Jake continued to watch father and son hug. He could not look away from such raw affection. Grief and longing burned through him, tempered by a cold vein of jealousy. He knew it wasn’t fair to feel that way, but he couldn’t help it.
Brandon broke from his father’s embrace, his face pinched with worry. “Jake, if you want, my dad can drive you home, too.”
Jake retreated two steps and shook his head. He had to swallow hard to clear his throat. “I … I’ve got my bike.”
“Son,” Brandon’s father said to Jake, “it’s no trouble.”
Jake bristled at the casual use of the word son. The man was not his father.
“Thank you, Mr. Phan. But I’d rather go by myself.”
Brandon’s father waited a moment longer, then slipped an arm around his son’s shoulder. “If you’re sure …”
Jake nodded and headed toward his bike. As he walked, the sun-baked concrete began to burn his bare feet. He increased his pace, but it wasn’t the heat that drove him onward. He had to get away.
Reaching his bike, he gave one last glance toward the smoldering school. It looked like any further training would be delayed for at least a week. In the meantime, he had lots to keep him busy. Books and piles of articles waited for him at home. Plus, he and Uncle Edward had a field trip planned for tomorrow to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. There was a new Egyptian exhibit opening in a couple of days, and a friend of Edward’s had arranged an early behind-the-scene tour.
Jake began to turn away when he caught a glimpse of a large man over by the fire truck, his shape clouded by a billow of smoke. The figure stuck out from the crowd—not only because of his black pinstripe suit, but also because of his massive size. The mountain of a man slipped back behind the fire engine and disappeared.
Recognition flared through Jake.
It couldn’t be …
He mouthed the man’s name as if trying to summon him back into sight. “Morgan Drummond.”
But the man didn’t reappear, and Jake grew less sure.
Obscured by the smoke, the figure could have been anyone: the firehouse’s captain, the chief of police. Besides, what would Drummond be doing here? Jake had last seen the man at the British Museum in London. Drummond was head of security for Bledsworth Sundries and Industries, the corporation that had sponsored his parents’ last dig before they had vanished.
Suspicion ran through him.
Jake didn’t understand what the corporation had to do with his parents’ disappearance, but there had to be some connection.
He remembered the tie tack worn by Morgan Drummond. It had been sculpted into the shape of a griffin, representing the corporate logo for Bledsworth Sundries and Industries. The mythological monster was half eagle and half lion. In Pangaea, Jake had found the same symbol burned into the sword of a grakyl lord, the leader of one of the monstrous legions of the Skull King. Even the grakyl themselves looked somewhat like griffins.
But how was it all connected?
Jake continued to stare down the street, watching for another glimpse of the man. After a full minute, he finally gave up with a shake of his head. It couldn’t have been Drummond.
Jake unlocked his bike, yanked it free of the rack, and aimed for home. He had a long way to go.
As he pedaled away, he kept checking over his shoulder, still uneasy. He remembered the way the hairs on his neck had prickled with warning before the sedan came smashing through the school’s front window.
Those same hairs still stood on end.
With a crunch of stones, Jake swung his bike off the main road and onto the crushed stone driveway that led through the rolling acres of his family’s estate. The ride from town had helped clear Jake’s head; but he still felt uneasy, haunted by those fiery eyes in the smoke.
As he passed through the wrought-iron gates, Jake waved to the two stone ravens perched atop the pillars to either side. The birds were the namesakes for his family’s estate: Ravensgate Manor.
“Hey, Edgar. Hey, Poe,” he called to the statues as he passed under their baleful gazes.
The pair of ravens had been nicknamed by his great-great-grandfather, Augustus Bartholomew Ransom, back in the nineteenth century. Augustus had been school friends with the writer Edgar Allan Poe, whose poem “The Raven” had become a favorite of his. It was even said that one of those stone ravens had been the inspiration behind Poe’s poem. Over the centuries, an ongoing debate raged among family members as to which raven was the source of that inspiration.
Edgar or Poe.
Jake placed his money on the raven to the right. With its bowed head and hooded eyes, Poe always gave him a bit of the creeps. But like an eccentric pair of uncles, the two ravens had grown to be as much a part of the family and its history as anyone.
And at least those two weren’t going anywhere.
Jake pedaled onward, winding through a hardwood forest of sugar maples and black oaks. Eventually the woods gave way to a sprawling English garden. In the center rose the manor house of Ravensgate, built in a Tudor style with stone turrets, timber-framed gables, and a slate roof gone mossy with age. It had started as a country farmhouse, meant only as a family retreat from the city. But over the centuries, it had been added to and expanded into its current sprawl.
The front entrance, though, remained the same. Even the door came from that original farmhouse: constructed of stout oak hewn from the hills around here, bound in straps of copper, and secured with square-headed nails.
Jake squeezed his bike’s brakes and slowed as he swung toward the front of the house. A circular driveway wound past the entrance. He immediately spotted a car parked near the flagstone steps that led up to the front door.
Jake noted two strange things immediately.
The front door was ajar—something Aunt Matilda would never have allowed. But more disturbing, Jake recognized the car parked at the stoop. It was a black sedan, identical to the one that had smashed into the school.
He was sure of it.
Same make, same model.
It was too much of a coincidence to ignore.
Nerves jangled with warning. Jake’s blood went cold. He dropped his bike and ran in a low crouch toward the house.
Something was wrong.
From inside the house, a loud crash echoed out, accompanied by the tinkle of broken glass. Next came something that stopped his heart: a scream of pain and anguish.
His Aunt Matilda.
2
BROKEN CABINETS
Jake had left his backpack and clothes back at the dojang, along with his cell phone. He had no way to call for help, and riding to a neighbor’s house would take too long. He had to reach a phone inside.