Gwen eyed the thief. “How did you—?”
“The blueprints.” Raven pushed them both out into the open. “The Phantom’s chicken scratch said the shift change’ll take two minutes. Don’t waste it gawkin’, yeah?”
They hurried across the compound, scooting from alleys to bushes to parked cars. Raven always seemed to know when the guards would leave their posts or disappear around a corner on a roving beat.
“I didn’t see any of this in the Phantom’s plans,” said Gwen as the thief pulled them down behind a parked sedan.
Raven snorted. “As if you know how to read ’em, yeah?” She took off again.
Their zigzag path brought them to a drainpipe not unlike the one Jack had used during the Hunt, right before it had all gone horribly wrong. He shuddered at the memory.
Raven saw the change in his expression. “You up for this?” she asked, glancing from Jack to the rooftop four stories up.
He nodded. If it would help him save the professor and prove his own innocence, then he was up for anything. “Absolutely.”
Jack’s muscles apparently disagreed. Every one of them was burning by the time he reached the top. He rolled, panting, over the gutter and onto the green copper roof, right next to Gwen.
She was breathing as hard as he was. “Please say we’re done with all the climbing.”
Raven leaned over them, streaked black hair hanging down. “Sorry. There’s still the little matter of a fifty-foot drop to the jewels, yeah?”
It occurred to Jack that fifty feet was a little specific, considering he had not seen any measurements on the blueprints. But then he couldn’t read all the Phantom’s symbols either.
Raven didn’t give him the chance to ask. By the time he got to his feet, she was at the skylight.
If the Phantom had, in fact, used the skylight, he had left no sign. Each of its six triangular panes was still intact, and none would have been large enough for even Jack to squeeze through. “Perhaps he can zap through windows,” offered Gwen. “It’s possible that all he needs is to see where he’s going.”
“Or maybe he realized we might call the cops and chickened out,” said Jack, pressing his face to a pane with his hands cupped around his eyes. A chandelier hung down from the center support into a sixteen-sided chamber with a balcony around the upper periphery. The jewels of the Russian Imperial Collection sparkled in the darkness far below. Among them, Jack caught a hint of movement. His eyes adjusted, and a dark silhouette formed. “Nope. He’s down there.”
Gwen frowned at the other two. “And how are we supposed to follow? Even if we could cut through the glass, these sections are too small.”
“But three sections is just right, yeah?” Raven removed a bundle of rails from her pack and unfolded them into a trapezoid to match the outline of three successive panes. “I told you. Tools of the trade. Copper framing melts as easy as glass.” She fixed the whole thing to the window with a suction cup and flipped a toggle. The lower half of the rails glowed orange. Acrid white smoke rose into the night. She held out a hand to Gwen. “I’ll need your coat, yeah?”
“You most certainly will not.”
Raven rolled her eyes. “To set the glass on.” She snapped her fingers. “Come on. We don’ have all night.”
Gwen relented, sliding the coat from her shoulders and grumbling about whose fault it was they were up there in the first place, while Jack kept an eye on the Phantom, making sure he didn’t look up from his work. The trapezoid came away from the skylight with nothing more than a light crick.
“Now,” whispered Raven, setting the pane down on Gwen’s coat, “first rule of magic and thievin’: never trust your own eyes, yeah?” She lifted a set of brass goggles from her pack and held them to her eyes. After a moment, she nodded to herself and handed them to Jack, bypassing Gwen and getting a dirty look for it.
Jack took a look through the blue lenses. Sparkling lines appeared below. They crisscrossed the room right above the display level. “Laser tripwire,” he said, pulling the strap of the goggles over his head. “But I think we can get through, as long as we can see it.”
“Look who’s a regular criminal now, yeah?”
Jack gave Raven an embarrassed smile.
“Can we get on with it?” Gwen was shivering, clutching her shoulders.
He coughed. “Right. Sure.”
Jack’s goggles amplified light, showing him the entire room below. Cases packed with jewelry lined the floor. There were silver suits of armor, gem-encrusted weapons, and a small fleet of gilded carriages right off the pages of a fairy tale. The centerpiece was a broad pedestal with three crowns, and that’s where the Phantom was, pulling the biggest one through a hole he had cut in the display case. He was grumbling, talking to another person. The professor was down there with him, but why would the Phantom talk to him if he was unconscious?
Jack put the implications out of his mind and shifted his focus to the upper level, adjacent to the chandelier. “The nearest balcony is maybe twenty feet away,” he said, glancing at Raven. “Can you get us over there?”
“ ’Course I can.” The thief drew a pistol from her bag of tricks, took aim, and fired a dart into the chamber. It was followed by the whistling of monofilament wire. She clipped a D-ring to the chandelier’s upper anchor and unfolded a set of handles from the sides of the gun. “Zip line,” she whispered, holding it steady for Jack. “After you, yeah?”
As Jack squeezed his legs through the hole in the skylight, Raven waved a hand in front of his goggles. “Wait. Your satchel.”
“What about it?”
“Hole’s too small. You’ll get hung up. Take it off, an’ once you’re on the balcony, I’ll toss it over, along with mine. It’ll be safer for the both of us, yeah?”
Jack looked to Gwen, but she only shivered, wearing an expression that said I’m too cold to care anymore.
“Jack.” Raven made an urgent motion for him to hand over the bag. “We’re gonna lose him.”
“Yeah. Okay.” He passed it over and slid the rest of the way down, holding the thief’s hand for support while he reached for the zip line. He cringed as he grabbed the handles and let what was basically fishing line take his full weight. Gravity did the rest.
Jack flew down the line to the balcony and caught the rail with a toe, glancing down over his shoulder. The Phantom still did not look up. He was busying himself with a dental pick, working small diamonds free from the crown and laying them on a black velvet cloth. Jack let out a breath, steadied himself atop the rail, and let go of the device. It whizzed back up to Raven.
Once he had hopped down to the carpet, he took a longer look at the chamber floor, a good thirty feet below him. He could see the professor now. Tanner was indeed awake, watching the Phantom work. He did not look drugged, nor did he look much like a captive. He spoke in low whispers, giving commands like he was in charge. And when the Phantom finally popped the giant egg-shaped ruby from the top of the crown, the professor did something Jack could not rationalize, no matter how hard he tried.
Tanner stood up from his chair.
Chapter Thirty-Three
JACK RIPPED OFF the goggles. “Professor?”
He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Both men looked up, and Tanner smirked—actually smirked—at him.
The twang of a cut zip line drew Jack’s eyes to the skylight. Raven was gone. Gwen, red-faced, gripped the edges of the trapezoidal hole and shouted down at him. “It’s a trap. Get out of there!”
The Phantom swept up the velvet cloth full of gems and shoved them into the inside pocket of his coat. When he drew his hand out again, he was holding the stopwatch device. He looked straight up at the skylight.
“Not this time,” muttered Jack, backing across the carpeted balcony to gain some runway. “Gwen, cover the glass!”
Three things happened in quick succession. Jack launched himself from the balcony rail, flying headlong into open space. Gwen threw her coat across the skylight like a
tarp, covering the entire thing. And the Phantom vanished.
Zzzap.
The thief reappeared a few feet below the covered window, a mix of surprise and terror filling his eyes, frantically reaching for the chandelier’s chain. Jack’s gamble had paid off. The Phantom couldn’t teleport any farther than he could see. An instant later, Jack slammed into him, wrapping him in a bear hug and sending them both into a violent midair twist.
Adrenaline pumped into his brain. His muddled tracker senses kicked into crystal-clear overdrive, and his topsy-turvy world slowed to a crawl. The Phantom was still grasping but not for the chandelier. The stopwatch floated just beyond his outstretched fingers.
It was Jack’s first solid look at the device. Instead of hands and numbers, spirals of silvery script were carved into the dark alloy on both sides—ancient runes, or maybe complex equations—leading to a bright blue gem at the center. With almost academic curiosity, he pushed himself away from his foe and plucked it from the air. He fixated on the only soft thing he could find, a purple cushion just visible through the sunroof of a fantasy carriage, willed himself to land there, and pressed the button.
Zzzap.
Pain.
Atoms turning inside out.
Jack thumped down on the seat with a surprised Oof as a glassy blast wave rushed out of him in all directions, cracking the carriage walls. He would have felt guilty about the damage, but the Phantom came crashing down through the sunroof right behind him, showering him with splintered wood and gold leaf.
Alarm bells rang.
The thief had fallen through the laser tripwires. As the Phantom lay groaning on the carriage floor, something else dropped through the ruined sunroof, and Jack reached out and caught it—the Russian ruby. Jack must have knocked the jewel from the thief’s grasp when he smacked into him in midair. The Phantom’s face contorted into the start of a growl, but then he vanished, along with the ruined carriage, the alarm bells, and everything else.
Jack dropped through a white-out blizzard, with shapes and figures spiraling past him in the vortex—crossbows, muskets, war machines, and chemical formulas—all broken down like three-dimensional blueprints. It was a spark, he knew, but he had never felt one like this before.
He landed with a crunch in a snow-covered courtyard, and the blizzard thinned. An army of men in gray overcoats, collars raised against the cold, stood in rows before him. A few wore the funny hats his mind had forever linked with Napoleon, but they were not speaking French. Their accents were Russian, and they were chanting a name—Constantine—over and over.
A line of mounted men in similar uniforms stretched out to Jack’s right, horses stamping the pavement. Several held their weapons at the ready, but no one fired. The snow whirled and tumbled between the two factions, as if it were the only thing keeping them from tearing each other apart.
Jack had to get out of there. Back in reality, alarm bells were ringing, Russian guards were converging on the hall, and the Phantom was about to tear his head off. But he couldn’t look away from the standoff.
A horse snorted, sending a puff of hot breath into the frigid air. Jack was resting against its flank. Rather, the Russian ruby was resting against its flank. Jack was watching the spark from the pinnacle of the same crown the Phantom had just picked clean of its jewels. A mounted soldier with a curling mustache and the most epic sideburns Jack had ever seen was holding the crown at his knee. He remained bareheaded, the only bareheaded soldier in that whole disturbing winter wonderland.
“Nicholas.” A soldier with gold epaulets and a plumed cap eased his horse closer. He said something in Russian—urgent, pleading.
We must end this, before it comes to blood.
The translation came unbidden to Jack’s mind. But how? Sparks showed images and sounds from the past. They did not come with captions. But he had already seen that this was no ordinary spark. What had Gwen told him about the Russian ruby? It imbued the emperors with supernatural knowledge. She had followed that with a caution, though. It was also said to have driven them mad. Jack mentally cringed. He really had to get out of there.
In answer to the soldier’s urging, Nicholas waved a hand high in the air. Instantly, a group of horsemen broke from the line, charging the opposing troops. Yet still they did not fire.
“Constantine! Constantine!” The troops held their ground, chanting the name all the louder. The horsemen faltered and pulled up short. Their mounts slipped and skidded on the icy stone, and two of them went down. One fired a shot and a single chanting man dropped like a marionette with its strings cut. Blood seeped into the snow.
The crowd went silent.
Nicholas let out a string of angry commands, and the rest of the horsemen returned to the line. After that, the only sound was the whistling of the wind and the brush of the snow like grit against patches of empty stone. Then Jack was rising. Nicholas was lifting the crown, not to place it on his head, but to stare at it, as if searching for the answer to his crisis.
Frost tinted his eyebrows, and beneath them, his steel-blue eyes were sad, even confused. But as Nicholas gazed into the ruby, his expression changed. Sadness and confusion twisted into malice.
Jack felt the same mixture of anger and glee rising in his own mind. Ghostly cannons materialized in his vision—men loading grapeshot, white flashes exploding from bronze barrels. The Russian ruby—this source of supernatural knowledge—had shown him how to finish the standoff.
It had shown Nicholas as well.
The would-be tsar set the crown on the pommel of his saddle, letting it hang at an ignoble tilt, and pointed at his cavalrymen. They parted, making way for three cannons. The troops across the square began to murmur. The men of the front line took a step back into their comrades. But Nicholas gave them no chance for retreat. He pumped his fist. The cannons fired.
Men fell by the dozens, blood spraying across the snow. The rest tried to run. They pushed and scrambled out onto an ice-covered river that bordered the square. Meanwhile, the cannon teams reloaded and fired into their backs. The ice broke beneath them. They sank into pink, frothing water, dragged down by their winter coats.
The whole scene was horrifying. And electrifying.
A part of Jack exulted in the sight of all that death—knowledge of warfare perfectly executed. The rest of him recoiled. Before Jack had the chance to process what was happening to him, Young Professor Tanner materialized out of the smoke and the swirling snow. He strolled up to the horse and reached out, his thin fingers going straight for Jack’s face. “I’ll take that.”
Jack tried to flinch but he couldn’t. He’d almost forgotten he was sparking. Tanner wasn’t reaching for Jack’s face. He was reaching for the jewel. And if the professor was there in the spark with Jack, he must already have a hand on the ruby back in the real world.
Chapter Thirty-Four
YOUNG TANNER’S SMIRK held steady, but the rest of him morphed into Old Tanner. At the same time, the snow-dusted, bloody square behind him became a darkened hall, and the screams of dying men became the alarm bells the Phantom had set off. Tanner’s arm was stretched through the carriage window, fingers caressing the ruby. He plucked it from Jack’s hand.
“Why?” asked Jack, recovering his voice. “Why are you doing this?”
But Tanner gave no answer. He kicked away the chock beneath the carriage wheel—the one holding it in place on the platform—and then shot straight up through the hall. A pair of quantum thrusters, like those the spooks had used in the Archive, blazed at his ankles.
“Didn’t see that coming,” said Jack as he and the Phantom watched Tanner nimbly alight on the upper balcony and run away into the shadows.
Slowly, the two tore their eyes from the empty balcony. They stared at each other for half a heartbeat, and then the Phantom snarled and made a grab for the stopwatch device. But the shift of his weight set the coach into motion, sending him sprawling back against the seat instead.
The coach creaked and bounced down
a ramp toward a pair of tall double doors, and Jack dug the fingers of his free hand into the velvet cushion as it smashed through. The carriage collapsed to the bricks, skidding to a stop in a sagging heap of gilded firewood, wheels rolling off in separate directions. Jack fought back his shock, pushed his way out through the debris, and took off across the courtyard.
Dogs barked.
Men with guns converged, shouting in Russian.
“Jack!” Gwen waved to him from the corner of a building, next to the alley that led back toward the wall. They would never make it that far.
It seemed the Russian guards weren’t too keen on shooting at a couple of kids. They did, however, release the dogs. A pair of German shepherds bolted out in front of their masters, covering the distance at twice the speed. Jack glanced down at the device in his hand and a solution came to him. He held it up so Gwen could see. “This way! Run to me!”
She nodded and sprinted out to meet him.
A dog leaped, teeth bared, just as their fingers touched.
Zzzap.
Pain.
Trees.
An iron grip on his shoulder.
Jack glanced back and saw the angry glare of the Phantom. The thief had chased him from the wreckage, grabbing him at the last moment, and Jack had teleported all three across the compound to the top of the Kremlin wall. As momentum carried them over the battlements toward a grove of tall pines, the Phantom ripped the stopwatch from Jack’s hand, growling in his ear. “Turnabout’s fair play, innit?”
Zzzap.
He was gone. And Jack and Gwen crashed into the pines.
They tumbled down through bows and branches, letting out a series of grunts and cries until they slammed into the snowbank below. Gwen was the first to crawl out. She pulled a pinecone from her curls and tossed it away. “You all right?”
Jack moaned, sitting up and rubbing his head. “I think so.” He let her help him to his feet and together they stumbled out of the foliage. Alarms still rang in the compound. In moments the whole square would be crawling with guards and policemen. The two of them ran for the scooters.