escape as if it was a video game. “Okay, we’re finally at the end of the first level-we just have to go a little farther. We’ve earned a lot of rubies.”
“Life points… pretty low,” Steve groaned, but at least he was playing along.
“Look, we’re almost through. We beat the boss, so we’re pretty much home free.”
“We haven’t beaten the boss,” Steven said. They were nearing the stairway to the cellar now, which to Tyler meant they were almost out, but Steven was walking slower and slower. “The boss lives down there. In the RALLEC.” He stopped. “Hear that?”
Much to his sorrow, Tyler did. It was the scraping, dragging, rustling noise he had heard before, getting slowly louder as it came up from the depths. “Follow me,” he said. “Run!”
The torch flames streamed behind them until Steven had to drop his before it burned his hand. Tyler briefly wondered about setting the corridor on fire behind them-it surely wouldn’t burn through to the real-world side of the mirror-but then he remembered the sad, confused eyes of the woman behind the grating. He turned back and stamped out Steven’s sparking, sputtering torch, then began to run again.
He didn’t know what made him look back just before they got to the room with the mirror-it wasn’t a sound. Whatever was following them was as noiseless now as ash blown on the wind. Perhaps it was a feeling, the idea that something was fluttering along behind them like an untethered shadow. But once he looked, he wished he hadn’t. All he could see of the indistinct shape was a face made of shadow, and all he could see of that face was hunger and loneliness and madness.
They crashed through the door into the mirror-bedroom. Tyler pushed Steve headfirst into the washstand mirror and then dived after him into the silver-mercury reflection.
Carmen and Alma wouldn’t let go of Steve. The girls were crying, but Steve was like someone who’d just woken up from a strange dream.
“Where’s Lucinda?” Tyler asked, then felt his stomach grow heavy with dread when they told him.
“I have to go,” he said. “I have to go after her. It’s that guy your dad was talking to Mr. Walkwell about- Stillman, the rich guy. The helicopter must be his.” He sighed. He was exhausted and scared and all he wanted to do now was go to bed. Wasn’t this night ever going to end? He didn’t want any more answers about Ordinary Farm because all they did was lead to more questions. “You’d better come with me,” he said a moment later. “It may be the only chance to sneak you off the property. We might have the police here by morning-especially if your parents find out you’re gone.”
“It seemed like a good idea when I thought of it,” said Steve Carrillo sadly.
“Yeah, I get a lot of those too.”
“No more magical mirrors, right?” Steve asked.
“No more mirrors. We’re just going to get you off the farm as quietly as possible.”
“That sounds good,” Steve said, sounding a little more like his old self. “I don’t want any more excitement tonight, that’s for sure.”
Chapter 27
C olin Needle had to admit he was a little nervous.
It wasn’t sneaking across Ordinary Farm by night with a stolen dragon’s egg that was worrying him-he’d been preparing to do this part for days, and had been back and forth over the route with an appropriately sized rock in his backpack a half-dozen times, practicing until he knew every potential hazard, with or without a flashlight. No, it was the way the stakes of the game had been raised that worried him.
First off, Colin had never wanted to make a deal with this Stillman fellow. If he had known the true story of Jude Modesto’s important client, he felt sure he would have abandoned the whole project. But he had already given Modesto the chip from Meseret’s previous egg before he found out, and apparently Stillman had tested it and decided it was very, very interesting, so it was too late to turn back.
Still, Colin had to admit that the half-million dollars would make it easier to deal with his own conscience. He would have asked for more, but he needed to be able to carry it back himself, and this way Stillman would be even more eager to come back for such one-of-a-kind bargains-and Colin would supply them to him.
Second, things would have been much easier if Modesto could have waited just a few days more to set up the meeting. The Jenkins kids would have gone back home and Colin’s distraction for Ragnar and Walkwell would have been ready. He had planned to arrange an escape from its pen by the bonnacon, a slow-moving but immensely strong and stubborn bull-like animal that sprayed caustic dung; recapturing it would have taken them most of the night. Modesto’s sudden email demanding the sale take place tonight had meant that he had been forced to improvise instead.
Colin had left a glove (part of a pair he had bought but never used) near the barbed-wire fence out on the edge of the property, then made an “innocent” remark at dinner about having seen a surprising number of cars and other activity out on Springs Road near where he had left the telltale glove. He figured that should keep them busy for at least the first couple of hours of darkness, searching for intruders out at the farthest point of the property from his rendezvous with Jude Modesto. Colin certainly hoped so-he didn’t want to look up and find himself staring into Walkwell’s weird, angry eyes. That man-that goat-horned thing -scared Colin Needle almost as much as his mother did, and that was saying something.
Still, it shouldn’t have been this way. Everything would have been so much simpler without the Jenkins kids. Sure, it had been occasionally interesting to have people his own age around the farm, and Lucinda was okay, but Colin Needle had big plans and having Gideon’s relatives around just made things more difficult.
He stopped to rest on top of a hill beyond an abandoned barn where he could look back toward the house. All good so far, no more than the ordinary number of lights on, Gideon’s study and bedroom, the kitchen, a few along the porch and the other outside doors. So much of the house was unlighted at night that most of the time you couldn’t even begin to guess at its immense size. Only on bright, moonlit nights like this one could you see the array of roofs, the covered arcades and outbuildings, and the unusual silo and tower rooms that made Ordinary Farm look like some strange Oriental palace.
And it’s going to be my palace someday, he thought with no little satisfaction. Because I’m the only one who really cares about it-or at least I’m the only one with any sense. Any guts.
He heaved up the backpack. The egg was no easy burden, big and lopsided as a partially deflated beach ball, heavy as a sandbag. He got the straps over his shoulders again and made his way down into the shadowy, oak-shrouded valley beside Junction Road, out of the moon’s glare.
Colin hadn’t really expected a helicopter, let alone the biggest helicopter he’d ever seen. Its dark hide gleamed like the shell of a beetle as it crouched on the hilltop half a mile from the road, its rotors lazily turning. It had no markings, but Colin had a feeling that the darker patch on its side was something covering a corporate logo-Stillman’s Mission Software, most likely. His stomach tightened. Several men stood waiting outside the copter’s open bay door.
Colin wasn’t simply going to walk up to them with the treasure in his hands, of course. He wasn’t a fool. He’d read plenty of spy novels and seen plenty of movies and he knew all about double crosses. He’d even thought about one of his own, substituting something for the real dragon egg before selling it, so he certainly didn’t trust Jude Modesto not to cheat him. While he was still in the shadows he took off the heavy backpack and hung it over the branch of a tree, high enough to be almost impossible to see in the dim light, and counted the trees as he fol lowed the deer path to the edge of the clearing and out into the open.
“You’re late,” said Jude Modesto. The fat man was trying to sound like an important fellow who’d been kept waiting, but he wasn’t very convincing. Stillman and his two bodyguards stood by the copter, the same two huge men who were only a couple of bad haircuts and two pairs of Lycra shorts away from looking like professional wrestlers.
“You changed the meeting time,” Colin said flatly. “It wasn’t easy for me to rearrange things.” Unlike Modesto, Colin knew that the less emotion you put into your voice, the less you had to worry about giving away how you really felt. Which, in his case, was nervous. He’d just noticed that both of the bodyguards were wearing
