‘The 39 Clues’ a multimedia mystery adventure

Amy did, which was typical. She never put up a fight with adults. Amy had long reddish-brown hair, unlike Dan’s, which was dark blond. This helped Dan pretend his sister was an alien imposter, but unfortunately they had the same eyes — green like jade, their grandmother used to say.

Amy was three years older and six inches taller than Dan, and she never let him forget it — like being fourteen was such a big deal. Usually, she wore jeans and some old T-shirt because she didn’t like people noticing her, but today she was wearing a black dress so she looked like a vampire’s bride.

Dan hoped her outfit was as uncomfortable as his stupid suit and tie. Aunt Beatrice had thrown a fit when he tried to go to the funeral in his ninja clothes. It wasn’t as if Grace would care if he was comfortable and deadly, the way he felt when he pretended to be a ninja, but of course Aunt Beatrice didn’t understand. Sometimes it was hard for him to believe she and Grace were sisters.

“Remind me to fire your au pair as soon as we return to Boston,” Beatrice grumbled. “You two have been entirely too spoiled.”

“Nellie’s nice!” Dan protested.

“Hmph! This Nellie almost let you burn down the neighbor’s apartment building!”

“Exactly!”

Every couple of weeks, Beatrice fired their au pair and hired a new one. The only good thing was that Aunt Beatrice didn’t live with them personally. She lived across town in a building that didn’t allow kids, so sometimes it took her a few days to hear about Dan’s latest exploits.

Nellie had lasted longer than most. Dan liked her because she made amazing waffles and she usually cranked her iPod up to brain-damage level. She didn’t even hear when Dan’s bottle rocket collection went off and strafed the building across the alley. Dan would miss Nellie when she got fired.

Aunt Beatrice kept driving and muttering about spoiled children. Amy secretly went back to her huge book. The last two days, since they got the news about Grace’s death, Amy had been reading even more than usual. Dan knew it was her way of hiding, but he kind of resented it because it shut him out, too.

“What are you reading this time?” he asked. “Medieval European Doorknobs? Bath Towels Through the Ages?”

Amy gave him an ugly face — or an uglier-than-usual face. “None of your business, dweeb.”

“You can’t call a ninja lord dweeb. You have disgraced the family. You must commit seppuku.”

Amy rolled her eyes.

After a few more miles, the city melted into farmland. It started to look like Grace country, and even though Dan had promised himself he wouldn’t get sappy, he began to feel sad. Grace had been the coolest ever. She’d treated him and Amy like real people, not kids. That’s why she’d insisted they simply call her Grace, not Grandmother or Gran or Nana or any silly name like that. She’d been one of the only people who’d ever cared about them. Now she was dead, and they had to go to the funeral and see a bunch of relatives who had never been nice to them. ...

The family cemetery sat at the bottom of the hill from the mansion. Dan thought it was kind of stupid they’d hired a hearse to carry Grace a hundred yards down the driveway. They could’ve put wheels on the coffin like they have on suitcases and that would’ve worked just as well.

Video   Get kids reading with ’39 Clues’ Sept. 8: TODAY’s Ann Curry talks to author Rick Riordan about the book series “39 Clues: The Maze of Bones.” Today show

Summer storm clouds rumbled overhead. The family mansion looked dark and gloomy on its hill, like a lord’s castle. Dan loved the place, with its billion rooms and chimneys and stained glass windows.

He loved the family graveyard even more. A dozen crumbling tombstones spread out across a green meadow ringed in trees, right next to a little creek. Some of the stones were so old the writing had faded away. Grace used to take Amy and him down to the meadow on their weekend visits. Grace and Amy would spend the afternoon on a picnic blanket, reading and talking, while Dan explored the graves and the woods and the creek.

Stop that, Dan told himself. You’re getting sentimental.

“So many people,” Amy murmured, as they walked down the driveway.

“You’re not going to freak out, are you?”

Amy fiddled with the collar of her dress. “I’m — I’m not freaking out. I just — ”

“You hate crowds,” he finished. “But you knew there’d be a crowd. They come every year.”

Each winter, as long as Dan could remember, Grace had invited relatives from all over the world for a weeklong holiday. The mansion filled up with Chinese Cahills and British Cahills and South African Cahills and Venezuelan Cahills. Most of them didn’t even go by the name Cahill, but Grace assured him they were all related. She’d explain about cousins and second cousins and cousins three times removed until Dan’s brain started to hurt. Amy would usually go hide in the library with the cat.

“I know,” she said. “But ... I mean, look at them all.”

She had a point. About four hundred people were gathering at the grave site.

“They just want her fortune,” Dan decided.

“Dan!”

“Well? It’s true.”

They had just joined the procession when Dan suddenly got flipped upside down.

“Hey!” he yelled.

“Look, guys,” a girl said. “We caught a rat!”

Dan wasn’t in a good position to see, but he could make out the Holt sisters — Madison and Reagan — standing on either side of him, holding him by his ankles. The twins had matching purple running suits, blond pigtails, and crooked smiles. They were only eleven, same as Dan, but they had no trouble holding him. Dan saw more purple running suits behind them — the rest of the Holt family. Their pit bull, Arnold, raced around their legs and barked.

“Let’s fling him into the creek,” Madison said.

“I wanna fling him into the bushes!” Reagan said. “We never do my ideas!”

Their older brother, Hamilton, laughed like an idiot. Next to him, their dad, Eisenhower Holt, and their mom, Mary-Todd, grinned like this was all good fun.

“Now, girls,” Eisenhower said. “We can’t go flinging people at a funeral. This is a happy occasion!”

“Amy!” Dan called. “A little help here?”

Her face had gone pale. She mumbled, “Dr-dr-drop ...”

Dan sighed in exasperation. “She’s trying to say ‘DROP ME!’”

Madison and Reagan did — on his head.

“Ow!” Dan said.

“M-M-Madison!” Amy protested.

“Y-y-yes?” Madison mimicked. “I think all those books are turning your brain to mush, weirdo.”

If it had been anybody else, Dan would’ve hit back, but he knew better with the Holts. Even Madison and Reagan, the youngest, could cream him. The whole Holt family was way too buff. They had meaty hands and thick necks and faces that looked like G.I. Joe figures. Even the mom looked like she should be shaving and chewing on a cigar.

“I hope you losers took a good last look around the house,” Madison said. “You’re not going to be invited back here anymore, now that the old witch is dead.”

“Rawf!” said Arnold the pit bull.

Dan looked around for Beatrice, but as usual she wasn’t anywhere near them. She’d drifted off to talk to the other old people.

“Grace wasn’t a witch,” Dan said. “And we’re going to inherit this place!”

The big brother, Hamilton, laughed. “Yeah, right.”  His hair was combed toward the middle so it stuck up like a shark fin. “Wait till they read the will, runt. I’m gonna kick you out myself!”

“All right, team,” the dad said. “Enough of this. Formation!”

The family lined up and started jogging toward the grave site, knocking other relatives out of their way as Arnold snapped at everyone’s heels.

“Is your head okay?” Amy asked guiltily.

Dan nodded. He was a little annoyed Amy hadn’t helped him, but there was no point complaining about it. She always got tongue-tied around other people. “Man, I hate the Holts.”

“We’ve got worse problems.” Amy pointed toward the grave site, and Dan’s heart sank.

“The Cobras,” he muttered.

Ian and Natalie Kabra were standing by Grace’s coffin, looking like perfect little angels as they talked to the preacher. They wore matching designer mourning outfits that complemented their silky black hair and cinnamon-colored skin. They could’ve been child supermodels.

“They won’t try anything during the funeral,” Dan said hopefully. “They’re just here for Grace’s money like the rest of them. But they won’t get it.”

Amy frowned. “Dan ... did you really believe what you said, about us inheriting the mansion?”

“Of course! You know Grace liked us best. We spent more time with her than anybody.”

Amy sighed like Dan was too young to understand, which Dan hated.

“Come on,” she said. “We might as well get this over with.” And together they waded into the crowd.

The funeral was a blur to Dan. The minister said some stuff about ashes. They lowered the coffin into the ground. Everybody tossed in a shovelful of dirt. Dan thought the mourners enjoyed this part too much, especially Ian and Natalie.

He recognized a few more relatives: Alistair Oh, the old Korean dude with the diamond-tipped walking stick who always insisted they call him Uncle; the Russian lady Irina Spasky, who had a twitch in one eye so everybody called her Spaz behind her back; the Starling triplets — Ned, Ted, and Sinead, who looked like part of a cloned Ivy League lacrosse team. Even that kid from television was there: Jonah Wizard. He stood to one side, getting his picture taken with a bunch of girls, and there was a line of people waiting to talk to him. He was dressed just like on TV, with lots of silver chains and bracelets, ripped jeans, and a black muscle shirt (which was kind of stupid, since he didn’t have any muscles). An older African-American guy in a business suit stood behind him, punching notes in a BlackBerry. Probably Jonah’s dad. Dan had heard that Jonah Wizard was related to the Cahills, but he’d never seen him in person before. He wondered if he should get an autograph for his collection.

After the service, a guy in a charcoal-gray suit stepped to the podium. He looked vaguely familiar to Dan. The man had a long pointed nose and a balding head. He reminded Dan of a vulture.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said gravely. “I am William McIntyre, Madame Cahill’s lawyer and executor.”

“Executor?” Dan whispered to Amy. “He killed her?”

“No, you idiot,” Amy whispered back. “That means he’s in charge of her will.”

“If you will look inside your programs,” William McIntyre continued, “some of you will find a gold invitation card.”

Excited murmuring broke out as four hundred people leafed through their programs. Then most of them cursed and shouted complaints when they found nothing. Dan ripped through his program. Inside was a card with a gold-leafed border. It read:

“I knew it!” Dan said.

“I assure you,” Mr. McIntyre said, raising his voice above the crowd, “the invitations were not done randomly. I apologize to those of you who were excluded. Grace Cahill meant you no disrespect. Of all the members of the Cahill clan, only a few were chosen as the most likely.”

The crowd started yelling and arguing. Finally, Dan couldn’t stand it anymore. He called out, “Most likely to what?”

“In your case, Dan,” Ian Kabra muttered right behind him, “to be a stupid American git.”

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