The Fearsome Firebird

by Lauren Oliver

  “Oh, shut your beak,” Pippa said crossly.

  Thomas shrugged. “Like anything. It’s worth a look, isn’t it?” No one said anything. “Well, isn’t it? Or should we trust Rosie Bickers to do the job?”

  “No,” Max said emphatically. “No way.”

  There was another long moment of silence, during which Thomas looked at each of them expectantly. Finally, Pippa sighed. “All right, Tom,” she said. “Tell us what you’re thinking.”

  It wasn’t difficult to sneak out after dinner. The museum’s residents, especially Mr. Dumfrey, had been temporarily distracted by the arrival of Emily. By dinnertime, it became clear what her special feature was.

  Every single inch of visible skin—from her anklebones to collarbone, wrist to wrist—was covered in brightly colored tattoos, so that it looked as if a patterned dress had become grafted to her skin.

  Sam caught himself staring at her left forearm, where a woman was cupping a hand to her ear, listening to the whisperings of a snake coiled in a tree. The tableau looked surprisingly similar to the Adam and Eve exhibit in the Hall of Wax, behind which the entrance to Miss Fitch’s quarters was concealed.

  “That’s all right,” Emily said, before he could look away. “I’m used to people staring. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?”

  But Sam couldn’t look at her for the rest of the meal.

  After dinner, while the other residents argued about how the attic should be rearranged to accommodate Emily and whether Smalls really needed three beds laid end to end, Sam, Max, Thomas, and Pippa simply slipped out the front door.

  The moving vans were gone from the street, and lights burned on all floors of Miss von Stikk’s new school. At the old Cupid’s Dance Hall, music might have been piping into the streets through the open window, and women might have been trailing in and out through the doors, laughing and tottering on high heels. But now the street was still, the music forever silenced.

  Erskine’s store was just off the Bowery, a rough portion of New York, home to pawn shops, saloons, and flophouses. The sun was just setting when they emerged from the subway at Second Avenue and made their way toward the address listed on Erskine’s card, and Sam felt a hard squeeze of anxiety: big men leered at them from open doorways, and a whisper followed them down the street like the faint hiss of a snake. He didn’t want to fight tonight. He didn’t ever want to fight, really. He didn’t want to be here, period—he would much rather have been sprawled out on the bed next to Freckles at the museum, or laying out a game of DeathTrap with Thomas. Unfortunately, it was starting to seem to Sam that the right thing to do was almost always the thing that was least comfortable.

  He wondered where Rattigan was tonight.

  They paused at the corner of Chrystie and Stanton, from which they had a clear view of the entire street. There was a single policeman watching over Erskine’s shop. He looked as sorry to be there as Sam was himself.

  “All right,” Thomas whispered. “Pippa, you go distract the policeman—”

  Pippa snorted. “And how do you expect me to do that?”

  Thomas sighed. “I don’t know. Pretend to be lost or something.”

  Pippa scowled at him, and Thomas rolled his eyes.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll do it. Sam, you get us in. But try not to break down the door this time, will you?”

  He trotted off before Sam could protest and approached the policeman, gesturing wildly and looking much younger and more confused than he had even a second earlier. Sure enough, after a minute the policeman was guiding Thomas in the opposite direction, leaving the entrance to the shop clear.

  “Come on,” Max said.

  They hurried down the street to Erskine’s building. Sam took a deep breath, wiping his palms on his blue jeans, and carefully tested the front door. The lock was old, and the wood groaned beneath the pressure of his hand. It would be nothing for Sam to break down the door, but that would bring the police in after them. He tested the doorknob next and was shocked when it snapped off cleanly in his hand.

  “Oops,” he said.

  “What’d you do?” Pippa whispered.

  He turned around, holding up the doorknob. “I didn’t mean to,” he said.

  “That’s all right. It isn’t your fault. And besides, it worked.” She pushed the door open with an elbow, revealing a dark hallway that smelled like paint and chemicals.

  They moved into the shop, closing the door behind them and trusting that the police officer wouldn’t look too closely at the doorknob when he returned. It was pitch-black. Sam tried to turn around and Max let out a yelp.

  “That was my foot,” she whispered. He could feel her warm breath on his cheek and he took a step backward.

  “That was my foot,” Pippa said.

  “We need a light,” Max said.

  “Give me a second,” Pippa replied, and Sam heard her footsteps move off. He stayed perfectly still, terrified that if he so much as twitched he would stomp on Max’s foot again or break something. A moment later, Pippa had located a lamp, and the room was illuminated in a soft white glow. Sam immediately checked the windows. Luckily, the blinds were drawn. Hopefully the light wouldn’t attract attention. Just to be safe, however, Pippa unwound her scarf and draped it over the lamp, dimming the light.

  Erskine had three rooms on the ground floor: the first, a kind of reception area with a smelly carpet and a cheap laminate desk; the second, what looked to be a storage room full of cartons labeled with chemical names; the third, a small bedroom with a single very small window fitted high up in one wall.

  “Check this out,” Sam said, pointing to the bed, which was unmade. “Maybe that means his killer surprised him while he was asleep?”

  “Maybe,” Pippa said. “Or maybe he didn’t like to make his bed.”

  “Shhh.” Max hushed them sharply. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Sam said. She waved a hand, silencing him. And then he did hear it—a series of soft and muffled thuds from somewhere inside the walls, as if a heavy fist were banging, trying to get out. Sam’s mouth went very dry.

  Pippa screwed up her face in concentration, and Sam knew she must be trying to see, to feel her way in through the plaster. She was getting better. They all were, actually. Sometimes, even lying down, Sam could feel his strength pulsing through him, shimmering in his blood and even his fingertips.

  Pippa’s face cleared. “It’s only Thomas,” she said, and a second later, there was a rattle and a pop, and an air duct came away from the wall, and Thomas emerged, covered in dust.

  “Oof.” He swung easily and silently to the ground, dropping the last few feet, and then sneezed. “I need to find a better way to travel.”

  “How’d you get in?” Pippa asked.

  “I had to loop around the back so the cop wouldn’t spot me,” he said, shrugging. “I went through the heating ducts.”

  Together, they returned to the storage area, which was piled with boxes. Thomas reached inside and extracted a bottle of something called Fleas-B-Gone, giving it a shake. “Empty,” he said. He reached for another one. “All of them empty.” He spun the bottle around and let out a low whistle. “No wonder this stuff works. The main ingredient’s ethyl parathion.”

  “Ethel who?” Max said.

  Thomas looked up. “Ethyl parathion,” he said. “It’s a kind of poison. Could flatten an elephant with the right dose.”

  A chill went down Sam’s spine. “What about a man?” Sam asked. “Could that whatever it’s called kill a man?”

  Thomas shrugged. “Definitely, if he inhaled enough of it. During the war it was used as a nerve gas. Reaper gas, it was called.”

  “But Erskine wasn’t poisoned,” Pippa reminded them. “He was strangled.”

  “That’s right.” Sam frowned, trying to recall what he’d learned from Rosie Bickers. “He was sitting at the desk.”

  They returned to the office. The desk was piled with invoices, orders, and unopened mail—stack
s and stacks of it, over-spilling the drawers and haphazardly tacked beneath makeshift paperweights: horseshoes, bricks, and empty bottles of Fleas-B-Gone.

  “What are we supposed to be looking for again?” Max said as Thomas and Pippa began to sift through the accumulation of paperwork in the drawers.

  “I don’t know,” Thomas said. “But we’ll know if we find it.”

  Half the desk was dominated by an ink-stained blotter, which was covered with a miscellany of mail and newspaper cuttings. Sam began sorting through it, but with every second he became increasingly convinced that they were on a hopeless mission. He thought of General Farnum and the way his mustache quivered when he was upset, how soft his voice became as he coached his fleas through their training exercises, the precise way he polished his boots every morning, and felt a sudden panic. He hadn’t known General Farnum for long, but already Sam had grown to think of him as a friend. The museum wouldn’t be the same without him. Sam wouldn’t be the same.

  He’d lost so many people already.

  He shifted a stack of invoices and saw a letter, half-finished, penned in handwriting he already recognized as Erskine’s.

  Don’t threaten me, were the first words he saw, and his heart jumped into his throat.

  Don’t threaten me, he read again, and then:

  You’re nothing but a swindler and the next time I see you I’ll be sure and say it to your face. If I don’t get either my order or my money back I swear you’ll regret it, Benny. He stopped reading. The name Benny rang alarm bells deep inside his mind. It was familiar to him. But the connection eluded him, and so he continued: Enough with your stories and excuses, you’ll drive me out of business and over my dead body will you—

  The letter stopped abruptly, as if he’d been interrupted before he could finish it.

  Which, Sam thought with a tiny shiver, maybe he had.

  “Guys.” Sam’s voice squeaked. Over my dead body. Poor Erskine hadn’t realized how literal the words would prove to be. “I think—I think I found it.”

  “Found what?” Max said.

  Sam took a deep breath. “It,” he said. “The thing we didn’t know we were looking for.”

  After the letter had passed hands, there was a moment of silence.

  “So,” Thomas said. “Looks like Erskine had an enemy.”

  “Benny,” Pippa said. “But who’s Benny?”

  They returned their attention to the desk, this time searching specifically for references to a Benny. They sorted through piles of mail both unopened and opened—it seemed Erskine was in danger of going out of business, since he’d received multiple complaints for failing to keep his appointments—and even sifted through the contents of the wastepaper basket, carefully avoiding the crumpled wads of used Kleenex.

  Pippa spent a whole ten minutes standing very still, breathing calmly through her mouth, focusing on the name Benny and trying to see her way into the desk drawers and file cabinets to find its twin.

  But it was useless. Erskine’s shop was too full, too crammed with papers and files. It was as if someone had upended an enormous library inside of her mind, and she was left feeling confused and overwhelmed, with the beginnings of a headache.

  “Nothing,” Thomas said disgustedly, after he’d removed the final drawer from Erskine’s desk. “Nothing but junk and junk and unpaid bills.”

  “And more of this stuff,” Pippa said, holding up another empty bottle of Fleas-B-Gone.

  Suddenly, Sam straightened up, white-faced, as if a phantom hand had passed down his back. “I knew it,” he whispered.

  “Knew what?” Max had given up the search long ago and was instead trying to pry loose a quarter that had somehow gotten wedged between two floorboards.

  Sam reached into his back pocket and withdrew the battered wallet that was a twin of Thomas’s. Pippa knew that Siegfried Eckleberger had bought them each a wallet for Christmas the same year Pippa got a small necklace with a four-leaf clover on it, which unfortunately Freckles the cat had consumed not long after his arrival. From his wallet, Sam extracted a small newspaper clipping. Then he looked up, eyes shining.

  “I knew I recognized the name,” he said. “Benny Mallett, of Chemical Compounds Incorporated. I wrote to him after Freckles wouldn’t stop scratching.”

  Max stood up, dusting off her hands, having apparently abandoned her attempts to retrieve the money. “What are you talking about?” Max said, snatching the clipping from Sam.

  Knowing Max would take forever to tease out the words, Pippa closed her eyes and felt her way down through Max’s hand and into the grainy paper. It was as easy now as sliding down a banister—it was as if she could send her brain out to grab hold of objects in the real world. She read out loud: “‘Cat Can’t Stop Scratching? Try Fleas-B-Gone, the Number One Most Effective Flea Killer in the World.’”

  There was a cartoon beneath that, of a happy cat giving the thumbs-up, and then beneath that, in smaller letters: “Send all inquiries, orders, and complaints c/o Benny Mallett, Chemical Compounds Inc., 660 Neptune Avenue, Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Max said. “Erskine was getting his supply from some guy named Benny.”

  “And then the supply stopped.” Thomas rubbed his forehead. “But why would the supply stop?”

  “It doesn’t make any difference, does it?” Pippa said. “Maybe Benny decided he didn’t like Erskine. Or maybe he went into business for himself and decided to cut out the middle man. Either way, Erskine was mad. He started threatening Benny Mallett—”

  “So Mallett decided to kill him,” Tom finished. He was still frowning. “Seems like a pretty weak reason to kill somebody.”

  “Maybe he didn’t do it on purpose,” Sam said. “Mallett came to confront Benny, they started arguing—”

  “And Mallett accidentally strangled him?” Thomas shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Look, we don’t have to prove that Mallett did it.” Sam’s voice was edged with exasperation, and Pippa knew he was eager to leave the room where Erskine had been killed. He kept casting longing glances at the door. “Just that Farnum didn’t do it. Right?”

  “Right.” Thomas nodded slowly. “I guess so.” But he sounded unconvinced.

  “Tomorrow we’ll go to Sheepshead Bay and talk to Mallett,” Pippa said, taking the lead.

  “Where’s Sheepshead Bay?” Max asked.

  “Near Coney Island,” Pippa answered automatically, and then immediately wished the words back into her mouth. Coney Island was where Howie had gone and joined up with another, rival freak show. She hoped Max wouldn’t remember.

  But obviously, Max did. She smiled meanly, narrowing her eyes. “Count me in,” she said.

  They had planned to sneak off to Coney Island just after breakfast the following morning and return to the museum by the one o’clock matinee show. But the day was a busy one. First, Monsieur Cabillaud demanded that they spend several hours listening to his lecture about the brilliant and misunderstood Marie Antoinette, and on the damaging effects of too much butter in the diet, which he claimed had been her downfall.

  Then, when Mr. Dumfrey, beaming, announced that Miss Bellish, the pretty tattooed woman who’d been standing outside the museum doors the day before, had agreed to join the show at a reduced salary—a blessing, especially since they still couldn’t get the Firebird to do anything but insult anybody who came near it—Thomas was charged with making a last-minute trip to the printer’s office twenty blocks away to order new brochures advertising Emily the Tattooed Wonder. Caroline and Quinn, meanwhile, upon learning that Emily would precede them in the show’s lineup, huffily threatened to quit the museum entirely, and both Pippa and Betty had to spend nearly forty-five minutes soothing their egos.

  To further add to the mess, Sam couldn’t locate a single steel bar he had not already twisted into a balloon-animal shape or a single concrete block he hadn’t split by the light application of his pinkie finger, and Max’s
costume had several rips in the seam where her knives had been improperly stored. All of this meant that by the time the matinee show was due to begin, Thomas, Pippa, Sam, and Max had no time to do anything but throw on their costumes and hurtle onstage.

  The performance, however, went smoothly. Nearly every seat in the Odditorium was full, and the crowd burst into appreciative applause after Pippa had an audience member write down the first and last names of her father’s parents on a piece of paper and then successfully guessed them, all from a distance of one hundred feet. It was an old standby, and by this time the paper wasn’t even necessary. Pippa could have known about Irma and Egbert Ziegenfelder merely by concentrating, allowing her mind to slip like a hand into the mind of the audience volunteer. But she wasn’t certain of her abilities yet. The ability to read minds, really read them, was so far unreliable at best. Besides, she wasn’t sure she was ready to reveal it.

  Max and Thomas were a big hit, too. They’d recently collaborated on an act that involved a hatbox and half a dozen knitting needles sharpened to daggerlike precision. Max, too, had gotten better. Faster, if that were possible, and even more deadly accurate. Sometimes it seemed that when she threw, she wasn’t even releasing her knives: they were simply her fingers, extensions of her body.

  Even though Pippa had seen them practice the trick before, she still couldn’t watch, and she heaved a sigh of relief when it was all over and Thomas emerged, unharmed, holding the hatbox now perforated with a half dozen holes. Sam performed his tearing-a-phonebook-in-half trick with his usual air of gloomy embarrassment, hurrying offstage as quickly as he could manage it despite a standing ovation and various cries of “Bravo!” returning to the wings with his face flaming scarlet and shedding his costume so quickly he ripped his vest clean in two.

  “That’s the third one this week,” he said glumly, eyeing the torn costume.

  Lash did his famous bullwhip act, successfully knocking a pen out of the hand of a man in the front row and a lollipop out of the mouth of a child in another, and receiving a standing ovation for both efforts. He came off the stage with tears of joy in his eyes.