The 39 Clues: Book 8 (12 page)

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But so far, the crowds had been sightseers, not Wizard fans. Around here, the Great Wall outdrew teenage moguls, even the wonderful and celebrated Wiz.

Nellie peered over the parapet at the purple-tinged mountain vista that seemed to go on forever. "Pretty slick. From here you could spot an invading army twenty miles away. Are you sure those emperors were Janus? This place has Lucian written all over it."

Amy shook her head. "Way back then there was no Lucian or Janus. The Wall was started two thousand years before Gideon Cahill was even born."

The au pair shot her a cockeyed smile. "I forgot that there are still a few things on this planet you Cahills haven't had a hand in." The sun was low in the sky now, and she had to squint to see the next tower. "Looks like a big mob ahead. Maybe it's God's gift to hip-hop."

Amy nodded but said nothing. To her, the setting sun meant only one thing: They had been wandering around the Wall all afternoon, with no sign of Jonah --or Dan.

They raced along the ancient battlement --this stretch arduously uphill. Nellie set Saladin down, and the cat, happy to stretch his legs, bounded beside them. Puffing hard, they caught up to the horde assembled outside the tower--a Brazilian tour group.

"Jo-Jo--?" This time Amy's stammer had as much to do with breathlessness as the presence of a large group of people.

"Jonah Wizard," Nellie finished, scooping Saladin

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back into her arms. "Have you seen him?"

"The Wiz?" The tour guide brightened. "He is here? I read his
O Filho Da Gangsta
bedtime stories to my nieces in Sao Paolo."

Nellie was totally disgusted. "No matter where you go, or who you meet, it's all Jonah, all the time."

"But," Amy added, barely able to lift her gaze from the cobblestones, "when you really need him, he's nowhere."

The au pair recognized the hopelessness in the girl's voice. "Okay," she said, taking charge. "We're tired. It's time to admit that we're not going to find Dan today. We have to figure out where we're going to sleep so we'll be fresh to take up the search in the morning."

Amy stuck out her jaw. "No! I'm not leaving here without my brother!"

"Be sensible. It'll be dark soon. We won't improve our chances of getting to Dan if we kill ourselves. We need rest and we need food. We haven't eaten since breakfast. You know how cranky Saladin gets when he's hungry."

Saladin added a plaintive
"mrrp!"
to the conversation.

"That cat eats too much already!" Amy erupted. "Fresh snapper, shrimp dumplings --what's next, beluga caviar? We don't have time for breaks! Who knows what Jonah could be doing to Dan right now? If he harms my brother in any way, I swear I'll put my hands around his throat and strangle him!"

Her breath caught in shock at the violence of her tone, and -- worse -- the realization that she meant

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every word. Was the Madrigal in her coming to the surface? Ordinary people tossed words like
strangle
around casually, not meaning anything by them. It was different for Madrigals. Madrigals
killed.

"So with all that we have to worry about," she mumbled in a quieter tone, "you'll have to forgive me for not dropping everything because
Saladin's
a little hungry. He could live for a month on his own blubber. The last thing he needs is another snack."

A few feet away, a tourist unwrapped a sardine sandwich. With a
"mrrpl"
that was practically the shriek of a hunting bobcat, the Egyptian Mau hurled himself out of Nellie's grasp. Unaccustomed to hunting for his food, Saladin overshot the sandwich, skimmed the parapet at the edge of the Wall, and disappeared over the side.

Twin screams escaped Amy and Nellie.

They raced to the edge and looked down, terrified of what they might see.

Thirty feet below, Grace Cahill's beloved pet stood on the spot where invading armies had been repelled and slaughtered. His tail was high in the air; his fur bristled in outrage. The
"mrrp!"
he emitted was the most thorough scolding either of them had ever received.

"You know," Amy said, her voice shaking, "maybe we should get something to eat and find a hotel for the night."

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CHAPTER 16

The city of Xian was much smaller than Beijing, but Dan could hardly tell the difference out the window of the G5. There was no towering skyline like the one in China's capital, but the sprawl of buildings seemed infinite, the red of brake lights clogging every inch of the grid of roadways. Traffic.

Pollution, too,
he thought as the plane descended through a thick layer of brownish haze.

"Oh, no --" They weren't even on the runway, and Jonah's father was already immersed in his BlackBerry. "Remember those 'Live Large with the Wiz Generation' posters? Well, guess how that translates into Chinese--'Jonah Wizard Makes Your Ancestors Fat.'"

Dan brayed a laugh in his face. "Can you save me one? It'll go great in my collection!"

Broderick was not amused. "In that case, why don't
you
take the conference call from the record company?"

"It's all good, Pops." Jonah yawned as the jet touched down. "You know the drill. I take some lucky fan out

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to dinner; we post the whole thing on YouTube; everybody forgets about a few posters."

"They printed over six hundred thousand," his father reminded him, tight-lipped.

"Dinner and a movie," Jonah amended. "Better yet, clubbing in Xian. We'll give MTV Asia an exclusive. It'll be epic, yo! Just as soon as we're done with these terracotta homeys," he added with a wink at Dan.

Of all the managers, publicists, and bodyguards of the Wizard entourage, and even Jonah's own father, the star had chosen Dan to accompany him on this mission to learn the secret of the terracotta army.

Not that Dan cared about the Clue hunt anymore.

Another thing about Xian --they had real limos here. A silver stretch was waiting at the airport to take them to their hotel, the Bell Tower, where Jonah had reserved the entire top floor.

Jonah's father was on the phone with the hotel's nightclub to hire the headline act to perform for them in their suite --a little dinner entertainment.

Dan glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty. "How late does this terracotta place stay open?"

Jonah flashed his rock star grin. "It closed two hours ago. We can't go yet. It isn't dark enough."

Dan's voice dropped. "I get it. We have to check it out when there's no one around."

"That's how I know we're family," Jonah approved. "Cahills think alike, yo. Got a good feeling about us working together. We make a fly team."

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If this were Amy, Dan reflected mournfully, she'd be telling him how stupid he was, calling him dweeb while she went to some library to check out six hundred books on terracotta warriors.

His mood darkened abruptly. Then she'd accuse their poor parents of deserving their fate. How could she even
think
that about Mom and Dad? He patted his pocket where the picture from Bodhidharma's cave lay hidden. "You know, Jonah," he ventured, "it's been--uh--two days, four hours, twenty-one minutes--"

"Since you last saw your sis," Jonah finished sympathetically.

"Not that I'm keeping track," Dan added quickly.

"Must be hard," the star agreed. "I've got to tell you, cuz, I'm amazed we haven't come up with her yet. By now-- it's almost like she doesn't want to be found."

Dan recoiled as if he had just been slapped.

His distress was interrupted by a knock at the door. The entertainment had arrived.

Dan had little appetite at first. He sat at the table, viciously dismantling dumplings with his chopsticks, eating next to nothing as he mulled over the devastating notion that Amy might have written him off. Was that possible? She called him annoying often enough. Yet he said the same about her, and he would have given anything to be reunited with his sister.

The show turned out to be Chinese acrobats who executed an unbelievable climbing-and-tumbling routine. It was off the chain -- Jonah's words. Even Dan

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began to climb out of his funk, especially for the grand finale -- a dragon dance performed upside down while hanging from the ceiling.

Jonah's father invited a few local entertainment reporters to join the fun, so Jonah was sure to get good press in Xian -- as if Jonah got bad press anywhere.

The man of the hour was at his schmoozing best, laughing and joking with the media. No way could anybody tell that, as soon as this was over, he was off to burglarize the most important archaeological site in Asia. Yet when no one was looking, Dan couldn't help but notice a glazed expression on the famous face.

Funny--I think the rock star lifestyle is amazing, but it has to be brutal twenty-four/seven.
For Jonah, this was the normal routine. It was probably exhausting to be at fever pitch, day after day, week after week.

It was past midnight by the time the acrobats had gone home and the reporters had finished their interviews. Dan was rummaging through the minibar when the sound of distant music reached him. Not Jonah's music --in fact, the melody was classical. To Dan's astonishment, he recognized the piece. It was by Mozart, perhaps the greatest of Jonah's Janus relatives.

He followed the sound to the suite's smallest bedroom and peered inside. Broderick Wizard perched on the edge of the bed, an acoustic guitar in his arms, his fingers a blur over the nylon strings. It was obvious -- even to Dan, who knew nothing about music--that Jonah's father was playing with great skill.

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"You're awesome."

Broderick looked up in surprise. "Oh --it's you." He set the guitar down on the comforter, picked up his BlackBerry, and began self-consciously scrolling through e-mail.

"Does Jonah know how good you are?" Dan asked.

Jonah's father cleared his throat uncomfortably and tried to hide behind the pocket-size device. "I was quite the rising star in college. But then I met Cora, and ... well, I'm decent, but, you know, compared to
them --"

Them. The Janus. Why play music if you can't be Mozart, or Scott Joplin, or John Lennon, or Jonah Wizard? What a Cahill attitude!

Dan was surprised to feel genuine sympathy for Jonah's father. Whatever dreams he might have had were gone, traded for a spot on the red carpet a half step behind his famous son. And what was left for Broderick? Thumb cramps, maybe, from texting.

It made Dan wonder about his own father. He remembered very little about either of his parents, but, like Broderick, Arthur Trent had been an outsider who married into the Cahill family. When people talked about Dad, he was always just Mom's partner, working with Grace in the Clue hunt. He'd even raised his kids with the legal name Cahill, just as Grace had done with her daughter. What else had he given up to play in the big leagues with the Cahill heavy hitters?

Jonah appeared in the doorway behind Dan. "You

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guys having a secret meeting without me?" His eyes fell on the guitar lying on the bedspread.

His father looked uncomfortable. "I was just--you know--killing time."

"He's amazing!" Dan enthused. "Not all your talent comes from the Janus side, Jonah. You should hear your dad play. He's good enough to --"

"Great, cuz," Jonah interrupted firmly. "Let's bounce. The car's waiting for us outside."

His father nodded in resignation. "Let's go."

It was 12:25 a.m . when the silver stretch pulled away from the curb in front of the Bell Tower Hotel.

"Tell the driver to stop short of the terracotta museum," Jonah advised his father. "We can hoof it a couple of blocks. Last thing we need is cops nosing around our ride."

"Got it," Broderick confirmed. "Good luck, guys."

"Luck's got nothing to do with it," Jonah replied with supreme confidence.

They drove about twenty minutes before the driver called out that they were getting close.

Dan squinted through the window. "There's no museum coming up. Wait--you mean
that
thing?"

The structure that loomed out of the darkness was low and absolutely enormous -- at least five blocks wide and stretching back as far as they could see.

"They built a giant airplane hangar over the whole dig," Jonah's father explained. "The biggest in the world."

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"Crazy," Jonah commented. "Okay, we'll roll from here. Ready, cuz?"

"Let's do it," Dan replied.

They got out, keeping to the shadows. The limo backed away to a spot behind some bushes.

They made their way swiftly and silently toward the hangar. It was farther away than it looked --its sheer size created the illusion of closeness. Both were breathing hard as they mounted the front steps and concealed themselves behind the ticket booths.

Jonah reached into the pocket of his black leather jacket and pulled out a device that resembled a larger version of his father's BlackBerry.

"Is that to call your dad when we're done?" Dan asked.

"It's a heat sensor," Jonah explained in a low tone. "A place like this has got to be crawling with guards. We can keep track of them on this screen."

Dan peered at the readout. The vast complex was mostly in darkness, but there were at least seven or eight heat signatures inside and outside the building. Several of them seemed to be bunched together.

Dan was alarmed. "Do they see us?"

Jonah watched as tiny but very bright flickers appeared around the group. "I think they're on a tea break."

"Yeah, but where?" Dan persisted.

"In the back. Come on, cuz, we may never get a better chance!" Jonah produced two lumps of putty and affixed them to the lock on the glass doors,