The Bronze King by Suzy McKee Charnas

we’re going to need all the power we can get hold of.”
    â€œWhere are you going now?” I said.
    â€œDowntown. They got some places you can sleep.”
    Joel got red in the face. “You mean those flophouses for bums? That’s not—you don’t belong—I think you should come home with me. My folks would be pleased to put you up. I’ll explain—”
    â€œExplain what?” said Paavo, rubbing at the side of his neck and looking at Joel patiently. He rubbed that same place often, and I’d noticed a sort of darkish mark like a bruise there.
    â€œWell, I don’t have to say anything about the kraken or any of that,” Joel said. “See, my dad takes in—extends his hospitality to all kinds of musical people. He’d be honored to have you stay over, honest.”
    Paavo thought about it, looking unfocused and tired. He shook his head. “Thanks, but I better not. Things could get to be a problem.”
    He downed the last of his coffee and dug around in his pockets, and then he turned to me and he said, “Val, you got something for a tip?”
    Without a word Joel and I emptied our pockets and shoved this pathetic pile of change over to him.
    â€œThanks,” he said. He took the money, left a tip, and stood up. “Tomorrow,” he said. “After school. Grant’s Tomb.”
    I said, “What if something comes up in the meantime? How can we find you?”
    â€œYou know how to get in touch,” he said. “It’s a little clumsy, but it’s the best we can do.”
    I drew a panicky blank. Then I remembered: Water. Silver. I nodded.
    He left.
    â€œHe should have come home with me,” Joel muttered.
    â€œDon’t you know anything?” I said. “He’s worried that the kraken or the Princes might get after him, and he didn’t want to take a chance on your parents getting caught in the middle. Or you.”
    â€œI can take care of myself,” he said. “I did okay with the Princes, didn’t I? You’d have been in real hot water if I hadn’t been along.”
    â€œListen, Joel,” I said, “let’s just remember whose business this all is, all right? Paavo is here because I got in touch, because of what my grandmother told me.”
    â€œOh boy,” he said, “we’re trying to save the world here, and you’re getting possessive.”
    â€œYou’re the one who’s acting possessive,” I said.
    Joel stared at the door after Paavo. “God, if only I could get him to play for my father!”
    I walked out and went home.

 
    9
Grounded
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    T HERE WAS LOTS AND LOTS of homework to do. I hadn’t exactly been keeping up with my assignments. The weekend was only one day away, finally, so I hoped I’d have time to get to everything then.
    If there was a weekend. If the kraken didn’t gobble everything up first.
    Mom called from her office downtown, checking up on me: where had I been, when she’d expressly told me to come home and stay there? Fight, yell, hang up, trouble later, but she didn’t know anything new. There was no way she could find out I’d been with Joel and Paavo unless her spy network caught me again. I figured the odds on that one were in my favor for a change.
    I sat home and read the paper (we got our deliveries again after that disastrous Times- less Sunday). It had stories about a subway train that had derailed itself somehow and injured a lot of passengers, and about the collapse of a new section of the West Side Highway. Could these things be due to the kraken flexing its muscles? I sat and shivered with the paper jiggling in my hands, because I knew they were. The kraken was getting ready to come out. In the meantime it was making these forays in the subway and the sewer passages and the conduits for power and water and all that stuff.
    This was my first experience with a secret so huge and