Chapter 76
The whole family had gathered in the catacombs for a cozy breakfast. I’d once wondered what the Clark’s ate, and now I knew. Lukewarm orange juice. Dry cereal. Those soggy bran muffins sealed in plastic that supposedly stayed fresh for months.
The catacombs were lit by conjured sconces.
Their gas-green glow danced over the shelves of bones and slid across Last’s pallid complexion.
Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, but I don’t think she’d been crying.
She had a crackling, eight-cups-of-coffee, excited energy.
She squirmed in her seat at the breakfast table, and her mouth kept twitching into an anticipatory smile.
The wind had blown through the Clark mansion, sweeping the thick layer of ash into hilly dunes and shaking loose the noxious fumes.
The upstairs was still a charred, skeletal remain, but now it looked like the powdery surface of the moon, with the Clarks’ footsteps memorialized in the still gray ash.
It was eerie to walk through the mansion’s gray-coated corpse, but even worse to descend into the catacombs.
I could feel the creature pressing at the walls. No. That wasn’t quite right. I could feel the creature pressing at me.
It knew me from my second death. It remembered me from the games. Both times, it had touched me with the tiniest tentacle of itself. Only the thinnest thread had ever been able to slip through the cracks of its dungeon. But that had been enough.
Most of the time, people believe the fears you have in childhood won’t be so terrifying when you’re an adult and you look at them head-on.
Unfortunately, most people are wrong about most things.
For instance, there is a monster under your bed.
And the beast locked in the basement is more terrifying than you could ever have imagined.
As a child, I was terrified of the monster in the Clarks’ catacombs. As an adult, I was petrified.
It knew me. And it knew I was unlocking its cage.
It pressed against me, rattling its cage and clawing at the locks. Its hot breath licked my skin as I carefully removed another raisin from the soggy bran muffin. I popped the raisin into my mouth and slowly chewed. It was crunchy and sour.
“Not hungry?” Principal Clark asked. His bald skin glowed a sickly green in the cold light.
There was something reptilian about him.
Perhaps it was the smoothness of his skin and how he plucked every hair, even his eyebrows and his eyelashes.
It made him look like a freshly molted snake.
But more likely, it was the way he studied me.
He watched me as if he were contemplating unlatching his jaw and swallowing me whole.
Primus smirked at me. It was interesting—I’d never seen that expression on him before. It was almost like he thought we were two confidants enjoying an inside joke.
Last bounced in her seat and said, “Can I tell her? Can I?”
The Clark’s expression flattened. He set his spoon down firmly on the table and then slowly wiped his fingers on his paper napkin.
“I will tell her,” Primus said.
There was a prideful satisfaction in the way he leaned back in his chair. But there was something else too. He looked a bit like a little boy who’d just finger-painted his first picture and was eager for his mother’s approval.
I had a feeling he was about to hand me a gift.
“As you know,” Primus said, steepling his hands in front of him, “Thirteen died yesterday.”
I nodded. Thirteen, the Clark’s body, had sacrificed himself for Last at the wedding. She might’ve died if he hadn’t jumped in front of her. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Primus grinned.
Last bounced in her seat.
The Clark watched me with a hungry smile.
I didn’t like where this was going.
The creature in the walls shoved against me, urging me to unlock its chains.
“As a reward for your service to us, you will be our next body.”
“Not Fourteen though,” Last said, leaning forward to grip my hand. “You’d be Mari. You’d be my body.”
Primus made a sound of disagreement. “Not quite, sister. The bodies belong to all of us.”
I let out a slow breath. My throat was constricting like a collapsing straw.
Last’s eyes darkened, and the skin around her mouth turned white. I knew she was thinking about Primus and her pet cricket. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she’d stab me in the heart with her butter knife if she thought Primus was going to “take me.”
I would have to tread very carefully.
Primus smiled at me, waiting to see my response to his gift.
I knew what this was. He wanted to control me like Jagger controlled me. The only way he knew how was by making me a body.
“I’m honored,” I said, turning to the Clark, “and very . . . grateful. However, I’m a mine. I’m Jagger’s. His will is mine. I can’t become your body. He won’t allow it.”
“Do you speak for him?” the Clark asked, his smooth forehead rising at my rejection.
“Yes. In this.”
“Take note,” Primus said, knocking his knuckles against the breakfast table, “the mine has refused our gift. The mine is stupider than I thought.”
Last slumped in her chair and pushed the seat back from the table. “Fine. Time to unlock the monster. Come on, Mari. We’re going down into the tunnels.”
The excitement that had been drumming through her had dissipated. Now, she just looked tired.
Last stood, snatched a plastic-wrapped muffin, and then frowned at me. “Well? Come on.”
I looked at Primus and the Clark.
The Clark sent a paper-straw, hissing breath through his dry lips. “Go. You’ll work until the creature is free. The leggerock knows and has promised you’ll stay until it is released. Do not pause. Do not rest. Do not tire.”
The last time I was here, I’d cleared millions of knots.
The beast was barricaded behind a medieval dungeon, a tortured tapestry of illusion.
It was impenetrable to everyone but a lockpick.
It was the most exhausting, most trying thing I’d ever untied.
By my estimate, I still had millions more knots and at least fifteen hours to go before the creature was free.
It was going to be a very long day.
However, I wished it could be longer. I wished the day would never end. Because when it did, the monster would be freed.
I pressed my hand to the cool wooden table and stood, sending a frightened, urgent tap along the rope that connected me to my brother. He’d come when I’d called at Rockefeller. Would he come again?
And more importantly, would he want to stop the monster?
The Clarks insisted it would defeat the Smiths. Maybe Jacob wanted the Smiths to die too.
I stopped tapping and pulled back into myself.
The Clark’s smile grew. “When the creature is freed, it will devour the Smiths. You and my son will face the Smith abomination. You will prevent his conjurings, and my son will send the Smith creature back to hell. Do you understand?”
I nodded. “Free the creature. Stop the Smiths’ conjurings. Primus wins the crown.”
Primus looked on me with bold approval. He snaked his hands behind his closely shaved head and smiled.
I stared at him, wondering if he was truly crazy enough to think he’d be able to wear the crown without having won it in the games.
But what did I know? Maybe in all the Clark archives, there was a history that told of a usurper who’d managed to challenge the crown and plop it on their own head.
Or . . . he truly thought he’d been the one to win the games, and Finn was the pretender.
I suppose, if the duel hadn’t actually finished, and Finn died before it was done, then Primus might believe he was the winner.
I wouldn’t risk a thousand painful deaths for the possibility, but I also wasn’t a Clark.
They’d done plenty of mad things through the centuries.
“Take note,” Primus said, as Last clasped my hand and tugged me toward the tunnel, “I won’t win the crown. I’ve already won it. Tonight, we’re reclaiming what’s mine.”
As Last and I hurried down the bone-walled tunnel, the creature moaned happily at my approach. I shivered and couldn’t help but think Primus was wrong. We weren’t reclaiming what was his. We were unlocking a nightmare, and all of us would be lucky if we survived the night.