The 39 Clues Invasion (2 page)

His phone blared out the chorus of Jonah Wizard’s latest hit, “Gangstas Have Feelings, Too.” Dan reached into his pocket, dug past the sticky Twizzler wrappers, and pulled it out. It was Atticus calling again.

“Ninja Assassins Incorporated, Dan Cahill speaking. Who would you like offed today?”

“Hey, Dan,” Atticus answered glumly. Some days Atticus was just as bad as the walking history textbook who claimed to be Dan’s sister, spouting fact after boring fact. But more often lately he was shut down and barely said a word. It almost made Dan long for one of Atticus’s classic “in actuality” rants about Julius Caesar or some other long-dead dude.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m okay. Do you want to come over tomorrow night? My parents are out of town, so I can watch as much History Channel as I want.”

“Dude, if I wanted to be bored, I’d steal Amy’s diary again,” Dan protested.

“They’re showing a special on military vehicles so large that they fell apart under their own weight,” Atticus offered. “And Jake said we could order pizza.”

“I’m in. I’ll get Nellie to drive me.” It’d been a few weeks since he’d seen Atticus, who lived forty miles away in Cambridge. And although he considered the History Channel a form of cruel and unusual punishment, he was excited to see his friend.

It was starting to get dark as Dan said good-bye to Atticus, opened the gate, and started up the hill to Grace’s mansion. He still thought of it that way, even though the house his grandmother had lived in had burned down and then been rebuilt over the last year.

A movement in the woods caught his eye, and he felt his whole body clench. Was it
them
? He peered into the dusk, and a field mouse bolted across the driveway. He sighed and tried to pull himself together.

Dan walked more quickly, eyes roving over every shadow. He expected a Vesper to be waiting behind each tree, staring out with murderous eyes. Dan shivered. This was the one thing worse than being bored.

The leaves on the ground rustled in the wind, causing Dan to glance back and forth anxiously.

He broke into a trot, afraid to look behind even as he heard a car on the road. Dan wished he could dismiss his concern as paranoia, but these weren’t made-up monsters or exaggerated fears. The Vespers were very real, and completely merciless.

He reached the mansion and sighed with relief as the door locked behind him with a satisfying thud. He knew there almost certainly wasn’t a Vesper hiding in the woods, but once he started thinking about it his imagination just ran wild. And if Dan’s sister was right about the threat, eventually the Vespers would attack. It was only a matter of time.

“I’m telling you, that one’s true,” Atticus insisted. They were finally playing one of his favorite games. The rules were simple: Atticus told Dan three crazy facts about history, and he had to guess which were true and which one was a lie. “They pickled General Pompey’s head and gave it to Julius Caesar.”

“Ugh,” Dan said. “That must have tasted worse than cafeteria food.”

Atticus rolled his eyes. “In actuality, no one ate pickled heads. It was more like a trophy or a warning. Caesar was upset when they gave him the head. He liked Pompey. It’s all here in this Roman history book.” Atticus reached into the pile of books and pulled out a massive volume. Mom complained about the books littering the floor, but Atticus liked having them all laid out there for easy access. Except when he got up at night to go to the bathroom and stubbed his toe on Thucydides’
History of the Peloponnesian War.

As Atticus went for the Roman history book, one of his notebooks fell out of the pile and landed at Dan’s feet. Before Atticus could react, Dan swooped down and picked it up.

“What’s this?” he said, opening it. “ ‘ “
My Voyages with Marco Polo
,” by Atticus Rosenbloom,’ ” Dan read from the first page. “Sounds like a real page-turner.”

“Hey, gimme that back!” Atticus yelled, lunging for the notebook. His masterpiece was nowhere near ready for public consumption. His face flamed at the idea of Dan reading the part where the intrepid eleven-year-old assistant explorer Atticus Rosenbloom saved Marco Polo from falling off the Great Wall of China.

Dan pulled the book back and Atticus fell past him, the two tumbling across the floor and into the pile of books. Through sheer luck Atticus landed on top of Dan with one of Dan’s arms pinned beneath him. Atticus knew he only had a few seconds before Dan recovered — Dan was nearly two years older and way stronger. He pushed down on Dan’s arm and grabbed for his notebook, grinning at his unlikely victory.

But before Atticus had time to crow, Dan started thrashing wildly, his eyes wide with panic. Atticus tried to get off, but he lost his balance and fell back down again on Dan’s left arm. Atticus pushed to get up again, but something sent him reeling backward. It was Dan’s right fist, connecting with Atticus’s nose with a hideous crunch.

“I’m so sorry, dude.” Dan was horrified. He could still feel the throb in his fist where his punch had landed home. When Atticus fell on top of him, he had felt the tightness in his chest from his asthma, and suddenly he’d been hit by a wall of panic. Some sick instinct from the Clue hunt had taken over completely, and Dan had lashed out.

There was blood on the knuckles of his right hand. Atticus was holding his nose and more blood gushed from where Dan’s blow had landed.

“It’s — it’s okay,” Atticus said. “I’m sorry I fell on top of you.”

“No, I’m sorry. I went crazy and . . .” Dan didn’t know how to explain what had happened. Instead he pulled off his shirt and offered it to Atticus, who flinched away, his shoulders slumped.

Dan had done it again. He’d let the hunt for the 39 Clues take another person away from him. Maybe it was better this way. He was too dangerous to allow himself to have friends — in the end they all got hurt.

Atticus seemed smaller, shriveled into himself. The authority he’d had when talking about history had disappeared. He was only ten, and even if he was some kind of super-genius headed to Harvard, right now Dan could only see the little kid.

Even Dan’s bare belly button disapproved of his behavior, a wide O of shock. Dan reached down and grabbed the flesh of his stomach. He might not have six-pack abs, but with a little help he could make his belly button open and close, which was sort of impressive.

“That Dan Cahill is a huge jerkface, huh?” his belly button said in a gravelly voice. It had been many years since Dan had watched
Sesame Street
, but he’d perfected the sister-repellent monster voice, and the skill never really went away. “Someone should really teach him a lesson. Like, bleed all over his shirt. That would show that Cahill bonehead.”

Despite his bleeding nose, Atticus smiled.

“Anyway, forget that guy,” his belly button said. “Just hang out with me. As long as you keep feeding me pizza, I promise not to eat you.”

Dan was relieved when Atticus laughed. His friend had been acting so distant lately. Dan hoped he hadn’t ruined things entirely. Other than Atticus, Dan’s sister, Amy, was the closest thing Dan had to a friend. Which was pathetic, because most of the time Amy was pretty lame.

“I’m sorry, Att,” he said in his own voice. “I just couldn’t breathe, and I freaked out.”

“It’s okay,” Atticus answered, smiling weakly. “At least now I can say I’ve met a talking belly button.”

“You know who would really hate that dude?” Dan grinned, handing his phone to Atticus. “My sister. She’s out on a date with her boyfriend. Maybe he’ll see it and it will save him from having to listen to her for an entire dinner.”

Atticus used Dan’s camera to frame his belly perfectly, cutting out the hands moving it. Atticus wasn’t satisfied with the first attempt, but after a few takes they had a cinematic masterpiece, ready for a red-carpet release. Dan took back the phone, selected Amy’s number, and pressed send. It didn’t go through, so he hit the button again.

Dan’s laugh caught in his chest. His phone had no service.
Signal interrupted
, the notification said. But this was the special phone Mr. McIntyre had ordered for him, with a supercharged receiver and service from every network. It
always
had a strong signal, even when Nellie drove them through the tunnel of the Big Dig or went into the mountains.

“What’s wrong?” Atticus asked as Dan grabbed his friend’s phone from the desk and checked it. No signal there, either.

Dan flicked off the light and stepped to the window. It was dark, but he could make out a car parked at the end of the driveway. He tried to breathe deeply. This was just another false alarm, like the squirrel the other day. The person was probably just visiting someone nearby and needed a parking spot.

He almost believed it, until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. His stomach sank. There were antennas sprouting from the roof of the car. They looked just like the signal jammers he’d seen at one of the Cahill family’s interminable security briefings. Dan’s pulse quickened as the car doors swung open and two dark shapes stepped out. One was slight and moved like a panther, while the other was huge and had biceps the size of Atticus’s waist.

“Someone’s outside,” Dan said, breathing slowly to try to stay calm. “And I think they’re jamming our cell phones.”

Atticus laughed. “Nice one. Next you’ll tell me they’re here to steal the mask from the Peabody. . . .” He shoved Dan out of the way to get a view. They watched together as the two shapes started up the driveway. “Burglars,” Atticus squeaked. “Real burglars. What do we do?”

“We have to get out and call the police.” A part of Dan wanted to try to scare the burglars away, but he knew better. There was nothing they could steal that was worth risking his life over.

The boys sprinted down the stairs and Dan was about to lead them through the back door when he caught a glimpse of movement. He grabbed Atticus and they headed for the kitchen window. Another shape was sneaking across the backyard. The moon was low in the sky, outlining a hulking silhouette. They backed out of the kitchen and tried the landline phone in the living room, but there was only silence on the other end. As they went back up the stairs to Atticus’s bedroom, the high-pitched squeal of a drill echoed from the front hallway.

“Dad installed a super-expensive security system so museums can lend him artifacts. It sounds like they’re trying to get around it,” Atticus whispered, looking up at Dan with wide eyes. “What do we do?”

“We hide. If they’re here for the stuff in your dad’s study, we stay upstairs. As soon as they’re gone, we call the police.”

“But if they steal the Aztec mask from the Peabody Museum . . .” Atticus trailed off, mouth working open and closed but no sound coming out.

“Dude, did you see the size of that guy in the backyard?” Dan answered. “A mask isn’t worth getting killed for.”

“No.” Atticus shook his head, his face pinching up as he tried not to cry. “Dad will get fired. My mom . . . she’s really sick, Dan. She left this weekend to go see expensive specialists in New York. All the normal doctors have no idea what’s wrong. They’ve given up on her. If Dad loses his job, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

Dan froze. This was the secret that Atticus had been keeping. This was why he’d been acting so weird for the last month.

Dan didn’t really remember his parents anymore, but he would never forget the flames the night that they died. The flames, and the people shouting as he and Amy stood outside the burning house and clutched each other in their pajamas. He remembered the cold police station afterward, sitting in that metal chair for what seemed like hours while a woman in a blue uniform filled out the papers that said yes, your parents are really dead.