Chaos on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer [bill gates books recommendations txt] 📗

I would desperately like to talk this over with Steph, but she’s on her date with Rachel, and Rachel always asks her to turn off my app, and I don’t want to bother them if it’s not an absolute emergency. But I hear from Steph late on Saturday afternoon with a new concern.

I took another look at that picture from Friday at the Midtown Exchange, she says in a text right after she turns on RideAlong. Look in the background. I think that’s Rajiv.

Face-matching technology is imperfect. And he’s quite a bit older than in the pictures from over a decade ago. But I am 80 percent sure that Steph is correct. Which means Rajiv is in Minneapolis, hanging out in the same place where the Catacombs sent Nell. Coincidence?

And even if it is a coincidence, does Rajiv’s presence put Steph in danger?

I take the new picture and set out to track him down.

16•  Steph  •

On Monday, I take the bus to school for the first time by myself. It’s the city bus, not a school bus, and the trip goes fine. Nell is still being dropped off. She looks downcast and worried, so I greet her by holding out the printout of the satellite image CheshireCat sent me. “My hacker friend thinks they might know where she is.”

Nell’s head snaps up. “Where?” she asks.

“They’re not 100 percent certain,” I say, and lay the piece of paper on a table where we can both look at it. “There’s this place in eastern Wisconsin that has a house and some land. It’s kind of off the grid. The Catacombs holds events there—”

“Yes,” Nell says, her lips tightening. “I’ve been to summer camp there.”

“Glenys’s parents’ car passed through Wausau on January second. My friend doesn’t know for certain that they went all the way to this place, but they headed in that direction around the time Glenys disappeared.”

Nell stares down at the printout desperately. “Does your friend have the address of the camp? I mean, I’ve been there, but I don’t know how to get there.”

“Coordinates.” I tap the corner of the page, and Nell gets out her phone and looks them up, then zooms out to the nearest town, Seton, which appears to consist of a gas station and a convenience store, and then out again to find the nearest city of any size, which is Wausau, fifty miles away. Seton is so small my mother wouldn’t have tried to move us there.

Nell switches to her browser and silently looks up bus fares. There’s a bus from Minneapolis to Wausau, but nothing that runs beyond that. The drive time from Minneapolis to Seton is four hours.

“Have you ever used one of the self-driving taxis?” she asks me.

“Not by myself,” I say.

“I’m just wondering if I could use one to get there. And back. If I had the money, somehow.”

“It would depend on whether there’s good data network coverage in Seton.”

We both look down at the printout, which shows heavy forest all around the compound.

“Could you get help from your father?” I ask.

“He’s not very happy with me at the moment,” she says.

“Why? What happened?”

Nell folds her hands delicately and says, “On Saturday, one of my quests from the Catacombs was to punish my family for being sinners. I figured I might as well punish them for doing something that annoyed me, so on Saturday night, I hid all the dirty dishes behind a bush in the backyard.”

“You hid the dishes?”

“Yes. My father thought it was Thing Three, Thing Three thought it was Thing Two, there was a big fight, it was a mess.”

“But your father’s angry at you?”

“Well, they did eventually figure out it was me, I think. They washed everything, but they think something got carried off by a raccoon; they’re short a dinner plate now.”

“Was that the sort of punishment the Catacombs was expecting you to dish out?”

“Probably not,” she says. “Because they didn’t grant me another question.”

We get rounded up for our morning classes, and I spend my chemistry class thinking about what the Catacombs did want from Nell when they gave her that assignment. I don’t like the possibilities that come to mind. It occurs to me as I’m washing the glassware from the chemistry lab that Hide all the undone dishes would actually be a great Invisible Castle sort of assignment, and it’s weird that on one hand it seems like a funny prank if you’re calling yourself a Mischief Elf while doing it, and really sinister if you are punishing a sinner. Is that just because Nell told me that the Catacombs didn’t seem to like this as a punishment? Or am I a hypocrite? I go to the bathroom before lunch so I can text without Nell peering over my shoulder and text the story to Rachel.

I hear back from her while I’m washing my hands. Punishing slobs for being slobs is one thing. Punishing SINNERS, well, that’s me! Or you! Or Nell! There’s a pause, and then she adds, Punishing slobs could also be us. Or at least me. I mean, let’s be honest about that.

I go get my lunch and sit down with Nell. “Do you know how to drive?” she asks me. “Didn’t you say you know how?”

“I know how to drive, but I haven’t taken driver’s ed and I don’t actually have a permit,” I say. “Didn’t you mention you could test for a license?”

“My practice log was in my mother’s purse when she disappeared. And she’s supposed to sign it before I take the test.”

“Tell me more about the camp,” I say. “Who runs it?”

“Brother Daniel and Brother Malachi. The idea is that it’ll be a safe haven for us when the Antichrist takes over.”

“But it’s also a summer camp?” I unfold the printout again. “Did it have sheds?”

“Oh, it definitely had sheds,” Nell says. “Right by the main house. Which is here.” She taps the largest building. “There’s this path leading into the woods with