“How come they never mentioned Dominic before?” I asked. “Is it because he’s the personification of human evil?”
Angelo smirked a little. “Subtle, Maggie. And your parents and Dominic have gone their separate ways, obviously. They have always had different … viewpoints, for lack of a better word, on how the Collective should be run.”
I crossed my arms over my chest so that Angelo wouldn’t see my hands turning into fists. I already hated Dominic Arment. “So where is he now?”
“Apparently here in New York. He has a home … and then he has a home.” Angelo raised an eyebrow at me.
“The place where he takes his mistresses?” I guessed.
Angelo tapped his nose in response, looking a bit disgusted. He’s big on moral character, respecting women, all that.
“What a dirty birdie,” I replied. “So the gold coins are probably behind Door Number Two.”
“We think.”
“We think?”
“Darling, this isn’t one of our usual cases. We don’t have a lot of information. The Collective normally supplies background intelligence for us.”
I thought for a few seconds. “Do they know that you know all this about Dominic?”
Angelo just smirked at me. “Your job is to look for the coins, if you so desire.”
“I so desire. I’m looking for these coins. That’s a done deal. Do we have an address?”
Angelo pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and showed it to me. “Do you see it?” he asked me.
22 Pomander Walk was written on the paper in Angelo’s elegant scrawl.
“Yes.”
“Good.” Then he crumpled it up and tossed it through the bars of a sewer grate.
“Subtle,” I said, mimicking him.
He gave me a wink, but his face soon sobered. “This is your biggest case ever, my love. Are you sure you’re ready?”
“Are you?” I challenged, trying to lighten the mood even though my heart was pulling a Fred Astaire and tappity-tapping away in my chest. “You trained me, after all.”
“Ah, I see. The teacher becomes the student and vice versa.” He chuckled and straightened one of his shirt sleeves. “Know this, Maggie. I have always had complete faith in you.”
For some reason, that sort of made me want to cry, but I shook it off and wrinkled my nose at him. “This has been a really uplifting conversation, by the way. The Collective wants people to think that my parents are thieves, the Secret Service wants these coins as much as I do, my parents actually know the bad guy, and that pigeon is getting closer!” I stamped my foot and it scuttled away. “Ugh, disgusting.”
“Things are not as bright as one would like them to be,” Angelo admitted. “But the sun is out, the birds are singing—I said birds, Maggie, not pigeons, you don’t have to make such a face—and we’re having a lovely morning in Central Park.” He glanced over at the green trees, then offered me his arm. “Stroll with me?”
I took it because I can never say no to a stroll with Angelo.
And I never will.
Chapter 7
“Who in their right mind would need to prep for the SATs three days a week during the summer?” I pulled my hair into a ponytail and held it off my neck while I watched an amateur guitarist start strumming in Washington Square Park.
“Stupid people,” Roux replied. She was sitting next to me, guzzling her way through a Coke before our mid-morning break was over and we had to go back into the classroom.
“Morons,” she continued. “People whose parents try to get rid of them for three months under the guise of caring about their education.”
I waved my makeshift ponytail, trying to fan myself and failing miserably. “Your parents care about you—” I started to say, but Roux just laughed.
“Yeah, right.”
“But didn’t they come home two days ago? Family bonding time, yay!”
Roux pulled her sunglasses down her nose just far enough so that I could see her unamused glare, then pushed them back up. “They left again this morning. Something in Bangkok, I think. Or maybe it was Beijing? Biloxi? I don’t know. We went to dinner last night but I was too busy ignoring them to listen to what they were saying.”
I looked down at my feet. It was always awkward when Roux talked about her parents. Yeah, mine were unconventional and weird and dorky, but at least they were around. “Well, at least now they won’t annoy you all the time,” I said, trying to cheer her up. “Maybe I could come over. Slumber party!”
“Mags, I love you dearly, but you are the worst slumber party attendee ever.”
“I think you’re being a little drama—”
“Ever.”
“Why? I’m fun! We watched movies and ate raw cookie dough.” Several months ago, Roux had been horrified to discover that I had never had what she called “a normal rite-of-passage experience for every teenager residing in the Western Hemisphere.”
“You had to Wikipedia ‘raw cookie dough’ to make sure that you wouldn’t get salmonella.”
“It had raw eggs! It was a risk!”
“And you fell asleep at ten o’clock.”
“I’m an old soul. We go to bed early.”
Roux tried to keep glaring at me, but her grimace collapsed into a smile instead. “Anyhoodle,” she said. “We could try having a slumber party, see if you’ve learned anything. Or, you know, maybe I could hang out at your house instead.”
“Roux, it’s not exactly the safest place.”
“Are you kidding? You have four deadbolt locks and a fingerprint scanner! Your windows are bulletproof! It’s the safest apartment ever!”
“Could you not say it so loud?”
“This park is one of the weirdest places in Manhattan,” Roux said. “No one gives a rat’s ass. Here, watch!” Roux stood up and straightened her dress. “HEY, EVERYONE! THIS GIRL HAS A FINGERPRINT SCANNER! SHE’S A SAFECRACKER!”
“What are you doing?” I hissed, yanking her back down on the bench. “You are insane! Legimately insane!”
Roux just gestured out at the summer crowd. “See? No one cares. Except for all the pot dealers.” I looked where she was pointing and saw several men scrambling out of the park. “Wow. Who knew they could run so fast?”
“You made your point,” I said. “Our loft is super safe, yay. Now all of lower Manhattan is aware thanks to the Roux Broadcasting System.”
“Now in stereo,” she said, not missing a beat. “So when can I come over?”
I sighed and rubbed my palms on my knees, feeling itchy and nervous all of a sudden. “Roux?”
“Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“That’s not a good voice.”
“All I said was Roux!”
“But you said it ominously. Like, with omin.” She grinned when I started to crack up. “I’m serious! The last time you sounded like that, you dropped twelve passports in my lap and then I had to run twenty blocks and jump into a helicopter so a crazypants madman wouldn’t kill me.” Roux sipped at her Coke. “You can see why I’m wary.”
She had a point.
“Well, it’s not that bad,” I began, which got Roux’s attention. In the worst possible way.
“Are you on a mission?” she whispered, glancing around us. “Are we staking someone out right now?”
“We don’t do stakeouts—”
“No, of course not, of course not. That’s for less talented spies. Spies in training, that sort of thing. I’ve been studying up on it.”
“You have?”
“You should see the stack of spy novels by my bed.” She sighed. “It’s exhausting trying to be well read.”
“Roux,” I tried again. “I’m not on a stakeout. Calm down.”
“Phew. ’Cause I cannot run in these shoes, let me tell you.”
I shook my head. “Can we just focus, please? We only have a few minutes before we get back to class.”
“Let’s ditch and go buy night vision goggles.”
&nbs
p; “No.”
“Okay.”
“The Collective is accusing my parents of stealing evidence.”
Well, that got her attention.
“Really?” She gasped. “Did they do it?”
“No!” I cried. “Of course not! My parents are, like, model spies.”
“That sounds like an oxymoron. Why is the Collective saying that?”
“Because I think they’re pissed at me for showing a gap in their armor.” It wasn’t the whole truth, and maybe not even a little bit of the truth, but I wanted to protect Roux as much as I wanted to protect Jesse. They didn’t need to know everything.
“You mean when Colton Hooper tried to kill you? They should be thanking you!”
I smiled despite myself. “That’s what Jesse said.”
“Hell yes, he did! Finally, we agree on something.” Roux took the last sip of her Coke, then expertly tossed the bottle ten feet into a recycling bin. “So what’s the plan?”
“I’m not really sure. I just need to prove that my parents didn’t do it because if the Collective finds them guilty, then we get tossed out.” It was terrible to even think about it, the fact that my family and I would truly be on our own for the first time in my life. I was already plenty nervous about whether or not to apply for colleges, and that was still nearly six months away. Being kicked out of the Collective would be like losing the only family I had ever known. And what would my parents do for money? A computer hacker and a statistician with no legal work experience weren’t exactly at the top of the job postings on Craigslist.
Roux’s voice was small when she spoke again. “If you get kicked out, does that mean you can’t go to Harper anymore?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, even if you do, I’ll homeschool you.” Roux dug her elbow into my side, trying to cheer me up. “I’ll give you all my quizzes and homework and I’ll let you do the reading, too. No need to thank me!”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“I don’t like to brag, but I am an amazing friend.” She slung one arm over the bench and looked around her again. I wondered if she had seen Angelo do the same thing whenever he was out in the city. “And you don’t have to tell me if you have a plan. I know you have a plan.”
“How do you know?”
“Maggie, you have a plan for everything. You always have your MetroCard ready to go so you don’t hold everyone up at the subway turnstiles. You carry your keys poking out of your fist so that you can stab someone if you have to. You do homework every day at the same time—from four to six every afternoon, don’t even try to deny it. You keep rain boots in your locker in case it rains. Trust me,” Roux concluded. “You have a plan.”
I had no idea she paid attention to any of that stuff. Roux was usually so busy talking, laughing, flailing, and demanding that I never thought she noticed anything subtle or sly.
“I don’t have a plan,” I protested, then added, “yet.”
Roux grinned. “That’s my girl.”
“I just have to prove that my parents didn’t do anything,” I said. “It can’t be that hard.”
“But what if the Collective tries to stop you from proving it?”
“I don’t care what they want!”
“That’s the spirit!”
“I’m serious. Even if we get kicked out, at least I’ll know that I tried to clear their names.”
Roux was quiet for a few seconds before speaking again. “What if they want to stop you, though? Like … really stop you?”
“Jesse’s afraid they might try to kill me.”
“Jesse has become my psychic twin. The world doesn’t even make sense anymore.”
“They’re not going to kill me,” I told her. “You two are just scarred from the whole Colton Hooper experience. That was the first time you ever experienced something like that. Trust me, run for your life a few more times and you’ll be able to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”
Roux looked unconvinced, but then her face slid into a slow smile. “Hey, remember when I punched him and broke his nose?”
“How could I forget? You never stop mentioning it.”
“Ugh, that was so amazing.” Roux threw a few small jabs in the air. “So. Getting back to you and your weird problems.”
“They’re not weird, they’re …” I couldn’t find a word that described the situation.
“They’re weird,” Roux said. “Trust me. And honestly, I’m not surprised. I could tell you were getting bored.”
“I’m not bored. We live in New York. It’s not boring.”
“C’mon, Mags. It’s me, okay? I know you well. You are so bored. How could you go from being an international safecracker to sitting in history class, pretending to learn facts about cities you’ve already lived in? I’d die of boredom and I’ve never even been anywhere.”
“Are you kidding? High school is agonizing! Give me a safe any day!”
“Exactly.”
I stopped short as I realized my Freudian slip. “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “I just meant that it’s difficult. I’m not bored.”
“But it’s not what you’re meant to do.”
The certainty in Roux’s voice stopped me and for the first time, I admitted to myself that I was bored. I was so bored. I loved Jesse, loved Roux, loved my parents, but nothing changed. The scenery was the same, our house was the same, the risk was the same.
“You spin imaginary locks between your fingers,” Roux said gently. “You do it all the time. Stop lying to yourself.”
I took a deep breath. I was pretty sure we were way late for our SAT prep class. “If I could have everything at the same time, I would,” I told her. “You and Jesse and my parents and Angelo and our house, and then I’d just work nights and weekends.”
Roux grinned. “Like Batman!”
“Just like him.” I laughed. “Same outfit and everything.”
“You definitely need those little pointy ears,” Roux agreed. “Okay, then, so what’s the plan? What are we doing?”
“We?”
“Duh. Of course we. What’s Jesse doing? Let me guess, standing around and doing that pouty thing he does? Because that’s always helpful.”
“He does not pout! He just … okay, maybe he looks a little pouty every now and then.”
“Ha! You knew I was right.”
“But it’s a cute pouty thing! And he’s doing nothing and so are you. Nothing,” I added as she started to protest. “You are both civilians in this one. I’m not dragging either of you back into danger.” I didn’t tell Roux, but I still woke up some nights gasping for breath, seeing Roux and Jesse run behind me and then disappear into the earth below, falling so fast that I was unable to grab them.
I could feel Roux’s glare even from behind her sunglasses. “Are you being serious right now?”
“Stone cold serious. Wait, is that a wrestler’s name? It sounds like a wrestler.”
“You’re just going to solve this whole thing by yourself?”
“That’s pretty much the plan, yeah.”
Roux sat very still for a moment and I steeled myself for the outburst.
Sure enough, I was right.
“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said!” she cried. “So what, you’re going to go do your job without Jesse and especially without me? What am I supposed to do then? Do you think I like reading all those spy novels? If I have to read the word ‘Moscow’ one more time, I’m going to smother someone with a babushka!”
“It’s too dangerous!”
“I know! If Angelo hadn’t saved us, you’d probably be dead! We’d all probably be dead! I know about danger!”
“No, Roux, you don’t. Sometimes people are psychopaths, okay? I have a talent, I have a gift, and I’ve been trained since I was a little kid. I made a huge mistake by dragging you and Jesse into it last year, I know that, and I will not do it again. You deserve better.”
Roux sat back against the bench and loo
ked very, very small. “So you go off and do your job and I stay here and do what?”
“You go to school,” I told her. “You apply to colleges. You harass Harold! Do whatever it is you enjoy doing! You love talking to Harold!”
It might have been just the sun, but I thought for a split second that I saw Roux’s lip tremble. “Do you have any idea what it’s like?” she said in a near whisper. “What it was like before you came here? Those girls hate me.” She pointed over toward our school, which was only a few blocks away. “They hate me. I made one mistake and they won’t let me forget it. Have you even noticed that you’re still my only friend? You know what they say to me, Maggie. How many different ways can you call someone a slut? Because I think they’re trying to set a world record.”
Now I knew it wasn’t the sunlight. Roux’s lip really was wobbling.
“My parents were home for two days and they took me to dinner and talked about themselves,” she said. “They asked about school and about friends and didn’t listen to any of my answers. Then they taped a note to the refrigerator door this morning and left a thousand dollars cash for emergencies. They don’t care about me at home and they hate me at school. The only place I can go where someone doesn’t try to shut me down is your house.”
I sat dumbfounded. I had thought that nearly everything rolled off Roux’s back, that she didn’t care what anyone thought of her. She never even blinked when someone in the hall threw a slur in her direction, but I guess if you fire a bullet at someone enough times, eventually they learn not to flinch.
And it made sense now, too, why she thought our loft was safe. Even without the bulletproof windows and high-tech entrance pad, it was still the safest place she had.
“No, it’s fine,” she said when I tried to reach for her, and she slipped a finger under her sunglasses to wipe at her eyes. “It’s cool. I think … I think I’m just going to ditch the rest of the class, if that’s okay with you.”
“I can ditch with you,” I offered. “I mean it. We can do something. Do you want to get a manicure?”
She smiled a little. “You’re a good friend. But I think I want to be alone for a while. Gotta get used to it again.”