The Map of Stars, page 28
“Okay, Theodore. Show me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Tess
Jaime whipped his light around. Ava Oneal stood in the doorway in her long silvery coat, a Morningstarr moth flapping lazily on her shoulder.
“Ava!” Tess said.
“Ava!” Theo said.
Jaime didn’t speak at all.
“Why shouldn’t we touch the machine?” said Tess.
Ava stepped across the threshold and into the building. “It’s dangerous.”
“No, it isn’t,” Theo said. “Not yet, anyway. We haven’t charged it.”
“And you don’t have to. You can simply walk away,” Ava said.
“Walk away?” Tess said. “No! We need to see what it does! We need to know who we are!”
“You already know,” Ava said. “At least, you know one possibility. But that’s not the only possibility. And if you leave now, you can discover new ones.”
“What are you saying?” Theo said. “Why don’t you just tell us what you know?”
“Please,” Jaime said, so softly that Tess could barely hear him.
Ava approached. She reached up and touched Jaime’s cheek with her fingertips the way a mother would. “You fix one thing, and so many other things are broken in the process.”
“What does that mean?” Theo said.
“More than a hundred years ago, someone set a fire in an orphanage. It was a refuge for black children, one of the few in New York City. And they wanted to burn it down. So they did. I saved every one of those children but almost didn’t survive myself. Almost all of my skin was gone. My heart gave out. My face . . .” She touched her cheek with her palm. “I asked for help, and the Morningstarrs helped me. I knew that it would cost something, but I didn’t know how much. They saved me and they doomed me all at once. I have been wandering this ugly, vicious world ever since. At first, I saved who and what I could, and that was enough. But it never stops. Never. And I have watched every single creature I have ever loved die.”
“But you’re not a machine!” Tess said. “You’re a . . . a . . . lady!”
Her smile was so sad that Tess’s chest ached. “Yes, I am a lady. A person, a human, just like you. But not like you, too.” She unbuttoned the jacket and slid it from her shoulders. Her brown skin shimmered and gleamed as if it were dusted with glitter.
Tess said, “Are those . . . ?”
“Solar cells!” Theo said. “Millions of solar cells!”
“Now you see,” said Ava as she pulled the jacket closed. “And I have the heart of a Lion.”
“A Lion battery,” Theo breathed.
“So as long as the sun shines, here I am,” Ava said.
“What about my mother?” Jaime said. “You . . . you look so much like her. You could be her sister. What does she have to do with this?”
Ava cocked her head. “Your mother?”
As soon as the words were out of Jaime’s mouth, lights, previously hidden behind vines and grime, turned on. The lights were so bright that Tess, Theo, and Jaime had to hold up their hands and turn their faces away. Even Ava winced. More than a dozen men—including the Brunos, who leered and cracked their knuckles—poured into the building from all sides.
“You’ll never get the machine, Slant!” Tess yelled into the air, holding on to Nine’s collar so she wouldn’t charge.
A pale, redheaded woman dressed in a white suit emerged from the blinding light, a woman Tess had never seen before. “Slant,” the woman said. “That’s hilarious.”
“Wait . . . who are you?” said Theo.
“That is a much bigger question than you think it is, Theodore,” said the woman. She snapped her fingers and one of the Brunos ran out the door. He came back with a folding chair. He unfolded the chair, and the redheaded woman sat down. She said, “You can call me Miss Roberts.”
“Where’s Slant?” Tess said.
Miss Roberts waved a slim hand. “Sleeping, I suppose. It is the middle of the night.”
“Isn’t he in charge?”
“In charge of what?”
Tess didn’t know how to answer this. Darnell Slant was the reason they’d started this whole thing. He was the reason they were here.
Wasn’t he?
“You really don’t have any idea what’s going on, do you?” Miss Roberts said. She crossed her legs. “But I can’t blame you for that. You’re just children. Resourceful children, I grant you—you thought to bring a bodyguard—but children nonetheless. All of you, back away from the machine. Slowly.”
“I don’t think so,” said Ava.
“I thought you might react that way. Candi?”
Candi moved so fast that she was just a red flash. She had an arm around Jaime’s neck and some sort of baton at his throat before they knew she was there. Candi grinned at Tess.
“Hello, Candi,” said Ava Oneal. “Always the minion, never the boss, I see.”
Candi’s grin turned into a snarl.
Miss Roberts said, “If you’d like to keep this child in one piece, you’ll take a few steps back. That weapon Candi has shoots a million volts.”
Tess started toward Jaime and Candi, but Ava held her arm, shook her head. Tess had to stand there like a fool while one of the Brunos scooped up the small machine and carried it to where Miss Roberts sat.
“That’s ours,” said Jaime, struggling in Candi’s arms.
“And now it’s mine,” Miss Roberts said. She looked at her fingernails.
“You can’t do this,” said Theo.
Miss Roberts rolled her eyes. Candi rolled her eyes. The Brunos rolled their eyes. So much eye rolling made Tess want to scream.
“Let me make this as clear as I can,” said Miss Roberts. “This isn’t a movie. You’re not the heroes. And we can do whatever we want. And we will keep doing whatever we want until the end of time.”
Tess said, “Do you work for Slant?”
Miss Roberts looked so offended that Tess thought she might slap the nearest person, whether it was Tess or not. “People like Darnell Slant are actors. They play their parts. If they do it well, they’re rewarded. If not . . . well . . .” She trailed off, her meaning clear. “You can think of me as a director. The director. This is my show, my game. I call the shots, I direct the moves.”
“Show? Game?” Tess said. “What game?”
“The game called New York City, the game called America,” Miss Roberts said. “Someone has to run things. Someone has to push civilization in the right direction.”
“Who elected you?” said Theo, red-faced.
“Oh my goodness,” said Miss Roberts. “You are so sweet. The people don’t elect other people to run things. They never have. You’re pawns, that’s all. You are all pawns.”
“I thought we were actors,” said Jaime.
“You’re not actors, you’re ants,” Candi said over Jaime’s shoulder. “Insects, like your precious Morningstarr Machines.”
“I don’t like all these mixed metaphors,” said Theo.
“Aren’t ya listening?” said one of the Brunos. “Nobody cares what you like or what you don’t like, okay? Jeez.” A moth fluttered past him toward the lights and he lunged at it, missed.
“All this time we thought Darnell Slant knew what he was doing,” said Jaime. “But you’re saying he was just doing what you wanted him to do?”
Miss Roberts said, “I’m shocked you thought otherwise. Then again, I prefer to operate behind the scenes, so to speak. Anyone with real power doesn’t have to announce it.” Another moth flitted by, or maybe it was the same one. The first Bruno jumped and clapped his hands, but it flitted out of his reach. The second Bruno slapped at the air. The little moth easily evaded him, wings glinting silver in the light.
Silver? A machine? Tess glanced at Ava, at Ava’s shoulder. The moth that had been there moments ago was gone.
Miss Roberts’s eyes narrowed. “Bruno, catch that thing!”
“Yes, Bruno, catch!” Ava said. Nine tore out of Tess’s arms and jumped into Ava’s. Ava launched Nine at the Bruno, knocking him to the ground. Ava jumped over both of them to land a running punch into the nose of the other Bruno. He stumbled over a stalagmite of half wall into Candi and Jaime. Jaime elbowed Candi in the gut and twisted away.
Candi ignored Jaime and kept her eyes on Ava, circling, keeping her hands low. She faked with her left and attacked with her right. Ava dodged and pushed the arm aside, spinning Candi around. Another kick to the backside sent Candi flailing. She got her feet under her and faced Ava again, her face twisted in fury.
“You seem angry,” said Ava. “Are you angry, Candi?”
Candi replied with a roundhouse kick that missed Ava entirely. Ava swept Candi’s standing leg and Candi fell to the ground. One of the Brunos came charging at Ava, but she used the bottom of her long coat like a cape, draping it over his head and then coming down on his back with a ferocious elbow. She rolled over him to deliver a knee to the face of the other Bruno, who toppled like a tree into a pile of rotting leaves and vines.
The other guards glanced at one another, uncertain. Tess couldn’t help but grin.
Ava paused, took stock of the scene, and then relaxed. The silvery moth fluttered over to her and came to rest on her shoulder.
Miss Roberts, who had abandoned her chair and was standing there in shock, said, “Who are you?”
Ava smiled, lovely and dangerous. “I’m tired of playing games. I’m here to ruin your fun.”
Behind Candi, an older white man, lean and gray haired, said, “And I’m here to ruin yours.”
“Dad?” said Miss Roberts. “Dad! What are you doing here?”
“Checking up on you,” said the man. He held something in his arms, some kind of fuzzy thing with a long tail. Or was it an arm? “Good thing I came.”
The fuzzy thing’s tail—or arm—waved lazily, and Miss Roberts’s lip curled. “Dad, you need to go home. Let me call you a car.”
“Sit down in your chair, Merry.”
Merry?
Miss Roberts bristled and hissed, “Do not speak to me like that.”
“Yes, yes, you’re the big boss or the big bad or the director or something like that. I think your game nights went to your head,” said her father.
“That’s it,” Miss Roberts said. She reached into her jacket. “You’ve forced my hand, Father. I’m going to have to call the authorities and have you taken somewhere where you’ll be safe. I hate to do it, but you’ve left me no choice.”
“Call whoever you’d like,” the man said. “It won’t get you anywhere.”
Miss Roberts dialed the phone. Her voice was softer, more soothing, when she said, “I know you don’t understand, and that’s all right. You spend time with your . . . pets.”
The man’s gray face went stony. “I said, sit down.” Moving much more quickly than Tess would have thought possible, he tucked his pet under one arm and plucked the phone from her hand with the other. He threw it on the ground and smashed it with his foot. Then he pushed Miss Roberts down into her chair. Miss Roberts opened her mouth to protest, but the man held up a hand. “Before you say anything about your money or your power of attorney, I regret to inform you that you have neither.”
“What? Yes I do.”
“You silly girl. Those bankers, those lawyers work for me. They did what you told them to because I asked them to. You don’t have anything I haven’t given you.”
Jaime said, “So who’s the big bad? I’m confused.”
“That would be me,” said Merry’s father. “My name is Hunter Roberts.”
“I’ve never heard of you,” Theo said.
“Because I didn’t want you to have,” said Hunter Roberts.
“What do you want?” Ava said.
“Everything that’s due me,” he said, still petting the creature in his arms. He kissed its head. “This is Ramona. Say hello to the children and the lady, Ramona.” He held up the creature. It looked like a fuzzy . . . koala-crab? It clacked its one big claw and waved the small one. Nine growled.
Hunter Roberts sniffed. “Ramona doesn’t like cats.”
“I don’t think cats like Ramona,” Jaime said.
“What do you want from us?” Tess asked. “Why are you here?”
“I already have what I need,” Hunter Roberts said to Ava. He nodded at the machine, and one of the guards scooped it up and handed it to him.
“You don’t know what it does,” Jaime said.
“I know exactly what it does,” said Hunter Roberts. “Do you?”
“I cannot let you have it,” Ava said.
“I already have it.”
“Not for long,” Ava said.
“And what are you going to do about it?”
Ava scanned the circle of guards who were closing in on them. “You’re going to need more men.”
Hunter Roberts sighed. He held out the koala-crab thing and a guard took it reluctantly. Hunter pulled out a device from the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Is that a flip phone?” said Theo.
With a flick of Hunter Roberts’s wrist, the phone opened. He pressed a button and held the phone to his ear. “It’s time.” He listened for another few seconds. “Your experiments can wait.”
The floor beneath them shuddered. A panel that had been hidden amid the debris on the floor gaped wide. Three cages rose up.
Each one housed a monster.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Theo
“Oh no,” said Theo.
“Oh no,” buzzed Ono.
“Oh yes,” said Hunter Roberts. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
Nine growled. Jaime slowly backed away. “That’s not the word I’d use.”
All the cages were about fifteen by fifteen feet. In the first was a giraffe-owary, nearly as tall as its cage, biting at the bars with its vicious beak. In the second was a spider-wolf fat as a bull, bristling with a truly disturbing number of legs. In the third, a crocodile, its skin a strangely bright shade of green, smiled a crocodile smile, and then a barbed tail flipped up and curled over its back.
Theo, Tess, and Jaime were so absorbed with the monsters, they almost missed the man who had come up from the depths with them. He wore a lab coat and had large bulging eyes that reminded Theo of a salamander.
“This is Dr. Munsterberg,” said Hunter Roberts.
“Oh, come on,” Tess said.
“As you can see, he’s been working on a few experiments.” The spider-wolf thrust a dagger-like leg between the bars, but Dr. Munsterberg sidestepped it, his expression never changing. He was scrolling through his phone, as if this whole display was unnecessary, or even distasteful.
“You mixed a scorpion with a crocodile? Why would you do that?” Theo said. Even Merry Roberts seemed horrified. She practically fell out of her chair and scrambled behind Tess and Theo. Tess glared down at her.
Hunter Roberts blinked. “I didn’t mix anything. Dr. Munsterberg did.”
“Yes, but why?” Theo practically howled.
“Have you ever heard of a species of jellyfish called Turritopsis dohrnii?”
“Jellyfish?”
“It starts its life like other jellyfish, as a fertilized egg. It develops into a larva, which swims to the bottom of the ocean. There it changes into a bunch of polyps that in turn spawn a bunch of jellyfish. But that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is that when faced with a threat—starvation or predation, a big boat that goes by and slices off a few tentacles—the jellyfish can revert back to being a polyp, which then spawns more jellyfish identical to the adult. Because it can literally turn back time, some people call this jellyfish ‘the Immortal Jellyfish.’”
“Okay?” said Theo, who had no idea why this weirdo was blathering on about jellyfish, even immortal ones.
But Ava knew. Of course she knew. “You want to live forever.”
“What?” Merry Roberts said. “No!”
“Now you understand me,” Hunter Roberts said. “These beautiful creatures were by-products of experiments designed to help me find a way to stop time, or even reverse it.”
“Dad, you cannot be serious about this,” Merry Roberts said. “You’re eighty-one. You’ve had a good, long life.” She added, “And you probably have two or three more years. Maybe two. Or one. Maybe one.”
“It’s not enough,” Hunter Roberts said. “I want more. And why shouldn’t I have it?”
“B-but,” Merry Roberts stammered, probably thinking about the inheritance that her father would never give her. “It’s not natural.”
Hunter Roberts stroked Ramona the koala-crab. “Nature is meant to be manipulated. Wouldn’t you agree, Ms. Oneal?”
At the sound of Ava’s name, Dr. Munsterberg glanced up. His eyes lingered on Ava.
Theo did not appreciate this. He did not appreciate this whole situation.
But Ava flicked the mechanical moth from her shoulder, and it flitted away. “You might be surprised to hear that I don’t agree at all.”
“He knows who you are? How?” Tess said.
From the doorway, Imogen Sparks said, “Because he’s been listening.”
“Well. I guess we have ourselves a party. I don’t like parties,” said Hunter Roberts.
“Imogen!” Tess said.
“That’s how he made his fortune,” the Cipherist said, walking into the room. “By collecting all the searches made on all the computers and all the phones and keeping track of them. By listening in on everything that everyone does.”
“You mean the cabbie was right about our microwaves recording us?” Tess said.
“I thought he stole a letter from Mary, Queen of Scots, from the archives,” Imogen said. “But you had one of your monsters plant a bug, didn’t you?”
More figures appeared in the open doorways all around them. Priya Sharma. Ray Turnage. Delancey DeBrule. Gunter Deiderich. Gino Ventimiglia. Adrian Birch. Flo Harriman. Omar Khayyám. All of the Old York Puzzler and Cipherist Society, armed with weapons that would have been appropriate for fifteenth-century soldiers: shields, swords, clubs.
“Historians,” said Hunter Roberts. “So self-important. You look like rejects from a Renaissance fair.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Tess
Jaime whipped his light around. Ava Oneal stood in the doorway in her long silvery coat, a Morningstarr moth flapping lazily on her shoulder.
“Ava!” Tess said.
“Ava!” Theo said.
Jaime didn’t speak at all.
“Why shouldn’t we touch the machine?” said Tess.
Ava stepped across the threshold and into the building. “It’s dangerous.”
“No, it isn’t,” Theo said. “Not yet, anyway. We haven’t charged it.”
“And you don’t have to. You can simply walk away,” Ava said.
“Walk away?” Tess said. “No! We need to see what it does! We need to know who we are!”
“You already know,” Ava said. “At least, you know one possibility. But that’s not the only possibility. And if you leave now, you can discover new ones.”
“What are you saying?” Theo said. “Why don’t you just tell us what you know?”
“Please,” Jaime said, so softly that Tess could barely hear him.
Ava approached. She reached up and touched Jaime’s cheek with her fingertips the way a mother would. “You fix one thing, and so many other things are broken in the process.”
“What does that mean?” Theo said.
“More than a hundred years ago, someone set a fire in an orphanage. It was a refuge for black children, one of the few in New York City. And they wanted to burn it down. So they did. I saved every one of those children but almost didn’t survive myself. Almost all of my skin was gone. My heart gave out. My face . . .” She touched her cheek with her palm. “I asked for help, and the Morningstarrs helped me. I knew that it would cost something, but I didn’t know how much. They saved me and they doomed me all at once. I have been wandering this ugly, vicious world ever since. At first, I saved who and what I could, and that was enough. But it never stops. Never. And I have watched every single creature I have ever loved die.”
“But you’re not a machine!” Tess said. “You’re a . . . a . . . lady!”
Her smile was so sad that Tess’s chest ached. “Yes, I am a lady. A person, a human, just like you. But not like you, too.” She unbuttoned the jacket and slid it from her shoulders. Her brown skin shimmered and gleamed as if it were dusted with glitter.
Tess said, “Are those . . . ?”
“Solar cells!” Theo said. “Millions of solar cells!”
“Now you see,” said Ava as she pulled the jacket closed. “And I have the heart of a Lion.”
“A Lion battery,” Theo breathed.
“So as long as the sun shines, here I am,” Ava said.
“What about my mother?” Jaime said. “You . . . you look so much like her. You could be her sister. What does she have to do with this?”
Ava cocked her head. “Your mother?”
As soon as the words were out of Jaime’s mouth, lights, previously hidden behind vines and grime, turned on. The lights were so bright that Tess, Theo, and Jaime had to hold up their hands and turn their faces away. Even Ava winced. More than a dozen men—including the Brunos, who leered and cracked their knuckles—poured into the building from all sides.
“You’ll never get the machine, Slant!” Tess yelled into the air, holding on to Nine’s collar so she wouldn’t charge.
A pale, redheaded woman dressed in a white suit emerged from the blinding light, a woman Tess had never seen before. “Slant,” the woman said. “That’s hilarious.”
“Wait . . . who are you?” said Theo.
“That is a much bigger question than you think it is, Theodore,” said the woman. She snapped her fingers and one of the Brunos ran out the door. He came back with a folding chair. He unfolded the chair, and the redheaded woman sat down. She said, “You can call me Miss Roberts.”
“Where’s Slant?” Tess said.
Miss Roberts waved a slim hand. “Sleeping, I suppose. It is the middle of the night.”
“Isn’t he in charge?”
“In charge of what?”
Tess didn’t know how to answer this. Darnell Slant was the reason they’d started this whole thing. He was the reason they were here.
Wasn’t he?
“You really don’t have any idea what’s going on, do you?” Miss Roberts said. She crossed her legs. “But I can’t blame you for that. You’re just children. Resourceful children, I grant you—you thought to bring a bodyguard—but children nonetheless. All of you, back away from the machine. Slowly.”
“I don’t think so,” said Ava.
“I thought you might react that way. Candi?”
Candi moved so fast that she was just a red flash. She had an arm around Jaime’s neck and some sort of baton at his throat before they knew she was there. Candi grinned at Tess.
“Hello, Candi,” said Ava Oneal. “Always the minion, never the boss, I see.”
Candi’s grin turned into a snarl.
Miss Roberts said, “If you’d like to keep this child in one piece, you’ll take a few steps back. That weapon Candi has shoots a million volts.”
Tess started toward Jaime and Candi, but Ava held her arm, shook her head. Tess had to stand there like a fool while one of the Brunos scooped up the small machine and carried it to where Miss Roberts sat.
“That’s ours,” said Jaime, struggling in Candi’s arms.
“And now it’s mine,” Miss Roberts said. She looked at her fingernails.
“You can’t do this,” said Theo.
Miss Roberts rolled her eyes. Candi rolled her eyes. The Brunos rolled their eyes. So much eye rolling made Tess want to scream.
“Let me make this as clear as I can,” said Miss Roberts. “This isn’t a movie. You’re not the heroes. And we can do whatever we want. And we will keep doing whatever we want until the end of time.”
Tess said, “Do you work for Slant?”
Miss Roberts looked so offended that Tess thought she might slap the nearest person, whether it was Tess or not. “People like Darnell Slant are actors. They play their parts. If they do it well, they’re rewarded. If not . . . well . . .” She trailed off, her meaning clear. “You can think of me as a director. The director. This is my show, my game. I call the shots, I direct the moves.”
“Show? Game?” Tess said. “What game?”
“The game called New York City, the game called America,” Miss Roberts said. “Someone has to run things. Someone has to push civilization in the right direction.”
“Who elected you?” said Theo, red-faced.
“Oh my goodness,” said Miss Roberts. “You are so sweet. The people don’t elect other people to run things. They never have. You’re pawns, that’s all. You are all pawns.”
“I thought we were actors,” said Jaime.
“You’re not actors, you’re ants,” Candi said over Jaime’s shoulder. “Insects, like your precious Morningstarr Machines.”
“I don’t like all these mixed metaphors,” said Theo.
“Aren’t ya listening?” said one of the Brunos. “Nobody cares what you like or what you don’t like, okay? Jeez.” A moth fluttered past him toward the lights and he lunged at it, missed.
“All this time we thought Darnell Slant knew what he was doing,” said Jaime. “But you’re saying he was just doing what you wanted him to do?”
Miss Roberts said, “I’m shocked you thought otherwise. Then again, I prefer to operate behind the scenes, so to speak. Anyone with real power doesn’t have to announce it.” Another moth flitted by, or maybe it was the same one. The first Bruno jumped and clapped his hands, but it flitted out of his reach. The second Bruno slapped at the air. The little moth easily evaded him, wings glinting silver in the light.
Silver? A machine? Tess glanced at Ava, at Ava’s shoulder. The moth that had been there moments ago was gone.
Miss Roberts’s eyes narrowed. “Bruno, catch that thing!”
“Yes, Bruno, catch!” Ava said. Nine tore out of Tess’s arms and jumped into Ava’s. Ava launched Nine at the Bruno, knocking him to the ground. Ava jumped over both of them to land a running punch into the nose of the other Bruno. He stumbled over a stalagmite of half wall into Candi and Jaime. Jaime elbowed Candi in the gut and twisted away.
Candi ignored Jaime and kept her eyes on Ava, circling, keeping her hands low. She faked with her left and attacked with her right. Ava dodged and pushed the arm aside, spinning Candi around. Another kick to the backside sent Candi flailing. She got her feet under her and faced Ava again, her face twisted in fury.
“You seem angry,” said Ava. “Are you angry, Candi?”
Candi replied with a roundhouse kick that missed Ava entirely. Ava swept Candi’s standing leg and Candi fell to the ground. One of the Brunos came charging at Ava, but she used the bottom of her long coat like a cape, draping it over his head and then coming down on his back with a ferocious elbow. She rolled over him to deliver a knee to the face of the other Bruno, who toppled like a tree into a pile of rotting leaves and vines.
The other guards glanced at one another, uncertain. Tess couldn’t help but grin.
Ava paused, took stock of the scene, and then relaxed. The silvery moth fluttered over to her and came to rest on her shoulder.
Miss Roberts, who had abandoned her chair and was standing there in shock, said, “Who are you?”
Ava smiled, lovely and dangerous. “I’m tired of playing games. I’m here to ruin your fun.”
Behind Candi, an older white man, lean and gray haired, said, “And I’m here to ruin yours.”
“Dad?” said Miss Roberts. “Dad! What are you doing here?”
“Checking up on you,” said the man. He held something in his arms, some kind of fuzzy thing with a long tail. Or was it an arm? “Good thing I came.”
The fuzzy thing’s tail—or arm—waved lazily, and Miss Roberts’s lip curled. “Dad, you need to go home. Let me call you a car.”
“Sit down in your chair, Merry.”
Merry?
Miss Roberts bristled and hissed, “Do not speak to me like that.”
“Yes, yes, you’re the big boss or the big bad or the director or something like that. I think your game nights went to your head,” said her father.
“That’s it,” Miss Roberts said. She reached into her jacket. “You’ve forced my hand, Father. I’m going to have to call the authorities and have you taken somewhere where you’ll be safe. I hate to do it, but you’ve left me no choice.”
“Call whoever you’d like,” the man said. “It won’t get you anywhere.”
Miss Roberts dialed the phone. Her voice was softer, more soothing, when she said, “I know you don’t understand, and that’s all right. You spend time with your . . . pets.”
The man’s gray face went stony. “I said, sit down.” Moving much more quickly than Tess would have thought possible, he tucked his pet under one arm and plucked the phone from her hand with the other. He threw it on the ground and smashed it with his foot. Then he pushed Miss Roberts down into her chair. Miss Roberts opened her mouth to protest, but the man held up a hand. “Before you say anything about your money or your power of attorney, I regret to inform you that you have neither.”
“What? Yes I do.”
“You silly girl. Those bankers, those lawyers work for me. They did what you told them to because I asked them to. You don’t have anything I haven’t given you.”
Jaime said, “So who’s the big bad? I’m confused.”
“That would be me,” said Merry’s father. “My name is Hunter Roberts.”
“I’ve never heard of you,” Theo said.
“Because I didn’t want you to have,” said Hunter Roberts.
“What do you want?” Ava said.
“Everything that’s due me,” he said, still petting the creature in his arms. He kissed its head. “This is Ramona. Say hello to the children and the lady, Ramona.” He held up the creature. It looked like a fuzzy . . . koala-crab? It clacked its one big claw and waved the small one. Nine growled.
Hunter Roberts sniffed. “Ramona doesn’t like cats.”
“I don’t think cats like Ramona,” Jaime said.
“What do you want from us?” Tess asked. “Why are you here?”
“I already have what I need,” Hunter Roberts said to Ava. He nodded at the machine, and one of the guards scooped it up and handed it to him.
“You don’t know what it does,” Jaime said.
“I know exactly what it does,” said Hunter Roberts. “Do you?”
“I cannot let you have it,” Ava said.
“I already have it.”
“Not for long,” Ava said.
“And what are you going to do about it?”
Ava scanned the circle of guards who were closing in on them. “You’re going to need more men.”
Hunter Roberts sighed. He held out the koala-crab thing and a guard took it reluctantly. Hunter pulled out a device from the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Is that a flip phone?” said Theo.
With a flick of Hunter Roberts’s wrist, the phone opened. He pressed a button and held the phone to his ear. “It’s time.” He listened for another few seconds. “Your experiments can wait.”
The floor beneath them shuddered. A panel that had been hidden amid the debris on the floor gaped wide. Three cages rose up.
Each one housed a monster.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Theo
“Oh no,” said Theo.
“Oh no,” buzzed Ono.
“Oh yes,” said Hunter Roberts. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
Nine growled. Jaime slowly backed away. “That’s not the word I’d use.”
All the cages were about fifteen by fifteen feet. In the first was a giraffe-owary, nearly as tall as its cage, biting at the bars with its vicious beak. In the second was a spider-wolf fat as a bull, bristling with a truly disturbing number of legs. In the third, a crocodile, its skin a strangely bright shade of green, smiled a crocodile smile, and then a barbed tail flipped up and curled over its back.
Theo, Tess, and Jaime were so absorbed with the monsters, they almost missed the man who had come up from the depths with them. He wore a lab coat and had large bulging eyes that reminded Theo of a salamander.
“This is Dr. Munsterberg,” said Hunter Roberts.
“Oh, come on,” Tess said.
“As you can see, he’s been working on a few experiments.” The spider-wolf thrust a dagger-like leg between the bars, but Dr. Munsterberg sidestepped it, his expression never changing. He was scrolling through his phone, as if this whole display was unnecessary, or even distasteful.
“You mixed a scorpion with a crocodile? Why would you do that?” Theo said. Even Merry Roberts seemed horrified. She practically fell out of her chair and scrambled behind Tess and Theo. Tess glared down at her.
Hunter Roberts blinked. “I didn’t mix anything. Dr. Munsterberg did.”
“Yes, but why?” Theo practically howled.
“Have you ever heard of a species of jellyfish called Turritopsis dohrnii?”
“Jellyfish?”
“It starts its life like other jellyfish, as a fertilized egg. It develops into a larva, which swims to the bottom of the ocean. There it changes into a bunch of polyps that in turn spawn a bunch of jellyfish. But that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is that when faced with a threat—starvation or predation, a big boat that goes by and slices off a few tentacles—the jellyfish can revert back to being a polyp, which then spawns more jellyfish identical to the adult. Because it can literally turn back time, some people call this jellyfish ‘the Immortal Jellyfish.’”
“Okay?” said Theo, who had no idea why this weirdo was blathering on about jellyfish, even immortal ones.
But Ava knew. Of course she knew. “You want to live forever.”
“What?” Merry Roberts said. “No!”
“Now you understand me,” Hunter Roberts said. “These beautiful creatures were by-products of experiments designed to help me find a way to stop time, or even reverse it.”
“Dad, you cannot be serious about this,” Merry Roberts said. “You’re eighty-one. You’ve had a good, long life.” She added, “And you probably have two or three more years. Maybe two. Or one. Maybe one.”
“It’s not enough,” Hunter Roberts said. “I want more. And why shouldn’t I have it?”
“B-but,” Merry Roberts stammered, probably thinking about the inheritance that her father would never give her. “It’s not natural.”
Hunter Roberts stroked Ramona the koala-crab. “Nature is meant to be manipulated. Wouldn’t you agree, Ms. Oneal?”
At the sound of Ava’s name, Dr. Munsterberg glanced up. His eyes lingered on Ava.
Theo did not appreciate this. He did not appreciate this whole situation.
But Ava flicked the mechanical moth from her shoulder, and it flitted away. “You might be surprised to hear that I don’t agree at all.”
“He knows who you are? How?” Tess said.
From the doorway, Imogen Sparks said, “Because he’s been listening.”
“Well. I guess we have ourselves a party. I don’t like parties,” said Hunter Roberts.
“Imogen!” Tess said.
“That’s how he made his fortune,” the Cipherist said, walking into the room. “By collecting all the searches made on all the computers and all the phones and keeping track of them. By listening in on everything that everyone does.”
“You mean the cabbie was right about our microwaves recording us?” Tess said.
“I thought he stole a letter from Mary, Queen of Scots, from the archives,” Imogen said. “But you had one of your monsters plant a bug, didn’t you?”
More figures appeared in the open doorways all around them. Priya Sharma. Ray Turnage. Delancey DeBrule. Gunter Deiderich. Gino Ventimiglia. Adrian Birch. Flo Harriman. Omar Khayyám. All of the Old York Puzzler and Cipherist Society, armed with weapons that would have been appropriate for fifteenth-century soldiers: shields, swords, clubs.
“Historians,” said Hunter Roberts. “So self-important. You look like rejects from a Renaissance fair.”
