Bonfire Masquerade Read online

  I started shoving my things in my bag. Joe laughed into his walkie-talkie.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get her in the garage. Meet me there when you can.”

  At seventeen, Sara Schulenberg was the youngest, and possibly the most accomplished, jewel thief in all of Europe. She’d been known to walk into stores pretending to be royalty, or a famous rock star, and demand to try on their most expensive pieces. Once the jewels were on, she pulled out her signature pink diamond-studded pistol, tied up the employees, and disappeared onto the streets. Joe and I had been on her trail for a week, ever since she’d pulled off a daring daylight raid in Poland. We’d tracked her to this Parisian hotel, where the French police were planning a sting this very evening. But she must have gotten word somehow, and now she was on the run.

  I debated heading to the garage to help Joe, or staying here in case she doubled back, when my earpiece came to life with Joe’s voice.

  “I forgot, what’s the thing she stole?” asked Joe.

  “It’s called the Szczerbiec. It’s the last remaining piece of the crown jewels of Poland.”

  “Is it by any chance a big sword?”

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly there was a blast of static from my earpiece. I heard Joe shout.

  “Joe? Joe? Nuts!”

  My earpiece was dead. I grabbed my bag and took off running for the garage. Hopefully Joe would be there … in one piece.

  I rounded the corner and leaped over the short gate that blocked off the entrance to the underground parking lot. From inside, I could hear the clang of metal against stone, and the sound of two people breathing hard. I raced down to find Joe flat on his back, with Sara standing over him. He tried to scramble to his feet, but Sara swung the sword in a vicious arc at his leg. He rolled, and the sword hit the ground. He tried to get up again, but Sara recovered quickly. She struck, coming even closer to hitting him. It was only a matter of time before she got him.

  “Hey!” I yelled, hoping to distract Sara. She turned, and I ran right toward her. I lowered my shoulder and braced myself for a good old body check.

  Unfortunately, I hadn’t accounted for the motor oil spilled on the ground. My legs flew out from under me and I landed on my back, right at Sara’s feet.

  “Ha!” She laughed, an almost dainty sound. She was tiny, barely five foot two, and the sword was nearly as big as she was. But she knew how to use it. She hefted it overhead and swung it down on my stomach.

  Thankfully, when I fell, my backpack had swung around, and now it was in the way. The impact hurt like crazy, and I’d have an awful bruise in the morning, but at least I was in one piece. Even better, her sword was tangled in the straps!

  “Gotcha!” I yelled. I wrapped my arms around the bag and rolled to the right, wrenching the sword out of her hands.

  “Joe, I’ve got the sword!”

  As I scrambled to all fours Joe jumped to his feet and tackled Sara. They went down in a heap. And just like that, Sara went from cat burglar to captured burglar.

  “I can’t believe they wouldn’t even let me keep the sword for, like, a day,” said Joe for the hundredth time. We were back in Bayport, and Sara was behind bars. The jewels of Europe were once again safe for models and princesses.

  “Well, it is one of a kind,” I reminded him.

  “So am I,” Joe smirked.

  I picked up half of my calculus textbook, which had saved me from Sara’s blow and been cut in two in the process, and tossed it at Joe’s head. He ducked, just as I had hoped he would. I whipped the second half of the textbook out and hit him in the shoulder.

  “Ow,” he said. “I never did like calculus.” He rubbed his wounded shoulder.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get back to me beating you in the game, too.”

  I kicked a controller toward him. We were halfway through the new ZOMG Kill V, and I was determined to beat him on this one, since he had destroyed me in ZOMG Kill IV. But before we could get started, there was a knock at the door.

  “Boys!” came our mother’s voice. “I have great news.”

  I opened the door and let in my parents. They were both smiling ear to ear. And if I didn’t miss my guess, Dad’s grin had a bit of an extra gleam to it. I started to get that tickle in my stomach that spelled a mission.

  There goes ever learning calculus, I thought. But all I said was, “Hey, Mom! Hey, Dad! What’s up?”

  Joe shoved the two halves of my textbook underneath the desk as our parents walked in. That would not be easy to explain to Mom, who was still in the dark about our “extracurricular” activities with ATAC. Luckily, she was too excited to notice.

  “We’ve decided we need a family vacation. So we’re heading to New Orleans for Mardi Gras!”

  Mom pulled a whole bunch of shiny beaded necklaces from her purse and tossed them to us.

  “All right!” yelled Joe. “This is awesome.”

  I couldn’t help but grin. I’d always wanted to check out New Orleans. The architecture, the voodoo, the swamps, the food! This was going to be great.

  “Your mother and I have already talked to your teachers about the schoolwork you’re going to miss,” Dad broke in on our cheering. “So you’re both going to have to write a paper about New Orleans while we’re there—and yes, that will require you both to spend some time at the library, doing research.”

  Dad winked as he said this, and I knew that tickle in my stomach was correct. We were on a mission. It wasn’t often that our parents came with us, but I guess ATAC was running low on cover stories after so many missions in a row.

  “To help you prepare, we got you this.” Dad tossed me a DVD. It was labeled “New Orleans: City of History, City of Mystery.” ATAC often hid our mission briefings in video games and DVDs, so I couldn’t wait to check it out.

  “Also, most of the hotels we were looking at were pretty booked up with Mardi Gras and all,” Dad continued. “So we had to get rooms in two different hotels on the same block.”

  Joe shot me a glance. That clinched it, this was definitely a mission. Being in a separate hotel would give us enough freedom to do … well, whatever ATAC needed us to do. And there was no way he would have allowed it otherwise.

  “We’ll leave you boys to get packing,” Mom said.

  With that, they left. Joe had the ZOMG Kill V out and the new DVD in almost before the door was closed.

  A menu screen popped up with an image of a carriage horse walking down a wide street, with beautiful old buildings on either side.

  “What’s this?” said Joe.

  “Look at it closely,” I said.

  The menu options read:

  Architecture of New Orleans

  The Voodoo Queens

  Attractions & Festivals

  City History

  “ATAC!” he shouted suddenly. He scrolled straight down the menu. After City History, he hit down again, and a new screen was revealed.

  This depicted a very different New Orleans. It looked like the same street, but after a devastating fire. The main building on the street had been totally destroyed, and the ones on either side were scorched and smeared with smoke marks. There was just one option on this screen: “Mission.”

  Joe clicked on the button, and Vijay, our old friend and fellow ATAC agent, popped up on the screen.

  “Hey, guys. Looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?” He pointed behind him, to the photo of the burned street. “It gets worse.” Behind him, the image changed to another burned-out building. Then another. And another. And another.

  “There have been a dozen robberies in New Orleans over the course of the last year. Each has happened during one of the city’s many street festivals. Witnesses say that the people responsible have been wearing carnival masks and costumes, and they look just like normal partygoers up until they start breaking windows and smashing locks.”

  A list of addresses and names began scrolling behind Vijay.

  “The perpetrators have burned each building to
the ground after robbing it, so the police haven’t been able to find any clues. And nothing seems to link the different robberies. They are in every neighborhood in the city, and include rich private citizens, a hardware store, a warehouse, and a tiny deli. From some of the robberies they’ve probably taken home tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of cash and merchandise. From others, almost nothing. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  The screen behind Vijay changed again. This time, it showed a street full of thousands upon thousands of masked revelers.

  “Mardi Gras is in less than a week. It’s one of the biggest street parties in the United States. More than a million people are expected to visit New Orleans over the course of a week, for dozens of parades, parties, and general celebration. The New Orleans police are already overextended. They’ll have no time to look for the gang responsible for these robberies. And there’s no doubt that whoever these people are, they’re gearing up for Mardi Gras as well.”

  The screen behind Vijay dissolved, and now he was standing in the control room of ATAC’s headquarters.

  “New Orleans needs help. Your mission is to find this gang, get in with them, and stop them before they strike again. You’ll be on your own for this one. Any contact with the New Orleans police might give you away. Whoever these people are, they know the city, and they’re going to be hard to infiltrate. Good luck.”

  The screen went black. The DVD stopped spinning. I turned to Joe. This was going to be a tough mission.

  Joe was smiling.

  “Know what this means?” he said. “Party Gras!”

  Joe always knows how to look on the bright side.

  CHAPTER 3

  NANCY IT’S MY PARTY AND I’LL DIE IF I WANT TO

  “We are definitely not in River Heights anymore!” squeaked Bess as we got off the plane at Louis Armstrong International Airport. The airport’s speaker system piped in jazz and zydeco, and the spicy smell of boiled crawfish hung in the air.

  “All right, Nancy, Bess, George, listen up for a minute.” We all turned to face my dad as he pulled a series of papers from his briefcase.

  “These have all the pertinent information you’ll need for the trip. We’ll be staying on St. Ann Street, in the French Quarter, in my friend Daniel’s house. He assures me he has room for all of us.”

  “The French Quarter.” Bess sighed. “Even just the name is romantic.”

  “Yes, well, romantic or not, it’s where we’re staying. Here’s a map of the area, as well as the address and phone number. I’ve also listed a few nearby tourist attractions—the Contemporary Arts Center, the Old U.S. Mint—and some decently priced restaurants. I trust I can leave finding the parades up to you.”

  This was typical Carson Drew. My dad was a lawyer through and through. He had a real talent for organization. Every vacation we went on he had a binder full of itineraries and maps. Sometimes I wish I’d inherited more of that from him.

  “Thanks, Mr. Drew,” said George and Bess, as they took their copies and we made our way to the taxi stand.

  Dad had the taxi take a leisurely route, so we could get a view of the entire city. We glided past elegant mansions in the Garden District. They all had huge columns and big front lawns. They looked like something straight out of a movie set.

  We also passed through neighborhoods that were still destroyed from Hurricane Katrina.

  “After the storm,” said George, reading from a guidebook, “the population of the city went down by nearly two hundred thousand people.”

  “No wonder so many of these houses are empty,” I whispered. It gave the city a spooky feel, the way you could go from such beautiful houses to such abandoned ones.

  “Look,” yelled Bess suddenly, “a graveyard!”

  Bess was right: We were gliding past an elegant cemetery filled with row after row of mausoleums.

  “Do you know why our cemeteries look like that, why there are no gravestones?” our taxi driver chimed in from the front seat.

  We all shook our heads.

  “Because the river is too strong. The water is right underneath the surface, all throughout the city. Can’t really bury anything. It’s also why there aren’t very many cellars or basements here.” He drove us past the Mississippi, but it was hard to see the river because of the levees, which kept it from overflowing and blocked the view.

  “We call New Orleans the Crescent City, because of the shape of the river,” our driver told us. “Everything is described as being toward the river, or away from it. The river, and the shipping business that went with it, created this city.”

  Finally we arrived in the French Quarter. The streets here were narrow, and there were horses pulling carriages full of tourists all over the place. People seemed dressed up for no particular reason—top hats, vintage dresses, wigs.

  “Are people getting ready for Mardi Gras?” I asked, when a group of people in tutus and pink wigs passed us.

  Our driver laughed again. “We are always getting ready for Mardi Gras, chérie. But in New Orleans, people get dressed up for the sheer joy of it all the time.”

  “OMG, is that a wig store across the street?” asked Bess. “I think I’m in love.” I could see her planning her outfits already.

  “Carson!” A shout came from the wide porch of the house in front of which we had stopped. A man in a white linen suit came bounding down the steps. He had to be Daniel Brumfield.

  Within a few seconds, he had paid for our cab and was helping unload the bags. He waved off Dad’s money, insisting it was his pleasure. Once the car was unloaded, he turned to us.

  “And you must be the three charming young ladies Carson told me to expect. Nancy—I’d recognize you anywhere. Your mother’s eyes.” He put his hand to my chin and gave a wicked smile. “I always said Carson was blessed you didn’t get your looks from his side of the family.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “And by the fabulous outfit I surmise this must be Bess? And George—I hear you are a whiz with computers, eh? I might have a few questions for you. But first, let’s get you all settled in!”

  His house was a four-story townhouse, with a beautiful and ornate black iron balcony curling around each floor. Inside it was all dark wood and slow-moving ceiling fans. The house would have felt like a model home from the 1800s, if it wasn’t for the bright modern paintings that filled the walls.

  “Is that a real Warhol?” George gasped, pointing at a tropically colored painting of Marilyn Monroe.

  “I’ll show you around the collection this evening, no worries,” replied Daniel with a twinkle in his eye.

  “I’m afraid, Carson,” he went on, “that I lost some of my best pieces in the fire. And now I’m having terrible trouble getting the warehouse rebuilt. You know I don’t believe in this stuff, but the workers say they think the site is haunted. Or cursed! I truly don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Daniel paused and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “But we can talk about all of this later. I’m giving a pre-Mardi Gras ball tonight in your honor, and I’m sure you need time to get ready. Yvette! Come and show the girls to their suite.”

  An elegantly dressed older woman with short, spiky hair poked her head over the railing of the master staircase. “Order me around like that again and I’ll frame your head and put it over the fireplace.” She smiled at us. “Pay no attention to my brother, girls. Grab your bags and come on up. I’ve heard so much about you three, it’s my pleasure to have you as our guests.”

  Yvette brought us to the top floor of the building. “Your suite awaits,” she said.

  She pointed to a door covered by a framed painting of a woman, which had been done in the style of an old-time comic strip.

  “I think that’s a for-real Lichtenstein,” whispered Bess, as I opened the door. Then we all gasped in surprise.

  The room behind the door couldn’t have been less in keeping with the rest of the house. It looked like a Japanese cartoon. Everyt
hing was plastic, curved, and bubblegum colored.

  Yvette laughed at the shock on our faces.

  “Daniel and I inherited this house from our parents, but we like to think we’ve made our own little mark on it. Good luck finding your beds, girls. The ball begins at eight. Just in case, I took the liberty of having a few things made in your sizes. They’re hanging in the closet.”

  Yvette shut the door behind us.

  “What did she mean, good luck finding the beds?” asked George. She pointed to three large square beds against one wall. “They’re right there.”

  I walked over and tapped on one of the beds. It was hard as a rock. Inset all along its side were thin drawers, like in a map case at a library. I pulled one open and found a purple silk evening gown that looked to be Bess’s size.

  “These aren’t beds, they’re closets!”

  With a little more exploring, nothing turned out to be what it seemed. The flat-screen television hanging on one wall was really a fish tank filled with miniature octopuses, while the window on the wall across from it was really the television. The beds, however, remained resolutely hidden.

  I scanned the room, thinking. An idea came to me. I walked carefully across the room until something felt different beneath my feet.

  “Here they are!” The beds had been built flush with the floor, and the mattresses were customized to look just like the rug, but softer. You wouldn’t know they were there until you stepped on them.

  After a little more exploring, we got down to the serious work of getting ready for the evening. Thankfully, Bess was there to decode the many options and get us ready. She chose three of the simpler dresses from the many Yvette had assembled. Although each was a different color (blue for me, green for George, and purple for Bess), all three had the long, clean lines of an elegant evening gown. It was possibly the most grown-up outfit I’d ever worn.

  George took one look at herself in the mirror and sighed. “This outfit basically guarantees I’m going to spill food on myself at some point tonight.”

  “Only eat green things,” Bess advised.