"Not funny, Aly," Cass said. "Look at my face. Do you see me laughing anymore? Don't freak us out."

"No, I mean it." Aly's lips trembled, as if she were about to cry. "My mind is blank."

Cass groaned. "No . . . no . . . no . . . this cannot be happening . . ."

Professor Bhegad's face drooped. "Cass's directional ability, Aly's hacking skills . . ." he muttered. "The very meat of their G7W talents. Gone."

"Their worst fears are gone, too, no?" Skilaki pointed out. "You have to give to get."

"Then why is Photia coming after us?" Aly demanded. "We did everything right! We sacrificed the memories of what is most important to us." A tear slid down her cheek.

I swallowed hard. Everyone's fears except mine.

Before I could say a word, Cass spun around. "How can we get our memories back, Skilaki?" he said. "I want whatever I was afraid of. I want my whole brain. I'll figure a way out of here. Just show me the thing I was afraid of."

"It's a griffin," I told Skilaki. "He has no memory of it anymore."

"I do not know such a thing either," she said.

"A big red monster?" Aly said. "Half eagle, half lion, disgusting breath?"

"Greef?" Skilaki said. "You mean, the greef? You're saying it oddly."

"Wait, you have one?" I asked.

"The queen keeps one, of course," she said simply, turning her back to us, "to guard her possessions."

Aly shot me a glance. Griffins guarded Loculi. That was their whole reason for being. And it seemed Skilaki didn't know a thing about the Loculus's true function.

If we could find the griffin somehow-and get past it without being devoured-we would get what we needed. And Cass might get his ability back.

"We want to see it," Aly said. "Maybe the queen can show us-"

"As you wish." Skilaki stepped outside the bunker, reared her head back, and let out a cry so loud and shrill that the hair stood up at the back of my head.

"Wait, not right now!" Aly called out.

"Children . . ." Professor Bhegad said, his face taut with fear, "I feel it. The fire."

I could feel it, too. The room was becoming hotter. From the baseboards, smoke began rising in black wisps.

"Out of here!" I shouted. "This place is about to go up in flames!"

Cass ushered Professor Bhegad toward the bunker entrance. I pulled Aly out of her seat by her shirt collar. We bolted outside and collided with Skilaki, who was still looking up at the sky. The acrid smell of burning wood seared my nostrils and I put my hand over my mouth, trying to edge down the hill. Aly was holding my arm and Professor Bhegad was coughing uncontrollably.

Above us I caught a flash of red. The griffin's unmistakable screech pierced the night air, through the crackling sound of the advancing fire. I craned my neck to see the beast flying jerkily, its wings tinged with fire, its giant beak open wide.

I went to help Bhegad walk down the hill, but my hand never reached him.

With a bone-shattering boom the bunker exploded, blasting us off our feet.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

VASILISSA.

"WHAT IS THAT thing?" Cass screamed.

My eyes flickered open. I had hit the ground hard. Cass had landed a few yards to my left. The griffin was thrashing crazily in the scraggly bushes just beyond him. Its awful screeches felt like blows to the head. Above us, the building was a pile of stones and smoke. The fire surrounded the hill now, raging toward us. There wasn't anywhere to retreat but toward the griffin.

"It's a griffin, Cass," I shouted back. "One of these things took you from the KI to Rhodes. It nearly killed you!"

He stared at the beast in utter horror.

"By the great Qalani, just take me now," Bhegad groaned. "I can't endure this."

Skilaki stood wearily, her wispy hair drafting upward as the fire neared. "You asked to see the greef," she muttered, "and not so much as a simple thank-you."

The beast turned to face us, its yellow eyes and red body the only color in the gray forest. It had managed to smother the flames on its wings, which were now edged black with soot. As Cass stood and faced it, the griffin bellowed in anger.

"I left you," Cass said, staring at the red lion-bird. "I left you at the bottom of the river."

"He's remembering!" I said.

"This thing . . ." Cass said. "Yes. I do remember. I do. It nearly killed me. Twice. The second time . . . was the river. Took part of me with it. To the bottom. My memory. My ability. It wasn't fair!"

The griffin snorted, sitting back on his furred haunches. It cocked its head at Cass, baring its teeth.

Cass stared for another minute. Then, to my astonishment, he bared his teeth right back.

The griffin jerked its head away, looking startled.

"What is he doing?" Aly whispered.

"I don't know," I muttered, "but it looks dangerous." Aly and I ran to Cass, grabbed him from behind, and pulled him toward us.

"I remember it!" Cass shouted, stumbling along the path at our side. "And I'm not scared of it anymore!"

"Remind me to give you a medal," Aly said. "If we live."

We nearly collided with Skilaki, who was staring at Cass. "Very curious," she said. "This boy's memory is not quite human, I suspect." Then, turning toward the griffin, she trilled: "Greef, metaphero aeroporikos eis vasilissa!"

"What does that mean?" Cass cried out.

"How should I know?" I said.

Professor Bhegad was saying something, but I couldn't hear him. The griffin reared back and let out a scream. Beating its wings downward, it lifted itself on red-furred haunches, revealing legs as tautly muscled as a lion's. It was coming for us.

Quickly I draped one arm around Professor Bhegad's shoulder and dug the other under his legs. He felt bony and brittle, and by now he weighed little more than a child. "Run!" I called out. "Now!"

"No . . ." Professor Bhegad said. "We can't . . ."

"Yes, we can!" Aly replied. "Or that thing will eat us!"

With a thrust of its wings that sent a gust of hot wind our way, the griffin leaped.

We raced back down the hill, away from the fire. The griffin's shriek pierced the air. I felt its talons dig into my shoulders. Again. I tightened my grip on Professor Bhegad-partly not to lose him, partly to deflect the pain. "Help . . ." I shouted through gritted teeth.

The griffin yanked me upward so hard I thought it would rip my shoulders off. As my feet left the ground, I clasped my fingers as tightly as I could under Professor Bhegad.

Aly and Cass raced toward me, grabbing at my leg, trying to pull me down to the ground. "Don't-I'm going to drop Bhegad!" I cried out. "Grab . . . Tweety's . . . leg!"

I could feel them both reaching upward, wrapping their fingers around the beast's ankles. The pain of the talons had taken over my body, pushing every nerve fiber beyond its limits, pushing me beyond thought and feeling. I could hear Cass and Aly yelling. I could sense the heat from below, washing upward in waves. But I felt nothing, sensed nothing, as if they were in a dream, shut away from reality.

I held tight. The professor was slipping. I concentrated every thought on my fingers, on locking them like magnets.

"Vasilissa!" Skilaki called, as if in another realm. She was floating beside us under her own power. And with considerably less pain.

"Is she telling the griffin to kill us?" Cass demanded.

"Vasilissa," Bhegad said, "means 'queen.' She is telling it to take us to Artemisia."

We were dropping now. With the downward motion, the professor felt lighter in my arms. A dry, stagnant coolness wafted up from below. I blinked, forcing my eyes open.

We plunged toward the central, open court of a sprawling stone castle. Its crenellated towers were cracked and broken, its battlements empty, its walls overgrown with scraggly vines that had sprouted between its bricks. Just outside its walls lay piles of bones and rotting carcasses, in a narrow ring of soil that served as a bank to the River Photia. The so-called river, I realized, was actually a wide moat of raging fire that ringed the castle.

In a moment the castle walls blotted out my view. My eyes quickly took in the center court's cracked, crumbling walls, festooned with flaming sconces. I felt my feet jam against the hard soil. The griffin loosened its grip and I tumbled away. I felt as if knives had been jammed into my shoulders, and I must have been screaming, because Aly was holding me tight. "You're going to be okay, Jack," she said. "We're here. Everything's working out."

Blinking my eyes, I looked upward into Skilaki's face. She was shouting commands at the griffin, which retreated on its coiled legs, chittering, until its flanks hit the castle's inner wall.

Professor Bhegad was facedown in the hard-packed dirt. I turned him over. His eyes were shut, his mouth open, his chest still. The flames from a wall sconce sent eerie dancing shadows across his face.

I tried to remember a junior CPR class I'd taken with my dad. Kneeling over the old man, I dug the heels of my hands into his chest. One-two-three-stop . . . one-two-three . . . Cass and Aly knelt beside me.

One-two-three . . .

"Pkachh!" Bhegad let out a violent cough, his eyes bugging open. "My boy, you are hurting me!"

I sat back as he struggled to sit up. Aly was hugging the old man, and I leaned toward Cass, who put his arm around my shoulder. "Good work, Jack," he said.

Our relief lasted only a few seconds, interrupted by a deep, echoing boom behind us.

We turned. A half-rotted wooden door had smacked open, crashing against the castle's inner wall. Splinters flew into the courtyard.

The open door revealed a portal of total blackness. Two pairs of eyes slowly emerged, white as golf balls, as if the irises themselves had been bleached away. As they came closer to the portal, moving steadily up and down, gaunt faces appeared around them.

I heard a sudden choking sound from Cass. I wanted to hurl, too. Two men trudged out of the darkness, dressed in rags and harnessed to a wooden yoke like oxen. Their skin was flaked and shredded, their scalps scraped down to the skull in spots. Hair sprouted in odd places like random loose wires, and neither of their mouths had lips. They grunted and drooled, pulling a pair of chains attached to a giant chariot that creaked on broken wheels.

"I don't like this at all . . ." Aly murmured.

"Zombies," Cass said. "I hate zombies."

The chariot was an ornately carved wood cabin on a frame of four rickety wheels. Draped around the cabin was a curtain of dingy gray fabric. From inside, a voice shouted something in an unintelligible language.

"Unngh," replied one of the two creatures of burden.

A hand reached out of the curtain and snapped a long, leather whip hard against the zombie's back.

I winced, but he didn't seem to notice.

Out of the cabin stepped a tremendous figure, a man so large that the entire vehicle seemed to lift off the ground as he stepped off. He didn't appear to be a zombie, but that's not to say he looked like a normal human, either. His skin had a strange rigidity, as if it was actually some weird kind of plastic. His chin had chins, and you could hide small kittens in the rolls under his eyes. He lumbered toward us, leaning on a jeweled bronze staff, whose handle was a small alabaster replica of the Mausoleum. His mouth was pushed into a kind of grin by the pressure of the flab underneath it, but his eyes were dull and cold as he looked at us.

"They speak English, Mappas," Skilaki said.

The man called Mappas didn't say a word, but held out his palm toward the cabin.

From out of the curtain came a slender hand that was dwarfed by the big man's. A woman emerged, with thick silver-white hair that spilled over the shoulder of a flowing golden gown. Its hem was ripped in places, but its embroidered pattern was festooned with jewels. The woman's ankles were thin, and the skin on her face was dry, seamed and puckered like a walnut. She seemed withered and ancient, but compared to the zombies around her, she was the picture of health.

"Bow all to Queen Artemisia!" bellowed Mappas.

I looked at Cass and Aly, who shrugged. We were already on our knees so we bowed from the waist.

As her wrinkled lips curled upward, she sucked in a breath and clasped her hands together. "Which one of you," she said, "is mine?"

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

THE TRADE.

I THOUGHT ZOMBIES weren't supposed to have emotions, but judging from the increase in drool, the two cabin pullers seemed pretty excited. "Miiiine," one of them echoed.

Or maybe it was "maaa" or "mooo." With zombies, it's hard to tell.

I stood to face Artemisia, which was no easy task. She was much better maintained than Skilaki, but her skin was as stiff and wrinkled as tree bark, and it creaked when she spoke. Eyelashes had been painted above and below her lidless eyes, giving her a look of permanent surprise. "Well?" she said, her voice like the cry of a dying seagull. "Speak or I shall take you all!"