LITMIR.BIZ

      e have to find the remaining four and somehow convince Valin to join us,” Mack said. He was pacing thoughtfully up and down the suite at the Plaza Athénée hotel in Paris. It was quite a large suite and quite extravagantly beautiful. It was morning, so there were croissants and hot chocolate in silver service on the sideboard.

      There were also croissant crumbs on the carpet and all three beds, and ditto hot-chocolate stains. This was the main boys’ room—Mack, Dietmar, and Stefan had slept here. The secondary boys’ room had been shared by Charlie and Rodrigo and was across the hall. The girls’ suite was down one floor and had been enjoyed by Jarrah, Xiao, and Sylvie.

      The two large suites cost 2,000 euros¹¹ each, while the smaller suite cost a mere 1,200 euros. Breakfast for seven cost just under 300 euros, which was kind of a lot, and given that they were spending 5,200 euros a night for the rooms, you’d have thought the Plaza Athénée would kick in a free breakfast. But no.

      Fortunately Mack still had the special credit card with most of a million-dollar credit line.

      There were gendarmes outside each of the three doors to the suite, but Mack wasn’t too worried about evading them. If you can fight Risky to a draw, you can cope with a handful of French cops.

      Everyone was in the largest suite now, lounging on the beds, the sofas, the fancy chairs, and the floor—seven of the most important and powerful twelve-year-olds in human history. Plus Stefan, the world’s most intimidating fifteen-year-old.

      And they were all watching Mack pace thoughtfully. (Jarrah was watching suspiciously since it seemed to her that Mack kept pacing closer and closer to the last remaining croissant.)

      “We need Grimluk,” Dietmar said. “He will give us a clue to the remaining Magnifica.”

      “We’ve been here two and a half weeks, guys. I’ve spent a lot of time in the bathroom staring at the fixtures and I haven’t seen him,” Mack said.

      Grimluk had a tendency to appear in shiny objects—sometimes mirrors, sometimes chrome bathroom fixtures.

      “Maybe he is dead,” Sylvie suggested. “It is the fate of all, is it not? We can perhaps delay the tolling of that final hour, and yet will it come.”

      Sylvie was philosophical. She was short and pretty and French with a sort of goth-emo look, and Mack found her fascinating. She was also Valin’s half sister. But not evil like him.

      “Why should Grimluk die now?” Dietmar wondered. “He’s lived for three thousand years.”

      “Who is this Grimluk bloke again?” Charlie asked. Charlie had only recently joined up, along with Rodrigo, and honestly, he sometimes didn’t pay attention.

      “One of the original Magnificent Twelve from three thousand years ago,” Xiao explained. She was a patient person, Xiao was. Also not technically a person. She was looking very person-like at the moment, looking like a beautiful Chinese girl, but her true self was a dragon. Not a scary Western dragon—a more serpentine, turquoise, philosophical Chinese dragon. Like if the usual dragon matured and stopped trying to look all punk and took up reading books. “Grimluk has been Mack’s guide from the start.”

      Rodrigo raised one elegant eyebrow. “Yes, so your guide—our guide—is a three-thousand-year-old man who speaks from bathrooms.”

      Jarrah said, “Mack, unless we have Valin, we’ll never be the Twelve. We best go find that git and see if we can’t change his mind.” Jarrah was always about active verbs. Go. Find. Jump. Yell. Smack. Fight.

      “I can change Valin’s mind,” Stefan said, and slammed his fist into the palm of his hand.

      “We don’t know where Valin is any more than we know where the remaining four Magnifica are,” Mack said. “Last we saw of Valin, he was here in Paris. All we know is that whatever he has against me started sometime long, long ago in the Punjab.”¹²

      “Then let’s go, right?” Jarrah said, and jumped up. Jarrah had been the first of the Magnifica to join Mack. She had her mother’s dark skin and her father’s blond hair and a wild recklessness that had absolutely captured Stefan’s affection.

      No one had a better idea, although Mack waited to hear one. He liked Paris. He liked this fancy hotel. He liked the fact that days had passed without anyone actively trying to kill him. But, nope, no one had a better idea. Darn it.

      Thus it was that with croissant crumbs still unbrushed from their lips, the Magnificent Seven cast a quick Vargran spell on the gendarmes, who were caused, by virtue of this magic, to go en masse to the restaurant downstairs and order well-done steaks,¹³ allowing the Magnifica to escape.

      You may be wondering: How does one get from Paris, France, to the Punjab? Well, first you find out that the largest city in the Indian Punjab is Amritsar, then you get onto Expedia and find out it’s a twelve-hour flight and costs 5,139 US dollars if you’re flying first class. And if you have a million-dollar credit card, why wouldn’t you fly first class?

      For once it would be an easy flight for Mack. He did not suffer from any flying-related phobias, so long as he wasn’t flying over the ocean. Fly Mack over the ocean and you’d barely hear the in-flight movie over the sound of his chattering teeth, his weeping, his sudden panicky yelps, and the inevitable (but necessary) crunch of Stefan’s knuckles against Mack’s jaw, putting him to sleep.

      Long story short, at ten a.m. the next day they stepped, well-rested (hey, first class, remember?), into the Amritsar airport. They were met by the guide Mack had arranged in advance. This turned out to be a man in a purple turban and an amazing beard named Singh. The man, not the beard. Or the turban.

      To clarify, neither the beard nor the turban was named Singh, but the tour guide was.

      It didn’t matter, because Singh’s beard was a major beard. It was glossy black, and curled up inside itself into a sort of concentrated, extra-strength beard.

      “Ah ah ah!” Mack cried, and backpedaled away, crashing into the living dead (the people who had flown coach), who snarled

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