Chapter 20

THURSDAY, MAY 14

8:37 P.M.

VANDERBEEKS’ NEIGHBORHOOD, INDIANA

Charity Vanderbeek was in my third-period class, and I actually knew where she lived, but it took Avery and me a long time to get there since we didn’t dare use our magical atlas. We caught a bus that took us back to my side of town, and then we went the rest of the way on foot. By the time we arrived in the right neighborhood, the sun was setting.

“That’s the house,” I said, pointing through the twilight. “Are we just going to ring the doorbell again?”

Avery shook her head. “We probably shouldn’t have risked such a direct approach with Tom Pedherson. Let’s peek through a window and see what we might be up against.”

“What if the neighbors notice us?” I asked. “They could call the Vanderbeeks. Or worse . . . the police.”

“Let’s creep into the backyard, then.” Avery veered off the sidewalk.

We moved in total silence, hopping over the low fence that sectioned off the Vanderbeeks’ backyard.

“This window isn’t shut all the way,” Avery said, inspecting one she could easily reach from the patio.

“Shh!” I hissed. “Someone might hear you.”

“I’d say there’s no one here to hear,” said Fluffball.

“What do you mean?” I asked, annoyed that he wasn’t even whispering.

“Come on, kid,” said the rabbit. “Look around. Nobody’s home. There aren’t even any lights on inside.”

I hated to admit it, but he was right. It wasn’t totally dark yet, but if someone was inside, they probably would have turned on a light by now. “Maybe it’s a trap,” I tried. “What if that substitute librarian is just sitting in the dark, waiting for us?”

“The garage was empty,” continued Fluffball. “No cars.”

“How do you know?” Avery turned on him.

“Oh, you two didn’t notice that?” asked the bunny. “I caught a quick peek in the garage window as we snuck past. Fun fact: rabbits see best in dim lighting like twilight and dawn.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I cried.

If a rabbit could shrug, that was what he did. “You’re the detectives. I’m just along for the ride.”

I looked at Avery. “I guess it’s safe to go inside and have a look around, then.”

“After you.” She gestured to the window she had pried open.

But I hesitated. I’d never broken into someone’s house before! This was real criminal stuff and I had a bad feeling about it. With my heart in my throat, I stepped up, putting my knee on the sill and ducking my head inside.

All was dark and quiet. Nobody home. Just like Fluffball had guessed.

“All clear,” I whispered back to Avery as I slipped into the house. I fumbled along the wall until I felt a light switch.

“Nice place,” Avery whispered as the room brightened. We were standing in a large room with a couple of couches, a big TV, and a fireplace. The kitchen was divided by a little half-wall, but I could see well enough to know that no one was hiding there.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” I asked.

“Clues,” Avery said. “Anything that might tell us if this Vanderbeek lady was involved in framing you.”

“Well, she probably wouldn’t leave important evidence lying around in the front room,” I said. “Should we head upstairs?”

“Come on, Fluffball,” said Avery. “We need you to sniff out any boons.”

The rabbit twitched his ears from his perch on the windowsill. “I was going to stand guard at the window and warn you if the family comes home.”

“More like, jump out the window and run away at the first sign of trouble,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” said Fluffball, hopping down. “Don’t blame me if you’re stuck upstairs when the evil Ms. Vanderbeek shows up.”

I moved toward the staircase. I was almost there when Fluffball snapped at me. “Not another step, kid! That scarf’s a boon!”

“What scarf?” I asked, freezing anyway.

Fluffball used his ears to point to a plaid scarf draped over the railing at the bottom of the stairs. As I watched, it slowly slipped off, falling to the floor. The minute it touched the carpet, something terrible began to happen.

It was just like the game everyone plays as a kid—the floor turned to lava.

It started at the spot where the scarf landed, spreading quickly toward us. Fluffball and I scrambled backward to avoid the bubbling orange liquid.

“Nice job, Skunk Boy!” cried Fluffball, bouncing across the room and leaping back onto the windowsill.

“What happened?” asked Avery, climbing onto the low hutch against the wall where the TV was mounted.

“I didn’t do anything!” I replied, springing onto the couch. “I didn’t even know what that boon could do.”

“You didn’t need to,” answered the rabbit. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. The scarf boon was manipulated to take action if an Ed so much as approached the stairs.”

“Wait!” I gasped. “Maybe that’s how the music box activated. What if someone had manipulated it to activate for an Ig like me!”

“Not likely,” said Fluffball. “Didn’t you say your mom opened the music box before you? And Tom Pedherson? Nothing special happened to them.”

The lava had boiled right up to the feet of the couch, and my perch was starting to sink. I ran across the cushions and sprang to the loveseat, realizing I would soon be marooned.

“Mason!” Avery suddenly shouted, nearly giving me a heart attack. “Do you know who this is?” Crouched on the TV hutch, she was holding out a framed picture that she’d taken from the shelf next to her.

I squinted to see what she’d found, but it was just a picture of Ms. Vanderbeek with her two daughters, Charity and the older one I didn’t know.

“Is this really the time to look at family pictures?” I shrieked, the loveseat tilting sideways as the lava ate away at its feet. I didn’t know why Avery seemed so surprised to see Ms. Vanderbeek’s picture. We were in her house, after all.

“Don’t you recognize her from somewhere?” Avery cried, still holding the frame insistently.

“Yeah,” I said, moving to the back of the loveseat to get to higher ground. “She was the substitute librarian who gave me the Music in the Box book.” We’d already been over this.

“That’s not all,” said Avery. “She’s also the repairwoman who fixed your mom’s dishwasher on Tuesday morning!”

“That’s why she looked so familiar!” I called back. “Oh, we’re onto something now. I bet Ms. Vanderbeek doesn’t even know how to fix—”

My loveseat jolted, dumping me off the back. I managed to spring to the side table, but it was small, bobbing precariously in the sea of red and orange.

“You’ve gotta jump!” Fluffball yelled from the windowsill.

“To where?” I shrieked. The nearest surface that wasn’t being flooded by lava was Avery’s hutch. But even she was cornered, probably only a few seconds remaining until she got fried.

Then I remembered something. I hadn’t seen the boon, but Fluffball had mentioned it briefly when giving us his list from the top hat. “Avery!” I called. “Toss me the hat!”

“What?” she cried.

“Just do it!”

With a deep breath, she pulled it off her head and threw it across the room like a Frisbee. I caught it just inches above the lava, my sweaty hands almost slipping on the black fabric. I plunged my hand into the opening, feeling for what Fluffball had described.

Baseball!

I pulled it out of the hat, holding it up victoriously as my little table dipped lower into the lava.

“Throw it!” Fluffball shouted.

I didn’t need him to remind me how it worked. He’d already given me the knowledge in that New York City alleyway.

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.”