Kingdom Keepers III(102)

“Do I answer that?” he hissed at Finn.

“Not now,” Finn answered.

The area in front of them was dark and eerily empty. The circus tent to their left posed the greatest threat—anything could hide in there—though its canvas walls remained motionless, suggesting that the tent was empty.

Finn stepped tentatively toward the boardroom, Philby right behind him.

Philby’s phone buzzed in his pocket for a second time.

Finn peered around the splintered doorjamb. The seat in the corner was empty. He ran to the chair, angry and frustrated. A pattern had been scratched into the wood of the arm. It looked something like a sword or a cross, but on closer examination there was a second crosspiece beneath the top bar.



“It’s a combination of an F for Fantasmic! and a cross for the sword,” Finn said. He now knew the purpose of the sword and where he would use it.

But in his chest was an empty hole where his heart should have been.

Wayne was gone.

* * *

As the Norwegian stepped into the empty elevator, Charlene was hovering directly over him, each limb extended between the walls to hold her there. She looked like a four-legged starfish.

Just as he raised his head to look up, she let go and dropped, catching his shoulders from the back and using the momentum of her fall to pull him over backward. They went together, crushing the trolls and knocking them down like bowling pins. She released him just before hitting the floor so that she could land on her feet. The Norwegian hit the floor hard. The elevator alarm went off as the doors tried to shut but couldn’t. Philby must have overridden the safety feature, because suddenly the doors slid shut, catching and pinning the Norwegian’s legs. He tried to free himself, kicking out, but the doors held him. At the same time the elevator began to climb, lifting the Norwegian and hanging him upside down. The elevator stopped four feet off the floor, so that his shoulders were touching the carpet, and the elevator held his legs.

Charlene spotted a security camera in the corner and she threw a thumbs-up toward it. As the trolls attempted to recover, she took off out the front door but quickly skidded to a stop.

Two Foo lions—that should have been stone lions from China, but seemed not to be made of stone at all, but from flesh and blood that only looked like stone—blocked the path in front of her. The lion on the left cocked its head toward her—it held a lion cub with its left front paw. The lion to the right growled.

Charlene fought to catch her breath, terror rippling through her.

“Good kitties,” she said.

* * *

Maybeck held his phone to his ear. “It’s a trap,” he told Finn. “There are lions at the front door.”

“Lions?”

“Gigabyte’s at the back.” He spoke into the phone—“Wayne?”—and then listened. “They haven’t seen him leave.” He paused. “We were set up, man. This is a trap.”

“Is not!” Finn said, trying to make sense of it all. “Stop thinking like that!” But the truth was: he was thinking about the possible traitor as much as anyone. He and Maybeck had spent, at most, thirty to forty seconds coming down the ladder. Somehow the Overtakers had managed to move Wayne, an old guy who didn’t move that fast, in that short time.

“They should get back to Nemo ASAP,” Finn said. “No use in all of us getting caught.”

“No way anyone’s catching me,” Maybeck said, though his voice lacked his usual confidence.

Only then did an unwanted thought surface in Finn’s mind. The kind of thought that on one hand made little sense, but on the other hand could not be easily dismissed. Suddenly Finn feared that the Overtakers knew that the Kingdom Keepers were unable to activate the Return—that the fob was missing. What if the Overtakers had somehow determined the Keepers’ vulnerable status and were now set to exploit it? As long as that fob remained in the Lost and Found there was no way out for the Keepers. They were easy prey, in danger of attack and capture. Maleficent must have been licking her chops. Whether by accident or design, the Keepers had made themselves easy targets.

Maybeck took out his phone to relay the order to return to the Nemo lounge as Finn looked on, but he speed-dialed without thinking, and had no idea who he had called. Whomever he was speaking to, Amanda, Willa, or Jess—Finn guessed it was Willa—obviously tried to argue, but Maybeck shut her up. “Just do it!” he shouted into the phone before disconnecting the call. “Sometimes I hate girls,” he said to Finn. “All the talking….”

I would bet they don’t exactly love us either, Finn was about to say, but he kept the thought to himself.