Chapter 24

Less than thirty minutes later found Cordelia, Gregory, Elizabeth, and the professor—who was, luckily, delighted by the company of the three monsters in their care—bumping together in a hansom cab on the way to the docks.

“I kept a filch for a pet before I knew what to call it,” he said, looking absolutely blissful when Icky squeaked a few farts into his lap. “A sort of a stray, he was. Kept sneaking to the door for wormroot cakes, when I thought I would lure a growrk. That’s what I meant about my dad, and how confused he was. Turns out growrks don’t even like wormroot cakes.”

“What’s wrong with Cabal?” Elizabeth piped up as another rut in the road jolted them all six inches out of their seats. “He looks pale.”

“He always looks pale,” Gregory said. “It’s because he’s dead.”

“No,” Elizabeth insisted. “Usually he’s white-pale. Now he’s gray-pale.” Another jolt knocked her head against the carriage ceiling. “I hope he’s not going to be—”

But at that second, Cabal reversed the contents of his stomach onto her shoes, and she began to scream.

Almost immediately, his normal pallor returned.

“Look at that,” Gregory said, while Elizabeth continued wailing. “He’s feeling normal-dead already.”

The smell of fish announced the harbor long before it came into view. Seagulls rose in swarms above the thinning trees, and the forest slowly ran into enormous colonies of rocks, and the whitecaps breaking between them.

The harbor teemed with longshoremen and fishermen, merchants and traders, and inspectors and smugglers posing as officials. Just off the coast, dozens of whalers and schooners, masts pointed confusedly at one another, were rocked by the waves.

Cordelia’s heart was flapping wildly, like an unlashed sail. It would take at least three days to get to Boston, if the weather held. Professor Natter was certain Byron Newton-Plancke intended to put the monsters on display before he killed them.

But what if he was wrong?

And what possible use could he have for her father?

The road finally gave up its pretense and melted into a churn of mud that flowed down to the docks. Elizabeth climbed out of the cab, still spluttering about her shoes, only to step directly into a giant mound of horse manure. She stood, trembling with mute fury, as Gregory leapt down after her.

“Aw, cheer up. It could be worse. You could’ve planted both feet.”

And Gregory, demonstrating, stomped around a bit to show her—splattering an unfortunate sampling of the bad luck on her coat.

Cordelia hopped the short distance to the ground, keeping well clear of the manure. She had to coax Icky from Professor Natter’s arms; the filch clung so hard to Professor Natter’s shirtfront, the separation effort nearly plunged the professor facedown into the mud. He caught himself only by bracing hard against the ground with his walking stick, and at last, very slowly, he managed the dismount. But at the last second, he lost his balance again, and Cordelia reached out to grab him.

“I’m all right,” he said. But he was panting. “Nothing to it.”

Cordelia could feel his fingers, knotty with age, crush hers in their grip. And she realized, with a sinking feeling, that it would be wrong to ask him to accompany them all the way to Boston. He had his work here, with his students, to attend to. And he had already done more than his fair share. He had fought monsters all his life. He had given half his face up to the fight.

His place was here, among his books, where the battlefield was drawn in printed letters on the page.

“You can’t come with us, Professor,” she said. “I can’t let you.”

Professor Natter’s eyebrows gave a ferocious leap. “Don’t be absurd,” he said, and nudged Cordelia aside with his walking stick. “Of course I’m coming with you. You can’t stand up to Newton-Plancke alone.”

“We’ve made it this far,” Cordelia said. But Professor Natter was old, and obviously tired. He had earned his right to his books, and his comfortable office, and his hot chocolate. Marshmallows, too. He had fought bravely in the war; this was Cordelia’s battle. “We made it all the way to New York from Boston. We made it here in a hot-air balloon. We gave a pair of lions the slip. We can handle Newton-Plancke.”

“We can?” Gregory whispered.

“Yes,” Cordelia said, with confidence she didn’t feel. She turned back to Professor Natter. “You have your students, and your work with the university,” she finished.

Professor Natter shooed off those concerns. “Stopping Plancke is far more important,” he said. “So step aside, please, before I write you up for disobedience.”

“No.” Cordelia stepped in front of him again when he tried to get around her. For a second, the old man glowered at her so fiercely, she almost shrank back. But she forced herself to hold his gaze.

And finally, his expression softened. “You’re just like your mother, you know,” he said quietly. “A real firecracker. Stubborn as an ox, and brave as a lion.”

Cordelia was momentarily speechless. She had never thought of herself as especially brave. She had been afraid since the moment she’d closed and locked the door of Clay Manor behind her. She’d been afraid even before then—afraid to go to school, afraid their secret would be discovered, afraid of a world full of menacing strangers, their faces blurred by her imagination into shadow.

But all that time, she had ignored the real danger—not that people would discover the Clays’ monsters, but that they would invent their own.

“She would be so proud of you,” Professor Natter said, and pretended not to notice Cordelia swipe her eyes. “You’re wrong, by the way, that your mother’s greatest work was never finished. She’s standing right here in front of me.” Then: “I want you to see this.”

He removed the copy of A Guide to Monsters and Their Habits from his satchel. Cordelia hadn’t even seen him tuck it away. Flipping open to the title page, he indicated several neat lines of faded cursive, writing as familiar to Cordelia as the lines that creased her father’s face.

“She’d promised she would sign a copy for me when the book was published. You were just a few months old. But she didn’t forget.”

Cordelia blinked away the tears blurring her vision and read:

To my good friend Sam,

Every life is a miracle, no matter what we name it. Ours is named Cordelia.

Affectionately,

Elizabeth

This time, Professor Natter discreetly nudged a handkerchief from his pocket, and didn’t even flinch when Cordelia returned it, soaking wet, a moment later. But he wouldn’t take the book when she tried to return it.

“Keep it,” he said.

Cordelia shook her head. “It was meant for you,” she said. “We have a whole stack in the library, anyway. . . .”

And, as if stirred up on the memory of ink and paper rustling, an idea came to Cordelia.

“There is one thing you can do to help, you know,” she said. The idea grew louder, and sharper, and wrote its way into a spark of excitement. “My mother never got to finish her book,” Cordelia said. “She never found the proof she needed. Maybe . . . maybe you can.”

“I wish I could,” he said. “But I’m not the right person to ask. I was only ever an amateur, a hobbyist. You need an expert—”

“There are no experts,” Cordelia said, a little more loudly than she’d intended. “There aren’t any experts, because the truth my mom saw doesn’t exist yet. You can make it true. You can find what she was looking for. You can at least try.”

Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

Cordelia’s relief broke in waves in her chest. “I don’t know everything,” she said. “Only what my father told me. He said that for years my mother had been trying to track proof of the Omnia morpheus—the common shape-shifter. She thought the shape-shifter explained the gaps left in the evolutionary tree. Trouble is, we could have proof of a hundred thousand shape-shifters and never know it. If they die in the form of another kind of creature . . .”

“Then the proof they leave behind is of the disguise. I understand.”

Cordelia nodded. “But she thought she’d finally, finally caught a break. She’d been writing to people all over the world: biologists, anthropologists, archeologists. And finally, someone wrote back. There were rumors of a fossil found in the jungle. A ‘cursed stone,’ the locals called it, that kept twisting and changing. . . .”

“In the jungle?” Professor Natter’s eyebrows scurried a little closer together. “That’s where this fossil was actually discovered?”

She nodded. “Somewhere in Brazil.”

Another half centimeter, and his eyebrows merged into a single knit. “You’re sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she said, a little impatiently. “My father saw her onto the boat two days later. And the telegram that came with the news was from São Paulo.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up. . . .”

“That’s all right,” she said. “Impossible things are true all the time.”