As Natalie stood there holding the book, I tried to think of any reason why three zombies would be so desperate to get a copy of Little Women.
“Ever read it?” she asked me.
“Of course,” I answered. “Haven’t you?”
She shook her head. “Never interested me.”
“Really? Not even in fifth grade?”
She laughed. “In fifth grade my favorite book was Emerging Principles of Nanotechnology.” (Sometimes Natalie almost makes me feel normal by comparison.)
“Well, then, you’ve really missed out, because the book is sooooo good. It’s set in New England during the Civil War and is about four sisters who try to keep up their spirits despite hard times. They take care of their neighbors, go to parties, and put on plays for their friends and family.”
“In other words,” she answered, “it’s the exact opposite of twenty-first-century killer zombies who live beneath Manhattan.”
“Pretty much,” I said. “So you’ve got to wonder why they’d go through so much trouble to get a copy of a book they could pick up at any bookstore.”
“Well, it’s not actually Little Women,” Natalie said as she opened it to the title page. “That’s just what it says on the cover. The full title is Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, the Theatricals of Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth March, by Margaret Key.”
She handed me the book, and I flipped through it. Sure enough, a writer named Margaret Key had written entire scripts based on the plays put on by the sisters in the novel.
“Okay, so what, then?” I asked, half joking and half trying to figure it out. “The three of them want to start performing girl plays for their friends down in Dead City?”
Just the thought of them dressing up as the sisters made me laugh out loud.
“Not exactly Shakespeare in the Park,” she replied.
“I can tell you, though, who would have loved this book,” I added as a happy memory danced through my head. “My mother was obsessed with Little Women. It was her all-time favorite novel. She even named my sister Beth after one of the sisters in the book.”
I handed it back to Natalie, and she flipped through it some more.
“I get that your mom would have liked it,” Natalie replied, “but not why Cornelius Blackwell was so desperate to get his hand on it.” She gave me a little wink and a smirk. “Notice I said hand—as in only one?”
“I had to chop it off,” I said defensively. “It was the only way to get the book.”
“And you’re sure this is the book you pried from the fingers of that severed hand?” she asked, holding it up by the corner as if it suddenly had cooties.
“Positive,” I said, replaying the gory scene in my head. “And I specifically remember that he checked the cover to make sure he had the right book. This is what they were after.”
She thought about it for a second. “Now that you say that, I remember him checking it too.”
We sat there dumbfounded, trying to think of any reasonable explanation and coming up with exactly zero.
“Okay, let’s forget for a minute why they wanted it,” I suggested, “and try to figure out what a book from the MIST school library was doing in the New York City morgue.”
“Change of perspective. Good idea.”
We mulled this over for a minute, and then Natalie made that “eureka” face she gets when she comes up with a brilliant idea.
She flipped to the back of the book and carefully slid the library return receipt from the pocket inside the cover. It was brittle and faded, but when she held it up to the light, she could still make out the faint writing. She read it and then laughed. “I know one thing the morgue and MIST have in common.”
“What?” I asked eagerly.
“Apparently, you’re not the only one in the family who’s lousy at returning library books.”
Now I realized what MIST had in common with the morgue. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said as she handed the slip to me.
I checked the slip and could not believe my eyes. The book was last checked out nearly thirty years earlier by a MIST student named Rosemary Collins. My mother.
“You were right when you said your mom would have loved this book. She loved it so much, she checked it out and never returned it.”
That’s when the doorbell rang.
“I bet that’s the boys,” Natalie said. “I texted them from the delivery truck and a couple more times when you were in the shower. You were in there for a while.”
Sure enough, Alex and Grayson were at the door, relieved to see us healthy and whole. Before we could fill them in on our adventure, my dad popped out from the kitchen.
“Hey, Molly, want to introduce me to your friends?”
“Sure thing, Dad. This is Natalie, Alex, and Grayson. We’re working together on a research project for school.”
“Nice to meet you all,” he said. “I’m making baked rigatoni for dinner, if any of you would like to join us.”
Alex, ever the food monster, smiled gleefully. “Is it true that you were selected the best cook in the entire New York City Fire Department?”
Dad, almost embarrassed, nodded. “I don’t know how tough the competition was, but yes.”
“Then I, for one, would very much like to have baked rigatoni.”
“Me too,” added Grayson.
“Do you have enough for three extra people?” she asked sheepishly.
“More than enough,” he answered with a smile. “I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
I could tell Dad was thrilled at the prospect of other kids visiting. I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m not exactly a social butterfly (let’s be honest, I’m not even a social caterpillar), and whatever friends Beth has, she tends to meet up with them away from home.
Dad went back into the kitchen while we headed to my room. Natalie and I filled the guys in on what happened at the morgue, our escape by way of the bakery, and our utter confusion about the book. That’s when Alex caught us all by surprise by announcing, “Little Women rocks!”
“Are you serious?” Grayson asked incredulously. “You’ve actually read it?”
“Multiple times,” Alex answered, without a hint of sarcasm or shame. “I have three younger sisters, and I read it to each one when they were little. I even did different voices for the characters. My Jo . . . off the charts.”
“If you know it so well, maybe you can figure out why they wanted it,” Natalie suggested as she tossed the book to him. “’Cause we sure can’t.”
Alex opened the book to the table of contents and then flashed a smile that up until that point I had seen him use only while looking at food.
“What a great idea,” he said as he read through the play titles. “There’s The Witch’s Curse, that’s the one where they perform on Christmas at the start of the book, The Captive of Castile, The Greek Slave . . .”
His voice trailed off as he continued down the list.
“What’s wrong?” Natalie asked.
“Well . . . some of these aren’t from the book at all.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Like this one,” he said. “Atlas and Prometheus.”
“Now that sounds good,” Grayson said, suddenly interested in the conversation.
“What do you mean?” asked Natalie.
“I may not know anything about Little Women,” he answered, “but I know almost everything about Greek mythology.”
“You sure you don’t mean geek mythology?” Alex asked with a laugh.
“Call it what you want. I used to read myths to my little brothers at bedtime. I even did voices. My Hephaestus would put your Jo to shame.”
We all laughed at that.
“Why would there be a play about Atlas and Prometheus in this book,” Natalie wondered, “if it’s not in the original?”
“Maybe there’s something in the myth,” I suggested. “What’s it about?”
“Atlas and Prometheus were Titans, and they were brothers,” Grayson replied. “But when the Titans went to war with the Olympians, Prometheus went against his own kind.”
“All right,” Natalie said, nodding. “Do you think that might have something to do with three Level 3 goons?”
Grayson shook his head. “Nothing I can think of.”
As we looked further into the book, we discovered that most of the plays were not, in fact, from Little Women. Despite this, Margaret Key had written them as though they were. Each one featured the four sisters and was written in Louisa May Alcott’s style.
We were stumped, staring off into space and trying to figure it out, when my father entered.
“Dinner’s almost ready—” he said, before stopping himself and laughing at the perplexed looks on our faces. “Homework’s that hard, huh?”
“Yeah,” I answered.
“I don’t suppose you know anything special about Atlas and Prometheus,” joked Alex.
“Just the obvious,” my dad said with a shrug, as if we all should know what he meant.
“What’s ‘the obvious’?” I asked.
“You really don’t know?”
“No.”
“What kind of New Yorkers are you?” he asked. “Atlas and Prometheus are the two giant statues at Rockefeller Center. Atlas is across the street from St. Patrick’s.”
“And Prometheus is right in front of the ice-skating rink,” Grayson finished. “How did I miss that?”
“Yeah, how’d you miss that?” Alex asked, with a friendly toss of a pillow.
“There’s a big statue out in the harbor, too,” Dad joked. “Tall lady with a crown and a torch. I think her name may be Something Liberty.”
“Very funny, Dad.”
“Anyway,” he said, with a clap of his hands, “dinner’s in about half an hour.”
He walked back toward the kitchen, and we turned to one another, our minds digesting this new information.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence?” Natalie asked. “Or do you think the play actually has something to do with Rockefeller Center?”
“Let me see the book again.” Alex picked it up and turned to the first scene of the play. He stared at it as if something might jump off the page and catch his attention. It took a moment, but something did, and a smile slowly began to form. “That’s interesting.”
“What?”
“Come here and look at the heading on the script,” he said. He motioned to all of us, so we crowded next to him and scrunched together. “Read the top three lines.”
PERFORMERS: JO, MEG, AMY, BETH
LOCALES: ZEUS’S HIDDEN APPLE ORCHARD,
TARTARUS, THE CHAMBER OF IAPEDUS
“So?” Natalie asked. “Is something wrong?”
“Not that I can see,” added Grayson. “The locations are all from the classic myth.”
Alex smiled. “Watch what happens when I cover the edges.”
He pressed his hands down flat on the page so that they covered the edges.
“Now read it.”
Suddenly a new phrase was visible in the middle.
’S HIDDEN
CHAMBER
“Omega’s hidden chamber?” I said, stunned.
Alex nodded. “I don’t think this is a play. I think it’s a code.”