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yesterday to see Bat Lady.
    It was back.
    I waited for the bald guy with the freshly shaved head to get out. He didn’t. The bell would ring in another minute or two. What did they want now?
    I started toward the black car. When I got closer, the back door opened. I slid inside. The bald guy was there. The divider was up so once again I couldn’t see who was driving.
    “Hello, Mickey,” Shaved Head said.
    I had had enough of him and his sudden appearances. “Would you mind telling me your name?”
    “How are you feeling?” he asked me.
    “Fantastic. Who are you?”
    “We understand Rachel was shot.”
    I waited for him to say more. He didn’t. I studied his face. He was younger than I’d first thought. Thirty, thirty-five at the most. He had strong hands and sharp cheekbones, and he spoke with an accent I usually associated with snooty prep schools.
    “Wait a second,” I said. “Is Rachel getting shot related to you guys?”
    “You guys?” he said.
    “The Abeona Shelter.”
    I had recently learned that my parents were not merely fun-loving nomads who traveled the world and did the occasional good deed. They ran covert operations to rescue children in danger as members of a clandestine organization called the Abeona Shelter.
    Abeona was the Roman goddess who protected children. The organization’s secret symbol was the Tisiphone Abeona—a rather exotic butterfly with what looked like eyes on both wings.
    I found the butterfly in that photograph of the hippies at Bat Lady’s house. I found another in one of Ema’s tattoos. And I found yet another at my father’s gravesite.
    Bat Lady seemed to be the leader. Shaved Head worked for the organization too. And now, it seemed, the Abeona Shelter had recruited my friends and me. Two days ago, we rescued a girl from a terrible fate. But it hadn’t been easy.
    “It seems apparent,” Shaved Head said, “that you’ve become very fond of Rachel Caldwell.”
    “So?”
    “So how fond?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Has she given you anything?”
    I made a face. “Like what?”
    “A gift. A package. Anything.”
    “No. Why would she do that?”
    Shaved Head said nothing.
    “What’s going on here?” I asked. “Why was Rachel shot?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I don’t believe you,” I said.
    “Believe what you will. These are the risks we all take.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “You take risks. She warned you about that.” She. He meant the Bat Lady. “But you can walk at any time.”
    “I don’t understand. Why were we chosen to join you?”
    He shrugged and looked out the window past me. “Why are any of us chosen?”
    “That’s deep, really, but you’re avoiding the question. Spoon, Ema, Rachel, me—why us?”
    “Why you?” He continued to look out the window. His jaw clenched and for a moment, he looked totally lost. Then he added something that surprised me: “Why me?”
    The bell rang. He opened the door.
    “Hurry back to class,” he said. “You don’t want to be late. And, Mickey?”
    “What?”
    “Whatever you do, don’t talk to your uncle about us.”

CHAPTER 10
    Giggles from random classmates accompanied Spoon as he approached my locker at the end of the school day.
    I just stared at him for a moment. Then I said, “What are you wearing?”
    Spoon frowned. “What does it look like?”
    “It looks like surgical scrubs.”
    “Exactly,” Spoon said. He smiled widely. “It’s the perfect disguise to get us into the hospital. I can pretend to be a doctor, see?”
    I’m tall—six-four—and I weigh about two hundred pounds. Spoon was small in pretty much every way. He was the kind of thin that looked too fragile, like a strong wind might snap a bone. His glasses were never quite on straight and looked too big for his face.
    I can easily pass for older than sixteen. Spoon could still buy movie tickets as a “child under twelve” without making the cashier bat an eye.
    “So are we going to see