“I SET YOUR dog on fire and wipe the floor with rags made of the memories of everything I ever did with yooooouu . . . !”
As Nirvana’s mix blared over the speaker, Torquin’s lips curled into a shape resembling an upside-down horseshoe. “Not music. Noise.”
Actually, I kind of liked it. Okay, I left out some of the choice words in the quote above, but still. It was funny in a messed-up way. The tune was taking my mind off the fact that I was a gazillion feet over the Atlantic, the plane’s speed was pushing me back into my seat, and my stomach was about to explode out my mouth.
I looked at Aly. Her skin was flattening back over her cheekbones as if it were being kneaded by fingers. I couldn’t help cracking up.
Aly’s eyes shone with panic. “What’s so funny?”
“You look about ninety-five years old,” I replied.
“You sound about five,” she said. “After this is over, remind me to teach you some social skills.”
Glurp.
I turned away, awash in dorkitude. Maybe that was my great G7W talent, the superhuman ability to always say the wrong thing. Especially around Aly. Maybe it’s because she’s so confident. Maybe it’s because I’m the only Select who has no reason to have been Selected.
Jack “The Mistake” McKinley.
Fight it, dude. I turned to the window, where a cluster of buildings was racing by below us. It was kind of a shock to see Manhattan go by so fast. A minute later the sight was replaced by the checkerboard farmland of what must have been Pennsylvania.
As we plunged into thick clouds, I closed my eyes. I tried to think positively. We would find Marco. He would thank us for coming, apologize, and hop on the plane.
Right. And the world would start revolving the other direction.
Marco was stubborn. He was also totally convinced he was (a) always right and (b) immortal. Plus, if he was home, telling the story of our abduction, there would be paparazzi and TV news reporters waiting at the airport. Milk cartons with our images in every supermarket. WANTED posters hanging in post offices.
How could we possibly rescue him? Torquin was supposed to protect us in case of an emergency, but that didn’t give me confidence.
The events of the last few days raced in my head: Marco falling into the volcano in a battle with an ancient beast. Our search that found him miraculously alive in the spray of a healing waterfall. The ancient pit with seven empty hemispheres glowing in the dark—the Heptakiklos.
If only I’d ignored it. If only I hadn’t pulled the broken shard from the center. Then the griffin wouldn’t have escaped, we wouldn’t have had to race off to find it without adequate training, and Marco wouldn’t have had the chance to escape—
“You’re doing it again,” Aly said.
I snapped back to attention. “Doing what?”
“Blaming yourself for the griffin,” Aly replied. “I can tell.”
“It crushed Professor Bhegad,” I said. “It took Cass over an ocean and nearly killed him—”
“Griffins were bred to protect the Loculi,” Aly reminded me. “This one led us to the Colossus of Rhodes. You caused that to happen, Jack! We’ll get the Loculus back. Marco will listen to us.” She shrugged. “Then maybe you can let six more griffins through. They’ll lead us to the other Loculi. To protect us, I can help the KI develop . . . I don’t know, a repellant.”
“A griffin repellant?” Cass said.
Aly shrugged. “There are bug repellants, shark repellants, so why not? I’ll learn about them and tinker with the formula.”
Tinker. That was what Bhegad called Aly. We each had a nickname—Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor. Aly was the Tinker who could fix anything, Marco the Soldier because of his strength and bravery, Cass the Sailor for his awesome navigational ability. Me? You’re the Tailor because you put it all together, Bhegad had said. But I wasn’t putting anything together now, except pessimism.
“DIIIIIIIIE!”
Nirvana’s sudden shriek made us all spin around. Torquin bounced upward and banged his head on the ceiling. “What happened?” I asked.
“The end of the song,” Nirvana said. “I love that part.”
“Anything good?” Torquin said, scrolling through the tunes. “Any Disney?”
Cass was staring out the window, down toward a fretwork of roads and open land. “We’re almost there. This is Youngstown, Ohio . . . I think.”
“You think?” Aly said. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I—I don’t recognize the street pattern . . .” Cass said, shaking his head. “I should know this. I’m drawing a blank. I think something’s wrong with my . . . whatever.”
“Your ability to memorize every street in every place in the world?” Aly put her arm around him. “You’re nervous about Marco, that’s all.”
“Right . . . right . . .” Cass drummed his fingers on the armrest. “You sometimes make mistakes, right, Ally?”
Aly nodded. “Rarely, but yes. I’m human. We all are.”
“The weird thing is,” Cass said, “there’s only one part of Marco that isn’t human—the tracker. And those things don’t just fail—unless something really unusual happens to the carrier.”
“Like . . . ?” I said tentatively.
Cass’s eyes started to moisten. “Like the thing none of us is talking about. Like if the tracker was destroyed.”
“It’s inside his body,” Aly said. “He can’t destroy it.”
“Right. Unless . . .” Cass said.
We all fell silent. The plane began to descend. No one finished the sentence, but we all knew the words.
Unless Marco was dead.