The Deceivers Read online

  Not a neighbor, Finn thought. Not the dad of anyone I know at school. Not one of the cops . . .

  It was thinking of the cops that helped Finn figure out where he’d seen this man before. The man had been in a guard’s uniform, standing on a stage. And he’d been announcing the start of a trial, saying Finn’s mother was guilty.

  This man was from the other world.

  For a long moment, Finn stood frozen, too terrified to move. That gave the man time to put on a burst of speed, move far past Mr. Mayhew’s car—and then turn at the same corner where Chess and Emma had turned.

  Finn began to scream.

  Five

  Emma

  Emma was having doubts.

  Oh, she was plenty sure that she could be right about the two worlds fitting together like reversible sequins on a pillow. And she was plenty sure that there could be multiple entry points into the other world. But what if she was wrong about the torn-off lever from their basement being the key to everything? What if she’d gotten Chess, Finn, and Natalie all excited about nothing?

  The scientific method—and allowing for lots of trial and error—was great when you just wanted to find out if a hypothesis worked. When you had all the time in the world, and could have fun figuring everything out.

  It wasn’t so great when your mother was in danger, and you already felt like time was running out.

  “Chess . . . ,” Emma began as they raced toward their own block.

  Chess barely grunted a reply. Their own house had just come into sight. It still had crime scene tape around it, with the stark black letters on the yellow background spelling out POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS again and again. Two new signs were posted on the front door: One said, “NO TRESPASSING,” with a bunch of small print underneath; one said, “REWARD!” with two pictures underneath.

  “Ooh,” Emma moaned, realizing that the pictures were of her mom and Ms. Morales.

  The police were offering a reward for information about the whereabouts of both women. Emma hadn’t known that.

  It made them seem like criminals. Or . . . like they were gone forever.

  But we know they’re in the other world, Emma reminded herself. Mom has information that protects her there—that’s why we rescued the Gustanos instead of her. Because the Gustanos weren’t protected. And Ms. Morales . . . she’s smart. She can take care of herself. So can Joe.

  Even if Emma had been absolutely certain that her mother, Ms. Morales, and Joe were safe, she still would have hated seeing her house this way. The police tape and the signs made it seem like the house belonged to somebody else entirely—total strangers, even.

  It looked almost as foreign as the run-down, dilapidated version of their house she’d seen in the other world.

  Somewhere far behind them, Emma heard someone scream. It was probably just kids playing—there were lots of kids in their neighborhood, and Finn’s friends in particular screamed at the top of their lungs all the time. But today it sent chills down Emma’s spine.

  “I’m glad Finn didn’t have to see this,” she muttered to Chess, pointing toward the signs on the door.

  “We’ll go in through the garage,” Chess muttered back. He held up the spare garage key, which Mom usually kept tucked in a flowerpot at the back of the house. Emma felt a little burst of love for Chess, that two weeks ago in the midst of shock and horror, he’d had the presence of mind to snag the spare key without the cops noticing. Chess was like that, quietly taking care of things.

  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 spru
ng 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.

  It kind of bothered Chess that Natalie knew so much about lying.

  “Dad, why didn’t you tell me you’d hired a security guard to watch the Greystones’ house?” Natalie was demanding.

  “I didn’t . . . want to worry you,” Mr. Mayhew mumbled.

  It almost sounded like he was the kid making excuses, and Natalie was the angry parent.

  “Mr. Mayhew, sir, if these really are the Greystone children, and they have every right to be here, I should go and get back into stakeout position,” the tackling man said, as though he didn’t want to watch Natalie and her dad argue, either. “I would remind you, though, that the police still regard this as a potential crime scene, and anything that is removed should be catalogued.”

  “Yes, I know that!” Mr. Mayhew snapped.

  The tackling man—or, security guard, rather—slipped out the garage door and eased it gently shut behind him.

  “Well,” Mr. Mayhew said weakly. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “What do you say we just forget this and go have dinner?”

  “Chess and Emma haven’t had a chance to get the toys they came to pick up as a surprise for Finn,” Natalie said.

  Okay, got it, Chess wanted to tell her. We can go with that cover story.

  “The surprise part is kind of ruined, but . . . you all stay right here,” Emma said. “Chess and I will be right back.”

  She grabbed Chess’s arm, pulling him past Mom’s car and toward the door that led on into the house.

  They raced toward the basement stairs without turning on any lights. It was like neither of them wanted to look too closely at their own house.

  “You find some toy of Finn’s we can show Mr. Mayhew,” Chess told Emma as they clattered down the stairs. “I’ll get the lever.”

  He’d have to figure out some way to hide it under his T-shirt. He tried to picture it in his mind—was it about the same length as his arm? Would it even fit under his shirt?

  He jumped past the last three stairs and hit the basement light switch. He took a shaky breath. The basement still smelled vaguely like kitty litter and their cat, Rocket, even though Rocket had been with them at Mr. Mayhew’s for the past two weeks.

  The door to Mom’s basement office—which the Greystone kids called the Boring Room—hung completely open, not shut and locked the way she always left it.

  That’s because we left that door open two weeks ago, Chess told himself. None of them had been thinking clearly after they’d escaped from the other world and shut off the tunnel that led out from the Boring Room. Plus, they’d had the Gustano kids with them, and the Gustanos had been desperate to get out. Being kidnapped had left them with a fear of basements.

  I’m not feeling too great about basements myself right now, either, Chess thought.

  He made himself take another breath, a deep one this time. He was both relieved and a little disappointed that he caught no hint of the foul odor from the other world. That had to mean the tunnel was still firmly shut, and Chess was in no danger if he walked through the Boring Room to pick up the broken lever.

  But it also meant he still couldn’t get back through that tunnel to rescue Mom.

  He sped past Mom’s desk in the Boring Room, then ducked around the bookcase at the back of the room that doubled as a secret door. It led into the hidden room that Chess, Emma, and Finn hadn’t discovered until after their mother vanished.

  Just pick up the broken lever and leave, Chess told himself. That’s all you have to do.

  But his hand shook as he reached for the light switch, and he had to grope around on the wall to find it. Even in the dark, he turned toward the place where he’d dropped the broken lever to the floor two weeks ago, after giving up on making it work again.

  Finally his fingers found the light switch, and he flipped it on. The light flickered once, then came on in a solid glow. Chess kept staring at the floor. He knew he was looking at the right spot.

  But there was nothing there. Nothing—but a faint outline in dust of the missing lever.

  Seven

  Finn

  Natalie and her dad were still arguing. Finn didn’t think he could take one more second of standing in the garage with Mom’s car, but without Mom.

  “Since it’s not a surprise anymore, I’ll go see what Chess and Emma are getting,” he announced.

  Natalie turned as if she intended to follow him. But if she came, her dad would want to as well.

  “Be right back!” Finn said, making shoving motions toward Natalie with his hand. He hoped Natalie could tell he meant, Sorry! It’s still your turn to keep distracting your dad!

  As soon as he got into the house, he saw that the basement door was open and the lights were on downstairs.

  And then he heard Chess scream, “Emma!”

  Finn raced down the stairs.

  “Chess? Emma? Are you okay?” he called.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he saw Emma dropping handfuls of Hot Wheels cars and speeding toward the Boring Roo
m door.

  “Hot Wheels—really?” Finn called. “You were going to make me have to pretend to be thrilled about those? Or—are they really a clue to getting Mom back?”

  “Decoys,” Emma gasped as she ran. “Sorry.”

  “Emma, get in here!” Chess hollered again from the Boring Room. Or, more likely, from the secret room behind it.

  Emma and Finn ran together. As soon as they ducked past the bookcase/secret door, they bumped into Chess. Finn threw his arms around his brother’s waist.

  “You’re okay!” Finn exclaimed. “Nobody’s hurt!”

  Absentmindedly, Chess patted Finn’s back.

  “But the lever’s missing,” Chess said dejectedly, slumping down against Finn’s head.

  Emma slammed back against the wall as if she was upset, too.

  “So what?” Finn said, peering back and forth between his siblings. “That lever was broken, remember? It doesn’t work anymore!”

  If Chess and Emma were going to get all panicked and sad about every little thing, it had to be Finn’s job to cheer them up. And to keep them focused on getting Mom back.

  Chess kept his arm around Finn’s shoulders.

  “Emma thinks the lever could still work somewhere else,” Chess said gently. “She thinks it’s only the tunnel leading out from this room that’s ruined. Not the lever itself. That’s what we were coming back for.”

  “Oh,” Finn said.

  Emma and Chess kept staring inconsolably at the floor. But Finn glanced around the whole space. The room still looked like a hoarder’s pantry, with canned food, jars of applesauce, boxes of granola bars, and other similar items on every shelf. Their whole family could probably live in this room for a year and never go hungry.

  Finn knew that all the packages of food—and the cash hidden in some of the shoeboxes—were actually items Mom had stashed to take into the other world, to help people there.

  He tried not to look at the back wall of the pantry, where the shelves were cracked and dirt shoved through the broken wall. It reminded him too much of the moment when the tunnel closed—leaving Mom, Ms. Morales, and Joe trapped in the other world.