THE WORDS LANDED like a handful of dropped rocks.
“But how could it be someone else?” J.J. protested. “Her parents—we saw her parents on TV last night, didn’t we? They would have known! They would have known the second they saw her! An impostor could have fooled us, but not them.” Marzana’s folder full of notes was still on the table where it had lain, forgotten, since the beginning of the meeting. J.J. grabbed it and took out the school picture of the ponytailed girl. “And this was her. This was the girl we saw. I’m sure of it.”
“Yes, yes, I know, but . . .” Marzana got up and paced a few steps. “Just let me think a minute.” She was right about this. She knew she was right. “Could Peony’s parents have been in on it?” She pointed to the photo. “They’d have been the ones who supplied that to the police. It’s just a picture of a girl in front of a plain background. It would’ve been easy to fake.”
“Could her parents have been the kidnappers?” Emilia asked. “Maybe they needed the cash for whatever reason, and Mr. Hyde couldn’t figure out how to just embezzle the campaign money on his own.”
Marzana shook her head, thinking back to the man and woman she’d seen on the news the night before. “I don’t think so. When I saw them on T.V., it seemed like they were just so relieved, they could barely keep it together—you know, too many feelings.” She frowned for a moment, picturing Mrs. Hyde’s ashen skin. Her husband’s paper-white face. “Now I’m wondering if it wasn’t relief, but just that they were barely able to keep the pretense up. I think what I saw was fear, and I think it was real. They were terrified. For whatever reason, they had to pretend their daughter had been returned when she hadn’t been. It was an intense bit of acting, and they weren’t sure they were selling it. Not to mention, if we’re right, their daughter’s still missing.”
A strange, stunned silence settled over the assembled Thief Knot, broken only by a hiss of a sigh from Emilia on the phone.
“Okay,” Nialla said. “Say it wasn’t Peony you found, and for some reason her parents pretended it was. Why? What possible reason could there be for them to pretend their kidnapped daughter had been returned when she hadn’t?”
Emilia’s voice spoke up. “If they’re not the kidnappers themselves? Maybe they were told they had to pretend it was her in order to get Real Peony back. But that suggests they knew about the fake Peony in advance.”
“And what about Fake Peony?” Nialla persisted. “If you’re right and the girl in Mrs. Agravin’s apartment wasn’t Peony, who is she? How did she get involved in this? I refuse to believe any kid would go along with a plan that involved kidnapping another kid.”
“I don’t think she was a kid at all,” Marzana said. “She slouched the whole time to make herself look shorter. Even then, I remember thinking she looked older than eleven, but I ignored it, because it wasn’t what I was expecting. She’s an accomplice. That’s why she wouldn’t tell me anything at all when I tried to ask her questions about the people who had taken her.”
Ciro spun his empty soda can on the table. “If we’re right, and if the Hydes knew in advance this was going to happen—that a fake Peony would surface—then there must be a whole separate set of demands the kidnappers made for getting the real girl back. And two of those demands must’ve been: When the cops ask for a picture, hand over this photo of Fake Peony, and when Fake Peony shows up in person, pretend it’s Real Peony.”
“In which case, it was maybe never about money at all,” Marzana put in. “I remember asking my mom and dad that first night whether this was really about the ransom. It seemed so weird, since the Hydes could never have raised that much in less than a week, and the whole city apparently knew it. But it makes sense if the ransom note we saw was just a front for the cops.”
“Except Real Peony did make the ransom note,” Nialla said eagerly. “We know that, right? They found her fingerprints all over it, and they matched them to prints at her school, not to prints provided by her parents. And no matter how much she picked up about what was really going on, from her perspective that note was real, in the sense that it was a real message going from the kidnappers to the world.” She started digging through her bag, then paused to point an accusing finger at Ciro. “I knew we gave up on the idea of a message too fast!”
“We didn’t give up on it,” Ciro protested. “We stopped because Peony seemed to have been found. We can start looking again. Or maybe . . .”
“Maybe,” Meddy repeated. Silence fell over the table, and one by one, the other members of the Knot looked at Marzana.
“What?” Emilia barked over the speaker, sounding totally exasperated. “I can sense the group glances happening and I’m feeling really, really left out.”
“The adults,” Nialla said. She looked up from the phone. “Your call, Marzana. We all agreed: You decide when we loop in the adults. We should tell your mom and dad, right?”
“Can I say something?” Emilia asked. “Before you call them, you should come to Marymead. Let me show you what I found. When Ciro told me the game was up, I thought it was just going to be something cool to show you. But now I’m thinking it might be more than that. If you’re right, then this isn’t just about the kidnapping, is it? The kidnapping is part of a bigger crime—it’s about whatever the real ransom demands are, the ones we haven’t seen. And if I’m right, you might be able to give your parents a really important clue. Come see this first.”
Marzana hesitated. If there was any truth to this new hypothesis, then Real Peony was still out there, and probably they should quit messing around and call in the adults fast. But if there was an additional clue she could give her mom and dad when she made that call, then waiting just a bit longer might be worth it. “Emilia, what the heck did you find?” she asked.
“I’m not totally sure. I need to show you. Will you guys come?”
“To your school?” J.J. asked dubiously.
“Yes, to our school, where, if you recall, there’s a secret, private Belowground station, which I spent all night exploring while you were sleeping, J.J.,” Emilia said waspishly. “Get over here, will you? There’s still a girl missing. And who’s got the book of maps? Does it have a big foldout map of the whole city in it? One we can pull out?”
“I have it,” J.J. said, reaching for his backpack. “I’ll check.” He dug out the gazetteer and riffled through it until he came to a removable folded insert. “Yeah, it does.”
“Good. Bring the whole thing. I’ll meet you in the courtyard in thirty minutes,” Emilia said. “I’ll make sure Mr. Sopwith is out of the way and the coast is clear. Marzana, Nialla, you remember the way, right?”
Westing Alley to the fire escape, through the glass museum, down to the basement, along the canal, under the Orangery, out through the shed. “Yes,” Marzana said. “But what about all the locks?”
“The doors you’ll use at Five Westing are always unlocked, and so is its canal door. I’ll unlock the Marymead-side ones for you, and I’ll prop our canal door open so you can’t miss it. Then I’m taking a power nap. See you in half an hour on the dot.” Emilia hung up.
Marzana punched the “end call” button on the phone and passed it to Ciro. “Well. Suddenly the day got a lot more exciting than I was expecting it to.”
As they left Surroyal Books and Marzana led the Knot across Hellbent Street toward Westing Alley and the helical fire escape, three separate conversations were happening among them. J.J. and Meddy were talking magic. Nialla and Ciro were talking steganography. And then there was the imagined conversation happening in Marzana’s head as she ran over the possible responses from her mother and father when they found out that she had so completely disregarded their instructions to butt out that she’d immediately reassembled her merry band to dive right back in. Would having new information, real information, mitigate their likely fury at all?
“Where, exactly, are we going?” Ciro asked as Marzana stopped under the fire escape.
“Up.” Marzana reached for the bottom rung of the low-hanging ladder and started hauling herself up.
“Is this legal?” J.J. asked, offering his cupped hands as a boost for Nialla, who was the shortest of the group.
“It’s at least intended to be used this way,” Nialla said, huffing slightly as she got her feet onto the rung. “You’ll see.”
They ascended one after the other: Marzana, Nialla, J.J., and Ciro, with Meddy bringing up the rear. Marzana counted four floors, then stopped and peered through the window beside the fire escape. Inside, angled rays of sunlight picked out assorted bits of glowing colored glassware. “This is us,” she announced. There was a single brass handle screwed into the outside of the window frame, and Marzana pulled it upward. “Careful as you climb in. Everything here’s breakable.”
She slipped inside, followed by Nialla. The two of them watched with satisfaction as first J.J. and then Ciro entered the kitchen. “Whoa,” Ciro muttered as he swung his legs over the sill and looked from a shelf on the wall to his right, full of blue and green and purple siphons and labeled SELTZER BOTTLES OF BROOKLYN, to an elaborate setup of spiraling glass tubes and round-bellied beakers on the counter to his left. “Is this a kitchen or a lab? Whose apartment is this?” Then he gripped his stomach and keeled over as Meddy, who had been behind Ciro patiently waiting to enter the room, got fed up and stepped through him.
“Excuse me,” she said, reaching down a hand to help him up.
Marzana grinned and waved a hand at their surroundings. “This is no mere apartment. Ciro, J.J., welcome to Boneash and Sodalime’s Glass Museum and Radioactive Teashop. Come on.”
In the main room, teacups and a plate of thick slices of lemon-iced cake had been laid out for five. Ciro looked around, confused. “Where is everybody? This place feels . . . empty. You know, apart from us.” He glanced toward an arch leading to a hallway the girls hadn’t explored on either of their previous visits, but that probably led to more displays of glass in what had once been bedrooms and bathrooms. “Somebody there?” he called.
Nobody answered. The boys looked down at the tea table, thoroughly confused. The girls shared a grin, thoroughly entertained.
“It’s a mystery,” Marzana said, remembering Emilia’s non-explanation the first time they’d come through this room. She glanced at her watch. “But we have a date with Emilia. Grab a piece of cake and let’s go.”
Out into the hallway, then down the stairs: down and down and down, until there was nowhere to go but through the creaky metal door and into the basement. “Flashlights,” Nialla announced, reaching into her bag. Marzana did the same, thankful she hadn’t unpacked the little kit she’d put together on Thursday.
“I didn’t bring a flashlight,” J.J. whispered to Ciro.
“Me either,” Ciro muttered back. “Note to self: From now on, always have flashlight.”
The girls had to search the basement a bit before finding their way to the room full of washers and dryers, but only for a minute or so. The door leading to the dry canal was unlocked, just as it had been before, and one by one, the members of the Thief Knot dropped down onto 5 Westing’s listing old pier.
“I just want to say,” Ciro said as they started the walk to Marymead’s private dock, “that I vote for the next action of the Thief Knot—after this whole kidnapping is resolved—to be coming back here to explore. Like, how far does this tunnel go?”
“Emilia says it runs all the way under the street above it,” Marzana said, squinting to read the remnants of the address on a door in the tunnel wall to her left that stood partly ajar. She was pretty sure it was too soon for them to be at Marymead, but it was better to be safe than sorry. “I don’t know how far Eald Brucan Lane goes, though.” 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. This wasn’t going to be their only adventure, not if Marzana could help it. She smiled over her shoulder at Ciro. “Yeah. We should definitely explore more, as soon as we can.”
The Marymead entrance was impossible to miss. Emilia had not only propped the door open with a piece of rusted pipe; she had tacked a handwritten note on loose-leaf paper to one of the pier’s pilings:WELCOME TO MARYMEAD, NERDS. —E.
Marzana waited while the others followed Nialla and her light through the door and down the steps toward the waterworks, then took down the note, kicked the pipe aside, and shut the door.
“This is the plumbing under our school’s greenhouse,” Nialla was saying as Marzana caught up to them in the humid and perfumed dark below the Orangery. Far ahead, the flashlight beams found the ladder bolted to the wall. “And that leads up into a shed in the courtyard. That’s where Emilia will be waiting.”
“Speaking of which, I’m going to go ahead and see if she’s there yet,” Meddy said, and then she was gone.
Marzana trailed behind the others, content to let Nialla lead the way while she tried to guess at how the hidden Cotgrave Wall Station might have given Emilia a clue to the bigger mystery behind Peony Hyde’s disappearance. There were too many threads that led, however tenuously, to the Cormorants. Emmett’s three initial suspects and Mrs. Agravin and Mr. Otterwill all might have been cups and balls, manipulated by the unseen hand of a magician—and if her mother believed Victor Cormorant had been manipulated just like the rest of them, then Marzana was inclined to believe that was true too. But she was having a hard time seeing all those Cormorant threads as so many dead ends and nothing more.
As they got closer, Meddy’s torso appeared on the ladder: upside down, as if she were leaning into the tunnel from above. The others hurried forward. “Is she there?” Marzana asked.
The ghost girl nodded. “Right outside. Hang on.” She disappeared again, and a moment later the hatch in the shed floor opened and a thick shaft of greenish light plunged down. “Come on up.”
When everyone was safely above, Marzana shut the hatch and stowed her flashlight. Meddy vanished through the wall and out into the courtyard; then, after the tiniest of pauses, the shed door swung open and Emilia peered inside. “Come on out, knotty companions. Quick, quick.” She swung the door shut after them, dropped to one knee, and relocked the shed with tools she’d been holding at the ready. She stood, acknowledged the boys’ impressed expressions with a brief bow, and picked up her satchel from the ground. “J.J., Ciro, welcome to Marymead.”
“Holy cow, that was amazing,” Ciro said, trying to keep the explosion of enthusiasm to a whisper and only barely managing it. “What’s the tunnel? Who found the route? What the heck is up with that whole glass-museum thing?”
“The cake was warm,” J.J. put in. “Oh, which reminds me.” He reached into one pocket, took out a slightly squashed little slab of cake wrapped in a piece of paper towel they’d found in the museum kitchen, and offered it to Emilia. “Meddy didn’t want hers. It was warm!” he repeated as Emilia took it. “Who makes the tea stuff? This is going to drive me crazy.”
“I couldn’t possibly say,” Emilia replied. “It’s a mystery.”
“That’s what she said,” J.J. grumbled, casting a suspicious glance at Marzana.
“Marzana’s smart,” Emilia said airily. “That’s why she’s the boss.” She took a bite of cake and waved a hand toward the gym doors. “Shall we?”
“Who’s around that we might have to avoid?” Marzana asked as Emilia led them through the gym.
“If you’re asking who’s in the building other than Commorancy Kids, there are plenty,” Emilia said, pausing to peek out into the locker passage and down the hallway in both directions. “Weekend cleaning crew; teachers; couple folks in the office; a couple resident adults, like the Commorancy nurse; and I think I saw the chess club arriving when I came downstairs. Fortunately, residents are allowed access to most of the school on weekends: the gym, the Library, the dining hall, all the community study areas . . .”
“Oh,” Marzana said, surprised. “So we don’t have to sneak?”
“Well, unfortunately, we’re supposed to sign in visitors, which I don’t propose to do, and I certainly don’t want anyone following us down into the station. But don’t worry, none of this is an issue.” She whistled quietly.
At the end of the hallway near Marzana’s own locker, a figure peered out from around the corner. A kid-sized figure, with floppy hair, holding a comic in one hand as if he’d been reading. He raised his other hand, made a fist, then made a knocking motion in the air with it.
“All clear,” Emilia said. “Head for the west stairs. Try not to sound like a bunch of elephants. I’ll be right behind you.”
Marzana bit down several questions and led the way to the big square staircase at the west end of the entry hall, glancing at the floppy-haired boy as she passed. A Commorancy Kid, of course. Sixth-grader, she was pretty sure. His name was Monty or Murray or something. He saluted as she went by, and she saluted back. Emilia, bringing up the rear, paused to exchange a few words, then slapped him a high-five.
As they rounded the first turn in the staircase, Emilia jogged up to pass Marzana at the head of the column. When she reached the second floor, she motioned for the rest of them to hang back while she leaned around the corner. “We’re clear all the way to the Library.” She waved them forward. “Let’s go.”
Marzana followed her around the corner and jumped as she came face-to-face with the girl who must’ve been posted on the landing. Another sixth-grader. Ada? Allie? She grinned at Marzana, showing a mouthful of crooked teeth. “Twitchy, aren’t you?”
“Just a little,” Marzana admitted, a bit surprised to realize that she was. This was her own school, after all. If they got caught, what was the worst that could happen? Emilia would get a talking to for not signing them in? Still, there was no denying it: this was exciting. Really, properly exciting, and Marzana’s nerves were abuzz. It was a feeling that seemed entirely out of place at school. “Er . . . thanks for your service,” she muttered.
“Don’t mention it,” said Ada or Allie.
A red-headed kid sat right outside the main doors of the Library with a book on his lap. He scrambled to his feet and saluted to the Knot—to Emilia, really—as the group trouped past him.
Inside, two eighth-grade Commorancy Kids who’d been sitting at one of the long tables stood up: Barnaby, a dark-skinned boy with locs whom Marzana knew from history class, and a blond-mohawked girl called Enza whom she knew only by sight.
Marzana and the Knot followed Emilia to the table, where she slapped Enza’s outstretched hand. “You realize you have cemented your own legend here, E,” Enza said.
Emilia pointed to Ciro. “We have this guy to thank. His grand-father worked on the stations.”
“We owe you, man.” Barnaby shook Ciro’s hand, then turned to Emilia. “We’re all dying to get a chance to explore, but this is your show, Cabot. Stay safe. Two of us will be here on rotation until you come back.”
“But if you’re not back by lights-out, we’re coming in after you,” Enza added. She checked her watch. “It’s eleven thirty now. That gives you ten and a half hours.”
“Plenty,” Emilia said. “We need to be back before these guys’ folks start panicking, anyway.”
Marzana looked up at the Library’s gallery, with its paired sets of spiral stairs and intermittent heavy velvet drapes. Behind which of those curtains had Emilia found the station entrance? It wasn’t immediately obvious how any of them could conceal much of anything. The wall to the east had the doors that led to the hallway and the art classroom beyond; there could be no unaccounted-for space behind the curtained paintings on that side. And the opposite wall was the west wall of the entire house. If there was any meaningful space concealed there, surely someone would have found it before now.
Emilia, meanwhile, turned to the red-haired kid who’d been standing guard at the Library door and who was now fidgeting nearby. “You have everything you need?” she asked him, looking severe. “Plenty of water, and ginger candy or licorice or whatever? We could be a long time.”
“I’m ready,” the boy said in a tone that suggested he was girding up for some kind of quest. “I was born ready. I’m your man. I—”
“Yeah, I get it,” Emilia interrupted in a bored tone. “You’ll have people here with you. But on the off chance that you find yourself alone and something goes wrong, you’ll . . . ?”
“Find Barnaby or Enza,” he recited. “Making sure to leave someone else at my post.”
“Good. And if at any point at all you’re getting tired, you’re losing your voice, you have to pee, tell these guys you need somebody to give you a break. That’s why they’re here. There’s no shame in asking for a break, but if you fall asleep on duty or can’t keep on keeping on, the rest of the Commorancy will never let you forget it. Okay?”
“Okay,” the kid replied, saluting again.
“Okey-doke.” Emilia bumped fists with the two eighth-graders and turned to the Knot. “We’re set. Let’s go.” She pointed to one of the curtained paintings on the gallery along the west wall. It was, in fact, the one beside the shelf from which Marzana had taken Stanton’s Aviary the day before. “That’s the one, right there.”
“But how?” Marzana asked. “How is there room? That’s the west wall of the house!”
“There’s exactly enough room,” Emilia muttered. “Just exactly enough.”
“Hold off on that for a minute,” Nialla interrupted. “Why would he potentially lose his voice?” Before Emilia could answer, the kid behind them began, in a scratchy, out-of-tune, self-conscious-but-fighting-to-power-through-it voice, to belt “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” at top volume.
“He does know it’s June, right?” J.J. whispered.
“What he knows is that now that he’s started singing, he can’t stop until we get back,” Emilia said as they crossed the Library floor. “He’s our canary for as long as we’re in the station. As long as he’s singing, we know the coast is clear here in the Library, and it’s safe to come out again. If he’s not singing when we want to come out, that means we stay hidden.” She started up one of the circular stairs. “Sixth grade in the Commorancy is basically community service in the form of lookout duty.” Then she stopped and felt for the bag at her side. “Crap. Hang on. Before I forget.” She took out the leather folder the school historian had given her. “I brought this specifically to put it back. Not carrying it down there.”
She edged past Marzana and hurried toward a shelf in the center of the south wall. “But Emilia,” Marzana said, following her, “we’re not actually going anywhere, are we? Why would we not come back for ten hours?”
Emilia waved a hand. “It’s just a matter of safety. We’re going into a space we don’t know anything about. I’m fairly certain we won’t get locked in, but if we do, we know we won’t be stranded past ten p.m. Also,” she added, crouching and shifting books to make room in the right spot for the leatherbound family tree, “it’s taking a lot of restraint for the rest of the Commorancy to give us time with the station to ourselves. They’re all dying to explore. So that was about fifty percent Enza and Barnaby promising to rescue us and about fifty percent Enza and Barnaby reminding me that after tonight, other people get a turn. Which is fair.”
“Speaking of which, get moving,” Enza ordered.
Barnaby dropped his head on the table. “You didn’t say you had shelving to do first,” he said indistinctly. “You could’ve given that to the canary to do.”
“Two seconds,” Emilia retorted.
“But the suspense,” Enza complained.
Marzana folded her arms impatiently and eyed the trustee portrait above the bookcase as Emilia shoved the folder back into its place. Then Marzana’s hands fell numbly to her sides as suddenly the Cormorant threads snapped into place, and all at once she could see the whole web.
She’d looked at this particular portrait a hundred times. It was one of the youngest of the assorted Cotgrave and Cormorant trustees, the dark-haired girl who seemed to be trying to look older than she was. The name engraved on the brass plaque at the bottom of the frame was Natasha Felice Cormorant.
Tasha.
How many times had she heard that name in the last week without really taking note of it?
Her mother, after Emmett had asked to be put in touch with the Snakebird: Maybe I’ll try his granddaughter Tasha, the one who runs the coffee shop down in Shantytown. I think I heard she’s trying to make a name for herself. I’ve never met her . . .
Victor Cormorant, after Mrs. Hakelbarend had suggested upgrading the locks at Marymead: I’m not a trustee, but I’ll pass the suggestion on to Tasha.
And Marzana’s mother again: Speaking of Tasha—you know, I tried to get hold of her before I called you. I thought since this was a downhill crime and downhill is more her territory, she might have some insights. Used a couple emergency channels, in fact, but no luck. How’s she doing these days?
The recollections swirled in her brain, set to the singing kid’s slightly off-key demands for figgy pudding.
“What is it?” Emilia asked. Then she followed Marzana’s gaze and fell silent.
“That’s Victor’s granddaughter Tasha,” Marzana said. “I heard my mother say she’s trying to build her own reputation.”
“As a carrier?”
“I think so. Mom was talking about reaching out to her for information. Tasha never returned the calls.” She glanced at Emilia. “I’ve been trying to work out how Victor Cormorant could have been so involved in this without having been the one shifting the pieces around. But Tasha’d probably have access to pretty much all his information too, right?”
“Well, I don’t have all my dad’s information,” Emilia said in an undertone. “You, either—but I guess we can’t use ourselves for comparison.” She considered. “I mean, it would seem the best way for him to invest in her career would be giving her access to what he knows, yeah. But do you really think that, in the course of using that access, she’d throw both her grandfather and her—what, her cousin, Otterwill would have to be?—under suspicion?” Emilia made a dubious face. “I can’t see that.”
Marzana considered. “She could afford to do that if she knew any suspicion would turn out to be all for nothing later. With the number of red herrings she put on the board, they’d just be two more. But a family member would probably be the only person who could manipulate the Snakebird himself.”
“‘Hey, Grandpa, Brian’s going up to the Liberty for a couple days. Stop by Marymead and see if they’ve got work for him,’” Emilia said experimentally. “That kind of thing?”
“Right. And then of course Fake Peony would’ve told her I asked about Victor, which she, good, conscientious granddaughter that she is, would have reported to him right away, but probably as if she got it from a different source. That would explain how he found out about that so fast.” Marzana thought back to her mother’s comments after Cormorant’s visit. “He knew he got played. He came to our house to try to convince my mom he hadn’t been involved intentionally.”
Emilia’s eyes snapped wide. “He came to your house?”
Marzana rubbed her face. “Good grief, I didn’t even get a chance to tell you that, so much has happened today.”
“Hey, guys.” Meddy trotted up to join them. “You’ve got folks waiting, in case you forgot.” She glanced at the painting. “Oh, my God, another sourpuss.” The glance became a double-take. “Guys?” Meddy said slowly. “Why is there a painting of Peony Hyde in your school?”
“What?” Marzana glanced from Meddy to the painting. “No, that’s Victor Cormorant’s granddaughter. We think—”
“J.J.!” Meddy called, darting back to the gallery stairs, where the other members of the Knot were trying and failing to look patient. She grabbed J.J.’s arm and dragged him over to the painting. Nialla and Ciro followed, and, with noises of exasperation, Enza and Barnaby stalked across the Library to join them as well.
Meddy shoved J.J. forward. “It’s her, isn’t it?”
“Her who?” J.J. asked, yanking his arm free.
“The girl we did magic for in Mrs. Agravin’s apartment,” Meddy said impatiently.
J.J. stared hard at the picture. “I don’t see it,” he said at last. “The Peony we met had braces; that girl on the wall’s like twenty, and how long ago was that painted, anyway? She could be a million years old by now.”
“She’s not,” Barnaby said. “That painting was only put up last year. She’s a current trustee. Youngest ever. They made a big deal of it.”
“She’s Victor Cormorant’s granddaughter,” Marzana said again as she fumbled in her bag for the photo they’d been looking at earlier. Her heart thudded as her fingers found the picture and she held it up in the light. She felt the entire group lean in behind her to compare the face in the little photo with the one on the canvas.
Two girls. One with her dark hair coiled up on top of her head in fancy, old-fashioned whorls and the other with her dark hair parted into two long ponytails that hung over her shoulders. One wearing a red-and-gold brocade blazer and one wearing a T-shirt with a bunny on it. One with tortoiseshell glasses, one without; one with braces, one without. Or was it just one girl, a girl who had been trying hard to look older in the portrait and younger in the photo, and everything else was just costume?
“It could be the same girl,” Marzana said hesitantly. “I wish she had a mole or a scar or something so we could be sure.”
“We don’t need one. She can change her hair and makeup and clothes and posture and stick braces on, but there’s a lot she can’t change.” Ciro pointed at the photo. “Look at the shape of her face. Look at the shape of her ears, and her hairline and her nose.” He tilted his head, his eyes flicking from one image to the other. “I didn’t see her in person, but I’d bet all the Tootsie Rolls in town on that being the same girl. You said yourself you didn’t think Fake Peony was a kid, Marzana. You said you thought at the time she seemed older than eleven.”
“That’s true.” Marzana blew out a mouthful of air. “If you say it’s the same girl, then I believe it.” She remembered her mother’s words again: Speaking of Tasha—you know, I tried to get hold of her . . . Used a couple emergency channels, in fact, but with no luck. How’s she doing these days? Her mom might have sussed out the possibility that Tasha was involved somehow, but Marzana was absolutely certain this revelation would knock her parents flat.
The caroling sixth-grader took a deep breath and began singing “Happy Birthday” to someone named Mervin. Nialla spoke up. “So now what?”
That was the question. “Tasha’s a carrier,” Marzana said, tucking the picture back into her folder. “Emilia told us carriers sometimes package whole jobs. What if she put this caper together for someone? The fake kidnapping was part of it; now we just need to know who it was for and what the rest of the job is.”
“Well, I can at least tell you something about the rest of the job.” Emilia shooed them back toward the gallery stairs again. “Now we go.”
“Finally,” Barnaby grumbled.
The Thief Knot climbed the stairs in an awkward little train and crowded up onto the gallery. Emilia slid partway behind one of the velvet drapes, revealing the ornamentally carved gilt edge of a massive frame. “I advise you, in the words of Oz the Great and Powerful, to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. He ain’t pretty.” She wedged a shoulder between the huge gold frame and the wall and wiggled in until only half of her body was visible. Marzana shivered as a soft gust of cool air slid along the floor, winding its way around her ankles like a damp, chilly cat.
The click that followed was deep and resonant, almost like a note played on a harp. Then, under the curtain, the frame moved sideways, like a sliding door. About a third of the hidden painting popped out from under the curtain. J.J., unable to stop himself, peeked around the hem at the rest of the picture, only to back away with a skeeved-out noise and his hands waving in a gesture of self-defense. Marzana, however, went straight for the other side of the curtain and stared into the rectangular hole that the painting had concealed. To either side of the void, the Library walls were a good two feet thick, and the velvet drapes were heavy and dark enough to block most of the room’s light.
Emilia disappeared into the dark. “And Emilia said, Let there be light!” she intoned.
Nothing happened. In the momentary pause, the singing boy moved on to “Frère Jacques.” Marzana and Nialla exchanged glances of mild concern and reached for their flashlights.
“Hang on, hang on,” Emilia’s voice replied. “I just hit the wrong button. Voilà!”
With a fizz and a flicker, the space behind the painting filled with a glow. A decidedly eerie glow. The light had an odd violet tone to it, and a translucent quality, as if already all the settled dust of the past decades was on the move again. And just as Marzana had suspected, there wasn’t much back there for the violet light to illuminate. Beyond the thickness of the interrupted wall was a space about five feet deep with a wall of black brick on the far side and a tiled floor.
Emilia popped back into view and patted the satchel at her side. “Knowing that the rest of you had not anticipated this adventure, I skipped the nap—you’re welcome—and took the liberty of provisioning our party while you were on your way here. Everybody in. I’ll close the entrance after us.”
“It opens from inside, too?” Marzana asked.
“It does. Everything’s in working order, as far as I can see.” Emilia made a pained face. “It kills me that this has been here the whole time and none of us knew it, but even worse is the possibility that not only has it been here but someone else has been using it all along. It’s sort of a pride issue. Anyway.” She held the curtain aside. “Everybody into the pool. The stairs are to the right. Mind your feet.”
“Here goes nothing,” Nialla said, and she crossed the threshold, followed by J.J., then Meddy, then Ciro. Marzana took a deep breath and stepped through the opening and into the dim and dusty violet light, just as the lookout down on the main floor finished singing “Frère Jacques” and launched into “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.”