The Key. Michael Grant

they opened their mouths.

      “I’m Frank. This is my crew: Joey, Connie, Pete, Ellen, and Julia.”

      “These are not proper fairy names,” Dietmar observed.

      Frank squinted. “What are you, the fairy police? Our names are whatever we say they are.”

      But Dietmar wasn’t having it. “A fairy should be named after a flower or a tree, or something in the natural world.”

      “And a kid should learn to keep his mouth shut,” Frank snapped. And with that, he drew what had at first looked like a small sword hanging at his side. It turned out to be a droopy sort of wand.

      “You like flowers? Be one,” Frank said. He waved his wand and said, “E-ma exel strel (click)haka!”

      “That’s Vargran!” Jarrah said.

      And Dietmar probably would have agreed except for the fact that his body had turned green and very thin. Tubular, one might even say. His arms flattened into graceful leaves. And his head formed first a tight, green bulb and then exploded outward as the petals of a magnificent-looking sunflower.

      From the seedpod at the center, Dietmar’s two eyes stared in shock. Frank did not seem to have bothered to give him a mouth.

      Mack was torn between terror—understandable—and a feeling of glee—also understandable but not really admirable.

      Xiao’s eyes narrowed, and already blue scales were covering her body as she—

      “Uh-uh-uh!” Frank warned, shaking his finger. “That would be a bad move, dragon girl. Your kind signed a treaty a long time ago. This is western dragon territory.”

      Reluctantly Xiao melted back to purely human form.

      “Now, can we talk business?” Frank asked.

      “You have to change Dietmar back to normal,” Mack demanded, somewhat forcefully, almost as though he meant it.

      “When we’re done talking business.”

      “Okay, what business?”

      Frank shot a coy look at his crew, who fluttered slightly, then settled toward the ground. The instant their bare toes touched the lush grass, their wings rolled up. Like rolling up a window shade. Just rolled up. Whap.

      “We hear you’re looking for someone,” Frank said.

      They were, in fact, looking for the Key. The Key to Vargran spells and curses. So far they’d found bits and pieces of Vargran, but now, as they neared the fateful confrontation to save the world from the Pale Queen, they needed more. A lot more. And the Key was . . . um . . . the key.

      That’s right: the Key was the key.

      The Key had two parts. The first had been given to them by Nott, Norse goddess of night. And if you believed Nott (and seriously, how could you not believe a mythical Norse goddess?), the second and final part of the Key had been buried with one William Blisterthöng MacGuffin.

      “Maybe,” Mack said cautiously.

      “No maybe about it, kid. You’ve been asking around about someone no one has seen in a long time. We have good sources.”

      Mack glanced at his companions. Jarrah shrugged.

      And Mack’s iPhone chimed with the tone it used to signal a message.

      Mack ignored it, but it was an edgy sort of ignoring, like he was forcing himself to ignore it, which just made everyone uncomfortable, and finally Frank said, “Oh, just go ahead and get it.”

      With an abashed smile, Mack pulled out his phone.

      “Well? What is it?” Xiao asked impatiently.

      Mack sighed. “It’s my golem. He’s refusing to shower in the boys’ locker room.”

      “Lotta dudes are bashful about that,” Stefan said, and no one thought he was talking about himself because Stefan was incapable of bashfulness.

      “It’s not about being shy,” Mack said with a sigh. “He’s made out of mud. That much water . . .”

      “Kind of busy here,” Frank interrupted impatiently. “Anyway, it’s best not to coddle golems. They just get needy.”

      “I’ll just take a minute to . . .” His words faded out as he thumbed in a response:

      You have got to handle these things yourself. You have got to be a big boy now.

      “Sorry,” Mack said of the interruption. “You were saying?”

      “We were saying you’re looking for someone who’s been gone a long time.”

      “Let’s say we are,” Mack conceded. In the back of his mind he was wondering whether he’d been too harsh with the golem.

      “Well, the someone you’re looking for is hidden by fairy enchantment. Been hidden for more than a thousand years.”

      “Are we talking about the same man?” Jarrah asked.

      “If it’s William Blisterthöng MacGuffin, then we are talking about the same man,” Frank confirmed. His eyes narrowed and his sharp little fairy teeth showed behind tightened lips. “And you’ll never find him. Never! Never . . . without our help.”

      “Why would you help us?” Mack asked.

      Frank shrugged. “A friend of ours wants something in return. Something you might be able to get for her. One hand washes the other. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Tit for tat.”

      “Can we stop being cryptic, please, and get to the point?” Xiao asked politely. “My friend is not happy as a flower.”

      Dietmar was unhappy with good reason—a pair of crows came swooping down and lit on Dietmar’s huge petals and began to pick at the seeds.

      “Hey, hey, get out of here!” Jarrah waved them off, but they retreated only as far as a low tree branch and from there kept a close eye on Dietmar’s sunflower seeds.

      “You tell the tale, Connie—you tell it best.” Frank indicated one of the female fairies, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, tiny little beauty in a deep-green formfitting outfit.

      “How do you suppose MacGuffin came to be called Blisterthöng?” Connie asked rhetorically in an enchanting fairy voice. She kind of writhed or danced as she spoke. It was a sort of dramatic interpretation: she used sweeping hand gestures, and sometimes lowered her head in sadness, or threw open her arms to show joy. “For many long years after the Romans left, and after the druids faded, and as the new faith was coming to Scotland, the fairies lived in peace. We are a peaceable folk. No fairy has ever raised a hand in violence against another!” She made a very dramatic upraised-fist move on that last line.

      Mack nodded thoughtfully because that seemed like the thing to do.

      “Except for the Seventeen Year War,” Pete the fairy interjected.

      “And the War of the Sweltering Cave,” Julia added helpfully. “And the Rabid Peace of Kilcannon’s Bluff.”

      “With those few exceptions, no fairy had ever raised a hand in violence against another,” Connie reiterated, again with the upraised fist of forcefulness. “Unless you’re going to count the Battle of the Pretenders.”

      “Or the Flaming Disagreement,” Frank said.

      “Or the Pantsing of Fain’s Firth.”

      “Or the Castle-Whacking Unpleasantness.”

      “Or O’Toole’s Tools of Terror.”

      “Or the War of the Noses.”

      They went on like this for quite a while. And Mack began to wonder if the fairies were exaggerating their peacefulness.

      “Or the Frightful Fruit Fight.”