The Last Spell Page 16

  “That was just something I made up,” Grace said weakly. “So you would feel bad for me . . . it was all a trick. . . .”

  Kara walked slowly toward her, as she might approach a wild animal she didn’t want to scare away.

  “That’s why you insulted me before,” Kara said. “You wanted me to get mad. And when that didn’t work, you were cruel to Lucas . . . you wanted me to say mean things and force you to do something that you no longer had the heart to do.”

  “That is the most ridiculous—”

  “And that’s why you’re letting us go.” Kara placed a hand on Grace’s elbow. “There’s a part of you that wants to be good, but you’re afraid to let it out. Come with us. We’ll find it together.”

  Grace features softened. It was like a mask peeling away, revealing a scared and confused thirteen-year-old girl who had been left alone for far too long.

  It only lasted for a moment.

  “People don’t change,” Grace snapped, yanking Kara’s hand from her arm. “You’re the good witch. I’m the bad one. That’s just the way things are.”

  She clapped her grimoire shut and vanished.

  The displays on this floor of the museum were completely different from the brightly lit exhibits above them. Kutt’s obsession with the interior machinations of life was evident at every turn: eyeballs floating in a giant vat of clear liquid like fish in a tank; iron wires running between a decayed heart and a black box; a massive sandbox in which children could dig for human bones. Kara was glad that they were running, for these weren’t the worst things they passed, and she was happy to reduce the truly gruesome exhibits to a nightmarish blur.

  “We have to stop,” Lucas said, out of breath. “Figure out where we’re going before we get even more lost.”

  Kara nodded, trying to catch her breath as well. The air, sharp with the stench of some unidentifiable chemical, made her throat burn. At least they were alone. There were no crowds, no schoolchildren. Kutt’s dark past had been buried here like a murdered corpse.

  They’ll be coming soon, Kara thought. The guards will report what they’ve seen. They’ll conduct a search.

  She listened and thought she heard sounds in the distance. Footsteps. Maybe even voices.

  “We can’t go back the way we came,” Lucas said. “We’ll run right into them.”

  “There must be another way to the surface,” replied Kara.

  They found it a few minutes later: a winding set of metal stairs that looked like they hadn’t been used in centuries and wobbled beneath the children’s weight. With Kara in the lead they dashed toward a glimmer of light overhead, at last reaching a hallway with white walls much like the corridor through which they had first entered, except with a complicated series of pipes running beneath its ceiling.

  They were back in the newer part of the museum again. There were no visitors in this area, which seemed to be for workers only. Creeping forward, Kara peeked through a door with a small window and saw hundreds of people milling from exhibit to exhibit. There was a long line at a food cart; even through the door they could smell something sweet.

  “What’s that?” Taff asked, recklessly peeking his head out. “I’m starving.”

  Kara pulled him back.

  “What now?” Lucas asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I came up with the finding-the-stairs plan. Your turn.”

  Lucas stared out at the crowd of Kuttians, their heads bald and their faces various shades of red.

  “Well,” he said, “we can’t exactly go out there and blend in, on account of we look completely different than every single person here.”

  “Fair point,” Kara said. “But we have to somehow make it back to the Swoop station.”

  “No,” Taff said. “We need to stop Grace! If Rygoth assembles the Vulkera then none of this will matter.”

  “She won’t,” Kara said. “I promise. Right now the most important thing is for us to get as far away from here as possible.”

  “But how can you be sure—”

  “No time to explain,” Kara said. “Just trust me.”

  “What about those animals over there?” whispered Lucas. “If we set them free we can use them as a distraction.”

  Kara couldn’t see the encaged animals very clearly from her vantage point—a spiked tail, a wisp of golden fur—but she could hear the despair in their thoughts, their desire to run free and TEAR CHEW PUNISH those two-legs who had imprisoned them.

  “Too dangerous,” Kara said. “If we set them loose in a crowd, and my control slips for even a moment . . . innocent people will die.”

  “We have to do something,” Lucas said, “and fast. I’m getting nervous standing here out in the open.”

  Kara felt the same way. The hallway was brightly lit, and with the door to the museum in front of them, the stairs to their left, and an intersecting hallway behind them, it seemed inevitable that someone would find them soon.

  “Wait!” Taff exclaimed, bending his neck at an awkward angle so he could see as high as possible through the tiny window. “I’ve been wondering why we’re still alive, and if I’m right, then . . . yes! There! There!”

  Kara pressed her face to the window, trying to see what her brother was talking about, and in the process saw a small boy sucking on a candy stick point in their direction. Just as the child started to tug on his mother’s sleeve, Kara ducked out of sight, pulling Lucas and Taff with her.

  They sat on the floor with their backs against the door. Kara hoped it was locked.

  “Explain,” she said.

  “The whole time we’ve been in Kutt I’ve been trying to figure out where all this air is coming from,” Taff said. “We can’t breathe the Clinging Mist. It isn’t safe. But we’re not dead, so the air must be coming from somewhere else. I could only think of one possible solution, and it turns out that I’m right.” He pointed up at dozens of slits lining the highest point of the wall like fish gills. “Look. The good air comes through there, from somewhere past the Plague Barrier. That means there must be a tunnel that we can use to get back to Rattle.”

  Kara kissed him hard on the forehead.

  “You,” she said.

  “One problem,” Lucas said. “How do we get up there?”

  The hallway ceiling was a normal height, but the one beyond the door rose high overhead, allowing for larger exhibits such as steel columns that shot lightning between them and an aviary packed with reptilian birds.

  “If anything goes wrong with those”—Taff paused a moment, thinking of the right words for the slits lining the upper wall—“air gills, then no one would be able to breathe. There has to be a way up there in case workers have to make repairs. The entrance would probably be around here somewhere, not out in the crowd. Otherwise you’d have children climbing up the ladder all day long.” He grinned. “That’s what I would do.”

  “Let’s find it fast,” Lucas said, looking around nervously. “I don’t know how much longer our luck is going to hold out.”

  They dashed along brightly lit corridors that were eerie in their emptiness. Lucas led the way, peeking around corners before waving the other two along, but it was clear that this particular area of the museum had been completely evacuated. Kara didn’t even hear talking behind any of the doors they passed.

  When they finally came to a ladder—leading up to a small hatch in the ceiling—Taff paused a moment to peek through a small window to the museum.

  “Where are they going?” he asked.

  The crowd was being ushered out of the hall by museum workers. Though the people were packed tightly together, they moved in slow, evenly spaced lines, careful to never touch.

  “I think they might be evacuating the museum so they can search for us easier,” Lucas said.

  “Why?” asked Taff. “It’s not like we can hide among the visitors. We sort of stick out.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lucas said, climbing the ladder. “As long as it’s keeping every
one busy.”

  He pushed open the hatch and a man’s heavy boot crashed into his face, knocking him to the floor.

  “Look at that!” the Kuttian said, landing with a thud. “A little outsider is trying to use my ladder.”

  He was a giant of a man, unable to stand at his full height without hitting his head on the ceiling pipes. His enflamed skin was the color of a fresh sunburn. Two bulbous veins crossed in the center of his forehead.

  “Outsider girl,” the man said, wincing with disgust at Kara’s appearance. “Repulsive. Skin like a maggot. The others have gone to see the Spider Queen. I am sorry, but I must bring the three of you!” He slipped work gloves onto his gigantic hands. “Much reward for me and my family.”

  Kara tried to dash past him, but the man was faster than he looked. He grabbed her with his gloved hands and lifted her with ease, holding her at a distance like a caught python, his face turned away.

  Taff reached for his slingshot before realizing that it was gone forever.

  “What are you looking for, outsider boy?” the man asked. “No matter. Walk in front of me. There is no need to hurt you.”

  Shoulders slumped, Taff started to walk past the man, who shifted to one side in the narrow hallway, not wanting to risk accidental contact.

  Taff paused and looked up at him. Kara had seen that look in his eyes before, wheels spinning as he formulated an idea.

  “Keep walking,” the man asked.

  Taff jumped up and touched the man’s neck.

  “NO!” he shouted, releasing Kara and clapping a hand to his neck as though he had been scalded. “What did you . . . who knows what kind of horrible diseases you filthy outsiders are carrying?” A feral noise escaped his lips, and he bent forward, meaning to seize Taff. The crossed veins in his forehead popped dangerously.

  Taff sneezed in his face.

  The man’s scream was long, hysterical, and surprisingly high-pitched. He tottered backward in stunned horror before spinning around and sprinting away from Taff at full speed, immediately banging his head on a low-hanging pipe and crashing to the floor, unconscious.

  Kara and Taff stared at the motionless man.

  “Bless you,” Kara said.

  Taff giggled.

  They helped Lucas to his feet. His bloody nose was still recovering from its encounter with the Kuttian’s boot, but Lucas had experienced worse injuries during his time with the graycloaks and waved away Kara’s ministrations, content to just wipe his face clean with the back of his sleeve.

  “First the faenix chucks me across the room, now this,” Lucas said sheepishly. “My uselessness is getting embarrassing.”

  “None of that,” Kara said. “Let’s keep moving.”

  They hurried up the ladder and found themselves standing on a small platform. Before them, two rows of evenly spaced crystal stalactites hung from the ceiling like giant icicles. Light shone through their translucent surface in a manner that made them practically invisible.

  “It’s a walkway!” Taff exclaimed. He bent down to touch a clear netting tautly suspended across the tips of the stalactites. Its strands were as thin as fishing line.

  “No way that’s strong enough to hold us,” Kara said.

  “Impossible things.” Lucas shrugged and stepped forward. The netting dipped beneath his weight, causing him to gasp in surprise, but held fast.

  “See,” he said, smiling nervously. “I knew it would work.”

  Kara and Taff made their way onto the netting—so clear that it was like walking on air—and dashed between the stalactites. The hall below them was empty. They passed through a narrow opening in the wall and entered the next hall, which was dedicated to a large metal vehicle with legs like a centipede. There was no one here either.

  Everyone was in the third hall.

  Given its size and grandeur, Kara suspected that this was the main entrance to the Museum of Impossible Things. Hundreds of men, women, and children stood in perfect rows, like an army about to march into battle. Kara crouched behind a metal sculpture suspended from the air, shielding herself from sight, and the two boys squeezed in behind her. Peeking out, Kara saw that the crowd’s attention was fixed on a woman standing on a raised platform almost directly below them.

  Rygoth.

  The platform, Kara now saw, was the flat shell of what looked like a mammoth tortoise. It lay subserviently still, its face puckered with boils and half-formed scales; Rygoth, knowing that she would be using the pitiable beast as little more than a stage, had put the barest of efforts into its creation. Standing on either end of the shell, the twins sneered down at the cowering crowd.

  Xindra lay sprawled at Rygoth’s feet. She wasn’t moving.

  “I hope I have made it clear,” said Rygoth, as two witches dragged the curator’s body away, “that I am truly disappointed.”

  A line of black-cloaked witches provided a human barrier between Rygoth and the assembled Kuttians. The witches held their grimoires close to their chests like sheathed swords, their expressions devoid of any human emotion. All stood save a kneeling girl whose hands were manacled together.

  Safi, Kara mouthed to Taff, pointing in their friend’s direction.

  Her face was puffy on one side, as though she had been recently struck. A wooden block had been fastened around her ankles. What have they done to you? Kara wondered, gripping the railing tightly in order to calm red thoughts that might be like an alarm bell to Rygoth. She turned to her brother and saw no anger in his face, only concern for his friend. Kara nodded at the unasked question in his eyes.

  We’ll save her. I promise.

  Kara searched the witches for Bethany. She was nowhere to be found.

  “I came to this horrid cesspool expecting two simple things,” Rygoth announced, enumerating with the fingers of her gloved hand. “My grims. And the girl. You have managed to let both slip through your fingers.”

  Safi grinned, clearly enjoying Rygoth’s frustration, and Kara realized that in resisting the Spider Queen for so long her friend had found a new source of strength.

  Rygoth couldn’t break you, Kara thought admiringly. You beat her! The young witch’s triumph rejuvenated Kara’s sagging spirits.

  If Safi can stand against Rygoth, then so can I.

  “It’s not too late for redemption though,” Rygoth continued, “and to demonstrate my mercy I’m going to give you all a chance to help. Together you are going to comb every inch of this building for the girl and bring her to me. But time is of the essence, my friends, so allow me to offer you some encouragement. For every minute that passes, I shall send one of your children into the Clinging Mist. Perhaps you will allow them to return and spread your marvelous plague. Or perhaps you will turn your backs on them while they die out there in the darkness, their little hands pounding on the glass, calling your names. Tough decision. I’m honestly curious what will happen.”

  Upon hearing this pronouncement, the crowd rumbled and shook like a great beast awakening from its slumber. Yes, thought Kara, thinking that Rygoth’s threats might finally be enough to spur them into action. Help us! Together we might have a chance!

  Kara’s hope of an alliance was short-lived, however, for the moment the witches threw open their grimoires the crowd fell silent, the fires of its rebellion doused by fear.

  “Let me be perfectly clear,” Rygoth said, staring down at the people of Kutt with a pitiless gaze. “Some of you can die, or all of you can die. It doesn’t matter to me. I will leave here with what I came for either way.”

  Dozens of black-cloaked figures shoved through the horrified crowd, snatching children at random. Screams and sobs filled the hall. Breaking with tradition, a young mother held her son close, refusing to relinquish him. A bolt of red lightning sent her flying across the room.

  Kara watched it all, knowing what she had to do.

  “You two head through those slits in the wall and back to the surface,” she told the boys. “Now. While everyone’s distracted. I’ll catch up
later.”

  “No way!” Taff exclaimed.

  Lucas nodded in agreement. “That’s not going to happen.”

  Kara drew them close. Even with the chaos below them she couldn’t risk raising her voice.

  “If I don’t give myself up, people are going to die,” Kara said.

  “You can’t,” Lucas replied. “She’ll kill you.”

  Kara shrugged with feigned bravery.

  “She’s tried it before. It hasn’t worked yet.” She lay a hand on Lucas’s satchel and met his eyes. “You must get as far from here as possible. Everything depends on it.”

  Lucas shook his head. “There has to be another—”

  “There’s not,” Kara said. “And we’ve no more time to discuss it.” She bent down next to Taff and brushed the hair out of his eyes. “Find Father,” she said. “Stay with the graycloaks until—”

  “No,” Taff said. “We’re supposed to stay together. You and me. Always.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, tapping him playfully on the nose. “I have a plan.” She looked up at Lucas. “My brother’s life is in your hands. Keep him safe.”

  Lucas, close to tears but fighting it, straightened at Kara’s words. He bowed slightly.

  “I will,” he said, his voice cracking.

  Acting quickly, before he could change his mind, Lucas dragged Taff backward across the netting. The smaller boy fought him the entire way, kicking fiercely.

  “Shh,” Lucas whispered in a calming voice. “We have to trust her. She’ll be all right. You know your sister. She can handle anything.”

  Lucas met Kara’s eyes for one final moment, and then the two boys slipped through an air gill and into the unknown reaches beyond the museum.

  They’ll be safe, Kara thought. They have to be.

  She stepped out of her hiding place behind the sculpture, ready to announce her presence, when a new voice cut through the chaos below.

  “My Queen!”