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Tick Higginbottolue fro case and pasted the first letter fro it as best he could He left a few blank pages for notes and calculations, then glued in the first clue, along with his solution and the ripped-out calendar with the special date of May sixth circled Finally, he attached the second clue Hewas dry, then closed the book

Satisfied with his efforts, and glad to have everything he needed in one portable book, he took his journal and went back upstairs

The next day, alanized and ready to go, the third clue came in the mail

Chapter

12

The Voice of MG

It was Saturday, and just as he had done a couple of weeks earlier, Tick spied on thefor the mailman to show up The day was clear and crisp, the sun al the ground Tick sipped hot chocolate and watched countless little drops of water fall fro icicles dripped away the last reone Christ house with Kayla, and the soft h the house Tick didn’t know if life could be any better

The truck finally rumbled up to his house around noon, and Tick didn’t bother looking to see if there was any sign of a yellow envelope He had his boots and coat on and was out the door before the mailman had even left for the next house By the time the truck drove off, Tick had already pulled out the stack of letters

Sitting right on top was a cru, poste lump in one corner, the rest of the envelope was fli his nerves, Tick sprinted back to the house and up to his roo on his bed

He ripped open the envelope and peered inside, seeing nothing at first He billowed it out, turning it upside down and shaking it until a little, flashy square fell out and tumbled off the bed Tick picked it up off the floor It was a tiny cassette tape, the kind his dad used when he made everyone talk about theia (A couple of years ago, his dad had finally switched to a video camera, but he still occasionally used the tape recorder, too)

Nothing had been written on the tape label, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what MG intended the recipients of this clue to do It took Tick tenout his dad’s little tape machine, hidden behind some socket wrenches in his dad’s infamous "junk drawer" Tick could hardly contain himself as he went back to his room, locked the door, popped in the tape, and pushed PLAY

He heard a few seconds of scratchy background noise, then a loud clank Tick, pencil in hand, planned to transcribe every word into his journal, but once the e started, he could only listen, fascinated

A man spoke, his voice quirky and heavy with a British accent Not like Mothball’s accent; no, this ht, like the head butler at an English manor who has just realized his entire staff is stricken with the flu on the night of the big Christmas party to which hundreds of very important people are invited

Well, one mystery had been solved: MG was a hed out loud, then rewound it to listen again Then he quickly fast forwarded through the rest of the tape to es On the fourth tiic words when the day arrives, then hit the ground below you ten times, as hard as you can, with a very specific object It’s a bit of a quandary because I can’t tell you what the object is Let’s just say, I hope your soul is stronger than mine because there are no exceptions to this require but not correct