They hopped the small fence around the grave marker. Ono buzzed and beeped, the sounds comforting in this strange darkness, so Jaime set the robot on the marble stand at the foot of the angel. They got out small gardening trowels, the only digging equipment they could fit in their backpacks, and started to dig. First, they tried one place, and then decided that the three of them should dig in three separate places. The ground was soft, but the digging itself was hard work. Jaime could feel the blisters forming on his fingers and palms.

“How deep do you think we should go?” Tess said.

“Five feet,” Theo said. “Standard graves in Brooklyn are three by eight feet, five feet down.”

“I do not want to know how you know that,” Jaime said.

“I hope we don’t have to dig five feet down,” said Tess.

They kept digging. Like the busiest part of the city, the cemetery seemed to be awake, too. The monk parrots’ calls sounded eerily human, the wind like the whispers of ghosts. The angel seemed to watch them as they dug, her expression inscrutable. Jaime imagined her coming to life, her wings flapping, her bronze body rising up and up and up. He was so mesmerized by the vision of the angel taking flight that he didn’t understand when his trowel struck something in the earth.

Clunk!

Jaime tossed the trowel aside, brushed away some dirt from whatever he’d hit. Not a rock. It felt like leather.

“I found something,” he said.

“What?”

“I don’t know yet. Help me with it.”

The twins gave up on their own holes and helped Jaime dig. They cleared the top of what looked like an oversized leather box, about two feet square. Written on the top were the words JUNK TRUNK.

“‘Junk Trunk’?” Tess said. “Doesn’t sound too promising.”

“One man’s junk is another man’s treasure,” said Theo. “Kind of looks like one of Aunt Esther’s old trunks. Or your trunk, Tess. The one you keep in your closet.”

“Except The Magix isn’t cured with grave dirt,” Tess said. “And my stuff isn’t junk.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what you keep in there?”

“Nope,” said Tess.

They dug all around the side of the trunk until they were able to heft it out of the ground. It wasn’t large, and it wasn’t buried five feet down, luckily for Jaime’s sore hands. It also wasn’t locked. Even though the cemetery was still creeping with jagged shadows, they grinned at one another before throwing open the lid.

Packed into the shallow trunk were all sorts of postcards and papers, little figurines and scribbled diagrams, all covered in dust and grime.

Tess leaned back on her heels. “It is a bunch of junk.”