The Fourth Ruby Read online

  Gwen chased after him, slinging the tail of her scarf over her shoulder. “Where, exactly, are you meeting the professor?”

  “Don’t you have someplace else to be?” he asked, wheeling around.

  “Of course I do. But I have to stay with you until I can hand you off to Professor Tanner.”

  Hand you off, as if Jack were a child passing between parents. “I. Don’t. Need. Babysitting.”

  “Yes. You. Do.” Gwen looked past him up the plaza, gauging his trajectory. “Are you . . . meeting Tanner at the Ministry of Secrets?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How do you even know where the door is?”

  Jack shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and frowned at her. Now she was just being obnoxious. He knew things. Maybe he hadn’t actually known where the Ministry of Secrets was until the professor had told him that morning, but he sure wasn’t going to tell her that. “Why shouldn’t I know where it is?”

  “Because it’s the Ministry of Secrets, not the Ministry of Things-everybody-knows-and-we-all-discuss-over-tea, now, is it?”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “I know a lot of things.” Gwen hooked his arm and pulled him north across the pavers, as if Jack hadn’t already been heading in that direction. She snapped her fingers. “The Crown Jewels. That’s why you’re meeting him down in Spookville,” she said, using the nickname for the Ministry of Secrets. Their agents were known as spooks. Agents of the Ministry of Guilds were known as toppers, thanks to their love of top hats, and the agents of the Ministry of Dragons were called dragos. In turn, the spooks, dragos, and toppers—who all considered the Ministry of Trackers to be a bunch of lowly commoners—referred to them as crumbs.

  Jack said nothing, but Gwen was right. She excelled at deduction, which was often really annoying. The professor had promised him a few guided sparks on the famous gems in the Crown Jewels collection. During the touristy hours, the jewels were on display in the Tower, but there would be no privacy during that time. Ever. After teatime, though, the whole room descended on a slanted elevator, deep into the headquarters of the Ministry of Secrets, into the most secure vault in all of London.

  They crossed Tower Hill Lane and entered a memorial that looked like a cross between a miniature Roman temple and an open mausoleum. Wide rectangular columns, plated with bronze, formed a long hall that supported a Parthenon-style roof.

  Gwen came to a halt between the first two columns. “No one can get into the Ministry of Secrets without a spook escort, not even Tanner.” She folded her arms, taking on an expression that Jack liked to call her Encyclopedia Kincaidia look. “Mo-Mos, book three, chapter eight, rule two: ‘No person or animal shall enter a Ministry of Secrets facility unaccompanied by an agent.’ ”

  “Mo-Mos?” Jack walked ahead of her into the hall, looking for a particular bronze panel.

  “It’s short for ‘The Manuals of the Ministry of Secrets.’ ”

  On the second column to the right, Jack found the panel the professor had told him about. Each one was embossed with the name of a lost merchant ship and the names of the crew that had perished with it. But this panel’s names were uncannily anonymous.

  SMITH, H. C.

  SMITH, J.

  SMITH, W. B.

  The list of coincidental crewmen went on, every one of them a Smith—except for the captain, whose name was Johnson. “So you’re saying you’ve read the top-secret spook manual.”

  “Manuals,” Gwen corrected him. “Plural. And yes, I have.”

  “Then tell me how the Ministry of Secrets knows for sure who’s an agent and who’s not.”

  “Rule three: ‘Agents of the Ministry of Secrets will have DNA access to all facilities that meet their clearance level.’ ”

  “Humph. DNA access, huh?” Jack laid his palm flat on the many Smiths, raising an eyebrow at Gwen. The Smiths glowed for an instant, and then four of the huge granite tiles at their feet dissolved before their eyes, exposing a deep stairwell of glistening steps—white marble, flecked with silver.

  “That can’t be right.”

  Jack lowered a foot to the first step. “You don’t have to come. You did say you had someplace else to be.”

  But Gwen only huffed and tromped past him, heading down the stairs.

  He watched her go. “So I guess you don’t, then.”

  Zzzap.

  The smart remark had barely escaped Jack’s lips when an orange lightning bolt flashed at the back of his mind, exactly like the one he had sensed during the Hunt.

  Zzzap. It happened again.

  Jack glanced around. Black taxis rolled by on Tower Lane. Pedestrians, huddled beneath their winter coats, hurried along the sidewalk. But he saw nothing that might have caused the strange flash. Gwen had reached the first landing. He rushed down the steps to catch up.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE GLISTENING STEPS ended between two colossal figures—a white statue of a man with the head of a jackal and a black statue of a woman with the head of a bird. The two held aloft an ornamented block etched with hieroglyphs.

  “To see yet remain unseen,” said Gwen, scanning the block as she and Jack passed beneath it.

  Jack glanced over at her, narrowing his eyes. “You can read that?”

  She gave him a little smile, a single bounce of her freckles, the first freckle bounce he had seen in a long time.

  They stepped down onto a midnight-blue marble floor. Set into the stone was a seal made from some dark silver alloy—tungsten, maybe. Two giant Vs lay one on top of the other within a circular boundary, and at their center was a lidless eye. Jack had the unshakable feeling that it could see them.

  Hanging above the seal, a good twenty feet over their heads, was a copy of the mini-temple-mausoleum monument where he had found the Smiths, except the spooks’ version included huge statues between the rectangular columns. Each faceless figure was dressed for a different era, in long capes, robes, or overcoats. Jack had the feeling they were all scowling down at him. Or rather, they were scowling up. The monument was upside down, and so was almost everything else. He nudged Gwen’s arm and pointed. “Um . . . Gwen . . .”

  Steps led up from all four sides of the temple. In the atrium above, men and women in striped suits and silk dresses walked inverted along bridges and balconies, defying gravity. Then it occurred to Jack that the floor at his feet had a bowl shape to it, terminating at the seal. It wasn’t a floor at all. He and Gwen were standing on a shallow domed ceiling.

  “Illusion,” whispered Gwen. “Trickery. Stock in trade for the spooks. Mo-Mos, book one, chapter six, rule six: ‘To remain unseen is not always to hide. More often it is to fool the eye.’ The spooks call this the Mobius Tower. Supposed to be a nightmare for tracker senses.” She snorted. “Doesn’t look so bad.” She reached deep into the pocket of her coat and withdrew a green bouncing ball. “I bet the whole thing’s a hologram.”

  After a quick glance around to see that no one was watching, Gwen tossed the ball high in the air. It flew past the temple of faceless spooks, hit the inverted steps, and bounced down again. She gave Jack a scrunched-up smile and raised her hand to catch it. “See.”

  But the ball never reached her. It slowed and reversed course, returning to the steps and bouncing up them with diminishing gusto until it rolled across an adjoining bridge and bumped the foot of a spook with jet-black hair. He picked up the ball with a pale hand, shot a glare at the two teens, and slipped it into the pocket of his pin-striped suit.

  Jack shook his head. “I have to get to the Vault. The professor said to take the south hallway from the seal, then down three levels, east, south, and east again.” There were only two hallways leading away from the floor-slash-ceiling. Jack turned left, in the direction he knew to be south.

  But Gwen grabbed his sleeve. “Wait.” She looked up at the inverted atrium and down at Jack again and then dragged him the other way.

  “But we have to go south. That’s—”r />
  “Don’t talk about it. You’ll hurt your brain. Trust me.”

  Ice-blue lamps glowed in the marble hall that led to the next stair, reflecting off the tungsten trim. Jack and Gwen went down—the normal down—three levels and stopped at the adjoining hallway, where Gwen made a dance in the air with her fingers, as if doing complex geometry.

  “Mrs. Hudson says the Mobius Tower is like an octopus beneath London, with tentacles reaching from the observatory at Greenwich to the headquarters of MI6, Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. Remember every turn or we’ll get hopelessly lost.” She made one more gesture, nodded to herself, and pulled him to the right.

  Their path ended at a small chamber, where a man and a woman sat on a bench against the left wall. His suit was black, with a silver scarf. Her dress was gray, with a tiny matching top hat resting amid tightly wound braids of black hair. They said nothing to the teens, but Jack noticed the woman’s hand, covered in a black lace glove, moved within her partner’s. Her fingers flicked and tapped in the spook touch code.

  There were no exits. Strange artwork of the same tungsten alloy covered the opposite wall, and two lines of glyphs formed an archway at the center. The largest glyph was the ministry’s eye seal.

  “Dead end or doorway?” whispered Gwen.

  Jack nodded at the glyphs. “You tell me.”

  She didn’t answer.

  Behind them, the spook woman’s fingers were still flicking. She did not look happy. Jack clenched his teeth, trying to whisper without moving his lips. “You read the Egyptian inscription in the stairwell, didn’t you?”

  “That’s not Egyptian. It’s spook-script,” countered Gwen, whispering through her teeth as well. “And I guessed, okay? All I did was recite the spook motto. To see yet remain unseen. With all those eyes, what else would it have said?”

  Jack cast an embarrassed smile at the spooks.

  The man looked disinterested, but the woman glowered back at him.

  Gwen elbowed his arm. “Didn’t your precious professor tell you what to do when you got here?”

  The finger flicking stopped. The man stood up, exposing his true size for the first time. He was bigger than Shaw.

  “Jack,” hissed Gwen. “Anytime now.”

  Playing a hunch, Jack laid his hand against the seal. The arch and all its glyphs glowed blue for an instant, and then the marble dematerialized. It was a door. He glanced over his shoulder at the big spook. The man stopped, gave him a suspicious scowl, and returned to his bench. Gwen had been right about the rules. Jack’s DNA was as good as a backstage pass.

  He gave the two spooks a weak smile and a thumbs-up as Gwen yanked him across the threshold, into a room filled with glittering treasure.

  “Whoa.”

  A sword on a velvet pillow was the first thing to catch Jack’s eye. The whole of the blade was polished silver, and the hilt was pure gold, with guards formed into the heads of a lion and a unicorn. It was huge and epic—a sword for heroes. Beside it was another, with a hilt and scabbard covered in jewels. That one was a touch too gaudy for his tastes.

  After the swords came a solid gold punch bowl big enough to bathe in, and matching jewel-encrusted goblets that could not possibly have been dishwasher safe. Jack saw gilded armor, sparkling tiaras, jeweled necklaces and bracelets—all protected by nothing more than the kind of rope chains you might find at a movie theater.

  What he did not see was any sign of the professor.

  Gwen had stopped deeper in, at the end of a long pedestal topped with seven crowns and one enormous scepter. She stood with her hands on her hips, frowning at him.

  Jack gave her a little shrug. “The professor had some errands to run. Maybe he’s delayed.” He clasped his hands behind his back and walked past her, inspecting the crowns. He paused before the biggest—the one with the golden scepter lying on a pillow beside it.

  By far, the largest stone in the vault was the massive diamond that topped the scepter, glittering in the spotlights like a captured galaxy. But Jack’s eyes were soon drawn to the crown itself and the big ruby in its band. The flow of reds beneath the ruby’s smooth surface merged the bright translucence of hard candy with the near black of thickening blood. He had a sudden, overwhelming desire to touch it.

  Jack leaned across the rope. He would spark. Sure. That was why he had come in the first place, wasn’t it? But he wouldn’t step into the vision without the professor there to help him. He would just . . . look. His hand stretched out, almost of its own accord.

  “What are you doing?” Gwen smacked him across the knuckles.

  He pulled back, cradling his smarting hand. “I just . . . wanted to see. You know . . . spark.”

  “Well, don’t. It’s a bad idea. You don’t know where that thing has been.”

  He started to turn away, then stopped. Why did he always let her push him around? Jack stepped up to the rope again. “I know what I’m doing, okay? You don’t have to treat me like I’m brand-new anymore.”

  She opened her mouth as if to respond and then snapped it closed again.

  Jack puffed up his chest and reached out again. He did take one extra precaution, though. He slipped his other hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the coolness of the zed—to be safe, because the professor wasn’t there to help him.

  “Jack, don’t—”

  Gwen’s voice went silent the moment his fingers made contact with the stone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  JACK HAD CERTAIN EXPECTATIONS going into the spark. The ruby was at the center of a crown. Kings and queens wore crowns in castle halls, or riding in carriages amid throngs of adoring subjects. He had figured the spark would drop him into some similar picturesque scenario.

  He had figured wrong.

  Jack fell right smack into the middle of a medieval battle.

  His feet sank into stinking mud, weighed down by steel armor ornamented with gold—a king’s armor. Bodies lay all around, some in armor like his, though much plainer, and others in rags tied on with leather straps. A knight with a plumed helmet and a purple cape swung an ax straight for his head. Jack raised a shield strapped to his left arm to deflect the blow.

  Sort of.

  Jack had no control over the shield, or his clinking, clanking armored body for that matter. Both belonged to whichever idiotic not-safe-in-my-castle monarch was wearing the ruby at the time. Jack was sparking the way he usually did, with no control over anything, not even his voice.

  The knight swung again, shouting in French. Another soldier shouted back, and Jack caught the word dyooc at the end of the exchange. He mulled that one over as a broadsword in his right hand made an unsuccessful jab at purple-cape guy. He watched the sword bounce off the Frenchman’s shield. Duke, maybe? Great. So a French duke was trying to kill him this time instead of a psychotic French clockmaker. Jack was moving up in the world, but why were they always French?

  A cry from the right. The idiotic not-safe-in-my-castle monarch turned toward a short bearded man fighting his way through the melee, shouting at his English king in a thick Welsh accent. Jack couldn’t understand a single word. When the vision turned back to the Frenchman, the ax was falling again. Jack’s shield hung too low. On instinct, he jumped out of the way.

  Mistake.

  Big one.

  Wet muck soaked Jack’s sneakers. He felt the gray, seeping cold of it creeping up the legs of his blue jeans. His jeans. His sneakers. Jack had jumped out of the ruby’s perspective and into the spark. And Tanner wasn’t there to guide him out again. He tried to breathe, vaguely aware that each breath was more a case of firing synapses than expanding lungs. What had the professor taught him? Think about escape. Look for an exit. The battle raged around him. Men screaming, trying to kill one another. And then it hit him. What exit? Jack was outside.

  The French duke’s ax had hit its mark. Half the golden crown welded to the king’s helmet had split off, including the ruby. The king lay in the mud beside it.
/>   Unintelligible-bearded-Welsh guy cried out and dove at the duke with what Jack considered to be the world’s smallest sword. The Frenchman knocked him away as if he had hardly noticed him. In truth, Jack had hardly noticed the Welsh guy either. He could not take his eyes off the ruby. He wanted nothing more than to rescue the beautiful red stone from the indignity of that revolting battlefield ooze.

  The duke, it seemed, felt the same. The king moaned, struggling to get his knees underneath him and exposing his back, but the Frenchman failed to press his advantage. He dropped the ax and went for the ruby.

  Something snapped inside Jack. He couldn’t let the duke get the stone. “No!” he shouted, and he and the duke merged as one man. They lifted the ruby from the mud together, holding it up to the red sky.

  Shink.

  Jack looked down. The world’s smallest sword protruded from his chest.

  But it wasn’t really Jack’s chest. It was the duke’s chest. Jack stepped to the side and watched the Frenchman fall. The duke awkwardly grasped at his back, unable to reach the hilt and remove the offending blade. Jack laughed out loud to see him struggling. He snapped his mouth shut in surprise. What he was seeing was horrible. Why would he laugh?

  Unintelligible-bearded-Welsh guy pried the jewel from the duke’s fingers and held it aloft, shouting, “For Henry!”

  For once, Jack had understood him.

  Oddly, Semi-intelligible-bearded-Welsh guy ignored the actual King Henry, who was still on all fours in the muck, trying to regain his senses. Not that it mattered. The Welshman had barely gotten the words out before a blacksmith’s hammer slammed into the side of his head. A French foot soldier dressed in rags dropped him like a sack of potatoes, right on top of the duke. The foot soldier snatched up the ruby and ran.

  “Stop! Thief!” Jack gave chase. As he ran, everything and everyone around him took on a red, gemlike quality. A bad sign. But all he could think about was the ruby.