“You know, we make a good team,” Ezekiel said as they made their way downstairs. “I take out the locks. You take out the bad guys.”
Baird crammed an unconscious goon into a broom closet; a serpent tattoo on his neck suggested that she had not just decked an innocent homeowner or houseguest. Caught by surprise, the unlucky lug hadn’t known what hit him. The speed and efficiency with which Baird had dealt with him before he could even sound an alarm reminded Ezekiel once again why he was so glad that he and Baird were on the same side. You really didn’t want to get on her bad side.
“Sounds like a plan,” she said, keeping her voice low.
More henchmen could be heard watching TV a few rooms away. Consulting the detector, Ezekiel saw that the source of the magic was apparently coming from the basement one floor down. He could live with that; chances were the cellar was a less popular hangout, provided they didn’t stumble onto any secret dungeons or torture chambers.
He hated when that happened.
A cellar door just off the kitchen led down to a dusty basement that, at first glance, appeared mercifully free of armed guards, death traps, or iron maidens. Scanning the scene, Ezekiel saw only the usual basement stuff: a furnace, a water heater, low-hanging ductwork, and, oh yeah, a huge stainless-steel bank vault built into one wall.
“Bingo!” he said gleefully. “Come to poppa.”
Baird glanced behind them to make sure nobody had followed while Ezekiel gave his full attention to the vault, which looked big enough to hold any number of enticing treasures, including several pots of gold. The thief felt like a kid on Christmas morning with a humongous present just waiting to be unwrapped. He made a beeline for the vault.
“What do you think?” Baird asked. “Can you open it?”
He looked at her incredulously. “Did you seriously just ask me that?”
“What was I thinking?” She stepped back to let him work, while keeping one eye on the basement stairs. “Go to it, maestro.”
The vault was a deluxe Glenn-Rieder X-3000, circa 2017. Constructed of ninety tons of reinforced steel and compressed concrete, it was state-of-the-art and all but impregnable—unless, like Ezekiel, you knew and had memorized the electronic back doors and cheat codes for pretty much every model of safe and security system in circulation. A digital keypad guarded access to the vault, but instead of trying to crack the password, he simply did a forced reset and changed the codes altogether. He paused only a second before picking out a new password:
PWNED
A red light on the keypad clicked over to green, locks and backup locks disengaged, and the heavy vault door slid open without so much as a squeak. Ezekiel beamed triumphantly.
“You were saying?” he asked.
“Sorry for doubting you,” Baird said. “Let’s see what we have here.”
The vault was big enough to hold both of them, as well as shelves of neatly stacked gold coins, along with various other golden valuables: jewelry, goblets, plates, utensils, candlesticks, scepters, and ingots. Ezekiel didn’t need an assayer to guess that all that glittered was indeed solid gold. He whistled softly in appreciation; he hadn’t seen this much gold in one place since the last time he’d browsed the Midas collection at the Library.
“Gotta hand it to them,” he said. “They’ve been busy.”
Baird glanced around. “I don’t see any pots. Must have discarded them after they got the gold.”
“Stands to reason,” Ezekiel said. “Who needs a rusty old pot when you’ve got a beauty of a bank vault?”
“I guess this confirms that it is the Brotherhood who has been hunting leprechauns for their gold, as if we hadn’t already suspected that. But that still begs the question: Where is Max and what else is he up to?”
Ezekiel shrugged. “Well, we had to leave something for Stone and Cassandra to discover.…”
* * *
“Follow me,” Stone said to Cassandra. “A manor this size would have a separate stairway for the servants that would be smaller and out of the way. Probably nobody’s using it at the moment.”
She trusted Stone’s judgment when it came to navigating rambling old houses. Her magic detector indicated that the unusual emanations were coming from the attic, so she trailed Stone up a narrow, winding staircase that thankfully didn’t creak too much under her delicate tread. She winced, however, every time her soggy sneakers squished.
I’m with Ezekiel, she thought. Moats are a pain.
The Librarians tiptoed up the stairs until they were at eye level with the topmost landing. Peering over the edge of the floor through the gaps in the railing, they spied a pair of bored-looking sentries posted before a closed door at the end of a hallway. Stone shot her an inquiring look and she nodded back at him. According to her sensor, the signal was coming from behind the door ahead.
But how were they going to get past the guards?
She was trying to figure that out when, to her alarm, she heard voices and footsteps coming from the bottom of the stairs, heading toward them.
“Oh, no!” she whispered to Stone. “I thought you said only servants took these stairs.”
“Well, guards are servants,” he said sheepishly. “Sorta.”
The footsteps were getting louder and closer, leaving the two of them trapped between the guards above and the newcomers below. There was no way they could avoid being caught, unless …
Cassandra closed her eyes and concentrated on Baird, who was just a few floors away by now. Her one hope was a new ability, unlocked by her recent surgery, that she was only recently beginning to understand and control. Squeezing her eyes, she projected a single thought as hard as she could:
Help! We need a distraction … now!
* * *
Down in the basement, Baird’s eyes widened as an urgent thought landed in the in-box of her mind.
“Cassandra and Stone!” she blurted. “They need a distraction, pronto!”
Ezekiel looked confused for a second, but caught on right away. “Oh, you just received a PM straight from Cassandra’s magic brain.”
“Got it in one,” Baird said. Glancing around the vault, she saw only one option available. “We have to set off the alarm.”
“You can’t be serious!” Ezekiel protested, appalled at the very notion. “I’m Ezekiel Jones. I don’t do alarms!”
“First time for everything.” Baird spotted another keypad on the inside of the vault. Darting over to it, she spotted a red panic button on the console. A bell icon on the button advertised its function. “Cover your ears.”
She poked the button, setting off a high-pitched klaxon that echoed painfully off the walls of the walk-in safe. Red-alert lights flashed as the door of the vault suddenly slammed shut, locking Baird and Ezekiel inside.
“Was that part of the plan?” Ezekiel asked.
“What plan?” Baird said. “I’m improvising.”
For her team’s sake.
* * *
The blaring alarm came in the nick of time, at least as far as Stone was concerned. The footsteps ascending the stairs toward him and Cassandra suddenly did an about-face and rushed back down the steps in response to the alarm. Stone, who had been bracing himself for a knockdown fight, sighed in relief. Maybe they weren’t up a creek just yet.
“Thank you, Eve,” Cassandra said softly, opening her eyes.
Stone realized that she must have telepathically alerted Baird to their plight, using her peculiar new gift. He hoped Baird and Ezekiel hadn’t put themselves in too much jeopardy as a result, but had to trust that they could take care of themselves, as they had so many times in the past. They knew what they were doing … mostly.
In the meantime, the two goons guarding the door also scrambled to investigate the alarm. Taking the main stairway, they exited the attic, leaving the door at the end of the hall undefended. Stone wasn’t going to waste the opportunity his friends had just provided.
“Let’s go,” he said tersely. “You with me?”
Cassandra held on tightly to her detector. “Right behind you.”
They charged down the hall to the door. Stone was prepared to batter his way in with his shoulder if necessary, but the unlocked door opened readily. The Librarians barged into a spacious, well-lit chamber, where they found Max and a pink-haired woman Stone didn’t recognize. An array of mounted charts and maps and bulletin boards suggested that they had found the nerve center of the Serpent Brotherhood’s current operation.
Looks like upstairs was the way to go, Stone thought. Baird’s going to kick herself for going the other way.
“Mister Stone, Miss Cillian,” Max addressed them with his customary aplomb. He and the woman appeared to be getting ready to make a rapid departure in light of the alarm. Max was shredding a file, while his bespectacled companion was frantically gathering up some papers. He looked up at the Librarians’ arrival. “Breaking and entering—really? How ill-mannered of you.”
“You’re one to talk.” Stone spotted a polished skull sitting atop what appeared to be a portable aluminum reliquary. “Looks to me like you’ve been doing a little grave-robbing on the side. Off the coast of Ireland, maybe?”
“Simply reclaiming what one of your predecessors hid from us,” Max stated. “Although I’m flattered that you’re so abreast of my activities.”
“Don’t be,” Stone said.
He clenched his fists.
* * *
Cassandra scanned the attic chamber with her detector, which rapidly zeroed in on a crystal prism dangling on a chain around the unknown woman’s neck. The magic radiating from it was a new variety that didn’t fit any of the standard patterns or wavelengths.
“That prism of hers,” she told Stone. “That’s where that weird signal is coming from.”
The woman’s eyes bulged behind her glasses. She looked to be about Cassandra’s age and was dressed far less elegantly than Max, as though she’d just thrown on a rumpled sweatshirt and jeans that had never seen an iron. She was nondescript in appearance, actually; only her candy-colored hair would stand out in a crowd.
“Whoa!” she exclaimed. “Is that an actual magic-detecting device? What does it measure? Differential resonances between metaphysical strata, or transcendental quantum signatures?”
“The latter mostly,” Cassandra said, pleasantly surprised to find someone who spoke her language, even if the other woman was presumably one of the bad guys, “although it can also be calibrated to detect fluctuations along the ectoplasmic spectrum and volitional ripples in the space-time-spirit continuum. But what kind of magic object is that prism? Where did you find it?”
“I didn’t find it.” The woman’s accent pegged her as an American. “I made it.”
“You created a brand-new magical object?” Cassandra was impressed despite herself. She’d known that this was theoretically possible, given the rebirth of wild magic; the Library had recently started collecting new magic objects that had been generated spontaneously throughout the world, but she’d never known anyone to create one from scratch. “On purpose?”
The woman grinned, pleased to have her achievement recognized.
“It wasn’t easy,” she said. “You have to find a way to alchemically fuse the raw magic with an object symbolically suited to achieve the desired effect, which means taking into account both mind and matter, along with deleting the uncertainty from the uncertainty principle by—”
“Not now, Coral,” Max interrupted.
Stone had to agree. Now was no time for a symposium on the science of magic and/or the magic of science. Cassandra could get her geek-girl on after they’d taken Max and his brainy accomplice into custody—and delivered them to the Library via the nearest Magic Door.
“You’re coming with me,” he told Max, dropping into a fighting stance. Stone was ready for a rematch and confident of the outcome, now that he knew what to expect from Max and didn’t have to worry about any innocent bystanders getting hurt. A fighter’s true strength came from his heart and soul, Stone had been taught, and he’d put his soul up against a Serpent’s any day. He beckoned Max with the universal hand gesture for bringing it on. “On your feet or off them, your choice.”
Max declined the challenge. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll delegate this time around.” He raised his voice to address an unseen presence. “Echidna, reinforcements if you please.”
A computerized voice replied via a public-address system. “Understood. Alerting security.”
“Hang on,” Stone said, taken aback. “Did you just order up more muscle via Alexa or Siri or something?”
“The name is Echidna, and she’s quite a time-saver.” Max smirked at Stone. “See for yourself.”
A door slammed open behind Max and three more guards stormed in from an adjacent room. They rushed to defend Max and Coral, wielding a truncheon, a switchblade, and brass knuckles, respectively. They looked annoyed at having their downtime interrupted and more than willing to bust some overstuffed Librarian skulls.
“Wait a second!” Cassandra protested. “Where’d these guys come from?”
“Beats me.” Stone suddenly found himself facing off against three new opponents instead of the guy he really wanted to spar with. He took up a defensive position between the men and Cassandra. “I thought that was a closet door!”
“But you’re the architecture guy!” she said. “You’re supposed to know about old houses and stuff!”
“Every old house is different.” He ducked and weaved, staying constantly in motion so the henchmen couldn’t catch him in a squeeze play. The trick with fighting multiple opponents was to keep them in each other’s way. Seizing the offensive was also key to overcoming a number disadvantage. “That’s what makes them so fascinating. They’re not all standard-issue, like today’s cookie-cutter McMansions. They have character, individuality—”
“I get the point,” she said. “Less lecturing, more kung fu!”
“But I was just getting warmed up.” Stone dodged a knife-thrust by executing a flawless Flying Armadillo spin taught to him by the Monkey King himself. The move worked better with a prehensile tail, but, combined with a reverse Yeti punch and a triple Swaying Bamboo counterattack, Stone managed to throw the Knife Guy into the path of the other two thugs, causing Baton Guy to trip over Knuckles, who knocked over a dry-erase board, setting off a chain reaction that caused the other boards to tumble like dominoes. “Although, yeah, I’m wasting my breath on these lunkheads.”
What was worse, the goons were just dangerous enough to keep him too busy to go after Max, who didn’t seem inclined to stick around for the end of the bout. Keeping clear of the fight, Max called out to Coral, who was waging a tug-of-war with Cassandra over a marked-up map of the United States that had been stretched atop a table. The map tore down the middle, causing both women to stumble backward, each clutching half of the map.
“I fear our privacy has been compromised,” Max told Coral. “Prudence suggests we seek a change of address.” He collected the skull and the reliquary, lifting the latter by its handle while tucking the former in the crook of his arm. “Echidna, initiate extraction procedure … with all due haste.”
“Understood,” the digital helper replied. “Your lift is en route.”
Stone heard the helicopter revving up outside.
Crap, he’s making a break for it, while I’m tied up with the hired help!
Ducking beneath a swinging truncheon while delivering a gut-punch to Baton Guy, Stone watched in frustration as Max headed for the balcony overlooking the backyard. Cassandra tried to chase after them, but was hampered by the four-way brawl between her and the balcony. She tossed her half of the map over Knife Guy’s head to mess with his vision, then scrambled backward to keep from being stabbed, clubbed, or punched.
“Come along, Coral,” Max said. “Our ride awaits.”
The pink-haired alchemist hesitated. “But the maps, the gold…”
“Leave them,” Max said forcefully. “We can’t let your prism fall into the hands of the Library, who will lock it away for all time.”
Coral blanched at the prospect. “I’m coming!”
Stone fumed in frustration as the goons covered their boss’s escape. Caught up in the brawl, the two-fisted Librarian could only watch out of the corner of his eye as the helicopter came whirring into view, hovering parallel to the balcony. The wash from its spinning rotors invaded the attic, blowing loose papers around like chaff. Max put down the skull and reliquary long enough to help Coral over the railing and into the passenger compartment of the copter before turning to take his leave. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a fake gold coin and lobbed it toward his embattled foes.
“Good-bye, Librarians!” Max shouted over the whir of the rotors. “Rest assured I will possess the Pot, no matter where it is hiding!” He reclaimed the skull and reliquary, gripping the grinning skull like a bowling ball with his fingers in its empty eye sockets. “But first: Echidna, execute Gomorrah Protocol.”
“Understood. Five minutes to detonation.”
“Detonation?”
Stone knew a self-destruct sequence when he heard one. Max was cutting his losses—and he didn’t want to leave any incriminating evidence behind.
“You hear that, dudes?” Stone barked at the henchmen. “Your boss just left you to blow up with the premises. You going to keep tussling with me … or get the hell out of Dodge?”
The thugs paused and looked at each other. Black eyes, split lips, and a busted nose indicated where Stone had managed to get his licks in. Beyond the balcony, Max and the helicopter were already taking off without them.
“Four minutes to detonation,” Echidna reported.
“Screw this,” Knuckles said. “I’m saving my own skin.”
Abandoning the fight, he bolted for the stairs, with his buddies close behind him. Stone let them go; he had bigger things on his plate than chasing after these small fry.
Staying alive, for one thing.
“We gotta go,” he told Cassandra.
“Hang on.” She was sorting through the overturned boards and scattered papers, trying to absorb as much intel as she could. Avid eyes scanned the contents of the war room. “Just give me a few more moments.”
Stone dragged her away from the debris. “There’s no time for that. This whole place is going to blow!”
“Wait!” she said. “I can make sense of this. I know I can!”
“Not if you’re blown to smithereens.” Stone was worried about Baird and Ezekiel, too, but had to hope that they were already making their own escape. “We need you more than we need any secret info!”
“Three minutes to detonation.”
Racing the countdown, Stone ran through their options at lightning speed. Fighting their way down three flights of stairs, possibly encountering various hostile Serpents, was going to take too long. He tried calling Jenkins, but got a busy signal. He hoped that meant Jenkins was occupied firing up a Magic Door for the rest of the team.
“Two minutes to detonation.”
There was no time to waste. They were going to have to go for the quickest route out of danger. Hustling Cassandra onto the balcony, he scowled at the sight of Max’s helicopter vanishing into the cloudy night sky, then peered over the railing at the moat several stories below.
“Wonder just how deep that is.”
Cassandra looked aghast. “Please tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
“You ever see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?”
“Don’t they die in the end?”
“Not from the fall.”
Lifting all one-hundred-plus pounds of her, he hurled her over the railing. A descending scream terminated in a loud splash.
“One minute to detonation.”
That was as close as he wanted to call it. Vaulting over the rail, he plunged toward the chilly black water below, counting on gravity to save him. Accelerating faster than the bomb could count down, he hit the water feetfirst and sank below the surface, discovering to his relief that the moat was deep enough to keep him from slamming into the bottom. He kicked to the surface in search of air and Cassandra, not necessarily in that order, and found her treading water in the shadow of the mansion, which he figured had to be going boom any second now.
“Dive!” he shouted. “As deep as you can!”
They submerged themselves with only a heartbeat to spare. A massive explosion shook the moat, the deafening blast and shock wave only slightly muffled by the water. Chunks of shattered masonry rained down on them, falling past Stone and Cassandra as they swam underwater toward the opposite side of the moat.
One good thing, Stone thought. If there is any nasty creature dwelling in the moat, it’s gotta be hiding now.
Starving lungs drove them back to the surface. Panting, they crawled onto the grounds behind where the mansion used to be. Cold and wet and pumped with adrenaline, Stone looked back at the conflagration they had narrowly escaped. Eden Manor was nothing but flaming rubble. Thick plumes of smoke and ash rose toward the heavens, taking with them whatever useful clues the team might have salvaged otherwise. Max had burned his bridges behind him—in a big way.
Cassandra gaped at the destruction. “Baird and Ezekiel must have gotten out in time, right?” She hugged herself to keep from shivering. “There’s no way they were trapped in there?”
“I don’t know, Cassie. I wish I could be sure of that.”
* * *
“This is why I hate alarms,” Ezekiel said.
He and Baird were pinned down in the underground vault while angry Serpents, locked out of the safe, did their damnedest to force their way in. So far the two of them had heard automatic weapons fire and sledgehammers pound against the other side of the thick steel door. Ezekiel figured power drills and welding torches were only a matter of time.
“How long until they get in?” Baird asked.
“Not soon,” he replied. “This vault is rock-solid. We’re going to run out of air long before anybody breaks in here.”
“Why don’t I find that reassuring?”
Ezekiel couldn’t figure out a way to put a positive spin on suffocation, so he started stuffing his pockets with precious gold coins instead. He couldn’t carry off the entire contents of the vault, but he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t at least make a dent in it.
“Seriously?” Baird asked him. “At a time like this?”
He shrugged. “It’s evidence, right? Minus a small finder’s fee, that is.”
“That’s what you’re thinking about right now—?”
An automated voice, blaring over a public-address system, intruded on the conversation:
“Attention! Gomorrah Protocol in effect. Five minutes to detonation.”
The pounding on the door halted abruptly, leaving them alone in the vault with an unexpected complication.
“Detonation?” Ezekiel echoed.
“Gomorrah?” Baird said. “As in fire and brimstone? That doesn’t sound good.”
Ezekiel had to agree. In his experience, secret bases and headquarters had an unfortunate tendency to go up in flames when compromised. He could only assume that the Serpent Brotherhood believed in covering its tracks as well.
“On the bright side,” he observed, “it sounds like the bad guys have given up trying to get to us.”
“Because they know better than to stick around for the fireworks.” Baird surveyed their surroundings. “What do you think? Can this vault survive a big blast?”
“Hard to say without knowing what kind of explosion we’re talking about,” Ezekiel replied. “Personally, I don’t want to take my chances.” He nodded at the sealed vault entrance. “That counts as a door, right?”
Baird’s face lit up. “You bet it does!”
“Of course, we’ll have to risk opening it,” he pointed, “without knowing who or what is waiting on the other side.”
“Four minutes to detonation,” a voice updated them.
Baird took out her phone. “Do it.”
Grabbing a solid-gold candlestick just in case, Ezekiel worked the keypad on the inside of the vault. Overriding the emergency lockdown was child’s play, but it wasn’t until after he hit the final key that it occurred to him that the whole self-destruct countdown might be just a ploy to trick them into opening the vault from the inside. Ezekiel held his breath as the door slid open.
He was going to feel really stupid if he got shot right now.
But the open door revealed only an empty basement, which meant that the countdown was no joke. “Baird?”
“I’m on it.” She stepped outside of the vault to get a better signal before dialing the Annex. “Jenkins! We need an extraction, ASAP.” She took a picture of the vault entrance. “I’m sending you a photo and the precise GPS coordinates now.”
Ezekiel couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but he could imagine Jenkins hurrying over to the tricked-out globe that operated the Magic Door. He mentally spurred the ageless caretaker on.
“Three minutes to detonation.”
Pilfered gold weighed down Ezekiel’s pockets as he waited tensely for their escape route. He wished he had time to load up on some more treasure, but knew better than to ask Baird to grab an armful, particularly when she was trying to save their lives.
A bright white light filled the doorway, rewarding her efforts.
“Right on time,” she said. “Thank you, Jenkins.”
“Hold on,” Ezekiel said. “What about Stone and Cassandra?”
“We’ll meet them on the other side,” Baird said. “Just like we planned.”
“And if they’re not there?”
“They’ll be there,” she stated.
“But how do you know that?”
“Because they’re Librarians.”