“You should try to keep it down when you talk to yourself, Max-Ernest. You don’t want people thinking you’re crazy, do you? Not that they don’t already…”
Max-Ernest spun around. Opal, the new school secretary, was standing in front of him, hands on her hips, laughing at him. Or at the very least grinning all the way up to the big mole on her cheek.
Max-Ernest hadn’t seen her since she’d set him up, making him walk into the principal’s office without knocking. What was it that looked different about her today?
“Unless you’re auditioning for the part of the jester? You know I could probably get you onstage at the Renaissance Faire.”
Max-Ernest felt himself blush. “Very funny.”
How much had she heard? He hoped desperately that he hadn’t said anything aloud about the Terces Society or the Secret.
“Oops—what’s that I hear?”
The bell was ringing. The second bell. The one that meant first period was starting.
Opal looked at her watch in that exaggerated way people sometimes do. “Tsk-tsk. Looks like you’re going to be a little late. I hope you have a note from home.”
“Um… not really.”
“Well, you better come to the office after next period. We’ll see what the principal, that is, Her Majesty, has to say about this.”
Max-Ernest stared. It was so unfair. Had the secretary not stopped to talk to him, he might very well have made it to class in time.
He was about to protest when his attention was diverted by an unexpected sight: Benjamin Blake talking to Amber.
Just the two of them. Alone.
They were standing between the administration building and the cafeteria. The space was very narrow and usually only populated by ants and the occasional rodent. Obviously, they had chosen it for the privacy. Only good luck had made Max-Ernest glance in their direction at the right time, and he was determined to take full advantage.
He had to get rid of the secretary quickly. That much was clear. But how was he going to spy on his schoolmates without being seen himself?
“OK, I’ll come by after class,” he said, edging out of their sight line.
“Good. I’ll see you then,” said Opal, studying him. She seemed to have noticed his change in attitude.
“Yeah, see you.” He started turning, as if he were going to head for class, when she stopped him.
“Oh, Max-Ernest, I’m sorry, can you do me a favor? I just did my nails and they take forever to dry. Would you just reach into my bag and get a tissue out for me?” She opened her large black patent-leather purse for him, her fingers spread wide so that her newly applied fingernail polish wouldn’t smear on anything.
Impatient, Max-Ernest felt around for the tissues.
“It’s right there under my compact—that’s that little mirror there,” said the secretary helpfully.
The mirror in question was hinged and would, Max-Ernest recognized immediately, make a perfect spy tool.
He closed his right hand around the mirror while at the same time picking up the package of tissues with his left. (Every once in a while, when he was doing a magic trick or was engaged in a spy operation, the experience of having to do two things simultaneously for his parents so many times came in handy.) With any luck, the secretary wouldn’t notice the compact was gone. And he could slip it back into her purse when he went to the office later.
It’s just borrowing, he heard Cass’s voice conveniently reassuring him. Not stealing. Besides, this was the woman who pulled a prank on him for no reason the day they first met!
The secretary smirked, delicately pulling a tissue from the package without letting her nails touch anything. “Thank you, Max-Ernest. And tie your shoelace, please!”
Max-Ernest nodded in acknowledgment, then headed in the direction of his class, not bothering to fix his shoelace. When he was satisfied that the secretary would be safely behind her desk, he reversed course and crept back toward the administration building.
Sidling up to the building and keeping as much of himself hidden as possible, he held out the compact and moved the mirror around until he could see Benjamin and Amber. They were still deep in conversation.
The last time he’d seen them together had been when Amber had told Max-Ernest’s fortune. It hadn’t seemed then that they’d remembered each other. But looking at them now, Max-Ernest had the sense that they knew each other very well after all.
There was just enough of an echo reverberating between the stucco walls for Max-Ernest to hear their whispering:
“You were trying to look into her mind, right?” Amber was asking. “Why? What did they want you to find?”
Benjamin shrugged. “It doesn’t matter because I didn’t find it.”
“Come on—they never tell me anything,” complained Amber.
“Well, then, why would you think I could tell you?”
“Please.”
“Why do you want to know so badly?”
“ ’Cause I hate not knowing a secret.”
“Then you’re very close.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Benjamin smugly.
“Ugh—I hate you!” cried Amber. “After that whole fortune-telling thing nobody likes me anymore—I totally ruined my reputation for this. I should at least get to look into the monocle!”
Amber reached for the monocle, but Benjamin turned away, preventing her from taking it.
“I’m not allowed.”
“So what? Like Dr. L is ever gonna know.”
“Something tells me he’ll know. Especially when he gets the monocle back.”
“Please please.”
“Why do you want to see it so badly?”
“So I can see what’s in your mind and know what you were looking for in Cass’s. Why do you think?”
The monocle, all along it was the monocle! Max-Ernest thought excitedly. He had assumed Benjamin’s telepathic power was internal, that it was Benjamin’s own unique talent at work, that Benjamin alone could see into Cass’s mind. But if his power resided in the monocle, then anybody could be a mind reader—anybody who got hold of the monocle, that is.
Even him.*
While Max-Ernest was speculating about how to get the monocle out of Benjamin’s hands, Amber lunged for it. In less than a second, she was holding it up to her eye.
Resigned, Benjamin folded his arms and looked at her. “Well, what do you see?”
“Nothing. It’s just like looking through plain glass. If you were just tricking me, I’ll be so mad…. No, wait. I see… I see… everybody. Everybody in school! Teachers. Students. Everybody. How cool is that? It’s like I can see through walls…. Wow, with this thing I could control the whole school—I mean, not that I don’t already….”
Suddenly Amber’s grin turned into a frown. “Why is Veronica talking to Naomi? I didn’t say she could. I hate Naomi, not that I’m a hater, I’m not…. Wait, never mind about Veronica….” Amber pointed in Max-Ernest’s direction. “I think there’s somebody behind that corner spying on us,” she said, lowering her voice, but still audible to Max-Ernest.
“Who?”
“I can’t see his face—”
“Give me the monocle back.”
“No, never—”
“You have to!”
They wrestled, Benjamin straining to keep the monocle away from Amber, until it fell to the ground, skidding in Max-Ernest’s direction.
Without thought to the consequences, he seized his chance and scrambled to get it. Benjamin and Amber stopped fighting when they saw him.
“Max-Ernest, old chum! Thank goodness it’s you. Somebody I can reason with,” said Benjamin calmly. “That monocle is very valuable to me. For purely sentimental reasons, you understand. It wouldn’t mean anything to anybody else. I appreciate your picking it up for me. Very kind of you.”
“Um, you’re welcome…?” said Max-Ernest, clutching tight to the monocle.
“Wonderf
ul. You can give it back to me now,” said Benjamin in the tone one uses with a little child.
Max-Ernest took a step backward. “No, I think I’ll keep it for the moment because… because…” He stammered, unable to think of a reason that wouldn’t give away what he knew about Benjamin and about the monocle.
“Forget him, Max-Ernest,” said Amber in her sweetest, most insinuating voice. “Give it to me and I’ll be your friend for real.”
“When are you going to get it through your head that I don’t want to be your friend?” asked Max-Ernest.
He wanted to run, but he hesitated. If he ran toward the exit, there was a very good chance Opal, the secretary, would see him through the office window.
“Just give it to me; it’s mine,” said Benjamin. “This isn’t the time for games.”
“Sorry—”
Both Benjamin and Amber reached for the monocle at the same time. Trying to evade them, Max-Ernest stepped on his shoelace. He fell backward and wound up sitting on the ground, still holding the monocle tight.
“I’ll take that,” said Opal, stepping up to them. Apparently she hadn’t gone back to the office after all. Before Max-Ernest could think to resist, she took the monocle out of his hand and stowed it away in her big shiny purse.
“The principal will deal with you two later!” said Opal, addressing Benjamin and Amber.
She offered Max-Ernest her hand and pulled him up with surprising strength. “You are going to the nurse’s office right now. That’s going to be a nasty bruise on your elbow.”
* * *
The nurse’s office was empty. The blinds were closed and the computer screen was dark. It looked as though nobody had been in there all day.
“You sit here,” said Opal, patting the pillow on the single cot in the room. Max-Ernest noticed her fingernails grazed the sheets without smearing. Funny, he thought, she said they took “forever” to dry….
It was then that he realized what looked different about her today: her mole. He could have sworn that when they first met it was on her right cheek—the right side of her face being the side you saw when you walked into the administration office—and yet now the mole was on her left cheek.
“I’m going to see if I can’t scare up that nurse. I must say, I didn’t take you for the wrestling type.”
Casually dropping her purse on the nurse’s desk, Opal gave a shake to her mass of blond curls and walked out of the room on her vertiginously high platform heels.
Not quite believing his luck, Max-Ernest waited until the secretary closed the door, then, as quickly as he could, he opened her purse. He removed the monocle and left her compact in its place.
As soon as he sat back down on the cot, Opal breezed back into the room. “Silly me. I forgot—Nursie is out for the day. Sick—wouldn’t you know it? Guess you’ll just have to muscle through.”
“Um, shouldn’t I at least put ice on my elbow or something?” asked Max-Ernest. Ever since the secretary had mentioned the likelihood of his elbow bruising, he’d been imagining the worst. “I think I could have a fracture. Or maybe a sprain. You know, they say a bad sprain is worse than a break—”
Opal waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, you’ll be fine,” she said, seeming to forget she was the one who’d brought him into the nurse’s office in the first place. “Can you not be such a hypochondriac for once, Max-Ernest?”
As Opal shooed him out, Max-Ernest tried to follow her suggestion; he had more important things to think about than his elbow, after all. Hopefully now that he had the monocle in his possession, he would be able to see what Benjamin had almost seen: into Cass’s mind. And, hopefully, he would be able to bring her back home.
And yet, even as he was opening his locker, gathering his things to take to the hospital, he couldn’t help wondering: who told the secretary about his hypochondria? It was most definitely odd: a woman he barely knew knowing him so well.
Almost as odd as a mole moving from her right cheek to her left.
Was it possible that the Midnight Sun had another spy—another mole—in his school? She certainly seemed more than capable of putting a KICK ME sign on his back.
Cass did not have much of a plan yet; she was hoping inspiration would strike.
She figured if she could make the soldiers turn around, she could slip behind them and untie the bandits, but that was as far as she’d gotten in her thinking. Unfortunately, she couldn’t find a stick long enough to poke a soldier at a safe distance. All the available wood in the area had been burned in the campfire. She looked for low-hanging branches she might break off, but these, too, were missing.
“Are you sure you want to make these people your prisoners?” she heard the Jester asking the soldiers. “Will you not then be as bad as bandits yourselves? No, you will be worse! ’Tis true they steal from the rich. But do not the rich first steal from the poor?”
For some reason, Cass didn’t have much faith that the Jester’s logic would convince the soldiers. Or even that if his logic convinced them, they would necessarily follow his suggestions. A more practical solution was required.
“How much gold have you? Or you? Or you?” the Jester continued. “Has not the King taken from your parents what should be theirs and yours? It is he who is the master thief. The royal band on his head does not make him any less a royal bandit…. Aye, that’s it, be gone, beasts! Thank you for allowing me to keep my feet!”
The regal beagles, it seemed, had decided to release the Jester from canine captivity. However, from the sound of their barking/bow-wowing/yapping, Cass feared that the reason they were moving on was that they’d picked up another scent—hers.
Sure enough, the yapping got louder and louder, and within less than a minute Cass saw the dogs heading toward her. The soldiers, she knew, would be close behind.
She had the advantage of invisibility, but that went only so far with creatures whose olfactory organs were forty times more sensitive than a human’s.
Thinking quickly, she pulled off her sweatshirt and threw it to her left in the direction of a boulder. Meanwhile, she stepped quietly in the opposite direction.
The ruse worked. The beagles piled onto her sweatshirt, pawing furiously at the mysterious garment, looking for Cass. When she didn’t appear, they growled in frustration and ran circles around the boulder.
Afraid to break into a run, lest she attract their attention, Cass edged slowly away from the dogs. She was on the verge of escape when the dogs suddenly lost interest in the boulder and started sniffing around again.
Quickly, she unbuckled her belt and tossed it under a bush.
Again, the beagles dove after their quarry, scrambling to get her belt. Again, they were frustrated to find Cass gone, the belt no longer attached to her waist. Again, they sniffed.
Cass, meanwhile, wet her finger to see which way the wind was blowing. Stealthily, she crept in the upwind direction, hoping that way would hide her scent. Alas, she miscalculated; beagles follow not airborne but ground-borne scents, and they started running toward her anyway.
Increasingly nervous, Cass bent down to untie her shoes.
The game continued—although to Cass, obviously, it wasn’t a game—Cass tossing her left shoe to the right and her right shoe to the left, then her right sock to the left and her left sock to the right, until she was standing barefoot and shivering behind a tree.
What to do next? She’d succeeded in confusing the dogs enough that they were now fighting over her socks about thirty feet away from her. But they would be diverted for only so long. And the soldiers, no doubt, would be fast behind.
Cass hesitated. She might be invisible, but she certainly didn’t relish the idea of undressing any further.
“Heh heh heh.”
A peculiar snorting, wheezing, laughing sound startled her. Like a pig imitating a hyena. Or maybe vice versa.
“Heh heh heh.”
Cass reeled around to find the homunculus watching her from on top of a rock.
&
nbsp; “Mr. Cabbage Face!” she whispered, excited.
“Why do you keep calling me that? My master’s housekeeper sometimes called me her ‘little cabbage face,’ but I thought it was because she was always giving me her leftover cabbage….”
“No, it’s because—there’s no time to explain. How long have you been here?”
The homunculus shrugged his little shoulders. “Awhile.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Too fun to watch you hopping around,” said the homunculus, smirking.
Cass noticed that his speaking had improved remarkably now that he was no longer the one being teased but was rather the one doing the teasing.
“Funny. What are you doing here?”
“Right now? Looking for food. But those cheap bandits don’t have any meat. Only this rotting potato—” He held up a moldy potato. A worm peeked out the side.
“Gross,” said Cass, stepping away.
“They eat like peasants,” said the homunculus, throwing the potato to the ground in disgust. The worm he kept—and popped into his mouth. “Mm, not bad…”
“I think that’s so they can afford to feed the real peasants,” said Cass, trying to ignore the end of the worm wiggling between his lips.
“I came here to warn you. Lord Pharaoh is looking for you.”
“Why?”
The homunculus furrowed his brow. “Something about a secret that will make him live forever. You are the only person who can show it to him, or the only person who can keep him from it. One or the other, I forget. He saw it all through that eyeglass of yours.”
“You mean he knows about the Secret?” Cass asked excitedly. Although the warning about Lord Pharaoh was ominous, it was also the first clue to uncovering the Secret she’d encountered since entering the Jester’s world.
“I don’t know about any secrets. All I know is he is a very scary man. If he finds you, I offer you this advice. His weakness is vanity. Show him a mirror and you will gain a minute.”
“A mirror? Uh-oh—!”
Whether it was owing to Cass or the potato or Cabbage Face himself, the dogs were back on Cass’s trail, yapping wildly.