Chapter 34

Where there had once been a man, there was now a vast dragon with black-tipped scales; enormous, curved fangs; and a tail ridged with heavy spikes. Cordelia and her father huddled next to Elizabeth and Gregory near the door. Cabal and Icky cowered at their feet. The baby dragon shrank back as the shadow of its enormous double swallowed up the corners of the room, exhaling hot, stinking air from nostrils the size of tree trunks. The only indication that the dragon wasn’t natural—that it was Plancke in a different form—was the blank mass of scarred skin stretching across the space where his left eye should have been.

“Everyone stay calm,” Cornelius said, herding Elizabeth, Gregory, and Cordelia behind him, as if he could shield them from Plancke’s wrath. “Stick close to me.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than the dragon-that-was-Plancke curled his lips back over his fangs and spat out a rushing stream of flame. The morpheus might have weakened in the heat, but his choice of shape more than compensated: it would take an oven the size of the whole museum to melt him down now.

“Down, down! Get down!” Cornelius cried.

Everyone was screaming. Elizabeth and Gregory scattered, and Cordelia felt her father push her to her knees. She rolled a few feet, blinking smoke from her eyes. The air stank of ash and sulfur. Fire had engulfed the door and a portion of the ceiling; there were more distant shouts, and the banging from the hallway went temporarily silent.

Cordelia had landed underneath the dragon’s swollen stomach. She could see the diamond pattern of his hide, his squat, powerful legs, and his thick tail lashing across the room, splintering plaster from the walls and crashing cages to the floor. She could feel the heat from his massive body, the whoosh of air every time the dragon swiveled his head or adjusted his position.

They were all trapped. They needed a weapon.

The knife.

Cordelia, still on her hands and knees, pivoted in every direction, ducking to avoid getting clobbered by the dragon’s tail. The smoke made it hard to see.

She swiped at her eyes carelessly, pushing back her sweaty strands of hair. Whoosh. She spotted the knife lying only a few feet away on the floor. As the dragon once again reared back and aimed a burst of fire at Cornelius—who escaped only by ducking behind the center mural—Cordelia lunged for the knife. Gripping the handle with both hands, she rolled onto her back and thrust the knife upward, as hard as she could, into the exposed belly of the beast.

The dragon stiffened. Smoke flared from his nostrils, as he swiveled his head to face her, his single eye glinting with malice. The knife was embedded deeply in his flesh, but Cordelia saw that the monster wasn’t bleeding. Instead, a sticky, gooey slime was oozing from his wound, and Cordelia scrambled out of the way to avoid getting spattered. It was the same slime she had seen in her father’s room; the same slime the eyeball left in its wake; the same slime a slug might puddle on a stone floor, after its back had been sprinkled with salt.

The idea hit her like a punch to the stomach: Byron Newton-Plancke was mostly water. Easily heated. Easily blurred by wet.

And fatally allergic to salt, which would evaporate it into its true shape.

“Cordelia, watch out!” Gregory shouted just in time. She dove as the dragon exhaled a wall of fire and smoke. She somersaulted into the corner, bumping her head on the wall. Sitting up, she shook her head to clear the stars from her vision.

The dragon’s yellow eye hovered right in front of her, reflecting a terrified Cordelia cowering at its center. The dragon’s nostrils quivered with pleasure. Every time he exhaled, Cordelia felt as if she were being blasted by air from a hot oven. With his crooked teeth exposed, the dragon looked as if he was smiling.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. Dimly, she was aware of her father shouting, of Gregory calling her name, of Elizabeth telling her to get out of the way. But there was nowhere to go. She was trapped.

It was over.

Cordelia squeezed her eyes shut as the dragon sucked in an enormous breath—

But instead of the expected blast of heat, she felt the dragon jerk backward. Looking up, she saw Icky—cowardly Icky—clinging determinedly to the dragon’s nose, letting off an explosive artillery of farts.

Cordelia rocketed to her feet. Doubling over to pass underneath the belly of the monster, she sprinted for her jacket. Someone—Gregory?—called to her to watch out.

Whoosh. Once again, the dragon turned its eye on Cordelia. She was so close. . . .

She dove as a stream of fire incinerated the wall behind her. She landed hard behind the cage, using it as a makeshift shield against the shimmering heat as she reached for the jacket that Plancke had cast off into a corner. From a pocket she rooted out the paper bag that had once contained the pretzels. She dug a fist into the bag and withdrew a handful of salt, praying it would be enough.

And as the dragon’s head rose, rose, rose over the top of the cage, his yellow eye like a sun just rising, steam issuing from his massive nostrils, she threw.

The salt landed directly in his eye. The dragon drew back, roaring with pain. Cordelia tossed another handful, straight up the dragon’s nostrils. For a terrifying second, nothing else happened, and Cordelia’s heart stopped: they were lost.

Then there was a sizzling sound, like bacon in a fryer. The dragon blinked. Then he began to melt.

His eye went first, oozing and popping, transforming into the same bubbling slime that had oozed from Plancke’s wounds. Then his snout, and his gigantic, quivering nostrils, began to blur—melting, melting, pouring away, so that even when Plancke attempted one last burst of flame, the fire itself transformed into liquid, splattering the walls and ceiling and dousing the remaining flames.

And as Byron-Newton Plancke puddled, shriveled, and collapsed, he started to howl. The sound was so loud and so horrible, Cordelia covered her ears. But the smaller he got, the fainter the noise became.

Until at last, when he was no larger than a house cat drowning in a pile of slime, the sound was tolerable again; and when he was no bigger than a mouse, the howl was no louder than a faint whistle.

And finally, Plancke the morpheus assumed his true form: a long, sluglike creature the size of a child’s finger, marbled with a complex pattern of veins, like the one her mother had found, fossilized into stone.

For a long moment, no one spoke. Gregory was panting. Elizabeth was shaking so hard her knees were knocking together with a hard, wooden clanging. She had broken out in warts all over.

Cordelia didn’t even try to stand up. She was flooded with exhaustion, suddenly; she felt as if her body had been replaced with iron.

Cornelius adjusted his glasses, which were perched crookedly on his nose. “Well,” he said. “Well.” He limped a little closer and stared down at the sluglike morpheus with distaste. He raised his boot. “Now that he’s been salted . . .”

“Don’t,” Cordelia cried out. Cornelius looked at her in surprise. “Don’t,” she repeated. “Let him live this way, as himself. Put him in a jar, and set the jar next to a mirror, and let him live with his reflection. That’s punishment enough, isn’t it?”

“You’re sure?” Cornelius asked quietly.

Cordelia nodded. “It’s like Mom thought,” she said. “Good overcomes evil. Then the evil has no one to blame for its evil. Right?”

Cornelius stared at her. Tears dampened his eyes. Then he pulled her tight into a hug. “That’s right,” he said. Then he released her and turned his attention back to Byron Newton-Plancke, in his true form.

“We’ll need to find some kind of container . . . ,” he began.

In a way, they did, a minute later, when Elizabeth, still gripped in an explosive outbreak of goblin, spotted the slug on the floor—and instinctively darted out a long, pink tongue to snatch it up.

A horrified Elizabeth clapped both hands to her mouth. There was a beat of silence.

Then Elizabeth cried out, “Slugs?”

Gregory patted her on the arm. “At least it’s not a spider,” he said.