Z WAS HEADED TO Conjuring Cats, too, and as soon as he entered, he spotted Loop going through the purple velvet curtain. He rushed into the Vault, barely saying hello to Mrs. Garza as he ran by the counter.

“You!” he yelled as he swooshed through the curtain.

Then Dominic yelled at him. “You!”

For a few seconds, they all glared at one another. If they had been superheroes, their eyes would be Tasers and they’d be on the ground shaking from spasms. That’s how angrily they stared. Then all of them yelled at once.

Z shouted at Loop. “You cut up my Svengali deck. Now it’s useless!”

Loop shouted at Dominic. “My chop cup doesn’t work anymore, so you owe me twenty-two dollars and fifty cents!”

And Dominic shouted at Z. “Because of you, my quarter shell is all messed up!”

Then they got personal. Loop called Dominic a know-it-all, Dominic called Z a crybaby, and Z called Loop a freak. Then Z brought up the time his bike got covered in bird poop because his friends put it under a tree where hundreds of grackles roosted, and Loop mentioned the time he chipped his tooth because he fell when they all raced with their shoes tied together. Dominic complained about the time they destroyed his favorite Transformers action figure by lassoing it with strings of Black Cat firecrackers and lighting them up to see if Optimus Prime was really the strongest and bravest of all the Autobots. Then they threw out nicknames they hadn’t used since forever—calling Z Buster because he fell off a trampoline and busted his lip, Dominic Mr. Toot because he accidentally farted in class, and Loop Chango for no reason at all, except that he hated to be called “monkey.” And when they ran out of old nicknames, they invented new ones right on the spot! Like Fungus Foot, Toilet Clogger, Slobber Boy, and Stink Bomb! Z didn’t like arguing, but no way was he going to back down. His friends wouldn’t back down, either, so this fight had definitely turned into the biggest, wildest, loudest, meanest, “everything-est” of all the fights they’d had since kindergarten.

Z seriously wanted to ditch his friends! He had absolutely no idea why Dominic kept blaming him for a messed-up quarter shell, because Z had never touched it. As far as he was concerned, his friends were lying. What he couldn’t figure out was why they thought he was lying, too.

So he and his friends kept arguing, shouting that so-and-so was guilty because of this-and-that. No one would admit anything. No one would apologize.

They might have argued till midnight, but a shrill whistle startled them. Z and his friends turned toward the sound and saw Mrs. Garza at the door. “Settle down! All this noise is bad for business!”

“But—” Loop tried.

She held out her hand like a cop stopping traffic. “I don’t want to hear it.” She took a deep breath. Then she said, “I don’t know what’s going on with you boys, but whatever it is, you better make peace now or get out of this store.” She shook her finger at them and then abruptly left.

Z felt bad. Mrs. Garza had been so nice to him, and if it weren’t for her, he never would have auditioned to get access to the Vault. The last thing he wanted was to make her angry, but he couldn’t let his friends get away with ruining his cards and accusing him of something he didn’t do.

For a moment, the boys were quiet. Finally, Dominic went to a table and sat down. Z joined him, then Loop did as well.

“Look,” Dominic said in a calmer voice. “It’s okay if the quarter shell is messed up. I wasn’t going to use it for my routine anyway.”

“For the last time,” Z said, all exasperated, “I didn’t mess up your quarter shell! I never touched it. You just have to believe me.”

“If you want Dominic to believe you,” Loop said, “then you’ll have to believe me about the Svengali deck. How could I mess it up when I didn’t even have it?”

Z knew this was an outright lie. “Okay, then,” he said, challenging him, “explain why it was in your locker.”

Loop shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know how it got there. I don’t even use that locker.”

Z remembered opening Loop’s locker and seeing that it was practically empty.

“Besides,” Loop said, “why were you looking in my locker?”

“Because,” Z answered, “Ariel told me to.”

Loop thought a moment. Then he looked at Dominic. “Ariel told me you were using my chop cup for strange experiments before you went to Corpus.”

“And it was Ariel,” Dominic added, “who said Z was practicing with the quarter shell, which seemed really weird because”—he glanced at Z—“you only like card tricks.”

They sat quietly for a while, but it didn’t take them long to reach the same conclusion.

All at once, they shouted, “Ariel!”