The Crims #3 Read online

  Big Nana let out a sound that probably would have been a groan if she’d been able to breathe properly.

  Uncle Clyde got down on his hands and knees and searched the sand until he’d found what he’d been looking for: a scorpion. “Aha!” he cried, picking it up between his thumb and forefinger. “Just a moment, Mother!” He crept over to Ava, who was too busy leaning on Big Nana’s windpipe to notice. He leaned in and tried to get the scorpion to sting her. The scorpion reared its tail . . . and then it stung Uncle Clyde instead. Which was only fair, really, seeing as he’d been the one to disturb its Tuesday afternoon. Uncle Clyde ended up writhing around in the sand, going into anaphylactic shock, until Imogen (always prepared) gave him an adrenaline shot.

  “Clyde, you idiot!” Big Nana managed to choke out. “You’re about as much use as sunscreen in the Antarctic!”

  “Actually,” said Ava, taking a break from throttling Big Nana because she loved correcting people almost as much as she loved killing people, “the sun can be quite strong in the Antarctic. Just because it’s cold, that doesn’t mean you don’t need to protect yourself from harmful UV rays.” And she started strangling Big Nana again.

  “Imogen,” croaked Big Nana, turning her sad blue eyes on her. “You’re my only hope. . . .”

  But Imogen was still shaking with fury. Once again, Big Nana had lied to her, and let her down, and made her feel like a fool (and not in a fun way like when she’d played the jester in the Crim family production of Twelfth Night). She looked down at her WWASVD bracelet. A supervillain is loyal to no one, she thought. A supervillain would walk away and let Ava kill her entire family. That way, I’d inherit the family fortune: a dangerous house, a lot of stolen silverware, and Uncle Clyde’s collection of 1990s boy band CDs.

  Big Nana reached out an arm to Imogen. She was shaking. “Please?” she croaked. Imogen remembered how devastated she had been when she’d heard about Big Nana’s death in the Underwater Submarine Heist. And how empty life had seemed without her. Easier, yes. But so boring. Without Big Nana, Imogen had felt like a planet without a sun—just a pointless piece of rock. She looked down into Big Nana’s eyes. She had never seen her grandmother look so weak. She was scared, Imogen realized. Am I really just going to stand by and watch a shiny-haired murderer kill the most important person in my life? she asked herself. There was no point denying it. She was a supervillain—or at least she wanted to be. But above everything else, she was a Crim.

  She had to save Big Nana.

  She ran over to Ava and grabbed her arms, pulling with all her strength to drag her off Big Nana. “Please don’t let me be too late . . . ,” she muttered. But Ava was too strong for her.

  “Ugh, Imogen,” she said. “What are you doing? You should be trying to help me! Do you know how much time this stupid fake treasure hunt has cost us? And do you know that you can’t buy time? Because I tried once and it turned out to be a scam—”

  “Excellent idea for a scam!” said Uncle Clyde.

  “And you know that even supervillains don’t live forever?” Ava continued. “Except the ones in New Mexico who have discovered the secret to eternal youth? And yes, I’m heading down to Albuquerque as soon as I’ve finished with the Gull. And yes, you can come with me. As long as you help me kill your grandmother first.”

  But Imogen kept trying to wrestle Ava away from Big Nana. “Uncle Knuckles!” she shouted. “Can you give me a hand?”

  “I’D RATHER NOT, IF THAT’S OKAY,” said Uncle Knuckles. “IT’S VERY CONVENIENT HAVING THEM BOTH ATTACHED TO THE ENDS OF MY ARMS. AND I’M NOT SURE I HAVE THE PERSONALITY TO PULL OFF A HOOK.”

  “No,” said Imogen. “I mean, can you help me pull Ava off Big Nana?”

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SO?” said Uncle Knuckles. He ran over and pulled at Ava’s other arm, and soon, they all fell backward in a pile on the sand.

  “Thank you,” croaked Big Nana, rubbing her throat. She staggered over to Ava’s deck chair and took a sip of her fruity cocktail.

  Ava turned to Imogen, eyes flashing like angry headlights, and said, “You really are a loser!” Then she turned and began to walk back the way they had come, toward the beach. Imogen followed Ava. The Crims followed Imogen. “I was a fool to think I could trust you! I was an idiot to think you would help me! I was an imbecile to think you were even close to my level. I was a— What’s another word for ‘fool’?”

  “Buffoon?” suggested Al, shaking a poison frog from his shoulder.

  Ava looked at him. “Is that a real word?”

  “I think so. I am very fond of thesauruses.”

  “Fine,” said Ava, looking over her shoulder to glare at Imogen. “I was a buffoon to ever think you’d put your crime-committing destiny above your pathetic family! They’re like a noose around your neck! They ruin everything! Even Adele songs!”

  “Hey,” said Sam, put out. “You said you loved my cover of ‘Someone Like You.’”

  “I was LYING!” shouted Ava. “We’re CRIMINALS, for badness’ sake! Every other sentence is a lie!”

  Imogen didn’t want to fall out with Ava. She liked having a friend who was on her level. She just didn’t want her to kill everyone that she loved. “Come on, Ava,” she said. She moved to touch Ava’s arm, but Ava pulled away. “What about our . . . Big Plan? This was just a side adventure, anyway, right?”

  Ava laughed a nasty, cold laugh, like a cheap ice cream. “We don’t have a Big Plan,” she said. “I have a big plan. I’ve learned my lesson now. I don’t need anyone. Not even a criminal with lovely hair and an excellent GPA. I am truly, totally, one hundred percent better off on my own.”

  Imogen felt a flash of fear. She could see where this was going, and she didn’t like the look of the destination. “No,” she said. “Come on, Ava . . .”

  “Yes,” said Ava. “I’m not just going to maroon your stu-pid family on this island—as you so helpfully suggested—I’m going to maroon you here too.”

  Imogen laughed nervously. She could feel her family glaring at her. (Except for Sam, who had taken a bite out of a mango filled with broken glass and was now picking out the shards.) “I suggested a temporary marooning,” she said, looking around at them all. “I was always planning to come back and rescue you. . . .” But the others didn’t look impressed. (Except for Sam, who was quite impressed at just how much glass could fit in a single mango.) In fact, they looked depressed. Which was fair enough, as one of their closest family members had been planning to abandon them on a desert island.

  But then Imogen stopped worrying about what the Crims thought of her and started worrying about Ava again. Because now that they had reached the beach once more, Ava had pulled her miniature cannon out of her pocket and was aiming it at the Crims as she walked toward the lifeboat. “Good riddance, losers!” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a superhero’s lair to infiltrate.”

  “Ava,” said Freddie. “I hate to be helpful, but you know there’s a massive hole in the bottom of that lifeboat?”

  “Then it’s lucky I have a boat puncture repair kit in my pocket, then, isn’t it?” said Ava, laughing her evil laugh. She pulled it out and had fixed the hole in the bottom before the Crims could even think of an appropriate swear word.

  “FIND OUT WHERE SHE BUYS HER BIG POCKET PANTS AND BUY ME A PAIR FOR MY BIRTHDAY, WOULD YOU?” Uncle Knuckles said to Aunt Bets.

  “I don’t buy pants from anywhere,” said Ava. “They’re handmade for me by tiny tailors. Who may or may not be elves—they have very pointy ears. And you’ll never have your own personal elves, because you’re not evil at all! You’re not even unpleasant! You’re actually quite heartwarming, the lot of you! You disgust me!” And with that, Ava jumped into the lifeboat and rowed speedily off in the general direction of the cruise ship, which was now completely out of sight.

  Imogen felt as though she might cry, and she hated crying; it made her look weak, and she wasn’t weak—she had been doing one-handed push-ups since she was five. Sh
e was marooned on an island. An island filled with deadly booby traps. Sure, she had saved her family’s lives, but it was only a matter of time till one of them ate a mango filled with tiny knives and died. And then, obviously, there was the whole starving to death thing to think about. . . .

  But then something unexpected happened.

  Imogen heard a loud “AAAARKKK! AAAARKKK!” coming from the sky. She looked up just in time to see a huge, glowing seagull swooping down toward Ava and picking up the lifeboat in its huge beak. Then it flapped its wings and soared off into the distance.

  “What was that?” asked Nick.

  “Was it a mutant seabird?”

  “Probably,” muttered Delia. “I’ve always said that pouring toxic sludge into the oceans was a bad idea.”

  “No,” said Imogen. “That’s not a mutant seabird. That’s a superhero. That’s . . . the Gull! He’s got Ava!”

  The Crims looked at one another, stunned.

  No one said anything.

  And then Isabella smiled up at Imogen toothlessly and said, “Now what?”

  “Well, I guess we’re going to have to come up with a really, really good plan,” said Imogen. And then she noticed something half buried in the sand, glinting in the sunlight: Ava’s phone. It must have fallen out of her pocket. She picked it up and Googled, “What should you do when your best friend/worst enemy has been kidnapped by the Gull?”

  But obviously, there was no Wi-Fi signal.

  Imogen looked up. The other Crims were just standing around, staring at her. “Isn’t anyone going to help me?” she said.

  And then Delia turned to Imogen and said, “I don’t think Isabella meant what are we going to do about Ava,” she said. “I think she meant, what are we going to do about you?”

  13

  IMOGEN LOOKED AT Delia. And then she looked at the rest of her family, who had formed a terrifying circle around her. They all looked quite angry. And by “quite angry,” I mean “frothing at the mouth and looking around for rocks to murder her with.”

  “You were going to maroon us on this island?” said Big Nana, in a terrifyingly steady voice. “After we came to save you from Ava?”

  “I didn’t need saving,” said Imogen. “Me and Ava were doing just fine before you came along and ruined everything.”

  “Imogen and Ava, sitting in a tree,” said Delia, in a singsong voice.

  “What are you, three years old?” asked Imogen. She sat down on a plank of the shipwreck. “Look,” she said, “I told you. I wasn’t going to maroon you forever. I was going to pick you all up as soon as me and Ava had defeated the Gull!”

  “But, darling,” said Josephine, “what would have happened if you hadn’t managed to defeat the Gull?”

  Imogen sighed. “I just sort of assumed we would defeat him,” she said. “I mean, this is Ava we’re talking about.”

  “Yeah,” said Delia. “The girl the Gull just plucked out of the ocean and has probably already eaten.”

  “I hadn’t really thought it through,” said Imogen.

  Big Nana shook her head. “I taught you better than that,” she said. “And I taught you better than to abandon your family on an island to starve to death or be eaten by jaguars.”

  “That isn’t necessarily what would have happened!” Imogen said desperately as her family closed in on her. “Don Vadrolga might have taken pity on you and let you live in his horrible pink mansion! It could have all ended happily!”

  “Except it didn’t, did it?” said Big Nana. “And now we’re all marooned on this island. And those jaguars are probably pretty hungry. And Don Vadrolga isn’t even here anymore. So he can’t take pity on us.”

  “Except that he didn’t lock his back door, so we can all just go and hang out in his house and eat his food till we figure out how to get out of here,” said Freddie.

  “Good point,” said Big Nana.

  But Imogen wasn’t going to stand for this. She wasn’t going to let her family make her out to be the villain when Big Nana was the one who had lied to them all and led them on this mad treasure chase. “Ava was right about one thing,” said Imogen.

  “The fact that navy-blue bikinis are more flattering than bright pink ones,” Josephine said with a nod.

  “No!” said Imogen. “The fact that you all hold me back! All the time! We wouldn’t be in this mess if you had just let me go off with Ava and have one adventure on my own!”

  “But Ava’s a psychopath!” said Delia. “What if something had happened to you? You’re our family, and families should stick together. Like we stuck with Big Nana after she faked her own death! Like we stuck with Josephine after she signed us up for that stupid TV show! Like we stuck with YOU, after you refused to believe the Kruks were after us last autumn!”

  “Then you should still stick with me!” said Imogen. “Everyone makes mistakes! Especially Crims! It’s what we do best!”

  “The thing is,” Al said sadly, “it doesn’t seem as though you want us to stick with you.”

  Imogen’s face fell. Her father was right. She had wanted to get away from her family. But not permanently . . .

  Big Nana sat down next to Imogen and put her arm around Imogen’s shoulders. “Let’s go and have a little chat, shall we?” she said. “Give the others some time to cool off.”

  “I don’t need time to cool off,” said Delia. “My feelings aren’t going to change. You want to go it alone? FINE! Be like that! Look what happens when people leave girl bands! They have REALLY UNSUCCESSFUL SOLO CAREERS!” And she turned away and stomped across the sand toward the rain forest.

  “Let’s go with her,” said Sam, beckoning the other Crims. “She’s probably heading to Don Vadrolga’s mansion. Maybe we’ll find something that can help us get off this island. He’s the sort of person who might have a spare sixteen-seater helicopter lying around somewhere.”

  Imogen and Big Nana were alone. And when Big Nana was angry, she was a very dangerous person to be alone with. But she didn’t look that angry anymore.

  “I understand how it feels to be frustrated by your family,” she said. “Clyde, Al, and Bets are my children. Do you know how many times I’ve asked myself, ‘What did I do wrong?’ Why does Al end up opening a savings account every time I send him to rob a bank? Why can’t Clyde pickpocket a child on the way home from school without spending three years drawing up detailed plans for how to do it, involving steps like ‘Teach dog how to talk’ and ‘Figure out how to disguise self as a paving stone’? Why does Bets only murder people with tiny sharp household objects? It’s so messy to clean up with her afterward . . . but that doesn’t matter. Because I love them. And I need them. And you’re going to be the head of this family one day,” said Big Nana, patting Imogen’s hand, “which means that you’re going to need them too. Even if you can’t stand to be in the same room as them sometimes, even if you want to throw them all down the garbage disposal, and the only reason you don’t is that the garbage disposal smells when it gets clogged up. You’re going to have to learn how to work with them, just like you learned how to work with Ava. And let’s face it, she’s an actual psychopath.”

  “I know,” said Imogen. “She’s really proud of it. She’s actually the treasurer of the International Psychopath Association. They don’t have meetings IRL anymore because every time they met up, at least half of them ended up dead.”

  Big Nana shook her head. “And yet you trusted Ava more than you trusted your family? Really?”

  “It’s not that I trusted her,” Imogen said slowly, and not altogether truthfully. “It’s just that I wanted to commit a half-decent crime, and I thought she’d be able to help me do it.”

  “But you’ve seen what the Crims can do when we work together,” said Big Nana. “We’re so much stronger together than you are alone. Even though you’ve got a blackbelt in karate and an encyclopedic knowledge of poison antidotes.”

  “Ava’s not all bad,” said Imogen.

  “Oh, I know!” said Big Nan
a. “She pushes you to be better! And she was right about one thing: You should never let a superhero win anything, except one of those fake ‘You’ve won a million pounds!’ contests that fraudsters use to scam people. The Gull is about to realize how wrong he was not to be afraid of the Crims.”

  Imogen looked at her grandmother. “You mean—we’re going to try to fight the Gull and save Ava?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” said Big Nana. “As long as we can persuade the rest of the family. Because right now, they aren’t your biggest fans.”

  “I know,” said Imogen. “I left my biggest fans on the cruise ship. I had two battery-powered ones in my bedroom, and they kept me really cool in the hot weather.”

  Imogen followed Big Nana through the rain forest, dodging the machine-gun palm trees, and the poisonous lake, and the lethal boomerang disguised as a butterfly, until they came to Don Vadrolga’s mansion. Imogen felt her heart speed up as they walked across the manicured lawn to the front path. Maybe all wasn’t lost. Maybe she could get her family back, and save her dangerous but strangely lovable friend, and defeat a superhero all at once.

  They walked into the marble hallway and looked around for the other Crims. “Hello?” called Imogen.

  Delia stepped into the hallway, her arms crossed. “Decided to join us, have you?” she said. “Look what I found when I was going through the drawers in the living room, looking for a stray Golden Globe Award.” She handed Imogen a business card.

  The business card smelled strongly of sardines and seemed to be printed on a whitish feather. There was writing on the front:

  GULL PERSONAL SECURITY SERVICES

  NOTHING SAYS KEEP OFF LIKE A GIANT SEABIRD

  POOPING ON YOUR HEAD

  “So,” said Big Nana. “The Gull is the one protecting this island.”

  “Which means that Vadrolga is in with the Gull,” said Imogen. “Which means that he might have helped him plan his attack on Krukingham Palace. It was an inside job!”

  “Oh who cares about that—” said Delia.