The Call - Michael Grant [19]
“Okay, enough, all right?” Mack said. It was getting to him. He was feeling fear, true fear, begin to form like a ball in his chest.
“Listen, for my time is run out,” Grimluk said. “I will help when I may. You must assemble a new twelve of twelves. Bring the twelve new Magnifica together from the corners of the earth and find a way to bind the Dread Foe again.”
“How am I supposed to do this?” Mack demanded. “I’m missing a math test. I have PE next after that. I’m kind of busy.”
“Find the way of Vargran, young one. Or truly, all the world will die. But first, if you return to your home and hearth, you will draw the enemy like nectar draws the bee, and all those who know you, all who love you, will be destroyed!”
“Vargran?”
“I fade…,” Grimluk said sadly. “Much is left to tell but…power…no longer…” He was flickering now, and the sound of his voice was like a cell phone call breaking up. “You will be…contacted.”
Then he and his weird light were gone.
“Huh,” Stefan said.
“This is nuts,” Mack said. “No way. I mean, seriously, someone slipped some bad peanut butter into our cookies or whatever. We’re hallucinating.”
The bathroom door opened then.
Framed there was the old man in green.
He grinned with surprisingly white teeth. He hefted his walking stick in one hand. He grabbed the knob atop his stick with the other.
And he drew out a very bright, very sharp-looking sword.
Ten
“Have at you!” the green man said.
He lunged at Mack, needle-sharp point thrusting straight toward Mack’s heart.
But the man in green was very old. Very old. Probably not as old as the spectral Grimluk, but way old.
So the sword point didn’t exactly slice through the air. It was more a case of it trembling forward. Mack leaped to one side, and between the time when he leaped aside and the sword reached the place he’d been, he had time to stop and tie his shoe. Understand—he didn’t stop to tie his shoe. But he could have.
The man in green frowned. He stared at the place where Mack had been.
He turned rheumy green eyes left and right and finally located Mack, shrinking up against a stall door.
He began to swing the sword in an arc that would slice Mack right across the throat, if he stood there long enough.
Stefan stepped forward and grabbed the man’s sword arm. “Hey. Stop that, old man.” He took the sword and the walking stick and thrust the sword back into it. “Cool stick,” Stefan observed.
“Unhand me!” the old guy yelled.
“Whatever,” Stefan said, and released the man.
“Why are you trying to skewer me?” Mack demanded, outraged.
The old man started to answer, but then raised one finger indicating he needed a moment. He fumbled inside his green blazer and drew out a clear plastic tube that ended in a clear plastic mouthpiece.
He pressed the mouthpiece against his lips and nose and breathed deeply. Once. Twice. Three times. Four times. Five times.
Six times.
And…seven.
“Oxygen. I can’t take this altitude,” he explained.
“Should I call a doctor?” Mack asked.
“Ha!” the man said. “I’ll see you in your unmarked grave, you young…” He held up his finger again and took several more draws of the oxygen.
“You’ll rue the day you ever heard the name Paddy ‘Nine Iron’ Trout.”
“Actually, this is the first I’ve heard it,” Mack pointed out. “And that thing with the snakes was seriously uncool.”
“Snakes?” Stefan asked.
“This old dude put poisonous snakes in my window. They would have killed me, too, only they went for the golem.”
Stefan nodded as if he understood. He didn’t.
“You can run, but you cannot hide from the fist of the Nafia,” Nine Iron said. He made a fierce face, and Mack could kind of see where back in the day—like sixty, seventy years ago—it would have been a scary look. Now he mostly noticed the way Nine Iron paused between each word to either