brother. Colin stared right back at him, both of them showing their teeth and glaring like puppies playing tug-of-war with a toy.
Boys! she thought. Meseret was so right…
Strangely, Hector Carrillo and all three Carrillo children were waiting out in front of the farm’s main gate when Lucinda and Tyler and the others from the house pulled up in the horse cart. Lucinda couldn’t help wonder who had told them Gideon was coming back.
“I offered to drive Gideon home from the hospital,” said Mr. Carrillo, patting the fender of his truck. “But your Mrs. Needle wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Too much trouble,’ she says. ‘We’ll just take a cab.’ ”
“She’s not our Mrs. Needle,” growled Tyler. Still angry, Lucinda shushed him. Colin was standing only a short distance away, craning his neck to look for Gideon-or was it Patience Needle he was waiting for so anxiously? Colin might be a strange, difficult boy, Lucinda thought, but his mother was a complete nightmare. How could anyone expect the poor kid to be normal?
They saw the plume of dust from the farm road long before they saw the cab, but soon it appeared, a white and red smear against the brown of the hills. A few moments later it pulled up beside the tall fence and the gate. It took a little while for big Ragnar to unfold himself from the back seat, then more time to help Gideon out while Mrs. Needle paid the driver. Judging by the look on his face as he pulled away, Lucinda guessed she hadn’t given the man much of a tip, if any.
Gideon looked small and unwell, but what was worse was that he almost didn’t seem to notice what was going on, letting Ragnar help him but scarcely even looking up as the folks from the farm gathered around. Mr. Carrillo stepped forward with his hand extended.
“Nice to see you back, Gideon,” said Mr. Carrillo. “I hope when you’ve had a few days to recuperate we can have that conversation I’ve been waiting for.”
Gideon looked down at Hector Carrillo’s hand as if he didn’t know what it was, then turned away and continued trudging toward the gate.
“He is still not well,” Mrs. Needle said-not apologizing, but in a tone that suggested Mr. Carrillo should know that and should leave him alone. “I’m sure he will be happy to speak to you when he’s feeling better.” She hurried after Gideon as the old man shuffled toward the gate on Ragnar’s arm, as though she could not bear to be separated from him for long.
“Wow,” said Carmen Carrillo. “He looks weird. I thought somebody said he was better.”
Mr. Walkwell looked troubled. “I apologize for Gideon, Hector,” he told Carmen’s dad. “Ragnar said he was much better, but now he seems ill again. Perhaps the ride made him that way. Those cars are foul things.”
“Yes, but somebody has to talk to me soon, Simos,” said Mr. Carrillo. “Stillman’s calling me every day. I can’t wait forever. I’ve been begging for Gideon to deal with this for months!”
Mr. Walkwell pulled him aside for a quiet conversation. Colin and the other farm folk stood watching as Ragnar lifted Gideon onto the wagon, then followed after as it creaked back toward the house, all of them on foot this time as though walking behind a funeral procession. The thought made Lucinda shiver.
“So what’s going on with him, anyway?” Steve Carrillo asked. “Dude, he looked like a zombie.”
“He didn’t even look like himself,” said little Alma. “Like the real Gideon is lost in there somewhere.” She hugged herself as if the hot day had made her shiver.
Mr. Carrillo returned, his conversation with Mr. Walkwell finished. He did not look happy. “ Vamonos, kids,” he said. “In the truck. We’re not going to get anything done here today.”
Lucinda waved as they drove off, but the Carrillo kids just looked embarrassed. As Mr. Walkwell turned the cart back toward the house, Lucinda realized her brother had been silent the whole time since the Reptile Barn, deep in thought-Tyler hadn’t even said anything to Steve Carrillo or asked what he was playing on his GameBoss.
That proves it, she thought gloomily. The world really is coming to an end.
Chapter 17
According to Mr. Walkwell, the male dragon Alamu had been around the night of the laboratory fire and had probably even caused it. Octavio Tinker’s Continuascope had been gone since then. Jackson Kingaree had also disappeared that night, but hadn’t shown any sign of having the Continuascope then or now. And Haneb said dragons, and especially Alamu, loved to collect shiny things for their nests. The Continuascope had been very shiny.
Elementary, my dear Watson, Tyler thought. Find Alamu’s nest, find the Continuascope. More important, make sure Colin Needle didn’t find it, because if Colin got hold of Octavio’s invention he’d be able to use the Fault Line. He’d be able to travel back and forth through time. In fact, Colin might even find a way into the washstand mirror world to rescue Grace, and then Gideon would put him in the will instead of Tyler and Lucinda.
The biggest problem, of course, was that Lucinda had opened her mouth and started babbling about dragons and shiny things and what Haneb said right in front of Colin Needle. Yes, if someone forced him, Tyler would have admitted that he loved his sister, but right now he didn’t like her very much. Colin might be a total jerkwad but he wasn’t stupid-he would definitely be thinking the same things as Tyler.
So it all came down to two questions: where was Alamu’s nest and how could he get to it before Colin did?
Almost halfway through his second summer on the farm now, Tyler knew better than to walk around asking people where Alamu kept his hoard. He didn’t want to talk about it to Lucinda, even if he hadn’t been angry with her, because he knew she would have a fit at the idea of him going anywhere near a dragon’s nest. His sister was the kind of kid who always waited for the grown-ups to fix things. They didn’t, of course, which was why she was grumpy a lot. Tyler had figured out a long time ago that if you wanted something you had to do it yourself: if he was hungry for cookies he scavenged money from under the sofa cushions and went and bought some at the store, because Mom sure as heck wasn’t going to bake any. But finding double-stuffed Choco-Marshes in the grocery aisle was quite a bit easier than finding a dragon’s nest in a farm the size of a state park.
It turned out to be a good time to ask questions. With Gideon back at home, people were bustling in and out of the house all day long and Tyler had plenty of opportunities to talk to the farm hands. Kiwa, one of the three Mongol herdsmen and the one who spoke the least English, still managed to tell Tyler a few things he hadn’t known, and his fellows Jeg and Hoka were even more help, letting Tyler know all the places that Alamu seemed to frequent. Even Ragnar had useful information to offer.
“Of course he spends a lot of time around the Reptile Barn because that is where his mate and her child live,” Ragnar told Tyler, “and he comes there when we put food out as well, but he also spends many warm afternoons in the sun on that rocky hill there.” The big Norseman pointed to a distant granite face, a shiny smear along one of the hills that fenced the valley. “Why do you write down these things, boy? You are not going to go near the worm, are you? He will kill you and eat you. That is no joke.”
“Trust me-I don’t want to go anywhere near him,” Tyler said, which was true. “I’m just making notes.” Ragnar’s hard green eyes were full of doubt; Tyler began to regret having asked him anything in the first place. “Okay, I have a sort of… bet with Colin Needle. That I can predict something better than he can. I don’t want even to see Alamu, I just want to figure out where he goes. Honestly, it’s nothing important… ”
Just then Ragnar was called to help Mr. Walkwell with something, but Tyler knew he’d better stay away from the big man from now on-Ragnar suspected that something was up. That was certainly something they didn’t teach you in school: how to deal with a suspicious Viking.
To his delight, Tyler discovered that little Pema, the young Tibetan woman who worked in the kitchen, had been paying attention to the dragon as well.
“I love to see him fly,” she said, and he could see how much she meant it-her dark eyes were shining with excitement. “When I was young my grandmother told me stories of the dragons-we call the country my family came from Druk Yul, the Dragon Land. So it is a great goodness to live so close to them now. And Alamu… ” She blushed and smiled. She was older than Tyler had realized-not a girl but a young woman who just happened to be small. “He
