Lorelei swung the chair around and looked up at where Homer and Dog sat on the balcony. She smiled. It wasn’t the evil smile of a villain. It wasn’t the satisfied smile of someone who’d just won a game of hide-and-seek. She smiled as if she was looking at a long-lost friend.

Friend?

It’s perfectly normal for friends to argue and have hurt feelings. Buddies disagree about all sorts of things and then apologize, and life goes back to normal. But even if Lorelei were to apologize for stealing the reptile book, Homer wasn’t going to forgive her. He’d forgiven her for stealing Dog the first time. He’d forgiven her for taking his uncle’s membership coin and lying to L.O.S.T. about it. He’d forgiven her for stealing Dog the second time. But there’d be no forgiveness this time. She was no friend of his.

He scrambled to his feet and stomped down the stairs. “I want my map,” he said when he reached the bottom step. “And I won’t leave until I get it.”

Daisy the rat, who’d been sleeping on Lorelei’s lap, stretched and yawned. She twitched her black nose at Homer, then slid off. Her stomach brushed along the floor as she waddled to a wall of vending machines. Daisy’s normally sleek body looked totally different, like a stuffed gray sock. Standing on her hind legs, she reached up and pushed a button on one of the vending machines. A whirring noise sounded and then plop. She reached into the bin and removed a bag of chips. Then she tore the bag open and feasted. She’s been eating too much junk food, Homer guessed.

“I changed a lot of stuff,” Lorelei said as she clomped over to another vending machine. “Remember how Madame la Directeur kept mice in here?” Homer nodded. One of the machines used to spit out white mice—food for Madame’s cobra. “I put in all my favorite snacks instead.” She pressed a button, and a bag of Dinookies tumbled into the bin. “Want one?”

Homer glared at her. He wasn’t about to accept treats from his mortal enemy, even if they were delicious dinosaur-shaped cookies. “I want my map.”

Lorelei waved the bag at Dog, who was still sitting on the top step. Who could blame him for not wanting to venture into the lair? His last visit had been hair-raising. “Dog? You want some?” She shook the bag. The sound of tumbling cookies proved to be more powerful than terror-filled memories. A dog’s stomach has a mind of its own. Lorelei shook the bag again.

“Urrrr.” Dog’s long body and short legs were not designed for stairs, so it took him a while to get down.

Homer eyed the bags of corn snacks, barbecue twists, and red licorice vines, but he had other things on his mind. “We’re not eating your food,” he said, blocking Dog’s path.

“But it’s polite to offer guests something to eat.”

“This isn’t a tea party,” Homer snapped. “Give me the map!”

Lorelei frowned. “I’m sorry I had to take it.”

“Sorry?” Homer’s voice cracked. He clenched his fists and stomped toward her. “Sorry? I heard you talking to Gertrude and Torch. You’re not one bit sorry. You’re trying to ruin L.O.S.T.”

“Homer,” she said as she opened the bag of Dinookies and turned it upside down. Dog charged, slurping up each cookie as soon as it hit the floor. “There are some things you understand and some things you don’t understand. Not everything is as it seems.”

“Stop talking in riddles, Lorelei. Just give me the map.”

She tossed the empty bag into a trash can. “You shouldn’t be so mad at me,” she said, flaring her nostrils. “Your sister gave me the map.”

“Yeah, well, what were you doing at my house, anyway?”

Lorelei folded her arms. “I chartered a plane to Milkydale because… because… well, I wanted to say hi. Your sister was sitting on the porch reading Rare Reptiles I Caught and Stuffed.”

Homer clenched his jaw. “She wasn’t supposed to have that book. I never gave it to her.”

“I asked her where she got the book. She said she’d found it under your bed. Really, Homer? Under your bed? That’s the most obvious hiding place in the world.”

Her smirk was almost too much to bear. “Yeah, well, sometimes the most obvious hiding place is the best,” Homer said. That wasn’t the real reason he’d chosen the hiding place, but it sounded brilliant when he said it.

“I asked her if it was a good book, and she said that you’d ruined it by pasting bits of your maps on most of the pages.” Lorelei raised her eyebrows. “I couldn’t believe my luck. She had no idea she was holding the hiding place of Rumpold Smeller’s map. So we traded. I gave her a harmonic crystal. Those crystals have come in superhandy. I sold a bunch of them to collectors. Want to see what I bought with all the money?” She spread her arms wide and smiled. “I got some real cool stuff.”

Despite his anger at his sister, who’d had no right to trade away something that didn’t belong to her, Homer was curious about some of the new things in the lair. A fountain that sprayed colored water caught his eye. Lorelei followed his gaze. “Do you like my soda fountain?” She took a paper cup from a dispenser and held it beneath a green stream. “This one is lime-flavored.” She took a drink. “Are you thirsty?”

Homer was thirsty, and, after eating the bag of Dinookies, Dog was probably thirsty, too. So Homer took a paper cup and held it beneath a red stream, which turned out to be fruit punch. If Lorelei had been his friend, he would have told her he really like the soda fountain, but instead he said, “No big deal.” Then he filled the cup again and gave it to Dog. As he knelt, he whispered in Dog’s ear. “Smell the map, boy. Go find the map. The map is treasure.” Dog was his greatest hope. He’d found the map before—he could find it again.

Lorelei took Homer on a tour of her lair. A trampoline, a popcorn machine, and a purple golf cart were among her favorite purchases. “I set up a laser detection grid around the perimeter. That’s how I knew you were on the balcony.”

Lorelei, who’d once been homeless, had turned Madame’s lair into a place any kid would love. When Homer first met her, she was living behind a utility closet in a soup warehouse. In those days, a few milk crates had held her meager belongings, but she’d been proud of her little hideout. Now she lived in Wonderland. A pang hit Homer as he remembered their friendship. He wanted to tell her how great the lair was. But that would be nice. She doesn’t deserve nice, he reminded himself.

“Watch this,” Lorelei said. She clapped her hands, and the lair went dark, but the stone ceiling twinkled like a star-filled sky. Homer hoped that during the blackout, Dog would take the opportunity to sniff out the map and seize it. But when Lorelei clapped again and the lights turned back on, Dog was lying on his belly, having some sort of staring contest with Daisy the rat. “The self-destruct button still doesn’t work, but that’s okay. Oh, and look what I found.” She pointed across the pool to where some kind of vessel, partially submerged, was moored. “That’s a seaweed-powered submarine. Pretty cool, huh?”

“Hey, that used to belong to my uncle,” Homer said. “Ajitabh invented it.”

“Well, it belongs to me now.”

Homer watched Dog from the corner of his eye. Why wasn’t he sniffing around? The book with its hidden treasure map was in here somewhere. “Pssst,” Homer said while Lorelei walked over to a vending machine and punched a button. Dog ignored him. “Pssst. Dog. Pssst.”

“He won’t find it,” Lorelei said. “Do you think I’m stupid or something? I know Dog’s secret, remember? Do you think I’d leave the reptile book somewhere where he can smell it?”

Darn it!

Lorelei grabbed another snack bag from the vending machine’s bin. “Want to see the very coolest thing I bought?” She walked to the edge of the pool and opened the bag. A ripple appeared next to the submarine. Dog growled. Homer’s palms turned clammy. Something was in there.

Lorelei faced the pool and whistled. Dog ran to Homer’s side, then pressed his head between Homer’s shins, watching as the ripple moved. A red speedboat, which was tied to a mooring post, began to rock back and forth as the ripple passed by. Dog trembled. Who could blame him? The last ripple he’d seen in that water had belonged to a vicious monster. “What’s in there?” Homer asked, grabbing Dog’s leash just in case.

“Wait until you see,” Lorelei said. She knelt at the edge and put her hand into the murky water. “I call him Speckles.” The ripple moved straight for Lorelei, and just before it reached her, something surfaced—something black and covered in white polka dots. Whatever it was, it was huge! It lifted its smooth, flat head above the water and opened an enormous mouth. The mouth opened so wide it looked like a black hole. Lorelei dumped the snack bag’s contents into the mouth, which then closed, and the creature disappeared below the water. “Freeze-dried plankton,” she said as she crumpled the bag. “Speckles loves it.”

“What was that thing?” Homer asked.

“He’s a whale shark, the biggest fish in the ocean.” She patted the shark’s tail as he passed by. “You don’t have to worry. He’s my watchdog. He guards the place. He looks scary, but whale sharks are gentle. They aren’t like other sharks. Speckles wouldn’t hurt anyone. Sometimes I ride on his back. I bought him from a zoo. Poor thing lived there his whole life.”

For a moment, Homer thought that shark-riding might be a fun thing to do, but then anger rushed over him. “I don’t care about all this stuff, Lorelei. I want my map!”

“I won’t give it back, but I’m glad you’re here.” She flared her nostrils. “I need Dog and his treasure-sniffing nose.”

Homer’s cheeks burned red. “You can’t have him.” He gripped the leash so tightly his fingers ached. “I’ll never give him to you. And you promised you’d never kidnap him again.”

“I know that,” she said. “That’s why I want you both to become members of FOUND. Come on, Homer. Join me. Why not? You had the map in your possession and you did nothing with it. Why didn’t you do something with it?”

“I was waiting….” he mumbled.

“Waiting for what?”

“Till I got older. Ajitabh and Zelda said I should finish school before I set out on the quest.”

Lorelei laughed. “Why would you do a stupid thing like that? You’re young and strong. This is the time, Homer Pudding. Right now. You should have gone after that treasure the minute you got the map instead of listening to those L.O.S.T. people. You’re never going to get anywhere in life if you let other people tell you what to do all the time.”

Some of the things she was saying made sense. Homer had promised his uncle that he’d continue the quest. But while he was busy growing up and finishing school, someone else might find Rumpold’s treasure. Homer stared at the word on Lorelei’s pocket. FOUND. She wasn’t waiting around. She was making things happen.

But by helping her, he’d be a traitor to L.O.S.T.

“So what’s it gonna be, Homer?” she asked. “Are you gonna go back to Milkydale and clean goat poop, or are you gonna come with me on the most important treasure quest the world has ever known?”

Goat poop or treasure quest? That seemed an unfair choice.

A buzzer sounded. Lorelei yanked the remote control from her pocket. Her face went pale as she stared at the yellow light that flashed on the remote’s surface. “Someone just went down the tortoise slide,” she whispered. Then she frowned at Homer. “I’m not expecting anyone. Are you?”