Instead of returning to his seat, he began to pace.

  “As soon as I opened it, I knew it was something special. The materials, the craftsmanship.” He shook his head, in awe just picturing it. “I’ve seen, handled, bought, sold, dismantled, and repaired just about every kind of enchanted, cursed, or charmed object you can imagine, but never anything like this. This is a diamond of the first water. From the looks of it I figured it was a focuser, but I haven’t gathered enough evidence to prove or disprove the theory. All I know for sure is that it was forged from ancient, extremely rare materials. Custom-made, no doubt, by a very heavy individual. And you can bet your ass there are similarly heavy individuals who’d do just about anything to get their hands on it.” His tone lowered, darkened. “That’s why we moved it. Strangers were showing up, sparks I’ve never seen in Sunder before, sniffing around my shop with no intention of buying anything. I got the idea they were looking for the object, so we stashed it at Goldie’s, where no one goes if they can help it, and booby-trapped the thing.”

  Leopold gaped at him. “You blew me up?”

  “You blew yourself up,” Norm corrected him.

  “And most of the room,” Isabel added.

  “But not the object itself,” said Norm, pointing at Leopold’s chest. “Totally unscathed.”

  “Wait, what about the rest of him?” Isabel was staring curiously at Leopold.

  “What about the rest of me?”

  “Your head’s still attached to your body.”

  “And you’re upset about that?”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you weren’t decapitated.” She turned her attention to Norm. “But shouldn’t he have been more…dead?”

  “The blast wasn’t supposed to be lethal,” Norm said. “You can’t interrogate a dead thief.”

  “But it blew up in his hands, and he still has all his fingers.” She glanced at Leopold’s hands, as if to verify. “Is it possible the object’s some kind of shield?”

  “Seems unlikely, but I can’t rule it out.” Norm scratched his chin. “I’m still betting it’s exactly what it appears to be—a focuser. One we couldn’t get to work.” He looked at Leopold. “But you did.”

  Leopold peered down at his chest, at the torn cotton and dried blood of his shirt. “I don’t think this is the definition of working.”

  “Yeah, but you got it to do something,” Norm insisted. “I analyzed it with every magical device known to sparks—and a few that aren’t. Couldn’t find a seam, sigil, rivet, button, or fingerprint. Or get so much as a shiver out of it, no matter what I did.”

  “But when he touched the thing,” Isabel said, “it just flew out at him, like magic.”

  “Probably was magic,” Leopold pointed out.

  Norm whistled. “Wish I could’ve seen it.”

  “And I wish you’d told me there was a secret passageway under the floor,” Isabel countered, wandering over to the kitchen counter.

  Norm, who’d been clearing the plates, looked slowly from Isabel to Leopold, eyebrows raised. “There was a secret passageway under the floor?”

  “Uh.” Leopold cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

  Norm returned from the sink, shrugging off his Kiss the Cook apron as he dropped into the chair across from him. “So,” he said. “Larry.”

  “He prefers Leopold,” Isabel said over her shoulder.

  Leopold considered proposing to her right then.

  “Leopold. Cool. I dig it.” Norm was nodding at him. Despite his constant motion, Norm had hardly taken his eyes off Leopold since he’d regained consciousness. Now Norm leaned in, staring, intent as an X-ray. “You’re new here. You barely know your way around Sunder Hill, right?”

  Leopold narrowed his eyes. “Right.”

  “But you knew there was a secret passageway under the floor of Goldie’s.”

  Isabel, who’d been clanking around inside the open fridge, stopped to listen.

  Leopold only nodded.

  “So.” Norm leaned in further, voice dropping. “Who told you where to find it?”

  There it was. The beginning of an interrogation.

  Leopold regarded Norm and Isabel carefully. Had these people saved him, healed him—made him an enormous breakfast—only to pry information from him? And what would they do once they had it?

  “No one told me,” he said after a beat.

  Norm sat back in his chair, folding his hands atop the rolling hill of his stomach. Gone was the jovial, carefree surfer; now his eyes gleamed sharply. “I find that kind of hard to believe, little dude.”

  Isabel kicked the fridge shut with a bang. “The object had only been in that room a few days. There were obfuscation spells all over it—”

  “If we’re launching an investigation,” Leopold said, cutting her off, “maybe first we should talk about why you’ve been following me.”

  Norm’s brow wrinkled. He turned to look at Isabel. “You were following him?”

  “I wasn’t!”

  “You were,” Leopold insisted. “First, at the Brite Spot—”

  “Is it a crime to eat dinner?”

  “Then, at my test—”

  “That was purely for entertainment.”

  “And then you show up in the exact room I need to search—”

  She huffed, exasperated. “You barged into my room and blew up my things in order to steal my object—”

  “I can’t steal something that already belongs to me!” Leopold exploded, the sudden boom of his voice bringing the conversation to a halt.

  Isabel stared at him, slightly stunned, but Norm looked delighted.

  “Belongs to you, huh?” said Norm. He glanced at Isabel. “That explains a lot.”

  “He could be lying,” she muttered, now glaring determinedly at the wall.

  Norm considered that. “My wild guess is he isn’t. Also—” He frowned suddenly, confused. “Wait, you were banished, which means you must’ve gotten your memory revised. So why do you remember being tested, and meeting Isabel, and—”

  “It didn’t work, obviously,” Leopold said. “They screwed up.”

  “Figures.” Norm sighed. “Trust our elected officials to do something simple—”

  “Whatever.” Leopold shoved away from the table and rose to his feet. “Thanks for breakfast. I think it’s time for me to go.”

  No one tried to stop him as he walked away, picking through the disarray of Norm’s apartment in search of his duffel bag. “Hey, where the hell is my—”

  “Map?”

  Leopold froze, then spun around. His stomach sank. Norm was holding up his mother’s Thomas Guide, the expression on his face just triumphant enough to piss Leopold off.

  He stalked back into the kitchen. “You went through my things.”

  Norm looked almost offended. “Of course I went through your things.”

  “What gives you the right—”

  “You nearly blew up my niece!”

  “You stole my shit!”

  “You stole my shit—”

  “Choose a new word, guys, this is gross—”

  Leopold tried to swipe the Guide from Norm, who jerked it out of reach. Leopold briefly considered decking the guy.

  Norm made a show of flipping through the Guide, then made an appreciative sound. “This is some high-grade shit, little dude—”

  “What did I say about—”

  “Stuff,” Norm corrected. “This is next-level enchantment for a kid who massively, catastrophically failed his channeler test.” He looked up at Leopold. “I have, like, a billion questions for you, Lunchtray Larry.”

  “Fuck,” Leopold whispered, dropping his head into his hands.

  “1987 edition, right?”

  “Congratulations, you can read. It’s right there on the cover.”

  Norm smiled. “You know what’s not on the cover? The brand of the enchanter.”

  Now Leopold looked up, frowning. “What? Who cares?”

  “I care, little dude. I care a lot. Rare, enchanted objects are my stock in trade. Don’t dis the biz.”

  Norm had risen to cross the room and was rifling through one of the cabinets. When he turned back to face them, his right eye had grown to three times its size, and Leopold recoiled.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “What? This?” Norm gestured to his eye as he strode back to the table. When he sat down, it became obvious that he’d strapped some sort of device to his head. It looked like a cross between a monocle and a fishbowl—which, upon closer inspection, was filled with water and swam with tiny orange guppies.

  The guppies turned to stare at Leopold in concert.

  “I call this an optical expositator,” Norm explained. “It allows me to see beneath the surface layers of magical objects. Shows me something about how they were made, and sometimes, by whom. It didn’t reveal anything about the object on your chest, but it showed me a hell of a lot about this Guide.”

  Despite his better judgment, Leopold sank back into his seat at the table.

  If Norm had information about the Guide—and perhaps, by extension, his mom—Leopold was willing to listen. And then he’d deck the guy and get the hell out of there.

  Norm turned the Guide over in his hands. “This particular work of magical cartography was enchanted with a 1930s-era Barnack Leica Aether focuser. There are maybe three such focusers in existence, most in the hands of collectors. Someone with access to serious gear made this. Someone connected. Someone talented.”

  “I’ve never heard of an enchantable street atlas,” said Isabel, crowding behind Norm to look over his shoulder.

  “Because they’re almost as rare as 1930s-era Barnack Leicas,” said Norm. “There’s only one edition that’s enchantable, and that’s the ’87. A map like this can lead you to a targeted object no matter where it is. Even if it moves from place to place, the directions will adjust accordingly.”

  “And find hidden passages in the floor?” said Isabel.

  “Yep. And if we’d kept the object in the shop”—he looked up at Leopold—“your Guide might’ve found a way to break in there, too.”

  Norm opened the Guide and held it up to his eyepiece, hemming and hawing with little sounds of interest. The fish pointed this way and that, synchronizing with the movements of Norm’s eye as he scanned page after page.

  “Aha, here you are!” he said after a minute, and then he turned the Guide to show Leopold what he was looking at.

  It was a diagram of Norm’s apartment.

  A blue star pulsed at the center of the kitchen. There was no path anymore, and as of now, no further instructions. Norm whistled through his teeth. “This really is primo spell-work, my friend. I’d say it’s about five, six years old, judging from the rate of Aether decay.”

  Five or six years.

  Right around when his mom had died.

  “Now.” Norm turned his enormous eye and its staring fish toward Leopold, then tucked the Guide under his arm. “I’m gonna need you to tell me where you came across this little beauty.”

  Leopold worked his jaw as he studied the curly haired eccentric.

  Norm’s brown bathrobe had little pink flamingoes all over it. His goatee was flecked with bits of egg. Only now did Leopold notice that Norm’s pajama bottoms were decorated with marijuana leaves. His eyes, however, were clear and determined.

  “Norm,” Leopold said calmly. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Yeah, little dude.” Norm was smiling now. “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t trust you.”

  “Neither do I,” Isabel piped in.

  Leopold leaned forward. “I don’t trust either one of you.”

  “Good. We’re all in agreement,” said Isabel, biting into a triangle of toast. “I love it when we’re all in agreement. Makes it easier.”

  “Makes what easier—”

  Leopold gasped as the object on his chest heated once more without warning. He tensed, gritting his teeth through the pain.

  Despite their show of toughness, both Norm and Isabel leapt out of their chairs.

  “You okay?” Isabel said, her fingers alighting on Leopold’s arm. He was grateful for the point of contact, grateful for an excuse to focus all his attention there, where she touched him.

  “I’m fine,” he said, the heat fading, pain subsiding. His hand fell away from his chest. “Just got lightheaded for a second.”

  “You’re sure this thing isn’t going to hurt him?” Isabel asked.

  “I’m sure.” Norm focused his fishbowl eyepiece on Leopold again. “It’s got zero death magic.”

  “It wouldn’t have death magic,” said Leopold, closing his eyes on an exhale. “She wouldn’t have done that to me.”

  “Who?”

  Leopold looked up, surprised by his own foolishness. “No one,” he said.

  Isabel crossed her arms, frowning at Norm. “Okay, maybe we should switch to good cop. Bad cop is getting us nowhere.”

  “Bad cop got us a she,” countered Norm, looking affronted. “Bad cop got him to admit the Guide belonged to him! I’m about to crack this kid—”

  “No, you aren’t,” said Isabel and Leopold at the same time.

  “Fine.” Norm sighed. “You’re up, Iz.”

  But before she could ask him anything, the interrogation was interrupted by a familiar, insistent buzzing noise.

  Leopold straightened, then turned to face the living room. In the silence it became clear that the sound was emanating from his duffel bag, which he could see now atop the cluttered coffee table.

  It was his phone.

  “Hold that thought,” said Leopold, rising from his chair.

  “Bad cop wouldn’t have let him leave the table to take a phone call,” Norm grumbled.

  Fifty-Two

  Leopold plucked the phone from his bag, meaning only to turn it off, but the screen was lit with dozens of all-caps texts and alerts for missed calls, an enormous backlog that had for some reason only just started coming through.

  Most were from Richter. That his dad had tried to reach him was not surprising; Leopold had run away from home and stayed out all night. What shocked him was the sheer volume of texts and voicemails, along with missed calls from both Emmet and, strangely, Emmet’s mom.

  “You’re not planning on skipping out on us, are you?” Norm called from the kitchen. “You try to leave, bad cop will have to chase you down.”

  Leopold almost smiled, then returned his attention to the phone. An argument of car horns drifted through the apartment’s thin glass windows. He ignored Richter’s voicemails—he didn’t feel like being screamed at just then—and scrolled to the beginning of his dad’s texts instead. They started out angry, predictably enough, their time stamps beginning a few minutes after Leopold had flung Richter out of his room and ridden away on his bike.

  10:57AM: I had every right to do what I did. Come downstairs and face me.

  11:10AM: You left???? Get your ass back here NOW

  11:11AM: You’re grounded for the rest of the summer

  11:21AM: Make that the rest of your life if you don’t answer me

  11:29AM: Running away from your problems won’t solve them.

  11:31AM: I knew you were an entitled little shit. I didn’t realize I’d raised a coward.

  Leopold rolled his eyes. He almost swiped away from Richter’s text thread, but the tone of the next message—and the few after that, sent hours later—kept him reading.

  2:46PM: Answer me, Larry. Pick up your phone.

  3:10PM: WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU

  3:45PM: Son, this isn’t funny.

  Son.

  The messages cycled between rage and fear, threats—then, finally, surprisingly, something like vulnerability.

  At 5:45, a flurry of missed calls and increasingly desperate texts.

  5:45PM: ARE YOU CRAZY?? You could have been KILLED

  Someone had called him. Tiny? The police?

  5:48PM: I’m at the tow yard! Where are you????

  Leopold was amazed: His father, normally the world’s most emotionally lazy man, had actually left the house to go looking for him.

  5:55PM: I talked to the tow company, you’re in deep shit with ME but they’ve agreed not to report this to the police

  6:00PM: This is your dad. Larry, please answer, need to know your status

  Your status. Rigid, toxically proud Richter-speak for are you okay?

  He’d been operating under the assumption that his dad wouldn’t really care that he was gone. That some part of Richter was glad to be rid of him.

  Shockingly, he’d been wrong.

  Then again, maybe his father’s concern stemmed partly from the fact that Leopold was under eighteen and legally still his responsibility. Either way, he’d gone to the trouble of tracking him to the tow yard, asking after him, even paying off Tiny, who had surely demanded some exorbitant bribe to let the matter drop. He tried to picture self-important Richter throwing his weight around in that scruffy office with socket-wrench-wielding Tiny and Friends, but he couldn’t summon the image; it was un-picturable.

  7:44PM: You can’t just disappear like this. You’re scaring me.

  Then, at 8:30 p.m.: The police found your car in some parking lot in the hills. I don’t know if you even have your phone with you anymore but call me. Wherever you are, I’ll come get you. Please.

  That simple, plaintive word made Leopold’s stomach knot. Please.

  There was one final text, at 10:55 p.m.

  It’s been twelve hours

  Free-floating, desperate, emotionally inscrutable. Was he angry or terrified? Or both?

  And that was it. End of thread.

  Leopold’s first reaction was resentment. He tried to remember the last time his dad had said a caring word to him, anything that carried even the subtlest whiff of I give a shit. But now that Leopold was maybe hurt, maybe in danger…now he could bring himself to thumb-type the word please?