Empire of Bones Read Online Free Page B

111, where he’d hoped to spend the night. He had completely forgotten to thank Pat and Pat, but he figured they would understand.
    “Daniel, I can do it.” Katie Smith patted her son on the chest. “Set me down and I’ll walk.”
    Daniel didn’t answer. Cyrus slid out of the plums into a dry pasture and pulled a bundle of branches aside until they popped with concern.
    “Daniel …,” Katie said.
    “Mom,” said Cyrus. “We have to be quick. And quiet. Just let him carry you. And hang on.”
    As the train emerged, Cyrus turned and began to jog through the tall grass, glancing back to make sure Dan could keep up without jostling their mother too much. He shouldn’t have worried. Daniel’s head was high and relaxed, and he wasn’t even breathing hard. Cyrus hated admiring his brother’s strength. It meant that Phoenix was good at what he did. And it always reminded Cyrus that he would never again see his tall, straw-haired, blue-eyedCalifornia brother. Dan was a quick brown-haired ox, with a patched-up heart and dark-brown eyes that saw things he didn’t like to talk about.
    Cyrus wondered what his mother thought of Daniel’s change. She’d known about it; she’d been brought up to speed on almost everything during her two months of therapy in Ashtown. But she hadn’t commented on Dan. She’d said more about the changes in Cyrus.
    The group shuffled across an old beam over a muddy pasture stream, and then Cyrus led them up a low hill, through a cattle gate, and down into a green bowl. Milk cows looked up, still chewing, and watched them descend. The motel disappeared from view behind them.
    At the bottom of the bowl, beside the ruins of an old barn with a broken back, an odd-looking tilt-rotor plane basked in the long grass. Two large propellers had been rotated up above the wings, making it look and act part helicopter. Once in the air, the props could rotate forward. The strange plane had once belonged to Rupert’s old Keeper. It had been borrowed from his widow, and the loan had become mostly permanent.
    Cyrus had never flown it.
    Diana got the cabin door open and climbed up and forward into the copilot’s seat. Dan set Katie down and helped her climb inside. Horace hopped in, but Niffy paused to admire the plane before Nolan nudged him from behind. Antigone stopped at the door.
    “Cy …” Antigone’s voice was one shade short of panic. She turned back toward the motel. “Oh, gosh. Cy … the globes.”
    Cyrus stared at his sister, not understanding.
    “Skelton’s paper globes,” Antigone said. “I left them by the pool when Mom came and then I forgot them. We have to go back.”
    Cyrus sighed. “Why? We never even figured out what they meant.”
    “Yeah, but they might,” Antigone said.
    Cyrus turned and hopped up into the plane’s open door. His mother was in a rear-facing seat, and Dan sat with his legs crossed on the floor at her feet. Niffy was facing forward, perched in a middle seat between Horace and Nolan. The little lawyer was pinned against the rounded cabin wall.
    “Horace,” Cyrus said. “What would you say if I told you we lost Skelton’s paper globes?”
    Horace snorted. “That I warned him against taking you as his heirs, and that I hope he haunts you into an early grave. I’ve told you that the money and the accounts he had me hiding were only a fraction of his real worth. His real shadow empire, the one he spent his final years sheltering from the O of B and from Phoenix—”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Cyrus said. “I get it.”
    Cyrus leaned in until he could see up into the cockpit. Diana looked back at him from the copilot’s seat. Shealready had her headphones on, but she lifted one earpiece.
    “Give me two minutes, Di,” Cyrus said. “Fire up in one and be ready for me.”
    Diana nodded and turned back to her controls. Cyrus dropped his pack on the floor and then backed out of the cabin.
    “Cyrus …” His mother’s voice stopped him. Her eyes were wide