Charlie Hernández & the League of Shadows Read online

  “You know, this whole ski-jacket-in-the-summer thing kind of reminds me of this loco story my mom told me,” Sam said. “Last year, a friend of hers started wearing winter coats in July after giving birth to triplets. Then she started carpooling and . . .” He suddenly trailed off, his gaze drifting over my shoulder.

  “Is this supposed to be a cliff-hanger or something?” Alvin asked, giving Sam a funny look. But Sam didn’t answer; he just kept on staring, and it took me a couple seconds to realize he was actually looking at something. Or someone.

  I spun around and saw Violet Rey coming up behind me, her glittery JanSport over one shoulder, her big purple cheer bag over the other. I thought there was a hint of a smile on her pretty pink lips, but I could have just as easily been imagining it.

  “Hey, Charlie. What’s up?” she said.

  “Nothing much, Violet. . . . Wh-what’s up with you?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Alvin and Sam with stupid, OMG expressions plastered across their faces; Alvin looked like he’d swallowed a dinosaur egg and realized it had just hatched in his stomach. I couldn’t exactly blame them.

  Violet held up a finger and crooked it at me. “Think we can chat for a sec? Alone?”

  “Uh, sure . . .”

  We walked a little way together, and once we were out of earshot of the guys, she whispered, “So, when are you going to find out where the map leads?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t really gonna,” I lied.

  “What?” She sounded like I’d just told her to paint her face green and start cheering for the G. W. Carver Hornets, one of our rival schools. “What do you mean you weren’t really gonna?”

  “Don’t get me wrong; it’s cool and all. But I don’t think it’s going to lead to some . . . undiscovered treasure or whatever.”

  “And you’re not even a little curious to find out where it does lead?”

  “Not really,” I said. But that was an even bigger lie. Of course I was curious. I mean, how could I not be? Just a few hours ago I’d found a map inside the only thing on the planet that I had left of my parents. A map that also, by the way, happened to have a big decorative stamp of horns and feathers on it. But I simply couldn’t let her get involved. With my current feather situation, now was not the time to be making new friends—especially ones as popular as Violet Rey.

  “You’re so lying right now,” she said, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “Wh-what would give you that impression?”

  “Yeah, I wonder. . . .” She rolled her eyes. “And why are you still wearing that ridiculous jacket? You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  “I . . . heard there was a cold front coming.”

  “So why don’t you wait for it to actually get here?”

  “Because I like to . . . be . . . prepared.” I winced, wondering just how stupid I could make myself look in a sixty-second conversation. My guess was very.

  “Fine.” Violet crossed her arms over her cheer jersey. “But I should warn you that I’m a curious girl, Charlie Hernández. A very curious girl. And the fact that you’re being all dodgy is only making me even more curious.”

  “I—I’m sorry?”

  She eyed me for another moment, then dragged a hand through her thick blond bangs. “Charlie, your feathers are showing,” she said with a sigh.

  “My what? ” I nearly shrieked. I looked down and saw it was true—a couple of feathers were poking out of the cuff of my sleeve. “My jacket’s got a little rip,” I said, quickly stuffing them back in. “I’ve been trying to get it fixed for a while now, but my, uh, tailor’s on vacation. . . . You know tailors.” I could hear the fear in my voice, could feel the sentences spewing out like vomit, but couldn’t seem to shut myself up. “I’m not stressing, though. I’ve heard things like that can happen to even the best winter coats. They say it’s quite common, actually.”

  Violet gave me a doubtful look. “Who would tell you something like that?”

  “Just . . . people.” My cheeks felt like they were on fire; my face was probably redder than a habanero chili pepper.

  Her eyes never left mine. “Right.”

  And just then, a miracle happened.

  Honk! Honnnnnk!

  Sam’s mom pulled up to the edge of the PE field, saving me from the Violet Inquisition. (Which was beginning to feel even more intense than the Spanish one where they burned people at the stake.)

  She honked again, then rolled down her window and shouted, “C’mon, guys! I’m gonna be late for hot Pilates!”

  “That’s my ride,” I said to Violet. “Gotta run . . .”

  She fixed me with those brilliant baby blues. “Don’t think this is over, Charlie. I’m going to be keeping my eye on you . . . both eyes.” Then she made a gun gesture with her fingers and fired it at me.

  Ay, que bueno. My very first psycho stalker. “ ’Kay.” Swallowing hard, I gave her an awkward wave and then hurried after the guys.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The entire car ride home the guys pestered me with questions about Violet: What did she want? What did she say? What does her breath smell like? Glitter? Cupcakes? Chocolate-frosted fairy dust? Unfortunately for them, I wasn’t in a question-answering mood. And fortunately for me, the whole trip took less than five minutes, as Sam’s mom broke almost every traffic law known to man, blowing through stop signs and traffic lights, weaving madly from lane to lane, honking and hollering at anyone who dared to get in her way.

  Honestly, after all I’d been through today, I was just glad to be alone, glad to be off school property, and glad to be home—even if that home wasn’t my real home.

  Mrs. Wilson—my temporary guardian—lived in a small two-story bungalow half-hidden behind a tangle of mango trees and crooked palms with their trunks painted white. The house was an oldie from the fifties, and even though she’d spent the last five months remodeling it, the place still showed its age, with sagging gutters, creaky wood floors, and old-school jalousie windows that protested with an annoyingly loud groan when cranked open.

  Mrs. Wilson was in the living room, dusting her dolls, when I walked in. Like the house, Mrs. Wilson was getting up there in years—and by getting up there I mean she’d probably shared a carriage with Benjamin Franklin at some point in her life. She had a dandelion fluff of frizzy white hair and skin so crinkly it reminded me of an old photograph someone had folded and unfolded too many times. Her back was a little hunched and her legs were a little wobbly, but her eyes were still a sharp, piercing green and didn’t miss much. Didn’t miss any dust particles on her dolls, that was for sure.

  “Oh, hello there, dear,” she said when she heard the door close. “How was school?”

  “Hot.” I armed sweat off my face. “Very hot.”

  She set her duster down and smoothed the front of her floral-print nightgown. (Mrs. Wilson was an early sleeper and therefore always in a nightgown.) “Maybe that’s because you’re wearing a snow jacket,” she said, catching my gaze in the mirror behind the old-fashioned antenna TV.  “Don’t think it’s the right season for one of those.”

  When I didn’t say anything, she gestured around the room at her dolls. “So, this is all of them. What do you think?”

  “It’s . . .” I searched for the right word. “Wow.”

  Over the last few weeks, Mrs. Wilson had been bringing her “prized collection” out of storage. Every couple days, she’d go and fetch another box or two, usually about seven or eight dolls. But today she’d brought home close to forty, and now the living room basically looked like one giant showroom for her vast—and freaky—collection.

  There were literally dolls everywhere—sitting on sofas and armchairs, perched on shelves, staring blankly across the room from pint-size rocking horses and cribs. Some of them were big—well, big for dolls—and sported even bigger smiles, while others were tiny and had terrified expressions on their pale, plastic faces. They wore everything you could imagine, from miniature vaquero jackets to ext
ravagant baiana dresses that must’ve taken months to sew.

  According to Mrs. Wilson, she’d started her collection when she was only five years old and had since traveled the world, buying a doll or two in every country she visited.

  “There are certainly a lot of them,” she said with a proud sort of grin. “But they fit the space quite nicely, no?”

  I nodded, trying to be supportive. “Yeah, very nicely.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot. Are you interested in a little dinner, dear?” She nodded toward the kitchen, where I could smell somthing rich and creamy bubbling away in one of her huge, old-school cast-iron pots. “I whipped up some escargots à la Bourguignonne. That’s snails finished in a delicious herb butter sauce, just like they make in France.”

  “That sounds amazing,” I said, but it was all I could do to keep my tears in check. Ever since I was little, my mom would cook up all kinds of tasty traditional dishes for me. She’d make seafood paellas in the old Spanish way; chiles rellenos using real Mexican chilies; arroz con pollo with the exact spice combination her family had used in Cuba for generations. My mom taught Spanish and Hispanic culture at my school and always said you can learn everything about a people from what they ate. I missed her. A lot. And now, anytime someone mentioned any kind of cultural dish, I missed her even more.

  “I’ll prepare a plate for you,” Mrs. Wilson said, moving past me.

  “Oh, no. Actually, I think I’m gonna have to pass. I have a ton of homework. I’ll just have a Snickers or something if I get hungry.” Usually, just thinking about my parents made me lose my appetite. Today I had even less of an appetite than usual because I was so anxious to take a closer look at that map. And the whole snails-in-butter thing didn’t exactly get my digestive juices doing the salsa either.

  “Candy bars aren’t a real meal, dear,” I heard her call out as I pounded up the creaky stairs to the attic. “You should always try to incorporate multiple food groups.”

  “Don’t worry,” I called back. “I’ll throw in a bag of tortilla chips to get some veggies in. ¡Hasta mañana!”

  • • •

  In my room, I stripped down to my underwear (which were soaked through—TMI, I know) and dropped into the rolling chair in front of the laptop Alvin had let me borrow.

  Then I pulled the map from my pocket, typed the words “horns,” “feathers,” and “map” into my favorite search engine, and hit go.

  Nothing came up—nothing useful, anyway—so I tried my second-favorite search engine, but I didn’t get anything there, either. Not even a page of results this time.

  Sighing, I leaned back in my chair, wondering what to do next. Unable to come up with much, I took a picture of the little horns-and-feathers symbol with my webcam, uploaded it into Google, and ran a reverse image search. Honestly, I really wasn’t expecting to get a hit, but next thing I knew, bingo, I got one! A link to the La Rosa Cemetery website had come up in the results.

  More than a little confused, I clicked it and was greeted by a colorful banner that read, LA ROSA, THE MOST TRUSTED NAME IN ESTATE PLANNING. Below it was the slogan, PICK A PLOT, SECURE YOUR SPOT! It sounded like they were offering cruise reservations, not a six-foot-deep hole in the ground. In the center of the page was some sort of family crest (a shield flanked by two huge birds—eagles, maybe), and inscribed along the edge of the shield was that symbol again—the horns and feathers!

  Interesting . . .

  I browsed the site. There was some history about the place, a little background on its founder—Mr. Juan Garcia, an old Spanish industrialist—and a couple of pages about pricing and payment plans. Nothing jumped out at me (except the half-off sale on coffins—because who doesn’t need to get in on that deal, right?).

  Just when I was about to close the page, I randomly clicked on the directions tab, and an aerial view of the cemetery came up on the screen, freezing me in place.

  It was a mirror image of the map—right down to the little hill in the middle and the long stretches of trees that bordered it.

  At first I couldn’t believe my eyes. But looking at it from this angle, there was no doubt about it. This was a map of the old cemetery up on Bonita Avenue!

  Then something else hit me: Whatever the X marked was inside that cemetery.

  The idea hadn’t even fully formed in my brain, and already I could hear my parents telling me that it was a bad one, my mother saying something like, ¡Mijo, ni lo pienses! Who in their right mind follows a map they found in a locket to a cemetery? It’s stupid. And dangerous. What do you even expect to find?

  And she’d probably be right. It was stupid. And dangerous. Heck, the trip alone was a six-mile bike ride in each direction. Not to mention the fact that the only way there was through a super-shady part of town.

  But as sure as I was that my parents wouldn’t approve, I knew I had to go. If there was any chance of figuring out what was happening to me, any chance of finding my mom and dad, I had to give it a shot. Regardless of the consequences.

  CHAPTER NINE

  That evening I waited for Mrs. Wilson to go to bed—which wasn’t a very long wait, because she tucks in promptly at seven p.m. every night—then waited a little longer for the sun to start going down before I snuck out my bedroom window and headed over to La Rosa. The ride took almost an hour, and by the time I got there, night had fallen and the wind had really picked up, gusting through the narrow two-lane street that curved into the cemetery’s parking lot. Fortunately, I’d put something on to hide the feathers—my own normal, full-size, non-sparkly hoodie this time—so the drop in temperature was more of a relief than anything.

  I laid my bike by the entrance and looked around. The cemetery on Bonita was supposedly one of the oldest establishments in all of Miami. According to their website, it had been founded in the late 1800s, right around the time Miami was declared a city. The graveyard itself, a rolling carpet of ankle-high crabgrass, was surrounded on three sides by tall, spindly trees. A twisted wrought-iron gate guarded the entrance, hanging from a pair of giant rusty hinges. The gate shivered slightly in the breeze, making this sad, high-pitched whine that sounded like a wounded animal. Beyond it, sunken tombstones and towering mausoleums created a haphazard maze of stone and marble that seemed to run on forever. I could hear a chorus of spooky sounds coming from somewhere deep inside—low moans and echoes, creaking branches, and a constant tap-tap-tap on stone—but I told myself it was just the wind. Had to be.

  Still, standing there, staring at this huge, creepy place, I instantly regretted not asking Alvin or Sam to tag along.

  But it was too late now.

  Stuffing my hands into my pockets, I walked in through the main gate (which someone had forgotten to close—if it even closed anymore, that is) and began picking my way around the grave markers, trying not to think about the bodies rotting just six feet under. Wispy tendrils of fog wound through the grounds, creating a freaky 3-D effect. The headstones poked up through the fog like hundreds of crooked teeth. I tried not to think about those, either.

  About twenty yards in, I stopped to check the map. It was dark in here, much darker than by the entrance, but the yellow glow of the streetlamps across the road provided just enough light for me to see. And judging by the little pictures, I wasn’t too far now—another fifteen yards or so and whatever the X marked should come up on my right.

  Almost there, I told myself, pocketing the map. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the low roll of thunder and started walking again, faster, knowing I had to pick up my pace. A storm was coming—if it wasn’t already here. And sometimes when it really poured, Mrs. Wilson would come upstairs to check on me, to make sure the attic wasn’t leaking or something. She was always keeping an eye on me—I guess she felt responsible for my well-being now or whatever—and I appreciated that. The last thing I wanted was for her to walk into an empty room and—

  A flicker of movement to my left drew my eye.

  I whirled in that direction, scanning the shadows
.

  Nada.

  No movement or sound except for the wham-blam-blam of my heart.

  I squinted into the gloom, listening. Still nothing.

  This place is getting to me, I thought. A few more minutes in here and I’ll be seeing a zombified Justin Bieber doing the claws-up move from “Thriller.”

  Up ahead, the branches of the ancient oaks creaked and snapped. I tried not to stare at the creepy mosaic they made against the starless sky, tried to ignore the nagging feeling that I was being watched, followed even.

  “Get it together, chico,” I said out loud. “There’s nothing to be afraid of . . . cero.” But my voice sounded weak and scared even to my own ears. There was a vibe to this place . . . a sort of lurking, uneasy feeling that put a chill in my bones. And even though I knew it was probably all in my head, I also knew I didn’t want to spend one more second in here than I absolutely had to.

  In fact, part of me was already beginning to think I should turn around, when I passed a row of shallow graves and saw something that made me stop in my tracks.

  It was an enormous statue of an angel—a big ol’ tough-looking dude made of solid white marble. He was kneeling down, both wings folded over the top of his head with a serious expression that was all like, Hey, whatchu lookin’ at? One of his huge stony hands was pointing down at the ground, and I could just make out a pair of tiny symbols chiseled into the concrete slab between his legs: two horns and five long feathers. The exact image from the map!

  My skin prickled. This has to be it. . . .

  Just below the symbol, pressed lightly into the concrete, was the vague imprint of a hand. A big one. And smack-dab in the middle of the palm was a tiny gem that seemed to be radiating a dull greenish glow. Without thinking, I stretched out my hand to touch it, and just as I did, that creepy someone’s watching feeling came over me again.