match the scars on my ankle, but the others are new to me.
“What’s Sam’s birthday again?” I ask.
“January fourth, nineteen ninety-five.”
The triangle clicks like a lock as I turn it right to the Loric number one. I turn it left, swallowing hard as I aim it at what must be number four. My number. Then I rotate the triangle to one, nine, back around to nine again, and five. Nothing happens for a few seconds, and then the sundial begins to hiss and smoke. Six and I step back and watch as the stone lid of the well flips back and opens with a loud echoing crack. When the smoke clears, I see a ladder inside.
Sam is jumping up and down near the fence. One hand over his mouth, the other raised in a fist.
One of the dark windows of the house turns yellow. Bernie Kosar lets out two long
“What about Sam?” I whisper.
“He’ll be fine. Bernie Kosar’s up there.”
We reach the floor and find ourselves in a short hallway that curves to the left. The air is musty. I shine my palms back and forth as we walk through the curve; and when the hallway straightens again, we see there’s a room ahead with a cluttered desk and hundreds of papers pinned to the wall. I’m about to run inside, but that’s when my lights catch a long white object in the doorway.
“Is that . . .” Six trails off.
I’m stuck in my tracks. It’s an enormous bone. Six pushes me forward and I pull the dagger from my back pocket.
“Ladies first?” I offer.
“Not this time.”
With a running start, I jump over the bone and immediately light up the room with my hands. A yell escapes my mouth as I take in the skeleton sitting against the wall. Six jumps inside, and when she sees it, she stumbles backwards into the desk.
The skeleton is over eight feet tall, with giant feet and hands. Thick blond hair falls from the top of its skull and reaches past its wide shoulder blades. Around its neck hangs a blue pendant similar to mine.
“That’s not Sam’s dad,” Six says.
“Definitely not.”
“Then who is it?”
I step forward and examine the pendant. The blue Loralite stone is slightly larger than mine, but everything else is the same. I stare at it and feel an overwhelming connection to whoever this was. “I’m not sure, but I think he was a friend.” I reach over his head and retrieve the pendant, handing it to Six.
We move to the desk. I don’t know where to start. A heavy layer of dust covers stacks of papers and writing utensils. The writing on the papers pinned to the wall above the desk is in every language but English. I recognize a few Loric numbers, but nothing else. A white electronic tablet sits on a dilapidated wooden chair, and I pick it up and press my fingers over its black screen. Nothing happens.
Six opens the top drawer to find more papers, and as she grabs the second drawer’s handle, an explosion aboveground knocks us off our feet. A long crack travels along the room’s ceiling and then the concrete buckles. Chunks fall all around us.
“Run!” I yell.
With the pendant around her neck, Six tears a dozen papers from the wall and I stuff the white tablet in the back of my waistband. We scramble up the ladder and peek out the sliver of space between the well and the sundial. Dozens of Mogs. Smoldering fires. Bernie Kosar has transformed himself into a tiger with the curling horns of a ram. A Mog’s arm is in his teeth. Sam is no longer at the fence, and neither is my Chest.
I’m about to burst out of the well when Six launches herself past me in a tornado of clouds. The sundial lid whips backwards, and she rips through a huddle of five Mogs, sending them across the yard. I pull myself out of the well and close it as she picks up a gleaming Mog sword, turning invisible.
I use my telekinesis to toss three armed Mogs standing near the well against the house. They explode into thick ash, and when I turn I see a shirtless man frozen in the back door with a shotgun in his hands. Behind him stands Sam’s frightened mom in a nightgown.
Six materializes next to two Mogs running at me with glowing cannons, and she swings the sword through both their necks. Then she uses her telekinesis to throw the wheelbarrow at another, turning him into a pile of ash. I toss two Mogs against another, and Six impales all three in one quick motion. Bernie Kosar leaps into the middle of the yard and digs his teeth into a few Mogs struggling to their feet.
“Where’s Sam?” I yell.
“Here!”
I twist to see Sam lying on his stomach under a charred shrub. Blood runs down his scalp.
“Sam!” his mom yells from the doorway.
He struggles to his knees. “Mom!”
His mom yells again, but a Mog reaches down and pulls Sam up by his shirt. I concentrate and uproot the rusty swing set, but before one of its metal poles can spear the Mog in the chest, he tosses Sam over the fence.
With an intensity I’ve never seen in her before, Six slices through the remaining Mogs. She’s covered in ash when she jumps over the fence after Sam. I leap onto Bernie Kosar and we follow.
Sam is on his back in the neighbor’s yard. Motion sensor lights flood over him. I jump off Bernie Kosar and pick him up.
“Sam? Are you okay? Where’s my Chest?”
He opens his eyes halfway. “They got it. I’m sorry, John.”
“There!” Six points to several Mogs running through a field towards the forest.
I set Sam on Bernie Kosar’s back, but he pushes himself off. “I’m okay. I swear.”
From the other side of the fence, Sam’s mom yells, “Sam!”
“I’ll be back, Mom! I love you!” And then he’s the first to run towards the Mogs. Six and I catch up easily, but she veers right to plunge her sword into an approaching Mog. Four more are thirty yards ahead of her; and with the large pendant bouncing around her neck, she charges, with Bernie Kosar at her heels.
Sam and I enter the muddy field, and two Mogs cut off our path. Over my shoulder I see two more separating and marching in our direction at strategic angles. The others have entered the forest at two different sections, and I can’t see who has the Chest. I pull the dagger out of my back pocket. The handle wraps around my hand.
I run ahead, and the two Mogs in front of me run, too, their swords bouncing and cutting into the empty field behind them. When we’re less than five yards apart I leap with my dagger above my head. As I start to fall, a huge tree zips underneath me, ramming both Mogs and killing them. Six. As I hit the ground again I turn to see her running towards Sam and the two Mogs who circle him.
The one on Sam’s left tackles him around the waist. Six tears the Mog off and throws him far into the field, where he immediately gets back on his feet and charges.
I sneak up behind the other Mog and hammer my dagger into the back of his neck, pulling it out at an angle that slices down through his shoulder blade. He falls to a pile of ash that blows onto my shoes.
Bernie Kosar pounces on the other Mog and quickly he has a tongue coated in thick ash.
“We have to get back to the car and get out of here,” Six says. “There must be more on their way-they were waiting for us.”
“We have to get my Chest first,” I say.
“Then we’re going to have to split up,” Six says. With her soot-covered sword, she points at the two sections of forest the Mogs disappeared into. “Bernie Kosar, you’re with me.” Bernie Kosar shrinks into a hawk, and he and Six head left.
Sam and I enter the forest in the other direction. Soon we hear twigs cracking, and we run in that direction. I speed ahead and hurdle a series of dead trees to see four Mogs trying to escape through a small clearing. In the moonlight, I still can’t see if any of them hold my Chest.
I slide down the hill on my side, crushing saplings, creating a small landslide of loose rock. I hear Sam
