Sam was the first to hear someone slipping a keycard into the business center’s door. He hurriedly grabbed The Undead Sea Scroll from the desk and slid it into his open backpack.
Fern spun around. Ralph Mooney stared through the door’s glass window at the McAllister twins. He grinned as if he’d just shot his first buck of hunting season.
The door swung open and Headmaster Mooney walked in. He was wearing a fanny pack, Dockers, and a white T-shirt, stretched tightly over his large belly, with FBI written in large block letters. Headmaster Mooney had purchased three of the shirts for ten dollars at a stall in the mall, and Fern thought it might have been better had he sprung for the fifteen-dollar XXL sweatshirt.
“And what, might I ask, are you two doing up at this hour?”
“Nothing,” Sam said, clutching his backpack close to him.
“It sure doesn’t look like nothing,” Headmaster Mooney said, fiddling with the end of his walruslike mustache. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling made the top of the headmaster’s bald head shine like a bike reflector.
“Well, it is,” Sam said, this time more defiant.
“Did you let anyone know where you were?” Headmaster Mooney asked. The first thing Ralph Mooney thought of when he came upon the McAllister twins in the business center was that he’d caught them breaking curfew. But technically, there was no rule about how early you could wake up for breakfast. Still, he figured they were at least breaking Rule Seven of the St. Gregory’s Spring Break Trip Regulations. They had failed to let their group leader know where they were.
“We didn’t go anywhere. We came down here to talk before breakfast.”
“Now, we both know that’s not true. You are expected to remain in your rooms until the appropriate meeting time,” Headmaster Mooney said. “It’s only six fifteen now, which leaves well over an hour until we’re supposed to meet in the lobby.”
Headmaster Mooney scrutinized the brother and sister. They were both fully dressed. He began to think that there was something else going on.
“What did you put in your backpack just now?”
“Huh?” Sam said, playing dumb.
“When I came into the room, there was something on the table there,” Headmaster Mooney said, pointing to where The Undead Sea Scroll had been resting. “Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“Please give me your backpack.”
“What?”
Headmaster Mooney lunged at Sam and yanked the bag out of his hands.
“Hey!” Fern yelled. “You can’t take that from him!”
“Oh, really?” Headmaster Mooney said, stepping back toward the door while he reached into the bag. “And why not?”
He pulled out The Undead Sea Scroll. Sam’s and Fern’s eyes bulged out of their sockets.
“What have we here?” Headmaster Mooney palmed the book with one hand. He looked at the binding and figured it had to do with some role-playing game the students at St. Gregory’s were enthused about. “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to investigate this a little further.” Headmaster Mooney tossed Sam’s backpack at him. Sam caught it and stared inside its now empty large compartment.
Fern and Sam were at a loss for words as they watched Headmaster Mooney take the Rollens’ most sacred text and casually put it under his arm. As he pulled the door open, he turned around and faced the twins.
“Oh, and you better head directly to your rooms. When everyone meets at seven thirty, I’ll deal with you then. But I wouldn’t expect to leave this hotel today.”
And with that, Headmaster Mooney left the twins sitting alone in stunned silence in the Marriot business center.
Chapter 23
Fern Mcallister’s Day Off
Despite wanting to remain in the business center, Sam and Fern couldn’t linger there any longer. Headmaster Mooney was waiting for them outside in order to verify that the McAllister twins were heading back to their rooms. He went so far as to ride the elevator up to the seventh floor with them. When Fern opened the door to room 723, Candace Tutter was waiting for her, sitting cross-legged, clearly sulking. As soon as the door opened, she got up.
“I thought you were going to stop lying to me,” Can-dace reproached her. She scrunched her small eyes and nose together, making an angry face.
“Sorry, Candace. I had to talk to Sam,” Fern said, already low on patience after the Mooney debacle.
Candace was tempted to ask a follow-up question, but she knew Blythe and Lee were only a few feet away, digging through their respective suitcases in search of something to wear.
“Where were you?” Blythe said, craning her neck to look at Fern.
“Out. Don’t bother telling Mooney on me,” Fern said, blowing past Blythe into the middle of the room. “He already knows.”
Blythe and Lee continued to stare at Fern as she rifled through her things to find a clean shirt. A few days ago, the blond twosome would have bullied her into revealing more details, but after the ketchup and mayo shower and their fall from grace, they were feeling decidedly less inclined to test the limits of their power over Fern.
Before long, it was time to gather in the hotel lobby. Fern scrambled to change and splashed some water on her face. Blythe and Lee still refused to ride in the same elevator with their roommates, but this time they opted to let Candace and Fern take the first one. Fern quickly filled Candace in on the recent developments, and Candace responded as she always did . . . with an endless string of questions.
Fern tried to answer them all by the time the twosome reached the lobby, but it was simply impossible.
As they stepped into the lobby, Candace turned to Fern.
“Tonight we have to find a way to rescue Miles before . . . he completes the potion.” Candace’s eyes teared up as she thought of Miles’s situation. An outsider would not have guessed that Candace Tutter had never met Miles. Fern was getting used to her new friend’s unpredictable empathy.
“We need to know what that last ingredient is,” Fern said.
“Is there anything to go on other than what Miles’s aunt showed you in that weird book of hers?” Candace asked while searching for Mrs. Phillips so that she and Fern could properly line up.
“No,” Fern answered.
“Well, we have all day to brainstorm, right?” Candace said, already beginning to sort through the possibilities in her head.
Headmaster Mooney cleared his throat to announce his presence to the girls.
“Fern, I’ve thought about it. . . .”
Fern and Candace both whipped around. Headmaster Mooney stood close behind them, with his hands on his hips. He began talking once he realized he had gotten Fern’s attention.
“I’m afraid that if I let you and your brother escape any kind of punishment, it would set a horrible precedent.”
“A horrible what?”
“A precedent . . . a standard,” Headmaster Mooney explained, all the while wondering if a St. Gregory’s education was still all it was cracked up to be. “My point is that I’m afraid you and Sam are both suspended from the day’s activities. You will not leave your hotel rooms.”
“What?” Fern said. “But we weren’t even do—“
“I don’t want to hear another word. Perhaps next time you’ll reconsider when you make a plan to sneak out.”
“At least give Sam his book back,” Fern insisted.
“What book?” Headmaster Mooney asked with counterfeit innocence. Fern could tell Mooney was enjoying messing with her.
“Mr. Billing will be here momentarily to make sure you go straight back to your rooms. At noon, someone will bring you a brown-bag lunch.”
Fern shook her head in disgust.
“And Fern,” Headmaster Mooney said, resting both hands on his protruding gut, “I’m sure the thought hasn’t crossed your mind, but don’t even think about leaving your room. There’s only one way out of this hotel, and I’ve instructed all the employees at the front desk to notify me immediately
if they spot either you or Sam in the lobby. Now you’ll have to excuse me. I have to go deliver the news to your brother.”
Candace scowled at the back of Headmaster Mooney’s bald head.
“That man has it in for you,” she said.
Fern smirked. “It doesn’t even take a genius to figure that one out, Candace.”
Fern watched her brother’s face contort into an expression of anger as Headmaster Mooney told him about their daylong suspension.
Before Mr. Billing came to collect Fern, she handed Candace the list of ingredients she’d scribbled down while at Aunt Chan’s house.
“Find Lindsey and see if you can come up with the missing ingredient. . . . We don’t have a lot of time.” Candace folded her fingers around the wrinkled piece of paper just as Fern was led off to her hotel room “cell” by Mr. Billing.
Fern awoke with a start. The ringing phone had jolted her out of a shallow slumber. She quickly remembered she was back in room 723, serving her sentence.
When Fern had first gotten back to her hotel room, she’d thought about taking a shower, but as soon as she laid eyes on her unmade hotel bed, she couldn’t resist plopping down. The sleepless, teleporting nights were taking their toll.
She tried not to sound groggy as she answered the phone. “Hello?”
“This totally stinks.”
It was Sam. Fern laughed and checked the clock. It was eight in the morning. Fern had been asleep for only half an hour.
“Oh, I don’t know. I think we picked a good day to sit out. Weren’t you complaining about going to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the National Museum of the American Indian?”
“Maybe we should try to break into Mooney’s room and get my book back!” Sam raised his voice at the thought of a new caper.
“Don’t you mean the Lins’ book?” Fern asked sarcastically. “Anyway, even if Mooney does read it, he’ll think it’s all a bunch of nonsense.”
“Have you figured out what the final ingredient is or where it might be?”
“No. You?”
“No.” Sam paused. “You should go back to sleep. Maybe something will come to you after you’ve had some rest.”
“How did you know I’ve been sleeping?”
“Um, I’ve lived with you for the last thirteen years, Fern. Your voice sounds like it’s got sand in it when you first wake up.”
“Oh,” Fern said.
“I’ll call you in a little while.”
Fern hung up the phone and closed her eyes. She knew she should be developing a plan to try to stay one step ahead of Laffar. But lack of sleep soon overcame her thoughts, and she passed into a state of deep slumber.
When she woke up again, she felt cold sweat on her forehead. She’d been dreaming of Haryle Laffar. She’d dreamt she’d been in a room and witnessed Laffar kill her mother. In the dream, Phoebe looked a lot like a grownup version of Fern herself.
There was a knock at the door. Fern rubbed her eyes and got up. She opened the door.
“Preston?”
Preston Buss stood in front of her. He stuck out a brown bag and smiled at Fern.
“Your lunch, compliments of St. Gregory’s.”
Preston was wearing dark jeans, an American Apparel hoodie, and a dark corduroy blazer. Fern took one look at him and was immediately self-conscious about her disheveled state.
“What are you doing here?”
“I said I was sick and rode back with Mr. Billing. He said I could deliver your lunch before going back to my room to rest.”
Without waiting to be invited in, Preston stepped through the doorway. Fern backed up to give him room.
“For girls, your room is pretty messy,” Preston said, looking around. Fern had to agree. It was almost as if a tornado had transported the entire contents of Blythe’s and Lee’s closets to Washington and then dumped them all over the hotel room. There was little visual evidence that she and Candace even resided here.
“You don’t seem sick,” Fern said, playfully furrowing her brow.
“Oh, I’m not really.”
“Then why did you come back here? Shouldn’t you be learning all about how money is printed with the rest of the school?”
Preston put his hand on top of his head and tousled his dark hair. Fern could see his cheeks redden slightly before he answered.
“I guess. I don’t know. I heard you were sick so I thought I’d say hi.”
Fern felt a surge of guilt.
“Preston, I lost your harmonica,” Fern blurted.
“You what?” Preston said. Fern studied his face to see if he was angry.
“I didn’t lose it, I mean to say that I left it in my mom’s room, so I can’t give it back to you right now.”
“No problem . . . but that reminds me,” Preston said, sticking his hand inside his blazer pocket. He pulled out a shiny object.
It was another harmonica. Preston handed it to Fern. It had WASHINGTON, DC engraved on its top. “I saw this at the souvenir shop and thought you should have one of your own. You can give mine back whenever.”
The guilt overwhelmed Fern. She vowed she would recover Preston’s harmonica somehow, when she’d freed Miles and Mr. Lin. The worries over whether she’d unearth the last ingredient in time consumed every other thought. Because Laffar was her father, Fern was beginning to feel like stopping him was her responsibility—that fate had designated her the only person who could.
Fern slipped the harmonica into her sweatshirt pocket.
“Thank you,” she said. “For the lunch and the harmonica.”
“No problem,” Preston said. “I better get back to my room. Mr. Billing said he was going to check on me in a few minutes.”
“If you’re missing, he’ll probably think I kidnapped you or something.”
Fern stood by the door and listened to Preston’s footsteps fade. She was thankful for his gift because she would need it to silence the Sirens, but she also was no closer to solving the puzzle of the potion. Fern felt her heart sink under the monumental weight of the responsibilities she’d undertaken.
Her last hope was that Candace Tutter had solved the riddle of the potion, a solution that so far had eluded Fern.
Chapter 24
The Essence of Ix Chel
Lindsey Lin was close to strangling Candace Tutter. Fern had told Lindsey that morning over the phone that Candace knew everything. Fern was convinced Candace might be able to help in some way. Lindsey couldn’t understand why Fern had told Candace about her Unusualness, Miles, the potion, and who-knew-what-else. Revealing one’s Otherworldly status was counter to everything Lindsey had been taught. If her mother hadn’t been so distraught over her father’s absence, Lindsey would have reported the intel leak. May Lin would come unglued if she knew that Fern was telling Normal middle schoolers her life story. But Lindsey didn’t want to burden her mother further. In truth, though Lindsey wouldn’t have ever admitted it, Candace’s chatterbox tendencies were a welcome distraction from her own worries over her missing father.
Mary Eileen, Olivia, and Alexa all wondered why Lindsey had insisted after her morning phone call that she needed to spend the day with Candace. At breakfast, Can-dace and Lindsey bumped into Lindsey’s other roommates standing in line for bagels. Candace stood there silently for a minute while Lindsey chatted with her friends, and then she cleared her throat.
“I think we should move on, Lindsey,” Candace said. “We’ve got a lot to discuss.”
Lindsey rolled her eyes and whispered to Mary Eileen that she would explain later. Once Lindsey’s other friends left, Candace resumed her barrage of factoids.
In the end, Lindsey put up with Candace following her around for the day, yammering about everything under the sun as they took spots in the long line in front of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. She honestly didn’t know how Fern had tolerated Candace as her DC roommate—she was already at her wit’s end. Candace had spent breakfast and the bus ride peppering Lindsey with tidb
its about money and the bureau itself.
“Did you know that bills aren’t made from trees? They are seventy-five percent cotton and twenty-five percent linen.”
“Fascinating stuff,” Lindsey said, on autopilot. She’d already learned from Candace that in addition to printing money, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing also made postage stamps, treasury bonds, and all the invitations for White House functions. Now, as the line slowly progressed, Candace sensed that Lindsey was tiring of money factoids. She decided to move on to the more pressing matter. She reached in her jacket pocket and unearthed the slip of paper Fern had given her.
“The essence of Ix Chel,” Candace read from the slip of paper. “Now, Fern said that Ix Chel was the Mayan goddess of birth. Birth . . . birth . . . death . . . life . . . Maybe something from the Natural History Museum?”
“Would you lower your voice?” Lindsey said crossly. “People might hear you.”
“No one has any idea what we’re talking about,” Candace said, studying the line in both directions. Can-dace Tutter had a point. The students in front of Lindsey and Candace were playing the alphabet game and the group of boys behind them were talking about their favorite teams in the upcoming NCAA March Madness basketball tournament.
“Why don’t you go back with your group?” Lindsey asked impatiently. Lindsey hoped one of the chaperones would make Candace return to her assigned group, but they all were either distracted or unworried while the students waited in line.
“Because Fern asked me to work with you to unravel the clue to the last component. She thought we would have a better chance of discovering it together.”
“I work better on my own,” Lindsey said. She wanted to be left alone so she could try to piece things together.
“You don’t seem like you really want to solve this mystery at all,” Candace said, tired of putting up with Lindsey’s negative attitude.
Something inside Lindsey snapped. She grabbed Can-dace by the shoulders and squared them so the two girls faced each other.
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