“We have so much to look out for. A lot hangs in the balance. But, tonight, we look out for the most important ones. Tonight” — she paused, almost through, lifting her glass a final time before she could finally kick back — “tonight, we look out for each other. Because what’s the point of being the world’s most powerful family if you don’t get to enjoy it once in a while? Am I right?”
“To the spoils of our riches,” Ian said.
“And the new year,” Natalie echoed, looking around.
“Next year,” Jonah vowed, “I’ll be around more. I promise. Resolution time, y’all.”
“I’ll make each of you special decryptors, so you can know what’s going on,” Sinead said.
“I will bench three Cahills at once,” Ham broke in.
“We’ll be nicer to poor people,” Natalie promised, “like all of you.”
“I will collect more baseball cards,” Dan cried.
“My resolution?” Amy said. “To try and not always go it alone.” She looked around at the beautiful night, the Seine lit up below them, her cousins decked out in fancy and funny clothes, the ridiculously lavish food and lights and music and games. She looked at her brother, whom she had almost lost the night before.
They were an impossible group, no denying it, and they would test her over and over in the years to come. But they were her family.
Six hours later, as the Cahills watched the sun rise above the Eiffel Tower, midnight struck at the Rosenbloom house back in Boston. Far away from slider bars and cheery toasts, Professor Mark Rosenbloom sat staring at the television screen as the New Year’s ball dropped in Times Square. His ten-year-old son, Atticus, was asleep on the shoulder of Mark’s older son, Jake. Atticus couldn’t sleep by himself lately; he kept having nightmares about losing his mother and waking up to the horrible knowledge that those nightmares were true. Nobody said a word at dinners — they just stared into plates of food other people had dropped off. As if anyone felt like eating, anyway.
“Happy New Year,” Mark whispered to Jake.
“Whatever,” Jake replied.
While the Cahills were off gallivanting in the City of Light, the Rosenbloom house was cloaked in darkness. In the shadows, a figure slid away from the house, scheming his next move. It would be swift and deadly, just as it had been for the mother of Jake and Atticus. Looking back in at the grieving figures in the Rosenbloom living room, the man chuckled to himself.
He had executed his plan flawlessly.
The Guardian was dead. It was a tricky piece of work, but the man had administered the poison to Astrid himself. A steady dusting of undetectable, lethal powder in the pages of the library book only she was studying. Now she was gone and no one suspected a thing, certainly not her two motherless sons or her bereaved husband. The man started to turn away, but a movement inside the house caught his eye.
It was Mark, carrying a sleeping Atticus upstairs. The man on the sidewalk made a decision, and then smiled. Guardians may be cute when they’re little, the man thought, but they grow up to be such nuisances. The man would eliminate Atticus as well, but that could wait. He had other things in mind right now — the Cahills laughing it up halfway across the globe. The real games were about to begin.
Vesper One’s New Year’s resolution: World Domination.
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Clifford Riley would like to acknowledge Jackie Reitzes.
Cover design by Keirsten Geise; Rapid Fire logo design by Charice Silverman
First edition, December 2011
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e-ISBN 978-0-545-45203-8
39 Clues Rapid Fire 7 Fireworks Page 3