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Dedication
For Katherine, Jake and Julia
Contents
Cover
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
“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.
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