Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26 In the underground parking garage of the Bell Tower Hotel in Xian, China, Jonah Wizard emerged from his limo just in time to see a six- foot terracotta warrior figure being loaded carefully onto a truck by two uniformed workmen. "Hey, where'd you get—?" The words were barely out of his mouth when a second warrior was toted by, this time under the supervision of Cora Wizard. "Mom— where did these come from?" "We're the Janus," she explained. "Do you really think we can't whip up a few statues to replace the ones you broke? Careful with that!" she snapped as one of the porters sideswiped a pillar. "It's supposed to look two thousand years old, not two million!"

She turned back to her son. "I've been thinking about your request to be relieved of your responsibilities in the clue hunt." "And?" he prompted anxiously. In answer, her hand came around and slapped him across the face hard enough to send him sprawling. He scrambled up again. "What's up with that, yo?" "I am not 'yo,'" Cora Wizard said through clenched teeth. "I am the head of this branch, which is bigger than you or I or Mozart or Jane Cahill herself. The future of our kind, from Spielberg to the lowliest juggler on a unicycle, lies in the thirty-nine clues, and I won't allow my son or anyone else to take the Janus out of the running for this prize. Especially now that we know there are Madrigals involved." "Are you sure about that?" Jonah challenged. "What if the kid was just blowing smoke?" "I should have figured it out years ago," she berated herself. "No wonder Grace and her oh-soperfect daughter never allied themselves with one

of the branches. We all thought it was part of their high-and-mighty routine— always above the fray, never dirtying their hands. And all this time, they were the lowest of the low." "I'm not cut out for the clue hunt, Mom," Jonah pleaded. "I'm not good at it." "You are Janus," his mother said firmly. "You are more gifted and brilliant than all the Lucian, Tomas, and Ekat troglodytes put together. For centuries, we have played second fiddle to those Lucian butchers, when our qualities dwarf theirs. And do you want to know the reason?" He stared at her, totally abashed. "The reason is that Lucians stop at nothing to achieve their goals. They lie, they cheat, they steal." Her laser-guided eyes locked with her son's. "And they kill." Jonah Wizard had spent his entire life in service to the Janus branch. On their instructions, he had become a rapper, a TV star, and an international mogul. He had no doubt what was expected of him next.

With the fall climbing season over, Tingri wasn't much of a tourist attraction, so they had the guesthouse all to themselves. Amy, Dan, and Nellie sat around the open fire pit in the kitchen, completely exhausted, but too excited to sleep. Saladin had no such problem. He was curled up on the hearth and hadn't moved for hours. "This is wonderful," Nellie murmured contentedly. "The heat of the fire, the cold, dry air. Someone ought to open a resort in Tingri. Even the smoke smells richer, earthier. Maybe it's the altitude." Dan laughed without humor. "Maybe it's the yak poop. That's what they heat with up here." "And cook, too?" Amy asked in dismay. She pushed away her cup of sweet aromatic tea. They had spent the evening filling each other in on their separate adventures throughout China, marveling at how such different paths had brought the two of them to the foot of Everest at almost the same moment. Dan howled with delight at Amy's description of Saladin's plunge off the Great Wall. And Amy

laughed just as hard when Dan tried to convince her that their cousin Jonah wasn't all bad. "Seriously," he insisted, "you've got to feel sorry for someone who's trying to live up to guys like Mozart and Rembrandt. And that mother! He could sell a trillion CDs, and it would never be good enough for her. She's like a cross between Aunt Beatrice and Medusa. Man, she practically swallowed her own head when I told her we were Madrigals." Amy drew in a sharp breath. "You told her that?" "I couldn't help it. I was just too mad." She nodded. "I hear you. But you know how the Cahills feel about Madrigals. The other teams will be gunning for us twice as much as before. We have no idea where to look for the next clue. And which of our darling cousins will be willing to trade information with us now? Nobody would form an alliance with a Madrigal." Dan looked crestfallen, then suddenly leaped to his feet. "Wait a minute! Maybe we're not so dead in the water. Remember the Beard Buddha from

Grace's house? Well, the real thing is on Mount Song. In a cave behind it, I found these ancient burned-up pieces of lab equipment. Wasn't Gideon Cahill's lab destroyed in a fire?" Amy nodded, intrigued. "Where's all that stuff now?" "It was too much to bring, so I re-hid it. But there was one thing I couldn't leave." He reached into the pocket of his jeans and drew out the painted miniature in the gold frame. Amy was thunderstruck. "A picture of Mom?" "Look closer. The clothes, the hair. That's not Mom. It's old. Maybe centuries old." Amy took the miniature and peered at it. "An ancestor, then." "A Cahill ancestor," Dan amended. "And when you've got Cahills—" "They're usually mixed up in the thirty-nine clues." Amy gently pried the oval miniature out of the frame. The portrait was unmarked and unsigned. But engraved on the inside of the frame was: PROPERTY OF ANNE BONNY. "Anne Bonny!" Amy repeated. "She was a pirate