Chapter 30

FRIDAY, MAY 15

12:56 P.M.

THE CLEANER’S APARTMENT, NEW YORK CITY

The entire box didn’t explode, but the lid blasted off, smacking me in the face and knocking me backward. Music started playing—a rock song from the 1990s.

Something silver whizzed past my head, missing my ear by less than an inch and sticking into the wall beside the bed’s headboard.

It was a CD. But it was glowing red-hot. As I watched, it exploded like a miniature bomb, blasting a fist-size crater in the wall.

“Boon!” I heard Fluffball shout over the music. But he wasn’t pointing at the deadly CD. His long white ears were pointing at the box.

It looked like there were several items inside, but the only one I had time to notice was a CD player. No sooner did I lay my eyes on it than the small machine spit out another red-hot CD. This one went over my head, narrowly missing Hamid as he leaped face-first onto the bed.

And the CD player didn’t stop there. It shot another and another, launching the dangerous disks in every direction across the room.

Luckily, my leg was feeling much better, so I scrambled backward, taking shelter next to Avery and Hamid. Hamid had tumbled off the mattress, and they were hiding behind the bed’s footboard.

The deadly CDs weren’t slowing down. They stuck into the walls and ceiling like saw blades, each one detonating with a fiery explosion.

Fluffball was still on the bed, mostly burrowed under the single pillow, but he poked his head out to risk a glance at the CD player.

“There’s a stop button on the player,” he said. “It should shut down the boon’s power if we push it.”

“How did this happen?” Avery cried. “A boon isn’t supposed to hurt us unless we know what it does. We couldn’t even see that thing!”

“That’s not completely true,” Fluffball said. “A boon has to be activated by someone who knows what it does. But it can still hurt others. Think about how Wreckage knocked down those Igs at the High Line with his drumstick shockwave.”

Two CDs crashed into each other in midair, exploding with a burst of sparks.

“So, someone activated this CD player from a distance?” I said.

“No,” said Fluffball. “It was already running when we got here. Someone pushed the play button a long time ago.”

“Then how come it didn’t start spitting CD blades until I pulled it out from under the bed?” I asked.

“I think we should worry more about turning it off than who started it,” said Hamid.

“Right,” Avery said. “If that box holds our evidence, the last thing we want is for those CDs to light it on fire.”

“How do we get close to it?” I asked.

“Like this,” Hamid said bravely, leaping to his feet. He snatched the pillow off the bed, causing Fluffball to let out a panicked scream and dive down next to Avery and me. Hamid moved around the end of the bed, holding the pillow out like a shield.

A CD struck the pillow and exploded, little downy feathers bursting out like a cloud. The fabric pillowcase caught fire and Hamid shrieked, yelling, “Abort! Abort!” He threw the ruined pillow to the floor and sprinted over to take cover behind the couch, two CDs missing him by mere inches.

“I’m going to crawl under the bed and see if I can reach the stop button,” said Avery.

“I don’t think you’re going to fit,” I said. “It’s pretty low.”

She tried to duck underneath, but her shoulder got stuck. “Fluffball,” said Avery, pulling herself out. “Go under and shut off the CD player.”

“What?” cried the rabbit. “Why me?”

“You’re the only one small enough,” I said.

“You think I’m expendable,” he said, sitting up on his back legs and folding his arms. “I won’t go.” He closed his eyes and turned up his nose.

Avery grunted in frustration. “I can’t think of anything in the hat that would help.”

“What about those elbow pads?” Fluffball said.

“Elbow pads?” I asked. “You never mentioned those before.”

“They’re not in the hat, Stinky. They’re over there.” He pointed back toward the couch with his ears. “Looks like one of Albrecht’s personal boons.”

“You mean these?” Hamid asked. His hands appeared above the couch and he pulled a pair of protective elbow pads from an end table.

“Yeah. Those,” Fluffball said. “They must have been important to a really bad roller skater who did something good with their life.”

“What do they do?” I cried.

“Immunity boons,” the rabbit explained. “Once you strap them around your elbows, they will protect your arms from other magical boons.”

“Just the arms?” Avery asked.

“Picky, picky,” he said. “One of you has to put those on and go out there before this bed gets ripped apart and we lose all our cover. You’ll have to use your arms to block all the incoming CDs.”

“It should be Mason!” Hamid called, flinging the elbow pads toward us. “He’s trained his entire life for this moment!”

“You have?” Avery asked.

I shrugged, strapping one of the pads onto my elbow. “Hamid and I used to play a video game like this.”

“Blocking exploding CDs while wearing elbow pads?” she questioned.

“Well, it’s not exactly like this,” I admitted as she helped me put on the other one. In the video game we were blocking laser bolts with force fields around our arms. And if we died, we just started over at the last checkpoint.

“Good luck out there,” Avery said, tugging the elbow pads to make sure they were secure.

I took a deep breath and silently counted to three. Then I leaped up with a battle cry, holding out my arms in front of me.

There was a burning CD headed straight for my face. Instinctively, I lifted my arm to block. The disc glanced off my forearm without any pain, shooting upward and lodging into the ceiling.

“Yeah!” I shouted, bringing my other arm around to block the next searing CD.

I advanced slowly, step by step, punching and knocking aside every dangerous CD that came near me. In no time, I was standing above the cardboard box with a clear view of the CD player. But there was a problem. I was working so hard to block the discs—I couldn’t possibly bend down and push the stop button.

“Avery! I need help!” I cried, swinging my arms together to block a pair of CDs from hitting my chest. “I’ll block for you, but I need someone else to turn it off!”

“Okay!” I heard her reply. “I’m coming out.”

I took a sideways step to provide better coverage for her. The number of burning discs seemed to double, and my arms were getting really tired. The video game was way easier than this!

“I’m right behind you,” Avery said. Risking a glance back, I saw that she was on her hands and knees. “I’m going to reach around your leg and shut it off.”

“Do it quick!” I said, seeing her hand creep past my ankle, feeling for the dangerous CD player inside the cardboard box.

“Got it!” she cried. I looked down just in time to see her press a button. But it wasn’t the right one. The music picked up in speed, the voices sounding like chipmunks.

“That was the fast-forward button!” I bellowed. Suddenly, the CDs started flying twice as fast as before. My arms felt like a blur as I followed my instincts and relied on my years of video game training to bat away the hailstorm of dangerous discs.

“Oops!” Avery said, her hand fumbling across the front of the CD player again.

The discs struck faster, and one of them clipped my thigh, ripping my pants and buzzing over Avery’s head behind me. I punched away another, my arms feeling like they were turning to lead.

Then Avery’s hand finally slammed onto the stop button. The music died, and the CD player made a soft whirring sound as it powered down.

“Is everyone okay?” I asked, dropping my weary arms to my sides. Hamid emerged from behind the couch, and Fluffball tentatively crept around the bed’s footboard.

“You were almost out of cover,” said Hamid, pointing at the side of the bed that had taken the brunt of the attack. The bottom sheet had burned away, and the mattress was ripped open, exposing smoldering stuffing and springs.

“Yowzer,” said Fluffball. “That explains a lot.”

“Like what?” I asked, stripping off the elbow pads and handing them back to Avery, who dropped them into her top hat.

“That bedspring.” Fluffball pointed with his ears. “It’s a boon.”

“Why didn’t you notice it before?” I asked, annoyed.

“It was inside the mattress, under a sheet,” he defended.

“You couldn’t see through a sheet?” I cried.

“I’m an Angora rabbit,” he stated. “I don’t have X-ray vision. Believe it or not, a boon detector like myself has to see a boon in order to detect it!”

“I thought you sniffed them out,” I said.

“It’s a blend, okay?” Fluffball snapped. “You ever smelled something that seems familiar, but you can’t quite place it until you see it? That’s how it works for me. Yes, technically, I have to see the boon to identify it, but my sniffer points me in the right direction.”

“What does the spring do?” asked Avery.

“It activates when it’s stretched out,” said Fluffball. “It freezes other boons that are in close proximity anywhere below it.”

“That’s why the CD player started shooting,” Avery said. “The play button was already down, but the boon was frozen because the spring was stretched out. When we moved the bed, the spring must have contracted.”

I nodded, finally understanding. “And without the spring to freeze the CD player, it started launching deadly discs.”

“Just another reason to download digital music,” muttered Hamid.

“Wait,” I said. “Maybe that was how the music box activated during my book report. Maybe someone had planted a boon in my classroom that would freeze the music box until the perfect moment.”

“How is this different than the vent cover dampener?” asked Avery.

“The dampener stopped boons from activating,” explained Fluffball. “The bedspring froze boons that were already activated.”

“This was obviously some kind of security system,” said Avery. “The only way to get the cardboard box was to move the bed, which would release the spring and wake up the CD player.”

I looked over to see that Avery was holding the lid to the cardboard box. It appeared to be slightly charred, but all the handwritten words were still clearly legible.

Avery and I moved over to inspect the box.

“I think it’s time to see what the evidence tells us.”