Brendan, however, was not even trying to sleep.
He was sitting at the small desk in his room with his head in his hands, thinking about having to go back to his old school and seeing all of his old friends and teachers. They would all ask him why he had to transfer out of private school and come back. He’d have to tell them the truth. That his dad gambled away all their money and they got kicked out of their home. It’d be especially hard to face them after the way he’d left – admittedly (now) a little too cocky over how much better his new private school was going to be “than this dump”.
This reality somehow filled Brendan with more fear than most of the crazy book adventures he had been on. He realised death was almost easier to face than total humiliation – which was a startling and sobering revelation.
Brendan distracted himself by switching on the fifty-five-inch TV that he’d brought with him from his not-quite-a-man cave in the Kristoff House attic. They could take away his cool attic bedroom and his old school and the money and his chauffeur (which was probably his favourite part of their old life). But nobody was getting their hands on the TV he bought with some of the money Eleanor had wished for using The Book of Doom and Desire. He and the TV had been through a lot together already, including the Giants’ most recent World Series victory. He’d been so excited on the final out, that he almost accidentally threw his half-full can of soda right through her beautiful and flawless screen.
Brendan flipped through the channels, looking for the reruns of Family Guy or South Park that always seemed to be on late at night. He was just about ready to settle on ESPN as a consolation, when a headline on a news channel caught his eye. For a second, he figured maybe he was watching a parody news show, because there was no way the headline could be true.
But the channel was CNN. The news story Brendan watched play out on-screen was most definitely real. And it caused him to literally fall out of his bedroom chair and land on the floor with a sickening thud.
At the other end of the Walkers’ apartment, Cordelia was in the middle of the strangest dream of her life. In fact, it didn’t feel like a dream to her at all, but more like reality, with actual sounds and smells and textures. If it weren’t for the fact that what was happening in her dream was impossible, she would have believed it was really happening.
Cordelia was back in the book world. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she was certain of it. Perhaps it was partly because the sunshine seemed a little too bright as it poured through the narrow windows lining the walls of a huge castle. The slivers of sun lit up her feet as she moved through a long, vast stone hallway.
Except that her feet didn’t look like her feet. They seemed … bigger, but also lighter somehow, almost as if they were capable of floating. But they were her feet; they had to be, since Cordelia could feel the coldness of the stone floors through strange, thin leather shoes.
She entered a large room at the end of the extensive hallway. It didn’t take long to recognise the lush tapestries on the walls and large windows. The massive bone and amethyst throne at the end of the red silk carpet was the surest giveaway of all.
Cordelia was back at Castle Corroway from Denver Kristoff’s book Savage Warriors. She was inside the evil Queen Daphne’s throne room. Even as the royal guards knelt before her, Cordelia knew it couldn’t be true. But yet, it clearly was. And somehow she was the new queen.
But still she pressed on, almost as if something was driving her besides her own free will. Cordelia marched up to her throne like she truly belonged there. She sat down and surveyed the room. She had guests, it seemed. But they were certainly not ordinary guests.
Before Cordelia’s throne stood the most bizarre array of creatures and people that had likely ever assembled inside a castle, fictional or otherwise. Krom was there, from their first adventure, as the new leader of the band of Savage Warriors who carried out Queen Daphne’s most vicious orders. Next to him stood a familiar German general who looked exactly like the only other German general Cordelia had ever met, the Nazi cyborg, Heinrich Volnheim, Generalleutnant of the Fifteenth Panzergrenadier Division from Kristoff’s book Assault of the Nazi Cyborgs. But it couldn’t have been Volnheim himself, because she’d watched him get blown to bits on a snowy mountainside by a tank cannon. All of the cyborg generals must look exactly alike.
Next to the Nazi cyborg stood a very stereotypical-looking vampire, complete with a pronounced widow’s peak in his slicked black hair, pale skin, a black cape with a high collar and protruding bloody fangs. There was also Ungil, the slave gladiator from Emperor Occipus’s Roman Colosseum, German pilots most likely from the World War One adventure novel, The Fighting Ace, a group of Prohibition-era mobsters, military officers from what looked like virtually every major war, a few hideous purple aliens with tentacles, and a vast array of other creatures and characters that Cordelia didn’t recognise.
They were all staring at her expectantly. So Cordelia began to speak, surprising herself with the authority and confidence of her words.
“Welcome!” she said. “Thank you all for joining me. As you know, I’ve been trapped here for months. But now our time draws near. The worlds are ready to converge. As we speak, more of us are finding ways to break through, slipping past the barriers that separate us from the outside, from the place that is truly ours. And once we finally break through, nothing will be able to stop us.”
The creatures and soldiers cheered. More words spilled from her mouth, almost of their own accord. Cordelia could feel that she meant what she was saying even though each word that came out shocked her. It was almost like talking on the phone with someone and hearing an echo of your own voice.
“The only person who could have stopped us is now dead!” Cordelia announced excitedly to the crowd. Except that by now she suspected she was not really herself, and she had a sinking feeling she knew precisely what was happening. “The old man’s magic is broken, decaying like his rotting corpse inside the cold ground. So now the time has come for us to act. We must make our plans accordingly and prepare for the moment when …”
Suddenly Cordelia was torn violently from her dream. She was being shaken and there were voices whispering harshly into her ear.
“Cordelia, wake up!” the voice said. “They’re coming through! They’re going to kill us all!”
Cordelia Walker sat up quickly at the sound of Brendan’s panicked voice and her head slammed into the metal frame of the top bunk. She cried out in pain, suppressing the urge to curse loudly.
“Ouch! What’s the matter with you, Bren?” Cordelia asked as she rubbed her aching forehead.
“Sorry about that,” Brendan said. “I maybe got a little excited there, but I swear it’s super-important. You’re gonna want to see this right away. Both of you.”
Cordelia was used to having her own room and her own queen-size bed. But their apartment by Fisherman’s Wharf only had two small bedrooms and a den. And so now Eleanor and Cordelia had to share a room. The movers had brought back their old bunk beds from storage that evening.
“Are you OK, Deal?” Eleanor whispered.
“Yeah, there’s