Jaime hooked a finger in his pocket. “I told you, the house is closed and the door is locked. We don’t have a key.”

“LAND OF KINGS LAND OF KINGS LAND OF KINGS.”

The robot was so loud that Jaime slapped a hand over his pocket, glanced all around to make sure no one was watching them. No one was. There were no cars in the small parking lot, no kids in the nearby playground.

Tess fixed her mirrors onto Jaime, her brows creasing. “I think he might be trying to tell us something.”

“What?”

“That we might have the key.”

“But we don’t,” Theo said.

Jaime patted his various pockets. Then, he unbuttoned the top button of the coveralls, reached inside. He pulled out the overlarge silver jack and showed it to the robot. “You mean this?”

“LAND OF KINGS LAND OF KINGS LAND OF KINGS.”

“I think that’s a yes,” said Tess.

Theo tried not to feel bad about being wrong. Again. Grandpa Ben would have noticed, would have reminded him that being right was not the point. The process of discovery was the point. The journey was the point. And journeys don’t always feel comfortable. Sometimes, Grandpa Ben would say, journeys are downright painful, like Frodo’s long trip to Mordor to destroy the ring in The Lord of the Rings. Theo hated those books. All that talking and fighting and dying, when the eagles could have flown them to Mordor all along.

Where were the eagles when you needed them?

Lazy eagles.

They returned to their bench, balled up the paper bag that had contained their lunch, and went back to the homestead. Jaime pulled off the mirrored glasses and replaced them with his own pair. “That’s better. I couldn’t see anything.” He took one more look around, then inserted the jack into the lock.

The inner door swung open.

By this point, they weren’t even surprised.

Inside the house, it was gloomy and dark, but a little cooler than it was outside in the sun. The bottom floor was arranged like a museum, with historical displays and racks of postcards. Jaime pulled Ono from his pocket and set it on the floor. The robot marched across the room as fast as it could, which was not fast at all. Still, it seemed to know where it was going. When it reached the bottom step of the staircase, it said, “Oh no!” It backed up and hit the step again. “Oh no!” And again, “Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!”

Jaime scooped up the robot, and they climbed the steps. Upstairs was much different from downstairs. Instead of museum displays and postcards, the rooms up here were decorated with Victorian furniture, as if a family still lived here, a family stuck somewhere in the 1850s. The fancy parlor had pinkish-red drapes, a fireplace, gold wallpaper everywhere.

“What do you think, Ono?” Jaime said. “A little gaudy?”