Free The Key by Michael Grant Page B

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    â€œStop banging, ye’ll ruin mah door. That’s hert o’ oak, ye cannae buy wood lik’ that anymair!”
    MacGuffin was concerned about the woodwork.
    â€œThen open the door and give me the Key!” Mack yelled. “And our phones!”
    This time the silence dragged on and on. But Mack made a “stay put” gesture at his posse and they waited.
    Then, with a clattering of chains and locks, the door opened a crack. Bristly beard and a single eye came into view. Every camera was rolling.
    MacGuffin thrust out a hairy hand holding a stone circle perhaps seven inches across, with a hole in the middle.
    Mack did not want to get near enough to that beard to take the stone. He nodded at Stefan, who stepped forward.
    â€œGrrrr,” MacGuffin said furiously at Stefan.
    â€œGrrrr back at you,” Stefan snarled.
    â€œThe phones,” Mack said, his voice hard.
    A fairy hand pushed a burlap bag out of the door, then withdrew.
    The door slammed shut.
    Mack turned to the somewhat disappointed tourists. “Listen, folks: we’ve got what we came for. We have to go. But you can all stay and drive that guy crazy.”
    No one likes a spoiler, but no one likes a story that skips over an interesting development, either. Mack and the Magnifica have to move on. But just so you know: within a few days MacGuffin had cracked and opened his castle for regular tours. In fact, he was making a pretty penny from a gift shop that featured William Blisterthöng MacGuffin dolls and a recording of MacGuffin’s craziest rants.
    Connie appeared in the background of a YouTube video but was never seen by the public. The rumor is that she moved to Ireland to avoid Frank’s revenge.
    As for Mack, he would be going to France. Why? Because Sylvie said, “There are two others like us, Mack. They are hiding in Paris. I risked everything to join you so that you and your friends might save them.”
    â€œSave them from what?” Mack asked.
    â€œThey have all come to Paris, Mack, all the forces of evil. They knew there were three of us who had gathered there, so they came to Paris to kill us and leave you powerless to complete the Twelve.”
    â€œWhen you say, ‘They have all,’ what do you mean by that?”
    â€œThe Tong Elves. Bowands. Skirrit. They say there is even a Gudridan—a giant—and maybe more. All under the command of two people: the man in green and his apprentice—he who is the twelfth of us.”
    â€œValin?”
    â€œYes,” Sylvie said. “My half brother, Valin, the twelfth of the Twelve.”

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Twelve
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    S ylvie had a short and emotionally repressed parting from her grandparents, who apparently understood that she would have to be gone for a while saving the world. There were shrugs, a few small hand gestures, and they did the kiss-kiss-on-the-cheeks thing.
    The now–Magnificent Five plus Stefan crammed back into the car and drove with their usual destructiveness—two sideswiped cars, a crushed stop sign, and a young woman on a bike who had to plow into a ditch to escape injury 19 —to reach the Clansman Hotel, where a boat could be found to take them out onto Loch Ness itself.
    Normally the boat would take a whole load of tourists, but the tourists were all still busy at Castle Blisterthöng—as it would come to be known—so Mack and his friends had the boat to themselves.
    The captain was extremely reluctant to allow them to stop in the middle of the loch and use his megaphone to begin shouting at the water. But, as you may recall, Mack had a million-dollar credit card and, again, it’s kind of amazing what you can get people to do when you have that much money.
    Boat rental: 500 GBP. 20
    So the boat, HMS Heather Lochlear , stopped and wallowed in the midst of Loch Ness. It’s a fairly narrow lake—you can see both sides at once—but quite long, so you can’t see end to end. They