For a moment we just stood there, too stunned to react. Then a loud hiss came from overhead. My head snapped up just in time for me to see the ceiling's sprinkler system cranking on, showering us with icy water.
"What?" shouted Mr. Pruitt. "What is the meaning of this?"
My guess was it meant that Iggy and the Gasman had just shot to the top of my "so in trouble" list, but I didn't say anything.
Everyone scrambled for the doors, yelling and pushing.
Mr. Lazzara cupped his hands around his mouth. "Orderly, please! Fire drill forms! Children!"
Mr. Pruitt charged toward the doors, practically mowing kids down in his effort to get out from under the sprinklers.
Nudge grinned at me, water dripping off her curly hair. "I didn't know school would be this much fun," she said.
65
"This is grounds for expulsion!" Mr. Pruitt screamed, veins popping out on his forehead.
I watched him with interest, calculating the chances of his keeling over from a heart attack within the next five minutes. Right now it looked like 60, 65 percent for.
The six of us were standing soggily in his office, half an hour after the last fire truck had left. Pruitt had insisted on seeing all of us together. We were chilled and bedraggled, and just wanted to get our butts home.
But nooo.
First we had to listen to the headhunter chew us out. Granted, being chewed out by someone as horrible as the headhunter was a walk in the park compared to, say, having Erasers try to kill you. But still, an afternoon-ruiner, for sure.
"The stink bomb was reason enough!" Mr. Pruitt shouted. "But I stupidly gave you a second chance! You're nothing but a bunch of street rats! Vermin!"
I was impressed. Vermin was a new one on me, and I'd been called everything from arrogant to zealous.
Mr. Pruitt paused to suck in a breath, and I jumped in.
"My brothers didn't do the stink bomb! You never proved it. Now you're accusing us again with no evidence! How-how un-American!"
I thought the headhunter was going to pop a vessel. Instead he reached out and grabbed the Gasman's hands, holding them in the air.
My heart sank as I saw the smudges of black powder, ground into his skin when the bomb went off.
"Besides that!" I blustered.
The headhunter seemed to swell with new rage, but just at that moment, the assistant showed Anne into the office.
She didn't work for the FBI for nothing-somehow she managed to calm the headhunter down and shooed us out of the office and into her Suburban.
For half a mile there was silence in the car, but then she started in.
"This was your big opportunity, kids," she began. "I'd had higher hopes..."
There was a bunch more, but I tuned it out, gazing through my window at the fading autumn color. Every once in a while words floated into my consciousness: grounded, big trouble, disappointed, upset, no TV. And so on.
None of us said anything. It had been years since we'd had to answer to any grown-up. We weren't about to start now.
66
What Anne didn't get was that only weeks ago we'd been sleeping in subway tunnels and scrounging for food. So being "grounded" and not able to watch TV was, like, meaningless.
"We still have this whole house," Nudge pointed out in a whisper. "It's full of books and games and food."
"No dessert, though," Total said mournfully. "And I didn't do anything!"
"Yeah, no dessert," said the Gasman indignantly.
I glared at him. "And whose fault is that, wise guy? You and Iggy screwed up again. For God's sake, quit bringing explosives to school!"
"We did hear the headhunter telling Ms. Cox to bury some files," the Gasman reminded me. "If we could find them, it might give us something to use against him."
I sighed. "How about we just stay under the radar until we leave? Don't retaliate, don't do anything else. Just quietly get through the rest of our time here."
"How long will we be here? Did you decide when you want to leave?" Angel asked.
"Yeah," I said drily. "Two weeks ago."
"Can we just stay through Thanksgiving?" Nudge asked. "We've never had a Thanksgiving meal. Please?"
I nodded reluctantly. "If no one else messes up, that should be okay."
I went upstairs and headed to my room. As I passed Anne's open door, I heard the TV. The words missing children caught my attention, and I paused, listening.
"Yes, the recent disappearance of several area children has brought back difficult memories for other parents who have lost children, whether recently or years ago. We're talking now with Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths, whose only son was taken from a local hospital right after his birth."
I froze. Griffiths was Iggy's last name-we thought. I remembered that much from the legible papers we found at the Institute in New York-before they disappeared. But the Institute file had also said that Iggy's father was dead. So these people couldn't be his parents-could they? Riveted, I edged my way forward a few inches so I could watch the TV through the partially open door. I heard Anne in her bathroom, brushing her teeth.
"You'd think that after fourteen years, it would get easier," said the woman sadly. "But it doesn't. It's the same pain, all the time."
My breath caught in my throat. Fourteen years? Griffiths? The reporter's image cleared and was replaced by a couple. The man had his arm around his wife's shoulders. They both looked sad.
One other thing.
The woman looked just like Iggy.
67
Fang looked intently at me, peering through the strands of hair that always covered his eyes.
"They were standing in front of their house. I saw enough to recognize it if I saw it again," I told him in a fast whisper. It was late, and everyone else was asleep. I'd waited till now to tell Fang what I'd seen. "Their name was Griffiths. Their kid disappeared fourteen years ago. And the woman was the spitting image of Iggy."
Fang shook his head slowly, thinking. "I can't believe you would just happen to see that."
"I know. But how could it possibly be a setup? We weren't even allowed to watch TV today. I just-I think we have to check it out."
Fang shook his head again. "How many houses are there in the DC area?"
"This house had a big, dark church behind it, like on the next block. It was old-fashioned, and the spire was really tall. How many of those are there?"
Fang sighed. "About a million."
"Fang! This is a huge break! Of course we should go check it out!"
He looked at me. "But we're grounded," he said with a straight face.
I stared at him for a second, and then we both burst out laughing.
68
"What's wrong?" Fang had been acting a little off all night. Now we were flying high over the lights of DC, and he kept wiping his forehead and rolling his shoulders.
"I'm way hot," he muttered. "But I don't feel sick. Just-way hot."
"Like I did?" I raised my eyebrows. "Huh. Give it a week; you'll be flying like the Concorde. I think. Or, you know, you're dying." I shot him a grin, which he didn't return. "What? You feel really bad?"
"No. But I just thought of something. I have your blood in me."
I looked at him, his wide, dark wings moving smoothly, powerfully through the night air.
"So? It was just blood."
He shook his head. "Not our blood. The red cells have DNA, remember? I got transfused with your DNA."
I thought. "Uh, so?"
He shrugged. "So maybe that's why this is happening. Maybe it wasn't supposed to happen to me."
"Hmm," I said. "And we don't know if that's bad or good or nothing."
"Guess we'll find out," he said.
Turns out there are practically hundreds of freaking tall church steeples in the DC area. Though finding the right one tonight seemed amusingly unlikely, we cruised around, looking for a steeple in a residential neighborhood. We dropped down more than a dozen times, but once I had scanned all the close-by houses, we took to the air again.