The butterflies in his guts multiplied. “Okay.”

  The detective opened a manila folder and spread six pictures on the table in front of Jaime: six black women, all of them with fine features and medium-brown skin.

  One glance at the pictures and he saw her among them. He would have known her anywhere, the way you would know a person if you’d drawn them over and over and over again, which he had.

  “Do you recognize any of these women?” Detective Cherry asked.

  “Take your time,” said Detective Murphy.

  His father’s hands cupped his shoulders as they all waited for Jaime’s answer. Jaime examined each picture slowly, carefully. Then he looked up, making his face as calm and inscrutable as the Turk’s, as the face of the king in his pocket.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never seen any of these people before.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Karl

  A few miles away from Jaime’s apartment, in a cramped cage at a veterinary hospital, Karl stirred. He stretched one back leg, then the other. He scratched at his belly, which was strangely itchy, and was annoyed to find his back paws bandaged.

  “Look! I think he’s waking up!” a voice said.

  Karl did not recognize the voice, though he was far too exhausted to be frightened of it. Other voices joined in a chorus, chattering about hydration levels and temperature and heart rate and so on, but he was also too exhausted to register such statistics, even his own.

  “Karl! Hey, buddy! Hey, Mr. Floof!”

  Buddy. Mr. Floof. No one called Karl such undignified things. “Buddy” and “Mr. Floof” were the kind of names moody teenagers gave to pet boa constrictors or mole rats when they believed themselves to be the agents of irony.

  “Karl! You’ve got some people really worried!”

  With both paws, Karl covered his masked eyes and rolled over. There were so many things he wanted to say, Oh, do shut up! being the most pressing, followed by, Surely you must have other duties besides disturbing the rest of convalescing patients? and then, If you would like to make yourselves useful, you will bring me a bowl full of Cheez Doodles so that I may snack upon waking.

  But of course he could say none of this. Despite all the racket, Karl kept his eyes closed, not terribly interested in seeing the world outside the cage he was in, or the seriously rude people who kept interrupting his nap. Karl hadn’t had such a long and restful sleep in weeks, and he deserved a small snatch of peace and quiet, did he not? He had been through an Ordeal, with a capital O, the likes of which would make the bestseller list, if only he were able to type.

  Karl tried to relax, to ease himself back into the dream he’d been having, the lovely dream in which the little girl with pigtails like antennae—what was her name? Something adorable and sweet, but also snappy—was riding her tricycle with Karl in the basket. They traveled through the halls of an old building while the little girl pointed out all the areas of interest to him. “Look, Karl,” she would say, pointing to a piece of molding or a bit of tile, “that is a SIGNIFICANT ARTIFACT. And that is also a SIGNIFICANT ARTIFACT.” Sometimes, when they passed by one person or another, she would declare that person to be NEFARIOUS and worthy of serious inquiry. According to this adorable and sweet and snappy little girl, many people and many things were worthy of serious inquiry.

  Well, she was correct about that.

  Karl’s mind searched for respite, but he couldn’t bring his restless thoughts to heel. His brain kept flashing on sights and sounds and smells and sensations that made his limbs twitch all the more. The lab. The doctor who resembled nothing so much as a newt. The injections and the surgeries designed to do . . . what? Karl had no earthly idea.

  When he was first captured and brought to the lab, though his situation had clearly been dire—his cage small and uncomfortable, his kibble dry and entirely unappetizing—he had been too frightened to make a peep of protest. Back then, the doctor wasn’t as scary as Karl’s animal companions. If you could call them companions, which Karl would not. He and the other animals were merely test subjects, playthings for the doctor with the exophthalmic eyes. Karl would never forget the large and fuzzy-legged thing that was some horrifying cross between a wolf and a . . . spider? He would be haunted forever by the way it laughed before it launched itself at the bars of its cage, mandibles gnashing: Heh, heh, HEH! And then there was the blue monkey with the voice box of a bird that would belt out a song called “Last Train to Clarksville” when it wasn’t swearing so much that Karl couldn’t help but be astonished by both its vehemence and its creativity. Mice with prehensile tails, all hanging from the tops of their cages like tiny, furry piñatas. Gators that weren’t quite gators and rabbits that weren’t quite rabbits, dogs and cats and foxes and even smiling quokkas, rendered into mismatched monsters with too many or two few of everything, so scared or enraged by what had happened to them that they could barely function.

  Except Octavius. He was the only one besides Karl who had a name instead of a number, given to him by lab assistants who seemed to think it was hilarious. Instead of languishing in his tank the way so many of the others did, Octavius wouldn’t stay still for injections, he wouldn’t perform tricks, he wouldn’t stop throwing anything that was put into his tank right out of it—food, coral, other fish. Octavius was a marvel of rebellion. While the rest of the animals cowered whenever the doctor came near, Octavius would reach up and smack that horrid man right across the face with a tentacle. A thing of beauty, it was—a rebuke, a refusal, and a challenge all at once. It was something they all wished they could do, stay strong in the face of such mistreatment and fear. But even the spider-wolf—or wolf-spider, or whatever it was—didn’t have that kind of courage. Only Octavius stood, er, swam, strong. Karl liked to think that he and Octavius had a bond of sorts, a friendship. When the blue monkey sang his song too many times in a row, when one of the many-legged, many-toothed things wouldn’t stop screeching, Karl would put his tiny hand up against the glass, and Octavius would press a tentacle likewise, as if to say, Greetings, friend! I, too, find this terribly annoying and quite stressful. We both deserve better.

  And then one night, after a particularly awful procedure that Karl wished he could forget, he blearily woke to see Octavius’s many tentacles working at the mesh that covered his cage. Karl didn’t understand what Octavius was doing until a screw fell to the floor, and then another, and another. It took Octavius nearly thirty minutes to get the last three screws, but he managed to do it. (The doctor would regret giving Octavius three eyes and fourteen tentacles.)

  After all the screws had fallen to the floor, Octavius lifted the mesh top of the tank and then climbed out. Flesh that had been mottled and gray against the pebbles at the bottom of his tank turned as beige as the tile when he hit the floor. His third eye was larger than his other two, and rose up on a short stalk from his mantle like a periscope. He slithered along the floor, keeping tight to the sides of the room, that periscope eye fixed on the camera mounted in the corner, which swept lazily from one direction to the other. As soon as the camera was pointed away from him, Octavius slithered forward. When the camera swept back, Octavius froze, his skin blending in with whatever was behind him.

  So fixated was Octavius on that camera that he didn’t see the wolf-spider/spider-wolf slide the tip of one leg—a leg with a curving scythe of a claw—through the bars of its cage, ready to slice Octavius into sushi. Without thinking, Karl grabbed his food bowl and banged it against the bars of his cage, chittering as loudly as he could, a warning. But he should have known it would warn others. An alarm blared. All the animals, all the monsters chattered and screeched. Octavius shrank away from the spider-wolf/wolf-spider, flattening himself against the floor. The door opened and a shaft of light cut through the darkness, guards silhouetted in the doorway.

  “Who’s there? What’s going on?” one of them barked stupidly, ridiculously, if he wanted to hear an answer that made any sort of sense.

  The animals replied by screeching louder, copying Karl and banging their food bowls against the bars of their cages. Karl banged the loudest to keep the guards’ eyes off Octavius, who was working at the lock on the wolf-spider/spider-wolf’s cage. Instead of trying to slice Octavius, the wolf-spider/spider-wolf burst from its prison, launching itself at the guards, who screamed and fell into a pile in the hallway. Octavius slithered around the room, using all fourteen tentacles to unlock cages and lift the mesh off the tops of tanks. The creatures lurched and shambled and flapped and flew around the room. Octavius finally reached Karl’s cage and made quick work of the lock. A tentacle gently curled around Karl’s middle, lifting him up and out of the cage and depositing him on the floor.

  Thank you, dear Octavius, Karl chittered, brave and noble friend.

  Octavius gave him one last squeeze and then nudged him, as if to tell him to get moving. Karl didn’t need any more prodding. He waddled as fast as he could, pausing only to grab a key card off one of the dazed and mauled guards. With key card clenched firmly in his teeth, Karl ran for the door at the end of the hallway. He dragged himself up onto the chair next to the door and slapped the key card against the reader.

  And the door swung open.

  So shocked was Karl that he froze for a few seconds, before leaping into the waiting arms of the darkness.

  Karl didn’t know how many nights he’d traveled, only that he’d traveled far, so very far. He spent his days hiding in parks and in garbage cans, dodging determined Rollers and equally determined dogs, and his nights foraging for the scraps of food that would keep him going. Hoboken, Hoboken, Hoboken rang in his brain, the spell that would get him home to his family. He walked until the pads of his paws were raw and bloody, until the flesh began to melt off his poor starving bones. He was a mere ghost of himself when he stowed away on a container ship bound for New Jersey, curled in the darkest corner he could find, so ruined that even the city rats, those hardened criminals, left him alone.

  He crawled out of the ship onto the docks, making his lonely way up Sinatra Drive. He passed places called Crash Fitness and Puzzle Up Escape Room and Hungry Wolf Tavern, all of which made him shiver. But he kept going. He had only his ears and his nose to rely on now. To comfort himself, he hummed “Last Train to Clarksville.” When he finally reached the building and smelled its familiar scent, new carpet and chlorine and sweat and something else, something that smelled like people he knew, people he loved and who loved him, he shadowed a couple as they lurched through the doorway, silly with wine or with each other. The guard at the desk barely looked in their direction as he buzzed them in, and the couple was far too silly to notice the dazed raccoon who joined them in the elevator, and collapsed there, unconscious to the world.

  “Come on, come on, little fella,” said a voice. “Wakey, wakey.”

  Karl woke again with a start. He was not in an elevator, he was at the vet’s, and the people were murmuring at him as if he were a kit instead of a full-grown adult. It was extremely vexing. He rolled over and opened his eyes. Many pairs of human eyes gazed back.

  Shhhh! he chittered at them.

  “He’s so cute!” said a mouth.

  Stuff and nonsense!

  “I think he’s talking to us,” said another mouth.

  Bring me Cheez Doodles! Quick, man! For I am famished after my long journey!

  “Excuse me, coming through, excuse me!” another voice piped up, a small voice, a kit’s voice.

  “Miss, you’re not supposed to be back here.”

  “The doctor said it was okay. She needs to see him,” a woman said.

  The many pairs of eyes and mouths moved away and were replaced by the face of a small girl, brown eyed and bronze skinned, a small girl wearing a black mask. For him? For him!

  The adorable girl, the sweet and snappy one. Oh, how his heart filled. But her name, what was her name?

  “Karl!” she said, stripping off her mask. Her eyes were filled with tears. “Karl, I missed you!”

  He wanted to tell her about his journey, he wanted to tell her how much he’d missed her as well, he wanted to tell her how grateful he was even to be in this cage, watched over by well-meaning buffoons, he wanted to tell her that he had just remembered her name, and it was the most perfect name for the most perfect little kit.

  He stood on all fours and chittered at her, at them all.

  “What’s he doing?” said another voice, the mother of the little girl, almost as lovely as her daughter.

  He chittered again.

  “What is it, Karl? Do you want something?”

  He wanted what was on the desk behind them. He grasped the bars of his cage and shook them.

  “He wants to get out. We need to let him out,” said the little girl.

  “I don’t think—” began one of the vet techs, but this little girl wouldn’t wait for his permission—this little kit was unstoppable. She yanked open the cage, reached in, and gathered him up.

  “You’re so skinny!” she said, nose in his fur. “I’ll fatten you up again. I promise. You will be my best chonky boy.”

  He reveled in this embrace for a few precious moments. Then he wriggled in her arms until she put him down on the floor. He waddled over to the desk and climbed onto its top.

  “What the heck is he doing?” someone said.

  Karl grabbed a pad and pen and started to write.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tess

  Tess got home from Coney Island still tasting funnel cake, still thinking about the chess pieces the Turk had given them.

  Theo had gotten a knight, a piece that moves in a distinctive “L” shape—two squares horizontally and one square vertically, or vice versa—and can’t be blocked. It simply jumps to new locations.

  Jaime had gotten the king, a piece that moves exactly one square in any direction but has one special move it can make only once a game—castling.

  And Tess’s piece, the queen, can move any number of squares and in any direction.

  What were they supposed to do with the pieces? Did it mean there was another chess game in their future? Was there some significance to the pieces they got?

  “Tess, you’ve hardly touched your chick’n. Is there something wrong?” her father asked.

  “Oh no! It’s great, Dad, thanks.” She forked up a big bite of grilled chick’n, popped it in her mouth, and chewed. “Ummm,” she said. “It’s good.”

  “I’m glad,” her father said. “But please don’t talk with food in your mouth.”

  “You’re such a pig, Tess,” Theo said.

  “Aboabink aboabink,” she said. She slipped a piece of chick’n to Nine, who gulped it back. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Where do you think?” her dad said.

  “Work,” said Tess.

  “Wabork,” said Theo.

  “Wabork schmabork,” said their father, who seemed to think this was hilarious. Dads were so proud of their dad jokes.

  “Where’s Aunt Esther?” Theo asked.

  “That I do not know,” said their father. “She does so many things that I can’t keep up with her.”

  “Oh, she’s probably racing in the Iditarod,” Tess said.

  “Kayaking down the Amazon,” Theo said.

  “Climbing Mount Everest.”

  “Rocketing into space.”

  “All of that sounds ridiculous and yet entirely plausible when it comes to your aunt,” said their dad, getting up to scrape the remains of his dinner into Nine’s dish. “We’ll have to ask her when she gets home.”

  “She won’t tell us,” said Theo. “She never explains.”

  Their father piled dishes in the sink and squirted everything with soap. “Some people like to be mysterious. Like you two.”

  “What?” Tess and Theo said at the same time. “Us?”

  “Yes, you two. You’ve spent the whole summer either out all day with Jaime or holed up in your room doing who knows what. Care to share?”

  Tess didn’t look at Theo, Theo didn’t look at Tess. They both studied their dinner plates with intense concentration. Their father laughed.

  “See? Mysterious.”

  “We’re not doing anything,” Tess said.

  “Sure, sure,” said their dad.

  “We’re not!” Theo insisted.

  “In that case,” said their dad, “maybe you two want to sit with your dear old dad and watch a movie.”

  Tess was about to say no, but their dad looked so hopeful that she couldn’t. So that’s how they found themselves sitting in front of the TV after dinner instead of researching Eliza Jumel and the Morris-Jumel Mansion. Their dad found a movie on one of the streaming channels and they settled in to watch The Lost Girl, which was about another set of twins, girls, who were separated into different classrooms at school by their parents, who thought the girls would be better off developing their own interests instead of relying on each other, something Tess thought was ridiculous.

  “I mean,” she said, “they obviously have their own interests already. And what’s wrong with working together and relying on each other? Why are adults so dopey?”

  “Alas, another mystery,” said her dad.

  The story was just starting to heat up—a creepy teacher who might be an ogre! Things disappearing all over Minneapolis! Weird dolls! Weirder crows!—when their mother came through the door.

  “Hey, hon,” said their dad, pausing the movie. “Long day?”

  “The longest,” said their mom. “You wouldn’t believe half the stuff that’s going on. Or maybe you would.”

  “What’s going on?” said Tess.

  “I shouldn’t talk about it,” said their mom, raking a hand through overlong hair in need of a trim. “But one thing I can tell you is that I heard there’s a witness in Jaime’s case.”

  “Someone saw who pushed him?” Tess said. “Really?”

  “Yeah, got a picture and everything,” said their mom. “It’s probably on the news right now.”

  The twins’ dad switched over to a news app, and sure enough, the hosts were talking about a woman who had allegedly pushed a young boy off a ferry boat traveling from Manhattan to Hoboken.

 

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