Chapter 32

Time seemed to stretch interminably. Moonlight reached across the exhibit hall with long, pale fingers, like the frigid reach of Newton-Plancke’s hands.

Cordelia’s mind was turning so quickly, she felt dizzy even sitting down.

Newton-Plancke had reminded her of something . . . something she had read . . . something important . . .

Cordelia closed her eyes. She saw, in a flash, Professor Natter leaning heavily on his walking stick down by the docks. She saw his eyebrows drawn into a single, dense cloud. . . .

In the jungle? Even in her memory, she saw his eyebrows leap. You’re sure?

“Give it up,” Elizabeth grunted. “You don’t have the key, anyway.”

“But if I could just reach—” Gregory panted.

“Elizabeth’s right,” Cordelia said. Her voice echoed. “We’ll never get out of here without the key.”

“We may never get out of here at all,” Elizabeth said quietly.

There was a moment of heavy silence. They all knew what she said was true. At last Gregory gave up and sat down with a sigh. Cordelia’s throat was tight. All her fault. This was all her fault.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted. It was easier to apologize in the dark. Easier to talk, really, when she didn’t have to see the way that Gregory and Elizabeth were looking at her. “This is all my fault. If it weren’t for me, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“That’s all right,” Gregory said.

“No.” Cordelia shook her head. “No, it isn’t all right. I nearly got us killed a half-dozen times. And now . . .” And now all hope is lost, she added silently.

“I’m sorry too,” Gregory said, after a moment. Cordelia turned to him. “Why are you sorry?”

“Just because,” he said, shrugging. “You shouldn’t have to be sorry all on your own.”

Cordelia felt her throat squeeze up to the size of a pea. She wanted to reach out and hug Gregory. But of course, the cage bars prevented it. There was another moment of silence. Elizabeth cleared her throat.

“I’m sorry too,” she said.

Cordelia was so startled she forgot, temporarily, to feel awful. “What are you sorry for?”

“For lying,” Elizabeth said. “And for being so horrible. And for being, well . . .” She held open her hands, which were swollen to double their normal size, and blinked her yellow eyes mournfully at them. “This.”

“You aren’t this,” Cordelia said. “You aren’t anything. You’re you. And that’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“Besides, the green looks good on you,” Gregory said cheerfully. “Goes with your haircut.”

Cordelia felt it then—something shifting, growing, knitting together between them in the dark, something delicate as silk, invisible as wind. They were changing. They were changed. Cordelia had spent so long trying to keep everything exactly the way it was. But about this, too, she’d been wrong.

It was so cold in the exhibit hall, their breath seized on the air. Soon Cordelia’s fingers were numb, and Elizabeth’s shivering was so bad that her three sets of teeth chattered together.

“You’d think a big-timer like Plancke could afford a bit of heat,” Gregory said, hugging his knees to his chest. “But it’s always the rich ones don’t like to spend a dime. . . .”

“It isn’t that,” Cordelia said. She plunged her fists into her pockets and was surprised to feel her mother’s little oval stone had made it past Newton-Plancke’s inspection of their pockets, perhaps because it had slipped underneath the empty bag of pretzels. The rest of her tools were gone. “It’s because of what he is. The morpheus despises the heat. Imagine how it feels to be melting, if you’re actually in danger of—”

She broke off, gasping.

“What?” Gregory said. “What is it?”

“—in danger of melting,” she finished in a whisper. “No morpheus would ever dream of living in the jungle. . . .”

“The jungle?” Gregory frowned. “Who said anything about a jungle?”

“My mother sailed to Brazil before she died. She claimed she was looking for fossil evidence of a morpheus. But she can’t have been. She knew better. Heat and moisture weaken the morpheus’s shape and make it much harder for it to take a lasting form.” Cordelia was breathless with excitement. Now she understood what Newton-Plancke meant by trap. “She must have been trying to lure Newton-Plancke to go after her, to a place where he would be weak enough to . . .”

But she trailed off. Weak enough to trap? To reason with? Surely she hadn’t been planning to kill him. . . .

And just as quickly as her excitement came, it left. Whatever she’d been planning to do hadn’t worked. In the end, he had beaten her at her own game.

Just like he had beaten Cordelia.

Like he would no doubt beat her father.

It was like Plancke had said: even weak, he was strong enough. Stronger than they were, certainly.

She had the funny oval stone in her hands now, this little relic of her mother’s life—meaningless and beautiful and easily mistaken for any other, but for the etchings on its surface. Lives, too, were like that. Insignificant, beautiful only to the people who looked closely enough.

Who would miss her mother, if Cordelia and her father were gone? Who would think about her?

Had her mother been thinking of Cordelia when she died?

She was crying without meaning to. The tears were hot on her cheeks, and fell so hard and fast she didn’t bother to try and stop them. Who got to say what was beautiful and what wasn’t, who was important and who didn’t belong, which lives had value, and which ones more value? Whose lives disappeared like stones down a well, forgotten and ignored, dismissed and vilified, because they simply weren’t the right shape? If only certain stars got to shine in the night sky, wouldn’t the sky be a little uglier? Wouldn’t it be missing pieces?

The stone was now dark with tears, and warm from her grip. She’d been squeezing so tightly, she’d even left the imprint of her fingers on its surface. . . .

Cordelia blinked. She’d left the imprint of her fingers on its surface. Even its shape was different now—no longer oval, but tubular and flesh-colored, and sized exactly for her cupped hand. But when she opened her fingers, it pooled immediately across her palm. . . .

She dropped it with a cry and saw it wink, and harden into sharp edges, and flush the exact color of steel.

“What is it, Cordelia?” Gregory said.

“Don’t tell me it’s a spider,” Elizabeth said. “I haven’t eaten anything for hours, and I don’t want to be tempted.”

“Cordelia had the last pretzel,” Gregory said. “But she might let you lick the salt. . . .”

“It’s not a spider,” Cordelia said wonderingly. “It’s a fossil.” She flipped the small panel of metal into her hand and saw it take on the color and shape of her hand again. “It’s a morpheus fossil. My mother had it all along.”

“I thought you said—” Gregory began.

Cordelia interrupted him. “I don’t understand it, either,” she said. “But I’m sure. And look. See how it changes? See how it fills in the shape of whatever it touches? Water relaxes the morpheus’s shape. I must have soaked it while I was crying. And my hand was hot. . . .”

“Cordelia.” Elizabeth’s voice was suddenly high with excitement. “What about a key?”

Cordelia looked over at her, confused. “What about a key?”

Elizabeth was on her knees, gripping the bars of her cage. “Will it take on the shape of a key? A key fitted exactly to a very complicated lock?”

Suddenly, Cordelia understood.

With trembling fingers, she stretched an arm through the bars of the cage and tried to reach for the lock on the cage door. The angle was so awkward, she could barely get the fossil up to the keyhole.

“Come on,” she whispered. “Come on.”

Gregory and Elizabeth were watching her intently. Cordelia held her breath. The fossil had taken on the shape of a finger. She nudged it a little closer. . . .

And nearly lost her grip, as one end of the fossil narrowed into the keyhole, and twisted around the bolts, and hardened into shape.

Cordelia barely had to turn before she heard a click, and was free.

Both Gregory and Elizabeth shouted when Cordelia tumbled out into the open. Cabal began to bark, and Icky to whine, until Cordelia hushed both of them.

“Hurry, Cordelia,” Elizabeth said. As if she needed to be told.

She rubbed the fossil in her palms to warm it and ran to Gregory’s cage. But just as soon as she’d fed it into the lock, she heard the swish of curtains behind her.

Then a familiar voice called to her. “Cordelia?”

She barely had time to turn around before her father was in front of her, sweeping her into his arms. “Thank God I found you,” he said, his voice choked up with feeling. “Everything’s okay now. You’re okay now.”

He set her down. As her tears started falling again—a sudden release of fear and relief and love—he found her cheek with one rough hand. His beard was untrimmed and his fingernails ragged, but he smelled exactly the same, like pipe smoke and bergamot.

“Don’t cry. You’re safe. I’m here now.”

Just as quickly, Cordelia’s relief turned to horror. Her father was here. This was what Newton-Plancke had wanted all along. It was what he’d counted on.

She pulled away, swiping at her cheeks with both hands. “You can’t stay here,” she said, panic cresting suddenly inside her.

“Sounds like a great plan.” Gregory, impatient, reached out to maneuver the cage door open. “All in favor of a quick exit . . . ?” He wriggled free and rolled to his feet.

Cordelia was still trying to push her father toward the curtains. “You don’t understand. Plancke is waiting for you. It’s a trap. He was only using me as bait. He knows you’re here, you’re not safe, you have to—”

She didn’t get any further. The room was suddenly flooded with light, and Plancke, wearing a dressing gown and slippers and holding a very large, very sharp knife, was illumined.

“Cornelius,” he said pleasantly. “I was very much hoping you’d show up.”