The Deceivers Read online

“Finn, that’s not how the internet works,” Emma said, though she ruffled Finn’s hair, too, so it wasn’t like she was calling him stupid.

  Natalie flashed him an indulgent smile and hit Enter again. Then she leaned closer to the screen.

  “Wait,” she said. “Why did some of the matches disappear?”

  Chess saw that now only half the screen was filled with rows of matched images.

  Natalie hit Enter a third time.

  Now the bottom row of matches disappeared. It had only contained two pictures, but when Natalie hit Enter yet again, half of the second-to-last row vanished as well.

  “The images of your mom—they’re being erased!” Natalie gasped. “Someone’s deleting them right now!”

  Twenty-Two

  Finn

  “Then save them!” Finn yelped. He yanked on Natalie’s arm as hard as he could, so she would listen. “Save the pictures of Mom while you still can!”

  Natalie glanced dazedly down at him, then her gaze sharpened.

  “He’s right,” she muttered. “Finn’s totally right. We should save copies of those images to check . . .”

  She jerked away from him to reach for the computer again. But that threw Finn off balance. He stumbled to the side, waving his arms wildly. His right elbow hit something solid. At least he thought it was solid. Then he heard a ripping sound.

  Finn looked down to see that he’d put his elbow through one of the VOTE SUSANNA MORALES signs.

  “Oops,” Finn whispered.

  “Don’t worry about it, Finn,” Natalie said. She grinned a little wickedly. “I’ve wanted to vandalize those signs ever since we walked in here.”

  “But you’ll get in trouble when the Judge comes back, and—”

  “Just hide it behind the others,” Emma suggested.

  Finn looked back at the punctured sign.

  “No, wait, it’s like there are two layers,” he said, tugging on the torn canvas. “I only broke one layer, so . . .” He made the hole in the sign even bigger. “Yes! It’s still the word ‘VOTE’ right below where I stabbed it, so I can pull away the top layer and . . .”

  Recklessly, he yanked harder. The entire top layer of the sign fell away, revealing a second layer that was just as glossy and gleaming as the first. And it held another familiar smiling face.

  But this was a giant photo of Natalie’s dad, not her mom.

  Finn took a step back so he could read all the words under the picture: VOTE FOR ROGER MAYHEW. Confused, he swiveled his head back toward the older kids.

  “Natalie, are both your parents judges here?” he asked. “In charge of everything?”

  “I . . .” She stumbled toward Finn and clutched his shoulder as if she were comforting him. Or trying to hold herself up. “Is it possible? Maybe if my parents hadn’t gotten divorced . . . If they’d stayed happy together in my world, if they hadn’t spent so much time and energy fighting . . .”

  Emma had replaced Natalie at the laptop and was typing fast.

  “This says Mr. Mayhew is currently mayor of the city,” she reported. “And he’s running for governor.”

  “Governor?” Finn said, gazing up at her in awe. “Natalie, your family’s, like, really important here!”

  “These people aren’t her family, remember?” Emma shoved the laptop back a little too roughly.

  “Other-Natalie’s family, then,” Finn said. “But why is Mr. Mayhew’s sign hidden under Ms. Morales’s?”

  “Can we think about that after we save the pictures of Mom?” Chess asked.

  “Oh!” Natalie rushed back to the computer.

  Finn followed. Emma was already switching away from the information about Mr. Mayhew. Natalie typed in a command. The screen flickered and went blank.

  “I thought we were going back to the pictures of Mom,” Finn complained.

  The other kids huddled close around him. Chess put his arm around Finn’s shoulders. Emma patted his arm. And Natalie dropped her hands from the keyboard.

  “I’m sorry, Finn,” she said. “All the images are gone. Her name, and now her pictures, too. . . . Everything about your mom has vanished from the internet.”

  Twenty-Three

  Emma

  “This is my fault,” Emma said. “I shouldn’t have switched over to looking up Mr. Mayhew.”

  “I shouldn’t have put my elbow through that sign,” Finn said.

  “Stop it!” Natalie told them. “None of you are to blame for the weird stuff in this world. And anyhow, I might be able to see what happened to those images of your mom.”

  “You can?” Emma asked.

  “Just give me a minute,” Natalie said.

  Emma walked over to examine the sign, so she wouldn’t hang over Natalie’s shoulder and distract her.

  “What if there’s a Mayor Mayhew sign behind every single one of the VOTE SUSANNA MORALES signs?” she asked. She moved the mayor sign to the back of the stack, so she could look at the others.

  “Why would there be?” Chess asked, stepping up beside her. “None of this makes sense. I mean, some people might reuse signs to save money or be environmental. But in this house . . .”

  He looked up. For the first time, Emma noticed that there were elaborate wood carvings on the ceiling of the office, just like on the door. Real–Ms. Morales’s office wasn’t like that at all. Emma didn’t know what carved ceilings and doors cost—or, oh, look, carved wooden pillars in every corner of the room, too.

  Judge Morales and Mayor Mayhew aren’t worried about saving money at all, Emma thought.

  “Ugh,” Natalie sighed behind them. “The wayback function isn’t working. But before we lost everything, I did see one web address for your mom’s image, and . . . What?”

  Emma, Chess, and Finn all rushed to Natalie’s side.

  “You’re just looking at stuff about your dad again?” Finn asked. The image on the screen showed a picture on a signpost—but the photo was indeed Mayor Mayhew’s election pose, not anything about the Greystones’ mom.

  “N-No,” Natalie said. “That’s from the day of your mom’s trial. It’s timestamped and everything. Five minutes ago, this timestamped picture showed a signpost from two weeks ago with your mom’s picture on it. We saw that signpost in real life! Not just on the internet!”

  The picture was grainy and barely in color—it seemed to come from a security camera. But Emma recognized the surroundings. It was a scene right beside the Public Hall where her mother’s trial had been held.

  Emma gasped.

  “Who would make it seem like that was a picture of your dad instead of our mom? And why?” she asked. “Why try to make people think they don’t remember things right?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Natalie stammered.

  Emma’s head swam. It was all too strange—Mayor Mayhew’s face hidden under Judge Morales’s in this office; Mom’s image being replaced by Mayor Mayhew’s online. It made her think of when she was a little kid learning how to play rock-paper-scissors; she’d asked again and again, “But which one’s really the strongest? Which one has the most power?”

  Mom doesn’t have any power in this horrible world, Emma thought. She’s trapped. But Judge Morales, Mayor Mayhew . . .

  Just then, there was a loud crash outside the office.

  “I thought you said everyone else in the house was gone!” Emma hissed at Natalie. “And why isn’t this room soundproof, like your mother’s office back home?”

  Emma whirled toward the door and saw the answer to her own question. They’d left the office door hanging wide open, the key with its green ribbon still jammed into the lock.

  “Oh, I’ll shut—” she began, taking a step forward. But before she could go any farther, Chess slammed into her.

  “Get down!” he whispered, his long arms pulling Finn and Natalie, too. “Everybody has to hide!”

  Twenty-Four

  Chess

  Protect the others, thrummed in Chess’s brain. Protect the others. Whatever else ha
ppens, I have to protect the others. . . .

  He really wasn’t sure Emma, Finn, or Natalie had any instincts for self-preservation. Emma had even been ready to walk to the door, where anybody standing outside the office might have seen her.

  Am I the only one who remembers how scary this world is? he wondered.

  He realized he wasn’t just thinking about their last trip to this world, when they’d failed to rescue their mother and ended up barely escaping from the cops. Something about being back here again was jarring loose older memories, older thought patterns.

  When I was a little boy and we lived in this world, he thought. When Daddy was still alive. Back then . . . Mommy and Daddy were scared all the time.

  He saw that now, though he hadn’t understood as a three- or four-year-old.

  Why was that coming back now, as he crouched behind the desk in the Judge’s office with Natalie, Emma, and Finn?

  Was there any chance he’d been in this house as a little boy?

  He caught only flashes of old memories and old feelings, too brief and mysterious to interpret. They were like insects that landed for only an instant, then flew away. And the more he tried to chase them, the faster they left.

  It dawned on him that Emma was squirming away from him.

  “Chess, this isn’t a good place to hide,” she whispered. “Not with that door open, not if that sound was Judge Morales coming back . . .”

  “I’ll shut the door,” Natalie whispered. She squared her shoulders, her back pressed hard against the Judge’s desk drawers. “It has to be me. I live here.”

  She flashed the three Greystones a crooked smile, and Chess saw that she was saying that like an actress preparing for a role, psyching herself up.

  “What if that sound was Other-Natalie coming back?” Finn asked. “What if she got sick at school today and had to come home and then she sees you and . . .”

  “Well, then, I’ll . . . overpower her,” Natalie said grimly, her voice filled with even more bravado. Even more falseness. “I’ll have the element of surprise on my side. I’ll overpower her and lock her in her own closet and . . .”

  Chess put his hand on Natalie’s arm.

  “Just wait,” he begged. “Wait and listen, and let’s see what you might have to deal with. . . .”

  He broke off, because now he could hear voices outside the office, probably coming from the kitchen or dining room. They were indistinct at first, then got closer and louder.

  “—I’ll start scrubbing the bathrooms, if you do the vacuuming upstairs . . .”

  “Cleaners,” Natalie said, slumping in a way that let Chess see that she’d been as terrified as him. Maybe even more so. “This is easy, then. I’ll send them away. I’ll say I’m contagious.”

  She jutted her chin into the air, shoved her hair back, and shook Chess’s hand off her arm. Then she stood up and seemed to change her mind about the hair, running her hand through it backward to mess it up. She pinched her cheeks until they turned red.

  “Have to look sick,” she muttered.

  “Be careful,” Chess whispered, though he was pretty sure Natalie didn’t hear him.

  She’d barely stepped away from the desk when Chess heard a woman’s voice exclaim from the doorway, “Oh! Miss Natalie!”

  Chess clutched Finn and Emma and pulled them closer, drawing them into the recessed portion under the desk. Now all he could see of Natalie were her sneakers and her jeans from the knees down.

  “Yeah . . . hi.” Natalie’s voice was barely a croak. “I’m really sick.” She swayed convincingly. “That’s why I’m home from school. Believe me, you don’t want to catch what I’ve got. So you should go. Mom will reschedule after I’m better—who knows how long it’ll take?”

  “Oh, yes, Miss Natalie, your mother already called and told us you would be here.” The cleaner somehow managed to sound both subservient and scolding, all at once. “She said you would stay in your room, away from us. And she said very definitely that we should still clean the rest of the house, because your parents are having five hundred people at their fund-raiser here tonight. Are you so sick that you forgot?”

  Emma turned an anguished face toward Chess; Finn waggled his eyebrows and mouthed the words “Five hundred people?” in disbelief.

  Chess’s heart sank.

  “Oh . . . yeah,” Natalie said weakly. “You know my parents have fund-raisers all the time. I can’t keep them straight.” Chess saw Natalie shuffle her feet. Then she planted them more firmly, and Chess could tell she’d probably straightened her spine and done her chin-jutting move again, too, because she sounded more imposing when she spoke again. “Well, I’ll hide out in here, not my room, because it makes me feel better to sleep on my mom’s office couch when I’m sick. So don’t clean this room or mine, okay? Thanks.”

  “You know we never step foot in your mother’s office, Miss Natalie,” the cleaner said. “It’s forbidden. I’ve never even seen this door open before.”

  There was curiosity in the woman’s voice, as if she wanted to come in and look around.

  “Oh, right,” Natalie said. “Sometime when I haven’t filled the place with germs, you should ask Mom for a tour.”

  “You know that wouldn’t be allowed,” the cleaner said stiffly. “I hope you feel better soon, Miss Natalie.”

  The way she spoke those words, Chess thought she might have even bowed in reverence to Natalie and her family. Chess heard footsteps receding. Natalie dashed out of sight, and a moment later he heard the office door slam. Then Natalie was back, crouching by the desk to peer at the three Greystones hiding under it.

  “There’s, like, an army of cleaners here,” Natalie reported. “But I locked the door and remembered to take the key out this time, so we’re safe here until they’re gone. We should probably be quiet in case there’s not soundproofing . . . or, no, I could always say I’m watching something online. . . .”

  “What if those cleaners are here for hours?” Emma wailed. “We should climb out the window.”

  “And go where?” Chess asked quietly.

  “To—to—” Emma began.

  Chess glanced reflexively toward the window. Strangely, even though the sun should be fully up by now, the light outside was still dim and hazy. So it took him a minute to make sense of the huddled shapes along the long rows of hedges and flowers on the other side of the window. By then, Natalie was already running toward the window. She grabbed the blind and yanked it down, shutting off any view the kids could have of the outdoors.

  Or any view anyone outdoors could have of the kids.

  “Wh-Why’d you do that?” Finn stammered, his faced twisted in puzzlement.

  “There’s like, an army of workers outside, too,” Natalie hissed.

  “Landscapers, gardeners . . . ,” Emma added, as if it might help somehow to categorize everyone.

  “But . . . ,” Finn began.

  “Finn, don’t you see?” Chess asked, his voice ragged and frantic. “We can’t let any workers know we’re here—indoors or out. We’re trapped!”

  Twenty-Five

  Finn

  “I still don’t understand,” Finn persisted. “Natalie can pretend to be Other-Natalie. We can pretend to be, I don’t know, friends who brought her homework when we heard she was sick? I mean, we really are friends, so that doesn’t take much pretending. Or, hey, Natalie can say she got better, like, really fast, so she invited us over to play, and . . .”

  None of the others jumped up and said, Oh, you’re right, Finn—those are great ideas!

  “Finn,” Chess said gently. “There’s too much we don’t understand. We can’t start telling lies like that until we know what will and won’t sound true. It’s more dangerous for us Greystones than it is for Natalie. We can’t risk being seen until we have to. Until we know where to find Mom and Ms. Morales and Joe.”

  “But Mom and the real Ms. Morales and Joe aren’t here,” Finn protested. “So we know we’ll have to go somewhere else.
. . .”

  Finn saw Chess bite his lip. And his voice had come out really, really shaky. Natalie twisted a strand of hair around her finger again and again. Even Emma—Emma who was always so brave—did nothing but hug her laptop. She stayed huddled under the desk.

  “Oh,” Finn said. “Are you guys all scared again? A lot more scared than me?”

  There’d been a time or two on their last trip to this world when the big kids had been afraid and frozen and Finn had been fearless. The first time, Finn had forced everyone else to be brave, too. But the second . . .

  “It’s not like we just want to hide here doing nothing,” Emma said softly. “Natalie can do more computer research. So can Chess. And I can take another crack at Mom’s code.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Finn asked. No matter how much he tried to hold on to the idea I’m fearless! I can help the others! his voice came out sounding like he was just a whiny little kid.

  “Maybe you look around the Judge’s office for clues?” Chess suggested. “After all, she was in charge of Mom’s, uh, trial, and maybe she has papers somewhere about the . . . sentencing and where Mom is now.”

  “Wouldn’t she just have all that on her computer?” Finn asked grumpily.

  “We don’t know how things are done in this world,” Natalie said. “Why don’t I try to get past the security passwords on that laptop”—she pointed to the one on the otherwise empty desk—“and you look for paper files.”

  “And, Finn, we’re not staying here forever,” Emma assured him. “I bet the workers will take a lunch break, and we can sneak out then. If we do enough research first, we’ll know where to go. And how to get Mom back. And Ms. Morales and Joe, too.”

  Finn saw Natalie glance toward a fancy clock on the wall. Finn wasn’t as good at reading clocks with hands as ones with glowing numbers, but he was pretty sure it was barely nine o’clock.

  “Guys, I’m not sure we have until lunchtime,” Natalie said nervously. “Remember, the Judge was going to call the school and complain about them supposedly letting me leave with another kid’s mom, and the school’s going to say, ‘What are you talking about? Your daughter’s right here in history class.’ . . .”