The Dark Portal (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 3) (19 page)

“Well, then
,” she said slowly, “maybe all I’m sensing is the residue it left behind.” A shudder gripped her, and she glanced over her shoulder at the opposite hill. “Who knows what might wander over here from that cemetery?”

Jake’s jaw tightened
at the thought. “Feel better, Izzy.”

“Thanks. I’ll wait out here till everyone’s ready to go.”

He nodded, then went back inside, on the watch for any sign of a black fog.

On his way back to the dining hall,
he passed a classroom where Archie was talking to the teachers and older students about his latest scientific obsession. He had sketched a picture on the blackboard of the submersible he was building back at home. Jake sent him a grateful nod from the doorway.

This was obviously Archie’s way of helping to d
istract the teachers and older students, as they had discussed. Dani must have agreed to entertain the youngers. As Jake approached the dining hall, he felt a tug on his heartstrings as he realized the carrot-head had got the children singing.
Leave it to the Irish.

It was a song Jake
knew all too well, but it pained him to hear it coming, muffled, through the door. He had sung that song many times. Indeed, the melancholy tune brought back some of the bleakest moments of his former mode of life.

T
he age-old ‘
Souling Song’
was typically sung by homeless children going door-to-door to beg for food:

Hey-ho, nobody home,

No food, no drink, no money have I none.

Yet will I be merry!

Hey-ho, nobody home.

They sang it in a round
split between two groups. That was how it sounded prettiest.

Jake ignored the
slight lump in his throat and pushed open the door.

But the moment he stepped into the dinin
g hall, he stopped in shock.
“What are you doing?”

Illuminium glitter
ed in a cloud over Dani’s head and sparkled over the heads of the smaller children crowded around her, all singing.

Jake took an angry step forward.
Little fool!

When Dani
saw him standing in the doorway with a horrified glare, she abruptly stopped singing.

The schoolchil
dren followed suit and when the song stopped, the Illuminium went dark in the silence; it fell out of the air, whispering to the floor like ordinary dust.

The kids’
eyes shone with wonder, but Dani’s green ones filled with confusion when she saw the fury on Jake’s face.

“
Can I please speak to you for a moment, Miss O’Dell?” he said through gritted teeth.

Usually she would have sassed him for being bossy, but she must have heard the serious wrath in his voice. She furrowed her brow,
got up, and hurried over, then stepped out into the hallway with him.

“What do you think you’re do
ing?” he whispered angrily at her before she could speak. “You can’t show them that!”

She seemed startled.
“What’s the harm? You saw how sad they all were. I had to do something to cheer them up. It made them happy.”

“It was supposed to be a secret!”

“Well…I forgot!”

“
You forgot? Don’t lie to me! You know you broke the rules.”

“Like you never do
that!” she retorted.

“Dani, this is serious,
” he warned her when she rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. “Anything having to do with the magical world can’t be shown to outsiders! You know that perfectly well. Why did you do this?”

“
I felt sorry for them!” she exclaimed. “Kids like that, they never get anything.”

“What if Aunt Ramona found out?
You could be fired.”

She drew in her breath, paling
at the prospect of being sent back to the rookery. “Are you going to tell on me?”

“Of course not,” he snapped
. Then he shook his head. “But I have no idea what sort of problems you might have just caused by showing them that. What else did you tell them?”

“Nothing!”

“Did you tell them about the goldmine? The dwarves? The unicorns?”

“Of course
not! I’m not stupid!”

“Are you sure about that
?”

Hurt flashed across her
freckled face. “I was only doing what you asked me to. Distract ’em, you said!”

“
Right, so your mistake is my fault?”

“
I said I was sorry!” she cried, then she rushed off with tears in her eyes, pounded through the foyer, and slammed out the front door, rejoining Isabelle by the coach.

Great.
Jake scowled after her.
Now I have to clean up her mess. Stupid carrot-head.
How could she do such a thing? She knew better than this.

If these school kids started asking ques
tions about the Illuminium, like where it came from, that would lead to questions about the mine, and
him,
as the person who owned it.

Soon Plas-y-Fforest could b
e plagued with a wave of snooping youngsters trying to sneak onto the property to explore—and then how long before they discovered dwarves and unicorns, and tree goblins, and house brownies, and roses that moved on command?

He’d better come up with something good.

Because if Aunt Ramona found out about this, the old bird would have a fit, and as usual, he would somehow end up getting blamed.

With a harrumph under his breath, Jake stalked back
into the dining hall, upset that now he’d also have to put the Oubliette spell on these kids.

Perfect.
After all that they had been through, now he’d have to do the mind-wipe spell on them.

That was the usual protocol that Aunt Ramona had taught him when regular folk saw something that they shouldn’t.
It would make them forget.

But when
Jake went in and bent down amid the circle of younger children sitting around on the floor, he looked at their pinched, drawn, pale, hungry faces, and realized he didn’t have the heart to take it away from them—that little taste of wonder that Dani O’Dell had just shared with them.

Instead, he hid his frustration, put
on a fake, enthusiastic smile and gathered them around closer, then made a game of swearing them all to secrecy.

Fortunately, he was still an accomplished liar.

He told them the Illuminium was one of Archie’s scientific projects, a boring old chemical compound of aluminum and phosphorus or something. But he warned that this invention was still waiting on its official government patent, so they mustn’t tell anyone, or some other scientist might try to steal Archie’s idea.

Once they understood this, the children eagerly
agreed, much to Jake’s relief. They seemed thrilled to share in the duty of keeping Archie’s secret.

Finally satisf
ied they’d keep their little mouths shut, Jake nodded and left them.

“At last.
What took you so long?” Garnock huffed when Mischief and Mayhem finally returned. They did not look too much the worse for wear. “Did you get it?”

Mischief jumped up onto Mayhem’s head and perched there, proudly holding out the ring of power on his
dusty gray palm.

“Ah, ha, ha, good boy!” Garnock
swirled closer with a gloating laugh, but Mayhem let out a low, indignant yowl, as if to say,
What about me?
“Yes, yes, of course, I meant both of you.”

Mayhem snuffled
at this blatant show of favoritism.

Garnock tried to lift the ring off the little gargoyle’s cupped gray palm, but alas, as a spirit, he could not pick it up.

He uttered a low-toned spell to levitate it; Mischief’s eyes widened as the ring floated up and spun slowly in midair while Garnock admired it.

“I will wear this again,” he vowed. “As soon as I have my body back.
And believe you me, I will use it well.” When his concentration broke, the ring plopped out of the air back into the imp’s hand. “Keep it safe for me until it’s time.”

Mischief bobbed his head and clutched it.

“I’m going back to the school. I’m starting to feel peckish. I need to feed again. You two stay out of sight. You’ve done well for today, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to go back down there—no whining!” he scolded Mischief when he complained.

“
Tomorrow, I want you to go back to my workshop and then slip through the Portal and start bringing more of your brethren through to our side, in case I need them.

“
Have them hide in the mine until I’m ready to mobilize my army,” he said in a sinister tone. Then he frowned. “Mischief, be careful with that thing! How many times have I told you a ring of power isn’t a toy? Stop fooling around!”

His warning came a bit too late,
for Mischief had just given the ring some sort of order: In turn, it sent him shooting backwards twenty yards across the grove.

He landed
with a yelp.

Mayhem laugh
ed heartily.

Garnock sighed and shook his ghostly skull of a head
at their antics, then made his way back to the Harris Mine School.

It was time to feed agai
n on more of the students’ life-force.

Once he had preyed
on a total of one hundred souls, the spell to bring him fully back to life would almost be complete. And then…his first order of business?

Revenge on whatever remain
ed of the Lightriders.

Naturally.

PART III