The Key by Michael Grant Read Free Book Online Page B

bottommost layers of your brain, down where the brain is just the sediment of evolution and where blunt animal terror lies, far away from your reason and your logic and your calm, soothing voices.
    So the Mack we would see in that terrible cell is not the Mack who stood up to Stefan back when Stefan was the most feared bully at Richard Gere Middle School. (Go, Fighting Pupfish!) Nor would it be the Mack who threw down with Risky in the Australian Outback and killed her once. It’s not the Mack who faced dragons and fought Skirrit and treasonous Tong Elves and insane Norse gods and Paddy “Nine Iron” Trout.
    It’s possible to be very brave some of the time. And pants-wetting scared another time. That’s the reality of it. The same person can run away in blind terror one moment, then turn suddenly and face certain death with unearthly determination.
    Humans are strange that way.
    The thing about Mack’s fear was that it was so intense that if you’d told him he was just hours away from being catapulted to certain death, he wouldn’t have been even 1 percent more terrified. He had already turned the fear meter up to eleven.

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Eight
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    J arrah, Dietmar, Xiao, and Stefan were ushered unceremoniously through the door of MacGuffin’s castle. The door slammed behind them.
    Stefan was back in the enchantment zone and could no longer see the stones and tufts of grass around him, or the castle door closed behind him, or the walls looming above him.
    â€œWe have to get him out of there,” Stefan said.
    â€œCan’t even call me mum for a few good words of Vargran,” Jarrah said. “MacGuffin took our phones. What can we do?”
    â€œI …,” Dietmar began. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know what to do.”
    Mack would have been secretly pleased to hear that, if he’d been there.
    One by one they looked at Xiao. Jarrah said what they were all thinking. “You could fly us over the walls.”
    Xiao looked down, deep in thought for so long it seemed as if she might have fallen asleep. “I cannot,” she said finally in a very sad whisper, and with a slow shake of her head. “There is a treaty. No eastern dragon may appear in the west. To violate the treaty is to risk a war.”
    â€œSo risk it,” Stefan snapped.
    Xiao’s eyes flashed. “You don’t understand: it’s not only a risk to dragon folk; if the western dragons were to rise again, entire cities would burn!”
    â€œI don’t care,” Stefan snarled. He stabbed a finger in the general direction of the door he couldn’t see. “He’s under my wing. I protect him, and I don’t care what gets in my way. He’s under my wing!” He raged back and forth, demanding someone show him a rock so he could bang the door down with it.
    â€œIf we could find the fairies …,” Dietmar said. “Frank and the others. Connie has betrayed them. They might be able to help us.”
    â€œBut where are they?” Jarrah shouted. She had caught some of Stefan’s wild rage. “Where are the lying little—”
    Xiao said, “Wait.”
    â€œWait? Wait on what? Until dawn, when he kills Mack?”
    â€œThe fairies cast a Vargran spell that allowed us to see the castle,” Xiao said patiently.
    â€œYes, but only because we have the enlightened puissance ,” Dietmar observed.
    Xiao nodded. “The reason there must be twelve of us is that our power grows with each new member of the Magnificent Twelve. True?”
    Dietmar snapped his fingers. “Ah! But even if we are only three Magnifica, it may be that our power is greater than the fairies’!”
    â€œWe must descend the hill,” Xiao said. “And when dawn comes, we must cast the spell and reveal the castle to as many people as we can get together. MacGuffin needs to remain hidden because he is no match for the terrible powers of the modern