Secrets of the Deep (33 page)

“Come on,” Maddox muttered, even as they heard muffled police whistles start trilling in the distance. “We’ve got to get out of here. Your aunt won’t be pleased if anyone gets arrested.”

“Go! I’ll hold him till you all are clear.” Jake used his telekinesis to keep the professor dangling in midair as the rest of them hurried to the door, Sapphira helping her sister.

Maddox stepped out first to make sure the constables had not yet arrived in the street, then beckoned the kids out swiftly one by one.

“C’mon, Jake!” Dani paused at the door.

Jake followed, backing his way to the door, and only lowering Dr. Giannopoulos to the ground once he reached the threshold. As soon as he stepped out, he slammed the door, and Nixie discreetly used her wand to lock the shifty fellow inside his own shop.

Then they ran.

CHAPTER 17

Rock Monsters

L
anding on the floor of his shop in an undignified heap, Dr. Dmitri Giannopoulos bumped his head, then scrambled to his feet in a fury.
Horrid little beasts!

Heart pounding, he rushed to the door of his shop and peered through the window. Relief filled him when he saw that the little tribe of barbarians were gone, but when he laid hold of the doorknob and tried to twist it, intent on stepping outside to yell to the police, it didn’t move.

Panic filled him as he jiggled the door frantically, shocked to find he was trapped. What manner of people were these youngsters? More wizards like Wyvern?

Dazedly, he pondered the knowledge that at least one of them had been a real mermaid. Memories of the many humiliations he had suffered at the hands of the mer-brats filled his mind—and restored his backbone.

Though still shaken up, Giannopoulos scowled with fury. “I will not be humiliated in my own establishment!” he muttered under his breath.

Rubbing his bruised head, he tried to make sense of what had just happened, but only one thing was clear: He had to let Lord Wyvern know he had accidentally blabbed.

Ugh, he was not looking forward to that, but he did not dare attempt to keep his terrifying patron in the dark. Though maybe he should leave out the part that he’d revealed His Lordship’s name.

He didn’t want to die, after all.

Still, he wasn’t too concerned about those little terrors. Even if the children found the treasure cave, the moment they disturbed the rocks around it, they were in for a very rude surprise. The rock golems would put an end to their search—and their lives.

Another glance out the window showed there was still no sign of the police. “Typical!” he huffed.
Well, hopefully they’re chasing those miscreants,
he thought, then clomped into the back room.

Though his shop was empty and he was locked in anyway, he shut the door to the backroom. Once it was secure, only then did he take out the fat black candle that Lord Wyvern had left him.

It had the earl’s aristocratic coat of arms imprinted in the side of it. Giannopoulos studied the Wyvern family crest for a moment before lighting it. The crest showed a wyvern with its claws bared—his patron had told him that a wyvern was a dragon with two legs rather than four.

The symbol seemed to suit him very well, Giannopoulos thought with a gulp. Then, with shaking hands, he pulled out a Lucifer match and struck it, nervously lighting the black candle’s wick.

In truth, he had not expected to have to use it, had doubted that it even worked. But the earl had warned him in the sternest possible tones not to try to contact him by telegraph if anything of an unusual nature were to happen. They could not risk such communiqués being intercepted.

But it was just as well, for the telegraph operator would have thought him mad when conveying such a message:

Dear Lord Wyvern,
STOP,
I was besieged by magical children and a mermaid today,
STOP,
and held upside down in midair by an especially nasty blond boy.
STOP.

He shrugged off the absurdity of reporting such a thing to outsiders. Unsure of what would happen, he began reading the incantation that Wyvern had jotted down for him over the black candle as it burned.

The thing smelled absolutely awful.

Wincing at the sulfur smoke that curled up from the crackling wick, Dmitri glanced nervously at the flame and noticed that it burned a weird color.

In the next moment, the smoke began to form a dark, foul-smelling cloud above the candle—and in the center of it, the earl’s face suddenly appeared.

Giannopoulos’s eyes widened.

“Hello? Yes? Who’s there?” The earl’s face in the cloud squinted into the room. “Oh, it’s you,” said Wyvern, sounding bored. “What is it, Giannopoulos?”

He couldn’t speak for a second.

“I’m waiting! Speak, man. You have my attention. Has something happened? Are the artifacts safe?”

“Er, y-yes, sir, I think so.”

“You
think
so?”

“I-I’m sure they’re safe, sir.”

“They’d better be. Well, then? What is it?”

“Well, it’s just…there were some children here a moment ago. Very strange children, my lord. They had one of our artifacts—they said they found it while sea-bathing. I can only conclude it must’ve fallen out of one of the sacks as your, er, servitors were carrying them up.”

“Did you take it from them?” Wyvern asked.

“I tried, sir. But there were too many of them and they had strange powers. Not unlike your own, I should think.”

In the smoke, Wyvern’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, really?” he murmured coldly. “What sort of object did they have, Giannopoulos?”

“An orb—and they had a mermaid with them! She’s the one who found it. They’ve locked me in my shop. I-I’m afraid, sir, they…they terrorized me into admitting that we found the Atlantean trove.”

“They
what
?” Wyvern bellowed.

“I couldn’t help it! I feared for my life!”

“From children?” Wyvern shook his head in disgust.

“They tortured me! B-but don’t worry, my lord,” the doctor hastily assured his patron with a crafty smile. “I sent them to the cave—we both know what will happen when they start poking around there.”

“Hmm. Yes. Let’s hope so.” Wyvern brooded on it. “Tell me more about these children. You say they had powers like mine? Describe them.”

“Well, they were English, clearly. One boy, with a bowtie, he seemed reasonable enough, but the cousin he had with him was just ghastly! Blond-haired, maybe thirteen, fourteen. He levitated me right up off the ground like you did with those boulders that day! He turned me upside down until I almost couldn’t breathe!” It seemed only prudent to exaggerate, seeing the scowl on the face in the smoke.

“Did you at least catch a name for this boy?” Wyvern asked in an ominous rumble.

But at that moment, a draft hit the candle, causing it to flicker. The image of Lord Wyvern’s head wobbled and grew misshapen. “Giannop—”

The flame winked out.

Dmitri cursed himself for being too slow to block the draft with his hand, cutting his patron’s question off midsentence.

He winced, wondering what the sorcerer earl could do to him at this distance if he annoyed him sufficiently. Hands shaking, his pulse skittering with anxiety, Giannopoulos finally got the candle lit again.

Lord Wyvern stared out the cloud with a long-suffering look.

“Sorry, my lord.”

“As I was saying. This boy. Did you by chance catch his name?”

“Not his surname, no, but I heard the little red-haired girl call him Jake.”

Wyvern growled. “Just as I suspected.”

“You know him, sir?”

“Indeed. The Griffon heir. The gentlemen I represent have long wished to get their hands on the little menace, but others have been hiding him. Did you happen to catch where he’s staying? Also on Malta?”

Dmitri shook his head. “No, sir, but they did say they had traveled here on the ferry, if I’m not mistaken. They didn’t specify which one, though. There are several here that run daily to a few different ports. They said they had come across my book and wanted to know anything I could tell them about the orb. Somehow they had already deduced that it came from Atlantis.”

Wyvern shook his head. “He really is the most irksome boy.”

“Well, sir, don’t worry. This lad is either headed to jail, or, if he and his cohorts slip through the hands of the local police, to Nisáki. And we both know what will happen when they get there and start poking around the caves. Your golems will reconstitute and pound them into paste!”

“Perhaps. However…when dealing with Jake Everton, we’ve learned that it’s best not to leave things to chance. I daresay it may take something stronger than rock golems to defeat that lad. No matter. I’ll think on it and send something worse to hunt him down and finish him, now that I at least know the region where the blasted Order’s been hiding him.” Wyvern tilted his head. “Did you tell the little darlings anything else?”

“Oh, no, sir!”

Wyvern narrowed his eyes. “I trust you didn’t give them my name.”

“Of course not, my lord!” Giannopoulos said, hiding his gulp. “Never.”

“Lucky for you,” Wyvern said. “How’s the research coming along on the rest of the artifacts, anyway?”

“Progressing,” Dmitri said eagerly, grateful for the change of subject. “I’ve begun to decipher a few more of the hieroglyphs—”

“Yes, yes,” Wyvern said. “Beg your pardon, I must go. Carry on with your research. If you see the boy again, contact me at once.”

“Yes, my lord,” Giannopoulos said, and with that, the image of Lord Wyvern’s head nodded his dismissal, then disappeared from the smoke cloud.

Mystified, Giannopoulos licked his fingers, pinched out the flame, then went back out into his shop, where the police were now banging frantically on the door.

About time.
He hurried to let them in.

# # #

Fortunately, Jake had enough experience dodging the London bobbies that he managed to lead his friends away without getting arrested. He didn’t know this ancient city, of course, but he took his friends on a weaving path through several blocks until they reached the pier.

There they hired a tubby little fishing boat that sported both sails and steam power to take them to the uninhabited island where Giannopoulos had said the Atlantean treasure was hidden. The decks were draped with nets and piled with empty traps and buckets, and the whole thing reeked of fish, but it looked seaworthy.

The sun-leathered captain was the only one who would agree to take them at this time of day. They stressed to him that they needed to be back in time to catch the evening ferry back to Catania; with a puff on his pipe, he agreed this was possible for a few extra lire. Jake paid him, then they hurried up the gangplank, and soon were chugging and sputtering along out of the harbor.

To avoid getting splashed—and for fear of Davy Jones’s spies watching for them everywhere in the water—the mermaids stayed out of sight in the dim, stinky cabin, as they had aboard the packet ship.

It was slow going. The tide was out, and the afternoon wind was sluggish.

Once they were clear of harbor traffic out on the glassy sea, the captain opened up the engines a bit to increase their speed, and even let down a few of the sails. But the sun was hot, and the canvas hung limp off the yardarms.

“So why you wanna go there?” the captain asked the boys at length. “There’s a-better islands all over de place. De beaches. De grottos. De fishing. Is nothing on Nisáki.”

“Well, sir, we heard there are fascinating caves on the western edge of the island, beneath a rock formation called the Cyclops’ Crown. Do you know the place?”

He nodded. “Is-a most mysterious. We are on the edge of what is called the Calypso Deep, deepest region of the whole Mediterranean. No one even knows how deep it goes. Miles,” he said.

“Yes,” Jake murmured, “we’ve heard of it.”

Archie sent him a guarded look.

The water grew more lively as they chugged on, passing in between various small islands; cross-currents molded by the seamounts clashed and swirled.

And then at last, in the distance, a small island rose from the cobalt sea, wearing a menacing rock formation along its ridged top like a jagged crown.

“Well,” said Maddox, standing by Jake at the rails, “I can certainly see where it got its name.”

“It does look like a crown for a Cyclops,” Dani agreed from nearby, shading her eyes from the sun.

The captain shifted gears, slowing their pace through the increasingly choppy waves as the boat chugged toward the island. Boulders outlined the crescent-shaped cove before them, and he obviously didn’t want to be dashed against the rocks as they arrived.

Against the azure sky, the weirdly jagged rock formation loomed above them. Wind and sea had sculpted towering spiky fingers of limestone. Below the Cyclops’ Crown was a steeply sloping bluff covered in loose scree and pockmarked with a whole warren of black-mouthed caves, large and small.

“Look—seals!” Dani pointed at the sleek, whiskered creatures sunning themselves on the boulders that stretched out like thick arms defining the rocky cove.

The seals flopped into the water and swam away as the boat approached. The flock of gulls standing around idly on the narrow pebble beach didn’t like the engine noise, either, but they merely flapped around a bit and screeched, annoyed, instead of leaving.

At last, the captain cut the engines and dropped anchor. He ran the gangplank out and braced it with a bang atop the outermost clump of boulders, then pointed, showing Jake how he and his friends could use the rest of the armlike boulders as stepping stones to the beach.

It wasn’t too precarious a walk, although the sea foam splashed up in places. Even so, the mermaids decided to risk it in their fascination with their human adventure. Liliana was bored, anyway, and couldn’t bear to stay behind on the boat with her sister while everyone else went exploring.