THE MORNING PASSED in much the same way as it always did. The Marymead fence had sprouted a collection of iron bells, using the students’ locks as clappers. Nialla brought sugar cookies she’d somehow managed to make in between Toby incidents. They ate one each as they walked up the stairs to homeroom and decided to save the rest for the meeting on the sixth floor.
Marzana wondered if Emilia would join them for lunch, but she didn’t. She sat with a handful of the other Commorancy Kids at her usual table on the far side of the dining hall under a sprawling Venetian glass chandelier, one of three that were relics from the days when this had been the Cotgrave dining room. It wasn’t until five minutes to the bell that she got up, dumped her tray, and strolled over to where Marzana and Nialla sat at the end of a table by the window. “You guys about done?” she asked.
Boy, Marzana thought, Emilia’s poker face isn’t just for game night.
She glanced at Nialla. “I am.”
Nialla got to her feet. “Sure thing.”
Emilia nodded. “Then let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
They grabbed their bags, dumped their trash, and followed Emilia to the nearer of the two big staircases. Since the lunch bell hadn’t rung yet, the stairs were mostly empty. “You haven’t been up here before,” Emilia said as they reached the second floor and started up to the third. “The Commorancy floors upstairs, I mean.”
Marzana shook her head. “Nope.”
“They’re nothing special.” Emilia glanced over her shoulder at them. “I mean, people think it’s mysterious or whatever. They’re just dormitories. I feel like I should make sure you temper your expectations, in case you were expecting the Gryffindor common room or something.”
“I wasn’t,” Marzana assured her as they passed the third floor.
“I kind of was,” Nialla grumbled.
“Well, sorry to disappoint.” She sniffed the air as they continued upward, then glanced at Nialla’s book bag. “Do you have cookies in there?”
“Yeah, but now that I know we’re not going to Gryffindor tower, I’m not sure I’m sharing them.”
“Would it help if I told you there actually is an Owlery?”
“Yes,” Nialla and Marzana said together.
“Oh.” Emilia said nothing for two more floors. The other two followed her breathlessly, in part because of the prospect of an Owlery and in part because there were just a thumping lot of steps. They paused for a momentary break at the turn in the stairs just above the fourth floor, scooting back into the wallpapered corner to make room for some kids heading up to the language and social studies classrooms on five. “There isn’t one, though,” Emilia admitted at last.
Finally they arrived at the sixth floor. “Most of the dormitories are upstairs on seven,” Emilia said, leading them into a wide space between the two staircases. It was mostly open, like the Grand Saloon on the first floor. The same big brick chimney that rose from the saloon’s huge hearth up through the house, floor by floor, stood like a column in the center of the room here, with fireplaces cut into it front and back.
“Is this the common room?” Marzana asked, looking around at the scattered chairs and tables, some of which were cluttered with abandoned textbooks and in-process projects. She paused to read a note taped to the top of a diorama of a room built into a shoebox: HARRIET, DO NOT TOUCH THIS! WE ARE NOT ADDING A DEATH RAY. I LOOKED IT UP AND MATTHEWS DIDN’T INVENT IT UNTIL THE ’20S. PETER. And then, Harriet’s scrawled reply: PETER, HE ANNOUNCED IN 1923 THAT HE’D INVENTED IT. SHOW ME WHERE IT SAYS HE DIDN’T INVENT IT EARLIER. XO HARRI. Standing on a toothpick tripod next to a matchbox desk was, in fact, an item made from a single rigatoni noodle blackened by marker that looked suspiciously like a tiny death ray.
“Nope,” Emilia replied. “We call this space the Inglenook, even though it’s not remotely a nook. It’s whatever it needs to be: study spot, dining room, workshop. Same thing upstairs. Our common room’s there,” Emilia said, pointing ahead to a pair of yellow doors. “Each floor has one. This floor also has our kitchen and pantry, a bathroom, the babysitter’s office, that kind of thing.”
“There’s a babysitter?” Nialla asked, aghast.
Emilia made a face, then nodded toward an office off to the right. “Resident nurse. Someone has to make sure we’re not getting into trouble up here when everyone else goes home, running with scissors and eating the detergent and whatnot.”
The yellow doors had probably once been sunflower-colored and bright, but they had darkened and the paint had cracked with time. The effect was surprisingly nice, like looking at the fissures on the surface of a painting made with thick-daubed strokes of color. Marzana and Nialla followed Emilia through them and into a room that filled up almost the entire front of the floor. Two sets of doors led out onto the balcony; between them, a huge picture window faced onto Pastern Wynd and stared into the windows of the two tall, skinny houses across the street from Marymead. There were a number of round tables, three clusters of big cozy chairs, two wood-burning stoves, and some nice tufty rugs underfoot. The paintings on the walls looked like they might’ve been done by students, some recently and some long ago.
“This is nice,” Marzana commented. The novelty of being on the sixth floor and the aches in her legs from hiking all the way up here were almost drowning the nerves that had been ramping up since before lunch. Almost.
Emilia surveyed the room. “It’s clean for once. That’s a pleasant surprise.”
“I’m surprised it’s empty,” Nialla said. “I’d be up here all the time if I had a private common room.”
“I asked to have it for this period today,” Emilia said, crossing to the trio of chairs that looked out the picture window.
“You asked to have it?” Marzana repeated. “To yourself? How does that work?”
Emilia shrugged. “It’s easier than you’d think. There are only fifteen of us, and we try to take care of each other. If somebody needs privacy, we find a way. Nobody abuses the privilege.”
“That’s amazing.” Nialla picked a seat and sighed as she settled into it. “It’s so quiet. I could get used to this.”
“Well, don’t get too used to it.” Emilia sat, and Marzana followed suit. “So let’s have it. Tell me about this kidnapping.”
“Okay.” Relieved that they’d somehow skipped small talk altogether, Marzana took her journal from her backpack and went page by page through everything she’d learned about the crime from her parents and Emmett, along with the questions she’d written down on Monday night. Out of habit so old she didn’t even really have to think about it, she skirted any mention of the connections between Emmett and her parents, or exactly why Emmett had come to the Hakelbarends in the first place.
Emilia was a good listener, or at least her impassive poker face made it look like she was. “And who’s Mr. Otter-something?” she asked at last. “You said you needed to know about a substitute teacher. Mr. Otter-something.”
“Otterwill,” Nialla supplied. “He’s subbing for Mrs. Agravin, and he came from Peony Hyde’s elementary school. Aaand,” she said, drawing out the word for dramatic effect, “he’s visiting family in the Liberty here on short notice because he had a summer job working at a camp, and that camp canceled its first week—this week—yesterday.”
“Which your parents’ friend said was the case with Peony’s day camp, which was located right by the school where she went and where this guy worked, and which they said was at least partly staffed with people who knew her personally.” Emilia had been paying very close attention.
“Exactly,” Marzana said, gratified. “We think he has to know something. The kidnapping hasn’t been reported to the public, but probably the teachers at the school would’ve been interviewed, and for sure any counselors who were there on Sunday to set up.”
“Sure, but there’s not likely to be confirmation of any of that in whatever records Marymead has for him,” Emilia pointed out. “If they have any records at all. Unless he’s subbed here before, I can’t imagine there’ll be much. Just personal information. Contact stuff. If the notice was that short, there might not even be a résumé, and if there is, I doubt he’d have taken the time to update it to include a camp from which a kid maybe just got abducted.”
“You’re probably right,” Marzana agreed, “but it’s a place to start.”
Emilia nodded. “Seems reasonable. You want me to look tonight?”
Marzana hesitated. “You can really do that?”
“Crack into the faculty records?” The poker face fractured at last as Emilia smiled a little. “That’s why you asked me, isn’t it?”
“Well . . . yeah. But . . . but you can really do it?”
“What can I say?” Emilia raised both hands, palms up. “The legends are all true.”
Nialla shook her head. “I think you might be my new hero.” She leaned over, got the foil package out of her bag, and opened it with an air of formality. “I bestow upon you these cookies, even if you have no owls.”
The three girls took a cookie each. Then they looked at one another. “So?” Marzana said finally. “All for one, or something?”
“All for one,” Emilia confirmed, holding up a crooked pinky finger. Marzana linked hers to it.
“And all for three,” Nialla said, slipping her pinky in too. Emilia looked at her with concern. “Don’t worry.” Nialla laughed. “One for all. It’s just something my brother used to say. All for one and all for two.” They each took a ceremonial bite. Nialla laughed again, this time a little nervously. “I can’t believe we’re actually doing this.”
“Anyway, it’ll be all for four if J.J. comes aboard,” Marzana pointed out. She paused to finish chewing. “Nialla’s neighbor,” she explained to Emilia. “He might join us too.”
“We’re meeting him at Lucky’s this afternoon,” Nialla said. “Can you come?”
“Sure. What’s his deal?”
Marzana glanced pointedly at Nialla, who squirmed slightly and bought herself a minute by cramming the rest of her cookie into her mouth. “He’s into magic,” Nialla said a little defensively when she’d finished chewing and couldn’t put off answering any longer.
Emilia’s poker face didn’t falter in the slightest. “Magic.”
Nialla sighed. “Listen, you’ll understand when you talk to him.”
“Can he throw playing cards to do damage, or something?”
“No!” Nialla exploded. “Well, maybe. I don’t know. But—just let him explain tonight. I’m telling you, it’s a good idea, bringing him aboard.”
“’Cause weaponized playing cards would be pretty useful, maybe. Depending on how serious things get.” Emilia patted Nialla’s shoulder peaceably, which was smart, because Nialla’s face was starting to go impressively red. “Yeah, I wanna come and talk to the magician. What time?”
“Meet outside on the front stairs after school at three?” Marzana asked. “We can walk over together.”
“Yeah.” Emilia smiled slowly. “But let’s not meet outside. Find me in the trustees’ hall as soon as you can after dismissal.”
Marzana frowned. The trustees’ hall was just outside the gymnasium, which had once been the ballroom of Marymead House. The gym was at the back of the ground floor, and it opened onto the courtyard, which might’ve been a convenient direction in which to go if the courtyard didn’t have a twelve-foot wall around it. If, however, they were going out the front door eventually, the cramped hallway, crowded with too many lockers and kids in too small a space, was a crummy meeting spot.
But before Marzana could ask why on earth they’d meet there, an old-fashioned buzzer rang over the common room’s open double doors. Emilia popped to her feet, impassive expression right back in place. “Better get moving. You kind of have to haul tail to get to the lower classroom floors from here before the second bell.”
Two hours later, Marzana and Nialla lingered in the hallway that ran in between the gym and the saloon, watching other kids packing up to head home. Short bays of four lockers each projected perpendicularly into the hall on both sides, with a wide break for the excessively grand double doors to the gym. Rows of gilt-framed, grim-faced Cotgraves and Cotgrave relations and descendants and other trustees of Marymead, past and present, hung above the lockers on both sides. The girls picked a spot against some lockers on the saloon-side wall to wait, and a moment later, Emilia materialized from out of the current, her satchel over one shoulder. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Marzana replied, still without a clue as to why they were here. She fidgeted and gestured vaguely toward the entry hall. “Should we . . . ?”
Emilia shook her head once. “Just wait.”
The crowd in the hall began to thin out. Emilia checked her watch in a careless fashion, then put up three fingers with which she proceeded to soundlessly count down: three, two, one. She held up a fist, and at that very moment, one of the massive doors beside them swung open and Mr. Pratt, the gym teacher, came out with a student in tow.
“—happy to discuss it, Kevin,” Mr. Pratt was saying, “but it’s table-tennis day, so I have to be quick about getting the flag down. You’re welcome to walk with me.” He and the student trooped down the hallway and disappeared around a corner.
Emilia stretched, then affected a look of surprise and annoyance. “Darn it, did I leave my coat in there?” she asked in a bored tone. “Come on, I bet I know where I left it. I’ll be quick.” And without waiting for an answer from the other two girls, she yanked the door open and slipped inside. Marzana and Nialla exchanged puzzled grins and followed.
The gym was another casualty of the Cotgraves’ stipulations about their bequest. The school was not permitted to move or alter any of the family’s collection of fancy-pants lighting fixtures, so the former ballroom’s massive gaslit chandelier, which for whatever reason had never been converted to electricity and always seemed to be giving off a low, persistent hissing sound, still hung midway between the two suspended backstops and had to be hauled up and out of the way whenever it was time for basketball. A stage had been installed in the wall to their right (post-Cotgrave, thank goodness, Mr. Pratt often snarked, or the school would probably have been stuck with actual footcandles there). The lights were out, but there was plenty of illumination coming in from the glass-paned French doors directly across the room (also not ideal for a room with frequent airborne objects moving at high velocity), which led to the walled courtyard. There was a second set of smaller double doors on the wall across from the stage, but they didn’t really lead anywhere but to the administrative offices.
“Are we going out through the courtyard?” Nialla asked dubiously.
“More or less,” Emilia replied, crossing to the French doors. “Quick, now.”
“How?” Nialla asked as she and Marzana followed, but Emilia didn’t bother to answer. The doors were already open; Mr. Pratt kept them that way in good weather to try to protect the glass, much to the fury of Mr. Sopwith, the gardener, who considered them to be the first line of defense in protecting the Orangery from escaped volleyballs and the like. Emilia led them outside into the courtyard, took a look around to be sure it was empty, then made a rapid turn to face the outside wall of the gym, where Mr. Sopwith kept a big work shed full of supplies. She took a little pouch from her satchel. It was about the same size as the one that held the little scout-knife multi-tool that Marzana’s father had given her for her last birthday—I should really start carrying that, she thought—but when Emilia flicked her case open, instead of a knife, she extracted a pair of lockpicks.
“Wait a minute,” Nialla whispered, glancing around in a panic. Marzana looked up instinctively toward the dozens of windows that overlooked the courtyard—but the shed was so close against the wall, the girls were probably invisible to anyone looking down.
“No time to wait.” Emilia spoke fast as she went to work on the lock below the chipped glass knob using a practiced bit of twitchy fiddling with the picks. “Mr. Sopwith locks the side gates on either side of the house and goes out front during dismissal to make sure nobody picks the flowers on their way home. The only way back here for the next half hour is through the gym, but Mr. Pratt’s fast getting the flag down. He’s who we have to worry about.”
“And the table-tennis club,” Marzana said, remembering Mr. Pratt’s words as he’d left the gym.
“Yeah, not really,” Emilia said, turning the knob. With a creak of old hinges, the door opened. Emilia swept an arm toward the cluttered inside of the shed. “Be my guest.”
“That’s impressive,” Marzana muttered, hurrying inside with Nialla right behind her.
“Meh,” Emilia said, pulling the door shut behind them. The scent of potting soil and chemicals filled their nostrils. The shed was dim but not dark, due to two green-tinged skylights in the roof, and it was almost obsessively neat and organized and large enough for the three of them to move around one another comfortably.
“For some reason, that lock gives me trouble,” Emilia said, reaching for a key that hung on a hook beside the door. “There’s a copy of this key upstairs in the Official Commorancy Key Collection—it’s just a ring full of rando keys collected over the years by boarders at Marymead—but somebody else was using the collection this afternoon.”
“How, exactly, do I apply to be a Commorancy Kid?” Nialla asked as Emilia relocked the door from the inside and rehung the key.
Emilia grinned. “Get on the waiting list. And move off that.” She pointed at the ground, and Marzana and Nialla discovered a wooden trapdoor set into the middle of the floor, the rest of which was made of the same paving stones that lined the courtyard outside.
Nialla backed up into a corner stacked with terracotta pots, and Marzana edged back against a pegboard hung with handheld tools. Emilia bent and lifted the hatch to reveal a brick-walled hole with a short ladder bolted to one side.
“You’re kidding,” Marzana said, staring down into the dark. Trapdoors in sheds? Collections of mysterious keys? She turned to Nialla. “All this time we’ve been bored out of our minds, thinking there was nothing exciting going on anywhere, and meanwhile our classmates are getting up to shenanigans right under our noses.”
“Bored? Here?” Emilia considered them as she took a flashlight from her bag. “Someday I’ll give you a proper tour of the school.” She passed the light to Nialla. “Take this. I’ll close up after us.”
Nialla switched the flashlight on and tucked it under her chin. “Nothing down there better be carnivorous.” She swung her feet into the hole and began her descent.
Emilia leaned on the hatch. “If there is, I haven’t met it yet.”
Marzana climbed down next, following the jittery beam and feeling the thrill mount as she descended. As they waited for Emilia at the bottom, Nialla bounced giddily on her toes at Marzana’s side and swept the light around the space: a tunnel that began at a wall just behind the ladder and seemed to open out into a bigger chunk of darkness just a little ways up ahead. This—this was exciting. Marzana reached out and grabbed Nialla’s free hand, at which her friend, unable to hold her own glee in any longer, actually hopped twice in delight.
They just barely managed to compose themselves as Emilia dropped down between them a moment later. She took the flashlight from Nialla. “Onward.”
The air down there was musty and humid, but it had a vague, familiar, citrusy green note to it. “I can smell the Orangery,” Marzana said as they walked down the tunnel toward the place where it widened. Her voice echoed.
“Yup.” Emilia’s light played over a tangle of iron and copper pipes and assorted antique valves and gauges that seemed to go on for yards and yards. “Most of the plants and fruit trees up there need tropical conditions year-round. The Orangery is heated from under the floor. This is where all the works are.” She swung the flashlight wide, revealing a sort of walkway at the periphery of all the plumbing. “This way.”
They followed Emilia and her flashlight through the perfumed tunnel and into a stretch with a more minerally smell to it. Emilia pointed to another jumble of pipes. “Those are the fountain waterworks. Nearly there now.” At last the beam of the flashlight fell on a set of stone steps. Emilia trotted to the top and hastily picked the lock on a small wooden door set into an old brick wall. She pushed the door wide, leaned to the side so that Marzana could squeeze in next to her, and trained the beam of the flashlight downward to illuminate a derelict little platform about a foot below that jutted out over a wide, dry cement trough. “Thataway.”
“Where are we now?” Marzana asked as she climbed down onto the platform. It looked like a small pier.
“Private dock,” Emilia confirmed as Nialla dropped down to join Marzana. “Underneath Eald Brucan Lane.” She flashed the light from side to side, revealing an arched red-brick ceiling over a tunnel marred here and there by the jut of more sad little dry piers, but with no end in sight in either direction. “I don’t know when there was last water in this canal—maybe not since the Cotgraves—but this is where Eald Brucan gets its name: from the old brook that used to run below it. We can take this all the way to right under where Westing Alley meets Hellbent, and come down basically across the street from Surroyal Books.”
“Down?” Nialla asked, looking up at the arched brick ceiling of the tunnel. “Don’t we have to go up at this point?”
“Well, not at this point,” Emilia said, and the tunnel vanished into darkness as she leaped onto the pier, tucked the flashlight between her chin and left shoulder, and used her picks to relock the door they’d come through. “At this point we go straight.” She stood and jumped down into the dry canal. “All will become clear. Shall we?”
They filed down the center of the canal for about ten minutes, until they reached a pier whose corresponding door was painted with an address in flaking gold paint that glittered when the flashlight’s beam found it: 5 WESTING ALLEY. This door wasn’t locked at all. They followed Emilia through it and up into a basement full of washers and dryers that sat at odd angles to the wall, dark except where small windows near the ceiling let in shafts of dusty light. “Apartment building,” Emilia explained. “Abandoned. Mostly.”
There it was again, that sudden, cresting thrill. “What does ‘mostly’ mean?” Nialla inquired.
“It means it would look very weird if anyone came out the front door, so we’re going to climb up a few floors and come down the fire escape.”
“Isn’t there a back door?”
“Yes, but it’s padlocked from the outside, and I presume none of us are magicians or we wouldn’t be going to interview one. Plus,” Emilia added, “this route is much cooler. If you thought the waterworks were exciting, this is going to be something else.”
Marzana’s nerves had been fizzing along at a high degree of excitement ever since Emilia had begun to work on Mr. Sopwith’s shed door, but now they ramped up to an even more extreme pitch. She was used to a low-grade jangling borne of her general worries about all the social interactions that somehow she just couldn’t seem to get through the day without. But this was different. She’d felt it before, once or twice—most notably, of course, at Greenglass House—but in general she had come to believe the feeling wasn’t to be found at home in Gammerbund. Yet here they were, and much to her shock, there had been excitement literally under her feet all this time. She just hadn’t known where to look.
They found a stairwell behind a pitted metal door and marched up six floors. Emilia stepped out into the hallway without so much as a pause to see if the coast was clear. “Come on,” she called, when Marzana and Nialla hesitated. “Our skulking days are over.”
They joined her in a hallway tiled in black and white squares, and Emilia pointed with a flourish to a sign on the door of the apartment immediately across from the stairwell they’d emerged from.
boneash and sodalime’s glass museum and radioactive teashop
“This is a . . . museum?” Nialla said, glancing from the sign to the end of the deserted hallway.
“And . . . radioactive teashop,” Marzana finished warily. Then she realized they weren’t standing in darkness anymore. “Wait.” Bare and dusty bulbs screwed into rusted, unremarkable ceiling fixtures flickered overhead. “The lights are on. Won’t someone notice?”
“They’re always on,” Emilia said. “Wait until you see this.” She turned the knob, and, as with the building’s entrance in the canal tunnel, the door opened easily. In the room beyond, there was still more light, and in its warmer illumination, a sea of pastel-colored glass surfaces glittered.
“It’s a real museum,” Emilia said, waving them forward. “Everything’s labeled; everything’s got a history. Somebody maintains it, but I’ve never seen anyone here, other than people I happen to bring with me. Oh, and listen, it’s about ten minutes to four, so we should probably not hang out in there or we’ll be late for the magician. We can come back another time for a proper look around.”
Marzana edged forward, drawn irresistibly by the weirdness of a museum of any kind being kept in a mostly abandoned apartment building whose front and back entrances were apparently never unlocked. But Nialla hung back. She tapped the word RADIOACTIVE on the sign. “What about that?”
Emilia waved a careless hand. “Nothing to worry about. There’s a display about it in there. Apparently in the States they used to make a kind of glass with uranium. It’s supposed to be pretty harmless. Still,” she said, eyeing the room behind her dubiously, “I’ve never quite worked myself up to drinking the tea.”
Marzana gaped at her. “You can really have tea here? But you said there’s never anyone around!” Unable to resist any further, she pushed past Nialla and Emilia and into the museum.
From bottles of every shape and size to jewelry and electrical insulators and pipes and bits of decorative sculpture, glass covered nearly every surface—but tidily, precisely: plates standing on the floor in perfectly balanced stacks; saltcellars in the shapes of animals or shoes or wheelbarrows displayed with neatly printed tags on furniture and collections of lenses laid out in rows in display cases; masses of glass hanging from the ceiling in the form of lighting fixtures both fancy and plain and unlit mobiles made variously from art glass, champagne flutes, and teacups. A shoe rack beside the door held four different pairs of glass slippers. A shelf a few feet above it held four glass display heads, each different from the rest, wearing an assortment of felt hats. There was white glass; glass tinted pale milky blue and green and pink; painted glass; blown glass; pressed glass in patterns of hobnails or concentric circles or darts and arrows and diamonds. There was opaque glass in the colors of custard and bisque, or shaded from yellow to pink like a citrusy sunset. And everywhere, in between and around and over and under all those other colors and styles, there was glass in distinctive shades of yellow and green. Some of it was transparent and some was not, but every piece seemed faintly to glow.
In the middle of the room stood a table neatly laid with tea things made of gleaming glass the cloudy, bluish-green color of Marzana’s toothpaste back at home. The teapot was steaming faintly. Marzana could smell the freshness of the scones on the plate beside it. Three cups and three saucers had been set out. The centerpiece was a vase of painted crystal, filled with blown and sculpted flowers so detailed that Marzana was almost convinced she could smell their perfume, too. A glass bee perched on one delicate petal.
Emilia came to stand beside her and looked at the table over folded arms. “The number’s always right too,” she said, nodding at the scones. “The first time it was me and the girl who introduced me to the place, and there were two cups. When I come alone, there’s just one. Once I came with three others for my birthday, and there were four cupcakes, and you won’t believe this, but one of them had a candle in it.”
If anyone else had told her this, Marzana would’ve called that person a liar. But coming from Emilia, this somehow seemed at once entirely astounding and entirely possible.
A momentary silence fell as Marzana and Nialla looked around in wonder. “Are you really bored all the time?” Emilia asked quietly. “I don’t understand. Not when there are things like this in the Liberty.”
Marzana lifted her shoulders, feeling a vague sense of remorse at the words she’d chosen before—but only a shadow of what she thought she might have felt if not for the thrumming wonder and exhilaration still coursing through her. “I didn’t know,” she said simply. “I didn’t know there were things like this.”
Emilia shook her head. “But how? How have you not noticed? Don’t you know where you live?”
“That’s not fair,” Nialla protested. “How on earth would we ever have found this? If we hadn’t been shown, I mean. You had to be shown. You said so. How would you have found it?” She looked back at the sign on the still-open door announcing the presence of the museum. “Speaking of which, how does anyone find it? How do visitors get here? Do they? Does anyone else come here?”
Emilia considered. “Well, like I said, I’ve never seen anyone, and the front and back doors are padlocked, so your guess is as good as mine. The canal door is always unlocked, and if we had kept going up on those stairs, the roof doors are usually open. And of course, there’s the fire escape.” She shrugged. “It’s a mystery. But we have a date with a magician. Let’s not be late.”
She closed the museum’s front door and passed through the main room toward the arched entry to the kitchen, where there was a whole new collection of glassware. She topped short of going in and paused beside a table holding a tapering horizontal display of glass bowls, some rimmed with gold and all nestled one inside the other from wide to narrow with a spoked wooden wheel at the narrowest end. The sign above it read FRANKLIN ARMONICA, and for no apparent reason, there was a bowl of water on the table, next to the display.
“I’m going to say this,” Emilia stated, “but it might tick you off. I like you guys, so I hope it doesn’t, but I think it’s something worth thinking about.”
She paused for only a second or two—not long enough for a reply, but plenty long enough for Marzana to be taken aback by the businesslike way Emilia dispensed with sentiments that would have stymied her for hours and, in the end, almost certainly would’ve kept her from speaking up at all.
“To answer your question from before, Nialla: If I hadn’t been shown this place, I might never have found it, that’s true. But then again, I might have. For sure I would have found someplace or something just as amazing. I’d have found an adventure of some kind, even if it wasn’t the kind I thought I was looking for. Because I go looking for them. I open doors, I look through windows, I explore alleys and hallways, I assume every staircase has something interesting if I follow it up or down, and if I meet someone who seems interesting, I ask them where they’ve been and what they’ve seen.” Emilia gave the wheel at the end of the row of bowls a spin, and the glass glittered as the column turned. She stuck her thumb in the bowl of water and held it to the gold rim of one of the bowls. It gave off an eerie, gorgeous sound, a single, wavering note that hung in the air like a dream and pierced Marzana’s heart with aching joy. “You could do all that too,” Emilia said as the note died slowly away. Then she disappeared into the kitchen.
Marzana and Nialla stood, still riveted by the ghost of the Franklin armonica’s note, which hadn’t quite vanished from the world yet. “You know,” Nialla said slowly, “she’s not wrong. It would never have occurred to me that I was allowed to try that armonica thing out.”
“Come on,” Emilia barked from the next room.
Marzana gave her body a little shake to get herself focused again. “Right.” But both girls paused as, on their way to the kitchen, they drew even with the tea table. They exchanged a glance, and then each took a scone. “Thank you,” Marzana whispered. The scone was warm in her palm. She picked up the last remaining one. “Let’s take this for Emilia.”
The kitchen was long and narrow. At the end of the room, on the far side of the collections of soda and coffee siphons and an assortment of laboratory glassware, Emilia waited beside an open window leading to a fire escape coated by old flaking paint. Her impassive expression cracked into a smile as Marzana handed her the scone.
They ate as they climbed floor by floor down a fire escape that, for whatever reason, spiraled rather than switchbacked to the alley below. The neighboring building was close enough that Marzana could reach out without stretching at all to trail her fingers against the brick. And then, one last climb down the final stretch of ladder that reached almost all the way to the paving stones of Westing Alley, and they were on the ground. The scone was cranberry and quince, and it was wonderful.
They arrived at Surroyal Books five minutes before four, but J.J. still beat them. Riding high on the deliciousness of the trip from Marymead to the bookstore, Marzana barely felt a shred of nervousness right up until the moment they passed under the ringing bells over the door. Then Nialla brightened and waved at a boy with curly black hair who looked up from one of the chairs by the fire. He waved back and got to his feet. Marzana barely had time to start to formulate an opinion about the notorious Julian Mowbry before another boy in one of the other chairs got up too and followed J.J. over to the three girls.
“Hey,” Nialla said.
“Hey,” J.J. replied, super-casual. Marzana wanted to roll her eyes, but she restrained herself.
This was fortunate, because Nialla immediately waved a hand in her direction. “J.J., this is Marzana, and our partner, Emilia.”
“Nice to meet you,” J.J. said. He nodded at the other boy, who was olive-skinned with sandy, sun-bleached hair: young-sailor coloring, Mrs. Hakelbarend would’ve said. “This is my friend Ciro. You’ll want him for this thing too.”
Marzana felt rather than saw Nialla and Emilia’s eyes flick her way. She kept her voice even, though it was difficult. Remembering Emilia’s earlier air of this-needs-to-be-said-so-I’m-just-gonna-say-it, she ginned up her courage, pitched her voice to what she hoped was an effective blend of businesslike and annoyed, and snapped, “No offense, but we aren’t even sure we want you for this thing yet.” It came out angrier than she’d intended, but then again, Marzana was furious. She’d told herself she didn’t need to worry about this whole interaction because it was going to be up to J.J. to convince her to let him come aboard, which meant all the worry about what to say and what not to say should’ve been on him. Now he’d thrown Marzana right off her game.
“Okay, okay, everybody calm down.” Nialla pushed Marzana with one hand and J.J. with the other, herding them toward the history room with the table and the antler chandelier and the semi-privacy. “Let’s go talk.”
Marzana allowed herself to be moved along. Emilia and Ciro followed a pace or two behind.
They passed Lucky along the way, dusting shelves in the poetry section. “Afternoon, all,” she said, waving a linty cloth. “How’s everybody?”
“Fine,” Marzana said over her shoulder as Nialla propelled her along. “Okay if we use the history-room table?”
“Be my guest.”
“Thanks.”
Remembering Emilia’s strategic seat choice from the night before, Marzana stalked to the chair at the far end of the table and folded her arms as the others filed in after her. “So talk, then.” She glared at J.J. “You first. I hear you’re a magician.”
“Yeah, I am,” J.J. replied, sounding a bit defensive as he sat on the bench to her right.
“And what kind of magic do you do?” She knew she was being a little snotty. She didn’t care.
J.J. snorted. He snapped his fingers. The bulbs in the antler-chandelier light went out, and the room, which had no windows, went almost fully dark.
“Whoa,” Nialla said appreciatively. Marzana kicked her under the table.
“I do several kinds,” J.J. said calmly. She followed his voice and spotted his silhouette near the door, where the only light left was dribbling in from the rest of the bookstore. The chandelier clicked back on, and J.J. lowered his hand from the switch on the wall and sauntered back to the table. “Mostly close-up magic, but also some stage magic.”
Marzana looked from him to the switch he’d somehow thrown from ten feet away. “And how’d you manage that feat?”
J.J. gave her a pitying look. Then he relented, possibly because he remembered he was supposed to be convincing her to let him join the group. “I half-flipped the switch and attached a thread to it when we walked through the doorway,” he explained. “When I snapped my fingers, you looked over here”—he waved his left hand—“so you didn’t see me pull the thread and tug the switch the rest of the way.”
“And you removed the thread when you went over to turn the lights back on,” Emilia guessed. He nodded.
“What made you go to all that trouble the second you walked through the door?” Marzana asked.
“I assumed you’d want to see something, and you’d be expecting me to do some kind of card trick or close-up vanishing or something basic like that.” He shrugged. “This wasn’t any more difficult. It just took planning. That’s the kind of stuff I’m good at. I can look at a space and figure out how to use it, to make it do what I want it to, and to make other people in the space think what I want them to think.”
“Illusions.” Nialla gave Marzana an expectant smile.
“Illusions,” J.J. confirmed. “Though the word ‘illusions’ always makes me think of dudes in shiny suits with mysterious tunes playing in the background.”
“Okay,” Marzana said reluctantly. “I guess I can see why Nialla thought you might be useful.” She laughed a little self-consciously. “Despite what she said—I mean, she told me it wasn’t magic-magic, but I was still kind of hoping you’d turn out to actually be—you know. A real magician or whatever. That you could really do that stuff.”
J.J. looked at her, perplexed. “But I can. That’s the point. That’s what all the planning is for. I can walk into a room, look around, and figure out how to make whatever bit of magic I want to happen, happen.”
“Right, I get it. But I mean . . .” Marzana waved her fingers. “A mage or sorcerer, like from an RPG. That would be pretty epic.”
“I know what you mean.” The magician in question shook his head. “But look—the reality is even better. When I do a trick, it’s me doing it. Me, not some nebulous power that does it for me. Give me a spool of thread and some wax, and I can do things you wouldn’t believe. What’s more impressive, snapping your fingers and having instant results, or actually figuring out the possibilities and mechanics on the fly and producing the same effect?”
“I get it,” Marzana repeated, though it was more directed at Nialla than at J.J. Nialla was still staring at her in that expectant See what I mean? manner, and Marzana really wanted that to stop as soon as humanly possible.
“But the really epic thing?” J.J. went on, leaning across the table. “Even if I tell you the miracle is just a piece of thread, I can still make you believe in it. I can make you believe I have to be lying about the string. That I have to be doing it for real. That’s actual, legit magic.”
Marzana nodded, pointedly ignored Nialla, and turned to the other boy at the table. “All right, then . . . Zero, was it?”
Ciro gave the smallest of sighs. Apparently he’d gotten that before. “Ciro, with a C. Ciro del Olmo.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Marzana thought she saw Emilia sit up a touch straighter, but when she glanced over, the other girl’s face was just as blank as usual. “And what’s your deal?” Marzana asked, turning back to Ciro.
His face was almost as impassive as Emilia’s. “My skill is hidden information.”
“Hidden information, like what?” Marzana asked. “Like codes and ciphers?”
He nodded, but in such a way as to make clear that codes and ciphers were not remotely the extent of what he was talking about. “Like codes and ciphers, but also steganography and camouflage and plain old lying.”
“Tell them about your folks,” J.J. suggested, pushing Ciro’s shoulder in encouragement.
“Hang on,” Emilia interjected quietly. “This can’t be about our parents. I can’t talk about that.”
“Neither can I,” Marzana said, looking away from Ciro and J.J. to glance at Emilia curiously out of the corner of her eye.
“Doesn’t matter, because you’re already in,” Ciro said. “I can talk about my father because he’s dead, and my mom—well, if knowing where I learned what I know will help convince you to let me join up, I’ll tell you.”
There was a momentary silence around the table. “I’m sorry about your dad,” Emilia said at last. Marzana shot her a grateful glance. Of course that was the right thing to say, but it hadn’t even occurred to her.
Ciro nodded. “Thank you.” He looked to Marzana again. “Well?”
Marzana fidgeted. “Do you want to tell us?” She was deeply uncomfortable with the idea of any of them having to share more than they wanted. This is the Liberty, after all. We keep our secrets. And we know better than to try to pry secrets out of others.
Ciro looked at her with an unexpected mixture of anger and pride. “Yes.”
“Okay, then.” This situation was so awkward. “Go ahead.”
He folded his arms defensively. “On both sides of my family, I have experts in hiding information and finding information that’s been hidden. My dad and his family were camoufleurs. There have been del Olmos in Nagspeake since before the Revolution.”
“What’s a camoufleur?” Marzana asked.
“Someone who camouflages things. So for instance, there’s a pretty great story about how my however-many-times-great-grandfather came to Nagspeake from Acapulco.” Ciro leaned on the table. “I do have some Latino ancestry—my first name comes from my great-uncle—but the first guy in my family to call himself del Olmo was actually a Korean named Songhan who came to Mexico in the eighteenth century as a sailor on one of the Manila galleons, which used to go back and forth between there and the Philippines. But conditions on the galleon were horrific, so he deserted the ship in Acapulco. Then a year or so later, he got into trouble—the kind that had bad guys scouring the city for him.”
“You should tell them that story,” J.J. interjected. “That story’s awesome.”
Ciro shook his head. “It is, but it’s a longer story, and it’s not the point. What matters is that Songhan figured the best way to escape was by sea. He had a locksmith friend who was sailing to Nagspeake with his wife in three days, and his friend said the captain would take passengers. But that was expensive, and Songhan was broke.”
“Couldn’t he have signed on as a sailor?” Nialla asked. “If he’d been one before? Weren’t ships always looking for good sailors back then?”
“He could have, but he thought he’d be safer if he went as a passenger, because then he could hunker down and hide in his cabin until the ship left port, and no captain would allow anybody to come aboard and hassle someone who’d paid for safe passage. But again: expensive. And then,” Ciro continued, “he learned from his buddy that the ship had a problem that might keep it from departing on schedule. The trouble was the ship’s elm-tree pump, which is just what it sounds like: a pump made from the trunk of an elm tree. This ship’s pump had broken, and the crew had replaced it with one made from a different kind of wood. But since then, the ship had had nothing but bad luck, and now the crew was ready to mutiny if they didn’t get a new pump made from an actual elm tree. Only Mexico doesn’t have elm trees, so the ship was stuck.
“Songhan’s friend introduced him to the first mate, and Songhan asked how much a new pump would be worth. The first mate said if he could produce an elm trunk within two days, he’d pay Songhan’s passage himself, and the crew could finish the pump at sea. He was basically asking my ancestor to work a miracle. And,” Ciro said with a grin, “Songhan did it. He produced the trunk and got his passage, and the crew took to calling him Songhan del Olmo: Songhan of the elm. He liked it so much that when he got to Nagspeake he kept it, and there have been del Olmos here ever since.”
“How did he find the elm if there weren’t any in Mexico?” Emilia asked.
Ciro grinned even wider and spread his hands. “Nobody really knows. But the del Olmos forever after were camoufleurs of some kind or another. My great-great-grandfather went to the United States for a while during the Second World War and painted warships in this crazy, colorful, wild patterning called dazzle that was supposed to fool U-boats so they didn’t know where to fire their torpedoes. My grandfather designed a bunch of the old Belowground Transit stations that were supposed to blend into their surroundings, and my father painted some warehouses in Shantytown that were camouflaged to look like tenements, along with some other things in the city that had to be hidden in plain sight. So I presume that back in the day, Songhan did what all his descendants went on to do: he made one thing look like another, and he did it so effectively that even a bunch of superstitious, paranoid sailors who thought their lives depended on it couldn’t tell the difference.” He cleared his throat. “And on my mom’s side, I’m descended from Annamaria Gallfreet.”
A momentary shocked silence settled over the room. “The Spinster?” Nialla said in a whisper.
“Really?” Marzana asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep the disbelief from her voice. The Spinster was a legendary figure from two centuries before. She’d been a weaver by trade, but the story went that she had also dabbled in codes and code breaking during the Napoleonic Wars. Now and then her tapestries showed up in museums around Nagspeake, and supposedly if you knew how to look, there were secrets to be found in them. The Spinster was a heck of an impressive ancestor to claim.
Ciro nodded. “My mother’s family has been working in codes and ciphers and languages and programming for more than two hundred years.”
Something clicked. “The cell phones?” Marzana asked, aghast.
Ciro nodded again. Nialla clapped a hand over her mouth. J.J. sat back, looking very satisfied. Even Emilia’s poker face cracked for a minute, but it wasn’t into surprise, rather a brief I knew it smile, and Marzana recalled how she had sat up just a bit straighter when she’d heard Ciro’s last name.
It wasn’t totally Deacon and Morvengarde’s fault that Nagspeake was stuck, technology-wise, in the previous century. But it was almost totally their fault. They had a monopoly on the rights to lay cable and fiber. They had a monopoly on the rights to provide internet service and to build cell towers. They had a monopoly on the rights to sell the phones themselves, which were not only exorbitantly expensive but were basically guaranteed not to work, because D&M refused to put in the infrastructure, and the government down in the city proper . . . well. There were a dozen reasons they couldn’t—wouldn’t—do anything about it, the biggest of which was that anyone who opposed D&M was guaranteed not to get any D&M campaign money, and D&M had a lot of that to pass around.
But in the past few years, someone in the Liberty had been quietly chipping away at this problem. Internet access was spotty, but with the right hacks in the right places, you could just barely get it to work. Cheap and functional cell phones had been circulating. There was too much packed into too small a space in the Liberty to do much digging, but makeshift cell towers had appeared, moved, reappeared elsewhere. The resulting shadow network didn’t work very well—or at least, it didn’t yet. Marzana’s mother, for instance, had access to whoever was supplying the phones, but she refused to rely on the devices during real jobs. And of course—deniability at work—she’d never told Marzana who that person was.
Now Ciro glanced at the door, then reached slowly into his pocket and took out a small gray rectangle. He set it in the middle of the table. The others leaned in to take a look.
“Does it really work?” Emilia asked.
“Of course it does,” Ciro said defensively. “Mostly. I mean, the only person who ever calls me is Mom, and she doesn’t seem to have any trouble. Usually.” He looked down at it a little doubtfully. “The camera works great, at least.”
“So are we in, or what?” J.J. asked, all but bouncing on the bench.
Marzana glanced at Nialla’s hopeful face, then Emilia’s impassive one. “Can you and Ciro give us a minute?” she asked.
“Sure.” J.J. said breezily. He and Ciro got up and headed back toward the bookstore’s main room. J.J.’s confidence was getting on Marzana’s nerves. Maybe that was part of his magician thing, she thought grumpily. Maybe you had to be confident to convince people to believe you were doing the impossible.
When the boys were gone, Emilia cleared her throat. “Did you want me to go too?”
Marzana shook her head. “No, you get a vote here.”
“We’re voting?” Nialla clapped quietly. “Then you don’t hate the idea.”
“I don’t hate it, but I’m still mad at you. Don’t think just because I’m willing to put it to a vote that you’re off the hook here. Especially since they’re basically a package deal. We can’t very well take one and not the other.”
“Why not?” Emilia asked.
“Because . . .” Marzana hesitated. Because it would be a jerk move was what she’d been thinking, but Emilia had a point. They weren’t doing this for fun and games. Aren’t we? a small voice in Marzana’s head inquired. No, we’re not, she replied firmly.
“Because I think whichever we take will just tell the other everything he finds out anyway.” Marzana looked curiously at Emilia. “Why? Do you think we should take one and not the other?”
Emilia shook her head. “I was just asking. Making sure I understand where we’re all coming from.”
“Okay. So what’s your vote?”
Emilia’s poker face wavered for a moment as a frown settled between her eyes and vanished just as quickly. “As long as they’re not going to come in and try to take over just because they’re boys. I quit a game group once because that kept happening.”
To Marzana’s surprise, Nialla nodded seriously. “Agreed. I vote yes, but only if we don’t keep voting on everything. I hope you keep asking for our input, Marzana, but if we’re really doing this, somebody has to be in charge, and as far as I’m concerned, that person has to be you.”
“Seconded,” Emilia said.
In charge. Out of nowhere, the bear that showed up periodically to go on a rampage in her gut came tearing through her insides. It only made sense—somebody had to at least nominally call the shots, and while the idea of being that person was utterly terrifiying to Marzana, the idea of it being anyone else was fundamentally unacceptable. She took a deep breath to try to at least signal to the bear to chill out and take a nap. “All right, I accept your terms and I also vote yes.”
Emilia got to her feet. “Shall I go?”
“Sure.”
She disappeared, and Marzana immediately began stringing words together in her head, but Emilia and the new recruits were back before she’d gotten farther than We’ve discussed it and we’ve decided . . .
“So?” J.J. asked without a moment’s hesitation. “Have you determined our fates?”
Everyone was looking at her, including Emilia, who had taken the chair at the opposite end of the table, and Nialla, sitting on the bench to her left. The bear was still sniffling around, kicking her gut and pawing at her throat. Marzana swallowed its claws down and nodded. “We have. But we want to be very clear about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. If you agree, we’d be glad to welcome you aboard.”
“Sweet.” J.J. dropped onto the bench opposite Nialla. “Tell us what the deal is, boss.” Ciro sat at his side without a word, listening.
Boss. Was that a good indicator that he already understood that she was in charge, or was he being sarcastic? “Well,” Marzana said, screwing up her courage, “you hit on the first thing.” The words Not to be bossy, but came instinctively to her mouth, but she caught them before they escaped and swallowed them back. “I’m in charge. If at any point we disagree about the best strategy, I make the final call. I make the decisions about when to call in the adults, and if I decide things get too dangerous, we stop.”
J.J. nodded immediately. Ciro raised a hand. “I have no problem with that, but I want to know more about what we’re doing before I decide if I’m coming aboard or not.”
Marzana balked. “After all this, you aren’t sure?”
Ciro shrugged. “I’ve told you about me, but you haven’t told me anything. Not about the . . . the thing, whatever this thing is, and not about you. I agree with you and Emilia that we shouldn’t have to tell each other anything we’re not comfortable sharing, but if you’re heading out to rob banks tomorrow, then no, I’ve got better stuff to do with my time that won’t get me arrested.”
He had a point.
“Okay,” Marzana said. Then she stopped talking for a minute as Emilia rapped twice on the table, sharply, just before Lucky and one of her customers came in looking for a book in the medieval history section. Marzana had a second to wonder just how awkward this looked—five kids suddenly going silent the moment an adult walked in—before J.J. leaped into the void.
“I thought so too,” he said carelessly, as if picking up the thread of a previously existing conversation. “That was before I took the test, though. It wasn’t the worst test I’ve taken this year . . . also not the easiest. Sometimes I think the difference is whether I have one of those annoying soft-lead pencils instead of my usual ones.” He leaned back with his hands laced behind his head. “My sister likes the soft-lead ones. Sometimes we get our pencils mixed up at home, and then the whole day is shot because the school store is absolutely never open when you need it to be. Part of the thing is, those soft-lead ones won’t hold a point, and I need a good point on my pencils for tests. I think my average went up by, like, ten percent after I got myself one of those fancy two-stage sharpeners. You know the kind I’m talking about?”
The customer, who had been showing signs of maybe wanting to browse, changed her mind, stuck her book under her elbow, and headed back for the front of the bookstore. Lucky followed, shooting a bemused glance over her shoulder as she went.
J.J.’s flood of test-and-pencil blather tapered off. “You were saying?”
Marzana looked at him in something akin to wonder. That much small talk, just off the top of his head? “How did you do that?”
“He has a gift,” Ciro said drily.
Oh, right. Marzana snapped her fingers. “It’s a magician thing, right? Patter, or whatever it’s called.”
J.J. grinned. “Yes. Yes, that’s exactly it.”
Ciro rolled his eyes. “Actually I just meant he’s a bigmouth.”
Emilia shifted in her seat. “Anyway.”
“Anyway.” Marzana cleared her throat. She opened her backpack, which sat on the floor by her chair, and took out her journal. “We want to solve a kidnapping. And we think we could use your help.”