“Yes,” I say. “More than once. The Mischief Elves app is blocking real texts and also sending forgeries.”
She jerks her head. “Is that Thing Two’s car?”
“I can’t remember which one you call by which number. It’s Jenny driving. She brought me out to help find you. She says there’s a meeting with a lawyer later today, which you need to come to, but if she has to go on the run to keep you both safe from the cult, she’ll do it.”
Nell and Glenys exchange a look.
“Also, my grandmother’s in the car. Just FYI.”
Glenys and Nell trail me to the car, and we all climb in, wedging ourselves in the back seat and sorting out seat belts.
“Hi,” Nell says to Jenny grudgingly.
“Hello, girls,” my grandmother says warmly. “I’m Steph’s mimi. Can I take all of you to lunch?”
My phone buzzes with a text, and I unlock it to find that I missed a bunch of texts from CheshireCat. “Head west,” I say to Jenny. “Like, right now. Right now!”
I’m afraid that she’s going to argue or ask why or demand we finish with seat belts first, but Jenny makes a careful U-turn and heads back the way she came. My grandmother, who’s either unable to read a room or resolutely unwilling to, starts reading off the names of restaurants we pass, suggesting that maybe we could eat at Nina’s? Or the Happy Gnome? Or—
Behind us, there’s an explosion that rocks the ground. Jenny slams on her brakes and turns, white-faced, to stare at me, and my grandmother shrieks, “What the hell was that?”
CheshireCat’s voice comes out of my phone: “Steph, are you okay? Did you find Nell?”
“Yes, Nell and Glenys. And Jenny and my grandmother are here,” I add, because even in my panic, I’m thinking that I need to make sure CheshireCat realizes that it’s not just me who can hear. “Did you get the robot out?”
“No,” CheshireCat says. “I guess I’ll have to order another one.”
There are sirens starting up all around us—police, fire, everyone and everything is heading toward whatever just exploded, and Jenny pulls the car over to let them by. Her phone makes a discordant wheep! sound effect, and she pulls it out, her hands shaking, and answers with, “We’re fine. I have Nell, and she’s fine. And Steph. And this other girl, uh, we haven’t done introductions. But we’re okay.”
“Is Bijan okay?” I ask CheshireCat.
“The explosion was in the James J. Hill House,” CheshireCat says. “The blast radius did not extend to his house.”
Jenny still has her phone to her ear but looks back at me and says, “Hill House blew up?”
“I believe everyone got out before the explosion,” CheshireCat says. “The robot raised the alarm.”
“Love you, too,” Jenny says into the phone. “Pass the word? I’m going to shut the phone off and drive for a bit.”
My whole body feels like it’s vibrating from tension, which means it takes longer than it should have to notice that my flip phone is ringing in my coat pocket. This sends me briefly into an entirely new freak-out, because the first possibility that occurs to me is that it’s my father trying to call me, and seeing a Boston area code in the caller ID doesn’t help with that. But there’s a reason I recognize the area code, I realize as I stare at it: I called that number this morning. It’s Xochitl. I pick up.
“Hi,” I say. “It’s Steph.”
“Steph,” Xochitl’s voice says. “You called me from your old phone. I figured there had to be a reason. But you haven’t been picking up.”
“Mom disappeared last night,” I say. “She left me a note to get in touch with you. She said she’d do the same and you could tell us where to meet. Do you know where she is?”
There’s a long pause.
“Xochitl,” I say. “Please tell me my mom’s been in touch with you.”
“The only call I got was from you,” Xochitl says. “When did you last see her?”
“Last night,” I say. “Thanks. Please let me know right away if you hear from her.” I hang up to scroll through the phone and see whether I missed calls from my mom, too. She’d have thought of the flip phone, surely; she’d have known I might go get it, and if she knew our smartphones were compromised …
There are eight calls from Xochitl’s number. But there are also texts. Many, many texts.
Last fall, when I was on the run from my father, I got several messages from a mystery number. I never figured out who had sent them, because they weren’t signed, and they weren’t from a number I recognized—they were offering help, but in a cryptic way. I’ve more or less been assuming for a while that they were from Rajiv.
The texts are from that same number.
Stephanie, we need to talk.
Stephanie, please listen to me.
Stephanie, we need to talk about a topic of intense mutual interest.
Stephanie, you were supposed to stay close to your mother for a reason.
“CheshireCat,” I say. “I think Rajiv has my mom.”
Jenny pulls the car into a parking lot, shifts into park, puts on the emergency brake, and turns around to look at the three of us in the back seat.
“Steph,” she says. “Who is CheshireCat, and why did they know that the explosion was about to happen?”
Oh. I suppose that’s a really excellent question, from her POV. “CheshireCat is a hacker,” I say.
“Their voice always sounds like that,” Glenys offers.
“They helped us get Glenys out,” Nell adds.
I’m not sure any of this is helping.
“How did this person know about the explosion?” Jenny asks. “Before it happened?”
“If I may explain,” CheshireCat says through my phone, “I was attempting to locate Nell via security cameras and realized that our foes here were keeping her hidden from me by tampering
