The Curse of the King. Peter Lerangis

You would have done the same thing!”

      Aly sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s just … an adjustment, that’s all. I mean, we had a chance. And now …”

      She gave me a sad shrug. We’re dead, is what she didn’t say. A genetic mutation was on target to kill us before the age of fourteen. And I had sabotaged our chance to be cured. Seven Loculi was what we needed. Now one of them was in pieces under a train.

      I sank back into the smelly seat. As the car slowed to a stop in front of a squat brick police station, our driver called out, “Home sweet home!”

      She was a tall, long-faced woman named Officer Wendel. Her partner, Officer Gomez, quickly hauled himself out from the passenger side. He was barely taller than me but twice my width. The car rose an inch or so when he exited. “Your papa’s inside, dude,” he said. “Make nice with him and make sure we don’t see you again.”

      “You won’t,” Aly replied.

      “Wait!” cried the old woman with the Chihuahua. “Those are devil children!”

      Officer Gomez paused, but another cop waved him in. “You go ahead,” he said wearily. “We’ll take care of Mrs. Pimm.”

      “I recognize her,” Aly whispered. “She’s the person who shows up in movie credits as Crazy New York City Neighbor.”

      As Officer Gomez rushed us inside and down a short, grimy hallway, I eyed my backpack, which was slung over his shoulder. The Loculus of Flight and the Loculus of Invisibility formed two big, round bulges.

      He had peeked inside but not too carefully. Which was lucky for us.

      Officer Wendel walked ahead and pushed open the door to a waiting room. Dad was sitting on a plastic chair, and he stood slowly. His face was drawn and pale.

      “Officers Gomez and Wendel, Washington Heights Precinct,” Gomez said. “We responded to the missing-persons alert. Found them while investigating a commotion up by Grant’s Tomb.”

      “Thank you, officers,” Dad said. “What kind of commotion? Are they in trouble?”

      “Healthy and unharmed.” Gomez unhooked the pack and set it on a table. “We had reports of noises, people in costume—gone by the time we got there.”

      Officer Wendel chuckled. “Well, a few weirdoes in robes near the train tracks, picking up garbage. Guess the party was over. Welcome to New York!”

      Dad nodded. “That’s a relief. I—I’ll take them home now.”

      He reached for the backpack, but Officer Wendel was already unzipping it and looking inside. “Just a quick examination,” she said with an apologetic look. “Routine.”

      “Officer Gomez did it already!” I pointed out.

      Before Gomez could respond, a sharp barking noise came from the hallway. The old lady was inside, with her dog. Officer Wendel looked toward the noise.

      I reached for the pack, but Wendel pulled it away. She opened my canvas sack and removed the basketball-sized Loculus of Flight. “Nice …” she said.

      “A world globe,” I blurted. “We have to … paint the countries onto—”

      “What the …?” Officer Wendel’s hand had hit the invisible second Loculus.

      “It’s nothing!” Cass blurted out.

      “Literally,” Aly added.

      Wendel tried to wriggle the Loculus out. “Is this glass?”

      “A special kind of glass,” Dad said. “So clear I’ll bet you can’t see it!”

      “Wow …” Wendel said. She lifted her hands high, holding up … absolutely nothing. Nothing that the human eye could see, that is. “I can feel it, but I can’t—”

      “I am not crazy stop treating me like I’m crazy, I saw them, I tell you—they were floating like birds!” Mrs. Pimm’s voice was rising to a shriek—and I remembered where I’d heard her voice and seen her face.

      An open window, a dim light. She had been staring at us as the Shadows from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus lifted us through the streets. She’d been one of the only people who’d noticed the flurries of darkness, the fact that we were being borne down the street in the invisible arms of Artemisia’s minions.

      I darted toward the door and looked out.

      Yiiiii! The Chihuahua saw me first. He wriggled out of her arms and skittered down the hallway toward me, baring his teeth.

      “There—those are the wicked children!” Now Mrs. Pimm was heading our way, followed by two burly cops. “They were floating above the ground … talking to spirits! Come back here, Yappy!”

      I sprang back into the room as Yappy clattered inside, yapping away.

      Officer Wendel let go of the backpack. She and Gomez surrounded Yappy, reaching for his collar. Mrs. Pimm began lashing at them with her cane. Two other cops grabbed at her shoulders.

      “Where’s the Loculus?” Aly whispered.

       There.

      I couldn’t see it, but I saw a perfectly rounded indentation in the sack on the table—a logical place where an invisible sphere might be resting. Shoving my hand toward the air above it, I felt a cool, round surface.

      Now I could see the Loculus. Which meant I was invisible. “Got it!”

      Aly sidled close to me. I reached out and grabbed her hand. Just before she disappeared, Cass reached for her, too.

      Dad stood there against the wall, looking confused. Now Cass and Aly both had hands on the Loculus, so I let go of Aly and reached toward Dad with my free hand. “If you touch us,” I said softly, “the power transfers.”

      He flinched when I took his arm. But it was nothing like the looks on the faces of Mrs. Pimm and the group of police officers. Their jaws were nearly scraping the floor. A cup of coffee lay in a puddle below them.

      I could hear Yappy heading for the entrance as fast as his little legs could carry him.

      We followed after him, but we didn’t rush.

      Even the NYPD can’t stop something they can’t see.

      

      DAD’S DISGUISE WAS a porkpie hat and a fake, glued-on mustache that made him sneeze. Aly’s hair, colored blond with cheap spray-on hair color bought at Penn Station, was bunched into a baseball cap. Cass wore a hoodie and a fake scar on his cheek, and I opted for thick sunglasses, which were now hurting my nose.

      Dad and Aly sat on one side of a narrow table, Cass and I on the other. We were the only ones in our little train compartment, which made our disguises kind of ridiculous. At least I thought so.

      None of us had been able to sleep. Now the countryside was aglow with the first hints of the morning sun. “We are two hundred forty-nine miles into Pennsylvania, fifty-four point three miles from the Ohio border,” Cass announced.

      “Thank you, Mr. GPS,” Aly said.

      “Seriously, how can you do that?” I asked. “The angle of the sun?”

      “No,” Cass replied, gesturing out the window toward a narrow post that zoomed by. “The mile markers.”

      Dad covered his mouth. “Ahh-haaaa-choo!”

      “Guys, maybe we can take off the disguises?” Aly said. “I’ve been checking news sites, feeds, social media, and there’s nothing about us.”