“So we have to open it. Okay.”
“Ahh, but first we have to get to it. You can’t just drive up the driveway.”
“Easy. I’ll climb the cliff by the lake—you know I can do it.” I’d done it before, plenty of times. It was an excellent cliff for learning to rock climb—well,Ithought it was. Ryan’s family had “Dangerous—Do Not Climb” signs posted all over it. “You’ll need to disable the security cameras on the garden, though, if I’m going to get close to the house.”
“I can take care of the cameras. Inside the house, you’ll need to go through the basement door in the kitchen. It has a simple tumbler lock—you can pick that.”
I nodded. “With my eyes closed.”
“Once you step on the basement stairs, it activates two spells: the first is a wall of fire in the stairwell, to keep out human thieves. It’s magically maintained at 1,000 degrees….”
“Not a problem,” I said. “Yay for fire resistance.”
He smiled, and our eyes met. His smile faltered, he looked down at his laptop, and he cleared his throat. I wished I could see what he was thinking. Did he regret helping me? He was taking a risk, defying his father, plotting against his family. He continued, “The second is in the hallway: a wyvern detection spell, to keep out wyvern thieves….”
“Okay, that one could be a problem.”
“Afterthat,the entire hallway is also filled with motion sensors, aka the lasers that I’ve replicated here”—he proudly pointed to the array of lasers—“and monitored by more security cameras. Assuming we can figure out a way to disable or trick the wyvern detection spell, you’ll have to acrobat your way between the lasers while I hack those cameras. That will get us to the vault door.”
“Locks on the door?” I guessed.
He tapped a few keys on his computer and brought up an image of a vault door. “It’s a combination lock, which I know you can crack, but to open the access panel to reach it, you have to breathe dragon fire.”
Oh. This wasnotgoing to be easy.
“And once you get the door open—”
Seriously? “There’s more? I thoughtmyfamily was paranoid.”
He took a deep breath, as if he were about to tell me he’d eaten the last slice of pizza. “The inside of the vault is guarded by a fire beast.”
“What?!”Fire beasts are very dangerous. Very, very dangerous. Also expensive. Fire beasts aren’t actual animals—they’re created by magic, with a rather complex spell. And maintaining the spell that generates them requires a steady stream of gold. (Spells, at least as far as I understand them, are fueled by gold sort of like cars are fueled by gas. No gold, no magic.) I’d never heard of anyone using a fire beast spell to protect their vault on a permanent basis.
Fire beasts are also extremely hot, well above 2,000° F, which is past the limit of wyvern fire resistance. They generate a white fire that can burn us. We used to whisper horror stories about fire beasts to scare each other late at night next to the lake, while our parents drank wine by a bonfire.
“Yeah, it’s wizard made. Costs an entire gold bar a month to maintain the spell. But my father swears it’s worth it. When he first told us he’d put one in the vault, I had nightmares for weeks.”
I had no idea what we were going to do about a fire beast.Mom must have found a way to defeat it,I thought. Ryan had said he’d seen herinsidethe vault in the security footage. Inside and not fried by a fire beast. If she could do it, then so could I. Maybe there was a trick to defeating the beast, or a way to deactivate the spell.
“So what do you think?” He looked anxious. Looking at the array of motion sensors, he ran his fingers through his hair. “It won’t be easy.”
“But it will be fun.” I cartwheeled over the first laser, ducked under the second, and rolled under the third. Popping up in the middle, I surveyed the area of remaining lasers.
It would take some experimentation to figure out the best way through. It wasn’t impossible, though, not for someone whose mother enrolled her in constant gymnastics classes from age two through twelve. I’d wanted to take ballet, but my family didn’t consider it practical. “So, how did my mother do it?”
He tapped a few keys. “Here. Security feed.” It began to play on one of the laptop screens. He leaned back so I could have a clear view.
Empty corridor. Gray walls. Vault door. Dust clouded the view, and I saw a figure in black cartwheel and flip across the screen between the laser beams.Mom.
Barely breathing, I watched as she, agile and powerful as an Olympic gymnast, flipped her way down the corridor. Reaching the end of the lasers, she shot a grappling hook up to the top of the vault door, and she then affixed the line and zoomed across it without touching the floor.
“Pressure-sensitive floors,” Ryan said. “Forgot to mention those. So you’ll have to crack the lock without touching the ground. Both the motion-sensing lasers and the pressure floors deactivate after you enter the combination lock code.”
Hanging upside down, she breathed on a steel panel. Fire blazed out between her lips, showing up as a dull amber on the grainy recording. The panel slid open to reveal a circular dial. Mom removed a glove, so she could feel the dial directly, and began cracking the lock.
Walking straight through the remaining laser beams (which caused the computers to beep anxiously), I joined Ryan. “Is this why she was caught? Because she was on camera? She should have disabled the cameras before she started.” Leaning forward, I studied the lock. A few seconds later, I realized I was only inches from Ryan. I felt his breath on my cheek.
“Um, she, uh, hacked the live feed….”
