This was Wayne’s apartment. Most had visited it before. There was incredibly sour milk in the refrigerator and food that now wore a coat of green fuzz—Wayne had not been here in a very long time.
They searched for over an hour for the Stonecutter’s Quill, but to no avail. If Wayne had hidden it, he’d hidden it well.
“What now?” Charlene asked.
“Is there any choice?” Finn asked.
“But without the pen,” Philby said, “what leverage do we have? We can’t win his release without that pen.”
“We’ll think of something,” Finn said.
“Or maybe Jez will dream it,” said Charlene, “and give us more clues to follow.”
“The point is, we did save Jez, and we pretty much saved the Animal Kingdom from being overrun by DHIs. We can’t be giving DHIs a bad name, after all.”
They laughed. Five shimmering kids, glowing as they enjoyed a rare moment of levity.
“Maleficent used us to bring Wayne out of hiding,” Finn said. “We failed him. And although we don’t know enough about Chernabog, we’ve seen his power. And I have a hunch that the bat with green wings was him all along, although I’m not sure how to explain that.”
“We know that even Maleficent cannot transform herself for very long,” Philby said. “Especially in this heat. She and her animal army may have been planning to take over AK. They had the ice truck as their backup, in case they failed. It was only when we crashed the server that she resorted to moving Chernabog. What’s strange is that if they hadn’t captured Jez, if she hadn’t been in that tunnel to have that daydream, we might never have known what Maleficent was planning, might never have been there when she was freeing Chernabog.”
“I think it was intended—us being there. I think if we’d failed to defeat the server then the animals would have caught us all and taken us to her. I don’t know what would have happened, but I think she had plans for us. Amanda saved us all by levitating her. Without that…”
“I always thought staying up that late would be fun,” said Charlene. “But it—”
“Stank.” Although Maybeck used another word.
“We’ve got work to do,” Finn said. “And we need to act quickly. Who knows what secrets Wayne might have in that old head of his? Secrets no one should know.”
“Tell us what to do,” Willa said.
All eyes fell on Finn. They waited for him to say something.
He smiled, a warmth filling him and making his DHI glow even brighter.
Wayne would have been proud.
“We’ll meet after school. We’ve got to find Wayne.”
He raised his right hand. In it was the black remote with the small button at its center.
“Ready?” he said.
The others nodded.
He pushed the button.