Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7 LATER THAT NIGHT AROUND MIDNIGHT Charlie opened his eyes and heard Lulu screaming. "The cloud monster! The cloud monster!" He looked out the window, and a hideous green cloud was swirling in the sky. All of a sudden, it

twisted into a giant face. A giant, sneering face… a face Charlie recognized. "Aaaaaaaahhhh!" Charlie screamed. And then everything went dark. Charlie's heart pounded. Where was Lulu? Why was it suddenly so quiet? And wait. Where was he? In bed, he realized. He'd had a nightmare. Charlie put his hand on his chest and took a deep breath. This is bad, he thought. Gordon had tormented him at school. At the beach… and now in his dreams! Charlie got out of bed and took deep breaths. He glanced in the mirror above his dresser. Even in the dim light of the moon, Charlie could see his swollen lip in the reflection. He didn't look like Charles the Great. He looked like Charles the Ugly. Charles the Scared. Charles the Weak.

A few tears slipped out. He wiped them away. Enough, he told himself. He sat down on his bed, switched on his lantern, and reached for Meraki's book. Reading about Meraki's life always made him feel better. He'd had a rough time, too, and look at him! The most famous magician in the world. One of the best chapters was near the end, when Meraki was kidnapped by two men. Charlie settled back on his pillow and started to read. I was walking home from a show, enjoying the night, and two men stopped me. They both had guns, and they ordered me to walk with them to a filthy building. I figured out very quickly that they did not want my money. They had been sent by my enemy. He's a magician named Thedo the Powerful. For years he'd been trying to steal the secret of my most popular trick: The Floating Woman. It had taken me years to create that trick. It was my treasure.

Thedo had sent spies to my shows in the past. They'd broken into my hotel rooms looking for the sketches of how the trick was done. And now he'd sent these brutes. The men took me to a small room, sat me down at a table, and shoved a notebook in front of me. "Write it down," the taller of the men demanded. "A magician never reveals his secrets!" I replied. "Tell us or we'll shoot you," the other man said. I almost gave up. I picked up the pencil and began to draw the trick. But then a voice whispered through my mind—my own voice. You have power. But what power could that be? I wondered. These men were very strong. They both had guns. And then it came to me: my magic skills. I could use magic to trick them. To scare them into letting me go. I thought hard, and somehow came up with a plan.

Luckily I always carried a few small props with me—cards, some coins, and a small vial of red liquid called magic blood. The vial was made of the thinnest glass. It was meant to be easily broken during a trick, and the shards would disappear into dust. I stood up. "I was raised by a family of snake charmers," I said to the men. (This was not true, of course, but the men didn't know that.) "I was bitten by cobras many times," I continued. (In fact I had been bitten only once by a cobra, while visiting a village in India.) "The venom gave me powers," I told the men. (Quite the opposite, that cobra bite had nearly killed me.) "And now, if you do not let me go, I will use my cobra powers to take all of the blood from your bodies. Every drop." I used a low, rasping voice. I flicked my tongue several times in a snakelike way. I swayed my body slightly, as a cobra does when it rises from a snake

charmer's basket. I rolled my eyes up into my head so that only the whites showed. The men looked at each other in confusion. And here was my chance. I snuck my hand into my pocket and grabbed the fake blood. Keeping it hidden in my hand, I reached up to the taller man's head, right next to his ear. I squeezed the vial so it cracked. The magic blood sprayed onto the man's face, the wall, and the ceiling. It was a gruesome show.