Michael Grant - The Trap

For Katherine, Jake and Julia

Cover

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Dedication

Before Chapter One

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Other Magificent 12 Books by Michael Grant

Copyright

About the Publisher

rimluk – looking as grim as ever – said the following while appearing as an indistinct image in a shiny chrome object in a bathroom in Sydney, Australia:

“I cannot guide you much further, Mack of the Magnifica. You must learn the secrets of this world. Find the ancient ones… the great forgotten forces. Some will help you. Some… not so much. But above all: Learn the ways of Vargran! Assemble the Twelve!! Time is shooooort!!!”

Grimluk usually didn’t use that many exclamation points. Nor did he typically draw a word out that way by adding unnecessary vowels. He tended to be grim rather than excited. So Mack paid close attention. This involved leaning nearer to the shiny chrome object in question, which if you’ve ever been in a public restroom, you’ll know is not considered appropriate behaviour.

“How short?” Mack asked.

“Short. Very shooooort.”

“But I mean, like, days? Weeks?”

“Thirty-six days from today is the end of the three thousand years of the Pale Queen’s sentence of banishment. The spell that binds her – already weakened – will end. And she will be free.”

“Say what? You’re telling me I have thirty-six days to find all the Magnificent Twelve? It’s just two of us so far! We’re just the Magnificent Two!”

“Thirty-six days to assemble the Twelve and destroy the Pale Queen!”

“You didn’t think to mention this earlier?”

“I didn’t have my calendar handy.” Then Grimluk’s wrinkled, haggard, drawn, worn, not-exactly-cute-little-Justin-Bieber face frowned. He rolled his white eyes up as though trying to remember. “Wait,” he said. “It’s thirty-five, not thirty-six. I always get seven minus four wrong.”

“I’ve already lost a day?” Mack shrilled.

“Go to the nine dragons of Daidu,” Grimluk whispered.

To which Mack replied, “The what?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Grimluk snapped. “This apparition thing isn’t easy. Each time I do it, I lose power. I weaken… I…”

And then he faded out. And Mack was left to stare at the chrome pipe with the same frustrated expression he got when the cable went out.

A man standing two urinals down shot him a worried look. “You all right, kid?”

“Yes, sir. Sometimes I talk to toilets. It… Well, they seem to like it.”

“Is that so?” The man thought about it for a minute. Then he said, “Hello, toilet.”

Mack was giving up on Grimluk and turning away when the ancient apparition came back into view. But now his voice was a whisper. An urgent, sketchy whisper: “… dragons may help… the Egge Rocks…”

“Daidu, nine dragons, egg rocks?” Mack repeated. “Egg Rocks? Is that a band?”

“Egge Rocks!” Grimluk whispered. “Teutoberg Forest. There… the eyes show!”

“Daidu, nine dragons, a band called Egg Rocks, toityberg… and an ice show?”

“Eyes!”

“Ice?”

Grimluk shook his head slowly, rolled his eyes up, and gasped, “Close enough…”

In a faint whisper, so quiet that Mack had to lean close – which looked extremely not-normal – Grimluk said, “Beware of…”

Mack listened intently and stared at the chrome for a while longer. He tried flushing a couple of times, banging on the handle on the theory that sometimes it helped to bang on things when they didn’t work.

But Grimluk was gone.

Again.

Which was very inconvenient because Mack had the impression that the last word Grimluk had said was “trap”. And that’s the kind of word you want to hear clearly enunciated.

“Grimluk has got to get himself a phone.”

It was irritating. Frustrating. Because Mack had quite a few questions.

He would have to answer those questions the hard way.

He clicked on his iPhone. Opened the browser. Opened the Google search window. And typed in Daidu.

or David MacAvoy – who all his friends called Mack – the flight to China went much better than the flight to Australia had.

The flight to Australia had ended when a beautiful shape-shifting evil princess named Ereskigal – who all her friends (she had no friends) called Risky – turned into a monster and yanked Mack out of a jet at thirty thousand feet and dropped him into the ocean.

On this flight, the one from Sydney to Shanghai, they’d had some turbulence, the first-class bathroom ran out of hand towels, and the meal they served was fish. But none of that was quite as awful as a five-mile fall through thin, freezing air into the shark-infested Pacific. Then they had transferred in Shanghai for a flight to Beijing.

Mack was accompanied by Jarrah Major, the second member of the Magnificent Twelve. And by his former bully and current bodyguard, Stefan Marr.

Stefan could pass for an adult because although he was in the same grade as twelve-year-old Mack, he was fifteen and had the muscular development of one of those guys who sell exercise equipment on cable TV.

In case anyone asked, they were telling people that Stefan was the “big brother” of Mack and Jarrah. How a dangerously handsome, muscle-bound blond thug had become the brother of a very average-sized, average-looking kid like Mack, let alone the brother of Jarrah, who had the skin tone of her Indigenous Australian mother, was anyone’s guess.

But people seldom questioned Stefan.

Certainly not more than once.

Anyway, the flight to China was relatively normal, although Mack spent the entire time gripping the arm-rest and whimpering. He had no fear of flying but he had a morbid fear of oceans and of sharks, and there’s a lot of ocean between Australia and China.

At one point Stefan smacked Mack on the head to get Mack to whimper more quietly. Mack didn’t really resent this much because if Stefan hadn’t done it, the rest of the passengers seated nearby would have. There’s just something about a sweating, trembling, teeth-gritting, seat-gripping, weeping, I-don’t-want-to-die-whining kid that gets on people’s nerves.