Edison’s Alley (20 page)

“Could I see that death certificate?” Nick asked.

For an instant Theo hesitated, thinking he shouldn’t hand it over. But then the thought changed to
Why not?
There was nothing unusual about giving his one piece of crucial evidence
to Nick. Nothing unusual at all. In fact, come to think of it, there was nothing odd about Vince having his own death certificate hanging in his school locker. At the moment it seemed like the most
natural, normal thing in the world.

“Sure thing,” said Theo, putting it in Nick’s hand.

Nick’s eyes scanned the document, then he folded up the paper and stuffed it in his back pocket. “Can I ask you a favor?” Nick asked.

Why would I do a favor for you?
was Theo’s first thought, but he heard himself say instead, “Sure, okay.” He wondered why he said that, but then wondered why he was
wondering, and wondered why he was wondering why he was wondering, and before long he was dizzy from the spiraling mental feedback and had to sit down.

“I need you to give a message to Caitlin,” Nick said. “Here, let me write it on your forehead.”

Nick came toward him with a ballpoint pen, but Theo shook his head and said, “No.”

Nick stopped, surprised. “No?”

“You should use a Sharpie instead,” Theo said. “Easier to read, and it won’t come off.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” said Nick, grabbing one from a kitchen counter.

“Because there are two types of people in the world,” Theo put forth. “The ones like me…and the ones like you.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Nick wrote his message, which required more forehead space than Theo had, so it curved around his left eyebrow and down to his cheek. Through all of it, Theo had the nagging sensation that
allowing your sworn enemy to write on your face with a permanent marker wasn’t the best choice, but it was crushed by a much more powerful feeling that assured him everything was perfectly
all right, and he was overthinking it.

When Nick was done, he gave Theo the key chain with the glowing fob. “Give this to Caitlin, too. Just make sure you keep it in your pocket until you get to her house.” Then Nick
reached over toward a laundry basket. “Oh—and can you wear this pair of underwear on your head, too?”

Theo had to admit it seemed like a reasonable request.

Caitlin was glad she was the one who had answered the door. Had it been her mother or father, she would have had a whole lot of explaining to do, because, though Theo could be
monumentally obtuse, he’d never before arrived at her house wearing a Fruit of the Loom beret.

“Hi, Caitlin,” he said brightly. “There’s a message for you on my forehead.”

Even before reading it, she knew this was Nick’s doing. Theo handed her the key chain with the Accelerati’s mind-numbing fob, which explained it all. She considered turning it off,
but then decided the only way for poor Theo to retain his dignity was to not know he had lost it. She removed the wayward underwear, which, mercifully, appeared to be clean, and brought Theo
in.

The message on his forehead, written in clear block letters, was simple. It said:

“Is everything okay?” Theo asked, a little vaguely. “Because…I feel like things might not be totally okay, and I don’t know why.”

Caitlin sighed. “Everything will be fine in a minute,” she said. Then she got her art supplies, sat him down, and began scrubbing Theo’s forehead with paint thinner.

W
hen the power went out in the University of Colorado’s Physics Building, darkening Dr. Alan Jorgenson’s office, he looked up from a
plate of flavorless takeout sushi on his desk. He knew that Nick Slate was now close.

Jorgenson pulled up his venetian blinds, letting in the remaining light of early dusk, and sat down. He took one more piece of bland albacore draped over blander rice, then leaned back in his
chair to chew and wait. Should the boy be on the offensive, Jorgenson was well equipped to defend himself with any number of Accelerati devices at his immediate disposal. A quantum eviscerator that
would transport the boy’s intestines to a spot precisely halfway between the earth and the moon. A tungsten particle beam that would blast him to the Canadian border. And if all else failed,
there was the old-fashioned revolver in his pocket.

His secretary came to his office door a moment later.

“I’d buzz you,” she said, with the slightest cringe, “but…the power outage…”

“Yes, yes,” Jorgenson said dismissively. “Send the boy in.”

His secretary was astonished. “How did you know?”

“For the same reason I am
in
this office and you are outside of it, answering my calls,” he told her.

She turned and left, and a moment later Nick entered.

He looked beaten. That was Jorgenson’s first impression, and his first impressions were usually correct. He had an air of absolute defeat about him that made Jorgenson want to gloat, but
he suppressed the urge. He’d have plenty of time for that later. Instead he continued to eat his sushi, which suddenly tasted a whole lot better. It tasted almost as fine as victory.

“What did you do to me?” the boy demanded with delicious desperation. “Why does the power keep dying all around me?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” lied Jorgenson. “Perhaps it’s the effect of one of the inventions that you and your little playground
friends have so blatantly abused.”

“You did it!” Nick shouted. “I know it was you! It had to be you! Make it stop!”

Jorgenson forced a false sigh, and got down to business. “Very well. I promise that your life will return to normal, and you will continue your lackluster existence without any further
interference from me…on the condition that you surrender all of Tesla’s devices.”

He watched as Nick bit his lip, considered the proposal, and then, instead of speaking, put out his hand for Jorgenson to shake.

Instinctively, Jorgenson raised his own hand, but then he hesitated. He had lost the pinkie of his right hand and it was still painful. The memory made him hate Nick Slate even more.

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t shake your hand,” he said, displaying his bandages. “You and your father shall give us unrestricted permission to retrieve the objects
in your attic, and shall cease and desist in all efforts at recovering the others. Finding those objects will be our task now, as it should have been from the beginning.”

He turned and reached behind him for an expandable file folder that was growing far too fat for anyone’s good. He called it his “nuisance folder.” Mostly it held things
relating to Nick Slate. After briefly leafing through it, he pulled out a simple yet comprehensive agreement.

“I took the liberty of preparing this document a few weeks ago, back when I believed you’d be sensible and would agree to it without causing unnecessary strife.”

When he turned back, Nick had the slightest smile on his face. Clearly the boy was relieved to have this over with.

“Here is the document,” Jorgenson continued, laying it on his desk. “As you are a minor, your surviving parent must sign it also. I expect it to be delivered by hand back to
this office within the hour. You shall remain…‘powerless’…until it is done.”

“Of course,” Nick said, and he held out his hand. “Shake my hand, Dr. Jorgenson, and I promise to do what needs to be done with that piece of paper.”

Jorgenson kept his hand at his side. No doubt the boy wanted to give his injured hand a sadistic squeeze. “Just the signatures will be fine.”

“I’d feel a lot better,” the boy said, “with a handshake…”

Now Jorgenson was getting irritated. The twilight was fading, and the room was growing dark. The sooner Nick left, the sooner the lights would return. “A handshake implies respect,”
Jorgenson said, keeping his hands by his side. “Need I say more?”

Nick held out his hand a moment longer, then his eyes narrowed. “Fine.” He picked up the paper. “Like I said, I’ll take this and do what needs to be done with it.”
Then he left, closing the door behind him.

Jorgenson sat back down and popped the last piece of raw fish into his mouth as the diminishing sunlight sliced through the blinds. The boy was bitter. Not a surprise—abject defeat will do
that to a person.

What
was
surprising, however, was the fact that the lights in the room did not return after the boy left. Was he lingering? Jorgenson walked into his outer office, where the lights were
also off, and stopped at his secretary’s desk.

“Where’s the boy?” he barked.

“He left five minutes ago,” said the woman.

“No…that isn’t possible…” He stormed past her and into the hall.

Farther down the hallway, Jorgenson could see that the ceiling lights were still on. But as he walked closer, the fluorescents flickered out above him, matching his strides. He came to a sudden,
slightly nauseated stop and he patted himself down, searching for the tiny chip. The little cretin must have found it before he arrived, and pretended not to know! Somehow he had placed it on
Jorgenson—but how? The boy hadn’t even touched him.

And then Jorgenson remembered turning his back on Nick to pull the document from the file…and the smile—no, it was a grin—on Nick’s face…and the single piece of
sushi sitting on the table between them.

That’s when Jorgenson understood the chip wasn’t on him. It was
in
him.

Jorgenson’s wail would have registered a ten on the fury scale, had such a measuring device worked within a twenty-foot radius.

There was nothing more satisfying than outsmarting a genius. Nick had embedded the tiny chip between the limp slab of fish and rice while Jorgenson’s back was turned. It
was small enough, Nick hoped, to be swallowed whole. He was already on his bike, pedaling away across the lawn of the physics building when he heard Jorgenson yell from somewhere
inside—indicating that the man had effectively swallowed his pride.

Now the chip was Jorgenson’s problem, and Nick hoped that his digestion was nice and slow. He had heard that the large intestine could, on occasion, trap things for years. It would serve
Jorgenson right!

But Nick’s mission had only been a partial success. Mitch’s little prophesy-belch had said that their lives could be saved by shaking Jorgenson’s hand—but Nick knew how
those little truth-burps worked: they implied no more than what they said. Nick didn’t necessarily have to surrender to the Accelerati—all he had to do was shake the man’s
hand.

Unfortunately, that was going to be much more difficult than Nick had expected.

A few minutes later, when Nick felt he had put enough distance between himself and the Grand Acceleratus, he took a moment to stop at a street corner and throw the surrender document in a trash
can, thereby fulfilling his promise to Jorgenson, by doing
exactly
what needed to be done with it.

W
hen Nick arrived home, Beverly Webb was there with his father.

His life was filled with interlopers. Like last time, Beverly had come over under the pretense of bringing her son to play ball with Danny. Clearly, though, her interest was in their father.

Was it wrong for Nick to want him to stay in mourning? It had been less than four months since the fire. Sure, the woman’s presence here didn’t constitute a “date,” but
her intentions were obvious.

“I brought that stain remover, Nicky,” she said.

“It’s Nick,” he said. “Thanks.” No one called him Nicky but his mother.

He took the thing from her. It looked like an old-fashioned washboard.
Of course,
thought Nick. He remembered it and its buyer, thanks to the memory-enhancing Oolongevity tea he had drunk
a few weeks ago. But the washboard had been purchased by some guy in a Hawaiian shirt.

“Be careful with it,” Beverly said. “It was a birthday present from Seth—it has sentimental value.”

“Uh…okay.” Nick should have left right then—taken the thing up to the attic and made himself scarce, but he lingered a moment too long. “How does it work?”
he asked.