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“No.”
“Did you reign after 1500?”
“No.”
Theo watched the conversation like a tennis match.
“Are you Ahuitzotl?”
“No.” I smiled. This kid knew his history.
“Tizoc?”
“No.”
“Axayacatl?”
“No.”
“Moctezuma I?”
“Nope.”
“Itzcoatl?”
“No.”
“Chimalpopoca?”
“No.”
“Huitzilihuitl?”
“What the hell are you saying?” Theo cried.
He’d cut off a chunk of the Aztec emperors and whittled them down until there was only one remaining. But now he had three questions left—two he didn’t need.
Why hadn’t he cut it down again? Surely he could have shortened his options and not guessed his way through all the emperors. Was this some kind of test? Or was . . . was he showing off?
“You’re Acamapichtli.”
There was a fanatical gleam in his eye, another smile playing on his lips. Both were gone as soon as I said, “Almost twenty. Not quite, but I almost had you.”
“I’m never playing this game again,” said Theo, sighing and returning to her homework.
The little boy from the lobster tank disappeared from Miles’s face.
Why did he invite me?
Most likely
I wish you could say more than yes or no.
Chapter Fourteen
Charlie planted herself in my bedroom doorway with her hands on her hips, the head of a black bishop clenched between her teeth. “Can I come with you?”
“This isn’t an eight-year-old sort of party.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means no.” I ducked back into my shallow closet in search of something different to wear. Old jeans littered the floor and shirts hung lopsided from hangers. A ratty pair of ginger cat-shaped house slippers curled up underneath a fraying sweatshirt. The slippers purred when my foot brushed against them.
“Why not?” Charlie stamped her foot. Her cheeks were round and red. With her expression and her tiny frame, she looked closer to four than eight.
“Why are you being so whiny tonight? Usually you give up after a while.”
She wouldn’t look at me.
“Are you crying?”
“No!” She sucked in snot.
“It’s not like I’m leaving permanently. I’ll be back later.” I finally decided it would be easier not to change at all and yanked the Lacedaemon Spartans XXL sweatshirt away from the (hissing) cat slippers to pull it on.
My mother called from the living room. “Alex! Your friends are here!”
It might have been the first time she ever said those words in that order in her life. I picked Charlie up under her armpits and carried her down the hallway, setting her on the carpet in the living room. The triplets waited at the end of the driveway in Theo’s Camry.
“Are you sure you don’t have to take anything?” asked my mother.
“I’ll be fine, Mom,” I said. “But I’ve been dying for some Yoo-hoos lately.” Had to get the requests in while she was still on this normality high. “See you later. If Dad calls, tell him he’s got horrible timing.”
“I wanna go!” Charlie tugged on my pant leg.
“You can’t—it’s a big-girl party,” I said.
“I’m not four!” Charlie screeched, the black bishop dancing on her lip.
“No,” I said, “you’re eight. And you need to stop chewing on those things—you’re going to choke.”
My mother’s eyebrows creased in worry right before I ducked out the door. Maybe she cared more about what happened at this party than she let on.
Being in a car with Theo and her brothers was like shutting myself in a bank vault with eighty pounds of TNT and a lit fuse. Theo let me sit in the front seat, but even then it felt like Evan and Ian were too close. The three of them sang earsplitting drinking songs the whole way and only stopped when Theo turned into Downing Heights.
Downing Heights was the richest neighborhood in town. All the houses here were huge and immaculate and eggshell white, but it didn’t take long to figure out which one was Celia’s. Cars lined up on both sides of the road nearly ten houses in either direction. Theo parked, and we walked to the two-story McMansion at the center of all the chaos.
A bad feeling roiled in my stomach. I’d never been to this neighborhood before, and eyes watched me from the dark spaces in the landscaping. I balled my fists in the hem of my sweatshirt.
Music beat a steady rhythm from a huge stereo on the back porch; the bonfire crackled a short distance away. Inside the house, lights flashed, and people came and went through all sorts of doors and windows like flies on a hot day.
“Keep calm,” Evan said, grinning, as he led the way into the house.
“Don’t go upstairs,” said Theo.
“And don’t. Ingest. Anything,” Ian finished. And then the triplets were gone. Sucked into the crowd beyond the door. Unfamiliar bodies pressed in on me from every side.
My perimeter check wouldn’t do any good in here. I could hardly see five feet in front of me. Checking each person for a weapon would be more than impossible. I had my camera, tucked in my sweatshirt pocket, but that wouldn’t do me any good. I’d never remember what I’d seen and what I hadn’t.
I slipped my way through the sweaty bodies and loud voices, looking for a familiar face. I thought I saw Tucker and headed toward him, but when I made it across the room, he’d vanished.
As I edged around the elaborate, china-cabinet-flanked dining room, I wondered where Celia’s parents were and if they knew exactly how many cans of beer were stacked on their polished mahogany dining table. (Answer: seventy-six.)
The curving staircase was around the corner from the dining room; the upstairs seemed a lot quieter and less alcohol-filled than the downstairs. I knew what Theo had said, but unless someone was going to ambush me, I didn’t see any reason not to go up.
At the top of the staircase was a gloriously quiet hallway lined on either side with doors. Most of them were closed. Probably bedrooms. About halfway down was a narrow table covered with framed pictures. I could see Celia in them, Celia smiling, but before I could get near them, a girl’s voice floated out of a bedroom up ahead.
“Stop squirming! Shut up and sit still . . . I thought you were going to do what I said.”
I tiptoed closer to the cracked-open door until I had a view of the room’s occupants. There was a bed. And on the bed was a half-naked Ria Wolf on top of a half-naked guy who was definitely not Cliff Ackerley. Ria, her back to me, sat up and flipped her hair over her shoulder.
