Spencer tried to imagine his mom swinging a mop like a club. It was a stretch of his imagination.
“Turn here,” Walter pointed. “We’ll take the back roads through Welcher. Cut them off at the intersection by Maple Park.”
“You know where they’re going?” Spencer asked anxiously.
“Welcher Elementary School,” Marv said. “It’s a sure bet.”
“But why? If they got the hammer and nail, why would they go back to the school?”
“The School Board,” Walter explained. “Hadley needs it to replace me as the next warlock.”
“What’s the School Board?” Daisy asked.
“When the Founding Witches placed their power into the bronze hammers, they recognized the need for a transfer of power for someone to become a witch or warlock—a rite of passage that would complicate the procedure and discourage thieves from stealing the hammers.
“The Witches formed the School Board—a plank of magical wood that would transfer the power from one warlock to his successor. After the Witches died, the Board was cut into thirteen square pieces. The idea was that each American colony would safeguard one piece. In order for Garth Hadley to take my power, he must pound the nail into the School Board. That resets the nail—kind of like wiping a computer hard drive.
“If Garth manages to do that, he’ll be cloaked in a magical Aura and no one will be able to touch him until he sets his domain. The Aura will provide him a safe walk. All he’ll have to do is choose a building for his domain, pound the nail, and he’ll be the new warlock.”
“But why would he risk going for the Board in Welcher?” Spencer asked. “Why not drive it into one of the other twelve pieces?”
“Welcher is the most accessible,” said Walter. “With time, eight of the pieces were destroyed. Four of the five remaining have been appraised as antique hardwood and fashioned into items that are now safeguarded in museums: picture frames, a historic plaque, an antique clock. Nearly impossible to reach. That leaves one.”
“At our school,” Spencer mused. “But how’d it get there?”
“I brought it with me.” Walter grinned at an old memory. “A year ago, when the BEM withdrew support from the schools, I stole Ninfa from a factory in Florida. With a little help from some Rebel spies, I managed to drive the nail into the remaining School Board. From there, I was protected by the Aura, so I took the Board and established my first domain in Arkansas. The BEM tracked me down, so I moved to Welcher. You know the rest.”
Walter pointed. “Turn left.” Alice spun the wheel and the station wagon squealed around a corner.
“What’ll we do once we reach the school?” asked Spencer.
“Mrs. Zumbro will drop me and Marv in the parking lot and take you two out of harm’s way.”
“But we can help!”
“NO!” Alice and Walter shouted in unison.
“I need to make sure you kids are safe,” the warlock said. “You’ve become too involved already. Marv and I can handle this. If we beat Garth to the School Board, we should be able to defend it.”
“That should be no problem, right?” Spencer said. “Garth will have to search every room to find the School Board, but you guys already know where it is.”
Walter grimaced. “I’m afraid the BEM already did the searching. Why do you think Miss Leslie Sharmelle came to your classroom as a substitute?”
Daisy and Spencer shared an astonished glance.
“The School Board is in Mrs. Natcher’s room?” Spencer couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“And if you haven’t guessed it yet,” Walter said. “It’s actually your desk.”
Chapter 38
“Into the school!”
Wait a minute,” Spencer muttered. It took a second to process what Walter just said. His desk? It seemed so ordinary. “My desk is the School Board?”
“Part of it, anyway,” said Walter. “About a square foot. In an attempt to disguise the magic wood, we inlaid the School Board into your desktop.”
Spencer tried to imagine his battered desk, wondering which part was the crucial magical wood. Was it the part with that funny message about Mrs. Natcher smelling like cabbage?
The station wagon rounded the last corner and Alice gunned it down the straight road into Welcher Elementary School. As he craned his neck to see out the windshield, Spencer’s heart sank.
The blue Toyota Garth had once driven was parked askew, the doors wide open.
“Couldn’t be,” Spencer whispered. “Garth was in that silver car with Leslie.”
“More BEM workers,” Marv guessed. “Preparing the way so Garth will have an easy entry once he arrives.”
They didn’t see the worst part until Alice swung the station wagon into the parking lot and its single headlight flashed across the school. The double doors that led into the middle hallway were smashed open. Glass lay in glinting shards, leaving a jagged, dark opening into the school.
“Drop us here.” Walter’s voice was an urgent whisper. Alice screeched to a stop.
“We’re unarmed,” Marv said from the backseat.
“Thanks for mentioning that.” Walter gripped the car door, ready to spring out.
“Take this.” Daisy swung Spencer’s backpack over to Marv. “It’s got vac dust.”
“We’ll need it.”
“Let’s go!” Marv flung open the door and shouldered the backpack. Spencer watched the two janitors cautiously approach the broken school door.
Headlights suddenly flooded the parking lot. Spencer and Daisy whirled around to see a big vehicle speeding toward the station wagon. Squinting against the lights, Spencer saw what it was.
The white BEM van.
Alice threw the car in gear and slammed on the gas. But the acceleration on the old station wagon made a tortoise look fast. Before the tires had made a complete revolution, the BEM van slammed into the side of the Zumbro station wagon.
Metal folded and glass crunched. Airbags deployed in the front, slamming Alice against the seat. Daisy flew into Spencer and he knocked his head against the window.
“Mom!” Spencer cried. “You okay?” He didn’t have to ask about Daisy. She was clinging to his sleeve, whimpering but unharmed.
“I don’t know who these people think they are!” his mother shouted from the front seat. “But somebody’s going to pay for that!” She was twisting the key in the ignition, but the attempt was futile. The station wagon was parked forever.
“We gotta get out,” Daisy said. Marv and Walter were racing back toward the station wagon.
Spencer tested the door. It was stiff, but with some pressure from his shoulder, it popped open. Daisy followed him out as Alice climbed across the passenger seat. Marv ripped open the door and helped her to her feet.
“Into the school!” Walter cried as the BEM van doors opened and several angry workers leapt out. Daisy led the group through the shattered opening in the door, Marv bringing up the rear.
The first BEM worker tried to follow them in, but Marv was ready for him. A fistful of vac dust struck the enemy, suctioning him onto the shards of broken glass.
“They’re trying to get in!” Daisy pointed down the hallway where two BEM workers knelt at the lock to Mrs. Natcher’s door. One held a flashlight while the other fiddled with slender lock-picking tools.
Walter knocked them both back with a palm blast of vacuum dust. Marv stepped over the pinned bodies and inserted his key into Mrs. Natcher’s doorknob.
“Inside! Quickly!” Walter ushered the others into the classroom. Just as the BEM workers poured into the hallway, the warlock slammed the door and twisted the lock.
Marv started shoving desks against the door for a barricade. Walter retreated to the center of the room. He exhaled a sigh of relief and briefly touched Sp
encer’s desk. Then he crossed to the window, pulling things along to block it.
Spencer glanced at his mom. She didn’t look so good. It looked as if the evening was turning out to be more than she could digest. As soon as she saw Spencer staring, Alice grabbed a desk and shoved it toward the door.
That was Mom. Strong and independent, if not a little frazzled. She clearly couldn’t let her son see a weakness. Especially not now, when courage was being stretched like taffy.
“What now?” Daisy pushed her own desk and Marv picked it up to make a stack.
“We hold out,” Walter said. “The BEM will have to retreat before school starts in the morning. That should buy us at least eight hours to smuggle the School Board safely away. All we need to do is survive tonight.”
Mrs. Natcher’s room seemed foreign in the darkness of night. Alice reached for the lights, but Walter stopped her. It was better if the enemy couldn’t see them. Spencer strode over to his desk, the object of so much attention. It was funny. He’d been so close to the School Board for weeks.
“Hadley already has Ninfa and the nail. If he gets into this room, all could be lost.” Walter dumped over a table and propped it against the window. “The most important thing is to keep Garth Hadley away from Spencer’s desk.”
“I think we have a problem.” Spencer looked up. “This isn’t my desk.”
Chapter 39
“Actually . . . that was me.”
Everyone stopped. Marv dropped the desk he’d been holding. All eyes were on Spencer, begging for him to be mistaken so they could ignore his last statement.
“This desk isn’t mine,” Spencer repeated.
“What do you mean? It’s got your name on it.” Marv stomped forward.
“This is my name tag, but it isn’t my desk.”
The others gathered closer, abandoning their efforts to fortify the room. Spencer felt his stomach sinking.
“Are you sure?” Walter asked.
“Positive,” said Spencer. “I know, because some dummy wrote Mrs. N smells like cabbige on mine. Some dummy who couldn’t even spell cabbage.”
“Um,” Marv grunted. “Actually . . . that was me. I scratched that into the School Board.”
“You?” Daisy said. “Why?”
“Well, she does smell.” Marv shrugged.
“But why’d you write it?”
“Walter told me to add some subtle marks to make it look more like a normal desk instead of a magic board.”
“Very subtle,” Spencer said.
“Enough!” The warlock waved his hands. “If this desktop doesn’t have the School Board, then we’ve got major trouble.”
“They switched it,” Spencer said. “They switched my desk for a fake.”
Walter nodded. “They knew we would stop at nothing to get in this classroom. All our attention was focused here.”
“But what about the guys picking the lock?” Alice asked.
“A decoy.”
Marv grabbed the stack of desks and threw them away from the door, breaking down the barrier that he’d so desperately built.
“And now,” Walter muttered. “Now they have us right where they want us—trapped in a classroom.”
Marv uncovered the door and threw himself against it. He shouted with rage as Walter’s prediction became reality. The door to Mrs. Natcher’s classroom was blocked. Alice ran to the window, but shadowed faces of BEM workers already clogged the escape.
“We’re surrounded,” she said. Marv slammed against the door again. The big janitor was determined, and Spencer was surprised to see the blockade hold against such a force as Marv.
“We need to find out where they’ve taken the real School Board,” Walter said.
Daisy suddenly dropped to her knees and started emptying Spencer’s fake desk. “If they really switched them, then all we need to do is find out whose desk this really is.” She pulled out a notebook. On the cover was a label: Haley Rasmussen’s writing notebook.
“Haley Rasmussen,” Daisy muttered. “She’s in Mrs. Cleveland’s class. That’s only two rooms down!”
Marv threw his bulk against the door, but it still didn’t budge. Alice ducked out of sight by the window.
“We need another way out,” said Walter, as though no one else were thinking it. “Every moment we wait brings Garth Hadley closer to the school. Once he’s here, nothing will stop him from becoming a warlock.”
“Let me just open this door and we’ll stroll on down to Mrs. Cleveland’s room,” Marv said sarcastically. He threw his shoulder against it once more, but it was still solid.
Spencer glanced at Daisy, who was staring at the ceiling. “The vent!” she said. “We could climb into the air vent and escape.”
Spencer sized up the vent. It was small, but they would be able to fit. “Nice one, Daisy!”
In no time, Walter was standing atop two stacked desks, straining on the vent cover. “Marv!” he said, jumping down. “I need you.”
Marv lumbered over and climbed up. He was a frightening sight, gingerly balancing on two desks, like a circus elephant standing on a tiny ball. With one meaty hand, Marv seized the vent cover and ripped it from the ceiling. White dust snowed down on the shaggy man as he looked up.
“No way I’m fitting,” Marv quickly determined. He and Walter traded places on the desks.
The warlock grasped both sides of the open vent and tried to pull himself in. His bald head disappeared into the ceiling. But, to everyone below, it was obvious that Walter’s shoulders were too broad to fit.
“Useless,” he said when his head reappeared.
“Wait.” Spencer stepped forward. “What about us?”
Before Walter could answer, Alice was climbing up next to him. “Fine,” she muttered. “I guess I’ll go.”
Spencer knew that his offer had prodded his mother into action. Her motherly instinct would be too strong to let her son enter into potential danger.
“This isn’t going to be good,” Spencer whispered to Daisy. He had to avert his eyes from the scene. His mother was atop the desks now, clinging to Walter Jamison. “My mom’s terrified of heights.”
“I got you, I got you,” Walter assured. He helped her grasp the vent. With his hands, Walter made a cradle for her foot. Her head disappeared into the vent.
Spencer covered his ears. Any moment now, his mother would start screaming.
And she did. “Get me down! Down right now! NOW!”
It was something Spencer had learned on a family vacation three years ago. They’d gone to Mesa Verde to tour the Native American ruins. Mom had gotten halfway through one of the cliff dwellings when she just froze. It had taken two park rangers to get her back on level ground.
It wasn’t just the twelve-foot height of Mrs. Natcher’s classroom ceiling that got Alice Zumbro screaming. It was a deadly combination of . . .
“Heights and tight spaces,” Spencer whispered.
Normally, Spencer would have been embarrassed by his mother’s outburst. But there was no time for that now. As Walter and Marv got Alice back on flat ground, Spencer volunteered again.
“You’ve got to let us try. Garth Hadley could be here by now.”
Walter glanced at Alice for parental approval.
“Please, Mom. I can do this. I’ll be careful.”
Still flushed and out of breath, Alice nodded wordlessly. Spencer scampered up the desks and stepped into Walter’s cupped hands.
“I don’t know what you have planned,” the warlock said, “but you better be careful. Your mother will never forgive me if something happens to you.” Without waiting for a response, Walter boosted Spencer into the metal air vent.
It was a tight fit with the princess backpack. Movement was limited to something between a crawl and a s
lither. Daisy’s face suddenly appeared behind him. Spencer reached back and took her hand.
She was still pulling her legs into the vent when a loud crash filled the classroom below. Shouts drifted up, filling the vent.
“What’s happening?” Spencer hissed.
Daisy twisted around, peering over her shoulder. “They’ve come into the classroom!” she whispered back.
“Must have seen us escaping and tried to stop it,” said Spencer.
“Walter’s down,” narrated Daisy. “He looks hurt. Your mom’s all tangled up in a mop. They got Marv, too. No, wait. He’s breaking free. He’s heading to the door!”
Suddenly, Glopified mop strings shot up from below and filled the vent opening.
“Spencer!” Daisy cried as the strings twisted around her leg. He reached back desperately, grabbing for anything. His hands found something and he pulled . . . on her braid!
Daisy yelped from the pain as she became the victim of a human tug-of-war. At last, the mop strings retracted and Spencer let go.
“Ow,” Daisy whimpered, grabbing the top of her head. “Who do you think I am, Rapunzel?” She stroked her thick braid. “This isn’t a rope, you know.”
“Sorry,” Spencer said. “Let’s get out of here before they attack again.”
Chapter 40
“Stop singing!”
Spencer and Daisy snaked their way forward through the vent system of Welcher Elementary School.
“If we go two rooms over,” Spencer whispered, “we’ll come out right in Mrs. Cleveland’s room. They won’t expect us to pop out of the ceiling.”
Spencer sounded much more confident than he felt. A million things could go wrong between here and there. He had no idea what they would do once they dropped into Mrs. Cleveland’s room. How could they get the desk safely away when all they had was a pink backpack full of vacuum dust? Besides, Garth might already be in there, pounding the nail into the School Board.
I’ve still got the Vortex, Spencer reminded himself.