” Cass said.

  “No!” I said. “It’s the shell of a Loculus that’s existed for thousands of years, right? What if it absorbed some of that healing power? Maybe that’s what’s keeping you and me from having episodes.”

  Cass’s eyes were as wide as baseballs. Dad was staring at the shard, too, from the copilot’s seat. Together we looked at Captain Nied.

  He yanked back the throttle, and the jet began to dive. “Fasten your seat belts, gents. And welcome to LA.”

  It is amazing what $200 will do to a Los Angeles cabdriver.

  As we twisted and turned through the city streets, palm trees and white stucco houses zoomed by in a blur. We could see the freeway in the distance, the cars at a total standstill. “Freeway is not free!” the cabdriver said in an accent I couldn’t quite figure out. “Is prison for cars!”

  No one laughed. We were too busy keeping our stomachs from jumping through our mouths. Dad was on his cell phone with the hospital the whole way.

  According to Dr. Karl, Aly was alive, but it wasn’t looking good.

  As the taxi screeched to a stop in the hospital parking lot, we pushed our way out. I hooked my backpack around my shoulders and sprinted after Dad. He flashed his ID left and right, fast-talking his way past guards. In a moment we were on the fifth floor, barging into the intensive care unit. It was a massive room, echoing with beeps and shouts and lined with curtained-off areas.

  A dark-haired woman with huge eyes peered out from behind one of the curtains. “How is she, Cindy?” Dad asked, marching across the room as if he were a regular.

  “Breathing,” Dr. Karl said, “but unresponsive. Her fever is spiking around a hundred four.”

  I pulled the shard out of my pocket and held tight. I almost didn’t recognize Aly. Her skin was ashen, her eyes were only half-open, and her hair was pulled back into a green hospital cap. A breathing tube snaked from her mouth to a machine against the wall, and a tangle of tubes connected her arm to an IV stand with three different fluids.

  Over her head was a screen that showed her heartbeat on a graph.

  Aly’s mom was holding her daughter’s hand. Her face was streaked with tears, and her narrow glasses had slipped down her nose. She looked startled to see us. “Doctor . . . ?”

  “Sorry,” Dr. Karl said, “I’m going to have to ask the kids to stay in the waiting room. Standard procedure for intensive care.”

  “I have to speak to her,” I insisted.

  “She won’t hear you,” Aly’s mom said. “She’s completely unresponsive.”

  “Can I just touch her?” I said.

  “Touch her?” Mrs. Black looked at me as if I were crazy.

  “This is way beyond ICU protocol,” Dr. Karl said. “If you don’t leave now, I will have to call security—”

  BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

  Cass and I jumped back. “Are they coming to get us?” Cass asked.

  “It’s not a security alarm. It’s something to do with Aly!” I said. Aly’s monitors were flashing red. Her eyes sprang open and then rolled upward into her head. She let out a choking sound, and her body began to twitch. As three nurses came running from the center of the room, Dr. Karl strapped Aly’s arms down.

  “What’s happening?” I demanded.

  “Febrile seizure!” Dr. Karl said. “Clear the area!”

  “But—” I said.

  A nurse with a barrel chest and a trim beard pulled me back, and I nearly collided with Cass. As the hospital staff closed in around Aly’s bed, we both stumbled back toward the entrance.

  “They’re killing her, Jack!” Cass said. “Do something!”

  I dropped my pack. “I’m going invisible. It’s the only way I can get to her.”

  “There’s no room for you,” Cass said. “If you barge in, they will feel you, Jack. It’ll freak everybody out. Total chaos, and it won’t be good for her.”

  “Any other ideas?” I said.

  Cass nodded. “Yeah. I’ll distract them. Give me three seconds.”

  “What?”

  But Cass was already running away, heading toward the table that contained the medical equipment and monitors.

  One . . .

  I reached into the pack and lifted out the Loculus of Invisibility.

  Two . . .

  As I stepped forward, the loud beeps stopped. I looked toward the monitors. They were dark. Aly’s equipment had shut down completely. Cass was scampering away from the wall socket, where he had pulled out the plugs.

  Three!

  I heard a shout. Two nurses broke away from Aly, scrambling toward the equipment, leaving her right side wide open. I raced toward her, clutching the Loculus of Invisibility with one hand and the shard with the other. Dr. Karl was injecting something into her left arm, concentrating hard.

  Aly’s chest was still. She wasn’t breathing. I placed the shard on her stomach, just below her ribs.

  “The pads—now!” Dr. Karl shouted. “We’re losing her!”

  “Come on . . .” I said under my breath. “Come on, Aly. You have to live.” Aly’s eyes stared upward, green and bright, dancing in the light even in her unconsciousness. I felt like I could talk to her, like she’d answer me back with some kind of geeky joke. I wanted to see her smile.

  But there was no reaction. Not a fraction of an inch of movement.

  A doctor was racing toward Aly with two pads strapped to his hands. They were going to try to shock her alive. I pressed the shard harder into her abdomen. I guess I was crying, because tears were falling onto her face.

  Aly’s mom bumped into me and screamed. It wouldn’t be much longer before my invisible presence was going to be a big deal.

  “We have power!” a voice barked. With a soft whoosh, the monitors fired up and the lights blinked on. The heartbeat graph showed a long, horizontal, flat line.

  Dead. A flat line meant dead.

  The doctor placed the pads on either side of Aly’s chest but I did not take my hand away—not even when they shot electricity through her, and her body flopped like a rag doll.

  It wasn’t working.

  Aly was ghost white and still. Her chest wasn’t moving. As Dr. Karl finally called off the electric shocks, I pressed harder than ever, leaning toward her face.

  “I’m . . . I’m so, so sorry,” Dr. Karl said to Aly’s mom.

  I had failed.

  She was the first to die. One of us would be next, then the other. And then there would be none.

  I brushed my lips against her cool forehead. “Good-bye, Aly,” I whispered. “I—” The words clogged up in my brain, and I had to force them out. “I love you, dude. Yeah. Just saying.”

  I let go of her and walked away toward the center of the room. I felt numb. My eyes focused on nothing.

  “Jack?” Cass whispered, wandering toward me, looking all teary and confused. “Where are you?”

  I picked up the backpack and slipped the Loculus of Invisibility back inside. As I became visible, I noticed I was next to two doctors who must have seen me materialize out of thin air.


  But they hadn’t seemed to notice. They were both staring over my head toward Aly. Gaping.

  Cass turned. His jaw dropped. “What the—?”

  As I wiped away tears, the first thing I noticed was Aly’s mom. She was on the floor, fainted away.

  The second thing I noticed was Aly sitting up, staring straight at me.

  “You love me?” she said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE HUMPTY DUMPTY PROJECT

  SHE WAS ALIVE.

  Half of me wanted to jump with joy. The other half wanted to sink down and melt into the linoleum. Dad and Dr. Karl stood by the bed, gaping as if their mouths had been propped open by invisible pencils.

  “I heard you say it, Jack McKinley!” Aly laughed as if nothing bad had happened. “You said, ‘I love you’! I heard it!”

  My mouth flapped open and shut a couple of times. “The shard . . .” I finally squeaked. “It worked.”

  Aly’s smile abruptly vanished. She looked around the ICU. “Wait. Jack? Cass? What are you doing here? Why am I in a hospital? Why is Mom on the floor?”

  I rushed over. Dad and I both lifted Mrs. Black to her feet. Her eyes puddled with tears. As she hugged her daughter, the place was going nuts. Cass was screaming, pumping his fists. The hospital staff high-fived each other like middle school kids. Dr. Karl looked bewildered. I thought I could see some tears on her cheeks as Aly’s mom hugged her, too.

  “You are a miracle worker, doctor,” Mrs. Black said. “Thank you.”

  “I—I’m not sure what did it,” Dr. Karl said. “I guess . . . the pads?”

  Aly pulled me closer. “What happened?” she whispered. “I had an episode, right? And you guys flew out to see me.”

  “Um, yeah,” I whispered back.

  “So how did the doctor figure out—?” she asked.

  “She didn’t,” I replied.

  “Wait—so you did it?” she said. “You saved my life?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  Aly smiled. Her eyes moistened. “Backsies.”

  “What?”

  “About what you said,” she said, “into my ear . . .”