Emma or Finn would have wanted to brag, See how smart I was? See what I did?
Chess and Emma reached the edge of their own yard, the patch where four-leaf clovers grew in the spring. A year ago, Emma had sectioned off quadrants and made a graph showing where the clovers grew the most, with theories about whether it was soil quality, sunshine, or rainfall that made the difference.
It felt like Emma had been a totally different person a year ago. Who cared about four-leaf clovers now?
“Wait,” Chess murmured, putting his hand on Emma’s arm.
They stood at the edge of the yard for a moment, Chess glancing all around. It was a quiet street, and no one was out, though Emma guessed someone could be crouched down out of sight, hiding behind one of the cars parked in driveways or along the street. Or not. This was the time of night when all the parents had come home and called kids in for dinner.
Doesn’t that make it seem weird that I just heard a kid scream, playing a few streets over? Emma wondered.
She pushed that thought aside, and tugged Chess forward.
“Let’s get this over with, so Natalie and Finn don’t have to keep Mr. Mayhew distracted forever,” Emma said.
They crept toward the door at the side of their house. It was their own sidewalk, their own driveway, their own grass, but both of them moved like intruders. Like they didn’t belong.
Chess reached the door and glanced around once more before slipping the key into the lock.
“Chess, you’re being paranoid!” Emma protested. “Hurry up!”
Chess turned the key, and Emma pushed her hand forward to turn the knob as fast as she could.
And then a man in dark clothes came out of nowhere and tackled them, knocking them both to the ground.
Six
Chess
“Get off me!” Chess screamed as Emma hollered, “Let go!”
Chess tried kicking and shoving the man away, and he was pretty sure Emma did, too. But the man seemed to know exactly how to keep both of them pinned to the ground, no matter what they did.
“Yeah, just found two kids trying to break into the house. . . .” The man seemed to be reporting into some walkie-talkie buried in a pocket, or maybe a microphone embedded in his clothes. Chess wiggled around enough to see the man’s chin lowered toward his shirt collar, but the rest of the man’s face wasn’t visible.
“We’re not breaking in!” Emma protested. “We live here! Or—we used to! We have a key!”
Chess shook his head silently against the ground.
Oh, Emma, he thought. What if we don’t want this man to know who we are?
Then Chess heard a speeding car and screeching brakes and running feet.
“Hey, hey! Those are the Greystone kids! Let them go!”
It was Mr. Mayhew’s voice.
And then Finn was screaming, “Stop hurting my brother and sister!” And Natalie was shouting, “Dad! Is that man a cop? Or, wait—does he work for you?”
Chess realized the man had let go. Still, Chess remained facedown on the ground for a moment, overcome. They hadn’t even gotten back into the other world yet, and already Chess felt defeated and powerless.
Already, he’d failed to protect Emma. If Mr. Mayhew, Finn, and Natalie hadn’t shown up—and Chess didn’t quite understand how they’d known to show up—then this man could have done anything he wanted.
He could have kidnapped Chess and Emma.
He could have taken them back to the other world, and Finn and Natalie wouldn’t have even known.
Finn started yanking on Chess’s arm, trying to turn him over.
“Chess! Chess! Are you in there?”
That was the kind of thing Finn used to shout when the Greystone kids were playing make-believe—pretending to be in danger, pretending to need help, pretending to have barely survived some awful fight with pirates or bandits or other made-up bad guys.
Chess winced, because Finn was shouting this for real now. Finn really was wondering if Chess had survived.
Chess made himself roll over and stand up.
“I’m fine, buddy.” Chess forced his mouth into a shape that he hoped looked like a smile. His legs felt shaky, but he locked his knees and stood firm. “I’m just . . . surprised. How’d you know to come rescue us?”
Finn darted his gaze toward Mr. Mayhew and shook his head warningly.
Okay, that’s a secret, Chess thought. Something else we can’t talk about in front of Mr. Mayhew.
Emma had already sprung up and was advancing on the man who’d tackled them. She had a finger poked against the man’s chest.
“Do you just go around knocking people down for no reason all the time?” she challenged. “Don’t you know people have rights?”
“It was a misunderstanding,” the man said, peering toward Mr. Mayhew, as if he expected Natalie’s dad to explain.
But Natalie’s dad was too busy trying to fend off Natalie.
“Honey, please,” he was saying. “I hired extra security to watch the Greystones’ house to protect everyone. And maybe to solve the mystery. You know how your mother, well . . .”
“My mother what?” Natalie demanded, facing off against her dad like Emma stood against the tackling man.
“You know, some of the people she associated with, they had ties to . . . bad elements,” Mr. Mayhew finished weakly.
“My mother helped women who were in danger!” Natalie exploded. “Women whose boyfriends and husbands were evil. That doesn’t mean Mom associated with bad elements! It means she was a hero! She is a hero!”
She spoke so forcefully, the tackling man took a step back.
Chess looked around. It was a warm night, and Chess could see open windows in neighbors’ houses. He could imagine people pausing over their dinners, peering out to see what the disturbance was.
What if it wasn’t just neighbors who were listening, but . . . others? Spies from the other world?
“Could we maybe move this inside?” Chess asked quietly, taking Natalie’s arm and tugging her toward the door into the garage.
“Good idea,” the tackling man said, starting to herd the others into the garage, too.
Chess realized that the tackling man had a patch on his black shirt that said “Ace Private Security Experts.” He also had bulging muscles that threatened to rip through his sleeves. Chess felt even more helpless—he and Emma could never have overpowered this man.
Emma at least had had the courage to berate him.
Chess turned on the garage light. The single bulb overhead was the energy-saver type that came on weakly at first, and needed a few seconds before it put out much of a glow. So everything in the garage looked shadowed and spooky.
Chess moved closer to Emma and Finn and put his arms around both of them. Finn sniffed, and rubbed dust off the window of Mom’s station wagon.
“It’s weird seeing Mom’s car here,” he said. “Without Mom.”
Chess knew that Mom’s car still being in the garage was one of the reasons the police didn’t quite believe that she’d gone on a business trip before disappearing. Should Chess, Emma, and Finn maybe not have told them she usually drove her own car to the airport?
The day the police thought there’d been a natural gas explosion, Natalie had quietly counseled the three Greystone kids on the fine art of lying: Only make up what you have to. Otherwise, tell as much truth as you can. That means you have fewer lies to keep track of, and you’re not as likely to trip yourself up.