Seven Wonders 3-Book Collection

  My back to a dark wall, I caught my breath. I looked around frantically for Cass.

  Where was Cass?

  I stepped back toward the street. “Cass!” I called out. “Cass, where are you?”

  “You!” I spun around at the sound of the gruff voice.

  Ahmed was approaching from behind, his fists clenched.

  I ran back into the crowd. Ahmed’s partner was waiting, a grin on his face and his arms wide.

  The two baby goats stared up from the puddle and scolded me. I knelt down, scooped up one of them, and flung it toward the man.

  He looked startled. Instinctively he caught it. I swerved around his stand and into the thick of the crowd. I ducked low, threading my way through the people, hoping against hope I’d run into Cass.

  I ducked under an archway that led into a courtyard. Sprinting across to the other side, I came into a wider, less touristy street, with boxy buildings, a bus stop, and a gas station. “Cass?” I called out.

  A car screeched to a halt at the curb. The driver called out, “Taxi? Taxi?”

  “No!” I said.

  The cab door opened hard, as if kicked. I backed away, nearly falling to the pavement. I saw a mass of white fabric, a huge pair of sunglasses, and a beard. A red beard.

  A beefy hand clapped the back of my neck and shoved me into the backseat, headfirst.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  THE CHILLING

  “HAVE ONE. NEED the other.”

  I unfolded my twisted body from the floor of the taxi. I knew the voice. “Torquin?”

  My captor pulled a white hood from his bush of red curly hair. “Better if you sit,” he said.

  I stared at him in numb disbelief. “How—?”

  To my left, another voice chimed in. “He’s here because I got a hardware store guy to cut off my iridium bracelet.”

  I spun around. I’d been so stunned to see Torquin, I hadn’t noticed who was sitting with me in the backseat. Aly grinned. “You can hug me. It’s okay.”

  I threw my arms around her, squeezing her hard. “I was worried about you!”

  “You were?” Aly said.

  “Yes!” I exclaimed, pulling away. “Look, we can talk more later. Listen, Aly. Marco is lost to us. He’s with the Massa and I don’t think he’s coming back. Cass is somewhere back there, on the main drag. We got separated. Let me run back and see if I can find him.”

  “Massa coming,” Torquin said, reaching for the door. “Can’t let you go. Torquin find him.”

  In the distance I could hear sirens. I turned to see a police car screech to a halt beside a public bus. Out of the car walked a man in a police uniform, along with Brother Dimitrios.

  “Drive!” Torquin said.

  I sank out of sight. The taxi driver put the car in gear. “Englees?” he said. “Where we go?”

  Before anyone could answer, the door next to me flew open. I felt something smack against me, and I fell against Aly.

  As the door shut again, Cass materialized out of thin air on the seat next to me. “All present and accounted for,” he said, dropping two sacks onto the floor of the taxi. “Including Loculi.”

  Aly screamed. She reached across me toward Cass, and I felt myself scrunched up into a big hug sandwich. “Are you okay?” she said.

  “The shish-kebab gave me gas,” Cass said. “Otherwise, I’m gnileef doog.”

  “Airport,” Torquin snapped.

  I could see the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror, like two white lanterns, as he slammed on the gas pedal.

  “Well, well, the mad bomber returns!” Fiddle called out as we stepped from the jet onto the KI tarmac.

  A woman with a shaved head ran toward us and wrapped me in a hug. It took me a moment to realize it was Nirvana. “Long time,” she said. “Longer than you know.”

  Professor Bhegad was walking toward the ladder with only the slightest limp. His tweed coat looked a little more ragged, his hair grayer and more sparse. “Where are the Loculi?” he called out.

  I stepped down the ladder, pulling the bags around to my front. “They’re in here, Professor,” I said.

  He snatched them away with a big grin. “Marvelous! Marvelous!”

  “Uh, we’re fine, too,” Aly said. “Thanks for asking.”

  Professor Bhegad set down the bags, then turned sheepishly toward us. He thrust his hand toward mine and I shook it. “Well, Jack, you don’t look a week older. Which makes perfect sense. Aly . . . Cass . . . so good to have you all back.”

  “We—we lost Marco,” I said softly. “He’s with the Massa.”

  Bhegad’s shoulders slumped. “Yes, well, I was afraid of this. We will deal with it. But let’s not dwell on the negative now. We have you, we have the Loculi. Only five to go.” He leaned down, investigating the contents of the bags. Then he pulled open the top box, the one with the invisible Loculus. “This second one has nothing in it. . . .”

  “Its power is invisibility,” I said.

  “Extraordinary . . .” he said, peering closer. “The boxes appear to be lined with iridium . . . it shields the Loculi from transmitting powers. How would they know that?”

  “They know a lot,” Aly said.

  Bhegad nodded. “And they will know more, now that they have Marco. We will have to act fast.” He wiped his brow and smiled wearily. “But first, a little celebration at the Comestibule. Everyone has missed you. Come. Your rooms are waiting. Take a shower, settle in, freeze up . . .”

  “The term is chill out, Professor,” Nirvana said.

  “Ah, well, impossible to keep up with the hep lingo,” Bhegad said, walking briskly toward campus. “Dinner begins at seven. A Seven Wonders theme meal. Colossal beef stew, pyramid flan, hanging garden salad, and such. So, my children, we will see you after your chilling.”

  I glanced and Aly and Cass.

  I wanted so badly to feel good about being back.

  I almost did.

  “What the heck is pyramid flan?” Cass asked, plopping down on my bed. His hair was still wet from the shower, his KI clothes crisp and bright white.

  Aly walked in behind him. “Flan is like custard. My mom always orders it at restaurants.”

  I was still getting dressed and hadn’t yet pulled up my pants. “Will you please?”

  “I won’t look,” Aly said, turning away.

  I zipped up and belted. From my dresser I grabbed the cell phone, which I had transferred out of my Massa custodial outfit.

  Cass was staring at it. “Wait. You still have the phone?”

  I nodded. I wondered if it still worked. Pressing the button at the bottom, I saw a warning flash on the screen: LOW BATTERY.

  I pressed okay and the giant eye stared up out of the screen. “Who the heck is that?” Aly asked.

  “The reason we got out,” I said.

  “We had a helper,” Cass added. “A elom. Or, I guess technically, an elom.”

  “Wait. There’s a mole inside the Massa?” Aly asked.

  My brain was kicking in now. Going back over our capture. The rescue had been thrilling, and I hadn’t wanted to think about the bad stuff. Marco. Daria.

  Even thinking about them now gave me a sudden pang in the chest.

  But the eye seemed to be staring into me, as if it were alive. As if it knew me. “Yeah,” I said. “A mole.”

  “Do you know who she is?” Aly asked.

  “No,” I said. “How do you know it’s a she?”

  “The lashes,” Aly replied. “They have mascara on them. Looks like there’s some eyeliner underneath, too.”

  I thumbed away from it and brought up the contacts app. “There’s a name at the top of this list,” I said. “Probably hers. I mean, they’re her contacts. It’s in code like the rest of the names.”

  We stared at the number: 19141325 61361291411.

  I grabbed a pencil, then found the sheet where I’d written the number-substitution code.

  Then, slowly, I matched the numbers to letters:
br />   “Sister Nancy . . . ” I said. “Nancy Emelink. The person whose voice we heard in that room with all the pillows. The boss of the Massa.”

  “That was a woman?” Cass asked.

  “And she told you her name?” Aly added.

  “She didn’t tell me,” Cass said.

  I thought back to that day. To what the woman had said. The words were so strange. “There was another name, though. Morgana . . . Margana? It’s not here in these numbers, but she mentioned it to me.”

  “Huh,” Cass said, his head cocked. “Which, by the way, is ‘huh’ backward. But here’s the weird thing. Margana? Did she really say that? Because that’s anagram spelled backward!”

  An anagram.

  The person—the weird voice—had added the word to the end of her name. Why?

  I wrote out the name NANCY EMELINK in big, block letters. Immediately Aly went to work. I could see her writing AMY CLENKINEN, LYNN MCANIKEE, and a bunch of others.

  But I could not bring myself to pick up a pencil. The letters seemed to be dancing on the paper, rearranging themselves in my own mind.

  I felt a sharp sting of cold at the base of my spine, running up to my neck.

  “Stop,” I said.

  Aly looked up. “Say what?”

  “I said, stop!”

  I grabbed the pencil from her. My hand shook as I separated out the letters that I was seeing.

  “What?” Aly said. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  Cass peered over my shoulder. “There are some letters left,” he said. “N, A, N, E . . . ”

  They danced around in my head, too. And as they did, I felt the blood draining from my body to my toes. “Give me the phone,” I said, my voice dry and parched.

  “Jack . . . ?” Aly said.

  “Just give it to me!” As she handed it to me, I tapped the screen. The big eye was still staring up at me. The iris that got us into the secret room. The reason we were here, safe and sound.

  I put my thumb and index finger on the screen and pinched in. A forehead and nose appeared. I pinched again—the eye zoomed downward and became part of an entire person. A woman in a uniform. She was standing in a group, with Brother Dimitrios, Yiorgos, and Stavros.

  She was smiling. I knew the smile.

  It can’t be.

  I pinched outward again, slowly, enlarging the woman until only she filled the screen.

  Welcome to have you back.

  The head of the Massa had said that. She had used those very words. It hadn’t been easy to understand, and I’d been so angry I hadn’t really listened closely.

  It was a phrase I’d heard only one person use.

  My fingers slackened. The phone slipped out, falling to the floor. I tried to move my mouth to talk, but I couldn’t. The eye had belonged to the person in the photo. A person who couldn’t have been there. Someone who died many years ago.

  “It’s Anne—the letters spell Anne McKinley . . .” I said.

  I couldn’t bring myself to continue. But Cass and Aly were staring at me in total bafflement. The words needed to be said aloud. I swallowed hard.

  “The head of the Massa,” I said, “is my mom.”

  Credits

  Cover illustration © by Torstein Norstrand

  Cover design by Joe Merkel

  Copyright

  SEVEN WONDERS BOOK 2: LOST IN BABYLON

  Copyright © 2013 by HarperCollins Publishers

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.harpercollinschildrens.com

  * * *

  Library of Congress catalog card number: 2013942765

  ISBN 978-0-06-207043-2 (trade bdg.)

  * * *

  EPub Edition © September 2013 ISBN 9780062070456

  13 14 15 16 17 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FIRST EDITION

  In the Underworld

  Dedication

  FOR DAVE AND ELOISE,

  MY FELLOW VOYAGERS INTO WONDERMENT.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter One - The Valley of Kings

  Chapter Two - Vaporized

  Chapter Three - Purys Elpam

  Chapter Four - Triangulation

  Chapter Five - Counterattack

  Chapter Six - Good-bye, Wilbur

  Chapter Seven - Emergency Protocols

  Chapter Eight - Location D

  Chapter Nine - Epic Fail

  Chapter Ten - The Only Game in Town

  Chapter Eleven - Whac-a-Massa

  Chapter Twelve - Mongolia

  Chapter Thirteen - Death Is Cold

  Chapter Fourteen - Dad

  Chapter Fifteen - Genghis and Radamanthus

  Chapter Sixteen - Newton Speaks

  Chapter Seventeen - Dad Takes More Weird

  Chapter Eighteen - Work to Be Done

  Chapter Nineteen - The Tailor Wakes

  Chapter Twenty - Brunhilda

  Chapter Twenty-One - Gnome? Pixie? Troll?

  Chapter Twenty-Two - Secret in the Stones

  Chapter Twenty-Three - This Is Not Science

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Flying Zombie Skin

  Chapter Twenty-Five - A Game Most Dangerous

  Chapter Twenty-Six - That’s Gnizama

  Chapter Twenty-Seven - Cold Feet

  Chapter Twenty-Eight - Lost

  Chapter Twenty-Nine - The Door

  Chapter Thirty - The Blazing Fields

  Chapter Thirty-One - Vasilissa

  Chapter Thirty-Two - The Trade

  Chapter Thirty-Three - It Is Good to Be Beautiful

  Chapter Thirty-Four - Shadows on Fire

  Chapter Thirty-Five - Gathering the Clouds

  Chapter Thirty-Six - Nadine

  Chapter Thirty-Seven - Because of the Eyes

  Chapter Thirty-Eight - We Tried

  Chapter Thirty-Nine - The Grand Carbunculus Wizendum

  Chapter Forty - The Fence

  Chapter Forty-One - Code Red

  Chapter Forty-Two - Hacked?

  Chapter Forty-Three - Losing It

  Chapter Forty-Four - Shouldn’ts

  Chapter Forty-Five - Shouldn’ts

  Chapter Forty-Six - Another Exit

  Chapter Forty-Seven - The Prodigal Sunshine

  Chapter Forty-Eight - Mom

  Chapter Forty-Nine - Artemisia Awaits

  Chapter Fifty - A Rush of Air

  Chapter Fifty-One - One Last Look Back

  Credits

  Copyright

  Map

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE VALLEY OF KINGS

  FOR A DEAD person, my mom looked amazing.

  She had a few more gray hairs and wrinkles, which happens after six years, I guess. But her eyes and smile were exactly the same. Even in a cell phone image, those are the things you notice first.

  “Jack?” said Aly Black, who was sitting next to me in the backseat of a rented car. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” I said. Which, honestly, was the biggest lie of my life. “I mean, for someone who’s just discovered his mother faked her own death six years ago.”

  From the other side of the car, Cass Williams slid his Coke-bottle glasses down his nose and gave me a pitying glance. Like the rest of us, he was in disguise. “Maybe she wasn’t faking,” he said. “Maybe she survived. And had amnesia. Till now.”

  “Survived a fall into a crevasse in Antarctica?” I said.

  I shut the phone. I had been looking at that photo nonstop since we escaped the Massa headqu
arters near the pyramids in Giza. I showed it to everyone back in the Karai Institute, including Professor Bhegad, but I couldn’t stay there. Not while she was here. Now we were returning to Egypt on a search to find her.

  The car zipped down the Cairo–Alexandria highway in total silence. I wanted to be happy that Mom was alive. I wanted not to care that she had actually been off with a cult. But I wasn’t and I did. Life had changed for me at age seven into a Before and After. Before was great. After was Dad on business trips all the time, me at home with one lame babysitter after the other, kids talking behind my back. I can count on one finger the number of times I went to a parent-teacher conference with an actual parent.

  So I wasn’t woo-hooing the fact that Mom had been hangin’ in a pyramid all this time with the Kings of Nasty. The people who stole our friend Marco and brainwashed him. The people who destroyed an entire civilization. The Slimeballs Whose Names Should Not Be Mentioned but I’ll Do It Anyway. The Massa.

  I turned back to the window, where the hot, gray-tan buildings of Giza raced by.

  “Almost there,” Torquin grunted. As he took the exit off the ring road, the right tires lifted off the ground and the left tires screeched. Aly and Cass slid into my side, and I nearly dropped the phone. “Ohhhh . . .” groaned Cass.

  “Um, Torquin?” Aly called out. “That left pedal? It’s a brake.”

  Torquin was nodding his head, pleased with the maneuver. “Very smooth suspension. Very expensive car.”

  “Very nauseated passenger,” Cass mumbled.

  Torquin was the only person who could make a Lincoln Town Car feel like a ride with the Flintstones. He is also the only person I know who is over seven feet tall and who never wears shoes.

  “Are you okay, Cass?” Aly asked. “Are you going to barf?”

  “Don’t say that,” Cass said. “Just hearing the word barf makes me want to barf.”