With his hands tied behind his back, Marv lowered his head like a charging ram and burst into the adjoining room, Spencer close behind.
Walter was strapped to a chair, a lamp illuminating his face as in a professional interrogation. Five angry BEM workers were scrambling around the room, gathering supplies to fight the intruders. Among them, Spencer recognized the skinny man with the pointy nose, the pimply recess aide, and the fat guy from the gym’s emergency exit. The other two were strangers.
Marv and Spencer paused in the doorway, surveying the area. The room was set up like Walter’s Rebel Closet, minus the vat of gurgling gray Glop. Vacuums, mops, brooms, and a myriad of other Glopified tools were ready for use. But Spencer was only searching for something sharp to cut the janitors free.
“Chaaaarge!” Spencer shouted when he spotted an open pocketknife on top of the little refrigerator. Like a faithful warhorse, Marv galloped forward. He head-butted the skinny dude and sent him sprawling on the floor. The pimply guy bounced from the bed and grasped a handful of Marv’s shaggy black hair, but it was impossible to hang on while Marv wore the glove.
One of the strangers tossed a well-aimed fistful of vac dust, and Spencer’s shield finally went down. At the same time, the fat BEM worker donned his own latex glove and grabbed Marv by the throat.
Spencer dove aside, springing from one queen bed to the next. On his way, he grabbed a pushbroom from the wall. If he remembered correctly from Walter’s training, the pushbroom should send his enemies flying. Spencer struck the nearest man once . . . twice.
Yes! The pushbroom flung the BEM worker helplessly toward the ceiling. Another man was charging, but Spencer hurled the pushbroom like a javelin and the man floated backward over the bed.
Marv was thrashing on the floor, his face turning beet red as the fat BEM worker continued to choke. Spencer reached the fridge, grabbed the pocketknife, and ran to Walter. With two cuts from the sharp blade, the warlock was free.
Walter Jamison leapt to his feet, snatched a mop from the rack, and dealt a painful blow to the back of the fat man’s head. Marv gasped for breath, veins still bulging across his forehead.
Walter grabbed a second mop, stepped over Marv’s body, and began casting an impenetrable network of elongated mop strings. Spencer rolled Marv onto his side and cut the ropes around his wrists.
“Thanks, kid,” Marv huffed. “That was brave of you to come alone.”
“I didn’t come alone,” Spencer said. Suddenly he remembered his mom, wrestling with Leslie in the other room, and Daisy waiting nervously outside.
“My mom’s over there,” he said. “She was supposed to stay with Daisy outside. We’ve got to help her! She doesn’t know what she’s up against.” Spencer stepped forward, but Walter cut him off.
“Marv,” Walter said, still spinning a defensive net with the mops, “take Spencer to help Daisy. I’ll hold off these three and get Mrs. Zumbro.”
“Come on.” Marv grabbed Spencer’s shoulder and steered him toward the window. In the lighted parking lot below, Spencer saw Daisy sprinting away from the hotel. Close behind, and gaining fast, Garth Hadley and Leslie Sharmelle descended on brooms.
“Oh, no!” Spencer cried. “Daisy has the nail. If they catch her . . .”
“Get a broom.” Marv jerked open the window and pulled off the screen. With a broom in hand, the big man clambered onto the sill just as two BEM workers launched from the next window.
“Hey!” Marv shouted, striking his bristles on the ground and jumping into a collision course. Spencer followed, leaving his mother tied in the next room and Walter to rescue her.
Once in the air, the broom’s course was unalterable. Marv sped forward and smashed into the skinny guy. Marv’s bulk won out and the BEM worker’s broom was knocked askew.
Spencer’s launch had set him higher than all the others. From his bird’s-eye view, he saw Garth Hadley and Leslie Sharmelle close the gap on Daisy.
Spencer heard the faint suction of vac dust and saw Daisy topple to the blacktop. Her broom dropped and shot off on its own. The mop tumbled from her grasp.
“No!” Spencer shouted, anger flooding through him. Garth picked up the mop and stood guard while Leslie pried open Daisy’s clenched hand. Spencer floated, trying uselessly to make his broom descend.
“Got it!” he heard Leslie shout. Spencer felt his stomach sink. The Barbie woman stood up and tossed the tiny object to Garth Hadley. They had found the bronze nail!
Too far away to do anything, Marv was fistfighting the two BEM workers in the parking lot. Spencer finally touched ground as Leslie and Garth reached a silver Lexus sports car.
Spencer had a chance to reach them if he stayed low and kicked off with enough force. The boy sprinted a few steps, angled his body forward, and whacked the broom bristles on the blacktop. The broom streaked forward, Spencer swinging a leg over the handle and riding it like a stick horse.
Leslie was in the driver’s seat and the motor revved as she turned on the car. Given his current angle and speed, Spencer guessed he would hit the car’s windshield in about a second and a half. Whether he had enough thrust to break through, Spencer never got to find out.
In the split second before impact, Garth Hadley leaned out the passenger window and cast the mop he’d stolen from Daisy. The strings wrangled Spencer from the broom and the mop retracted as Leslie peeled out. Spencer was caught like a bug in a butterfly net as the car sped for the exit.
Suddenly, big hands snatched him out of the mop strings, and Spencer felt totally disoriented. Marv held Spencer like he’d caught a touchdown pass. Momentum and gravity pulled the two of them over. They collapsed in the parking lot as the silver sports car took the corner too sharply and scraped the exhaust pipe on the curb.
“Daisy?” Spencer whispered, sitting up painfully. The girl was walking toward them. Her face was tear-streaked and her hands and knees were scraped from her fall.
“You all right?” Spencer asked, stumbling to his feet.
“They got the nail,” she sobbed. “I tried to get away, but they came too fast.”
“It’s okay,” Spencer tried to comfort. He clenched his fists in frustration. He never should have left her alone. She really could have been hurt.
Marv stood up, dusting his big belly. The burly janitor was equally scraped and bleeding, and he already had a black eye and loose tooth from his fistfight with the BEM workers. Spencer glanced across the parking lot. The skinny guy and the pimply guy were collapsed on the grass nearby. Apparently, Marv had won.
Suddenly, the side door of the Best Western burst open. The last three BEM workers charged forward, arms laden with Glopified weapons. Spencer felt a surge of fear. What had they done to Walter and his mom?
Weaponless, Marv stepped forward, clenching his beefy fists. Marv was never truly weaponless as long as he had hands. But the BEM workers were coming fast, the first one almost within mop range.
The screech of tires caused Spencer, Daisy, and Marv to whirl around. The Zumbro station wagon rounded the corner of the Best Western, single headlight shining on them. The BEM worker struck at Marv with his mop, but the car intercepted, brakes squealing to a halt in front of Spencer.
Walter rolled down the passenger’s window.
“Get in!”
Chapter 37
“The School Board.”
Looks like we got to you just in time,” Walter Jamison said as the station wagon pulled onto the highway. “Those three BEM workers weren’t going to show you any mercy. Mrs. Zumbro and I barely got away.”
Alice hadn’t said a word. She gripped the steering wheel, unblinking. Spencer noticed the ash-white color of her face.
Welcome to my world, Mom.
Spencer and Daisy were squeezed in by Max’s crumb-filled car seat while Marv sprawled out in the back. There weren’t many cars on the two-lane highway, and Spencer could see the Lexus’s taillights far ahead.
“We’ll never catch them,” Spencer whispered. “They’re driving a sports car.”
This seemed to snap Alice out of her trance. “Hey!” she said. “This baby’s never let us down.” She patted the dashboard. “And she’s been with us as long as you have, Spencer. Is your seat belt buckled, young man?”
Peering over his mom’s shoulder, Spencer saw the speedometer’s needle rising past 70. The whole car was shaking like a jackhammer. He quickly sat back and snapped the seat belt securely across him.
“Your mom gave an impressive show back there,” Walter said. “Knocked two of those guys over with a mop. And she didn’t even use the Glopified end.”
Spencer tried to imagine his mom swinging a mop like a club. It was a stretch of his imagination.
“Turn here,” Walter pointed. “We’ll take the back roads through Welcher. Cut them off at the intersection by Maple Park.”
“You know where they’re going?” Spencer asked anxiously.
“Welcher Elementary School,” Marv said. “It’s a sure bet.”
“But why? If they got the hammer and nail, why would they go back to the school?”
“The School Board,” Walter explained. “Hadley needs it to replace me as the next warlock.”
“What’s the School Board?” Daisy asked.
“When the Founding Witches placed their power into the bronze hammers, they recognized the need for a transfer of power for someone to become a witch or warlock—a rite of passage that would complicate the procedure and discourage thieves from stealing the hammers.
“The Witches formed the School Board—a plank of magical wood that would transfer the power from one warlock to his successor. After the Witches died, the Board was cut into thirteen square pieces. The idea was that each American colony would safeguard one piece. In order for Garth Hadley to take my power, he must pound the nail into the School Board. That resets the nail—kind of like wiping a computer hard drive.
“If Garth manages to do that, he’ll be cloaked in a magical Aura and no one will be able to touch him until he sets his domain. The Aura will provide him a safe walk. All he’ll have to do is choose a building for his domain, pound the nail, and he’ll be the new warlock.”
“But why would he risk going for the Board in Welcher?” Spencer asked. “Why not drive it into one of the other twelve pieces?”
“Welcher is the most accessible,” said Walter. “With time, eight of the pieces were destroyed. Four of the five remaining have been appraised as antique hardwood and fashioned into items that are now safeguarded in museums: picture frames, a historic plaque, an antique clock. Nearly impossible to reach. That leaves one.”
“At our school,” Spencer mused. “But how’d it get there?”
“I brought it with me.” Walter grinned at an old memory. “A year ago, when the BEM withdrew support from the schools, I stole Ninfa from a factory in Florida. With a little help from some Rebel spies, I managed to drive the nail into the remaining School Board. From there, I was protected by the Aura, so I took the Board and established my first domain in Arkansas. The BEM tracked me down, so I moved to Welcher. You know the rest.”
Walter pointed. “Turn left.” Alice spun the wheel and the station wagon squealed around a corner.
“What’ll we do once we reach the school?” asked Spencer.
“Mrs. Zumbro will drop me and Marv in the parking lot and take you two out of harm’s way.”
“But we can help!”
“NO!” Alice and Walter shouted in unison.
“I need to make sure you kids are safe,” the warlock said. “You’ve become too involved already. Marv and I can handle this. If we beat Garth to the School Board, we should be able to defend it.”
“That should be no problem, right?” Spencer said. “Garth will have to search every room to find the School Board, but you guys already know where it is.”
Walter grimaced. “I’m afraid the BEM already did the searching. Why do you think Miss Leslie Sharmelle came to your classroom as a substitute?”
Daisy and Spencer shared an astonished glance.
“The School Board is in Mrs. Natcher’s room?” Spencer couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“And if you haven’t guessed it yet,” Walter said. “It’s actually
your
desk.”
Chapter 38
“Into the school!”
Wait a minute,” Spencer muttered. It took a second to process what Walter just said. His desk? It seemed so ordinary. “My desk is the School Board?”
“Part of it, anyway,” said Walter. “About a square foot. In an attempt to disguise the magic wood, we inlaid the School Board into your desktop.”
Spencer tried to imagine his battered desk, wondering which part was the crucial magical wood. Was it the part with that funny message about Mrs. Natcher smelling like cabbage?
The station wagon rounded the last corner and Alice gunned it down the straight road into Welcher Elementary School. As he craned his neck to see out the windshield, Spencer’s heart sank.
The blue Toyota Garth had once driven was parked askew, the doors wide open.
“Couldn’t be,” Spencer whispered. “Garth was in that silver car with Leslie.”
“More BEM workers,” Marv guessed. “Preparing the way so Garth will have an easy entry once he arrives.”
They didn’t see the worst part until Alice swung the station wagon into the parking lot and its single headlight flashed across the school. The double doors that led into the middle hallway were smashed open. Glass lay in glinting shards, leaving a jagged, dark opening into the school.
“Drop us here.” Walter’s voice was an urgent whisper. Alice screeched to a stop.
“We’re unarmed,” Marv said from the backseat.
“Thanks for mentioning that.” Walter gripped the car door, ready to spring out.
“Take this.” Daisy swung Spencer’s backpack over to Marv. “It’s got vac dust.”
“We’ll need it.”
“Let’s go!” Marv flung open the door and shouldered the backpack. Spencer watched the two janitors cautiously approach the broken school door.
Headlights suddenly flooded the parking lot. Spencer and Daisy whirled around to see a big vehicle speeding toward the station wagon. Squinting against the lights, Spencer saw what it was.
The white BEM van.
Alice threw the car in gear and slammed on the gas. But the acceleration on the old station wagon made a tortoise look fast. Before the tires had made a complete revolution, the BEM van slammed into the side of the Zumbro station wagon.