8

“THANK THE BELLS we found you!” Helen cried, crunching toward me over a sea of broken glass. “Mr. Marvel and Mr. Omar said you’d be in here.”

“Mr. Marvel?” I asked as Helen brushed mirror fragments from my skirt and straightened my shirtwaist.

“Kid Marvel,” the dwarf said, striding forward and sticking out his hand. “Showman and impresario, entertainer to the crowned heads of Europe, and,” he added with a wink, “dwarf. And not just the human variety, if you get my drift.”

“Oh,” I said, not sure I did, “do you mean you’re a fairy dwarf?”

“Right on the nose!” He tapped his own bulbous and painted proboscis. “Or as your folk would say, genus: Fatus; species: dvergar. I hope you’ll excuse the liberties taken back at the Blowhole. Just doing my job, you know. But then Omar here”—the tall Hindu bowed his head—“said you were looking for the girls gone missing, and when I saw you chasing the humbug I knew you’d get yourself in trouble.”

“The humbug?” I asked, remembering he’d used the word before.

“A fake, a con, a master of disguise.” Kid Marvel rattled off the names. “A gyp, a hoister, a goniff . . . a thing that ain’t what it’s got up to look like—”

“In short,” Omar interrupted, “what my esteemed colleague Mr. Marvel is attempting to establish is that the man you pursued is no longer a man, but a creature possessed by demons. In my land we called such a creature a pishaca, a flesh-eating demon wont to haunt cremation grounds and feed on human souls.”

I shivered at the description. “We call him a Shadow Master. This one’s name is Judicus van Drood.”

Kid Marvel and Omar exchanged looks. “Yeah, we seen him here before,” Kid Marvel said. “Bloke who’s always got a different bleak mort on his arm, spreading the muck around.”

“What—?” Helen began.

“He’s always got a pretty girl with him and plenty of spending money,” Nate translated, and then shrugged at Helen’s stare. “A fellow spends time in the gambling hells, he picks up the lingo.”

“You’d be well advised not to spend so much time in hells, sahib,” Omar said, staring sternly at Nathan. Then turning to Helen and me, he added, “Nor should you be allowing these young ladies to chase after dangerous creatures.”

“It’s not up to him to allow us,” Helen said, bristling. “And we’re not ordinary young ladies. We belong to the Or—”

“Helen!” Nathan and I cried.

“My dear young lady,” Omar said, bowing his head to Helen. “We know all about your Order. But I suggest if we are going to talk of such weighty and clandestine matters we repair to the privacy of my pavilion.”

Helen, Nathan and I looked at each other. Omar the Magnificent and Kid Marvel were clearly not ordinary humans—or even humans at all. If they knew about the Order, they knew we were charged with destroying their kind. They might be leading us into a trap. And yet they had come to my rescue and they knew about the shadows and had seen van Drood escorting young women around Coney Island . . .

“We shall be delighted,” Helen answered for us, as though accepting an invitation to tea. “I’ve never been to a hypnotist’s pavilion before!”

The Golden Pavilion of Omar the Magnificent turned out to be a wooden caravan plastered with theatrical posters parked between the fun house and the freak show. From the outside it looked too small to hold the five of us—even if one of us was a dwarf—but it proved to be surprisingly commodious on the inside. The floor was covered with thick Indian carpets, the walls and ceiling draped with beautiful silk scarves edged with tiny brass bells. We were offered seats on low tufted cushions and served spicy tea from a brass samovar in delicate gilt-edged glasses.

“How lovely!” Helen cried, sampling an iced cake from a brass tray. “I’m going to give my next tea party an Oriental theme.”

“We’re not here to trade recipes for scones,” I said sternly. “We’re here to find a girl.” I laid Ruth’s picture on the brass tea tray. “This is Ruth Blum. She went missing on July fourth. A change—a witness said she saw Ruth meeting a man who matched van Drood’s description at the Steeplechase entrance on the day she disappeared.”

“Your witness must not be an ordinary mortal if she was able to recall the pishaca’s face,” Omar said, seating himself cross-legged on the rug. “The pishaca is even more adept at the arts of mesmerism than I. To the undisciplined mind his face would appear as a blur.”

“My mind is quite disciplined,” Nathan objected. “And I only recall him as a blur.”

“You, sahib, have indeed a fine mind,” Omar said, bowing his head to Nathan, “but I am afraid it has been sadly addled by liquor—”

“The blue ruin, eh?” Kid Marvel concurred, tapping his nose. “What a cab moll serves at a flash-panny’ll give you the barrel fever in the end. Better stick with the scandal soup.” He held up his tea glass, took a sip, and screwed his face up.

“—and by melancholy,” Omar continued, leaning forward and pinning Nathan with his glittering black eyes. A fog seemed to rise in Nathan’s pale gray eyes, and he swayed like a cobra rising from a snake charmer’s basket.

“Stop that!” I cried, snapping my fingers in front of Nathan’s drugged gaze. “It’s not fair to use your powers on us.”

“No more than it’s fair for you to wander into our turf without laying all your cards on the table,” Kid Marvel snarled back, his voice an octave lower than it had been a moment before. “You know we’re madges and we knows you could turn us into the Order of the Ding-Dongs. Your kind has never shown our kind a bit of mercy. You hunt us down and kill us. Why do you think we’re hiding out here at the freak show? Where else can we go that’s safe from youse ding-dongs? Why should we trust you? Why should we help you?”

“Madges?” I echoed. “Ding-dongs?”

Helen had shrunk back at the dwarf’s venomous attack. Nathan was clenching his fists as if he’d like to punch the little man. Omar was silent and watching, his black eyes moving across our faces. When those eyes reached me I felt a pinprick behind each eye and an itching along my shoulder blades.

“By madges my esteemed colleague means magical beings, and by ding-dongs, well . . .” Omar spread his hands wide. “While I admit it’s not exactly a respectful name for the Order of the Bell, I’m afraid I must agree with Mr. Marvel’s assessment. We would be foolish to trust your kind. When your emissaries came to my country they rooted out our gods and ransacked our temples. They combed our ashrams looking for children with magical ability and took those children from their homes, promising their parents they would be raised as equals in their schools.”

Omar held up his hand. I heard Helen gasp as she recognized the ring on his finger. It bore the Bell and Feather insignia.

“But we were never equals. They used us to learn our magic and then treated us as servants. Why should we trust you now?”

“He’s right,” Nathan said. “Their kind and ours can never work together. They don’t care if helpless girls are being stolen from their families. They’ll never help us.” He unfolded his long legs and began to rise stiffly to his feet, pulling Helen up with him.

“It’s you who’d sacrifice those poor helpless girls instead of taking help from our kind!” Kid Marvel cried, jumping far more agilely to his feet and jabbing his finger at Nathan’s chest, jarring Helen’s arm in the process. She dropped her teacup. As it shattered on the brass tea tray it made a sound like a bell ringing. The sound expanded in my head, swelling into a maddening peal that filled the caravan. The tiny bells on the hanging scarves rang and the glasses on the brass tray chimed. The whole caravan was shaking. I looked at Omar, sure he must be making the caravan move, but saw from his wide, surprised eyes that he wasn’t. I was the one doing it.

“A chime child,” Omar said, with something like awe in his voice. “And an unusually powerful one.” He fastened his glittering eyes on me. I felt my wings straining against my corset as if Omar was a wing charmer and he was coaxing them out. Would he reveal my true nature to my friends?

“A ringer!” Kid Marvel cried. “We could use you in the business, kid, if you ever get tired of working for the ding-dongs.”

“You never know,” I answered, looking at Omar instead of Kid Marvel. “I might need a change of scenery.”

Omar bowed low to me. “We would be honored to have you among us, garuda.”

“Then you’ll help us?” I asked, wondering what he’d called me.

Omar nodded at Kid Marvel, who stuck out his hand to shake mine. “Sure, kid, for a ringer, anything you want.” I was sure, though, that the reason Omar had decided to help me was because he knew now what I was, and that I couldn’t turn him and Kid Marvel in without endangering my own secret. As far as Omar and Kid were concerned I was one of them. Another madge. I supposed there were worse clubs to be a member of.

“But I don’t know how easy it’ll be. These molls that the humbug makes away with aren’t just strolling down Fifth Avenue. He puts ’em in a flash-panny tight as the Tombs.”

I knew by “the Tombs” he was referring to the jailhouse, but still the word made me shiver. I wasn’t sure what a flash-panny was, so I asked.

“A house of ill repute,” Omar said. “This one’s called the Hellgate Club.”

I shivered at the memory of the churning whirlpool that had sucked Molly down into the river last night. “There’s a place in the East River called that.”

“Yeah, that’s what it’s named for. They say sailors who survive the Hellgate come to the club after. And,” Kid Marvel added in a lower, more ominous tone, “they say them that don’t survive frequent it too, if youse take my meaning. It’s down on the waterfront—not a neighborhood nice kiddies like yerselves ought to go. It’s surrounded by gin joints and hop dens. It looks nicer than those places, but it’s not. All them dives are havens of grace compared to the Hellgate. If your friend is there it’ll take a pretty big con to get her out.”

“Mr. Marvel is correct,” Omar said. “The Hellgate Club is protected by the most ruthless gangsters of the underworld, corrupt officers of the New York City police force and demons of the shadow world. The girls are never allowed out and the building is guarded night and day. All who work there—and all who enter—are held in thrall to the shadow demons. It would be easier to extract a prisoner from the Tombs. Only a master confidence man could get a girl out of the Hellgate.”

“And luckily,” Kid Marvel said, grinning, “you’ve found one.”