9e945bf3b1d705d5d70aa6e5ed9fa2ba

“She’ll be fine,” Walt said. “You’ll see. She’ll be here after school—you can see for yourself then.”

“Oh! Right! I forgot about that,” Polo said, brightening.

“In the meantime, we need to get these coins out of sight. Butterbean, do you think you can carry them into the office? I’d fly them, but… you know. My back,” Oscar said. His back felt fine, but he was done carrying that heavy bag. He was pretty sure it made him look ridiculous.

“Sure,” Butterbean said, grabbing the handle of the bag and pulling it onto the floor. Half of the coins fell out, but Butterbean didn’t worry about that as she dragged the bag toward the office.

“We’ll just gather those up too,” Walt said, batting a gold coin in the direction of the office.

It took much longer to stash the coins away than they’d thought, and when they were through, Polo flopped down on the floor exhausted. “Wake me up when Madison gets here,” she said, closing her eyes.

Marco looked at the clock on the wall and frowned.“Okay, but…” he said, looking worried. “Isn’t she supposed to be back now?”

They all turned and looked at the clock and then at the door. There was no sound from the hallway outside.

Polo looked back at the clock.“Walt?”

Walt’s eyes were still on the door. “She’s late. It’s not a problem.”

“The clock says she should be here,” Polo said.

“My bladder says she should be here,” Butterbean said.

“She’s probably fine,” Marco said weakly. “Maybe they made her stay late?”

“They didn’t make her stay late,” Polo said, standing up. “Something is wrong. I’m going to find out what’s happened.”

Polo turned and marched toward the vent without another word.

“I’m going too,” Marco said, hurrying after her.

“I think you’re overreacting, Polo,” Walt said.

“Well, we’ll see,” Polo said as she climbed into the vent. Marco scurried after her with one last apologetic look at Walt.

“She’s probably fine,” Oscar said, looking out of the window at the street below. He saw lots of adult people, but no small, child-sized people. “It was just a button. Who would even notice that?”

“The Coin Man,” Butterbean said, her head on her paws. She was stationed by the front door, nose pressed to the gap underneath. “The Coin Man will notice.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. She wasn’t part of our plan anyway,” Oscar said. “Not to be mean, but we need to look out for ourselves. We don’t have Mrs. Food to take care of us anymore.”

“If something happens to Madison, we don’t have anybody to take care of us anymore,” Butterbean grumbled. She really needed to pee.

Oscar looked back out of the window. There was no doubt now that something was very wrong. Madison had never been this late.

“Ahem, excuse me?” A small voice came from the direction of the vent. “Knock knock?”

“Who’s there!” Butterbean said, whirling around. A small rat was standing nervously by the couch. And even though he’d said “knock knock,” it didn’t sound like he was telling a joke.

“Um, I’m Wallace. I’m here about Marco and Polo?” Wallace cleared his throat. “I met them in the vents?”

Walt jumped down from the top of the couch and landed next to Wallace, who was visibly startled.“You know Marco and Polo?”

“Um, yes?” Wallace eyed the vent like he was planning to make a dash for it.

“They’re not here, unfortunately. Would you like to wait?” Walt leaned away from the rat. She was trying to be as nonthreatening as possible. Wallace didn’t seem like a rat who’d had a lot of experience with cats. Or at least not good experiences.

Wallace cleared his throat and clutched his hands in front of his chest.“Yes, I realize that. That’s why I came. There seems to be some sort of… incident going on? In the apartment on the top floor? I thought you might like to know.”

“What’s happening?” Oscar flew over and landed on Wallace’s other side. He loomed over the rat, eyeing him carefully. He wasn’t worried about being nonthreatening.

Wallace swallowed.“I’m not sure. I don’t go to those vents. But I saw Marco and Polo go up there, and… well, there’s a lot of noise. Bad sounds. I’m not sure.”

Butterbean pawed at the front door.“Walt! Open! We need to go now!”

“Butterbean, wait.” Oscar turned to Walt. “Maybe Chad can help?”

“I don’t know—Butterbean might be right,” Walt said, looking at Wallace. If he had risked coming to a cat’s apartment, the situation must be bad.

“Maybe we should—” Walt started, but she was cut off by a screeching noise in the vent.

A screeching noise that was coming from Marco.

He skidded into the room and grabbed Walt’s leg, clutching at it in desperation.

“WALT!” he screamed. “It’s Polo! We went to Madison’s apartment to check on her, but she wasn’t there! But there were signs something bad had happened, so we decided to check on the Coin Man, and he got her! He found the button! And it’s bad! Oh, Walt!” Marco sobbed.

Walt put her paws on either side of Marco’s shoulders. “Marco. Calm down. Where’s Polo?”

Marco shook uncontrollably.“Oh, Walt. Polo’s dead!”

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

15

[Êàðòèíêà: img_4]

[Êàðòèíêà: img_34]