The Circle of Lies

by Crystal Velasquez

  Good for you. Glad ur OK, but I think we’re done, Ana.

  Sorry.

  My breath rushed out of me in a whoosh. He can’t be serious. I couldn’t believe it. I just kept staring at the screen, hoping the letters would rearrange themselves into words that made sense. But then I felt my foot catch on something, and before I knew it, I was going down. “Aaaaahhh!”

  I saw it all in slow motion. On the way down, the black cat, who had been perched on my shoulders, leaped off and landed gracefully on her dainty paws. I wasn’t nearly as suave. I broke my fall with my hands, scraping them on the pavement and landing with an oof.

  “Whoa! Are you okay, Ana?” Doli called, heading my way.

  “I think so,” I said, turning over to find out what it was I’d tripped over. At first, in the darkness of the evening, it looked like a pile of clothes. Then the pile groaned, and I realized it was a human body! I gasped, then scrambled to the person and turned him over. Maybe the man had had a heart attack or something and needed help. “Sir?” I said breathlessly. “Sir, are you all right?”

  When he didn’t answer, Doli said, “Pull back his hood; make sure he’s breathing.” I did, but when I saw the man’s face, I was the one who stopped breathing.

  “Uncle Mec!” I collapsed over him, hugging him with all my might. “I can’t believe it! What are you doing here?”

  He didn’t respond. He must be hurt, I thought with rising panic. I eased him back onto the ground while Doli whipped off the light jacket she was wearing, rolled it into a ball, and tucked it under Uncle Mec’s head. “It’s so dark,” I complained. “I can’t see what’s wrong with him.”

  Shani snapped her fingers and said, “Somebody give me a phone.” Doli pulled hers out and handed it to her without hesitation. Shani tapped a few buttons, and suddenly the phone became a beacon of light. “It’s a high-powered flashlight app,” she explained. She handed me the phone.

  I held it up to light my uncle’s face. His lip was bloodied and his cheeks were battered and bruised. He looked like he had been hit by a bus. And he wasn’t moving. Was he breathing? I couldn’t tell. “Uncle Mec!” I yelled, shaking him gently. “Please, please wake up.”

  Finally he eased one eye open and looked at me. “Ana?” he croaked.

  I breathed out in relief. He was alive. “Yes! It’s me, Tio. What happened to you?”

  “Your aunt and I—we were kidnapped.”

  I clamped a hand over my mouth.

  “Wow, you were right all along,” Lin said.

  Shani kneeled down on the other side of him. “Who kidnapped you, Mr. Navarro?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. They were wearing masks.”

  “When did it happen?” Doli pressed.

  “Right after Ana left for Temple Academy,” he said. He turned his head so he could look at me. “We were so sad after we dropped you off at the airport, niña, we decided to go see a movie—something to cheer us up. But when we got home, the door was open. We should have called the police, but we went in anyway. Inside there were a bunch of people in animal masks. They threw black sacks over our heads and ushered us into a van parked out back. After that, they kept us blindfolded and moving around a lot. They told us we should behave ourselves or we might never see you again.”

  I had to choke back a sob. It explained so much. That had been the reason that they’d never checked on me. They’d been prisoners all this time.

  “They brought us to a room somewhere—I don’t know where. Every once in a while they would move us—into a car, onto a plane, into another room, but we were always blindfolded. I never got to see who was keeping us prisoner or where they were taking us. We never got to talk to anyone but each other.”

  “But—but Aunt Teppy called me,” I said, tears running down my face now. “She told me to leave you guys alone, not to come looking for you. She said you’d gone to Cancún on vacation.”

  Uncle Mec looked confused. “No, Ana, Teppy never called you. They wouldn’t let us use a phone. And we wouldn’t go anywhere without telling you first. You know that. But we thought about you every minute. And Aunt Teppy prayed for you every night. She probably still is.”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned to see Shani looking at me with compassion in her eyes. “It must have been Nicole, Ana,” she said. “We suspected that anyway.”

  I couldn’t help it. I broke down in painful sobs. On the one hand, I felt relief—my aunt and uncle did love me, and I was right to have believed that the phone calls had just been another trick of an evil being. But I also felt horror, because now I knew for sure that Aunt Teppy was being held hostage and it was all my fault. “Why did they let you go?” I asked.

  “To send you a message,” he said. “They wanted me to tell you and your friends to stop fighting them, or else . . .”

  I stared at him in shock. He knew we were Hunters. “Or else what?” I pressed.

  “Ana,” he said, his own eyes tearing up. “They still have your aunt. And they said if you don’t stay out of their way, there will be more victims. . . .”

  “More victims?”

  But the shrill sound of Taylor Swift singing “Bad Blood” sounded from Lin’s pocket. Lin, who had been watching the scene between my uncle and me in fascinated silence, widened her eyes. “Sorry!” she cried.

  She pulled out her phone from her back pocket. “Hello?” As she listened, all the color drained from her face. “What do you mean, Dad? No . . .” She lowered her hand and let her phone clatter to the ground.

  Shani picked up the phone and stared at her. “Lin, what is it?”

  “That was my dad calling from Shanghai,” she said, her eyes staring blindly ahead. “My mother is missing!”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ONCE AGAIN, THIS SERIES IS a team effort, which means I have many people to thank.

  First, a huge thank-you to Fiona Simpson, my editor at Simon & Schuster, and to Brendan Duffy, Stephanie Lane Elliott, William Severs, and Ali Standish. How lucky am I to have access to such smart, creative people who are always full of good ideas and great advice? Thank you all so much! You’re the greatest, I hope you know.

  Thank you to the whole team at Aladdin, including Laura Lyn DiSiena, Kayley Hoffman, Shifa Kapadwala, Kara Reilly, Sarah Kwak, and everyone in sales, marketing, and promotion. And of course immense gratitude to Wylie Beckert for creating yet another incredible cover. (Whenever I do school events, the kids ask me if I designed the cover. I always have to say no and that they should be glad I didn’t—unless they’re really into stick figures.) Thank you to Diane Derroches and the organizers of Simon & Schuster’s celebration of Latino Heritage Month. It was an honor to be included, to meet the group of high school seniors who participated, and to share my love of books and writing with them. Thank you to Jeannie Ng for introducing me to the wonderful world of Simon & Schuster Children’s Books in the first place.

  Thank you to a very important group of people: the readers! Thank you so much for taking the time to read my books, and for reading in general. It’s still surreal for me that anyone outside of my immediate family has read anything I’ve written. So it’s a treat when someone who lives on the other side of the country (like my new friend Kira Nguyen) reaches out to share her thoughts about the book. I am in awe of all the kids I’ve met in person (Hi, kids from the Queens Library in Corona and P.S. 33Q!) and online. Your enthusiasm about books and stories and imagination makes me so happy and hopeful for the future. Keep it up!

  Thank you to the group of writers and librarians I met at the BooksNJ festival: Tracey Baptiste, Selene Castrovilla, Margaret Gelbwasser, Sharon Kalman, and Arlene Sahraie. It’s so cool to meet such a fun, driven, and intelligent group of women who are making a go of this writing thing, or who are doing everything in their power to keep libraries alive and well.

  I’ve had a lot of friends from high school invite me to their kids’ schools, offer me writing opportunities, send me pictures of their
kids reading my books, or attend my author events that I just have to give a shout-out to my alma mater: Stuyvesant High School. Thank you, class of ’93, for being my friends back then and for still having my back all these years later. I love you guys! Thanks also to my Penn State friends for all the support now, and for being wise critics in our writing workshops way back when. Thank you to my friends at Penguin Random House for keeping me sane and making me laugh during my years as a production editor when I was trying to juggle work, writing, and freelancing. I’m in your debt for reminding me to have a life and for being part of it! Thank you to my new coworkers/friends at Working Partners Ltd. for making me feel like I was part of the team all along.

  And finally, to my family, especially Mom and Dad—and to my friends who might as well be family—thank you for all the love you’ve given me, for being my biggest fans no matter what, and for forgiving me when I have a writing deadline and have to ignore you for a while. I don’t know what I would do without you.

  Crystal Velasquez is the author of Hunters of Chaos, the Your Life, but . . . series: Your Life, but Better; Your Life, but Cooler; and Your Life, but Sweeter; and four books in the Maya & Miguel series, based on the television show—My Twin Brother/My Twin Sister; Neighborhood Friends; The Valentine Machine; and Paint the Town. She holds a BA in creative writing from Penn State University and is a graduate of NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute. Currently an editor at Working Partners Ltd. and a freelance proofreader, she lives in Flushing, Queens. Visit Crystal’s website at crystalvelasquez.com, visit her blog at yourlifebutbetter.blogspot.com, or find her on Facebook at Facebook.com/CrystalVelasquezAuthor.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  First Aladdin hardcover edition February 2016

  Text copyright © 2016 by Working Partners Ltd.

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2016 by Wylie Beckert

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  Book designed by Laura Lyn DiSiena

  The text of this book was set in Warnock Pro.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Velasquez, Crystal, author.

  The circle of lies / by Crystal Velasquez.—First Aladdin hardcover edition.

  pages cm.—(Hunters of Chaos ; [2])

  Summary: “Ana, Doli, Shani, and Lin must continue to battle the forces of the Brotherhood of Chaos and prevent them from taking over the world. However, with Shani expelled from school and living in Mumbai with her father, the four Wildcats have been separated and their power diminished. Can they find a way to stop Anubis this time?”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-4814-2455-4 (hc)—ISBN 978-1-4814-2457-8 (eBook)

  [1. Shapeshifting—Fiction. 2. Demonology—Fiction. 3. Good and evil—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.V4877Cir 2016

  [Fic]—dc23

  2015016077