This Isn't What It Looks Like (24 page)

A second later, the monitor turned off altogether. And so did all the lights in the room and in the hallway. Only a sliver
of moonlight, passing through the tree outside Cass’s window, still illuminated the room.

Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji both rushed to Cass’s side. Max-Ernest felt her wrist.

“She still has a pulse! There must have been a power surge or something,” said Max-Ernest quickly. “You go down and see if
you can turn the electricity back on—the fuse box is right outside the kitchen. I’ll call 9-1-1 just in case.”

By the time Max-Ernest picked up the cordless phone Melanie had left for him, Yo-Yoji was out
of the room. His hand shaking, Max-Ernest started to dial the number, then realized he had no dial tone.

That was when he felt the hard, cold object sticking into his back.

“Put that down, old chum. I think I cut all the telephone wires, but I’m not taking any chances.”

Benjamin Blake.

Of course it was Benjamin, Max-Ernest thought. They had discussed turning off the power in the hospital in order to get access
to Cass. How much easier to do it here in Cass’s house!

“Hi, Benjamin,” he said, letting the dead phone drop to the floor. He was surprised that he was able to make himself sound
so calm. “That was a really terrible thing to do, you know. What if Cass had been on a respirator or something?”

“Well, lucky for her, she wasn’t. Now give me the Double Monocle. Or I won’t hesitate to use this.”

“Use what?”

“What do you think I’m holding in my hand, my dear fellow?”

“You don’t have a gun. I may not be able to read your mind, but I know that.”

“How can you be sure? Maybe I got it from our mutual friends at New Promethean.”

“The Midnight Sun don’t have guns. They don’t need them.”

“You really want to risk it, old chum?”

A good question. True, he didn’t remember ever seeing a Midnight Sun member hold a gun, Max-Ernest reflected. But they were
so ruthless, they wouldn’t hesitate to give one to Benjamin if they thought it would further their aims.

“How does the monocle work, anyway?” Max-Ernest asked, stalling. “I couldn’t see into anybody’s mind with it. I saw… something
else.”

“It’s the second lens—it gives you second sight. That means something different for everyone,” said Benjamin impatiently.
“Some people see ghosts, some people see into people’s minds, some people see the future. It depends on who you are and what
you need to know. Except
you
always need to know everything, so I can’t begin to imagine what you saw,” he sneered. “Now give it back to me. It’s mine.”

“Is it yours, really? Where did the Midnight Sun get it? Knowing them, I’ll bet it’s stolen.”

“Not at all! It’s one of their oldest treasures, dating back to Lord Pharaoh himself. And I have been entrusted with it,”
said Benjamin proudly. “I think you know Ms. Mauvais well enough to know we will all regret it if it gets lost.”

While Max-Ernest was considering his options, he caught a glimpse of blue—Yo-Yoji’s guitar flashing in the moonlight—and just
managed to step out of the way as the guitar came crashing down on Benjamin’s head.
^*

He turned to see Benjamin slumped at his feet, unconscious.

A flashlight rolled onto the floor. Clearly, the flashlight, not a gun, had been the object sticking into Max-Ernest’s back.

“Thanks, Yo-Yo—,” Max-Ernest started to say.

But it wasn’t Yo-Yoji standing over Benjamin, holding the guitar. It was—

“Cass?!”

“Cass Is Back!”… “Three Friends Reunited”… “A Month Passes”…? Honestly, I don’t know what to call this chapter.

I
know, you’re a bundle of conflicting emotions right now, aren’t you? Like Max-Ernest at his worst, you have no idea how you
should feel.

On the one hand, you’re relieved that Cass is OK. You know her so well by now. She’s like a friend, and you wouldn’t want
anything bad to happen to her. Nothing truly bad, anyway. Sure, she’s stubborn and willful. She makes mistakes that imperil
herself and her friends. She’s sometimes not very nice to her mom. Her ears are too pointy. But she doesn’t deserve to be
punished so severely. Certainly, she doesn’t deserve to perish on some long mental journey into her ancestral past.

You’re glad, in short, that she is still alive.

On the other hand, you’re absolutely furious with me, your not-so-humble narrator, for putting you through this arduous ordeal.
Go on, admit it. You hate me. Why couldn’t I have told you at the outset that Cass was going to survive? Why couldn’t I have
skipped the coma altogether? Why put you through every blip and beep and zig and zag of her heart monitor? Do I have no heart
myself?

In my defense, I could say that it is my duty to report the truth, whatever it is, wherever I find it. But you know better
than that. You know
me
better than that.

So I will respond by stating the obvious: you could have put the book down.

And yet you kept reading, didn’t you? You have kept reading about Cass and Max-Ernest book after book, if I am not mistaken,
almost as if you enjoyed seeing these two innocent young people put in harm’s way. As if their trials and tribulations existed
purely for your entertainment. As if they had no feelings of their own.

Please, therefore, spare me your criticisms and accusations, your pleas and complaints. At the end of the day, you, dear reader,
are nearly as guilty as I. We’re in this mud pit together. And don’t you ever forget it.

There. I don’t know about you, but I feel much better getting that off my chest. Now can we please get back to the story?

Thank you.

Let us begin this chapter anew by asking the most basic question:

What awakened Cass?

If you’re the sentimental sort, you might be inclined to believe it was Max-Ernest’s long and heartfelt bedside speech that
roused her. All Max-Ernest’s
memories stirred Cass’s own memories and brought her back to the present. Combined with the familiar yet always jarring sounds
of Yo-Yoji’s guitar, they were too powerful an antidote to resist. That’s probably what Cass’s grandfathers or even Pietro
would say.

Personally, I think it more likely that the power surge Benjamin created was responsible and that an electrical charge jolted
Cass awake. Just think of Frankenstein’s monster or a frog on a dissection table.

Of course, it’s also possible that she would have awakened on her own, regardless. As the all-powerful author of this book,
I give you permission to choose whichever explanation you like best. The happy fact remains that Cass was back, returned from
wherever and whenever it was that she had gone.

As for Cass, not only was she unsure what had woken her, she didn’t even remember what had put her to sleep.

After Yo-Yoji returned to her room, he and Max-Ernest filled her in on a few vital details (for example: that she’d been in
a coma for two weeks; that, yes, that was Benjamin Blake lying unconscious at their
feet; and that, no, the lights were not out because of a nuclear attack or even an earthquake but rather because their old
classmate had cut the power). Then Max-Ernest tied Benjamin’s hands together. “This is the Handcuff Knot,” he explained to
his friends. “The Spanish Bowline might also work, but I think it’s better for ankles.”

Meanwhile, Cass lit a couple of her emergency glow sticks, adjusted her IV to a more comfortable position, and settled back
into bed. “OK,” she said. “You guys have been holding out on me long enough. What happened?”

“What do you mean?” asked Yo-Yoji.

“I mean, what happened to me? What else would I mean? I was in a coma, right? People don’t just fall into comas for no reason.
Was I in a car accident? Did I almost drown? Do I have a rare infectious disease? Is there an alien virus in my brain? Tell
me. I can take it….”

“You mean you don’t remember?” asked Max-Ernest. “For real?”

“Remember what?”

“Eating the chocolate…”

“Señor Hugo’s chocolate? That’s what did this?” asked Cass, completely surprised. “Who gave it to me?”

“You did,” said Max-Ernest, confused. How could she not remember?

“Why would I do that? It nearly killed me and Yo-Yoji the first time! Right, Yo-Yoji?”

Yo-Yoji nodded, grimacing. “No doubt. It was insane. Fun. But insane.”

“So, then, all that time, you were just… unconscious… you weren’t… traveling back in time?” asked Max-Ernest slowly.

“Was I supposed to be?”

They didn’t have a chance to discuss the issue further because Cass’s mother had gotten home. She and Cass’s grandfathers
could be heard downstairs at that very moment worrying about the lack of electricity.

“Max-Ernest, are you up there? Is Cass OK?”

“Quick, you guys, untie Benjamin. Just pretend he came to visit with Yo-Yoji,” whispered Cass. “It’s going to be hard enough
to explain why the lights are out.”

“Actually, it might make it easier. We could tell her there was a break-in and the burglars tied him up,” said Max-Ernest.
“How ’bout that?”

Cass shook her head. “No, then she would call the police. Too complicated.”

“Wake up, dude—this is your lucky day,” said
Yo-Yoji, tugging on Benjamin’s ear while Max-Ernest bent down to untie the knots he’d made only minutes earlier.

Was it really possible the chocolate didn’t work? Max-Ernest wondered. As happy and relieved as he was about Cass’s recovery,
happier and more relieved than he’d ever been about anything before, he couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.

And more than a little worried about what this meant for the future of the Secret.

1. Cass and the Secret

Cass’s first flash of memory came late that night, when she slipped under the covers of the hospital bed. (Her mother refused
to let her sleep in her own bed until she’d been evaluated by a doctor.) Caught between the sheets was an odd gold monocle
with two lenses. Cass didn’t know where it came from (later, of course, she would learn the story from Max-Ernest), but she
knew that she’d seen it before. And when she looked through it, the sensation was familiar—so familiar that it didn’t even
surprise her when she noticed the monocle gave her X-ray vision. She held on to the monocle and studied it for the better
part of an hour, but she couldn’t remember
whether she’d seen it five hundred years earlier or merely five
weeks
earlier.

She didn’t need a monocle. She needed a crystal ball.

Still, she clutched it like a baby clutching a blankie. It was, she hoped, her key to unlocking the secrets of the past, and
to learning the Secret that it was her mission to guard in the future.

When she woke up in the morning, she remembered a bit of more of her journey, but only the way you remember a dream: in little
fragments that make no sense when you try to put them together.

“There was a bright light, a ghost, a flying sword, a Renaissance Faire… or was that last year’s field trip? It’s all so confusing!”
she told Max-Ernest on the phone.

As for the big questions, she couldn’t even remember whether she’d found the Jester, let alone whether she’d learned the Secret.

At this point, dear Reader, you know more about her life than she did.

Over the next few weeks, her mother celebrated Cass’s miraculous recovery, squeezing Cass every
other minute and rarely letting her out of her sight (which was annoying but at the same time kind of nice), and Cass’s doctors
kept calling her in for checkups and exams, desperately trying to explain what happened to her (which was funny but mostly
aggravating). Cass, meanwhile, grew increasingly despondent—and increasingly certain that her epic journey had never taken
place. She’d merely experienced a few chocolate-induced hallucinations and caused everyone a lot of anguish for nothing.

The worst was when Pietro visited, posing as a hospital social worker who wanted to help Cass “reintegrate into the society
of the outside world.” (A funny role for a hermit like Pietro to choose; Cass couldn’t think of anyone less integrated into
society.) Cass was pleased to see him, of course, and couldn’t help welling up when he told her how proud he was of her for
having embarked on such a perilous expedition, but the words that followed were hardly reassuring.

“Please try and remember as much as you can,
cara
,” he said. “I do not want to put any more of the pressure on you, but I am afraid if too much of the time passes, you will
never remember this thing that you alone can know. That you alone
must
know.”

“Can you help? Like hypnotize me or something?”

Pietro shook his head. “I’m sorry, I cannot. Nobody can. It is too dangerous. The temptation to learn the Secret for myself,
it would be too great.”

Cass sank further into despair. What kind of Secret Keeper was she? She didn’t even know if she knew the Secret.

2. Max-Ernest and PC

Once Cass was safely returned to the present, Max-Ernest, naturally, was very curious to hear about her trip to the past—if
indeed it was a trip she had made. Unfortunately, as much as he would have liked to spend all his time devising games and
tests to jog Cass’s memory, Pietro had given him strict instructions
not
to do precisely that.