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Jonah, who’d only ever ridden a horse once, at Boy Scout camp, could practically hear the hoofbeats.

“Gloucester’s a determined-looking man, you know?” Chip said wistfully. “He always acts like he knows he’s right. And he has a way of saying things that you know are wrong, but he makes you feel like you shouldn’t argue. You don’t think of what you should say back to him until hours later.”

“So, what did he say?” Katherine asked.

“He bowed down to me,” Chip said. “He said I was the king.”

Jonah did a double take.

“What’s wrong with that?” he asked. “I thought you were the king.”

He wondered if he’d missed some huge chunk of this story.

“It was deceitful,” Chip said, his voice wavering. “If Gloucester had just attacked me, straight-out, my soldiers
would have protected me. My chamberlain, Thomas Vaughan, would have given his life for mine. But no, Gloucester goes on and on about how
loyal
he is to me, and how my father left him the task of being my protector while I’m underage, and so he’s going to accompany me to London, not Lord Rivers. And he said we didn’t need all the soldiers, because that might scare people in London into thinking there was going to be some big battle, and so all the soldiers should go home, and I should leave my chamberlain behind too and just go with Gloucester and Buckingham.”

“And you
agreed
to that?” Katherine asked.

“I’m just a kid, okay?” Chip said. “And Gloucester was saying all the right things, and I didn’t know yet that he’d had Lord Rivers arrested.” He hesitated. “It was like we were playing poker, and Gloucester could see all of the cards in my hand, and I didn’t know anything about his. But I stood up to him later! Later, as we were riding away, he said that my father had had bad advisers, and that
they
were the reason he’d died, because they’d let him eat and drink way too much, and that’s why he was going to protect me. And I said, ‘Sir, do not malign my father’s memory. I trust his judgment, and I trust the advisers he gave me.’”

Chip sounded so proud and fierce saying that. But then he slumped against the wall.

“That only made Gloucester say, ‘Ah, and I’m glad of that, for
I
am the main adviser your father left you.’ And he smiled, and it was just like a fox, or a wolf—I should have told my soldiers to attack! I should have fought for Lord Rivers!”

Now Chip was scaring Jonah. Jonah tried to think of something to calm him down, but Katherine was already begging for the next part of the story.

“So then he locked you up and wouldn’t let you act like a king?” she asked eagerly.

“Nooo,” Chip said. “I was signing documents, I was going to council meetings, we were planning for my coronation, the big ceremony when I’d get my crown. … My brother came to join me here so he could play his part in the coronation too!”

“So, what was your problem?” Jonah asked, frustrated. “What do you have against Gloucester? Just because he’s your father’s brother, not your mother’s …”

“Everything changed,” Chip said. “Nobody would tell me anything! But suddenly there weren’t any more council meetings to go to, and I hadn’t seen Gloucester in days, and the servants acted like I was sick or something, like I had to stay in my room or the courtyard … they even moved my room to another place where I’d be ‘safer.’ This is the Tower of London, you know? It’s the
palace
. But
lately … lately it started seeming like I was a prisoner here.”

“A prisoner someone tried to kill last night,” Alex reminded him.

That word, “kill,” lingered in the air. Jonah, trying to avoid thinking about it, realized something else.

“The serving girl this morning, the one who brought the tray,” he said. “She wasn’t acting like she thought the boys had vanished. Or been killed. And I didn’t see her tracer, so she wasn’t doing anything different.”

“Or her tracer was in some other room entirely,” Alex said.

“Oh. Yeah.”

Jonah frowned. The more he thought about all of this, the more confused he was. Chip’s story only made things worse, because it just showed how much Edward V and his brother hadn’t known. Where was that Lord Rivers guy now? Was he really so wonderful? And was Gloucester so terrible, or did it just seem that way because Chip had listened to his mother’s side of the family?

Maybe all of this is just a misunderstanding
, Jonah thought.
A mistake
.

Which was really stupid, because it was pretty much impossible to mistakenly throw two boys out a window.

“Maybe if we check the Elucidator …,” Alex suggested slowly.

Chip whirled on him.

“You want to talk to JB again? Somebody we
know
betrayed us?
No!
”

“Not to talk to JB,” Alex corrected himself. “For other stuff. JB wasn’t the one who made us invisible. We figured that out all by ourselves. Maybe there’s some other function like that, that can help us. Or maybe there’s, like, some explanation of history on the Elucidator, some button we can click and find out everything.”

Jonah wished he’d thought of that.

“Do you still have the Elucidator, Jonah?” Katherine asked.

“Um, uh …” Jonah dug in the front pocket of his jeans. You’d think he’d remember something like that, but there’d been so much else to think about. “Here it is.” He pulled out a thin, flat disk.

A completely invisible, thin, flat disk. Even though he could feel it, hard against his hand, he couldn’t see the slightest shadow of anything in his open palm. He held it up, into the sunlight.

Still nothing.

“Very funny, Jonah.” Katherine scrunched up her face in disgust. “This isn’t the time for practical jokes.”

“No, really,” Jonah said. “It’s in my hand. It’s just … even more invisible than we are.”

He ran his fingers over the Elucidator, groping for some sort of button, something to use to give it directions. The surface of the Elucidator was completely smooth. The others gathered around him and felt it too.

“Maybe it has an audio activation in this mode?” Alex suggested calmly. “Elucidator, view screen.”

Nothing happened.

“Show screen,” Katherine said.

“End invisibility mode,” Chip said.

“Help?” Jonah tried. “Show help menu?”

The Elucidator stayed invisible.

“Maybe if I throw it again?” Chip asked. “That made it light up.”

“Or you might break it completely,” Alex said.

Don’t panic
, Jonah thought.
Don’t panic. It wouldn’t help to panic. …
But it was hard not to when they were all clustered together staring at nothing, and that same invisible nothing was their only link with the outside world, maybe their only hope of ever escaping the fifteenth century.

“Um,” Jonah said, his voice cracking. “Anybody got a plan B?”

“I do, but I don’t want to do it,” Katherine said in a small voice.

Oh, great, now Katherine wasn’t making any sense either. No, wait—Jonah hadn’t been able to understand her about half the time back in the twenty-first century, anyway, so this was just normal. It was good to have something be normal right now.

“Well?” Jonah said mockingly—mocking was often the best tone to use with Katherine. “What is it?”

Katherine looked carefully at Chip and Alex.

“I think the only way we can get out of here is to fix time,” she said. “Even if we can’t do anything with the Elucidator, you saw how JB yanked the Taser out of here. Maybe he’d do that with us, too, if we can somehow make it so it doesn’t matter that the king and the prince disappeared last night.”

“You mean, you’re on JB’s side. You think Alex and I have to die,” Chip said bitterly. “Thanks a lot!”

“No!” Katherine said. She grabbed Chip by the shoulder, steadying him. “I mean, we need to find out how to make it look like you did die, and make the people who wanted you dead think that you are. I want to
fake
your death. But first we need to figure out who tried to kill you, and why. And how they reacted to your disappearance. And for that …” She swallowed hard, uncharacteristically hesitant. “For that we have to leave this room.”

“You’re right,” Alex said, sounding surprised. “That’s a
good plan.” He tilted his head, puzzled. “Why did you say you didn’t want to do it?”

Katherine bit her lip.

“You’re going to think I’m being a real girl here,” she began.

“Katherine, you
are
a girl,” Jonah reminded her.

Katherine ignored him.

“Not
that
kind of girl. Not the kind in the movies who’s always screaming over every little thing, the kind that everyone else has to rescue.” She flipped her long hair disdainfully over her shoulder. “You know I’m not like that.”

She was appealing to Jonah now, like she really cared about his opinion.

“Okay,” Jonah said grudgingly. “You’re not.”

“But I’m
terrified
now at the thought of walking out that door,” she said. “I know we need to do it, I’m pretty sure it’s the best thing, but … maybe timesickness makes you agoraphobic? Or maybe it’s just because I’ve already seen murderers, I’ve already almost been burned to death—and that’s without going out into the rest of the fifteenth century. …”

Jonah didn’t like this. She was scaring him now too.

“Katherine,” Chip said soothingly. “We’re invisible! We’ll be fine.”

“Will we?” Katherine asked. “Can you promise that? You’re the king here, and you’re not even safe!”

Jonah thought maybe Alex was rolling his eyes, but it was hard to tell when his eyes were so close to being invisible.

“Then, maybe you could stay here—see what happens in our chambers the rest of the day—while Chip and Jonah and I go out,” Alex said.

Jonah decided that Alex must not have a younger sister back home in the twenty-first century. Otherwise he’d know that that was exactly the kind of thing that would set Katherine off.

It did.

“And that would be even worse!” Katherine said. “I’d be sitting here with no idea what was happening to the rest of you, with nothing to do except imagine all the worst possibilities. … We don’t even have cell phones to use to stay in touch!”

“We could …,” Jonah started to say. “Or if …”

But Katherine was right. It was amazing how hard not having a phone made everything.

“Maybe if we promise to come back within an hour?” Alex offered.

Katherine shoved against him.

“No!” she said. “Quit trying to get rid of me! I’m going too!”

And Alex, who seemed to understand scientific concepts so well, just sat there mystified by Katherine.

They all took turns using the privy room before they left. This made Jonah feel oddly homesick, because of all those times when he and Katherine were little kids and Mom or Dad would insist, “Make sure you go before we go!”

But the privy bore very little resemblance to a twenty-first-century bathroom. The “toilet” was just a single hole in the stones of the wall. And Chip and Alex had a little too much fun telling Katherine, “Instead of toilet paper there’s moss that you can use. See? It’s
really
useful!”

They also delayed a bit, looking around the room, trying to make sure that nothing was out of place.

“You didn’t leave the Elucidator lying around anywhere, did you?” Alex asked.

“It’s back in my pocket,” Jonah assured him.

“Should we hang the tapestry up again, or just leave it?”
Katherine asked. “It was the soldiers or guards or whatever those guys were who pulled it down, but probably they wouldn’t have done that if it hadn’t been for us. …”

The hooks for the tapestry were high above their heads, about twelve feet off the ground.

“Never mind!” Jonah said impatiently. “Let’s just go!”

He grabbed the door and jerked it open—and found himself staring right into the startled face of yet another serving girl, in the hall outside.

“Wh-wh-who’s there?” she called, darting so quickly to peer into the room that Jonah barely managed to step out of the way.

She looked right through Jonah, right through Katherine, right through Chip and Alex. Her eyes didn’t focus on any of them.

“Must have been the wind,” she muttered. “And the princes must already be outside playing. …”

She stepped back into the hall and pulled the door firmly shut behind her.

Jonah stood frozen, his heart pounding in his chest.

“Maybe … you were … right …, Katherine,” he whispered after a few moments, after he was sure the serving girl would have moved on. “Maybe it is too dangerous out there.”

Katherine reached past him for the door handle.

“Silly,” she scoffed. “You just need to be careful.”

She pushed the door open a crack, peeked out, and then slipped out into the empty hall. The others followed.

The hall was dim, with little sunlight reaching in from the high windows. Katherine pointed left, then right, then held her hands up questioningly. When everybody else shrugged, she turned to the right. After a few twists and turns in the hall they found a rounded staircase and tiptoed down. Reaching the door at the bottom, Katherine made a dramatic show of peeking out again, looking around carefully before slipping out.

I guess she’s not so scared if she can make me look like a fool
, Jonah thought. But he was just as glad not to be the first one out this time.

He stepped out into the sunshine behind Katherine and Chip, and blinked a few times to let his eyes adjust. The other three looked even dimmer and harder to see in bright light, and as long as he didn’t think about it too much, he found that reassuring.

Beyond them he could see a large courtyard of sorts: grass and greenery and flowering trees. And beyond that he could see soldiers—or maybe guards—standing around. They didn’t look like they thought they had anything to worry about; they weren’t standing at attention.
One or two of them even had caps pulled down over their faces, as if they might be sleeping.

“
My
soldiers never behaved so sloppily,” Chip muttered.

“Maybe if the commanders were away …,” Alex whispered back.

Here was another puzzle, Jonah thought. If the soldiers thought the king and the prince had disappeared last night, shouldn’t they be running around searching everywhere? Shouldn’t they be extra alert, not … comatose?