Charlie Hernández & the Castle of Bones Read online

  I shrugged. “What about them?”

  “Well, they’re not just on the wall behind the desk; they run along that entire side.”

  “So?”

  “So that means Joanna was still scrambling around and they were still trying to hit her with those blasts or whatever.”

  “Which means she probably still had whatever they were after…,” I said, finally starting to see the same movie that was playing in Violet’s head.

  “Exactly.” Violet’s footsteps echoed softly on the marble floor as she edged her way around the craters, and I followed, placing my feet exactly where she had. She paused near the entrance to the widest and most ornate of the three hallways, where a large hunk was missing from the top of the golden archway, as if something huge had taken a bite out of it. “They almost got her here… and that’s when she finally dropped whatever it was they were fighting over.”

  “How do you know?”

  She pointed at the floor where there was a slight indent in one of the tiles; but it could’ve been made by anything.

  “Okay, then what?” I said.

  “Well, then they took it from her.” Violet paused for a moment, thinking. “Unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless Joanna had a moment—just a second, really—to hide it.…” Dropping down onto her hands and knees, she peered into what looked like a small mousehole at the base of the archway. She pressed her left cheek flat against the floor… and suddenly her eyes lit up. With all the excitement of a little kid on Christmas, she reached into the hole with the tips of her fingers and brought out what looked like—

  “An egg?” Violet said, sounding about as confused as I felt. But that was exactly what it looked like—a big, shiny, yellow egg. Even weirder, as she held it between her thumb and index finger, the egg seemed to glow faintly. Like a cocuyo. Or a half-drained glowstick.

  I honestly didn’t get it. Actually saying I didn’t get it would be like saying the earth is big. It didn’t quite do my level of not-getting-it justice. “Is that what they were fighting over? Why? I mean, why?”

  “It’s solid gold, Charlie.… I can think of about a hundred million reasons why someone would want this.”

  “Okay, so gimme one.”

  She gave me a sideways look. “I’m talking about money, Charlie. Cash.”

  Oh. Duh. Knew that.

  Violet thought for a second, then said, “Quick! Hand me the box.”

  The box. Right. I hustled over to it, snatched it up like I was running the line drill in PE, then brought it back to her and watched with silent fascination as she placed the golden egg into the small scoop in the soft velvet lining of the box. It was a perfect fit.

  Violet’s eyes grinned up at mine. “We have a match.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  I was about to open my mouth to tell Violet that what she’d done was probably the most amazing thing I’d ever seen in my life when a soft rattling sound came from somewhere nearby. Violet and I froze, staring at each other for a moment in silent panic, like we’d been caught passing answers during a pop quiz.

  Then, slipping the egg into her backpack, she whispered, “What was that?”

  “No idea.” My eyes scanned the room, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. “I think it came from the desk.”

  Violet nodded. And we both crept not so silently toward the huge piece of overturned furniture, our feet crunching plaster and chunks of charred marble like a couple of half-panicky, completely un-stealthy ninjas.

  When we reached it, I bent down, peering into one of the empty drawer compartments. There was another low, crackling rattle, and in the shadows deep inside the desk, I spotted a slim glass tube lying on its side.

  “What is that?” V whispered into my ear.

  Shaking my head, I cautiously reached one hand into the hole. And as my fingers closed around the tube, I remembered that this was what Joanna had used to capture one of the minairons that had attacked us in Portugal.

  And the flower elf was still in there!

  “Is that what I think it is?” Violet hissed.

  “Yep.” There was a soft pop! as I yanked the plastic stopper out.

  “Isn’t it… dangerous?”

  “Shouldn’t be. It’s all alone.” I swirled the tube gently, but the tiny elf wouldn’t wake—it didn’t even flinch.

  V frowned. “Is it—dead?”

  “Might’ve just died. ¡Apúrate! Get me… get me some water and dirt!”

  Violet was off and running almost before I had finished talking, and next thing I knew she was back, holding some sort of fancy teacup in one hand and a scoop of dirt in the other. “Here,” she said, dumping the dirt on the floor next to me. “Fresh from the garden.”

  “Thanks.” I gathered it up with my other hand, shaping it into a nice fluffy mound, then poured the tiny elf onto it. Next I dipped my fingertips into the teacup and sprinkled the minairon a few times. Just to be clear, I had no idea if any of this would actually revive the thing, but I knew that they came from plants, so I figured what works for a plant might work for a plant elf. King of logic, that’s me.

  Seconds passed—nothing. I felt dumber with each one that went by. I started to panic, wondered how CPR would work on something this tiny (especially the mouth-to-mouth part), and right as I was about to dip my fingers into the water again and try another sprinkling, the minairon suddenly sucked in a harsh, choking breath. It sprang to its feet, looking wildly around, and shouted, “AAAAAAYYYYYYY!”

  Violet and I jumped back in surprise. Man, that thing could yell! “Hey, you okay?” I asked it.

  The elf gagged, coughed, and gagged some more, shaking its bald little head. I guess the answer was no. “Perdona, pero tienen caras muy grandes—me asustaron.” Its voice, thin and high pitched, reminded me of a teakettle.

  “What’d it say?” Violet wanted to know.

  “That we have very big faces and we scared it.”

  V didn’t take too kindly to that. Her eyes narrowed into thin slits. “Well, tell it that it has a very small, very blue face and that it scared us.”

  The minairon buzzed angrily, batting its tiny, translucent wings. “I speak English, you know!”

  “Good! Then start talking. What happened here?”

  “Why you ask me? I was a prisoner! I was trapped in a tube, in that drawer, in that desk, in THIS ROOM—when I should be free in the forest, BUILDING!”

  “So you didn’t hear anything?” I asked.

  “Who cares what I hear?” it screeched back. Then it began jumping up and down on its tiny pink toes. “What should I build? What should I build? What should I build?”

  “Uh, what’s it doing?” V sounded confused—and a little worried.

  “It wants us to give it a task. That’s what they live for.”

  “Okay, how about this?” Violet said to the elf. “We’ll give you a task if you tell us what happened here. Deal?”

  The minairon stopped bouncing, considered that a second, then sighed and threw its tiny bluish hands above its tiny bluish head, as if to say, Ugh, humans can be SO annoying. “Deal, deal!”

  “So what’d you hear?”

  The elf closed its eyes for a moment, as if trying to recall as much as possible. “First I hear a door open,” it said in a voice so small that Violet and I had to lean forward, almost poking it with our noses, to hear. “Then it close. And then—an argument.… But it start off friendly-like. Two sombras”—it held up two miniature fingers—“no, three. Only two talked, though—and they were arguing over… over an egg!” Violet and I looked at each other. The minairon continued, “Then… then they started to fight—BOOM, BAM, POP! That big stupid desk flies up. Then CRASH! I go flippy-flip! And then… I hear this strange humming sound.”

  “What kind of humming sound?” I asked.

  The elf looked at me like I was one peanut short of a SNICKERS. “What you mean, ‘what kind of humming sound?’ A HUMMING sound!”

&nbs
p; “Go on,” Violet said.

  “Then… they all go away from the desk, a couple steps… and then they all gone. Poof! ”

  Violet’s face fell. “Is that… it? I mean, did you hear the door open again? Did they leave through the front?”

  The minairon’s shoulders went up and down like it didn’t have the slightest clue.

  “And you don’t remember anything else? Maybe something they said?”

  The elf was shaking its head. “No… oh, one say they gonna take the other to a cave! Sí, that I remember!”

  “A cave?” Violet’s eyes met mine, hopeful but guarded. “I mean, that’s something.…”

  I turned back to the elf, who was staring eagerly up at us with eyes that were startlingly bright. “Uh, did they maybe happen to mention where that cave was?”

  “No… no, they don’t mention.”

  I felt my heart begin to sink. That wasn’t nearly enough info to work with. Not even for the great Violet Rey. Heck, there were caves all over the world. And it wasn’t like we could search them one by one. We’d both be celebrating our 120th birthdays before we even made it out of Central America. Just when I started to think it was time to come up with plan B, the minairon batted its tiny wings and said, “But… maybe I hear something like Lapa se Sasso.”

  The words rang a bell. “Wait. What did you say?”

  “Lapa se Sasso? No, that wasn’t it.… Maybe, Lapa du Papo? No…”

  “Lapa do Santo?” I threw out, and the fairy’s itty-bitty eyes lit up like sparklers.

  “Sí, sí! That’s the one!”

  And just like that, I knew where they had taken Joanna.

  V gripped my arm. “Charlie, what is that?”

  “It’s this famous cave in Brazil!” I explained, barely able to contain my excitement. “Southern Brazil. It’s a place of sacrifice.” But why would whoever kidnapped Joanna take her to a place like that? They couldn’t be planning to sacrifice her, could they…? And if they were, who were they planning on sacrificing her to?

  “Charlie, you’re a genius!” V shouted, and without even pausing to think it through, she leaned forward and planted this huge kiss right on my cheek!

  And then we both just sort of froze, staring off in opposite directions.

  The spot on my cheek where her lips had touched felt like it had been splashed with burning-hot lava, and for some reason I didn’t know where to put my hands. Violet, meanwhile, was staring across the room, staring hard like she’d spotted something really, really interesting, though there wasn’t much over there except for a smoking crater in the wall.

  “Oye, HELLO?” the minairon screeched up at us. “What just happened…? What’s wrong with you two? You going to give me a task now or what? Oye… can anyone HEAR me?”

  Violet still hadn’t looked back at me but said, “We should probably… go.”

  I had to swallow this huge lump in my throat before I was finally able to answer. I managed “Uh-huh,” but all I could think was AWKWARD!

  “WHAT ABOUT MY TASK?” shrieked the minairon.

  “Right,” I said. “And you… build us a nice sculpture out of all this mess.”

  “What kind of sculpture?” the elf asked inquisitively.

  “Uh, builder’s choice.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  On our way out of the study, Violet thought that it might be a good idea to search the Provencia, see if there was anyone else here, any witnesses. So we started with the bigger brick buildings, peering in through the stained-glass windows and iron gates, then moved on to the courtyards beyond the gardens, making a quick stop by the Chapter House with its white stone columns, archways, and shadowy alcoves. Fifteen minutes later we’d made it all the way back around to Joanna’s study, and by that point, it had become pretty obvious that there was no one else here.

  My mom was still waiting for us in the parking lot. Seeing us coming, she rolled down the passenger-side window and said, “What took you guys so long? I was about to go looking for you.”

  “It’s Queen Joanna!” I shouted, sprinting up to the car. I was panting, barely able to breathe. “Someone… we don’t know who… someone…”

  “Attacked the monastery!” Violet finished. “The queen’s been kidnapped!”

  “What?” My mother’s eyes went wide with shock.

  “They took her!” I shouted between breaths. “She’s gone!”

  “Get in the car!” my mom screamed, slapping blindly at the buttons on the side of her door, making all the locks pop open at once. “¡Apúrense!”

  The moment our butts hit the seats, my mom punched the start button on the dashboard, and the SUV’s engine roared to life. Then she went into total stunt-driver mode, slamming the car into reverse while simultaneously stamping on the accelerator, and we shot backward out of the parking lot and onto the empty street, peeling out.

  “Mom, what are you DOING?” I yelled over the revving engine.

  “Getting you away from here,” she said. “That’s what.”

  Violet and I had to hold on to our seat belts (we hadn’t even gotten a chance to strap in yet) as my mom weaved wildly through the traffic, honking her horn, whipping by other moving cars as if they were standing still.

  “Mom, we have to help Joanna! They’re taking her to Brazil! We have to do something!”

  “How do you know they’re taking her to Brazil?” she asked, glancing briefly at the rearview mirror. Her fingers were tight around the steering wheel, her knuckles white.

  “A minairon told us! What are we going to do?”

  But my mom ignored me. She swerved us in front of one car and then another as horns blared and people rolled down their windows to shout things she wouldn’t want me repeating.

  “Mrs. Hernández, Charlie’s right,” Violet said. “From what I’ve heard, we have about a ninety-six-hour window from the time someone is kidnapped to find them. Then things just get a lot harder.”

  How do you know that? I mouthed.

  Taken, the movie, she mouthed back.

  Right. Anyway… “Mom, we need to do something!”

  “Mrs. Hernández, maybe we should turn around.”

  “Mom, we can’t just do noth—”

  “ENOUGH!” my mom burst out. It was so sudden and unexpected that Violet and I went stiff in our seats. “BOTH OF YOU—JUST STOP IT, OKAY? I am NOT turning this car around, and NO ONE’S going back to help anyone. Am I understood?”

  “Mrs. Hernández—”

  “But, Mom—”

  “No! No buts! I am your mother and it’s my job to protect you. And that’s precisely what I’m going to do! End. Of. Discussion. ¿Me oíste?” My mom looked up to glare at me in the rearview mirror, and I knew her well enough (and I knew that look well enough) to know that when she said the conversation was over, that’s exactly what it was.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The second we got home after dropping Violet off, my mom stormed in through the front door, and the first thing she did was set the alarm. Then (with the help of my dad, who, by the way, was so caught off guard by everything that his expression was basically what I’d expect to see from someone who has accidentally walked into a ballroom party… naked) she ran around the house, putting the entire place on extreme lockdown. They locked all the outside doors; they closed and locked every single window, including the two tiny ones in the attic and the one in my dad’s office, which he never opened; they unplugged the garage door’s motor, so it couldn’t be controlled via remote. They maneuvered all the furniture around, positioning the tables, couches, and chairs to form mini blockades. Then, as if all that wasn’t enough, they glued pieces of Cuban bread to the ceiling in the kitchen, the living room, and all the bedrooms; sprinkled sugar on both the love seats; placed glasses of tap water on top of the fridge; and positioned upside-down brooms behind all the inside doors (and an extra upside-down baseball bat behind the door in my room). Then my mom grabbed every single potted cactus she owned—and she owned a lo
t of cacti—and began strategically positioning them in front of every window in the house. And when she ran out of cacti, she used her aloe vera plants, which she owned a bunch of too. By the time they were finished, our house looked like it had been decorated by some insane horticulturist with a serious gluten issue. Obviously, I knew what they were doing; I’d heard enough myths and superstitions from my abuela to understand that they were trying to ward the house against pretty much every evil sombra known to man. And why they were doing it was also pretty obvious—my mom figured now that La Mano Peluda had gotten Joanna, I was next. Scary part was, she was probably right. Still, did I think they’d gone WAY overboard? Duh. But then again, I’d never been turned into a four-inch-tall doll by some psycho bruja.

  At around eleven, my mom told me to go upstairs and get ready for bed. More like ordered it. And since I wasn’t about to argue with someone who had spent almost half an hour gluing bread to the ceiling, that was exactly what I did.

  After brushing my teeth and changing into my pj’s, I jumped into bed, closed my eyes, and tried to make sense of the questions racing through my brain.

  And the first one was pretty big: Who’d kidnapped Joanna? And why? I mean, I was sure she had a ton of enemies—probably every single sombra that had sworn their allegiance to La Mano Peluda—so I guessed what I was really wondering was who (or more like what) was actually powerful enough to kidnap the Witch Queen of Toledo?

  Another thing: Provencias were, like, the most protected places in the entire world. They were charmed and spelled and warded and filled with all sorts of powerful objects designed to keep evil out. So how exactly had it gotten in? And why had everyone suddenly abandoned the place?

  Then there was that golden egg.… Was it worth a gazillion dollars like Violet said? Probably. But I couldn’t see mythological beings fighting over something because it was valuable. Most sombras didn’t even care about money. They didn’t use it. Which meant there had to be more to it than that. But what? What was so special about that egg? Why had Joanna been fighting so desperately to keep it out of her kidnappers’ hands? And why did her kidnappers want it so badly?