by Jude Watson
“Pilot says we’re up in five,” Dan said. “Hey, what happened to Pierce’s goons?”
Amy found herself stuck for an answer, but Ian jumped in to save her.
“False alarm,” he said. “Might as well get to our seats.”
Amy hurried past everyone to the back of the plane. Once the jet was airborne, she checked to make sure the boys were distracted and then pulled that morning’s newspaper out of her backpack. Looking at it, she felt the same sick twist in her stomach she had when she’d first seen it at the airport newsstand.
The Cahills were the most powerful family history had ever known, but now they were up against their greatest challenge — J. Rutherford Pierce, a media tycoon with dreams of world domination. He had already manipulated a member of the Cahill family, a scientist named Sammy Mourad, to gain access to the Cahills’ most closely guarded secret: a serum that granted near-superhuman strength and intelligence to anyone who took it. Amy and the others, afraid of what the serum would mean for the world in the hands of someone like Pierce, were on the trail of an antidote and had one component of it already, the whiskers of an Anatolian leopard. Only six more to go and they would stop Pierce for good.
Unfortunately, Pierce wasn’t standing idly by while they searched. Not only had he sent teams of serum-enhanced mercenaries after them, he was attacking them daily in his many newspapers and television programs. At first he had contented himself with harassing Amy and Dan with dumb stories about what he called their irresponsible globe-trotting — and what they called TRYING TO SAVE THE WORLD! — or dumb gossip about Amy and Ian or Amy and Jake.
But now that had all changed. Amy lifted the newspaper off her lap. Pierce wasn’t just harassing them anymore. He was going for the throat.
“Everything okay?”
Amy jumped. Ian was leaning over the seat in front of her.
“Fine,” Amy said as she hurriedly stuffed the newspaper into her backpack. “Everything’s fine. Just . . . doing some research.”
“Ah, well, you can never know too much,” Ian said, falling into the seat across the aisle from Amy. “Speaking of which. Did you know the Avenue Habib Bourguiba in Tunis is known the world over as the Champs-Élysées of the near east? The cafés. The shops. The discos.”
Amy couldn’t help but laugh. “The discos? Honestly, Ian, who calls them discos anymore?”
“Well, the Tunisians, I expect,” he sniffed. “So the plan is to rely on the Rosenblooms’ father, then? He’s a scientist of some sort?”
Amy set her backpack aside. “An archaeologist. Apparently, his passion is lost civilizations. He’s in Tunis studying the Carthaginian ruins.”
Amy hoped Dr. Rosenbloom would be able to help. He would certainly have his work cut out for him. Amy and Dan had found an ancient notebook left to them by Olivia Cahill, one of the founders of the Cahill family. The notebook gave instructions on how to create the antidote, but much of it was in code. Atticus and Jake’s analysis of Olivia’s notes made them certain that the next piece of the antidote was a plant native to the area around Tunisia, called silphium. Of course, because nothing was ever easy, silphium was supposed to be just as extinct as the Anatolian leopard.
Ian turned to look out the window next to him, where the sun was painting the clouds gold and orange.
“You know, it’s funny,” he said. “I was on the phone with Nellie when the others were off getting their snacks and I saw you coming out the door to the runway. But I didn’t spot any of Pierce’s men.”
Amy could feel Ian staring at her, waiting for a response. When he didn’t get one he looked up the aisle, making sure the others were absorbed in their games. He leaned in close, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and halting, as if he were picking his way through a minefield.
“Due to recent . . . events,” he said, struggling with how to refer to the death of his younger sister, Natalie, “I, too, have been sometimes tempted to isolate myself but, to my surprise, I’ve found that having people around, even” — he glanced at the others on the plane — “these people, somewhat alleviates —”
“Pierce’s men were there,” Amy said through gritted teeth. “I’m not lying.”
“I would never suggest you were,” Ian said. “I simply —”
“Amy?”
The anxious roil in Amy’s stomach jumped twofold when she saw Jake standing in the aisle in front of her.
“You okay?” he asked.
“We were just having ourselves a bit of a chat,” Ian said. “Nothing for the likes of you to worry about.”
“Atticus has some ideas he wants to run past you,” Jake said to Amy.
She started to get up but Ian put his hand on hers, holding her back.
“If you keep troubling Amy with every little thing —”
“Maybe you should let Amy decide what’s little and what’s —”
“Guys!” Amy cried.
Ian and Jake shut up instantly, as shocked to hear Amy yell as she was to do it.
“I just need a minute,” she said. “Okay? Alone? Jake, I’ll be with you soon.”
There was a tense pause and then Jake stalked off to the front of the plane. Ian was about to say something but Amy turned away from him, and a beat later he pushed himself up out of his seat and left.
Amy closed her eyes and tried to quiet her mind, but she kept hearing the sound of her own raised voice. Was there a worse sound, Amy wondered, than your own voice, yelling at people you love? Not only that, but she could feel that newspaper sitting in the pack next to her, like an itch demanding to be scratched. Amy pulled it out and spread it across her lap.
The headline read: THE CAHILL WEB OF EVIL.
To each side, two columns of three pictures each were laid out like mug shots. Atticus, Jake, and Pony on one side and Ian, Hamilton, and Jonah on the other. Pictures of Amy and Dan — deeply shadowed in Photoshop to make them look especially sinister — sat between the columns, with spidery lines running from their pictures to the other six.
The article that accompanied the pictures alleged that Amy and Dan were not simply international nuisances, but were heading up a far-reaching criminal conspiracy with the others.
Hamilton Holt! the article screamed next to Hamilton’s picture. A burly brute who uses his fists to lay down the law on whoever dares to contradict the Cahill cabal!
Atticus Rosenbloom — the cabal’s twisted mastermind. This pint-sized provocateur uses his big brain and his connections to the worldwide academic elite to subvert the will of decent freedom-loving people everywhere!
It went on and on. Ian was a member of the global elite who provided them with an entrance into high society, while Jonah Wizard gleefully poisoned the youth of the world through insidious messages in his music. Amy could hardly breathe looking at all of it. It was one thing for Pierce to attack her and Dan, but it was something else entirely to go after their friends.
Amy looked up the aisle. Jonah was showing Hamilton a new video game while Atticus and Dan were practicing their aim by throwing Skittles into each other’s mouths.
It was amazing that they could seem so normal after all they had been through. Atticus and Jake had both lost their mothers, Ian had lost his sister, and Jonah’s cousin Phoenix had nearly died.
Amy crumbled the newspaper in her fist. They’ve all been through so much, she thought. It’s up to me to make sure they don’t lose anything else.
Tabloid
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved. Published by
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013934701
e-ISBN 978-0-545-57630-7
Amy and Dan p. 28: Ken Karp
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marble p. 36: CGTextures;
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Amy and Dan p. 200: Ken Karp for Scholastic
Book design and illustration by Charice Silverman
First edition, October 2013
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