In the morning, Iggy found us a guy who sold honey roasted peanuts. I swung my bag off my shoulder, digging to the bottom, and found the thick rolls of twenty's, fifties, and hundreds I had swiped from the CEO's office. I held up my hand when Max tried to give us some peanut-money.
"I got this, trust me." she was about to protest, but I held up my hand. "It's from the school."
A sadistic, evil, 100% Max grin slithered across her face. "Well, in that case…"
I bought eight bags of peanuts, one for Hunter, of course, and popped a few into my mouth while we watched the people from a park bench.
Angel, Fang, Gazzy, and Nudge were watching a mime on the corner when I saw a sleek, dark-haired man walking down the street. His gaze slid over to meet that of the poodle-walkers, and that was all it took for me to go from relaxed to uber-stressed in a heartbeat.
"Iggy," I whispered. "Get the others."
We got up casually and walked over to the others with our peanuts. "Two o'clock," I murmured. We sped down the path, not bothering for subtleness as six more joined the group.
Hunter, who was currently cradled in my free arm, warbled quietly.
"The zoo!" I said urgently. "It's fieldtrip day!" We merged smoothly with the other school kids, us older kids ducking down to hide our height.
One of the creeps tried to push past the policeman at the front gate and was roughly shoved back. "School day only," he said. "No unauthorized adults. Oh, you're a chaperone, huh? Yeah? Show me your pass."
I repressed the urge to cheer for the boys in blue. Sadly – or not, depending on how you look at it – that was the first time I had ever appreciated anything a cop had done for me.
Once we made it past the sleepy ticket-taker, we swerved off to the left, slapping high fives.
Nudge was almost quivering with excitement. I was quivering with nerves. This place was giving me the creeps. There were cages everywhere, and the poor animals were bored to death.
"Come on, let's get farther in," Iggy said nervously. "Put some distance between us and them. Jeez, was that a lion? Please tell me it's behind bars."
I finished stashing Hunter under my jacket. I didn't want some pompous zoo-official to think he was one of theirs and put him in a cage. I took Iggy's arm, brushing the back of his hand lightly with my fingertips. "It's a zoo, Iggy. Everything is behind bars. Just like we used to be."
After about forty-five minutes I was twitching so badly it must have looked like I had palsy. Max must have been feeling the same way, because she started to look kind of green around the gills and began to round everyone up.
"Can we leave?" she pleaded. "I just – want to get out of here."
"You look kind of sick," I said. This time, there were no helpful visions of brain-attacks or convenient hiding places. Hunter stirred restlessly. At least he got to get some sleep.
Fang found a crevasse between two rocks, leading to the zoo keepers' lounge. We made like a banana and split.
"You know what I love about NY?" Gazzy said, inhaling a kosher hotdog. "It's full of New Yorkers who are even freakier than we are."
I pushed my sucker to the other side of my cheek so I could slurp my slushy.
"So we blend?" Iggy asked, licking an ice cream cone that was like a mini him: tall, thin, and vanilla. He was just over six feet – pretty good for fourteen, I thought – with strawberry blonde hair and pale skin. He was right: here on this broad avenue, surrounded by punk rockers, Goths, leatherites, gorgeous super models, suits, and students, seven kids in ratty clothes with questionable hygiene didn't really make an impact. Even having Hunter on my shoulder didn't really make a scene.
"Well, yeah. I mean, at least more than we usually do," I answered, finally getting to the bubblegum center of my lollipop.
Max and Fang were discussing the new Erasers – it was harder to spot them, they looked more like average, everyday humans, and there were females –Nudge was getting a burrito with Gazzy, and Max was explaining sauerkraut to Angel.
Max found a cookie vender, and decided that her new quest was to find cookies as good as the ones that she had with someone named Ella and Mrs. Martinez. I decided not to ask. Sometimes, it was just better not to know some of these things.
We made it to a library, the most likely place to start a search. It was awesome. Marble pillars supported a slanted, Greek-styled roof adorned with figures of ancient gods and goddesses, and a stone lion guarded the entrance. We stared at everything like the out-of-town yokes we were.
"May I help you?" the young guy at the counter asked. He looked disapprovingly at our haggard appearances, so I turned up the charm-o-meter. I did have one, despite common belief.
"Yes, I'm looking for an institution in New York, and I was wondering if you could help me, please?" I batted my eyelashes at him, stepping closer to the counter. I smiled seductively at him, so glad that he was young. It was sort of fun when they were like, twenty, but when they were old… ugh. "If you had a database or a computer I could use…?" I traced my fingers over the back of his hand and smiled at him, looking up from under my lashes.
"Uh… fourth floor," he stuttered. "There are computers of the main reading room."
"Thank you so much," I said, smiling again. We headed for the elevators.
"Don't you think you overdid it a bit?" Max scolded, frowning.
I rolled my eyes. "I did not enjoy that, first of all. Second, he was going for the silent alarm. Unless you wanted to tangle with the police…?"
"Well weren't you the charmer," Iggy grumbled under his breath, not looking at me.
I shrugged, trying not to think about the elevator. I hated enclosed spaces. We should have taken the stairs. I was hyperventilating by the time we got to the top, and we flew out of the elevator like it was pressurized. Max signed "Ella Martinez" and the clerk smiled at her. Fang growled.
Iggy was sitting in a chair, listening to every rustle of paper, every whisper, every scraped chair, creating a mental map of the room.
I sat by the window reading about the history of New York.
The computer crashed, and a security guard in blue started towards us. We fled down the steps into the dim light, and no one followed us.
Max led us to the subway tunnel. A sign read "Danger! High Voltage! Stay Off the Third Rail!"
"What's the third rail?" Nudge asked.
"It's what keeps the trains on track," I said.
"There's over three thousand volts of electricity running through that," Fang added. "Touch it and you're human popcorn."
"Okay… Good advice," Max said. "Everyone stay off the third rail."
About two, two hundred and fifty yards down the track we found a tunnel leading into a huge cavern. It was a small, ragged city under the streets of Manhattan. Nudge had to give up her knish, but in return we got a narrow cement ledge to sleep on.
Hunter was exhausted, and I knew that it would be rude to make him stay up three nights in a row.
"I'll take first watch," Fang said. I sighed in relief. I was beat. I plopped down on the hard concrete with Iggy's warmth at my back and Nudge curled into my side. Hunter perched on a thin metal bar about ten feet above us and went to sleep. I was out like a light in seconds.
I jolted upright the second that Max did, crawling to her side as Fang whispered in her ear. She had bitten through her lip, and blood trickled out of her mouth.
An angry voice echoed down the tunnel, and Hunter flew to my shoulder. Who's screwing with my Mac?"