Kingdom Keepers IV(74)

“Good decision,” he said.

Each time the fireworks boomed, Willa flinched. Colors flashed on the walls surrounding them, turning their faces blue, red, green, and white in rhythmic pulses.

“Exactly what magic are we talking about?” Maybeck asked.

“The window magic.”

“Windows? Like the software?” Maybeck said.

“I don’t think we’re talking software,” Willa said. “What kind of windows?” she asked Jafar.

“Window magic,” he said. “I wish this also. What the evil one has, I must possess as well.”

“Windows,” Maybeck said, still confused and trying to wrap his head around their situation. For him, Jafar was one of the worst Disney villains out there. He killed people, or tried to; he placed no value on human life. Maybeck assumed he’d just as soon turn into a cobra and bite them dead as let them walk away. So, it came down to convincing him he could get what he wanted without knowing exactly what he wanted.

Beside Maybeck, Willa backed up a step. Jafar seemed in opposition to, or ignorant of, Maleficent’s Overtakers. Both possibilities fascinated her. Was there division in the ranks? Did Jafar command a splinter cell?

Speculation fled as she caught sight of a display carousel in the open doorway to the gift shop immediately behind her.

“What’s up?” Maybeck said softly in her direction.

Jafar seemed to understand he was outnumbered. He looked between them like a fan at a tennis match.

“Hang in there with me,” she said.

“Hanging,” Maybeck said.

Jafar raised his thin, hideous hand and said, “Don’t make me do something I’d rather not.”

But Willa kept moving ever so slowly toward the display carousel and the merchandise it contained: necklaces, fans, hand mirrors, Aladdin turbans, scarves, and more.

Jafar said, “You will give me magic. Only then will I let you leave alive.”

“You are one generous dude,” Maybeck said. “And right now I’m thinking there’s no one we’d rather give our magic to than you. Trouble is, right now, we can’t be giving our magic out in the open. You know? We bring the magic, and next thing you know all those people out there are going to want it. And that’s no good for any of us. You with me?”

Jafar trained his yellow eyes onto Maybeck, stopping him in his tracks.

“You don’t have it, do you?” Jafar sounded crushed and angry. Extremely angry. “I misjudged you. Magic is not something you can leave behind. One either has it or not. And if you don’t have it, you are of no use to me.”

Willa had to hope not only that her current line of thinking was correct, but that she had perfect pitch. She also had to remember back to second grade—which for her had been an unpleasant time, when her two front teeth had been roughly the size of her thumbnails, and her classmates had teased her for being so ugly.

She grabbed hold of a snake-charmer’s flute from the display carousel. In second grade, it had been a recorder flute for the Christmas show. She drew it to her mouth, and played a haunting melody from a faraway land that she’d just heard inside the store.

Within the first few notes of the snake-charming melody, Jafar slapped his ugly hands over his large ears and backed away from her, already beginning to sink to the ground, shrinking away like a snake inside a wicker basket.

Maybeck looked on in amazement. “How did you—?”

“Shut up! Get ready to run.”

“I do not need to get ready. I am so out of here.”

“Come over behind me.”

Maybeck slid over behind Willa and, with her continuing to play the melody, the two backed away from the recoiling Jafar.

She dropped the flute.

They turned and ran.

* * *

Finn stood in the front row of the crowd of the hundred or so people surrounding a roped-off area designated for the Chinese acrobats. Fireworks tore holes in the sky, as a coach and a group of twelve girls and eight boys appeared in gymnastics uniforms. The crowd broke into applause.

The girls were mostly all tiny and young, wearing light blue leotards, all with basically the same bob-and-straight-bangs haircut. The somewhat older Chinese boys formed a line behind, hands clasped behind their backs, flexing their arm muscles, and awaiting their turn. It took a moment for Finn to recognize the third-to-last girl in line as Charlene. She wore a wig that matched the other girls’. With the addition of some eye makeup and blush, she blended in surprisingly well. But just seeing her there made Finn think how stupid a plan this was. There had to have been a better way than this to get the spindle. But there was no turning back now.

The coach—a strong looking older guy with a bald head—clapped his hands twice and the show began. Finn looked away, not wanting to see what a fool Charlene was about to make of herself. Despite her claim that she’d seen the routine “enough times to know it by heart,” Finn knew that seeing it and being able to do it were two different things. With his eyes averted and squeezed shut, he cowered from what he expected was going to be a collective gasp as Charlene missed a move and crashed. The show opened with tumbling acts that defied belief: diving through hoops, two girls at a time. Somersaults. Human pyramids.