Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9 Jonah Wizard stood very, very still. He was posing at Madame Tussauds, where everyone who'd been anyone for the past two hundred years had been immortalized as a wax statue. Actually, Jonah was impersonating a wax statue, since the one they were making of him wasn't quite finished yet. Madame Tussauds had just opened for the day, and the room was beginning to fill up with people exclaiming, "They look so real!" In a few minutes, Jonah would move. He'd start with something small, maybe a raised eyebrow. Then he'd segue into some sweet dance move. Music would fill the room, and he'd start singing. Everyone would scream with delight and crowd around. Maybe some of the girls would even faint. Normally, this was the kind of thing Jonah loved. The music, the adoring fans— it was what he lived for. But today… today, he hated it. Today, he wasn't doing this just to thrill his fans

第九章大法师约拿一动不动地站着。 他在杜莎夫人蜡像馆前摆姿势，在那里，过去两百年来的每个大人物都以蜡像的形式永垂不朽。 实际上，约拿是在模仿一个蜡像，因为他们为他制作的蜡像还没有完全完成。 杜莎夫人蜡像馆刚刚开放一天，房间里开始挤满了人，他们惊呼：“它们看起来太真实了！”再过几分钟，约拿就要动了。 他会从小事开始，比如挑起眉毛。 然后他会跳一些甜蜜的舞蹈。 音乐会充满整个房间，他会开始唱歌。 每个人都会高兴得尖叫起来，围在周围。 也许有些女孩会晕倒。 通常，这是约拿喜欢的事情。 音乐，崇拜他的歌迷——这就是他活着的意义。 但是今天，今天，他讨厌它。 今天，他这样做不仅仅是为了刺激他的粉丝

or to promote his music, TV show, energy drinks, pop-up books, or clothing line. Or anything else in the vast, sprawling Jonah Wizard entertainment empire. Today he was just a distraction— a sideshow. While he was singing and dancing and sucking up all the attention in the entire building, his mother planned to pluck out a hint she believed was hidden in the shoe of the William Shakespeare wax statue only a few rooms away. And, just in case that didn't work, she had canisters of poison gas with her. She had grenades. She had a gun. Someone could get hurt, Jonah thought. Someone could be killed. Maybe even some of my fans, because of me. And there was nothing Jonah could do about it. Jonah's mother was blackmailing him. Blackmailing him to stay in the Clue hunt— and do it her way. She'd been livid that he hadn't emerged from the Globe with any leads. "Apparently, you don't care enough about winning the biggest prize in history," she'd said,

或是宣传他的音乐、电视节目、能量饮料、立体书或服装系列。 或者是庞大的乔纳巫师娱乐帝国里的其他东西。 今天他只是一个分散注意力的小插曲。 当他又唱又跳，吸引了整栋楼所有人的注意时，他的母亲计划从几个房间外的威廉·莎士比亚蜡像的鞋里找出一个暗示，她认为这是隐藏在鞋子里的。 为了以防万一，她还带了几罐毒气。 她有手榴弹。她有枪。 有人可能会受伤，乔纳想。 有人可能会被杀。甚至可能是我的一些粉丝，因为我。 约拿也无能为力。 约拿的母亲在勒索他。 勒索他继续寻找线索——按照她的方式去做。 他没有从环球报带出任何线索，这让她很生气。 “显然，你对赢得历史上最大的奖项不够关心，”她说，

glaring at him. "Apparently, you need more incentive." "No, Mom, I tried at the Globe," he'd protested. "It's just— we're not Lucians. I thought of a better way to win, a more Janus way— I could tell you—" "It didn't work, did it? I don't want to hear anything about plans like that," Cora said. She favored him with a thin, heartless smile. "I know what will work." And then she'd called the police herself. She'd driven Jonah to the police station to stand in a lineup and be picked out by witnesses from the Globe. "You see your choices now, don't you?" she'd asked. "You do what I want. Or you go to prison." Thinking about it now, Jonah had to work very hard to keep still. He couldn't really imagine being sent to prison. But Jonah's dad had spelled out exactly what a little bad PR, uncorrected, could do to Jonah's life: TV show—canceled.

怒视着他。“显然，你需要更多的激励。” “不，妈妈，我在《环球报》试过了，”他抗议道。 “只是——我们不是卢西亚人。 我想到了一个更好的办法，一个更像杰努斯的办法——我可以告诉你——”“没用，是吗？ 我不想听到任何关于那样的计划，”科拉说。 她给了他一个淡淡的、无情的微笑。 “我知道什么会起作用。”然后她自己报了警。 她开车把乔纳送到警察局，让他站在一排人中间，然后被《环球报》的目击者认出来。 “你现在看到你的选择了，不是吗？”她问。 “你照我说的做。不然你就得进监狱。” 现在想想，约拿必须努力保持不动。 他无法想象被送进监狱的情景。 但乔纳的父亲已经详细说明了一点糟糕的公关，如果不加以纠正，会对乔纳的生活造成什么影响：电视节目被取消。

Concert dates— canceled. Recording contract— canceled. Trademark T-shirts— put on the 75 percent off sale racks. Maybe even yanked off the shelves and burned because nobody wanted them. Jonah couldn't bear the thought of nobody wanting his T-shirts, his music, his TV show… not wanting him. But if Jonah did what his mother said, his parents would fix everything. Prevent all those possible disasters. Across the room, Jonah's mother winked at him— his cue. Jonah raised an eyebrow, and a girl staring him right in the face jumped back and shrieked. Jonah started dancing and singing, and everything went exactly as he expected: the screams, the fans' delight, the instant enormous crowd, even the fainting girls. So bizarre. It all felt wrong. Even without Mom having to resort to the poison gas, the grenades, the gun. Afterward, Jonah slid into the limo waiting

音乐会日期取消。 录音合同——取消。 商标t恤——放在七五折的货架上。 甚至可能从货架上扯下来烧掉，因为没人要。 乔纳无法忍受没有人想要他的t恤，他的音乐，他的电视节目……不想要他。 但如果约拿照他妈妈说的做，他的父母会解决一切问题。 防止所有这些可能发生的灾难。 在房间的另一边，乔纳的母亲对他眨了眨眼——这是他的暗示。 约拿扬起眉毛，一个女孩正盯着他的脸，跳了回来，尖叫起来。 约拿开始载歌载舞，一切都如他所料：尖叫声、粉丝们的欢声笑语、瞬间聚集的人群，甚至还有晕倒的女孩。 太奇怪了。一切都感觉不对劲。 即使妈妈不用动用毒气，手榴弹和枪。 之后，乔纳溜进等候的豪华轿车

outside Madame Tussauds. For perhaps the first time in his life, he didn't even glance out at the crowd as the car pulled away from the curb. "I know Mom called you. Did you take care of everything?" he asked his dad. Broderick kept his head bent over his BlackBerry. "Little problem," he said. "One witness won't recant. Won't change her story at all." "Pay her off," Jonah said. Finally, Broderick looked at his son. "She says she doesn't want our money," he said. "Everybody wants money," Jonah replied, a bit of his old confidence returning. "Offer her more." For a moment, he almost felt close to his father because he knew they would be thinking the same thing: Neither of them had ever met anybody who didn't want money. But Broderick was shaking his head. "She won't take anything," he said. "But— she said she would meet with you if we wanted. To talk about it." "Oh—one of those," Jonah said. He laughed,

杜莎夫人蜡像馆外。也许这是他有生以来第一次，当汽车驶离路边时，他甚至没有看一眼人群。 “我知道妈妈给你打过电话。你把一切都安排好了吗？”他问他爸爸。 布罗德里克一直在低头看他的黑莓手机。 “没什么问题，”他说。 “有一个证人不肯认罪。 也不会改变她的故事。” “付钱给她，”约拿说。 最后，布罗德里克看着他的儿子。 “她说她不想要我们的钱，”他说。 “每个人都想要钱，”乔纳回答，他往日的信心又恢复了一点。 “给她更多。”有那么一刻，他几乎觉得自己离父亲很近，因为他知道他们会有同样的想法：他们俩都没见过不想要钱的人。 但是布罗德里克摇了摇头。 “她什么也不吃，”他说。 “可是——她说如果我们愿意，她愿意和你见面。 谈谈这件事。”“哦——其中之一，”约拿说。 他笑了,

and he didn't even have to try to make it sound normal. "Yo, why didn't you say so?" It was just another fan, someone who thought the chance to meet him was worth more than any amount of money. He could respect that. Right now, that was exactly what he needed. Half an hour later, they pulled up in front of a drab hotel. "You might want to really turn on the charm," Broderick said, with a look Jonah couldn't quite identify. "I know," Jonah said coldly. "It'll be off the chain. Like always." He strode out of the car, up the cracked sidewalk. At the front desk, Broderick said, "My son is supposed to be meeting one of your guests in, ah, your sitting room?" The worker pointed to a broken-down collection of chairs. Jonah whirled around. "Yo, yo, yo, my homie—"

他甚至都不用努力让这听起来很正常。 “哟，你怎么不早说呢？”这只是另一个粉丝，一个认为与他见面的机会比任何钱都有价值的人。 他可以尊重这点。现在，这正是他所需要的。 半小时后，他们在一家单调乏味的旅馆前停了下来。 “你可能真的要施展魅力了，”布罗德里克说，脸上的表情乔纳不太明白。 “我知道，”乔纳冷冷地说。 “它会很便宜的。像总。” 他大步走出汽车，走上有裂缝的人行道。 在前台，布罗德里克说：“我儿子应该在你的客厅里见你的一位客人？”工人指着一堆坏了的椅子。 约拿转过身来。“哟，哟，哟，我的老乡——”