Ice Shock Read Online Free PDF Page B

Robin suit is adult-sized,” says the manager.
    â€œI’m Robin!” shouts Tyler, before I can say anything. Not that I would, because I can tell right away it wouldn’t fit me. Tyler’s either fully grown already, or he’s going to be a giant. Me, I’m still growing. I check out the Batman suit. It looks perfect.
    â€œOh, come on, let me borrow the Batman,” I plead. “Then we’ll be a match. Anyway, it’s the only one that fits.”
    â€œApart from the White Witch,” Tyler says with a snigger.
    The manager relents, again. I guess he just wants us out of there.
    â€œDo you know the Thompsons?” I ask as we hand over cash.
    â€œI’m not that old,” he replies with a smirk. “Died back in the seventies, didn’t he, Sir Eric? Some niece of his living there now. No idea what her name is.”
    But she’s a relative. She might still have Thompson’s Mayan stuff. That makes sense—why else would the NRO drag my father there?
    â€œHas she lived there since Thompson died?”
    â€œNo,” he says, pausing. There’s a tiny shift in his attitude toward us. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it’s as though the cando, easygoing nature has suddenly vanished. And it’s replaced with an air of conspiracy.
    â€œWho lived there after he died?”
    â€œHis widow. Then the house was empty for a while.”
    â€œIt didn’t sell?”
    â€œIt wasn’t on the market. Not with that history.”
    â€œWhat history?”
    The manager looks me calmly in the eye. “The history that any half-decent research would uncover. The stories from the time Thompson lived there.”
    We stare blankly. “Like what?”
    â€œProbably a lot of nonsense. As I say, I was too young to remember much. There were people who thought that it wasn’t only Egyptian archaeologists who came back with curses on them.”
    Tyler says, “What, Mayas had pyramid curses too?”
    â€œSo it was believed, around here. Mostly just whispers. All because of that young assistant of Thompson’s, the one who disappeared. There were folks who wondered if it was covered up at a high level because it got a D-Notice, as it was called back then—one of them things the government slaps on a case to make it a national secret. You need someone high up to get a D-Notice. It didn’t make the national papers. And that young fella, they never found him.”
    I gather up the costumes in a major hurry. I’ve got a hunch that Tyler’s next question is going to give the game away.
    â€œWe’d better get going,” I announce. “Going to be late.”
    Minutes later, standing in the bus shelter, Tyler says breathlessly, “Wow … what do you think of that story? Could Thompson’s Mayan curse be linked to the Ix Codex? Didn’t those guys who e-mailed you say it was dangerous or cursed?”
    He’s right, of course. And my mind can’t help going back to that story in the Lebanon newspaper about Madison. How many of these “cursed” artifacts are out there in the world?
    â€œIt
is
cursed,” I say, shortly. I’m so close to a possible answer—it’s time I told Tyler a bit more. “But the codex isn’t there anymore. Someone got there already, years ago. And my dad would have known that too. What I want to know is, why did he go to the trouble of coming back here? With those NRO men?”
    Tyler stares at me. “What are you talking about? How do you know all that?”
    â€œMy grandfather found the Ix Codex,” I tell him. “And I think I know how—he must have found the stories about Eric Thompson’s assistant in the local newspapers. Something must have put him on to Thompson—I guess we’ll never know what. But once my grandfather realized that Thompson had some sort of cursed Mayan relic, he must have decided there was a chance it