Squirming, he blushed. “Just experimenting.”
I’d seen his art before, when he’d first started drawing with his computer and in little doodles, but he’d never done anything like this. “It looks”—I paused, trying to find the right word—“lonely.”
“Yeah. Anyway, my parents think this is why I’m here.”
“Because you’re lonely?” I asked.
He looked up at me for the first time since I’d come over. His eyes seemed to capture me. “Not for much longer.”
Maximus passed by us. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, just make out already.”
I glared at him. “Don’t you have magic to do?”
He leveled a finger at me. “You are too young to be this stressed. Calm down. It will be fine. Your crew has all the skills needed. Or will.”
I watched Gabriela for a moment. She was supposed to place her hand into a coffee can with a blaze of fire in it. She was circling around it as if it held venomous snakes.
“I do understand,” Maximus said. “Your family was shamed. You want to restore your honor, reclaim your reputation, and all that jazz. But did it ever occur to you that none of that actually matters? It’s all manufactured nonsense. We’re just pretending, all of us exiles. None of us can ever be truly respectable so far from Home.”
“Maybe I just really, really want that jewel. It would look nice on my dresser.”
“His family will want it back.”
I’m counting on that,I thought, and smiled (hopefully mysteriously) at him. I left him to his magic and Ryan to his computer. Once I had the jewel, I had every intention of giving it back to them—in exchange for information about Mom.
As for me, I practiced cracking a Swenson lock.
I’d never cracked one of those before.
The Swenson lock is a top-of-the-line, bank-quality mechanical combination lock. You can’t use lock picks on these kinds of locks, obviously—no keyhole. The basic concept remains the same, though: you have to line up a series of grooves within the mechanism. You can do it by sound, with a stethoscope, or by touch, like Mom did. I chose touch.
Every afternoon, I sat cross-legged in front of a safe that Maximus had lent me. Cracking a safe like this by feel is a lot like trying to touch a breath in the wind. It requires focus. Cutting out the world so that the only thing that exists is the sensation in your fingertips. You have to get to know the particular feel of a particular lock better than the feel of your own heartbeat. Breathing in and out, I settled myself and focused.
This lock had a wheel with one hundred numbers and required a four-number combination, which works out to 100 million different possible combinations and only one right one. Only Ryan’s father knew the combination, and he was extraordinarily careful to block the lock from the cameras every time he entered the vault—Ryan had combed through all the security feeds, and no luck—plus he probably changed it regularly anyway. No, it was old-fashioned safecracking for me, which somehow felt appropriate. Mom had taught me to do this. I was going to prove to her I’d learned it well.
It took me three afternoons to crack it the first time.
Next try, it took me one hour.
Then forty-five minutes.
Thirty.
Fifteen.
Five.
And then I brought suction cups, the large kind that window washers use to attach themselves to high-rise windows—these were Mom’s, from the time she robbed the First National in St.Louis. Family heirlooms. Ryan helped me set up a bar at the same height as the ceiling outside the vault. Hanging upside down, I cracked the safe in two minutes.
Maximus starting bringing snacks to our practice. Chips with sea salt and cracked pepper, plus a variety of hummuses. (Red pepper hummus, yum! I love human snacks. Not snacks made of humans. Gross. Snacks madebyhumans.) When he started bringing Cheetos too, Ryan seemed to forgive him for their rocky start. I’d come out of my trance with the safe to hear the two of them boasting about how many Choco Tacos they could eat in a single sitting.
I sauntered over to them and helped myself to the chips. “How long until you think you’ll be ready?”
“For the Choco Taco battle?” Maximus said. “I could take this boy at any time.”
Ryan snorted. “This ‘boy’ can eat you under the table.”
I suppressed a smile and stole another chip. “Why not just call him a ‘young whippersnapper’ and be done with it? You know you want to.”
