“The hole in the east wing!” Kerri commandeered the party, compass in hand, covering it from the dust raining from the roof beams. “That way!”
They ran to the end of a corridor, Andy’s shoulder first, inspired by sheer faith to hit a door and not a solid wall. She crashed inside, landing onto a sun-kissed carpet. White sky shone through the charred skeleton of the roof like a divine power through a rose window.
Kerri leaped over Andy and clambered up a pile of debris to peep through a gash on the wall.
“Through here! Tim, come! You come with me!”
The dog blissfully jumped into her arms, then reconsidered when he saw the almost vertical drop on the other side of the hole, but Kerri didn’t give him a chance to cower: she hugged him tightly and plunged forward, and they avalanched down a steep pile of rubble to the ground, where they rolled to their feet and ran toward the sound of the approaching motorboat.
“A motorboat?!” Andy shouted in disbelief as she slid down with the cage and the bags. “Who the fuck—”
“Who cares?!” Nate cried, scurrying out himself, hugging the grimoire to his chest, trying to climb safely down and failing miserably, but happily, as he tumbled to safe ground.
The motorboat didn’t even dock; Joey Krantz swerved at the shore and let Kerri jump from the pier to the front seat. Tim came right after, barking an introduction in midair and landing on Joey’s lap.
“Quick, everybody on board!” Kerri called. “Nate! Move!”
Andy stopped by the pier, caught Nate once again frozen in front of the mansion, staring back at the dormer window to the attic they’d just escaped.
She followed his line of sight. She saw the magnificent mansion, long and boastfully tall, the ivy snaking up the fa?ade and framing the round window on the central dormer. The tremor had passed. Nothing moved up there. Nothing shuddered. Not the ivy leaves, nor the window frame, nor the black-cloaked crow-figure standing in the attic they had just left not sixty seconds ago.
“No way,” she muttered to herself.
A horn blared.
“Nate! Andrea! Come on board!” Joey shouted.
Andy popped out of the trance, grabbed Nate, glanced back at the figure she expected to have vanished in the lapse and saw it still standing there, as impertinent as only human-born things can be. Then they boarded the boat just as Joey was pumping the throttle and veering back to the mainland.
The house drifted away, hid back under the isle trees. The tectonic plates had settled. The waters were beginning to, disturbed only by the path knifed by the motorboat that ferried the detectives back to the mainland.
Andy shifted on the pile of backpacks and distressed animals and faced Joey. “What are you doing here?!”
“I called him!” Kerri explained. “I asked him to stand guard on the lakeshore in case we had to escape this way.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t approve, Andy! We are going to need help—all we can get!”
“So what happened?” Joey pressed. “Was that an earthquake just now? Is it what tipped your boat last time?”
Kerri tried to remember every new clue they’d collected, but the pile of loose ends was too big to juggle with; they just fell out of her hands. She flipped her hair and stared at the horizon.
Andy suddenly noticed the canary expostulating in the most harmonious terms. She opened the cage, realizing they could have freed it ages ago, and the little bird hopped indecisively on the brim of the little door, then tried to flutter out against the wind and lost. It settled in the shelter of the backseat, where the leather was torn and cozy foam stuck out, and it cowered there, tweeting unambiguously angry messages at each team member on the boat: Fuck you! And fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, and especially fuck you!
And Tim yapped back with immense joy at the new friend he’d made.
Kerri swapped slides under the microscope, holding her breath at the abusive smell coming from the sample box. Andy was gargoyling over her shoulder, perched on a stool behind her at the front row of the classroom.
ANDY: So I’m not angry that you called Joey. I mean, I don’t know how I would have reacted if you’d told me, but it’s okay, ’cause I don’t need to green-light every step; no one’s in command. (Pauses; sees Kerri taking notes.) What’s up?
KERRI: Oxidation of the marrow cells.
ANDY: Right. (Beat.) But anyway, the key to keeping it this way is being a team and sharing intel. Okay? I’m not pissed off; I’m saying that if we start (treading carefully) com-part-ment-al-iz-ing information, we’re less efficient. (Pause.) What’s up now?
KERRI: (Leaves the pen on the notepad.) Someone talking to me while I’m trying to concentrate.
Andy wisely repressed an unnecessary “okay” and shut up. It had been Kerri’s idea to hit the library, just like the old days, but the needs of the present case had vastly outgrown the once rich and always willing resources of the Blyton Hills Elementary book depository. She had now taken it upon herself to analyze the wheezer samples she and Copperseed had frozen using the best sixth-grade equipment available in the chemistry classroom.
The harsh population drop in Blyton Hills after the closure of the chemical plant was taking its toll on the public budget, and the school was expected to stop operating the following year and start busing the children off to Belden, as it did with high schoolers. Andy had never visited the building before, except for the library. She liked the classrooms better than those in the boarding schools she’d been sent to, but maybe it was just her grown-up eyes, distanced from the mean-looking periodic tables and plant taxonomy posters.
“Do you remember the Blooms’ house?” Kerri asked, not raising her eyes from the lens.
She held on for an answer, which didn’t arrive.
“You may speak now, Andy.”
“Yeah, I remember,” she answered promptly. “They had that swimming pool we were so jealous of.”
“Do me a favor: go there and ask Mr. Bloom to let you borrow their pH test pen—that thingy to measure water acidity?”
“Okay.”
“And take Tim; I can’t keep him from putting stuff in his mouth all the time.”
Tim caught the accusation, spat the tadpole back into its aquarium, and came tail-nodding to Andy by the door.
“Uh…want something to eat?” Andy asked.
Somewhere behind a curtain of curly orange stalactites covering the microscope, Kerri microsmiled. “A Coke.”
Andy left and closed the door behind her. Captain Al, Deputy Copperseed, and Joey Krantz were heading her way; she intercepted them.
“Don’t disturb her; brief me,” she ordered, walking on.
The three marched beside her, Captain Al reporting first: “Sentinel Hill’s clear. The creatures you met must have sprung up the shaft there. After I heard them and I morsed you a warning, I stood guarding the adit mouth for a while, but nothing popped up.”
“The air was too pure for them,” Andy guessed, resentful.
“I just scouted the isle,” Joey said. “I saw nobody.”
“Why are you wearing a uniform?” she interrupted.
“Uh…I volunteer for the sheriff’s office.”