LITMIR.BIZ

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is how Patrick “Paddy” Trout came to leave Loathbog and County Grind and took ship for the land of opportunity.

      

      

ack in Beijing, Stefan and Jarrah took a cab to the brand-new Nine Dragons Hotel.

      It was a stunning hotel. Beautiful. Expensive. Swank. All those things. Mack woke up in the elevator, moaning and whining about blue cheese, so as soon as they got to their room, Stefan dragged him to the bathroom, turned the shower on, and tossed him in.

      Mack showered using several cleaning agents: hand soap, bath soap, tangerine body wash and shampoo. Then he started it all over again. And finally he felt clean of the awful blue-cheesy-guts stuff.

      He emerged scrubbed and pink, swathed in a plush bathrobe, and far less likely to whine.

      Jarrah had snagged a candy bar from the minifridge and was standing beside Stefan, who was looking out one of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

      “You know, you boys didn’t mention there was a crazy old loon trying to kill you,” Jarrah accused.

      “I didn’t think he’d come after us,” Mack said. He flopped back on to the bed, which was amazingly soft. There were two beds in this room, and another bed in the adjoining room. “I thought Grimluk might have said something about a trap. It wasn’t clear. I thought I was imagining it. But I guess that was the trap.”

      “The possibility of a trap is something you definitely want to mention,” Jarrah said. “Still and all, here we are, right as rain. No worries.”

      Jarrah was a cheerful, optimistic sort of girl. Mack wished he could be like that. The cheerful, optimistic part, not the girl part.

      Stefan was looking at the room service menu. “I can’t read this.”

      Jarrah took the menu from him, flipped from the Chinese-language pages to the English-language pages, and handed it back.

      “Huh,” Stefan said.

      “That was weird, wasn’t it?” Jarrah said thoughtfully. “I mean, so I say these Vargran words, and stuff happens. I mean, that’s weird, right?”

      Mack lifted his head. “Some people might think so. Like, sane people. They would think so.”

      THIS BOOK IS ABOUT MACK, NOT ABOUT ME. I’M JUST HIS GOLEM. SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO READ THIS PART. UNLESS YOU WANT TO. DO YOU WANT TO? ARE YOU HOLDING THE BOOK SIDEWAYS SO YOU CAN READ IT? ARE PEOPLE STARING AT YOU BECAUSE YOU’RE READING A BOOK SIDEWAYS? DO YOU FEEL KIND OF SILLY? I FEEL SILLY A LOT. LIKE THE OTHER DAY WHEN IT RAINED AND MY FEET GOT WET AND STARTED DISSOLVING. I WAS RUNNING LATE, SO NO TIME TO STOP AND RE-MUD MYSELF. BY THE TIME I GOT CLASS, I WAS WALKING ON MY KNEES. I FELT SILLY. ALSO SHORT. THEN KIDS STARTED SCREAMING.

      Jarrah took a thoughtful bite of her candy bar. “I mean, what’s weird is that I’d spoken Vargran before. While I was with my mom and she was working on the Uluru cave wall. We’d puzzle words out. But nothing ever happened before. Not like that. Not something supernatural.”

      Stefan said, “It’s all Chinese food. Except the club sandwich.” He tossed the menu aside and turned on the TV.

      “I think there’s some kind of match-up between the person and the things they can do with Vargran,” Mack said. “I don’t know. I tried Google, Bing, Wolfram|Alpha, all the search engines. There isn’t much about Vargran.”

      “You think they’ll eventually shrink back? The Lepercons, I mean?”

      Mack nodded at the TV, which was showing a news report. It was an exterior shot of the airport. There were police cars and ambulances with lights flashing.

      A small army of workers pushed wheelbarrows full of goo that looked a bit like soft blue cheese. Firefighters had hooked up a hose and were spraying down some very disgruntled-looking people and their luggage.

      The broadcast was in Mandarin – one of the two main Chinese languages – so no one understood the commentary. But Mack guessed it was something like, “Holy fajita, the airport baggage claim is full of giant creatures oozing stinky cheese. What the heck is going on?”

      “This Vargran stuff is cool,” Stefan said. “I could buy a Snickers, right? And Jarrah, you could do your magico mumbo jabumbo and make it, like, huge.”

      “And then we’d be smothered in creamy nougat,” Mack pointed out.

      “Nah. Just eat your way out,” Stefan said. He made a face like he thought maybe Mack was being an idiot.

      “I don’t know what we’re supposed to do,” Mack said. He got up and went to stand between Stefan and Jarrah at the window. They were on the twenty-first floor, high up. It was dusk; lights were just coming on all over the city.

      “We have thirty-five days,” Mack said. “We have to find ten more kids. The exactly right ten more kids. We can’t just go to the nearest middle school. Then we have to, like… Well, I don’t exactly know. Grimluk said we had to find these ancient, unknown forces. And mostly, we had to learn Vargran.”

      “Well, my mom is working on deciphering more of that,” Jarrah said. “Why did Grimluk send us here to China?”

      “All Grimluk told me was, go to the nine dragons of Daidu. If I hadn’t Googled it, I wouldn’t even have known Daidu was the ancient name for Beijing. There was only one hotel named the Nine Dragons Hotel. So. Here we are.”

      “We’re here to find the next one of our group, right?” Jarrah said. “So, it’s what, like, a billion people in China? No worries, we just start asking around.”

      “Let’s go out and get some food,” Stefan said.

      “We only have thirty-five days!” Mack cried.

      “We still have to eat,” Jarrah said. “And we’re here, right? Let’s go out, see what’s what. Maybe the third member of the Magnificent Twelve is at the local McDonald’s.”

      “It’s getting dark,” Mack said, but it was a weak objection because Stefan and Jarrah were already on their way.

      The hotel was situated on a broad avenue. Traffic wasn’t heavy but it was dangerous. There were more bikes than buses, more buses than taxis, more taxis than private cars. But none of them seemed overly concerned with traffic lights.

      The Magnificent Two plus Stefan had a map, given to them at the hotel. Marked on it was the night market, the Donghuamen.

      Seriously. That’s the actual name.

      The woman at the hotel had told them it was the place to go for food. They could see the bright glow of it from blocks away.

      “It’s right next to the Forbidden City,” Mack said, turning the map in his hands.

      “Forbidden,” Stefan said with a smirk. “Yeah, well, it’s not forbidden to me.”

      Jarrah laughed. “Got that right, mate.”

      (Author’s note: I forgot to mention that Mack had changed out of his bathrobe. So if you were picturing him still in a robe, no: regular clothes.)

      Mack read the brief description on the map. “The Forbidden City is open to anyone nowadays. It’s this gigantic palace complex. Bunch of palaces and museums and stuff, with nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine rooms. Back in the old days no man could enter. Instant death. Unless you were a eunuch.”

      “What’s a eunuch?” Stefan asked.

      Mack told him, and as a result Stefan headed into the Donghuamen Night Market walking a little strangely.

      The market was about four dozen blazingly bright stalls topped by cheery red-striped awnings. The attendants

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