The Midnight Market

by Beth McMullen

  Hannah’s face is buried in a book while Jin stares out the window at the densely forested scenery outside. New York has a lot of trees to go along with the cows. Zeus, perched on Jin’s shoulder, keeps in character, dramatically rolling his eyes and loudly gagging every half hour so Moose remembers he’s gravely ill. Each time, Jin soothes him and whispers that everything will be okay. Zeus could not be happier.

  Eventually, I regain consciousness, yawning so widely my jaw feels like it might unhinge. Outside, there’s a lake every mile. Water, trees, cows. Hannah stares at me over the cover of her novel. “It lives,” she says.

  “Barely,” I groan, trying to work out the kink in my neck.

  “Are you ready to talk about what we are going to do when we get there?” Hannah asks. Jin turns away from the window. Now they both stare at me. They want the plan. Which I don’t have. Because I was napping. And drooling.

  “Does anyone have water?” I ask, stalling. Jin hands me a water bottle. I take a long swig. I swish it around in my mouth. I take another. It has to be a good plan to make up for previous bad plans, and I’m feeling the pressure. Come on, Lola. Think!

  Hannah leans across me to Jin. “She has no idea what we are going to do when we get there,” she says flatly.

  Jin studies me. “Is that true?” he asks.

  “I’m working on it,” I mutter. The problem is I have very little to work with. A time, a destination, and that’s it. Does it mean the market will take place at three o’clock in Grand Central Terminal? That doesn’t seem likely. It’s crowded there. Maybe that is the time the next clue will be revealed? Or is it something else entirely that we haven’t even considered? And there is no way I ask Moose if he happens to know anything. It’s enough to make a girl want to go back to sleep.

  But this is no time to panic. I take a deep breath. Back when I used to be in the art-thieving business, I always started planning a heist with some small piece of information. For example, I saw a valuable ballerina sculpture in a local San Francisco art magazine and worked out a plan to steal it from there. Of course, that ended up with me in the emergency room getting stitches in my butt, but that is not the point here. I started with next to nothing and soon had a full-fledged plan of action even if the ultimate result was failure. I remind myself this is not that different. But I will skip the failure part.

  “So here’s what we do,” I say, my voice masked by the struggling air-conditioning. “We go to the terminal. We look around.”

  Hannah raises a sharp eyebrow. “That’s the plan?”

  “It’s an evolving plan,” I say a little defensively. “We can call it the information-gathering stage of the plan.”

  “We go there, we look around, we decide what to do next?” Jin asks. “Just, you know, clarifying.”

  “Yup. That about sums it up.”

  “Great,” Jin says with a wide grin. “Of course it will work.” When I realize he’s not actually being sarcastic, I smile back. Hannah rolls her eyes.

  “Okay, I guess,” she says. “But can we try to make it fun? I’m bored. Like, really really bored. Road trips are the worst. Just driving and driving and more driving. Plus, the best character in my book died.” She tosses the half-finished novel over her shoulder in disgust. “Stupid author.”

  “We will do our best to make it fun,” I say solemnly. A bored Hannah is a potentially dangerous Hannah, to herself and others.

  Slowly the scenery begins to change. The trees recede and tall buildings appear on the horizon. The road becomes decidedly bumpier and full of potholes. As we roll down the east side of the Hudson River, I notice a few sailboats and a big freighter on the wide waterway. The steep cliffs on the far side are actually New Jersey, which looks full of trees like New York. I wonder if they have cows.

  The massive George Washington Bridge looms overhead as we weave our way down the road. Yellow taxis zoom in and out of lanes without a care in the world. Construction cranes dot the skyline. A near miss with a battered limousine demonstrates that Moose can curse in multiple languages.

  I have been in New York City a few times. The last time was when my father urgently needed to visit the American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West to talk to an archaeologist about a pressing matter, although he was vague on the details.

  “Important things,” he said, dismissing my questions. “Stuff that must be discussed.”

  We flew eleven long hours from Casablanca, Morocco, to JFK Airport, where we jumped into a taxi so my dad could meet the scholar for a discussion of “stuff and things” over a quick cup of coffee. The caffeine barely had a chance to take effect before we immediately reversed the journey. When I asked Dad to explain why he couldn’t have had his important conversation over the phone, he waved me off.

  “Sometimes you need to see a person’s face,” he explained, which was really no explanation at all. And he did not take kindly to my detailed description of the wonders of FaceTime or Zoom, nor my insistence that in certain situations an electronic face is as good as a real one. But when we got out of the taxi in front of the museum, I remember very clearly Dad taking a deep inhale and grinning. “New York City is full of magic,” he said with a wink.

  Guess he wasn’t kidding.

  CHAPTER 24 RUN

  WE WATCH THE STREET NUMBERS descend, and we are blowing by 140th Street when Moose’s cell phone rings. His ringtone is the theme music from Darth Vader because of course it is! He presses the phone to his ear as we strain to hear him over the noise. Brows furrowed, he chews his thumbnail while nodding and grunting. Sliding off my sweat-soaked seat, I wedge into the small space behind the driver. If I crane my neck at a very awkward angle, I can actually hear the caller’s voice. Oh, and it sounds familiar. I glance back at Jin and Hannah and make fish lips. They giggle. Great.

  Fish, I mouth. These are the words I distinctly hear: “parrot,” “trick,” “get rid of,” “dump,” “Macombs Dam Bridge,” “hurry,” “remove.” And you know what I think? Sure, you do. The parrot is a trick. Get rid of the kids by dumping them off the bridge. Hurry up and remove the problem.

  Moose jerks the wheel, flying off the exit and heading east. I wiggle out of the tight space and back to my damp seat to relay the intel. Jin and Hannah agree with my assessment that we are about to be pitched off a bridge into the Harlem River and left to drown. As appealing as a swim is right now, this won’t work.

  “You didn’t happen to bring that cell phone, did you?” I ask Jin.

  “No!” he snaps. “You guys told me I wasn’t even allowed to think about it.”

  Okay. That’s true. But also unfortunate.

  “We need to jump out of the van,” Hannah says, matter-of-fact.

  “It’s moving,” Jin points out. “We could conk Moose on the head.”

  “And then the whole van crashes and Fish gets her wish,” Hannah objects.

  They both face me. “Well? Now what?”

  But this time I have a plan. “Remember how Moose banned accidentally barfing in his car because you can never really get it clean?” I ask.

  Hannah grins. “Oh yeah. Right. Can I do it? Please?”

  I nod. “Sure. Go for it.”

  “Excuse me?” Jin says. “What exactly are we doing?”

  “Watch.”

  Hannah closes her eyes, takes a deep inhale, and produces a garbled, choking scream that so startles Moose he practically careens off the road anyway, which is what we wanted to avoid. But too late now. Hannah is in the zone. She gags and heaves and buckles at the waist, clutching her stomach and moaning.

  “What is going on back there?” Moose glances anxiously in the rearview mirror.

  “Hannah is carsick,” I yell, sounding as desperate as possible. “She’s going to puke! You better pull over!”

  Moose does not even hesitate. He does not question the sincerity of Hannah’s carsickness for a second. The van cuts across two lanes of traffic, inciting the ire of our fellow travelers, and stops hard on
the narrow shoulder.

  “When the door opens,” I whisper, “grab your backpack and run.”

  “Run!” Zeus squawks. Wonderful. That bird is going to get us all killed. Gently, Jin wraps a hand around Zeus to keep him from fluttering away. Hannah continues to gag as Moose jumps from the driver’s seat and darts around the minivan to pull open the door.

  Three. Two. One. Go! We rush him like a rogue wave, a flurry of arms and legs and feathers.

  “Come back here, you kids!” he bellows. “You are going in that river! That is final!”

  No way we are going in that river. “Run!” I yell. We dart from the van down the gravelly shoulder and into a tangle of trees that seem out of place in the urban landscape. I can hear Moose’s labored breathing behind me. He might be strong, but he lacks endurance. Coming up behind Jin, I give him a shove to the left around… tombstones? Worn smooth by years of rain, names faded, but yes, we are in a cemetery. Well, that’s creepy. But it’s also a little like running around inside a pinball machine. Moose can’t keep up, and soon we lose him in the maze of what a sign indicates is Trinity Church Cemetery. Ducking down behind a large headstone, breathless, we can barely speak. Our limbs feel like rubber.

  “Hey,” Jin wheezes, glancing around. “Is this where Alexander Hamilton is buried?”

  “No,” I gasp. “He’s downtown at the Trinity Church Wall Street graveyard. Different place.”

  “Maybe we work that in somehow?” he asks. “I’m a fan.”

  “Sure,” Hannah says. “First, run for our lives. Second, a Hamilton tour of New York.”

  “Jeez,” Jin replies. “It was just a thought. Why did Fish want us thrown off a bridge? I thought they were the ones enabling this whole fiasco.”

  This would be the perfect time to tell them about Lipstick and how she is actually our benefactor. But we are still panting from the running-for-our-lives part of the day, and it doesn’t seem right.

  “I don’t know,” I say quietly. After a few moments, it’s clear that Moose is not following us. We seem to have successfully escaped. Which is really great. What’s not so great is that we are far away from Grand Central Terminal and the clock is ticking. I tap my watch face.

  “We have to move fast if we have any hope of getting there in time,” I say. As we snake our way out of the cemetery and back to the streets, we argue over whether we have enough money for cab fare or the bus. The answer is a positive maybe. We head down a wide avenue as I anxiously glance at my watch.

  “Stop doing that,” Hannah says. “Time is going to happen whether you watch it or not.”

  “You sound like Professor Benko,” Jin says, elbowing her.

  “Who sounds like me?”

  And suddenly, out of nowhere, there is Dad blocking the sidewalk, his hair long and shaggy, his leather jacket covered in a fine layer of what is most likely Peruvian dust. I hate to admit it, but I’m rendered speechless, something that almost never happens.

  “Professor Benko!” Jin throws his arms around my father while Dad pulls Hannah and me in for a hug.

  “What are you doing here?” Hannah asks.

  “You’re s-supposed to be hunting diamonds,” I stutter.

  “Well, it’s a long story.” We don’t have time for a long story. We barely have time for this conversation.

  “Dad,” I interrupt. “We need to be at Grand Central in, like, twenty minutes. It’s urgent.”

  Dad’s face gets serious. “Got it. You can give me details en route.” He steps to the edge of the sidewalk and throws up an arm, and as if by magic, a green cab pulls to the curb.

  “Air-conditioning.” Jin sighs with pleasure.

  “Jin.” Zeus sighs with pleasure.

  “What is going on?” Dad asks, not sighing with pleasure.

  “You first,” I insist. I don’t know how Dad is going to react to us being here rather than tucked away at Camp Timber Wolf as we are supposed to be.

  “As you can imagine, Irma was quite upset to find that Zeus had gone AWOL,” Dad begins. “She suspected that his love for Jin got in the way of his reasoning.”

  “You’re assuming that Zeus has reasoning to begin with,” I interject.

  “Mean Lola,” Zeus spits.

  Dad waves us off. “No matter. Fortunately, he is chipped.”

  “The bird?” Hannah asks.

  “Indeed,” Dad replies. “Irma does not mess around when it comes to avian safety.”

  “Chipped?” Zeus squawks.

  “For your own good,” Dad says.

  “Chipped?” Zeus repeats, this time at volume eleven. I don’t think he likes the idea. Before Dad can further explain, Zeus tucks his head under his wing and refuses to come out. Great. Now Zeus is having a snit.

  “Oh, Zeus,” Dad says with a sigh. “You do like dramatic effect, don’t you? In any case, Irma found Zeus at camp and asked that I go there immediately to retrieve him. She did not want to make a big deal out of it in case it got you three in trouble. But when I woke this morning, fully intending to fly up to camp, I saw that Zeus was in fact headed here, to New York City. So I followed the tracker, and now here we are. But why are we here, kids?”

  “We’re hunting the Helm of Darkness,” I say, my mouth dry and gritty. Dad’s eyes flash hot for a moment, but he gets it under control.

  “And how did this come to pass?” he asks patiently.

  As I explain, he nods and tilts his head and mutters things like “interesting” and “unusual” and “rogue is never a good choice.” At the end of my tale, he goes quiet, which makes me sweat even more than I’m already sweating.

  “While I understand why you did what you did,” he says finally, “I rather wish you’d stayed at camp.”

  I hang my head. “I know.”

  “But I’d be lying if I said I never broke the rules,” Dad continues, “so I’m willing to reserve judgment for the moment. And as long as we are here, we might as well see it through. The Helm is a good find. Besides, I haven’t been to a Midnight Market in ages, and they are jolly good fun, as long as they don’t know I’m there. As you can imagine, Task Force treasure hunters are not exactly welcome. But you will never see anything like it in your life.”

  “Wait,” Jin asks, eyes wide. “Professor Benko, does this mean you are going to treasure hunt with us?”

  Dad chuckles. “Think of me as an advisor of sorts. There will be no glory for you three if the perception is that I did the work. I want you to proceed as if I were not here. I will, however, pay cab fare and buy pizza slices.”

  “This is going to be wild,” Hannah says. “Tell us more about the market.”

  “Well, it’s been around for as long as magical objects have existed, which is forever. The story goes that it has changed management a few times down through the ages, people dying and new folks taking over. And try as we might, we have never been able to figure out who is in charge at any given moment. But oh, to attend the Midnight Market.” Dad looks suddenly wistful, as if remembering a time from long ago and well lost. He shakes it off and smiles. “A person is never quite the same.”

  Something about his words puts me on high alert, my senses heightened. But I push that aside and focus on the fact that I’m treasure hunting with my father. How cool is that?

  CHAPTER 25 IN A CRUNCH? STOP FOR CUPCAKES.

  THE CAR AND PEDESTRIAN TRAFFIC in midtown Manhattan is spectacular. The streets are gridlocked, and people fill every square inch of sidewalk space. Clueless tourists gaze up at the towering real estate while locals plow them aside, like ducks through water. Big red touring buses crowd the curb, and taxis line up to fetch passengers. Several blocks from the station, Dad pays the fare and we run. On the plus side, it’s New York, so no one looks twice at the parrot riding along on Jin’s shoulder, squawking and bellowing.

  A group of ruddy-cheeked German tourists sweeps us up in their wake, dragging us toward the 42nd Street entrance to the terminal. Disentangling ourselves, we slip through the heavy doo
rs and into a blast of chilled air. The terminal is layered in smells—a fine bakery, sweaty feet, an electrical fire, moldy newspaper, French fries. To one side of the grand entrance hall are thriving food stalls, and to the other is a museum exhibit featuring glass cases of the fancy dresses of a rich-and-famous someone who had lots of fancy dresses. Jin wants to stop and admire the tulle and sequins and satin, but this is no sightseeing tour. I urge him on.

  “Come on,” I say. “We don’t have much time.” A short walk and the Main Concourse opens before us. Across the massive hall are numbered platform entrances to the trains. To the right side of the hall, wide dramatic stairs lead up and away to additional levels of the station. Dead ahead is the bedazzled information booth and iconic clock. Thousands of people move like a rushing river, densely packed and yet seemingly oblivious of one another, focused entirely on some future destination. This cannot be where the Midnight Market takes place. It’s too crowded.

  “I don’t think we will be shopping for magical objects here,” Hannah says, echoing my thoughts.

  “Of course not,” Dad says. “This is certainly the location for another clue. The Midnight Market organizers dearly love landmarks.” I glance around the packed terminal, wondering how many other people are here for the same reason we are.

  “But where?” Jin asks, throwing his hands up. Grand Central covers forty-eight acres. That’s roughly thirty-six football fields’ worth of space. There is a very good chance that if something happens at three o’clock, we will miss it because we are in the wrong place. I dig in my shorts pocket for the crumpled flyer. Hannah snatches it from my hand.

  It’s the exact moment my father clutches my arm. His jaw is tight and his face suddenly pale. “Lola,” he says. “Do you hear that sound?”

  “Huh?” I hear a lot of sounds. This place is mobbed.

  “Like tinkling bells? Like breaking glass? Like if a butterfly were flapping crystal wings?”

  I look at my dad. What a strange thing to ask. But okay. I concentrate. Bells. Breaking glass. Crystal butterfly wings. And I catch just a note of it high-pitched above the general din. “Maybe?”