I stuffed the hat onto my head so my hands would be free. Then I pulled back my arm and hurled the baseball at the middle of the staircase. The moment it struck the step, I was transported to that exact spot, landing on the sixth stair from the bottom.
“Where are you going?” cried Fluffball. “We’ve gotta get outta here!”
“That scarf was guarding the stairs,” I said, bending down and picking up the baseball. “That means she must be hiding something up there!”
I dropped the baseball back into the hat and tossed the whole thing across the room to Avery. I didn’t even have time to see if she caught it because the lava suddenly gurgled up over the bottom three steps, heating my toes.
“Yikes!” I cried, turning frantically to sprint up the staircase. “I didn’t think it would follow me up!”
“That’s what happens when you don’t bother to ask the expert!” griped Fluffball.
I didn’t look over my shoulder, but I knew the lava was rising quickly behind me. I could feel its heat nipping at my heels.
I reached the top stair and spun on the newel post, racing down a hallway. There were doors on my left, probably leading into bedrooms, but I didn’t want to corner myself now that I didn’t have a single boon to help me escape.
There was a closed door straight ahead. I could barely see it in the reddish glow of the lava chasing behind me. If I could get into the room and shut the door, it might buy me a few seconds to think while the lava ate through the door.
I grasped the doorknob desperately, my hand slipping once before I flung it open. I threw myself headlong through the doorway, only to discover that it was nothing but a coat closet.
I slammed into a couple of stacked cardboard boxes, the contents spilling around me as I staggered backward, falling right into the lava.
Except it wasn’t lava anymore.
The floor behind me had returned to regular carpet, soft enough that I hadn’t even hurt myself as I fell.
I gasped for breath, my heart bouncing around inside my rib cage. “What did you do?” I sputtered. But no one was there. I glanced back through the empty hallway just in time to see Avery reach the top of the stairs. Her sprint slowed to a walk when she realized that I was okay and the lava was gone. Then she slid her hand along the wall until she found the light switch, bringing the hallway into full view.
“How did you stop it?” she asked.
“I . . . no,” I stammered. “I didn’t do anything.”
She looked at me, confused. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “One minute the floor was lava, and then it was back to normal.”
“Fluffball!” Avery shouted over her shoulder. “The coast is clear. Get up here!” She stepped over and offered a hand. I accepted, letting her pull me up onto my shaking legs.
“You were trying to hide from the lava . . . ,” she said, “in a closet?”
“I thought it was a bigger room,” I admitted.
My sudden impact had made the closet virtually explode. Several of the boxes had popped open, papers and clutter now spilled all over the floor.
“This looks familiar.” Avery tugged on the corner of a dark blue piece of cloth sticking out of one of the boxes. As she pulled it free, I realized that it was a mechanic’s jumpsuit with the Skyline Appliance and Repair logo embroidered on the front.
“Well, well, well,” I muttered, pulling down the entire box. It was mostly papers inside, but I quickly spotted a Skyline Appliance name tag. It had Ms. Vanderbeek’s picture on it, but the name underneath was Janet West.
“She was a fake!” I exclaimed. “But wait a minute . . . It seems like she really fixed our dishwasher. At least, my mom was loading it when we saw her.”
“Maybe it was never actually broken,” Avery said, riffling through a stack of papers from the box.
“It definitely was,” I said. “Hasn’t worked right for a month.”
“Since April fourth,” Avery said, holding up the paper. “These are all the service dates when Skyline repair technicians visited your house. Looks like that first visit was supposed to be a free tune-up.”
“April fourth,” I said. “That was the day after the boon church was robbed.”
“It’s all connected,” said Avery. “Maybe the ‘free tune-up’ was actually meant to break your dishwasher so they’d have a reason to get into your house again. And Ms. Vanderbeek wouldn’t really have to know how to fix it since she could have just repaired the dishwasher with a boon.”
“We should probably go,” I said. “There’s no telling when Ms. Vanderbeek will be home.”
As I stepped forward, my foot sent some clutter scattering and my toe clanked into something hard. “Whoa . . . ,” I muttered, stooping down to pick up the metal item.
“A vent cover?” Avery said.
“Not just any vent cover,” I said. “The one from my bedroom!”
“How can you be sure?”
I tilted the metal grate toward her so she could see the droplets of bright orange paint that my dad had spilled across it in his haphazard remodel of my room. “Why would she take this?”
“It’s got to be a boon,” she said. “Fluffball? Where are you?”
“There was a boon in my room?” I mumbled, cradling the metal vent cover. “For how long?”
“When did your dad paint your room?” she asked.
“At least two and a half years ago,” I said. “After I got the cast off my leg, so I could go upstairs again.”
“You know what this means?” she asked. “Whoever organized all this—the Mastermind—has been targeting you for a long time, Mason.”
I felt my blood run cold. The vent in my hands felt like ice. “Why me?” I wondered aloud. “Why would anyone want to target me? I’m just a regular kid. An Ig.”
“What if they needed an Ig for their plan to work?” Avery mused.
“But why me?” I repeated.
“Hmm. Maybe you have something the Mastermind wants . . . ,” suggested Avery.
“What could I possibly have?”
“A boon that you didn’t know about?”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” I said. “The Mastermind has already proven that he can break into my house and leave boons to frame me. If I had something he wanted, why not just steal it?”
Avery quietly took the boon vent from my shaking hands. “I don’t know why they targeted you,” she said. “But we’re going to find out.” She took off her top hat and dropped in the metal vent cover.
It didn’t fit.
I watched her struggle with it for a moment, the vent cover fitting through the hat’s opening but clearly hitting the inside.
“What’s wrong?” I finally asked.
“It’s not . . .” She whispered something under her breath, then withdrew her magic credit card from her pocket. Holding it carefully, she slid the edge along the carpet.
Nothing happened.
“The boons,” she said, panic sneaking into her voice. “They’re not working.”
Finally, Fluffball appeared at the top of the stairs, hopping casually toward us. “Great timing,” I said. “Something’s wrong with Avery’s boons.”
Fluffball turned, sniffing around a doorway into one of the bedrooms.
“What are you sensing?” Avery asked. “Are you picking up a magical signature?”
Fluffball pooped. A handful of little brown pellets that stood out against the beige carpet.
“I don’t like Vanderbeek, either,” I said. “But that’s just low, Fluffball. Even for you.”
“Mason.” Avery took a step closer to the bunny. “I think something’s wrong with him.”
“That’s not new,” I said.
“No. I mean, his collar.” She took a knee and stroked his fluffy white fur. “He’s just a regular rabbit.”
“Did it come unclasped?” I asked.
She checked the collar. “It should be working,” she said, “but it’s broken,
just like all the other boons. There must be something around. Something dampening the magical effects.”
“That’s why the lava suddenly stopped,” I said. Then I saw the vent cover in Avery’s hand. Could it be?
I reached out and took it. “Maybe we should put this back in the closet,” I said. “So Vanderbeek doesn’t know we were here.”
She noticed me studying the vent cover. “You don’t think . . . ?”
I shrugged. “A dampener boon? It could make sense. Especially if the Mastermind wanted to make sure I never came into contact with other magical boons.”
“Until the day he wanted to frame you,” finished Avery. “Which was why Ms. Vanderbeek was at your house on Tuesday. Maybe she really did fix the dishwasher, but I’m guessing her main purpose for going to your house was to steal this from your bedroom.”
With a clunk, I tossed the vent cover back into the clutter surrounding the hallway closet. “No way to know what it really does, since it shut down our detector.” I stepped over and picked up Fluffball. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Wait,” said Avery, staring at a fresh stack of papers that had scattered when I’d dropped the vent cover. “Look at this.” She bent down and picked up a handwritten note scrawled on a paper napkin.
“What does it say?” I asked.
Avery read aloud. “‘My friends, by this time tomorrow, the boon church will be ours. I’m putting my neck on the line (again), and I’m counting on the two of you to follow up. Talbot—meet me at the rendezvous point with your truck. Vanderbeek—stand ready to enter the Morrison house at the Mastermind’s orders.’”
“Whoa,” I said. “This is . . . this is . . .”
“The evidence we’ve been looking for,” said Avery. “It proves you didn’t steal the boons from the church.”
“I don’t know if Magix would call this proof,” I said.
“Okay. Maybe not quite, but it’s certainly getting us closer to the truth,” she said. “So, this note was written the day before the boons were stolen from the church. We know who Vanderbeek is—”
“‘Enter the Morrison house,’” I repeated from the note. “That must have been to break down our dishwasher, since that happened just two days later.”
“But who’s Talbot? And who’s the Mastermind?”
“And who wrote this message?” It sure would have been nice if the criminal had signed it.
“Hold on a second . . .” Avery reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a crumpled note. As she unfolded it, I realized that it was the anonymous note she’d received in her locker.
“Check it out.” She held the two papers side by side. “Same handwriting.”
“You’re sure?” They certainly looked similar, but so did lots of handwriting.
She nodded. “Handwriting identification is a basic in detective training. Look at the words that are the same.” She started pointing them out. “The, you, line . . .”
“You’re right,” I said. Those few words were basically identical.
“This is bad,” she whispered.
“I don’t understand.”
“This means that the same person who stole the boons from the church tipped me off with a note that said you were innocent,” she began. “It means that whoever set this up wanted me to help you escape. The High Line was definitely a trap, and . . .” Avery took a deep breath. “It means that the same person had access to my locker inside headquarters.” She looked at me, her dark eyes wide. “The Mastermind has a spy inside Magix.”
I swallowed hard. “What can we do?” I asked. “We can’t really call and warn them.”
Avery sighed. “We keep going. Hopefully, in the process of proving you innocent, we can also figure out who the traitor is inside Magix Headquarters.”
She carefully folded the two notes and reached back to slip them into her pocket.
“Wait.” I caught her arm. “That napkin.” Now that she had folded it, I could see something printed on the other side. “Gran’s Kitchen,” I said, reading the name of the restaurant. “It’s a diner downtown. This note could have been written there.”
Avery nodded. “It’s worth checking out in the morning.”
“We can make it tonight if we hurry,” I said. “Gran’s is open late.” I started down the hallway. “Besides, I’m starving.”
Chapter 21
THURSDAY, MAY 14
9:36 P.M.
A BUS, INDIANA
We were on the bus headed downtown when Fluffball suddenly blurted out, “I’m aliiiiive!”
The few people on the bus glanced at Avery and me, but there was no way they could have known it came from the bunny. They probably thought we were playing a video on a phone with the volume up too high.
“Keep your voice down,” I said, holding the rabbit close against my chest. “And I never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad to have you back.”
“Pass me over to the girl, kid,” Fluffball said. “One more second in your arms and I’ll have to take a shower.”
As I let him hop into Avery’s arms, I noticed that she was reaching into her top hat, well past her elbow, silently letting me know that it was working again.
“What happened, anyway?” Fluffball asked. “I saw the lava chasing you upstairs. I heard a big crash and then . . . well, that’s the last thing I remember.”
“What do you know about dampener boons?” Avery asked him.
“Yeah. They’re freaky,” he replied. “They can completely shut down other boons that are nearby.”
“We think we found one at Ms. Vanderbeek’s,” I explained.
Fluffball’s pink nose bobbed against Avery’s hand. “I’m getting a whiff of residual dampener magic, for sure.”
“But we left it in the house,” I said. “Why did it take so long for you and the other boons to work again?”
“A powerful dampener can soak into boons around it,” Fluffball explained. “The effect lasts even after the dampener is gone. How long was I out?”
“Almost an hour,” Avery said as the bus came squealing to a halt.
“This is our stop,” I said, catching a glimpse of Gran’s Kitchen through the fingerprint smudges on the bus window.
As we approached the diner, Avery took a moment to fill the bunny in on what we’d found in Vanderbeek’s upstairs closet. My stomach rumbled at the smell of greasy fried food wafting down the street. The lighted sign above the door had a few letters burned out, so it looked like Gra Kitch.
I glanced at Avery and pointed to a notice taped on the door. It read “No pets allowed.”
“Hey,” Fluffball interjected. “You know I can read, too.”
“And we don’t consider you our pet,” Avery said delicately, “but we also don’t want to get kicked out of this place.”
“Fine,” the rabbit muttered. “Stow me away. Stick me in the magic hat like some common boon.”
Gently, Avery lowered Fluffball into the top hat and propped it on her head.
“It’s for the best,” I whispered to her.
A bell chimed as we stepped inside, and someone shouted for us to take a seat wherever we’d like and they’d be right with us. This late at night, I only counted three other people seated at the long counter with tall stools rising from a dingy black-and-white checkered tile floor. Avery and I picked one of the booths against the window, the red vinyl seats surprisingly bouncy.
“You’ve still got some money left?” she asked me quietly.
“I grabbed some cash when we were in my room. Just don’t order anything over ten dollars.”
Our waitress appeared, an older woman with bleached hair and a wrinkled tattoo of a leaf on her forearm. A pin with the name Kathy was fastened to her stained red apron. She placed a couple of menus in front of us and poured two glasses of water.
“What can I get ya started with?” Kathy asked.
“What’s good?” Avery asked.
The waitress rattled off a half a dozen menu
items, but it didn’t seem like Avery was really listening.
“You seem to know the menu pretty well,” Avery said. “Have you worked here a long time?”
Kathy smiled. “Oh, honey. I was working here since before you were born.”
“I bet you get to know a lot of folks,” she continued. “See a lot of interesting things . . .” I realized what Avery was doing now. Winning over the waitress was probably lesson one in detective training.
“Somebody ought to write a book about it,” Kathy said. “’Cuz I’ve seen some straaaange things going down.”
“Any secret meetings?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t too obvious.
“All the time,” said Kathy.
“We’re looking for somebody that might have passed through here a month or so ago,” said Avery.
Kathy held up her hands. “We get a lot of customers, sweetheart.”
“I figured it was a shot in the dark,” said Avery, taking a sip of her ice water. “His name is Talbot?”
“You talking about Steve Talbot?” Kathy said. “He’s come in on and off for years. But he’s been a regular for nearly two months now.”
Avery and I glanced at each other. We didn’t know about a first name, but the timing lined up with the robbery of the boon church.
“If it’s the same Talbot I’m thinking of,” said Kathy, “he always sits in that corner booth by himself. Next to the window.”
“Did you ever see him meet with this woman?” Avery asked, suddenly holding up the Skyline Appliance badge with Vanderbeek’s picture and the name Janet West. I hadn’t realized Avery had taken it from the house.
Kathy studied the badge. “I remember her. She came in dripping wet, but it wasn’t raining. Would have been about a month ago.”
“April second?” I asked.
Kathy shrugged. “Seems about right. She met with your friend Talbot.”
I grinned at Avery. By the sound of it, we’d found the right man.
“But the meeting didn’t look romantic, if that’s what you’re wondering,” said Kathy. “Nah. It was too serious. But Steve Talbot’s always got a serious edge to him.”
“What else can you tell us about him?” Avery asked.
“Quiet fellow,” said Kathy. “But always respectful. I think he’s a fisherman. At least he’s got a lot of fishing stickers on the back of his truck.”
Magic's Most Wanted Page 14
