The Emerald Mask (6 page)

“Breakfast?” Fiona asked as she held out a box of doughnuts.

“Definitely!” Darren replied as he grabbed a chocolate one with sprinkles on top. “Thanks! And thanks
for the ride, Mr. Murphy. Or do you prefer Professor Murphy?”

“You can call me Mr. Murphy,” Fiona's dad said with a chuckle. “Only my students have to call me ‘professor.' And I'm happy to give you two a ride to campus. I'm very impressed by you both—spending a beautiful Saturday in the library, working on your book reports. I can't say I was that responsible when I was your age.”

Darren glanced into the side mirror and caught Fiona's eye. From the way she raised her eyebrow, he could tell that she wanted him to play along.

“Well, you know. Gotta get it done,” Darren said. “My mom always says— I think you know my mom, Sharon Smith? She's a professor in the chemistry department?”

“Yes, Fiona mentioned that,” Mr. Murphy said. “A very impressive scholar. I don't know her very well, but I heard she won a pretty prestigious research grant last month. . . .”

For the entire hour-long drive to New Brighton University, Darren kept up a steady stream of chatter with Fiona and her dad. When they arrived on campus, Mr. Murphy rummaged through his wallet and
pulled out a plastic card. “This is my faculty key card,” he explained. “Remember, the rare books room is technically closed on weekends, but you should be able to access everything you need through the digitized versions on the computers. If there's any problem with that, just use my key card to get into the rare books room, where you can find all the original source materials.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Fiona replied as she slipped it into her pocket. “Meet you for lunch?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Mr. Murphy said. “I'll see you in the dining hall at noon. Good luck with your reports!”

As soon as he was out of earshot, Fiona turned to Darren. “Sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I had to make up an excuse for why we needed to be in the library. Thanks for playing along.”

“No worries,” Darren told her. “I don't think he suspected anything.”

“You're really good at that,” Fiona said.

Darren's face wrinkled in confusion. “Good at what?” he asked.

“I don't know,
talking
to people,” she said. “It seems so easy for you. Like you always know what to say. I can
never think of the right thing to say until, like, five minutes too late.”

Darren was surprised. Supersmart Fiona had trouble coming up with the right thing to say? That was news to him. “That's not how you come across,” Darren reassured her.

“Really?” she asked.

Darren shrugged. “To me it's like . . . like you're only going to speak up if you have something worth saying,” he said. “That's why when you talk, people listen.”

Fiona blinked rapidly as she glanced away, but Darren thought he saw the hint of a smile on her face. “We should get to the rare books room,” she said. “I hope we can find what we need quickly, but if not . . .”

Darren had only been in the rare books room once before, when he and Fiona had accidentally run into each other while their parents were at work. After they had decided to start research for their Changers reports, Fiona had introduced him to the rare books room, her favorite place on campus. What they'd learned there about Auden Ironbound's Horn of Power had helped them prepare for the battle of their lives.

Would they be so lucky a second time?

Fiona seemed to think so.
Is she humming?
Darren wondered as they walked through the library to the rare books room and the computer bank outside it. Every so often, he swore he could faintly hear a few pretty, high-pitched notes.
Bet that's her
selkie
side,
Darren thought, smiling to himself. He would've cracked a joke, but Fiona seemed so happy, he didn't want to spoil it.

Maybe the rare books room really
is
her favorite place,
he mused.

This corner of the library was practically deserted, except for three college guys who were hunched over a computer at the far end of the room.

“This isn't right,” one of them was saying. He tugged at the collar on his shirt and then ran his hand across his damp forehead. “It should be here! If—”

“Jack, would you
shut up
?” the one sitting at the keyboard hissed. “I'm trying to find it, okay?”

“Why don't
you
shut up, Bram?” Jack shot back. “If this is you trying, I'd hate to see you fail.”

“Enough,” the third guy, the one in the red New Brighton University hat, said. There was something
in his voice that silenced both his friends.

Man, college must be really rough,
Darren thought. He couldn't imagine ever talking to his friends like that—especially not over some school project. “Let's use this one,” he murmured to Fiona, gesturing to a computer a few feet away from the guys.

Fiona immediately sat down at the keyboard and entered her dad's log-in info. “I can't wait to go here,” she confided in Darren. “Have my own ID, my own key card—everything.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “I haven't thought about it much. But my brother seems pretty happy.”

Fiona typed quickly—far quicker than Darren could. “This one,” she said as the cursor of the mouse hovered over a title:
Traditions of Otherworldly Beings
. “I'm sure that's the one we looked at before.”

“So the whole thing's been scanned?” Darren asked.

Fiona nodded. “It's to protect the rare books,” she explained. “Anytime they're touched by human hands, they can be damaged. The good news is that since the book has been digitized, we can use the search function now.”

Fiona's fingers clicked on the keyboard as she typed the phrase “Circe's Compass” into the search box.

Darren and Fiona waited a few seconds. Then a message flashed across the screen:
NO RESULTS FOUND
.

“Uh-oh,” Darren said.

But Fiona shook her head. “Not a problem, I just don't have the right term yet,” she said. “Sometimes words were spelled differently a long time ago.”

Darren watched as Fiona typed in “Circe” and then “Cyrce” and then “Kirke,” and several other variations. Finally, she tried simply “compass.”

But the same message—
NO RESULTS FOUND
—appeared for every term she searched.

A puzzled frown crossed Fiona's face. “I find it very hard to believe that a book with more than a thousand pages from this era doesn't have a single reference to a compass,” she said.

“Maybe the spelling's not quite right,” Darren suggested. “Or it had a completely different name back then.”

“Maybe,” Fiona replied, but her voice was doubtful. “Still, there should be . . . something . . .”

Suddenly, Fiona sat up straighter. As her fingers flew across the keys, Darren realized that she'd had an idea.

That's also when he realized that the guys across the room had gotten very quiet.

And they were watching them.

Darren turned back to the computer just in time to see that same, frustrating message flashing again.

NO RESULTS FOUND

“I was right!” Fiona cried. “See, I searched for ‘Horne of Power'—weird spelling and all—because we know for a
fact
that it has a listing in this book, right, and I remember
exactly
how it's spelled, and get this! The computer
still
says no results were found!”

“Shhh,” Darren said with a nervous glance to the guys. To his relief, though, they were engrossed in their own computer again. “So . . . what exactly does that mean?”

“I can't say for certain,” Fiona replied. “There might be a problem with the search function. I don't know. But I
do
know what we can do about it.”

“What?” asked Darren.

Fiona stood up abruptly. “Examine the source!”

With her dad's key card in hand, Fiona strode toward
the locked room that held all the ancient, irreplaceable volumes. The moment she swiped the card, Darren could hear the whir of the lock opening.

“Come on,” Fiona said, pushing open the door. She pulled out a drawer that was near the entrance and withdrew two pairs of pristine white cotton gloves. “Safety first . . . Well, the books' safety, that is.”

Darren laughed as he pulled on the silly gloves.

In seconds, Fiona was halfway across the rare books room, reaching for
Traditions of Otherworldly Beings
. With extreme care, Fiona gingerly laid the book on the table and flipped it open to page 258. Her eyes darted back and forth as she scanned the page.

Then she shook her head.

“It's . . . Something . . . Something's wrong,” she said. “I
know
this is the right book, but there's no mention of the Horn of Power—and there should be.”

“Maybe it was on another page,” Darren offered.

Fiona shook her head again. “I distinctly remember the page number,” she insisted. “I'm sure of it.”

Darren was about to ask if Fiona had a photographic memory when she suddenly sucked in her breath sharply.

“What? What is it?” Darren asked, immediately on edge.

“Look,” Fiona breathed. “Look at the words!”

If Darren hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he never would have believed it: The letters shivered, trembled, and then began to shift and swirl across the page like a swarm of snakes. His mouth fell open from shock.

“It—did—” Darren stammered, at a loss for words. “Why didn't it do this before? The last time we looked at it?”

“I don't know—it must be a magical defense mechanism!” Fiona glanced up at him, her face shining with joy. “It's the right page,” she whispered. Her gloved finger hovered above the heading, which now clearly read “HORNE OF POWER.” “It's the right text!”

“How?” Darren asked in amazement.

“Some sort of enchantment, I assume,” Fiona said, a note of awe in her voice. “There's information here that is so sacred—so powerful—that only certain eyes can see it. And the book somehow
knows
—”

“Check the index!” Darren exclaimed. “Look for Circe's Compass!”

He eagerly reached for the book, but Fiona stopped him. “It's so fragile,” she said. “We still need to be careful.”

“Hey,” a new voice said.

Darren and Fiona looked up to see the three guys from the computer station.

They were blocking the door.

Almost by instinct, Fiona closed the book and held it against her chest, as if she could protect it.

“Can we take a look?” the guy in the red hat said. His smile was bright, but his eyes . . . There was something wrong with them, a flat emptiness that gave Darren a sudden chill.

We have to get out of here.

Just as Darren thought those words, they seemed to echo in his head—but in Fiona's voice, the same way they communicated in their Changer forms.

So she felt it too—magic.

“A quick look,” the guy continued, still pretending to be friendly. He took a step forward. His friends moved forward too. But the solid bookshelf against Darren's back told him there was nowhere to run.

“Give me the book,” the guy in the red hat continued. His smile faded until his face was as malevolent as his eyes.

“Just grab it, Evan!” Bram snapped, agitated.

Fiona shoved the massive book into her backpack, just as Evan's fist erupted with glowing magic.

What choice did Darren have?

The thunderbolt was forming at his fingertips before he had figured out a plan, but the moment he felt that fiery crackling—the very second it started—Darren realized what he had to do.

It was blisteringly hot. . . .

And blindingly bright . . .

But he flung it at them, anyway.

“Come on!” Darren shouted over their howls as he grabbed Fiona's hand.

Darren and Fiona ran—leaping over the three guys and darting through the doorway. Were those guys wounded—or worse? Darren swallowed hard. He couldn't bear to find out.

“Where are we going?” Fiona gasped as Darren dragged her down the stairs.

“Somewhere safe,” he replied shortly, pushing himself to run faster. If only he could transform, could fly away on his strong
impundulu
wings and take Fiona with him . . .

“Darren!” she exclaimed. “They're following us!”

“No,” he said. “That's not possible. I
saw
the lightning hit them. . . .”

But one glance over his shoulder confirmed Fiona's claim.

And perhaps even harder to believe, there wasn't a single sign they'd been hit by lightning. No scars, no singed clothes. The guys looked perfectly normal as they scanned the crowd.

They're looking for us,
Darren thought, panicked, as a feeling of dread settled in the pit of his stomach.

Darren pulled Fiona into a crowd of students who were listening to a drum circle in the quad. They wove through the crowd while Darren frantically tried to come up with a plan.
Even if we lose them out here,
he thought,
we're still exposed. And they likely know this campus better than we do.

There was only one thing to do: hide.

Fortunately, Darren knew just where to go.

There were plenty of buildings on campus that Darren had never visited before, but his big brother's dorm was unmistakable. It was a sleek, shiny building
covered in glass panels; the newest dorm stood out from all the other ivy-covered brick halls—which meant Darren could find it in an instant.

Darren and Fiona never stopped running as Darren dug around in his pocket, found his cell phone, and desperately dialed Ray's number.
Please answer,
Darren thought anxiously as he and Fiona reached the locked dorm.
Please, Ray. Answer your phone!