As he marveled at the bronze ripples, Jack realized he was isolating a piece of the picture, without the pain of blocking out the rest. He could turn his mind’s eye to one detail or another at will. He examined the wreckage of the drone, picking out the broken pieces and turning them over in his head, fitting them together again. He let out a short laugh. “How am I doing this?”
Gwen’s whispered voice joined the vision, a translucent wisp of winter gray. “You’re a tracker, Jack Buckles, like your father, and your father’s father. This is a hereditary skill. But, Jack, I don’t have it. I come from a ministry family. I’ve studied all my life to work with trackers, read everything there is to read about your kind, but I still can’t see what you see. You have to describe it to me so I can help you make sense of it.”
“Kerosene,” he said without hesitation. He smelled—saw, really—the deep, iridescent green scent of fuel. “I see a boot print made of kerosene. No. I see half a dozen prints from the same pair of boots, on the asphalt next to the rubble. There.” He pointed, then quickly shifted his hand. “I see a thread, too; small and black, caught in a crack in one of the broken bricks.”
Gwen pulled a magnifying glass out of her pocket and delicately picked up the thread to examine it. She glanced up at Jack. “Wool canvas, like the kind used in an overcoat.”
“Really?” He blinked, letting all of the data fall. “A magnifying glass? Is that standard issue for a Ministry of Trackers clerk?”
“You think I intend to be a clerk forever? Hmm? Focus, Jack. I can’t find the prints. Can you follow the kerosene?”
He nodded, opening up his senses again, but he no longer saw the field of data. He was back to the chaos, the pain. He started to panic, instinctively reaching for his ears.
“Breathe, Jack. It will take time for you to develop control, but you can do it.”
It took him several seconds to regain control, but soon he saw the iridescent green trail again. He did not find the strongest concentration on the ground as he expected. He found it on the wall to his left, drifting vapors that formed definite patterns on the brick.
“No way.”
“What?”
Jack was too enthralled by what he saw to answer. Stepping closer, he found a match sticking out of a crack in the mortar at the very center of the wall, as if someone had placed it there for him to find. “Stand back.” He yanked the match free, hesitated for half a second, then struck it against the brick.
The ignition nearly took his eyebrows off.
Lines of blue flame raced outward in all directions, branching off into curling, zigzag patterns to form a blazing message on the bricks.
If you want him back
XIII
Bring me the Ember
“ ‘ Thirteen,’ ” said Jack, reading the Roman numerals. “ ‘ The Ember.’ What does it mean?”
Gwen stepped up to the wall, raising a hand to touch the already dying flames. “It means your sister may have been right, Jack. It means your father may still be alive.”
Chapter 14
“WHY THIRTEEN?” ASKED Jack. “What does that have to do with Dad?”
“Later.” Gwen tugged him out of the alley, back to the sidewalk. “Whoever left that message stepped in his own kerosene. If we move fast, you can track him, bypass whatever game he’s playing, and go straight to the source. Can you see any more footprints?”
Jack nodded, half in a daze. The implication that his father might still be alive—held captive by some pyromaniac-drone-stealing-computer-hacking nutcase—left him dizzy. “Here,” he said, crouching down on the sidewalk. “And here. And another one there, on the street.”
Pedestrians sidestepped around the children as they passed, hardly giving their strange behavior a second look. Gwen took two unnaturally long steps, measuring her own stride against the prints Jack indicated. “Six feet tall, at least. Heading straight into traffic.” She pointed to a line of joined houses across the street. “Over there, perhaps.”
The two rushed across, Gwen gripping Jack’s arm and alternately halting and pushing him to keep him clear of cars as he followed the fading trail across the street. He found the last trace of kerosene on a cast-iron knob at the center of a blue door—the only door on the block of houses without a Christmas wreath. Staring at the peeling blue paint of the door, Jack suddenly realized his dad might be somewhere on the other side.
He grabbed the cast-iron knob, preparing to thrust a shoulder into the door, and instantly felt his fingers sink into the ice-cold metal, the same way they had at the vault door. Another vision flashed in his mind—a black glove, right where his bare hand was. A man in a black overcoat and fedora pushed his way through the blue door with a large crate tucked under his arm. Inside, Jack saw the rotting planks of a wood floor, flies buzzing in and out of a rusty sink. The man with the crate took a right toward an old set of stairs, and the door slammed closed. Jack was staring down at his own hand again.
He let go and backed away. “The man in black.”
“What?”
“Um . . . nothing.” Jack glanced down at the offending hand and quickly slipped it into the pocket of his coat. “I mean . . . it’s locked.”
“Mm-hmm.” Gwen eyed him for a long second, then tried the door herself, giving it a hard bump with her shoulder. The door fell open with an ugly squeak. “Stuck but not locked. Welcome to England. Doorknobs at the center have nothing to do with the latch. Come on.”
Dust hung heavy in the light spilling through the open door. A familiar buzzing sound pulsated on the edge of Jack’s senses, though it was not the sound of the flies swooping in and out of the sink. The carpet had been ripped up, exposing rotting wood planks stained with glue and mold. To his right, a set of rickety stairs with a broken rail led up to another floor.
“That way,” he whispered, tilting his head toward the stairs.
“You see tracks?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Each step let out an agonizing creak as the two of them picked their way around three long rolls of old, smelly carpet lying on the stairs. At the top, they found a single room with nothing but a small bed and an old desk and chair. The blue stench of ammonia hit Jack like a sledgehammer, coming from the stained mattress on the bed. He could hear some creature gnawing on the fabric inside.
The buzz had grown louder with every step up the stairs. Within a half second of reaching the top, Jack identified the source—bugs hovering behind the black curtains covering the window, probably attracted to the daylight. He walked over to let the light into the room, but his hands never reached the fabric. Four giant, blue-green beetles dove at him through the crack in the curtains, forcing him to duck. Then they climbed up to hover at the ceiling, flying in a perfectly square formation.
“They’re organized,” muttered Gwen, staring up at the beetles. She blinked and looked to Jack. “Same kind, you think?”
“Yeah, but there are no computers or drones to hack here. So what are they doing?”
Beams of light erupted from the bugs, each one projecting an image on the wall ahead of it. All four projections were the same—a life-size image of the man in black.
The clarity of the projections left no doubt in Jack’s mind. This was the man from his vision at the blue door, and the same man had scared Jack and Sadie into the Lost Property Office. Not only that, but his grizzled features and small chin matched those of the man in the reddish-brown coat that Sadie had followed from the hotel. The strange events of Jack’s morning had merely been stages in an elaborate trap—one that ended right there in that room.
The four projections tilted their heads back and laughed.
Chapter 15
WHEN THE LAUGHING started, the beams from the beetles shifted. The four images tracked down the walls and across the floor, converging to form a holographic projection at the center of the room, flickering in the hanging dust. The man in black clapped his hands and chuckled. “Bravo, Lucky Jack,” he s
aid in a distinctively French accent. “You found me. Excellent.”
“Who are you?” Jack took a step toward the image. “And where’s my dad?”
The Frenchman gave a short bow. “I am called le Pendulier. In your clumsy language, you would say, the Clockmaker. But that is of little relevance. You have an urgent assignment to attend to, Lucky Jack. That is why I brought you here.”
“What about the drone?” asked Gwen, stepping up beside Jack. “You stole an artifact from the ministry. We want it back.”
“I stole nothing!” The Clockmaker glared right at her, as if he could see her. “I merely recovered what was stolen from me”—he pointed to Jack—“by his father.” Then he dropped his hand and gave Jack a congenial, if not unsettling, smile. “Though I could not have done it without you, Lucky Jack. And for that, I thank you. Now, I really must insist we discuss your assignment.”
“I saw your message. You want something called the Ember. So what? I want my father back.”
“Ah, but the Ember is the key to saving your father. Bring me my prize and I will return him to you alive.”
Jack clenched his fists. “What if I don’t feel like running your errands for you? How about I hunt you down instead?”
“Ooh. How frightening.” The Clockmaker raised his palms, laughing. “No need to track me down. I am in the Great Clock Tower, what you might call Big Ben. There, you see? I am so helpful.” His grin flattened. “And if you so much as knock on the door without the Ember, your father dies. Bring it up to the Great Clock by the stroke of midnight, Lucky Jack, and you can have him. Fail me by just one second and I will give you ashes instead.”
The hologram began to fade.
“Wait!” shouted Gwen. “We don’t know what the Ember is. How do you expect us to find it?”
“That you must find out for yourself.” The Clockmaker faded back into view. “I suggest you ask the Boy at Pye. And while you’re at it, warn him that his mockery is at an end.” His lips spread into a dreadful grin. “Now, here is a final hint to speed you on your way.”
The projection flickered out and the beetles shot to the four corners of the room, bouncing off the walls with sickening cracks. One landed on the old mattress, sizzling with electricity. Purple flashes arced around its broken body with increasing intensity until it exploded, spreading flames across the mattress. The animal inside screamed. The other three repeated the first bug’s performance. Within seconds, the desk, the floor, and the rolls of carpet on the stairs were all on fire.
Gwen threw open the curtains. “There’s a fire escape here.” She yanked up on the window. It didn’t budge.
Blinding, choking smoke filled the room. Jack couldn’t focus. He couldn’t even think. Then his subconscious dredged up a single, important lesson left over from hundreds of elementary school fire drills. Drop.
He fell to his hands and knees, pulling Gwen with him, and his mind began to clear.
Flames were everywhere, blocking the stairs, eating the cheap paper on the walls. Jack reached up and pounded desperately on the window. Nothing. The glass wouldn’t break.
Gwen leaned her back against the wall. “Impact-resistant . . . panes!” she shouted between coughs. “Building Safety Code . . . Section K . . . Gotta hit it dead center with a hammer!”
Blue and yellow flames crept across the ceiling, living jewels so beautiful that Jack almost forgot they threatened to bring burning rafters down on top of him.
“Jack?” coughed Gwen. “Did you hear me?”
“What? A hammer. Right!” He tore his eyes away from the flames and opened his senses, trying to pick out details through the haze. He didn’t see any hammers.
Chair: burning.
Broken posts at the top of the stairs: also burning.
Aluminum bed frame: unreachable beneath the melting mattress.
A broken drawer underneath the desk: full of old office supplies.
He kicked the burning chair out of the way and used the toe of his sneaker to pull the drawer closer. Red-hot cinders dropped from the desk onto his jeans. Gwen smothered them out with the arm of her coat. She lifted a brass letter opener from the supplies. “Perfect! I’ll hold it against the window. You hit it with the drawer.” She had another coughing fit, then gave him a weak freckle bounce. “Do try not to hit my fingers.”
Gwen pressed the tip of the blade against the pane, breathing through her scarf, while Jack dumped out the rest of the drawer and smashed it on the floor. He wielded the remaining plank like a club, hammering at the round handle of the letter opener. On the first strike, spidery cracks spread out from the point of the knife. On the second, the glass shattered.
The escape ladder let them down onto a cobblestone courtyard behind the old buildings. Black smoke poured from the broken window above. Jack went straight to one knee, coughing out the bad air and sucking in deep drafts of the good. “Why . . . would he do that?”
Gwen remained standing, looking around the courtyard. “A final test, perhaps—to see if you’re good enough to find this Ember.” She glanced down at him and frowned. “Or perhaps he’s stark raving mad.”
Jack finally caught his breath and stood up, and the two stared up at the burning house. The only sounds in the courtyard were the crackle of the fire and the incoming sirens.
“Jack, the Clockmaker never . . .” Gwen trailed off.
“He never what?”
“Forget it.”
She turned abruptly and headed for the exit to the street. Jack stared up at the fire a moment longer and then hurried after her. “Where are you going?” he called. “Like you said, we don’t even know what the Ember is.”
“No,” she called back. “But now we know where to start.” Gwen crossed the street and turned right at the sidewalk, lowering her voice as Jack pulled up next to her. “The Clockmaker gave us hints—the Boy at Pye, the fire itself—clues that leave nothing to chance.” A grim expression fell over her sooty face. “I don’t know what the Ember is, Jack, but I know where, or rather when, it came from. And I can assure you, it was not a pleasant time.”
Chapter 16
IT AMAZED JACK that he had to work so hard to keep up with a girl Gwen’s size. Beneath the gray coat, her legs moved at the speed of one of those Westminster Dog Show terriers. Pedestrians ran past in the opposite direction, trying to get a closer look at the fire.
Gwen fished in her coat pocket and pulled out a flimsy blue packet of wet wipes. “Here,” she said, drawing several and handing them over. “Wipe yourself down. You can’t run around London all covered in soot. This isn’t a West End production of Mary Poppins, is it?”
“The Boy at Pye, who is he?” asked Jack, rubbing his face and hands until the white cloths were completely black.
The clerk used a few on her own face. “Not really who. He’s more of a what—a statue put up to mock the Great Fire for its gluttony.”
Jack furrowed his brow, trying to follow the explanation. “Which Great Fire?”
“The Great Fire.” Gwen grabbed the dirty wipes from his hand and tossed them into a wastebasket without breaking stride. “The Great Fire of 1666.”
“So . . . we’re going to wherever this statue is kept?”
“No. Of course not.”
The clerk made a sudden turn, leaving Jack behind at an intersection. He started to jog after her but slowed, sensing a strange presence on his left—three pairs of evil eyes. He turned and saw Dracula glaring back at him, standing between the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s Monster. And they were dressed as the Three Wise Men. The sign above read MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM MADAME TUSSAUDS WAX MUSEUM.
Disturbing.
Gwen kept going, undaunted by the tacky holiday figures in the line of window displays beside them. “The Boy at Pye is nothing more than a gilded statue of a fat, naked little boy—kind of awkward, actually. Our French nutter mentioned him to give us a clue as to the Ember’s history, and it was the only clue we needed, really. The fire was a bit of overkill.”
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“You think?” Jack caught up as she came to a halt at the next intersection. “I thought . . .” A boy band dressed as Santa’s elves in the window next to him crimped his focus. He rolled his eyes and turned his back to the display. “I thought the Great Fire of London was caused by an accident and high winds. You know, like the Great Fire of Chicago.”
“That’s the tale every kid in England hears whenever the fire brigade comes to visit: fire in a bakery, wooden houses, and all that.” She shook her finger. “Don’t forget to turn off the oven, and don’t play with matches. But that’s just a children’s story, isn’t it?” The orange hand across the street changed to a green man and Gwen set off at the same quick pace as before.
“The real story isn’t quite so simple,” she continued as Jack stutter-stepped to match her pace. “The king’s baker denied causing the fire to his dying day. A different man—a French immigrant named Robert Hubert—was hung for it, as a matter of arson and conspiracy. Many of the buildings, including the bakery, were built of brick and stone instead of wood, yet the fire moved at unbelievable speed. And then there’s the death toll.”
“Thousands?”
Gwen glanced up, raising an eyebrow. “Six. Yet nearly a hundred thousand Londoners were missing in the next census. Where did they all go? Historians take the royal account of the fire as gospel, but the king’s own brother, the Duke of York, may have been collaborating with French arsonists. In fact, the same man would invade England years later with a French army. So royalist testimony is suspect, to say the least.”
The sidewalk they had come to led them along a tall limestone wall. Gwen finally slowed to a stop next to a wrought-iron gate at the center of the block. The winter skeletons of leafless trees rose up behind it. From somewhere out of sight, muted tones of jazz touched Jack’s ears.
“A cloud of unsolved mysteries surrounds that fire,” said Gwen, turning to face him. “Perhaps the Ember is the key to solving them all.”