Unlucky Charms Read online

  “Hold back!” the Freeman in the black hat ordered.

  On the terminal side, a man with a duffel and a suntan and rubber sandals was just starting to take in the scene.

  “Hey,” he said. “My car is out there.”

  The black-hatted Freeman stood out of range of the wand and glared through the gap.

  “That was your mom that disappeared, wasn’t it, kid?” he asked. “What did you do to her?”

  “We sent her into the future!” Scott called back. Exactly a year into the future, to be precise, but they didn’t need to know that. “She’s safe from you people!”

  “C’mon,” Merle urged. Mick climbed back into the backpack.

  “Is this some kind of flash mob or something?” asked the man in the rubber sandals. “Are you going to move that van soon?”

  “Sorry,” said Scott, and he and Merle proceeded to leave.

  “But my car’s out there. I need it for driving.”

  “Sorry!”

  They jogged back the way they had come and turned toward a down escalator to baggage claim.

  “Stop right there!” someone shouted, and they turned to see the same Freeman who’d interrogated them in the gift shop, running down the moving walkway.

  “What’s he doing awake already?” said Merle.

  Scott squinted at the Slumbro. “You know you have this set on NAP?”

  “What? Give it here.”

  The escalator was crowded, so they fast stepped down some stairs.

  “She’s … she’s really safe, right?” asked Scott. “Just in the future?”

  “What can I say that’ll make you believe me? I double-checked the math. Archie triple-checked it!”

  “And Emily checked it too?”

  Merle sighed. “Yes, Emily checked it too.”

  The Freeman was negotiating the escalator behind them and speaking into a walkie-talkie.

  “Repeat, subjects are entering C baggage claim. Over.”

  Baggage claim was a wide tiled hall encircled by doors and big windows, filled with people and luggage and luggage carousels. You could turn in either direction to head outdoors, where the curbsides were packed with shuttles and taxis.

  Scott was beginning to understand how to spot the Freemen. They all appeared to be wearing at least a little pink—a scarf, a shirt, maybe a hatband—and a number of them were coming to join him at the base of the stairs. So was a bald and topknotted Hare Krishna in white robes, who’d been slouching over a rattling tambourine and handing out pamphlets near two suitcases in a corner. Everyone else in baggage claim had been doing their best to ignore him, such that most had not even noticed his tall stature or the fact that he’d been chanting “Hairy Christmas” for twenty minutes. But now, standing straight, he towered over Goodco’s pawns like the white king on a chessboard.

  Scott and Merle stopped on the stairs about a half flight from the bottom, so the Freeman on the escalator just passed them, slowly, with an embarrassed look on his face.

  “All right, you two,” another Freeman in a pink tie said to Scott and Merle and, to a lesser extent, Mick. “You can’t put us all to sleep.”

  “Can’t we?” Scott whispered.

  “Prob’ly not.”

  “Um, sir?” A Freeman addressed the tall figure in white. “This isn’t safe here—please step away.”

  Just then the Hare Krishna’s two suitcases unzipped and released a brown-skinned boy and a pale and dainty little girl. And the tall figure threw off his robe and stick-on topknot to reveal a blockheaded monster of a former librarian. Nearby people gasped, and a family of four burst into applause.

  “It’s the bigfoot!” cried one of the Freemen, turning from Biggs to Emily. “And the girl!”

  “And the boy!” said Erno. “Who’s also super scary!” But it wasn’t clear that anyone was paying attention.

  They had every reason to fear Emily, who actually had turned a woman into a donkey a couple of months back. But she couldn’t control that sort of thing, so when Merle began wanding people to sleep and Biggs starting lifting Freemen over his head, she and Erno just joined Scott on the fringes and tried to stay out of the way. Ordinary people all around the hall screamed or called for the police. The room was clearing fast. Mick leaned over Scott’s shoulder.

  “I should get in there,” he said. “Start punchin’ kneecaps.”

  “Maybe we should stay together.”

  “When I thought about all this going down, I imagined us doing something useful,” said Erno.

  “Can you remember what it was?” asked Scott.

  Erno chewed his lip. “It was always kind of hazy.”

  More and more Freemen. The crew from the parking garage had found their way to ground level and entered baggage claim from the outside. Biggs was surrounded but still fighting. Merle was essentially hiding behind a small pile of Freemen and shaking his Slumbro beside his ear.

  “That can’t be a good sign,” Scott muttered.

  “Some of ’em have guns,” said Mick. “Why aren’t they usin’ ’em?”

  “Was that Mick talking just now?” Emily asked.

  “You could hear him? You’re getting better.”

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t understand him. It just sounded like a little mosquito.”

  “No, that’s right,” said Erno. “That’s what he sounds like.”

  “Shut it, lad.”

  “Mick was wondering why they weren’t using their guns,” said Scott.

  “They’re going to,” Emily said. “Now that all the real people are gone. Watch.”

  Baggage claim had emptied out. The luggage carousels were choking on unclaimed bags. Freemen glanced about—no witnesses now.

  “I better put a scare into them,” Emily said.

  “What, you?” said Erno. “What can you do?”

  “Please. You know I’ve been studying pop culture,” said Emily.

  “Is that what you call watching a lot of TV?”

  Erno and Emily hadn’t been allowed television or movies growing up, so lately Emily had been making up for lost time. “I’ve been catching up on all the horror movies from the last thirty years, and apparently there’s nothing scarier than a little girl acting spooky.”

  “Puppets,” suggested Scott.

  “Okay, yes. Puppets or a little girl acting spooky. Bonus if she’s wearing a pretty party dress. Which I am.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Erno.

  “What if I talk like thiiiiis,” she sang.

  “Geez. Yeah, do that.”

  Emily stepped forward, slowly, but jerking now and then as if she herself were a puppet guided by an unsteady hand. Freemen turned and noticed. With a blank face and dead eyes, she raised her arms and slowly sang “Pop Goes the Weasel” in a ghostly voice.

  “Oh no,” a man whispered. Freemen started backing away.

  “Look out, something bad’s gonna happen! Like in that movie with the puppet.”

  “She turned someone into an owl!” said another.

  “That’s the wizard’s owl. It was always an owl.”

  Meanwhile, Emily exhausted “Pop Goes the Weasel” and started in on the national anthem.

  Merle made his way over to Scott.

  “Slumbro’s on the fritz. It isn’t holding a charge anymore.”

  “Does it need a new battery?”

  “Hope not. They haven’t been invented yet. You think this ploy of Emily’s is gonna get us out of here?”

  “Can’t be worse than any other part of our plan.”

  Two Freemen lost their nerve and ran for the exit.

  “You heard them upstairs,” Scott told Merle. “They’re afraid of you too.”

  “Good point,” said Merle, and he pocketed his wand and waved his arms around, chanting in Latin.

  “Admonitio! Insani magica tempus!”*

  What followed was a lot of tripping, running every which way, and repeated orders from the black-hatted Freeman to “STAND YOUR GROUND.”
But then the tinted doors of the south baggage claim entrance opened, filling the hall with light, and in glided a lovely, horrible woman. Emily dropped her act and suddenly looked every bit the little girl she was. Biggs roared. Merle muttered something that wasn’t Latin but was no less exotic.

  “Nimue,” whispered Scott. Perhaps she heard, because she fixed her eyes on him and smiled.

  “Freemen!” the woman sang. “Behind me!”

  The remaining men scurried to her side like children. She looked good, which could only be bad. It meant she’d been feeding on stolen magic and had glamour to burn. Her black hair was pulled up and piled atop her head in glossy ringlets like a tangled telephone cord. Her dress was red as a wound, with a bodice of crow’s wings and milky pearls. It was hard to take your eyes off her.

  It was so hard, in fact, that no one noticed a girl dash into the hall through the opposite entrance.

  Nimue raised her slender arms, looking only at Scott. He could guess why. They’d foiled Nimue last time because she was weak and she didn’t know Scott’s True Name. He felt certain that she wanted him to know now that she’d figured it out, or was currently so powerful it wouldn’t matter either way.

  “We should run,” said Scott.

  “Can’t outrun this.” Mick sighed.

  Then, suddenly, Polly was at his side. Scott turned to his little sister and said, “What are you do—”

  “Lift me high!” said a small but confident voice that seemed to come straight from Polly’s gut. She raised her hands, and in her palms stood a tiny black-skinned man, no larger than a toy, brandishing a birch-bark shield the size of a postage stamp.

  “MACBETH DOE!” shouted Nimue, and a cold flash of roiling light tumbled toward them. “MERLE L—”

  Then the light spasmed, rippled, and the woolly haze of it spun down into a single thread that plunged into the center of the birch-bark shield and was gone.

  Nimue gagged, wide-eyed, and pitched forward. The Freemen at her sides caught her before she hit the floor face-first.

  “Yay, Prince Fi!” shouted Polly. The tiny man shuddered as the shield glowed fitfully like a loose lightbulb. He shook it until it was nothing but dead wood again.

  Scott leaned close to Polly. “I thought you were supposed to stay in the car.”

  “Yeah—like Dad could keep me in the car.”

  “P-PIXIE?!” spat Nimue. She struggled for composure as the Freemen advanced. “How on this sterile doornail of a planet do you have a freaking pixie?!”

  “It’s kind of your fault, actually,” Erno told her.

  “Remind us to tell you about it next time,” Merle added, fiddling with his watch. “Kids?”

  “YOUR FAULT, MERLIN!” she screamed as they ran for the north doors and the Freemen followed. “EVERYTHING’S BROKEN, AND IT’S YOUR FAULT!”

  Biggs burst through first, carrying Emily under one arm, and soon they were all in the sunlit, airy freedom of the outdoors. Two white vans bucked up onto the curb, clumsily—one because it was being controlled remotely by Merle and his wristwatch, the other because it was being driven by Harvey. Harvey was half man, half rabbit, and all jerk. He had just the right mixture of self-regard and disregard for everyone else that you wanted in a getaway driver.

  In a moment Biggs had the back of Harvey’s van open, and then they were face-to-tiny-smoldering-face with a fluttering, fire-breathing finch. Blue sparks pitched from his beaky nostrils.

  “It’s us, Finchbriton!” Mick said quickly. “It’s us! Snuff it!”

  Finchbriton chirruped and flew to Mick’s shoulder as everyone piled into the van. Scott and Polly’s dad was already there, and when he saw Polly he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close.

  Merle knocked on the roof. “All in! GO!”

  The van lurched forward. The second van followed.

  John hugged Polly tight—a desperate, crazy hug.

  “You are crushing me,” announced Prince Fi from somewhere in the middle.

  “What did I tell you?” said John. “What did I tell you?”

  “I thought they might need our help,” Polly murmured. “And they did.”

  “I wished to be of service,” said Fi. “The girl should have let me go alone.”

  The Freemen called for their vehicles and started their pursuit, but then the remote-controlled van opened its cargo doors and released the helium balloons, and the roadway was all fat colorful pandemonium, and by the time they cleared the vans had traded places, and the Freemen followed the wrong one.

  “Am I in trouble?” Polly asked her father.

  “You’re … I don’t know, grounded or something.”

  “Am I grounded too?” asked Merle.

  “Everyone’s grounded.”

  CHAPTER 2

  December and January had been a strange couple of months, and that was saying something—November had been filled with magic animals and dark dealings in secret temples and an exploding cereal factory.

  After the cereal factory exploded, Scott and his new sideshow of a family had gone on what his father insisted on calling “the lam.” And here was the problem with that.

  Scott’s party included

  four children;

  an old man;

  an internationally famous showbiz personality;

  an eight-foot-tall librarian who needed to shave his body three times daily or thick, luxurious hair would surge from all but his palms, soles, and a T-shaped patch of face;

  a pixie prince who could hide in your pocket but who rebuffed any attempt to put him in a pocket because it was demeaning;

  a fire-breathing finch who didn’t satisfactorily understand which occasions were and were not a good time for fire;

  a cat that tended to rub up against one’s legs as if it didn’t realize it had a six-inch unicorn horn coming out of its forehead;

  and a duo who were invisible to all but one in ten thousand but who otherwise appeared to be a two-foot-tall leprechaun and a man with a rabbit’s head. And the reason they appeared to be a leprechaun and a rabbit-man was because that was what they were.

  Scott and Erno and Emily had made a little game of dreaming up ways their group could be even more conspicuous than it already was.

  “We could add a clown,” said Erno.

  “We could wear big sombreros,” said Scott.

  “I respectfully disagree about the clown,” said Emily. “People avoid eye contact with clowns. The clown could actually be a big help.” And you could almost see her make a mental note: Hire Clown.

  “We could all get parrots,” Scott said. “Parrots that scream all the time.”

  “We could get one of those inflatable gorillas they put on car dealerships.”

  Incidentally, “Hire Clown” was actually a pretty good description of their getaway philosophy so far.

  “People tend to behave like it’s the movies,” Emily had lectured to the group. “So the Freemen will be watching all the airports, because that’s what you do when you’re trying to track people down. But do you know what people on the run never do in movies? They never take hot-air balloons. They never hire a mule train or a paddleboat down the Mississippi. They don’t go on luxury cruises. We’re going to do all those things.”

  John raised his hand. “Can we get motorcycles with sidecars? I’ve always wanted one.”

  Emily shrugged. “It’s your money.”

  They’d been spending John’s money like it was cursed, or on fire. He was their own personal Scrooge McDuck.

  And so in this way they’d stayed a step ahead of Goodco and the Freemen while they made their plans. They’d rented an ice cream truck. They’d taken something called the Charleston Choo Choo. After leaving the Philadelphia airport, they abandoned their white van in a Center City garage and hired a guided tour across the Delaware on an amphibious vehicle called the Duck. In New Jersey, thrillingly close to Goodborough, they piled aboard a party bus custom painted to say CONGRATULATIONS ALEX AND STEVE.

  �
��Weird being this close to home and not going there,” Emily whispered to Erno. But Scott and Polly had not lived in Goodborough long enough for it to feel like home. Their home had just vanished a year into the future, postponed.

  “Three hundred and sixty days until she’s back,” Scott told Polly.

  Each of them staked their claim to a section of the bus. Biggs and Harvey and John traded shifts driving; Erno and Emily selected adjacent bench seats. Scott shifted around based on wherever seemed to be the quietest place to read at any given time—he was on his second book of King Arthur stories, trying to learn all the ins and outs. Polly taped off two whole rows, named the area Fancylvania, and tried to talk Prince Fi into an official state visit. But the little pixie camped instead atop the ceiling-mounted television—the only spot outside the bathroom where he could be certain not to have to watch it. And everybody avoided the bathroom.

  The party bus seemed almost specially designed to give you motion sickness, what with its pulsing neon and disco ball and bad transmission. Every time they hit a bump it played Kool and the Gang for three minutes, and they hadn’t been able to figure out where it was coming from.

  “I don’t know this song,” Merle told Scott. “Is it from your generation?”

  “I think it’s more from my mom’s,” Scott answered. “Or her mom’s? People play it at weddings, or … parties … or—”

  “Or whenever they want to ‘celebrate good times,’ yeah. I sorta picked that up from the lyrics.”

  Scott smirked. “I can’t believe I’m asking this, but … have you been born yet?”

  “Heh. Later this year, actually. About a month after the fairies take over. If all goes well, I’m thinking of gatecrashing my own baby shower.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “It is what it is.” Merle shrugged. “In five years I enter kindergarten. In sixteen I graduate high school, in eighteen I invent time travel to the future but not the past. In nineteen years I go so far into the future I pop up as Merlin in the next universe, and in about fourteen billion years you and me have this conversation again.”

  “No.” Scott winced. “No, that’s not right. You were trying to invent time travel so you could go back and prevent the invasion, right? If we stop the fairies from invading, you’ll never invent time travel, maybe. The next universe’ll be different.”