They saw them as soon as they walked through the door.

Standing straight up. Arms stuck out to the side. Row upon row upon row.

Cacao trees.

Planted between rows of other, taller trees. For shade. (Or possibly to hide them from a passing airplane.)

They were just as Max-Ernest had described.

With one difference:

“Are they… covered with snow?” Cass wondered aloud.

Indeed, it looked like snow had been accumulating on the trees for days, making big white mounds that weighed down the branches.

“That really wouldn’t make sense,” said Max-Ernest. “It’s summer and it’s pretty hot out.”

“Duh, I just meant it looked like it—”

“Plus, there’s none on the taller trees,” Max-Ernest couldn’t help adding. “Snow doesn’t usually stick to one kind of tree and not another.”

“It could be fake snow,” said Yo-Yoji. “I mean, there was a fake tree, right? Maybe they’re going to sell them at Christmas.”

The monkey screeched at them, perhaps to say good-bye, perhaps to tell them to stop arguing, then swung away into the cacao trees.

“C’mon,” said Cass. “Let’s keep going. But stay in the shade, under those taller trees. So nobody can see us.”

When they got closer, they saw that the white mounds on the cacao trees were moving. There wasn’t any snow at all, whether real or fake.

Rather, the trees were filled with hundreds, maybe thousands, of the white monkeys.

They chattered noisily, tossing so many cacao seeds—and the odd cacao pod—onto the ground that it seemed to be raining.

Beneath each tree was a gleaming golden pail that looked like something out of a fairy tale. Like a pail that might contain a secret potion or magic coins. Like a pail Hansel and Gretel might carry. The whole scene had a magical look about it, as if the trees were enchanted or the monkeys bewitched.

Occasionally, one of the monkeys themselves would drop onto the ground. He then would hop over to the pail and—

“Why are they sitting on those pails?” asked Max-Ernest.

“I don’t know,” said Cass. “It kinda looks like—”

Yo-Yoji shook his head in disbelief. “Why would anybody want to save… that?”

“Maybe for fertilizer?” suggested Max-Ernest, aghast.

Cass tensed. “Hey, do you guys hear voices?”

Her friends shook their heads, but they stopped talking all the same. They knew from experience that Cass’s hearing was far more acute than theirs.

Quietly, they all crept farther into the shadows and flattened themselves behind the furrowed earth.

An icy voice carried in the breeze. “All our beans have been pre-digested by our specially bred capuchin monkeys. Our mochachin monkeys, as we like to call them.”

The three kids shivered at once. They all recognized the voice and it gave every one of them a chill.

“All these beans you see on the ground—they’re the discards. The mochachins are very fussy. They insist on eating only the best and richest beans.”

From their place in the shadows, the kids could see Ms. Mauvais leading a small group through the cacao orchard. She was covered head to toe in a white nun’s habit—the sort with a headpiece that spreads out to either side like gull wings—but her porcelain-doll face was unmistakable. Her feet invisible beneath her robe, she seemed almost to be gliding over the mud and muck, as if she were suspended on a wire from above.

With her were the Skelton Sisters, dressed for the occasion in pink and purple camouflage as if they were part of some very girlish military operation. Montana Skelton held a video camera in her hand, Romi Skelton a microphone. The sisters were making some sort of film. ^*

Bringing up the rear: Señor Hugo, inscrutable as ever in his dark glasses.

Watching from the shadows, Cass stared at him, seething. This was the man who’d kidnapped her mother. Who’d manipulated her and broken his promise. She’d never hated anyone so much.

Apparently, she was making some kind of sound under her breath because Max-Ernest soon poked her. “Stop growling like that,” he whispered. “They’ll hear you.”

Cass nodded, snapping out of it. There would be time for growling later. She had a job to do.

“When they’re excreted by the monkeys, these superior beans are left perfectly intact,” Ms. Mauvais continued, speaking into the camera. “But they’ve acquired a distinctive flavor unknown anywhere else.”

“So then the cocoa beans have to be, like… dug out?” asked Romi, making a face.

Something like a smile crossed Ms. Mauvais’s frosty lips. “You don’t imagine we do that ourselves! We leave it to our eager young initiates. Isn’t that right, Alexander?”

She nodded in the direction of a small, unhappy-looking boy walking by with a golden pail in each hand. He wore a hooded gray tunic with a black sun embroidered on it—the insignia of the Midnight Sun.

“Oh my gosh, he is so cute!” exclaimed Romi.

She ran over to Alexander and grabbed him by the ear, causing the contents of a pail to spill out onto his leg. “Can we take this one home, Ms. Mauvais?”

“Yes, can we? Please,” said Montana, grabbing the boy’s other ear with her free hand and causing the other pail to spill. “We’ll take very good care of him, we promise. We’ll walk him and everything.” She pointed the camera at her sister. “We’re very good with little children, aren’t we, sis?”

“Oh, yeah! We love animals,” said Romi, not completely following. “That’s why we’re making a documentary at the zoo!”

“You mean in Africa,” corrected her sister.

“Oh, right, Africa! It’s so hard to remember where you are when you’re on a rock tour!”

“Let the boy go, darlings!” said Ms. Mauvais through her teeth. “We’ll talk about it later.”

As soon as the Skelton Sisters released him, Alexander scurried over to a long trough and emptied what remained in his two pails.

More similarly uniformed—and similarly unhappy—children were bent over the trough, sifting through the monkey droppings. Whenever they extracted one of the precious cacao beans, they rinsed it clean and placed it in a special golden pail marked with the Midnight Sun insignia.

“See what diligent workers they are!” said Ms. Mauvais to the camera. “We call them our Pearl Divers because the cacao beans are like pearls—little, brown pearls.… Tell them about it, Señor Hugo. Señor Hugo is our master chocolatier.”

He bowed, unsmiling. “Yes, they’re the secret ingredient in my chocolate. One of the secret ingredients, I should say.”

He patted the pocket of his chef’s apron. As if it contained a world of secrets. Secrets he would never think of divulging to the present company.

“So all these kids in the gray dresses—well, some of them are boys but you have to admit they still look like they’re in dresses—they’re all orphans like from your orphanage?” asked Romi.

“Yes, but we don’t think of them as orphans,” said Ms. Mauvais, attempting to sound warm and kind for the camera. “They’re our family. This is their home now.”

Ms. Mauvais wiped her pale brow with her gloved hand; all the lying was apparently exhausting her. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think we’ll stop there… I trust you’ll remove that unfortunate mention of the zoo.”

“Then this charade is over? I may get back to work?” asked Señor Hugo, scowling.

Ms. Mauvais nodded. The chef strode away, hardly bothering to pretend he couldn’t see.

During the course of the interview another person had silently joined the group. An elegant and very elderly man in a top hat. He leaned on a cane, waiting for the filming to stop.

Cass thought she recognized him as someone she’d seen over a year ago at the Midnight Sun spa.

When Ms. Mauvais’s other companions had dispersed, he finally spoke up: “I’m sorry, but I don’t think a nun’s habit suits you, my dear. I’m used to seeing you in gold and diamonds.” His voice was a throaty whisper. Even Cass had to strain to hear his words.

“Now I know why nuns are so ill-tempered,” agreed Ms. Mauvais, leading him back into the shade. “Itamar, darling, you’re supposed to be resting.”

“I have three or four days of life left at best. Forgive me if I’d like to spend them on my feet.”

“Nonsense,” Ms. Mauvais protested. “You’re nearly five hundred years old. They can’t snatch you away that quickly.”

Itamar pointed his cane at Ms. Mauvais. “I hope you’re not getting sentimental, Antoinette. We chose you long ago for your heartlessness. That is what the Midnight Sun needs. Not maudlin concerns about my health.”

The three eavesdroppers looked at each other. As interesting as the conversation had been thus far, perhaps the most interesting revelation was that Ms. Mauvais had a first name: Antoinette.

Itamar stretched his ancient mouth into a thin approximation of a smile. “I remember when your horse broke his leg. You were only ten years old.…”

“Not just any horse—an Arabian,” said Ms. Mauvais grandly. “I trained him myself. He was my prize possession. The closest thing I had to a family after my parents died.”

“And yet you killed him without shedding a tear!”

Ms. Mauvais looked for a moment as though she might object. “Don’t worry. My interest in preserving your life is purely practical. I rely on your advice and counsel. No one else is sufficiently experienced… or sufficiently ruthless.”

“Thank you. My advice now is to prepare for my death.”

“But we are so close! Immortality is at hand. In a piece of chocolate, no less.”

“So then it is as I suspected, Señor Hugo’s secret recipe is a recipe for the Secret?”

Ms. Mauvais nodded. “Let’s say it’s a recipe for the recipe… We will save you yet.”

“Perhaps. In the meantime, I am not the only one growing old. Even you, Antoinette Mauvais. Your two hundred years are beginning to show around the eyes. Or is it two hundred and fifty now?”

He touched the side of her face with his old gloved hand.

“Please don’t mince words, Itamar,” said Ms. Mauvais.

“I never do. If our organization is to survive, we need new members. Younger members.”

“I know! Why do you think I tolerate those two teenage trollops? Only so we can attract more followers.”

“Can you imagine kids joining the Midnight Sun?” Yo-Yoji whispered in the shadows. “What’s the point if you’re not old yet? I thought it was all about eternal youth.”

“Well, if you have their elixirs and stuff, you never have to get old. Or it takes a lot longer anyway,” replied Max-Ernest. “How ’bout that?”

“Oh yeah. So remind me then why we don’t want to join.”

“I don’t know,” said Max-Ernest. “Maybe because you have to wear a lot of gloves?”

“How about because they’re bloodthirsty killers and they kidnapped my mom!” exclaimed Cass in an outraged whisper.

Lifting herself up slightly, Cass peered down the path Señor Hugo had taken—was that the direction in which she would find her mother?—but she couldn’t see much beyond the rows of cacao trees and the fluffy white fur of the mochachin monkeys.