If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late (7 page)

Exhales.

They crept back down the other side of the ship but didn’t see a raft — or even a life preserver.

“Look —” whispered Max-Ernest.

Cass followed his gaze — and shuddered.

Two large hands were grasping the side of the boat — just like in her dream! Could it be . . . ?

As they watched in fearful fascination, a dripping man pulled himself over the rail and onto the deck.

“Mr. Needleman?!” exclaimed Cass.

He nodded, smiling mischievously under his wet beard. “You guys are really holding up the class.”

“But how did you get here?”

Mr. Needleman put his finger to his lips. “Later. Right now I want to you to get ready to jump.”

“Are we in big trouble?” asked Max-Ernest.

“Jump!” Mr. Needleman commanded, pointing over the side of the ship. “Or do you want to wait until somebody sees you?”

They looked over the edge. The ocean was dark and foreboding — and awfully far down. A few yards from the ship, an empty speedboat rocked back and forth in the water.

“Now!”

Mr. Needleman grabbed each of them by the wrist and — before Max-Ernest could explain that he was afraid of heights or that jumping made his nose bleed or even that he couldn’t swim — they jumped off.

Plunging feetfirst into a cold black ocean in the middle of the night isn’t like diving into a warm swimming pool in the middle of the day.

Just in case you thought it was.

Max-Ernest, of course, hadn’t experienced either before. He’d never been underwater.

He thought he was dead.

Not dying. Not drowning. Dead.

Why else would he not know which direction was up? For what other reason would he feel so much pressure on his chest and in his ears? In what other state would he be so totally and completely cold?

Never mind that he was safe in Mr. Needleman’s grip the entire time.

“I’m alive!” he cried when they surfaced. “I’m alive!!!”

“Shh!” said Cass, coughing for air on the other side of Mr. Needleman. “Do you want them to hear?”

The small boat nearly capsized as they climbed aboard. It wasn’t made for passengers.

“Thanks, guys,” said Mr. Needleman when they’d all managed to sit up — clothes drenched, teeth chattering, but, as Max-Ernest so succinctly put it, alive. “We couldn’t have located the Midnight Sun without you. Congratulations!”

“F-for w-what?” asked Cass, confused. She’d just noticed that Mr. Needleman had lost his New Zealand accent.

“For completing your first Terces mission, of course.”

As Cass and Max-Ernest watched in astonishment, Mr. Needleman reached up to the side of his face and ripped off his beard.

“Ouch!” he exclaimed, wincing.

It was Owen.

D
id you see that coming?

Did you have your hand up —
oh oh oh oh oh oh!
— dying to say who it was? Or were you surprised when he pulled off his beard?

Don’t be ashamed. I was almost surprised myself, and I knew Mr. Needleman was really the Terces Society spy all along.

As for Cass and Max-Ernest, they nearly fell off the boat, they were so shocked.

In the past they’d known Owen as a shy stutterer, a cocky surfer, and a mischievous Irishman. But their science teacher? Cass’s tormentor?!

They would have barraged the former Mr. Needleman with questions, but his speedboat made so much noise nobody could hear a thing. He drove so fast that the fan of water behind them rose a hundred feet in the air — well, ten feet in the air, anyway. (Since Max-Ernest was there, I’m afraid to exaggerate.)

Thanks to Owen’s nautical skills, or perhaps just to his recklessness, the
Midnight Sun
never caught up with them.

But the coast guard did. And that was nearly as frightening.

Less than an hour after escaping from the
Midnight Sun
, and still miles from shore, they found themselves blinded by a searchlight.

“You, there! Stop!”

Owen quickly threw a tarp over Cass and Max-Ernest before slowing down the speedboat.

They waited. Huddled together like a couple of sardines from the day’s catch.

“Are we in a pu-pu-puddle?” Max-Ernest shiver-whispered to Cass.

“Doesn’t ma-matter when your clothes are already we-wet.”

“But wh-what about hypothermia?”

Cass touched her arm in the darkness.

She thought a minute. “Can you touch your thumb with your little finger?”

They both could.

Cass gave Max-Ernest a thumbs-up. Safe. Momentarily.

A coast guard officer explained over a booming loudspeaker that a couple of students named Cass and Max-Ernest had gone missing. Their school was afraid that they might have stolen a boat from the harbor, then gotten lost at sea. “When I get my hands on those two punks, I’m going to wring their little necks. I haven’t gotten a wink of sleep all night, thanks to them!”

“I don’t know anybodies by the names of Lass or Mack Sernis,” Owen shouted back. “But if they’re still out heaya, they’re wicked lucky to be alive!”

“Well, if you see anything, call us on the radio!”

After the coast guard boat had disappeared, Owen pulled the tarp off the young stowaways.

“The Midnight Sun will eat those guys for dinnah,” he said, grinning.

“What kind of accent is that?” Cass asked, remarking on the sudden change in Owen.

“Boston. Can’t you tell? I’m a lobstah fisherman.”

Cass laughed through chattering teeth.

It was dawn by the time they reached land.

Owen swore up and down that he’d never intended for Cass and Max-Ernest to board the Midnight Sun’s ship, only for them to lure the ship to the docks — so he could put a tracer on the hull. But just in case the field trip was unexpectedly prolonged, he had stashed his car nearby.

Cass and Max-Ernest groaned when they saw the old VW bug: another wild ride lay ahead.

As they climbed in, Cass pulled the bungee cord belt she was wearing off of her cargo pants. She strapped herself to the side of her door, and then to Max-Ernest.

“Just a precaution. The percentage of traumatic brain injury related to car accidents is staggering.”

Max-Ernest grinned; the survivalist was back in action.

“Hold on, Lass and Mack!” The car exploded into drive.

Lass and Mack both came close to regurgitating the dinner they never had.

“So are you taking us to meet Pietro now?” Cass shouted over the roar of the engine. “Aren’t we supposed to go to a meeting?”

Owen looked over his shoulder. “First rule of the Terces Society — no meetings. Too boring!”

“Really?” asked Max-Ernest.

Owen laughed. “No. The reason is we don’t like too many members in one place at once. Less chance we’ll all be killed.”

“Grilled?”

“KILLLED!”

“Oh. Right.” Max-Ernest gulped.

Owen slowed the car just enough so they could hear.

“You’ll meet Pietro soon enough. For now, just keep an eye on each other. If you think you see the Midnight Sun lurking around, report back to us right away.”

“But what about our next mission?” Cass asked. “What about the Oath of Terces?”

“Later.”

Cass felt as if she’d been demoted — like a police detective taken off the street and given a desk job.

Worse: Owen said he wouldn’t be going back to school with them. Now that the Midnight Sun had seen him, he would need a new disguise; Mr. Needleman was no more.

“Probably some awful teacher’s going to replace you,” Cass complained when they were nearing home. “Somebody who’s really mean, not just acting that way.”

“Sorry, I’ve got another job now.” After he checked in with his Terces colleagues, Owen told them, he was going right back to sea in search of the Midnight Sun.

“They stole something, and I have to get it back. That’s why we put the tracer on their boat.”

“What did they take?” asked Max-Ernest.

“The Sound Prism. One of the Terces Society treasures. . . . It’s a . . . ball. About yea big —” He held out his hand.

Cass and Max-Ernest looked at each other apprehensively; he had to be talking about the ball in Cass’s backpack.

Max-Ernest poked Cass in the side. Wasn’t this their cue?

Cass shook her head imperceptibly.

Max-Ernest opened his mouth, but Cass pleaded with her eyes. They had one of those silent arguments that make you look like a monkey mimicking people at the zoo — until Max-Ernest shrugged and relented. He wouldn’t say anything, but Cass could tell he wasn’t happy about it.

She made a mental note to thank him later. In a highly functioning survivalist team, there had to be a leader. You didn’t have to agree with her all the time. But you couldn’t get to the top of Everest if someone wasn’t the lead on the rope.

Owen insisted on circling their neighborhood, then dropping them off a few blocks away from home — just in case anyone was staking out the territory.

“No time for tearful good-byes. If there’s an emergency, you can reach us at the Magic Museum.”

“Where’s that?” asked Cass.

“You don’t need to know.”

Cass rolled her eyes.

The VW ripped away, leaving them standing under a telephone pole. They both started talking at once — having the argument aloud that they’d had silently in the car.

I won’t try to untangle the entire conversation, but it boiled down to this: Cass didn’t trust Owen.

“The Sound Prism is all we have,” she said. “We already gave ourselves up to Dr. L, thinking he was Pietro. And Owen let us fall right into the trap!”

“I still think we should have showed him the Sound Prism. He
did
save our lives,” Max-Ernest pointed out.

Cass hesitated, then relented. “OK, fine — we’ll give it to them. But only if I can give it right to Pietro.”

Max-Ernest, who was very hungry and very tired and very much missing both of his beds, figured she meant sometime in the sort-of-distant future. But Cass had another idea. They should go find Pietro now. While they still could.

“We’re in trouble no matter what. What’s the difference if we’re missing a few hours longer?”

“But our parents probably think we’re dead —”

Cass nodded. “That’s why we should go now — dead people have more freedom!”

Max-Ernest shook his head — just when you thought you’d won an argument.

“Good,” said Cass. “Now all we have to do is figure out where the Magic Museum is.”

“Oh, that’s easy.” Max-Ernest reached in his pocket. “I found this on the floor of Owen’s car . . . and, well, it had the word
magic
on it, s-s-so, anyway,” he stammered, embarrassed.

He held out a book of matches.

The address was on the back.

“How ’bout that?”

Cass looked stern. “Max-Ernest, that’s stealing!”

He paled.

“Joking!”

He laughed. Sort of.

I
wrote it on a napkin in a diner late last night and —

You know how it is — one minute you’re banging on a broken vending machine, hoping just this once it will have pity on you, the next minute you’re tearing through the countryside, looking for anyplace, for anyone that will offer you a little bite of chocolate.

OK,
bites.