Edison’s Alley (24 page)

Nick knew Petula would barge in and make herself at home if given the chance, so he stood in the doorway, barring entry. “What’s up?” he asked.

“The harp,” she said. “I know where it is.”

That statement piqued Nick’s interest enough to allow her in the front door, at least as far as the foyer. “So the Accelerati don’t have it after all?”

“No, they do,” said Petula, “but I found out where they’re keeping it.”

And although this was great news, Nick had to wonder, “How did you find out?”

“Never mind how,” Petula said. “That’s not important.”

“If none of the rest of us have been able to find it, how did you?”

Petula released something between a grunt and a sigh. “Okay, fine. I was at the mall and this lady in a pastel-blue pants suit got hit by a semi.”

“She got hit by a semi? At the mall?”

“In front of the mall!”

“Which mall?”

“It doesn’t matter! What matters is what came flying off her shattered body.” And Petula held out a pin—a tiny gold
A
with an infinity crossbar—the pin that
every Accelerati wore. “When I realized she was one of
them
, I followed her.”

“How could you follow her if she was killed by a truck?”

“Not her! I mean her dog! She had a dog that didn’t get hit by the truck. I followed the dog.”

“What kind of dog?” asked Danny, who had joined them in the foyer.

“The kind of dog that knows how to return home after their master gets run over by a truck, okay?” Petula said with increasing frustration.

“Go on,” said Nick. “What happened next?”

“It led me right to the Accelerati’s lair.”

Nick took a long look at Petula. There was something about her that seemed both sincere and devious at the same time. He didn’t know what to make of it.

“Why should I believe any of this?” he asked.

Petula reached over to shake him, but stopped, apparently realizing she had already gotten that over with. With her hands limp by her sides, she said, “Look, I know I’ve never given
you a reason to trust me. But this time you have to. I do know where the Accelerati are hiding the harp, and we can get it back. If you don’t believe anything else, believe that.”

And in that moment, Nick found the scale tipping in Petula’s favor. He pulled out his phone. “I’m calling the others.”

He was dialing as his father emerged from the kitchen. “Did you say someone got hit by a truck?”

It was the first time that the five of them had been together since their summit meeting in Nick’s attic. Now they stood in the garage, where it all began, and Nick
looked at each of them in turn. Vince, Mitch, Petula, and, of course, Caitlin. Now he just had to sell them on the mission and convince them they could succeed. It would be hard, because he
wasn’t entirely convinced himself, but now that he knew the harp was within his reach, the risk didn’t seem to matter.

“We can’t just walk into the Accelerati’s headquarters and take the harp,” Caitlin said.

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Nick said. “They won’t be expecting it—we’ll have the element of surprise on our side.”

“Bring it on,” Mitch said, more emboldened than Nick had ever seen him.

“There’s only five of us and a gazillion of them,” Caitlin pointed out.

“I don’t think there’s all that many,” said Petula. “Especially not on a weekend.”

“What,” said Caitlin, “are they all home watching sports?”

“Maybe,” said Petula. “I mean, they must have normal lives when they’re not being Accelerati.”

Each of them had their defensive item with them. Vince brought the narc-in-the-box, Mitch the windstorm bellows, and Petula had gone home to get the clarinet. Nick took the frost fan down from
the attic, and Caitlin brought the force-field sifter, which would theoretically make them impervious to attack. They had jury-rigged the devices with carabiner clips so they could hang from their
belts, freeing up their hands. Nick couldn’t help but think they looked like a pathetic pack of superhero wannabes.

Through all of this Vince had been silent. This was nothing unusual—he was a kid of few words. So the words that came out of his mouth now caught them all by surprise.

“Give me one reason why I would walk into the Accelerati’s hideout and bring them my battery,” Vince said. “I might as well just unplug myself now.”

No one said anything for a moment. This was the first time Vince had drawn a line in the sand. Today was supposed to be a day for solidarity, but Nick found himself wanting to rip Vince’s
dark glasses off of his face so he could look Vince in the eyes. Then he remembered that the glasses were connected to the battery, so he couldn’t do it.

“Whose side are you on, Vince?”

“I’ve never been on any side,” he told Nick. “I just bought something in your stupid garage sale and got sucked into something I never wanted to be a part of.”

Caitlin stepped forward. “None of us wanted to be a part of this, Vince, but here we are.”

“Here
you
are.”

“Should I smack him?” Petula asked.

“I don’t think it will make a difference,” Mitch said. “But smack him anyway.”

Nick put up his hand to stop Petula.

“Vince,” Nick reasoned, “this is a chance for you to do something that matters.”

Vince shook his head. “None of this matters,” he said. “I know for a fact that you’ll never finish that machine!”

Nick remained calm. “Because finishing it means you’d have to die? Maybe for good?”

There. The truth was out in the open. He waited to see how Vince would react. Vince just shook his head, and Nick had the strange feeling that Vince knew something he didn’t.

“You’ll never even get that far,” Vince said. “Trust me—even without my battery, you’re screwed.”

It was hard to read Vince’s emotions through those dark glasses. Impossible to see where his eyes were focused. The standoff continued for a few more seconds, then Vince handed Nick the
narc-in-the-box.

“I’m not going,” he said. “I may be dead, but I’m not suicidal.” And he left. Just like that.

“We don’t need him,” Mitch said.

Oddly, it was Petula who was the most perturbed by Vince’s vanishing act. “But…but he
has
to be there!” she said.

Nick hooked the narc-in-the-box onto his belt. “Forget him. We’ll do this without him.”

F
ive minutes later, a pickup truck pulled into the driveway. Petula put aside her worries about Vince’s unexpected departure and took
everyone over to meet the driver: her cousin Harley. She engaged in a very short negotiation with him, as he would do anyone’s evil, or non-evil, bidding for a price.

Once the bargain was struck, Harley drove them in the back of his pickup, beneath unsettlingly troubled skies, to a rundown bowling alley in a questionable part of town.

“Atomic Lanes?” said Caitlin. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“This is where the dog went,” Petula told them as she hopped out. “Let’s go inside.”

Harley, who had no interest in their mission except that it had earned him twenty-five bucks plus lunch, was content to wait in the parking lot, blasting death metal—an appropriate sound
track for their assault on the Accelerati.

As it was Sunday, the alley was hopping with die-hard bowlers, families, and birthday parties.

“Get shoes, pick a ball, and pretend like you’re here to bowl,” Petula told them.

“You’re joking, right?” said Caitlin.

“We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves,” Petula whispered.

“Uh—we’ve got a fan, a bellows, a flour sifter, a clarinet, and a jack-in-the-box clipped to our belts,” Nick pointed out. “How could we
not
draw attention
to ourselves?”

Petula ignored him, went to the counter, and requested lane five, even though it was already taken. “We’ll wait—it’s my lucky lane,” she said, batting her eyelashes
at the disinterested clerk.

“Lane five is a secret entrance,” Petula said softly to the others while they watched the other bowlers finish their game. “You have to knock down a certain combination of pins
to get in.”

“And you got all this from a dog?” Caitlin asked.

Petula huffed. “The dog led me to the bowling alley, and inside a guy in a pastel suit was bowling here on lane five. I stayed long enough to see two different Accelerati bowl the exact
same pattern and then disappear.”

“Disappear how?” asked Nick.

Just then, the bowlers ahead of them left. Petula put up her hand. “I’ve had it with these questions!” Instead of choosing a ball, she marched down the lane toward the
pins.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to do that,” called Mitch—but of course that had never stopped her before.

Petula bent over the pins and started knocking them down by hand, leaving a seven-ten split. Then she called back, “Hit reset!”

Nick hit the button. Petula scooted back as the pin-setter jaw came down, nearly chomping her. Once the new pins were set, she knocked down all but three and ordered another reset. Nick
exchanged a glance with Caitlin, and pressed the button again.

Petula knocked down the second and third row of pins and, after the next reset, kicked them all over.

As soon as the last pin fell, to Nick’s amazement, the far end of the lane began to sink, becoming a ramp into some dark, unknown place.

“Whoa,” said Nick.

“Good going, Petula!” Mitch called.

“I don’t believe it,” said Caitlin. “No, seriously, I don’t. How could she have known all this?”

“Because,” said Mitch, standing up, “she’s smarter than any of you give her credit for.”

Nick raised his eyebrows. “I guess so.”

None of the other bowlers seemed to notice the lane turning into an access ramp, or the kids walking down it. By now Nick knew the Accelerati well enough not to question it. It didn’t
surprise him that the secret society had a way of disappearing right before everyone’s eyes.

Smoke and mirrors,
he thought,
practically applied
. That was what Jorgenson had said to him on the day Danny caught the first meteorite.

Well, now it was time for Nick to apply some of his own sleight of hand and make the harp disappear. That is, if they could find it.

It was no secret that Caitlin and Petula did not like each other. For Caitlin it had nothing to do with the fact that Petula had a stalkerlike crush on Nick. It had to do with
things like the voodoo doll Petula had made of Caitlin in third grade (which hadn’t worked) and the stink-bomb shampoo she had given Caitlin in fourth grade (which had).

Caitlin had been nursing a what’s-wrong-with-this-picture kind of feeling since the moment she arrived at Nick’s house—but these days that was nothing new. Lately, the more
appropriate question would be “What’s
not
wrong with this picture?” Still, Caitlin had to admit that Petula had promised to get them into the Accelerati lair, and she
did—so maybe Caitlin had misjudged her.

As for Mitch, he was proud that his girlfriend had, for once, done something helpful. And Nick? Well, his mind was already leaping ahead toward the harp.

The four of them went down the ramp to a dim hallway beneath the pin setter. About a dozen yards in, they came to an elaborately sculpted bronze double door.

“Rodin’s
Gates of Hell
,” said Caitlin, who knew her art. “But a different version. Interesting.”

The bronze doors opened into what appeared to be a broom closet, but the room seemed to expand like an accordion with every step they took until they were in an absurdly grand, cathedral-like
space, with windows that looked out over the snowcapped Himalayas—a nearly perfect three-dimensional projection.

Petula was right about something else, too: the place wasn’t teaming with Accelerati. It was practically deserted.

But practically isn’t completely. At the far end of the hall, two men in pastel suits were in the midst of a heated debate about time dilation. As soon as they saw the kids, they strode
purposefully toward them.

“I got this,” said Nick. He pulled the narc-in-the-box from his belt and started turning the crank. Mercifully, it did not play “Pop Goes the Weasel.” But it did require
several full turns for it to generate a sleep-inducing charge.

“Who let you in here?” asked one of the approaching men.

“Look away,” Nick warned his friends. Then the clown’s head on a spring popped out. The two agents gasped and collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

Nick pushed the puppet back down and latched the box again. “The harp is here. I can feel it.”

“Can you feel us a map?” asked Caitlin. “And maybe some keys to get us through locked doors?”

Beyond the Great Hall there was a marble rotunda with corridors going off in all directions, like the spokes of a wheel. A stately bronze statue of a man holding a lightbulb stood in the center.
Thomas Edison. The statue seemed to be pointing down one hallway. Nick could have taken that as a sign, but he doubted that a statue of Edison, Tesla’s archrival, would give him any
assistance whatsoever.

Then a short, plump man in a pale lavender suit entered the rotunda from one of the other corridors. He stopped short when he saw them. Nick recognized him as a member of the team that had tried
to clear out his attic.