Spell Robbers

  “That’s better.” Ronin scowled at them. “Have a seat, kid.”

  The room had a couple of sofas, sunken and stained. In one corner stood a little table with an expensive-looking coffeemaker, and nearby, a larger table rested in the light of three low-hanging bulbs, buried in papers and building plans. A whiteboard covered in half-erased scribbles took up most of one wall.

  Ben went to one of the sofas and sat down slowly. Ronin collapsed onto the other, while the mohawk, the shrub, and the businesswoman took up positions around them.

  “All right,” the mohawk said. Ben recognized his voice as the one Ronin called Argus. “We’ve cooled it down. Now explain.”

  “I will,” Ronin said. “But first, could you bring me a cup of coffee, Meg? I’ve still got the taste of that cheap League stuff in my mouth.”

  The woman’s lips got so tight they disappeared. “When have I ever brought you coffee?”

  “Fair enough.” Ronin slapped his thighs. “Introductions. Ben, this is Argus, Megalesius, and Lykos. You already met Polyphemus as we came in.”

  “Introductions?” Argus said.

  Ben didn’t figure those were their real names. He wondered if they even knew one another’s real names.

  Ronin continued. “Meg and Lykos are the crew’s firepower. Destruction specialists. Argus is our lookout, and he’s pretty handy with a fog if we need cover. Polyphemus over there is our safecracker. You’ve never seen such delicate actuations.”

  The giant? Delicate? Was Ronin being sarcastic?

  “As for me,” Ronin said, “I round out the crew with strategy and logistics.”

  “I wish I knew the strategy behind what you’re doing right now,” Lykos said. “Who is the kid?”

  “I already told you,” Ronin said. “This is Ben.”

  “Not his name,” Meg said. “What is he doing here?”

  “I’ve got another job lined up,” Ronin said. “And Ben is our inside man.”

  Argus took a seat, the chains on his coat jangling. “What kind of job?”

  “A hustle with a smash and grab. And it’s going to be hot.”

  “How hot?” Meg asked.

  “Everyone will be coming after us,” Ronin said. “And not just the League.”

  “Who’s the mark?” she asked.

  “Poole.”

  Argus chuckled. “Right.”

  Ronin paused. “I warned you it would be hot.”

  Argus stopped laughing. “Wait, you’re serious?”

  “What’s the prize?” Meg asked.

  “Well, that’s where it gets interesting,” Ronin said. “Seems some physicist has gone and made a portable augmenter.”

  Lykos stepped forward. “Did you say portable?”

  Ronin nodded. “It’s some kind of gun. Poole broke into the lab, stole the gun, and kidnapped the inventor.”

  The members of Ronin’s crew grew quiet. Argus got up from the sofa and paced, staring at the floor. Meg and Lykos did the same. Polly stayed in the doorway. Ben wasn’t even sure the giant was paying attention to the conversation. But Ronin clearly had the others intrigued.

  “All right,” Meg said. “How do we do this?”

  Ronin stood and walked to the whiteboard. He erased an area and wrote Poole’s name in the center. “The mark has been wanting a League agent in his pocket ever since he took over the Dread Cloaks. So far, he hasn’t even come close. That’s where the kid comes in.” Ronin wrote down Ben’s name, and drew an arrow pointing at Poole’s. “For his own reasons, Ben here happens to hate the League as much as we do. That’s why he helped me escape. But the League doesn’t know that. They think I took him as a hostage.”

  Argus looked alarmed. “So they’re after him? Right now?”

  “Most likely,” Ronin said. “But we have time.”

  “Time for what?” Meg asked.

  Ronin pointed at the board. “I take Ben to Poole. We convince him that Ben wants to spy for him, and then we send Ben back to the League. Poole thinks he’s a double agent, the League thinks he’s theirs, but he’s really our inside man for both.”

  “And then what?” Lykos asked.

  Ronin stretched his neck. “I’m still working on that. I’ll know more once Ben and I are in place with Poole.”

  The members of the crew cast doubtful looks among themselves. If they couldn’t be convinced, then it would just be Ben and Ronin, and Ben saw the operation slipping away. Failing. This was never a two-man job. What could he do?

  “This job is good.” Ronin jabbed Poole’s name with his marker. “You know me. Get me in there, and I’ll find an angle.”

  “It’s not you I’m worried about,” Argus said.

  He doubted Ben. They all did. Ben could see it. And why wouldn’t they? Ronin was asking them to take on both the Quantum League and the Dread Cloaks when Ben was nothing more than a twelve-year-old recruit. He had to think of a way to convince them. They had to believe he was capable of doing this, that he was capable of anything….

  “But I will be with Ben,” Ronin said. “I’ll convince Poole.”

  Meg shook her head, her blond hair swinging. “This is too big, Ronin. The risks. I can’t —”

  “I thought you said we could count on them.” Ben stood up. He felt the whole room shift its focus onto him. At that point, he wished he could take the words back. But he pointed at Ronin. “You told me I could trust you. That your crew could do the job.”

  Ronin blinked at him.

  “Bunch of cowards,” Ben said, listening to himself in disbelief at the same time. These were criminals. Just because Ronin had spared Ben didn’t mean the rest of his crew would, no matter what Ronin had said about them. Ben forced himself to make eye contact with Argus, Meg, Lykos. He hoped they couldn’t see his legs shaking.

  “I’m going to Poole,” Ben said. “And I am going to make the League pay for what they did to me. If you won’t help me, there are other crews that will. I’m sure any one of them would love to get their hands on the augmenter gun.”

  Ben turned his back and marched toward the door. Toward Polly. This was it. Capable of anything. He looked up into the giant’s face and said, “Out of my way.”

  Polly looked down at him, and then up at the rest of his crew, clearly baffled.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Ben gripped his Locus. This was probably the dumbest thing he had ever done, but he couldn’t turn back. “OUT OF MY WAY!”

  Polly frowned.

  Ben closed his eyes, rustled up a mess of electrons, and let them fly. It wasn’t a powerful lightning bolt, not enough to kill, but it knocked the giant off his feet and got the room up in a frenzy. Ben felt actuations blazing up behind him. Definitely the dumbest thing he had ever done. He spun around to face the rest of the crew.

  They all looked ready to kill him, but Ronin rushed in between Ben and the others, waving his arms. “Hold your fire!”

  “Who is this kid?!” Argus shouted.

  “I’m the kid who was going to be your inside man,” Ben said.

  Then he heard a deep rumble behind him. Ben looked over his shoulder as Polly lumbered to his feet, rubbing his head with his big, meaty hands. This guy didn’t need an actuation to kill someone. Ben wanted to run, right past the giant, up the stairs, and out of the warehouse. But he braced himself and held his ground.

  Polly stepped up and looked down, past the scorch mark on his shirt, straight at Ben.

  “Polly?” Ronin said. “Polly, stay — stay calm, now.”

  Ben looked right back up at the giant, and hoped his voice would come out sounding stronger than he felt. “You want another one, big boy?”

  Polly looked at Ronin, his face as blank as it had been before. “I’m in.”

  After that, the rest of the crew threw in, too. From their wary glances in his direction, Ben suspected they were now wondering about his sanity, and to be honest, so was he. The shaking only got worse after he sat down again and replayed what he had done in his mind. It could,
and probably should, have ended very differently. But afterward, Ronin grinned at him in a way that almost looked … proud.

  They spent the next few hours planning, Ronin at the whiteboard, trying out idea after idea, but they never settled on one. The coffeemaker popped and gurgled and hissed continuously. The sofa got tired and loose under Ben. The whiteboard became an unreadable tangle of marker.

  “The problem,” Meg said, “is that a job like this needs months of groundwork, not hours or days. Preparation, preparation, preparation. Isn’t that what you always say, Ronin?”

  “It is. But we don’t have months.”

  “We need more time,” Argus said.

  “Look, we’ll have time once Ben is inside.” Ronin went for another cup of coffee. “Right now, we just need to get him there. That’s it. We’re making this more complicated than it has to be.”

  “We’ve run all the angles.” Lykos stood and walked to the board. “Nothing works. Poole may be crazy, but he’s no idiot. Ben can’t just walk in and volunteer. Poole would see through that. We could stage a situation where Ben gets caught and flips, but Poole wouldn’t trust that very far. Not far enough, anyway. He’d think Ben was just trying to save his own skin.”

  “If we had time,” Meg said, “we could salt the mine. Ben could drop a few crumbs, give Poole a little taste, then reel him in.”

  “Listen to me,” Ronin said. “No. Time.”

  “Then I think we should scrap it.” Argus lifted both arms and let them fall against his legs. Then he looked at Ben, and his smile was uneasy. “I mean, sorry, kid. We tried.”

  “We’re not scrapping it.” Everyone turned to look at Polly. He stood in a corner of the room, pointing a beef rib of a finger at Ben. “We got the kid. That’s the most important part. Just get him in there.”

  “We’re trying, Polly,” Argus said. “But maybe —”

  “We’ve got the kid,” Ronin whispered. He looked at Polly. “That’s it.”

  “What’s it?” Meg asked.

  “A fiddle game,” Ronin said.

  No one in the crew spoke. But gradually their eyes all lit up. They smiled and nodded to one another.

  “What’s a fiddle game?” Ben asked.

  “That’ll do it,” Lykos said. “Poole will buy it.”

  “What will he buy?” Ben raised his voice. “What’s a fiddle game?”

  “The setup won’t be too difficult,” Meg said. “We just have to get Poole’s attention.”

  Ronin smirked. “I know how to do that.”

  “Stop!” Ben jumped up, surprising everyone in the room. Argus actually flinched next to him. “Would somebody please tell me what a fiddle game is?”

  THE next night, the Paracelsus crew stood across the street from an ordinary brick building in the shadows of a park. Two men, Dread Cloaks, guarded the door. Ben didn’t feel as nervous as he thought he would. Maybe it was because this seemed easy compared to shooting a lightning bolt at Polly. Maybe he was feeling a safety-in-numbers thing with the crew. Or maybe he was just getting used to this.

  “That’s it?” Argus asked. “That’s where he keeps it?”

  Ronin looked up at the building. “Some of it.”

  “And you’re sure this will get his attention?” Lykos asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Ronin said. “This’ll do it.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Meg asked.

  “Right.” Ronin turned to face them all. “Remember, this can’t seem too easy, but we can’t have any casualties, either. We can’t put Poole in a situation where he’ll lose face in front of the gang.”

  “We got it,” Polly said. “Simple fiddle game.”

  The fiddle game was a con. The way they’d explained it to Ben, a guy goes into a restaurant carrying a fiddle, orders food, eats, and then claims he can’t pay because he left his wallet somewhere else. So he offers to leave his fiddle behind as collateral while he goes to get his money. The restaurant owner agrees, and the guy leaves. After that, a second guy, who’s in on the game, comes up and tells the restaurant owner that the fiddle is special, it’s worth a lot of money, and he wants to buy it. Then, all of a sudden, the second guy has to go to an appointment or something, but he leaves his business card behind. So now the restaurant owner starts thinking he’s got something really valuable on his hands, this fiddle, and when the owner of the instrument comes back, the restaurant owner offers to buy it. The guy says he couldn’t possibly part with it, it’s his livelihood, so the restaurant owner offers more money, knowing he can make it back when he sells it. They haggle, and finally agree on a price, and the fiddle owner leaves with the money. Trouble is, when the restaurant owner goes to call the fake buyer, he can’t find him. The two guys split the money, and the restaurant owner is left with a piece-of-crap fiddle.

  In the game they were about to run with Poole, Ben was the fiddle. But he didn’t take it personally.

  “All right.” Ronin turned to Ben. “You ready?”

  “Yes,” Ben said. Even if he wasn’t, he still had to make sure he looked and sounded like that crazy kid who could do anything.

  “Are you?” Meg asked. “Are you sure this will work?”

  “Relax,” Ronin said. “I know Poole. He’d have to be pretty paranoid not to fall for it. Now, let’s go.”

  The crew broke apart and scattered in different directions. Argus stayed in the park, and Ben felt him actuating in the darkness behind them. Moments later, a fog rolled in and settled in front of the building. It turned the two Dread Cloaks into hazy shadows, but they were agitated shadows. They could tell the fog was an actuation. That was the plan.

  Lykos and Meg rushed from their positions into the mist.

  “Steady.” Ronin’s voice carried through all their earpieces. “Let them call it in first.”

  The Dread Cloaks came together, forming one shadow. They whispered to one another, but then one of them raised his voice a little. He had to if he wanted to be heard, because he was on his phone.

  “We’ve got company,” he said. “Tell Poole.”

  “Now,” Ronin said.

  Two lights flashed inside the fog, two lightning bolts, and the Dread Cloak shadows slumped to the ground.

  Ben heard Lykos in his earpiece. “They’re dead.”

  Ronin’s eyes widened. “WHAT?”

  “Kidding,” Lykos said. “But they’re out cold. Polly’s up.”

  The giant lumbered forward, followed by Ronin and Ben. They met up with Meg and Lykos in the fog, over the unconscious bodies of the two guards. Meg made a sweeping gesture from Polly toward the door.

  “After you.”

  Polly interlocked his fingers and popped all his knuckles at once. He strode up to the door, and Ben moved to where he could get a good look. He’d been waiting to see this. He expected the giant to rip the door off its hinges with an actuation or something. But instead, Polly just knelt down in front of it. He hunched his broad shoulders over the lock, brought his hands up close to his chest, and then his big fingers started flicking and dancing. Ben felt tiny actuations, little tickles, almost unnoticeable. They lasted a moment. Then the lock clicked, and the door popped open.

  That was it? Ben looked at Ronin.

  “Told you. Delicate.” Ronin winked. “Polly here knows just about every lock there is, inside and out.”

  Polly heaved himself to his feet. “Electronic locks give me fits, though.”

  “You’ve got most of them down,” Ronin said.

  “Yes, yes,” Meg said. “But Poole is supposed to catch us in the act of actually doing something, isn’t he?”

  “Right.” Ronin turned toward the park. “You can head on out, Argus.”

  “I think I’ll stay and watch the show,” came his reply in Ben’s ear. “If you don’t mind.”

  “Suit yourself.” Ronin led them into the building.

  They ran into a few more Dread Cloaks, but Lykos and Meg were too fast for them, faster than any Actuators Ben had seen. Ronin
led them to an elevator, pressed the button, and they waited. And waited. All of them watched the little floor numbers changing above the doors. Then the elevator dinged, and they all squeezed in, including Polly.

  They were heading up to a keyed floor, so Polly went to work with his delicate actuations, and soon the elevator dinged again.

  They rode it up, and when the elevator stopped, the doors opened onto what looked like a museum. The crew spilled out, and for a minute they all just stared. Across the open space, spotlights bathed dozens of marble statues in white, while angled ceiling lights shone on paintings hanging on the walls. There were even a few tall glass cases filled with wooden artifacts and clothing, baskets and rugs.

  “I told you,” Ronin said. “Poole has a thing for art.”

  Ben actually recognized some of the pieces from schoolbooks and TV, or at least some of the artists.

  “I don’t understand,” Lykos said. “Why doesn’t he keep this more secure?”

  “Because who would be stupid enough to steal from Poole?” Meg said.

  Ben knew the answer to that.

  “Ronin.” Argus spoke in Ben’s earpiece again. “He’s here.”

  And they were about to find out just how stupid they were.

  “This is it,” Ronin said. “Make it convincing, but nobody gets killed, all right? Do like I told you. Ben, stick with me. The rest of you, fan out.”

  The crew took up positions behind the larger statues and the glass cases, facing the elevator. Ben and Ronin crouched behind a big copper sculpture of what looked like abstract flames. It sounded hollow when Ben knocked on it.

  “Don’t do that,” Ronin said.

  They waited. And waited. Once again watching the little numbers above the doors.

  “This is the slowest elevator in the city,” Meg said.

  A few minutes later, the doors opened, and a group of Dread Cloaks got off. They all wore the same thing they’d worn in Dr. Hughes’s lab. Black vests with red shirts. Only they didn’t have the ski masks on. Ben wondered which of them was Poole.

  “Now!” Ronin shouted.

  He unleashed a fireball. Ice and lightning flew from Lykos, Meg, and Polly. Ben got off a lightning bolt of his own as the Dread Cloaks ran for cover, returning fire. Two statues shattered in the first volley, and one painting went up in flames. And just like Ronin had predicted, that was all it took.