“Who could have . . . ,” Mr. Hudson began to ask, and then trailed off as Ruby reached down and plucked a hair off the sleeve of a black coat—a long white-blond hair.
“Pike,” breathed Matt. “I saw her running down Fifth Avenue just before the Vermillion disappeared. She was carrying something.”
“Who?” Mrs. Hudson asked.
“Creepy rat-girl,” said Corey.
“Corey, don’t be rude. She helped us get home!”
“Yeah, but it seems like she had a mission of her own,” said Matt, “and I guess we underestimated her loyalty to the captain.”
“A child couldn’t have broken into this safe!” said Mrs. Hudson, growing more panicked by the second. “It’s impossible to break into this thing!”
“I’m guessing not for Pike,” said Ruby.
Mrs. Hudson stared at the empty safe until Mr. Hudson finally reached in to help her out. “Come on, Belamie,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
Mrs. Hudson crawled out of the closet and stomped into the living room. She paced back and forth in front of her wall display of swords, her hands pressed together at her mouth. Matt just stood there with the rest of his family and watched, all of them unsure what to do. Matt was trying to understand exactly why his mother was so upset just then. Almost as upset, it seemed, as when she realized the captain had kidnapped her children.
“It was a client’s artifact, wasn’t it?” said Matt. “You have insurance for that sort of thing, don’t you?”
But then Ruby gasped.
“The Queen Elizabeth box,” she said. “That’s what Captain Vincent was after! And you had it here the whole time?”
Mrs. Hudson didn’t answer Ruby. “Okay,” she said, pushing her fingers through her hair and pulling at the ends. “It’s okay. He doesn’t have the key . . .”
Matt swallowed. “You mean the one hidden inside the Mona Lisa?”
“What?” Mrs. Hudson said sharply, turning to Matt.
“The Mona Lisa,” said Matt. “We were there when he stole it from the Louvre in 1911, and I watched him take the key out of the back.” Matt didn’t have the courage to tell her that he had been the one to direct him to it, or at least his future self did.
What little color was in Mrs. Hudson’s face now drained completely. She shakily sat down on the couch. “He has the box and the key . . . ,” she said in a bit of a daze.
“Belamie,” said Mr. Hudson, sitting next to her. “What does it matter, hon? We’re safe now. We have the kids.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice cracking a little. “I was supposed to keep it from Vincent at all costs.”
“What’s inside it?” Corey asked.
“A letter,” said Mrs. Hudson.
“A letter?” said Corey. “That’s all?”
“Who is the letter from?” Matt asked.
“From the inventor of the Obsidian Compass,” said Mrs. Hudson.
“That’s who your client is?” said Ruby. “Who is he?”
“His name is Marius Quine,” said Mrs. Hudson. “I’ve only met him once and very briefly, with very little contact over the years. He’s a strange man, very mysterious and dangerously powerful, but if Vincent is able to gain the same power somehow . . .”
There was a moment of silence.
“Will he come after us again?” Ruby asked in a small voice.
“Maybe we should go after him,” said Corey.
“How are we supposed to do that?” Ruby asked. “We don’t have the compass or the Vermillion.”
Matt instinctively reached for his bracelet. He could call the Vermillion back to them! Just like he had when they’d been discarded. They could get the box back and the key and maybe the compass, even. And Jia . . .
But his bracelet was gone. He searched his pockets and the floor, even though he knew it wouldn’t be there. It must have come off during the fight at the Met, or before. It could be on the Vermillion, long gone.
“What’s wrong?” Ruby asked.
Matt shook his head and held out his wrist. “My bracelet . . .”
Ruby’s eyes lit up with comprehension. “Oh . . .”
The lump rose in Matt’s throat again. Jia would be discarded, and he was powerless to help her.
“It’s okay, Matt,” said Ruby. “We’ll figure something out. It’s not over.”
Matt nodded. No, it couldn’t be over. There was still hope, however small.
“I have a lot of explaining to do, I know,” Mrs. Hudson said. “And I will, but for now I need you to simply trust me. Can you do that? I know I don’t deserve it, but can you? Wherever we go from now on, we will all stay together. Agreed?”
Matt didn’t think he could take any more surprises, no more adventures. He just wanted to crawl into his bed, go to sleep, and wake up tomorrow to plain oatmeal and go to school and never, ever ride on another train or bus or boat. He looked to his brother and sister, dirty, bruised, and ragged. He could tell Corey and Ruby felt the same, but that they also understood the inevitability of their situation. Matt felt a chill come over him, and a deep, down-in-the-gut feeling that this wasn’t over. He pictured all three of their names carved into the mast of the ship. They never did that, which meant at some point they would board the Vermillion again, face Captain Vincent, perhaps even meet the maker of the Obsidian Compass. And Matt’s future self would do things that he still didn’t quite understand now. He understood so little. There was only one thing he knew for certain—the love he felt for his family. It rose above his exhaustion and aching body now, surpassed his fears and doubts. It was something that couldn’t be broken or dissolved, no matter where they went, or when. This was his family, and they belonged together at all times and all places.
Matt held his fist out in front of him. Ruby and Corey both joined him, then their mom and dad.
“Agreed,” said Matt.
It was their first five-way family fist bump.
Acknowledgments
Writing any book is always a big undertaking, like climbing a mountain. Writing a series is like climbing several mountains. Writing a time-travel series is like climbing all the mountains all over the world and throughout all time. It’s vast, it’s complex, it’s daunting. Simply put, no human being can do it without an oxygen mask and a team of experts to help you get where you want to go and (hopefully) not die in the process. To that end, I would like to thank Melissa Miller for believing I could write this series in the first place, and to Alex Arnold and Rebecca Aronson, who jumped on the ship brandishing magic pens. I loved all our brainstorming sessions. I still have fireworks going off in my brain. To my agent, Claire Anderson-Wheeler, always ready to read at the drop of a hat, offer advice and assistance, champion my work, and talk me off the ledge, thank you so much. Thanks to Katie Fitch for a magical, adventurous cover, and to Robby Imfeld and Gina Rizzo for getting my book into the hands of readers who will love it. Gratitude to Katherine Tegen and Kathryn Silsand, and all those at Katherine Tegen Books and HarperCollins who had any part in bringing this series about and making it what it is. Any remaining mistakes or weaknesses are my own. To Erin Cleary, Janet Lefley, Tabitha Olson, and Susan Tarcov, thanks for reading early chapters and giving invaluable feedback that certainly shaped the rest of the story. Thanks to Brianna DuMont, not only for reading this book section by section and providing fantastic input and ideas, but also lending your history expertise. You were there for me at a critical moment! Thank you to Sarah Beer Clemens for helping me with my very rusty, very limited French. Huge thanks to my husband, Scott, for a million things but in particular with this book, all the baseball facts, terms, and history lessons. I feel like I can sit with the cool kids now, or maybe the next table over? And last, but not least, always love and gratitude to my beautiful children, Whitney, Ty, Topher, and Freddy. You inspire me, delight me, challenge me, and ultimately make my life freaking amazing. *Family fist bump*
About the Author
Photo by Erin Lake
LIESL SHURTLIFF is the New York Times bestselling author of Rump: The (Fairly) True Tale of Rumpelstiltskin and other books in the (Fairly) True Tales series. She was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, the fifth of eight kids. She now lives in Chicago with her husband and four kids, where she writes full-time with a cat on her lap.
www.lieslshurtliff.com
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Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
TIME CASTAWAYS #1: THE MONA LISA KEY. Copyright © 2018 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art by Alexandria Neonakis
Cover design by Katie Fitch
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Shurtliff, Liesl, author.
Title: The Mona Lisa key / Liesl Shurtliff.
Description: New York, NY : Katherine Tegen Books, 2018. | Series: Time castaways; 1 | Summary: When Matt, Ruby, and Corey Hudson discover their subway train is actually a time-traveling eighteenth-century frigate captained by a mysterious pirate, they are thrown into a series of adventures that offer cryptic clues about their past and their future.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017057242 | ISBN 9780062568137 (hardback)
Subjects: | CYAC: Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Time travel—Fiction. | Pirates—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / Pirates. | JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic.
Classification: LCC PZ7.S559853 Mo 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017057242
* * *
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-256817-5
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-256813-7
1819202122CG/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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Time Castaways #1 Page 29
