“If you leave right now,” Fern said, “I’ll let you go before I call the police.”
“Don’t leave me, Flarge,” Laffar rasped.
Flarge took a long look at Laffar. He figured his best bet was to mimic the Sirens and cut his losses. Flarge took off, running as fast as his legs would carry him across the National Mall and toward the National Gallery of Art. Meanwhile Fern and Miles whispered in the ears of Can-dace, Sam, Lindsey, and Mr. Lin, who remained slumbering in the grass. One by one, they came to.
“Are you sure we should’ve let Flarge go?” Miles asked, as anxious for revenge as Fern was after his long stint in the cage.
“I don’t think he’s going to get very far,” Fern said.
In actuality, Flarge would get as far as Henry Park before a Capitol police officer stopped him for questioning and ultimately placed him under arrest.
Fern pulled out her phone. She dialed the Commander. Even Miles could hear the happy squeal of Mary Lou McAllister on the other line, asking if Fern was all right.
“I’m fine. I can’t talk now. You need to call the police and tell them to come to the walkway outside the Castle. Tell them there is a suspicious man here, on the ground, acting strangely.”
Fern hung up the phone. Covering her hands with the lining of her jacket, she dumped out the remaining contents of the goblet. She picked up the Golden Spike and the diamond and placed them in Laffar’s jacket pocket. As she watched the diamond slide out of sight into his pocket, she remembered what Candace had said about the stone bringing bad luck to its possessor. Another legend proving its truth.
“Why aren’t you picking those up with your hands?” Miles asked, squatting next to Fern.
“In a few minutes, when the police find Laffar still here, with not one, but two national treasures stuffed in his jacket pocket, I don’t want my prints on either one.”
“Of course,” Miles said. Behind the two Unusuals, Mr. Lin was now fully awake. His first sight was of his daughter, slowly regaining her senses. He rushed toward Lindsey, picking her up off the ground.
“You’re okay,” she cried, hugging him back tightly.
“What about the moon rock?” Miles asked.
“That’s got my prints all over it already, so I think I’ll hang on to it for now.” She slipped the smooth gray rock into her jacket. The truth of the matter was, Fern could wipe her prints from the rock, but she wanted to ensure that no one could ever assemble the ingredients of the Everlasting Elixir again.
The group retreated out of sight in the shadows, wanting to make sure that Laffar was apprehended by the police. The police found Laffar lying beside a pair of bolt cutters, and soon after, they discovered what looked suspiciously like the Hope Diamond in his jacket pocket. Lindsey, Fern, Mr. Lin, Sam, Candace, and Miles watched as two uniformed officers lifted Laffar up and shoved him into the back of their squad car, warning him politely not to bump his head and letting him know he had the right to remain silent. Fern recognized one of the policemen immediately. It was Officer Hallet. He was having another busy night.
But then again, so was Fern.
Chapter 31
The Ghost Bandit
Fern felt a sharp jab to the ribs and jumped up out of her seat at Ford’s Theatre.
“Time to wake up, Fern,” Sam said. “The presentation’s over.”
“What happened?”
“What always happens,” Preston Buss said, leaning over and smiling at Fern. “Lincoln got shot by some crazy actor.”
When Preston had insisted on taking a seat next to Fern, both Sam and Candace Tutter were visibly annoyed. All they wanted to do was talk about last night’s events, but with Preston there, they couldn’t. Fern smiled in response to Preston’s tired joke, and Candace and Sam both had to repress the urge to punch Fern in the shoulder.
Sam had realized the night before that his sister had a crush on his best friend. He figured it out when, after Laffar’s arrest, Fern insisted on teleporting to the cages where Miles had been held—all in the hopes of getting Preston’s harmonica back. It was a ridiculous mission in light of the night’s events, but Fern wouldn’t take no for an answer and no one really had the power to stop her.
Still, when Fern fell asleep on Preston’s shoulder during the reenactment of Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theatre, Sam almost lost his lunch, even though they hadn’t had lunch yet. When Preston refused to wake her, Sam felt like yelling at his friend to stop coddling his sister.
Ford’s Theatre wasn’t the only place Fern fell asleep that day. The week’s physical toll finally caught up with her. Headmaster Mooney thought he’d saved the best of the itinerary for the last day of the St. Gregory’s trip. After the long-awaited trip to the zoo, the group was to travel to Ford’s Theatre, then take a scheduled tour of the White House, followed by a late lunch at the famous wood-paneled Old Ebbitt Grill. Exhaustion overcame Fern while she stood in the White House’s State Dining Room. The guide was telling the group that Chelsea Clinton had thrown pizza parties in the famous room, and Fern began snoring standing up.
Candace nudged her that time, but not before several heads turned, including Mrs. McAllister’s. Headmaster Mooney, delighted that he could see the light at the end of the spring trip tunnel, didn’t let it bother him. The nightmare that was the St. Gregory’s 2011 Spring Break DC Trip would be over soon enough. The one-of-a-kind group of presidential heads could mercifully be returned to the storage shed for two more years.
As for the rest of the crowd, no one dared make fun of Fern. In truth, her newfound narcolepsy was only adding to her mysterious reputation. Rumors had spread (mostly through Blythe Conrad and Lee Phillips) that Fern had been sneaking out of her room every night, exploring the city on her own. No one knew quite what to make of the girl with the pale lime eyes.
When the group arrived at the Old Ebbitt Grill, the seat jockeying began immediately.
“Can I sit with you?” Preston asked, moving close to Fern as the students from St. Gregory’s filed into the historic restaurant.
“Our table’s full, Preston,” Sam said even though they hadn’t found a table yet. “We don’t have room for anyone else.”
Sam looked expectantly at Fern. He wanted her to back him up. Fern was divided. She did like Preston. But she was also dying to talk to Sam, Candace, and Lindsey about last night.
There was no way to do both.
Fern wondered if her life would be a series of these kinds of decisions—the choice between living her life like everyone else or giving in to her differences.
“Preston,” she said, looking into his deep brown eyes, “how about we hang out when we’re touring the Capitol after lunch?”
She could tell she’d wounded him, if only slightly. To soothe his hurt feelings, she pulled his recovered harmonica from her pocket and played a few barely recognizable bars of “Amazing Grace” before handing it back to him. Preston walked away half smiling, in search of his other roommates.
In all honesty, Fern didn’t think about him for long.
“I’ve secured a booth!” Candace yelled, waving her hand in the air. Candace had managed to find them the best of all the booths, tucked away in the corner of the restaurant, where the high wooden benches had backs at least six feet tall. It was as close to private as they could get. If Miles hadn’t had to return home to his aunt the night before, things would have been totally perfect.
Candace and Lindsey sat on one side of the table, and Fern and Sam sat on the other. They grabbed their menus and set them aside, all four exuding happy exhilaration over last night’s triumph. A few of the other St. Gregory’s students stared at the grouping curiously from afar, wondering what Candace Tutter, the biggest nerd in the seventh grade, was doing sitting with Sam McAllister and Lindsey Lin. But the foursome was too involved in conversation to notice.
“Do you know they’re calling Laffar the Ghost Bandit?” Candace offered in her high-pitched voice.
“Really?” Lindse
y asked.
“I saw the news this morning,” Candace prattled. “The Smithsonian released the surveillance footage and it’s kind of grainy, but you can see the bolt cutters appear out of nowhere over the lunar rock. Then all of a sudden, you see the cutters move on their own like a catapult, launching the rock in the air. A guard comes into the picture with a flashlight to check out the commotion, and then, BOOM! He gets knocked out by the floating bolt cutters and the rock disappears.”
“So they think that Laffar’s a ghost?”
“They still can’t figure out how he didn’t appear in the security film,” Candace responded.
“You actually knocked the security guard out?”
The voice came from behind them. All at once, the foursome turned their heads around.
“Miles!” Candace was the first to shout. Miles’s brown skin was scrubbed clean, and he was wearing a freshly pressed Joe Mauer jersey that was at least seven sizes too big for him. Fern laughed as she noted that Miles still had on his ripped Twins cap. His large-framed glasses nearly swallowed his face. He pulled up a chair at the end of the table.
“I can only stay for an hour,” he explained. “Aunt Chan’s become a worrywart since the whole kidnapping thing.” He let his wide smile wash over the group. It is so good to see Miles again, Fern thought.
“How did you know where we were?” Sam asked.
“Aunt Chan,” Miles said. “She knew you’d be here.”
The conversation among the five flowed easily, sharing as they did the common bond of last night’s traumatic events.
“What was really weird,” Sam said, as they began to go through all the proceedings of the prior evening, “was that Laffar used the Sirens’ cries to subdue Lindsey, and the wails worked on me, too, when the wails aren’t supposed to affect Normals.”
“Maybe you’re an Otherworldly and you don’t know it!” Candace exclaimed.
“Or you were having sympathy Siren pains,” Lindsey teased.
“I’m telling you, I fell into a trance,” Sam insisted defensively.
“What I still can’t figure out is how you knew about the Otherworldly punishment for desecrating next of kin,” Lindsey said, referring to Sam’s vital backup plan, which had been fully exposed now that it had worked.
In the hallway the night before, Sam had explained that if worse came to worst, Fern should make sure that Laffar drank the potion with her blood in it first. He reasoned that Laffar wouldn’t know that he was drinking his own daughter’s blood, which would render the Otherworldly completely mortal. The potion in this case would have the opposite of its intended effect.
What Fern knew already, and what Sam couldn’t tell Lindsey, was that he’d learned the fact from The Undead Sea Scroll, which he’d stolen from the Lins’ home the week before. Sam shot Fern a knowing look. Fern had promised Sam she wouldn’t betray him as long as he returned the book. They’d decided to ask their mother to get the book back from pilfering Mooney. Fern had no doubt that the task would be easy for the Commander to accomplish. The Commander seemed to be the only person Mooney genuinely feared.
“I’d heard it from Alistair Kimble,” Sam lied, “when he was first explaining how important family is to Otherworld-lies and the power kin has in the culture—for both Rollens and Blouts.” Although Fern had shared Sam’s backup plan with Candace before the mission began, even Candace didn’t know where the information had actually originated.
Fern looked around at the assembled group. She realized that there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for any one of them, and they for her. Whatever other people called them didn’t matter. They were her family.
Fern tried to change the subject away from Sam’s backup plan.
“I’m just glad your father is a hematologist so you knew all that stuff about the blood,” she said, looking at Can-dace. “If he’d taken Miles’s blood first, we all would have been done for.”
“Oh, my father’s not a hematologist,” Candace said with a smirk.
“He’s not?” Miles said, stunned.
“I made all that up. See, I was trying to think of a reason why Laffar should feel he needed to use Fern’s blood first. It was the first idea that popped into my head.”
“How did you know he would believe you?” Lindsey asked, her jaw still agape.
“I’ve learned that once people think you’re smarter than they are, they’ll pretty much believe anything you tell them—it’s the two Cs, credentials and credibility.”
The other four members grinned and shook their heads at Candace Tutter. She was turning out to be a real piece of work.
Miles turned to Fern. “I had a dream about another one of us,” he whispered to Fern while the others discussed what they would eat.
“Really?”
“I think she’s Austrian or German or something.” His eyes widened with the buzz of discovery. “Guess what? She shoots fire from her hands!”
Miles stopped as the others’ conversation died down. Soon the waitress arrived. They asked for five grilled cheese sandwiches, five orders of fries, and five Cokes. The five perfect sandwiches arrived—piping hot, with gooey melted cheese leaking out the sides. Candace gave Miles, who had the appetite of a boy twice his size, half her sandwich. Fern looked at him in his ripped Twins cap, gobbling his third half sandwich down. She took strange comfort in the fact that she’d now found another person like herself. Miles also had to shoulder the weight of a prophecy he had never chosen to be a part of.
In the dim light of the old restaurant, the unlikely group feasted on fries. The cheese spread into dangling lines connecting the bread to the bites in their mouths. Fern washed a large mouthful of buttery bread and cheese down with a gulp of fizzy Coke. Nothing had ever tasted more delicious.
In a few more minutes, it would be time for Miles Zapo to return to his aunt in Mound, Minnesota, and resume his status as the world’s number one Minnesota Twins fan. Fern would be sad to see him go. But she took comfort in another prophecy that was all but assured of coming true.
Miles Zapo and Fern McAllister would cross paths again very soon. Whatever the future held, Fern knew they would tackle it together.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I want to thank John and Clare Kogler, the best first readers a girl could ask for. Bradford Lyman and Marnie Podos had tremendously helpful things to say during the writing of this book. Thanks to Jan Wilhelm for lending her attentive eyes to later drafts. More generally, John Hurlbut has been a constant source of sage advice and encouragement. I am so grateful, as well, to Joel McIntyre, who, as my very wise and very underpaid consigliere, always manages to say exactly the right thing when I need it most. Under the steady and imaginative hand of my editor Sarah Sevier, these characters have flourished—with her help, it all seems easy. Finally, thank you to Faye Bender, who makes dreams come true.
About the Author
Jennifer Anne Kogler is the author of THE OTHERWORLDLIES, RUBY TUESDAY, and the upcoming THE DEATH CATCHERS. Born and raised in California, she has a twin brother who is a minute older but, according to Jennifer, acts ten years younger. She is a graduate of Princeton University and attends Stanford Law School.
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Credits
Jacket art © 2011 by
Margaret Malandruccolo / MergeLeft Reps, Inc.
Jacket design by Torborg Davern
Copyright
The Siren’s Cry
Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Anne Kogler
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or
mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kogler, Jennifer Anne.
The siren’s cry / Jennifer Anne Kogler. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Sequel to: Otherworldlies.
Summary: During a trouble-filled school field trip to Washington, D.C., twelve-year-old Fern finds and tries to rescue fellow Unusual Miles Zapo, who is imprisoned at the National Zoological Park, using her abilities with teleportation and telekinesis.
ISBN 978-0-06-199443-2 (trade bdg.)
[1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Psychic ability—Fiction. 3. School field trips—Fiction. 4. Twins—Fiction. 5. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 6. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.K8215Sir 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010045560
CIP
AC
* * *
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062084590
11 12 13 14 15 CG/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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