Nobody but Jaime was hungry, but they seemed happy enough when he picked soul food. Forty-five minutes later the food arrived: mac and cheese, collards, corn bread, shrimp and grits, ribs, and fried “chkn” made of cricket protein because Tess was feeling sad for birds at the moment.

“All the birds?” Theo asked.

“Yes,” Tess said. “All of them. Even the scary ones. They didn’t ask to be scary.”

“Which birds are scary?” Mr. Biedermann wanted to know.

“They’re the descendants of dinosaurs, for one,” Theo said. “And certain birds retain memories of faces and will peck your head if they see you too often in their territory. Everyone thinks owls are cute but they’ll pluck out your—”

“Theo,” said Mr. Biedermann. “I am trying to eat here.”

“Ostriches can be terribly aggressive,” Aunt Esther said. “I had one chase me for a mile, once.”

“Was that when you managed the game preserve in Africa?” said Mr. Biedermann.

“No. Why?”

“Never mind. These collards are delicious.” Mr. Biedermann scooped up another mouthful.

Jaime stayed over at Aunt Esther’s, mostly because he was too tired and freaked out from the day to think about traveling all the way to Hoboken. That night, he dreamed of the woman in gray, kicking and punching and swirling her way through whole battalions of bad guys. When she was through, she asked Jaime, “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you?” right before a giraffe-owary crashed through a fence and chased Jaime through a dimly lit city. He woke up just as the monster backed him into an alley with no escape, razor-sharp beak poised to strike.

After that, he didn’t get much sleep.

The next morning, he and the twins sat at the breakfast table waiting for Mrs. Biedermann to come downstairs and tell them they’d been identified on the video, that their adventures were over, that the blond lady had sung and they were all going to jail. But that was not what happened. Mrs. Biedermann shuffled into the kitchen looking as bleary-eyed and tired as her kids. Nobody asked her any questions until she’d finished one cup of coffee. (Every kid knew not to ask an adult any questions until that adult had had at least one cup of coffee. If you didn’t, you might as well throw yourself into a giraffe-owary pen.)

As her mother poured her second cup of coffee, Tess ventured: “So did you identify the workers from the station attack?”

“Not yet. Techs are still working on the video. And I’m not sure if that will be my case, anyway. We can’t consider the eagles stolen if they flew off by themselves, can we?”

“Guess not,” said Tess, suddenly tucking into a pile of waffles with a gusto she hadn’t shown before.

“What a weird week it’s been,” said Mrs. Biedermann.

“A weird month,” Theo said.

“The whole summer has been weird,” said Jaime.