Mrs. Biedermann covered the phone. “Tess? Did you sort Grandpa’s mail yet?”
“What? No. Who cares about—”
“Why don’t you bring it upstairs and put the new batch with the rest?”
“But—”
Mrs. Biedermann’s eyes landed on Jaime. “Maybe Jaime wants to go with you. And the cat. And your brother, before he decides to start kicking our furniture out the window.”
“What does it matter?” Tess grumbled. But she whistled for Nine. The cat crept out from under the coffee table and Tess slipped her into a harness.
“Come on, Theo,” Tess said. “Mom wants to get rid of us.”
Mr. Biedermann put a stack of plates in the sink with a rattle. “Tess, you know that’s not what your mother meant.”
Tess didn’t answer. She marched toward the door. Turned. Glared. At both of them. “Are you guys just going to stand there, or are you coming with me?”
Theo blinked, focused on Jaime for the first time since Jaime had arrived in the apartment. “Well? What do you think?”
“I think you look a little blintzed to me,” Jaime said.
Theo smiled, a tiny smile that disappeared as fast as it had appeared. “We’re all a little blintzed.” He stepped over the destruction and followed Tess out of the apartment.
“Thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Biedermann,” Jaime said, though he wasn’t sure what he was thanking them for, really.
Mrs. Biedermann waved, continued her phone call.
“Bye, Jaime,” said Mr. Biedermann absently. “Hope you’ll come by again.”
“Sure,” Jaime said, the word thick on his tongue. “We have a whole month.”
In the hallway, as Jaime was shutting the Biedermanns’ door behind him, he noticed something white and crumpled on the floor. He picked it up. An envelope with a gold seal and what looked like teeth marks. How upset had Mima been that she’d missed a piece of trash littering up her building? That she didn’t stop and pick it up? That none of the other tenants had?
He turned the envelope over, smoothed it out. The words TRUST NO ONE TRUST NO ONE TRUST NO ONE screamed at him. “Now you tell me,” he muttered.
“Jaime?” Tess called. She was holding the elevator with a stiff arm and a furious expression, wispy tendrils of hair standing out in a corona all around her head. She reminded him of Tyrone the hamster-hog trying to power her way to a more just universe.
Don’t let anybody get you down.
Jaime folded the envelope and slipped it into a pocket. “Coming.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Tess
The major symptoms of shock: weak pulse, clammy skin, shallow breathing, dizziness, light-headedness, confusion. To this list, Tess added numb lips, itchy toes, gnashing teeth, and a deep desire to toss the nearest real estate developer into the Hudson. Maybe all the real estate developers. And their creepy minions. Where does a person find minions anyway? Was there a job board online somewhere? How would an advertisement for minions read? Have you ever been told your smile makes people uncomfortable? Does your voice sound like a dentist’s drill? Does your gaze cause others to break out in hives? Have you misplaced your moral compass?
“Tess, are you okay?” Jaime asked.
Right. She wasn’t alone in the elevator. Sometimes she forgot she wasn’t alone, like when she walked down the street and realized she’d been mumbling to herself for blocks.
“Tess?” Jaime said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“Yeah?” said Tess.
“You were mumbling to yourself,” Theo said.
“I don’t mumble,” Tess said.
“I wasn’t talking about the mumbling, I was talking about your eye,” said Jaime.
“My eye?”
“It’s sort of . . . twitching.”
“My eye is really, really angry.”
“Makes sense,” said Jaime.
But the twitching was contagious, Tess noticed. As they rode to the penthouse, Jaime’s fingers typed out manic messages against the leg of his jeans. Theo’s foot tapped as if he was reliving the way he’d destroyed the Tower of London. Nine paced the length of her leash, pausing only to sniff at their sneakers. Even the elevator was twitchy; it lurched forward, stopped, jerked back, retraced its path, then lurched and jerked again.
Finally, they reached the seventh floor and the elevator released them into the corridor, which smelled of oatmeal, musty newspaper, and just the tiniest bit of lavender. Tess dug around in her messenger bag, pulled out the keys to her grandfather’s apartment, and unlocked the door.
Grandpa’s apartment had three bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room and dining room, even a library. He’d offered to switch apartments with the Biedermanns once, but Mom said there was no way that Grandpa would be able to fit his stuff anywhere else.
“I’ve never been up to the penthouse,” said Jaime.
Theo grunted. “My mom says a more accurate name would be ‘the fire hazard on the top floor.’”
Which was true. The apartment was packed with books and maps and parchments, strange gadgets designed by the Morningstarrs and others, piles of newspaper that formed little chimneys all over the place. How would they sort it all? And where would they move it?
Tess let go of Nine’s leash and the cat pranced between the chimneys. Huge windows lined one wall, motes of dust dancing in the bright sunshine. Nine leaped up to catch them like a bear snapping at spawning salmon.
“Wow,” said Jaime. “This is . . .”
“A mess?” said Theo.
“Amazing,” said Jaime.
Clanking sounds erupted from the kitchen, followed by some high-pitched squealing that pasted Nine’s ears to the top of her head.
“I thought your grandpa wasn’t here,” said Jaime.
“He’s not,” Theo said.
“Then who—”
A man dressed entirely in silver armor complete with helmet clomped into the living room. He held a tray with a plate of cookies and three overfull glasses of water that sloshed all over his chain-mail gloves.
Jaime’s mouth dropped open. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It is,” said Theo. “A Lancelot. Servant model. Built by the Morningstarrs, based on designs by Leonardo da Vinci. Something they did when they were young, but the machines caught on.”
Tess said, “In the early eighteen hundreds, everybody had a Lance—well, all the rich people had a Lance—but they went out of style more than a hundred years ago.”
“Maybe if you got him a different outfit,” said Jaime.
“Lances can get destructive when left alone too long,” Theo said. “My grandpa’s always finding the toilet paper pulled off the rolls and dragged around the house.”
Jaime nodded. “So they’re like big metal kittens?”
Lance held out the tray to Jaime, metal arms squeaking.
“He makes the cookies himself,” said Tess. “Oatmeal. They’re pretty good, usually. He must have made these before my grandpa . . . well, before he left. They might be a little stale.”