The Trap (The Magnificent 12 #2)(23)

“I didn’t intend any criticism,” Xiao said mildly.

Mack sighed. He felt discouraged. This whole thing had been impossible from the start. It was getting more impossible with each passing day. With each hour.

“Anyway,” Mack said, “all I know right now is ‘egg rocks.’ And hopefully that leads us to number four. And we kind of have to figure they’ll come after us there, too.”

“Hey,” Jarrah said. “No worries: we’re not dead yet.”

“And we’re having fun!” Stefan said. Then, when he saw the extremely dubious faces turned toward him, he added in a less enthusiastic voice, “Well, I am.”

“Have you Googled the ‘egg rocks’ thing?” Xiao asked.

“We think it’s in Germany. A place called Externsteine.”

They blew along at what had to be ever-increasing speed, because now the water flying from the bow had been turned to steam. Friction heat.

“This is excellent,” Stefan said. “You guys ever water-ski off this thing?”

Xiao did not seem amused. “Is he one of us?” she asked Mack.

“Not exactly,” Mack said. The question made him uncomfortable. “He’s . . . Well, he used to be my bully.”

“Your bully?”

“Yeah, he was the toughest kid in the school. We got to know each other because he was always beating me up.”

“Is that how American kids get to know each other?”

“I wouldn’t say it’s the most common way. Sometimes we just walk up to someone and, you know, say hi or whatever.”

“I see,” Xiao said, although Mack doubted she did.

“So. You’re a dragon.”

“Yes.”

“But you’re also a girl.”

“No, I’m a dragon. But I can make myself into a girl. It’s how I go to school.”

“You go to school? Dragon school?”

“No. Human school. In the outside world.” She pointed upward. “Up there. Although not directly up there, because we are far beyond the city now.”

“Why do you go to human school? To learn human stuff?”

“Not really,” Xiao said. “It’s to learn basic things. And wrong things.”

“That’s why I go to school, too: to learn wrong things,” Mack said. Xiao didn’t seem to get that he was joking. He was beginning to fear that she had no sense of humor. Normally Mack would find this very off-putting. It made it almost hard for him to relate, to talk to a person. But he didn’t feel that way about Xiao, possibly because she was a dragon.

“So you’re one of us,” he said. “I mean, one of the Magnificent Twelve.”

“Yes. I’ve known it for some time now. We dragons may know some things you humans don’t. Like, well, like just about everything except technology.”

“We know other stuff, too,” Mack said.

Xiao looked skeptically at him. “Tell me the truth: before all this started, you only believed in the things you could see and touch and feel. Right? You knew nothing about the wonders and the terrors that lie hidden in the unseen places of the Earth.”

“Well, I didn’t know there were dragons living under the Forbidden City, that’s true. Or dragons anywhere. Or Lepercons. Or Tong Elves. Or Skirrit. Or some princess named Risky.”

“A princess named Risky?” Xiao said, puzzled.

Mack was pleased to discover something he knew that Xiao did not. “I think her full name is Ereskigal.”

Xiao’s eyes froze into a stare. She didn’t move, except for a cheek muscle. It twitched.

“Ereskigal?” She held her breath, then let it out in a gasp. “You encountered Ereskigal?”

“Yeah. We weren’t exactly friends. And I kind of had to destroy her.” He had conflicted feelings about that. On the one hand, it seemed kind of creepy to brag about killing anyone or anything. On the other hand, he’d managed to take down a very, very scary person.

Xiao laughed. “You did not kill her. At least not the way you think.”

“Hey,” Stefan interjected from the seat in front of them. “Mack fried her butt. Zap! Shock and awe! Smoke and ash! Pow! So awesome.”

“You don’t know much, do you?” Xiao said.

To Mack’s amazement, Stefan’s face sort of crumpled. If Mack hadn’t known better, he’d have thought Stefan was a little intimidated by Xiao. “No,” he mumbled. “I don’t.”

“Ereskigal, or as some say it, Ereshkigal, is Morgan le Fay, Kali, Persephone, and Hel.”

“She’s Hel all right,” Jarrah muttered.

“She is not dead. Ereskigal must be killed twelve times, each time in a different way. Unless you killed her twelve times, she is not gone.”

Mack glanced nervously over his shoulder. Even Risky couldn’t possibly keep up with the barge.

Although now that he noticed it, the barge was starting to slow down.

“We’re almost there,” Xiao said. “We’ll pass as tourists at the wall. It’s morning now. We have to walk for a way along the wall; the dragon we’re to meet doesn’t like the river, so he lives a short distance away.”

The barge was definitely going slower.