“Vultures. Parasites.” He picked up the machete again, hefted it in his hands. “I’m sure our man’s got an excellent reason for his sabbatical.”

Our man. I began to wonder what Saltzman’s deal was. Not even Hale was this devoted an employee of the Trust. The caretaker of the New Haven tomb regularly called us on our bullshit. If we were too loud, or left a mess in the kitchen, or dared to skimp on coaster usage in the library, we were sure to get an earful in the next memo sent to our private Phimalarlico e-mail accounts.

“Have you been getting it bad up at the school?” he asked me.

I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean?”

“You know. For jumping to his defense and all. You’re the newspaper girl, right? Any backlash in the letters column?”

Um… “Backlash?”

“For your articles.”

Oh. My theoretical articles defending him. Of course. Well, this one didn’t require a lie. “I actually worked on the literary journal. We…stay out of politics, for the most part.”

“Oh.” He frowned. “Literary journal? That’s a new one for us, isn’t it?”

He had no idea.

“You might think about doing something, though. I’m sure the Eli Daily would take a guest editorial.”

“I’m sure,” I agreed, turning toward the door. Get me out of here. “I’m going to go check out the library. Thanks so much for showing me the tomb, sir.”

“Anytime, young lady,” he waved at me with his knife. “I’m going to get back to trimming those weeds.”

I guess that was indeed the proper purpose of a machete. Oddly enough, it was the least sketchy thing about the man. At the door, we went our separate ways, and I walked a little more quickly than necessary up to the main house, hoping that someone else had woken early.

Turns out, someone had. I entered the rec room and found Darren Gehry idly racking up the balls at the billiard table.

“Hey,” I said, stopping short just inside the room.

“Hey,” he replied.

“How you doing?”

He shrugged. “You okay?”

“Are you kidding?” I smiled. “I’m totally a celebrity. No one could stop talking about my little adventure yesterday.”

“Oh.” He looked down at the cue ball. “That’s…cool.”

I pointed at the table. “Want to play?”

“Do you think we’ll be too loud?”

“Good point.” I imagined the crack of the balls shattering the stillness of the Florida morning. “Darts, then?”

As Darren set up the board, I sifted around for topics of conversation that didn’t start off “So, sucks about your dad, huh?”

“Didn’t see you at dinner last night,” I finally said.

“We eat as a family,” he said. “We’ve got our own kitchen and all.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“Mom doesn’t wake up till late, though, so I usually get breakfast down here when the kitchen is serving. It’s much nicer. French toast and stuff.” He flicked a dart at the board, and it landed in double twenty. I had a ringer on my hands. “They’re supposed to do pancakes today.”

“Ooh, pancakes. Sounds great.” I watched him throw two more darts in quick succession, all closer to the center than I’d have predicted, then took my place at the line. My first throw went wide. “You’re much better than me,” I admitted.

“Nothing to do here,” he said. “I practice a lot.”

“What are you doing about school?” Oh, crap. I shouldn’t let on that I knew he’d been taken out of his school back in D.C. My second dart bounced off the board and landed in the carpet. I suck.

He frowned. “I’m not really supposed to talk about personal stuff.”

If I were his age, would my parents trust me with the kind of truth the Gehrys were facing? And regardless of the adults’ wishes, would I have the right to know? “Sorry, I don’t mean to—”

“Whatever. I’m homeschooled for now. But it’s pretty much a joke. I’m not doing anything. It’s not like we have a chemistry lab in the house. I do some math problems, read a couple of books.”

“What are you reading?” My third shot hit the mark underneath the three. Woo-hoo!

He gestured to the shelves around us. “You’re looking at it. Actually, I’m supposed to be picking something new right now.”

So I was contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Though I doubted this was the first time he’d played darts rather than reading. “Do you want any recommendations? I’m a Literature major, so I’ve pretty much read it all.” I retrieved my darts and wrote down my pathetic score.

“Sure.” Darren took his place at the line and I wandered over to the bookshelves. “Not now, though.”

“Why?”

He gestured with the dart. “I wouldn’t want to hit you.”

Right. I backed away and watched Darren hit two more doubles and one in the outer ring of the bull’s-eye. This was going to be a massacre.

“Are you going on the snorkeling trip today?” I asked him as he retrieved his darts and made marks on the scoreboard.

“There’s a snorkeling trip?” he asked.

Well, that answered that. God, this kid had to be going stir-crazy. He wandered over to the bookshelves and I took it as a cue to delay my turn at the board, since if he was worried about hitting me, he had to be terrified, given my wild aim.

“So what do you suggest?”

Go with the obvious. “Catcher in the Rye?”

He snorted. “Everyone says that. I read it, like, three years ago.”

Oh, a challenge. I smiled. “Did you like it?”

“It was okay. I’m reading Nietzsche right now.”

Like good disaffected fourteen-year-old boys everywhere. “Which one?”

“Genealogy of Morals.”

“How are you liking that?”

“Easier going than Kant.”

I laughed, and, as he’d moved away from the board, risked making a toss with the dart. It landed right outside the outer bull’s-eye ring.

“Good throw!” Darren said.

My next shot hit right above the “4” in fourteen. “I had a German Lit prof who said it was easier to learn German, then read Kant, than it was to read him in English.”

“Well, I’m not going to learn German on this island.”

Especially if he didn’t make it into the tomb here. “I specialize in fiction anyway. I mostly only read philosophy for background material. My Aristotle is less morals and more poetics.”

“I hate Aristotle. I find his tone to be remarkably jejune.” He looked at me as if I was supposed to contradict him. To act shocked. Yeah, this was the kid of an Eli student. A Digger, too. I don’t think I’d even seen that word since I took the SATs.

I threw my last shot (wide) and went to collect my darts. “Let’s see, what should you read?” I wandered over to the shelves. Who stocked these things? The bulk of the titles were your usual paperback thrillers of the Clancy and Grisham variety. Stephen King. Heinlein. Krakauer. Beach reads for boys on vacation. No romance, but I didn’t expect it, what with the usual demographics of the island’s visitors. Farther along were a few hardcovers of the classics. Tristram Shandy, of course. I’d have to show it to Harun. A dusty copy of Pilgrim’s Progress. Gag. War and Peace, my old nemesis. Several Dickenses, Tom Jones, Robinson Crusoe (natch!)—

I caught sight of a dart whizzing past from the corner of my eye. “Hey!” I cried, turning around.

He lifted his shoulders. “Oops. Sorry. I forgot.”

I looked back at the board. He’d hit the bull’s-eye. “Good shot.” I held up a thick paperback. “What about Catch-22?

He looked down at the darts in his hand. “Do you think—?”

The door opened. “Amy!” Demetria called. “There you are.” Half my club trooped in, looking famished and beachy. Everyone wore bathing suits and the appropriate cover-ups (except for Clarissa, whose itsy-bitsy pink bikini and white mesh cover-up were hardly G-rated), sunglasses, and hats, and smelled strongly of suntan lotion. Ben even had zinc smeared on his nose.

I suddenly felt way overdressed in my shorts, sports bra, tank top, and sneakers.