Mystics 3-Book Collection (77 page)

“ENOUGH!”

Director Hicks pushed his way through the
crowd.

“What is the meaning of this?” He could see
that Zoey had her hand on her weapon and he frowned. “Why are you
attacking these young Sevenths? Have you lost your mind woman?”

The large woman put her hands on her hips.
Zoey could see great sweat stains under her arms.

“Director Hicks, we know this girl took the
UECs—”

“No, she did
not
.” Director Hicks
seemed to grow taller and towered over the woman.

She cowered and said nothing. He glared at
the gathered agents.

The large woman crossed her arms over her
bugling chest. “If
she
didn’t do it, then
who
did?”

Director Hicks didn’t answer right away. “We
still don’t know.”

He glared at the woman. “Now, I suggest you
forget this ridiculous notion and think of a solution instead of
creating
more problems.”

He looked at Zoey.

“But Director Hicks,” said a middle-aged
agent who looked like he was about to coach a little league team,
“the UECs were our only hope. How can we shut them down the portals
without them?”

Director Hicks pulled on the sleeves of his
plaid jacket nervously, like he was hiding something. “Our
scientists are working hard at creating new ones, but I’m afraid
they won’t be ready for another few days . . . maybe a week.”

Zoey, Tristan, and Simon shared a look.
Simon mouthed the words “
a week
!”

Agent Frank had given them twelve hours.

“So, while we wait for the new UECs to
arrive, I want everyone to settle down and regroup with their teams
and come up with new strategies. We have mountains of work to do.
Go on now.”

Director Hicks’s fingers twitched at his
sides nervously, and when Zoey looked into his eyes, she could see
that he knew a week was too long,

“Any ideas as to what we do now?” asked
Tristan as the mob of agents dispersed.

Zoey glanced over her shoulder to make sure
no one was listening. “We stick to the plan.”

“We do?” questioned Simon, and then he
lowered his voice. “But how? We don’t have our secret weapon
anymore.”

He raised his brows. “You look like you’ve
already got something in mind? What’s the plan, oh mighty one?”

Zoey tossed the useless strap onto a nearby
table.

She took Tristan and Simon by the arms and
said, “I don’t know yet. But we can’t give up now. We’ll figure
something out. But right now, we need to
go
. Come on!”

With Tristan and Simon behind her, Zoey tore
down the hall and raced across the grounds to the Wander Inn. They
pleased Aria by inhaling a late supper and asked her to pack them
each a midnight snack.

Zoey shut her bedroom door. “All right.
Who’s got a watch?”

“Nobody wears watches anymore, girl,”
laughed Simon. He pulled out his cell phone. “We use these
babies.”

“Anyway,” said Zoey a little annoyed that
she could never afford one of her own. “You’ll keep track of time,
got it?”

“Got it.” Simon slipped his phone back into
this jacket pocket.

“And the food.” Zoey tossed Simon the three
meals. She watched him stuff his backpack and then filled her own
bag with water bottles. She zipped it up and hoisted it over her
shoulders. “You guys ready?”

“Ready,” chorused Tristan and Simon.

“You can still back out, you know.” Even
though she meant it, Zoey hoped her friends would accompany her.
She needed them.

“You’re not going anywhere without me,” said
Tristan, and Zoey felt her cheeks burn.

“Don’t forget me,” said Simon. “You need at
least one guy with a cell phone.”

“Let’s do this.”

Zoey withdrew her double-sided mirror from
inside her jacket and flipped it open. “Grab hold of my arms and
squeeze in. I need to have all your reflections in the mirror.”

Simon grabbed her left arm. “You know
where
we’re going, right?”

“Not really. Don’t look so freaked out.
It’ll be fine—”

“Says the girl who has
no
idea where
we’re going,” said Simon.

“Shut up, Simon, and let her concentrate,”
said Tristan. “Or do you want our legs to end up somewhere in
Africa?” Simon glared at Tristan but kept his mouth shut.

Zoey filled her mind with images of Muttab.
She pictured the eight-foot black-cloaked figure with a white face
mask under its black hood. Her skin tingled. Her reflection
wavered. Her friends looked like flickering ghosts in the
mirror.

“Ready!” she called. Her friends’ grips
tightened.

“One . . . two . . . THREE!”

With a
pop
, they vanished.

Even before Zoey felt the full effects of
the mirror-port, her feet met solid ground. The air moved beside
her, and she felt the presence of her friends. She blinked and
looked around.

They stood on a rocky island with brilliant
white beaches surrounded by a turquoise sea, but she had no idea
which sea. Her jacket flapped in winds that smelled of salt and
tropical flowers. Great waves smashed against the rocks and
showered Zoey in salt water. Overhead, deep maroon clouds raced
against a sky the color of blood. The effects of the Great Junction
had reached this little island, too.

A few hundred yards away, a white castle
with many turrets and towers overlooked the sea below. Its graceful
ivory walls gleamed in the sun like a giant jewel. It was like an
elegant and magical fairytale castle from
a
painting.
Zoey had never seen anything so majestic and
beautiful in all her life, and she had to restrain herself from
running over to it.

The earth vibrated under Zoey’s sneakers as
though the castle’s magic was alive in the ground and in the
rocks.

“You found it,” yelled Tristan over the
wind. “It’s beautiful.”

He turned towards her. “You knew you’d find
it, didn’t you? The castle that never stays put in the same place
for long . . . and
you
found it.”

Zoey smiled in spite of herself. “I
did.”

Perhaps she was the only Seventh or human
being for that matter who
could
find the secret castle.
Agent Franken had known she could find it, and his belief in her
had given her the extra courage she needed at first to set out on
this crazy quest.

“We better hurry. Who knows how long it will
stay here.”

“Man, it’s like
ninety
degrees
here!”

Simon tossed his jacket on the ground. “My
sweat glands are on overdrive.”

After about ten minutes of clambering up the
sandy road, Zoey brushed the dust out of her hair and looked
around.

Magic sparkled on every surface of the
castle like a thin layer of chalk, and the glass spires of the
turrets gleamed as if they had been enchanted.

They strolled through a g
ateway below an ornate arch and
up a flight of stone
steps
where they stopped in front of two colossal
glass doors.

“Now what?” Simon spit some sand from his
mouth.

“Do you think someone’s expecting us? I
mean—they are
sorceresses
. Maybe they saw us coming in their
crystal balls or something.”

Although she couldn’t explain it, Zoey
agreed with Simon. She felt like they were being watched somehow,
as though the castle walls had eyes.

Tristan turned to Zoey as if he expected her
to decide what to do first.

She raised her fist and knocked four times
on the castle doors.

They all stepped back.

Simon looked around nervously. “Who do you
think will answer the door—?”

Suddenly the doors screeched loudly and
swung open.

Tristan peered inside.

“No one,” he said and he turned around.
“There’s no one there.”

Simon whistled. “Oooh . . . spooky. This is
so cool!”

Tristan reached inside his jacket pocket for
his dagger, but Zoey grabbed his arm.

“No, don’t,” she said, shaking her head.
“They might take that as a threat. We’re here to ask for their
help. We can’t anger or frighten them. This is our only shot. Let’s
not jeopardize it.”

Tristan slipped his weapon back into the
folds of his jacket, but he didn’t look too pleased about it.

“Fine, but I don’t have a good feeling about
this place. I feel like the walls have eyes, and they’re glaring
down at us in a
bad
way.”

Zoey nodded. “I know. I feel the same way.
But we don’t have a choice. We need their help. Come on, let’s go
find Muttab.”

The truth was Zoey didn’t know how Muttab
would greet them. When she had met her the first time, she hadn’t
been exactly friendly or engaging. Maybe she would be angry that
Zoey had come to her house uninvited.

Zoey swallowed her fears and walked through
the doors. She didn’t know what to expect. Even though Muttab was
her mother’s friend, she had been told that the Minitians weren’t
forthcoming with humans. She kept thinking about what Agent Franken
had said,
the key is to
persuade
them, which
will prove to be a difficult task, nearly impossible . . . it’ll be
a lot harder than you think . . . .

Somehow, she knew he was right. They were
about to find out.

They walked on cold marble floors and
stepped into a grand foyer.
The echo of their
footsteps shattered the omnipresent silence. A series of white
marble columns supported arched ceilings nearly two hundred feet
above them. Zoey felt a thick electric energy, and the smell of
incense stained the air like a heavy perfume. Was that magic she
felt? It had to be.

After getting over the
initial shock of walking in such a grand and elegant castle, Zoey
noticed the first strange signs of wear.

Upon closer inspection,
the polished floors were cracked, like something heavy had landed
on them repeatedly. Deep fissures crisscrossed the outer walls like
jagged veins, and chips of marble and dust carpeted the floors.
Even one of the tall columns was cracked and fractured. Everywhere
she looked, she saw signs of destruction, like a bomb had gone
off.

“Something happened here,”
she said. “The castle’s been damaged somehow. Maybe an earthquake?
Looks like it.”

Tristan inspected a large
fissure in the limestone wall. “Maybe. But maybe it’s a side effect
from moving around so much. The castle moves, remember?”

Zoey nodded. Tristan was
right. This had to be an effect from constantly moving. The bones
of the poor old castle were suffering from age and
movement.

The foyer opened up into a
room the size of a school gymnasium. The walls were lined with
alcoves that were filled with magnificent tapestries and crystal
sculptures of creatures Zoey had never seen before. Even in here,
the floors were cracked, and there were fractures in the columns
and walls.

As they traveled deeper,
all of Zoey’s instincts told her to get out of there, to run and
never come back. If things went wrong, they’d need a fast way out,
and the castle’s front doors were getting further and further away.
She repressed a shiver.

The coldness of the room
chilled her bones and dulled her spirit, as if she would never
laugh or smile ever again. The space was unnaturally empty. There
was no furniture anywhere, not even a chair or a simple
candlestick. Didn’t witches burn candles? Were the Minitians hiding
somewhere, waiting to spring a trap? She’d have to find out.
They
had
to ask
for help. They had no other options. They needed a spell to become
invisible.

“There’s no furniture in
here,” whispered Zoey although her voice carried a lot louder than
she had first anticipated. “Castles do
have
furniture, don’t
they?”

Tristan frowned, “I admit
it’s a little weird, but we’re the first Sevenths ever to set foot
in this castle. Maybe this is
normal
to the Minitians.”

Zoey kept walking. Tristan
did have a point. Maybe they were spiritual creatures and only
furnished their castle with what was truly necessary. Was there a
library where they studied their magic? Or beds—if they even slept?
And without mouths, did these creatures even eat?

“Hey, check these out!
They’re awesome,” said Simon as he inspected the head of one the
crystal sculptures. “Totally weird, but totally cool. I wonder what
they’re for?”

“They’re
not
for touching,”
warned Tristan.

Simon made a face. “Nah. I think they’re
supposed to scare whoever comes in here. I mean, just look at the
detail on their faces—they look real, and it’s super scared, like a
horde of flesh-eating zombies tried to eat it.”

He poked his finger into one of the ears. “I
saw an art exposé at the Mocca art museum in Toronto like this
before, except the sculptures had no skin, and you could see all
the muscles, tendons, guts—”

“Nice,” said Zoey. “Remind me never to check
that out.”

She stopped and inspected
a crystal sculpture of a human man dressed in nineteenth century
clothes. Her blood froze when she looked at his eyes. There was
something that seemed almost
real
about them. The face was the face of absolute
terror, like it had been sculpted moments before the subject died
in excruciating pain. There was something oddly familiar about the
face, too. It was so lifelike that she could almost imagine him
waking up and talking.

“Told you they were weird.” Simon poked the
statue in the ear with his finger. “Loads of weird.”