Inside the Shadow City

by Kirsten Miller

  As soon as it was dark once more, I climbed down the fire escape outside my bedroom window and walked to Kiki’s house to meet the Irregulars for our second night of explorations. Before we left for the Marble Cemetery, Kiki asked to take a look at my map. I made a few quick corrections and printed out a copy for her. She studied it for several minutes, tracing her finger along the thick red line that indicated the Shadow City.

  “Looks good,” she told me. “Tonight, we’ll try to walk north.”

  From the moment the words left her lips, I could feel a question dangling on the tip of my tongue. Why north? I wanted to ask her. Who cares which way we go when we have an entire city to explore? Of course, now I wish I’d been brave enough to ask.

  In my defense, I did keep a closer eye on Kiki Strike from that point forward. I began to notice that she chose the routes we took with care, and it didn’t take long for me to reach the conclusion that Kiki was leading us to something. The other girls detected nothing unusual. They were too thrilled by the discoveries we continued to make. But every time we stopped to explore a room, Kiki would grow impatient if Luz lingered over some pirate’s booty or Oona and DeeDee played a quick game of blackjack in an abandoned gambling parlor. Instead of joining in on the fun, Kiki would pace the room, stopping only to snap at anyone who dared to raise a ruckus. She seemed to grow crankier as the hours passed, until nothing we did could please her.

  Each night, Kiki pushed us deeper into the Shadow City. Whenever we spied a trapdoor, her mood would magically lighten. Luckily, we discovered enough of them to keep her from getting truly nasty. New York was peppered with entrances to the Shadow City. Following hidden passages, we found ourselves in fancy wine cellars, dungeonlike basements, and steam-filled boiler rooms. We even discovered an exit from the Shadow City that led to a dingy broom closet in the bowels of City Hall. But it wasn’t until we climbed up a ladder and into the cash-filled vaults of the Chinatown Savings and Loan that we finally understood the importance of our mission. Until then, it had felt like a game. But suddenly Kiki Strike’s warnings made sense to us all. If criminals were allowed to take control of the Shadow City, there was no doubt they could cause plenty of trouble.

  Fortunately, most of the entrances to the Shadow City were well camouflaged and unlikely to be discovered by anyone from the world above. In fact, our explorations uncovered only one entrance that seemed too dangerous to remain open. It was located in Chinatown, just one block away from the Chinatown Savings and Loan.

  • • •

  If it hadn’t been for Luz’s tireless treasure hunt, we might never have found the entrance. She insisted on rifling through every trunk, box, or crate we discovered, and waiting for Luz could make Kiki furious. But while our leader threatened, ordered, and pleaded, Luz continued to tear open crates like a kid ripping apart a pile of birthday presents.

  Though her heart seemed to break each time she discovered a horde of porcelain chamber pots or a stash of pickled pigs’ feet, Luz refused to give up. In her eyes, every dank and smelly chamber held the promise of untold riches. So the night we came upon a cramped storage room that was filled to the rafters with shabby straw mats and dirty pillows, she ignored Kiki’s orders to move on and set about trying to topple a stack of crates in a corner of the room. After several good pushes, the top two crates crashed to the ground, spilling a million worthless chopsticks across the floor and revealing an opening in the room’s ceiling.

  Luz pouted while Oona, Kiki, and I climbed up the crates. A long ladder led to a bizarre room, its walls lined with dark cubbyholes just large enough to hold a human body. We saw no evidence of an exit to the world above, but another ladder leaning against a wall told us that we hadn’t reached a dead end. Kiki and Oona searched the cubbyholes while I thumbed through Glimpses of Gotham for clues. Skimming a chapter on Chinatown, I found we had stumbled upon one of Pearcy Leake’s favorite haunts—an opium den with a secret entrance located in the basement of a Chinatown warehouse.

  “Hey, Ananka. Mind sharing your expert opinion for a moment?” Kiki called. “Take a look at this.”

  I turned in time to catch a small bottle with a Chinese label. It was filled with a greasy liquid. I unscrewed the cap and was overwhelmed by a sickly sweet odor.

  “I found it in one of the cubbyholes. Does it look a hundred years old to you?”

  “Not unless the Chinese were using bar codes back then. And there’s a sell-by date in English. Whatever this stuff is, it’s good ’til next month.”

  “Hey, let me see,” said Oona, snatching the bottle. “I read Chinese.”

  Her brow furrowed as she examined the label.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Devil’s Apple Wart Remover,” she read. “Who would leave a bottle of wart remover down here?”

  “Someone with a wart problem, probably,” Kiki said. “It doesn’t matter who left it. It means someone’s been in here. We need to have a look upstairs.”

  After a long search, we located a camouflaged trapdoor and climbed into the warehouse above. There, we came upon a sight that could make any girl weak in the knees. Cobwebs curtained the warehouse’s windows, and dust bunnies the size of cabbages tumbled around tall towers of shoeboxes. In all, there were thousands of boxes, each filled with a pair of the most beautiful designer shoes I had ever seen.

  “Fake,” said Kiki.

  “Fake? They look like real shoes to me,” I said.

  “That’s not what I mean. They’re counterfeit.” She ran her finger across the soft leather of a pair of black boots. “All this attention to detail, and then they screw it up by misspelling Italy.”

  I peeked at the sole of one of the shoes. It was stamped with the word Italie.

  “Who left them here?” I wondered.

  “Smugglers, who else? They must be using this warehouse, and they’ve already found the opium den underneath it. We’ll have to close off this entrance if we want to keep them out of the tunnels.”

  Before we left for home, we barricaded the trapdoor that led from the opium den to the storeroom below. Back at Kiki’s hidden house, we listened as Verushka made an anonymous call to the police, tipping them off about the counterfeit footwear. The next day, a scandal erupted when the authorities announced that a wealthy real estate magnate named Oliver Harcott owned the warehouse. Unfortunately, no one could prove that Oliver Harcott was in league with the smugglers. The building had been rented to a Chinese businessman who had fled the city. With no leads left to follow, the police were forced to close the case and distribute the shoes to Manhattan’s homeless.

  The Irregulars celebrated our little victory with more of Verushka’s cherry blintzes, though in an amazing show of restraint, I limited myself to one. We were all thrilled that our mission to control Shadow City was proving to be a success. For the moment, the tunnels were safe. And Kiki Strike was pleased she’d caused trouble for Oliver Harcott. As far as she was concerned, a man who had looked the other way while his son, Jacob, had harassed people in Central Park couldn’t be entirely innocent. That morning, as Kiki drank her coffee and laughed along with the rest of us, I wondered if I might have misjudged her. Maybe she isn’t so dangerous, I thought to myself.

  I had almost begun to believe it, when everything went horribly wrong.

  • • •

  We had been exploring the Shadow City for more than two weeks when a remarkable change came over Kiki. One evening before we departed for the Marble Cemetery, she asked again to see the map. By that point, my masterpiece was impressively detailed, and I was proud of my work. I had taken great pains to perfect the image of the snakelike city that lay coiled beneath Manhattan.

  As Kiki held the printout in her hands, a small smirk played across her lips. She flipped through the photos of the buildings with exits and lingered on the last one, which showed an ordinary brownstone with a little blond girl playing on the stoop.

  “Where did you say this building is?” she asked.

 
; “It’s only a couple of blocks from your house, actually. It’s on Bethune Street.”

  “I thought I recognized that kid,” she said, staring at the photo and grinning like a maniac. I suspected we were close to whatever it was she was after. But once again, I didn’t ask. Let her find it, I thought, and then we can get back to the business of mapping the Shadow City. It was wishful thinking of the most dangerous sort.

  That night, Kiki was eager to return to the part of the city where we had left off the night before. We practically ran through the tunnels, despite the fact that our boots were not built for speed. Finally, we arrived at the door that led to the house on Bethune Street. Several more doors lay just beyond. Kiki stopped abruptly.

  “We’re under people’s houses now, so you’ve got to be quiet,” she told us, her order making very little sense. We were too far underground for anyone to hear us. But rather than argue, we all nodded obediently.

  “Okay, then, let’s see what we’ve got.” Kiki walked to the next door and tried the handle. It was locked. Oona took out her lock-picking kit, and after a few seconds, the door stood open. Inside, a skeleton dressed in the remains of a colorful three-piece suit lay splayed across a bed.

  “Don’t mind him,” Kiki instructed. “Look for an exit.” I scanned the ceiling, but there was nothing to be seen. A frown darkened Kiki’s face. “We’re done here,” she announced.

  “Wait,” called Betty, who had been examining the dead man’s suit. We turned to see her pointing at the skeleton. “There’s something hidden under his jacket.”

  I moved closer to the bed and peered down at the man.

  “It’s some sort of sack,” I confirmed.

  “Well, see what it is and let’s get out of here,” said Kiki.

  I reached over and pinched the sack’s fabric, careful not to come into contact with the hand that still clutched it tightly. When the skeletal fingers refused to release the sack, I tugged with frustration. The rotten fabric ripped, and a shower of golden disks rained down on us. One bounced off Betty’s forehead and fell at her feet. She bent down and grabbed it.

  “It’s gold,” she said, holding up a coin the size of a quarter.

  “We’re rich! We’re rich!” Luz shouted, jumping up and down as if she’d won the lottery. Everyone but Kiki scrambled to recover the gold pieces.

  “Leave the coins. We’ll come back for them later,” Kiki demanded, but there was no way to stop Luz from claiming her prize. She walked up to Kiki and shook a finger in her face.

  “You told me that if I joined the Irregulars I’d never have to go through anyone’s trash again,” Luz snarled. “Well, I’m sick of waiting. Sit your butt down and shut up while we take what belongs to us.”

  Rather than argue, Kiki took a seat next to the skeleton and studied my map while we collected the coins, many of which had fallen into cracks or rolled into crevices. By the time we were finished, we had found almost two hundred of them. We loaded them into DeeDee’s backpack, which sagged with the weight.

  With our newfound wealth stashed away, we returned to the main tunnel of the Shadow City. Kiki approached the next door. It opened to reveal nothing but dirt. Slamming it in frustration, she headed for the third door along the side of the tunnel. Unlike the others we had encountered, the door was made not of wood but rather a dull, dense metal. Although there was no lock to be seen, the door refused to open. Kiki turned to DeeDee.

  “This one’s locked from the inside. Get your explosives ready. Luz, Ananka, check for mains.”

  Luz and I studied our maps. According to the NYCMap, there was a water main that stretched through the middle of the block and a smaller gas main that ran alongside it. If my map of the Shadow City was to be trusted, we were far enough away from the pipes to safely detonate the explosives. But I was well aware of my map’s shortcomings.

  “It’s not safe,” I informed Kiki. “We may be too close to a water main.”

  “We have to open that door,” she replied, daring me to disagree. She wasn’t going to let the rebellion Luz had started get out of control.

  “It’s too dangerous,” I said. “The pipes are old. Any strong vibration could cause them to burst.”

  “It’s only a small explosion, Ananka,” said Kiki.

  “I don’t think it’ll cause any problems,” added DeeDee.

  “What about you? What do you think?” Kiki turned to Luz.

  “If the maps are right, it should be okay,” she said.

  “My map could be off,” I confessed. “I’ve had to correct it every time we’ve found an exit.”

  “We’re only a few doors down from the last exit,” Kiki insisted. “So the map should still be accurate.”

  “Why do you want to open that door so badly?” I asked, tired of her orders and feeling a sudden surge of courage. I heard somebody gasp.

  Kiki’s voice turned icy cold. “Our job is to find all the exits. If a door is locked from the inside, there’s a good chance there’s an exit behind it.”

  “You know what I think? I think you’re full of crap,” I told her. “You’ve never been interested in mapping the Shadow City. You’ve been leading us here all along. What is this place?”

  For a brief moment Kiki was taken aback, then her wolflike eyes narrowed.

  “It doesn’t really matter what you believe, Ananka. You’re not in charge, are you? DeeDee, get your explosives ready.”

  DeeDee hesitated.

  “If you don’t trust me, why are you here?” Kiki shouted. With her brow furrowed, nostrils flared, and white locks sticking out in every direction, she looked wild and dangerous.

  DeeDee reluctantly pulled out two small vials. “Sorry Ananka,” she apologized. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

  There was nothing more I could do. I sullenly followed behind the others as they moved a safe distance away. We watched from the doorway of the skeleton’s room as DeeDee connected the two vials and taped them to the locked door. As she dashed to meet us, the chemicals exploded. The blast was deafening, and a pale blue ball of fire raced down the tunnel, engulfing DeeDee as she ran. Then the walls of the tunnel rumbled, and stones began to fall from the ceiling. Where the metal door had stood, the tunnel collapsed in a mound of rubble and a cloud of dust. DeeDee lay on the floor in front of us. Her uniform had protected her body from the flames, but her hat had been knocked from her head and what little was left of her hair was smoldering. A long red gash stretched across her forehead. She wasn’t moving.

  “DeeDee!” I shrieked. As I ran for DeeDee’s body, I heard a loud crack followed by the roar of raging water. I grabbed one of DeeDee’s legs and began dragging her to safety. Kiki took the other leg and tried to help.

  “Look what you’ve done!” I yelled. If I’d had a free hand, I would have punched her. “I hope you’re satisfied!”

  Kiki said nothing, and together, we managed to move DeeDee from the wreckage. I dropped to my knees and took DeeDee’s pulse. It was very faint.

  “She’s alive,” I informed the others. “But we have to get her to a hospital.”

  “Take off her backpack. It’ll make it easier to carry her,” Kiki said. I pulled the backpack filled with gold from DeeDee’s shoulders and shoved it at Kiki.

  “You take it, then.” I turned to the others. “Okay, let’s get her out. We’ll have to go through the nearest exit. We don’t have time to make it back to the cemetery.”

  Together, the four of us were able to lift DeeDee quite easily, but when we reached the ladder that led into the basement of the nearby building, we seemed to be stuck.

  “Let me do it,” insisted Kiki. She hoisted DeeDee fireman-style over her back and carried her fifty feet up the ladder and through the trapdoor. Although I couldn’t have been angrier, I had to marvel at Kiki’s strength.

  With DeeDee’s limp body in tow, we hurried for the front door of the brownstone. The house was dark and difficult to navigate. Adding to the ambience, the people who owned the building were a
vid collectors of ceremonial masks from around the world. Wherever we turned, another bug-eyed monster or hideous hyena god was there to greet us. As we neared the front door, we heard little footsteps on the stairs that lead to the upper floors. I half expected to see that one of the demons had sprung to life, but it was only a tiny blond girl, dressed in pink pajamas with feet. We all froze.

  “You’re awfully short for robbers,” the little girl noted calmly.

  “Shh. We’re not robbers,” Kiki told her as Oona scrambled to open the locks on the front door.

  “Then what are you?” she asked.

  “Elves,” said Kiki.

  The little girl looked briefly puzzled.

  “See?” Kiki took off her hat and shook out her unnaturally white hair.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “The basement,” Kiki said. “But we’re leaving now.”

  “Okay,” said the girl, apparently satisfied. “Have a nice night.”

  Oona opened the door, and we carried DeeDee out of the building. A cab was driving past and Oona sprinted to hail it.

  “St. Vincent’s Hospital,” I demanded once we had carefully loaded DeeDee into the backseat.

  “You girls got cash?” asked the very hairy man behind the wheel.

  “Of course we do,” I snapped.

  “Okay, then, but don’t let your friend bleed all over the upholstery.”

  “Just drive!” I screamed at him.

  “No need to be rude,” he muttered as he stepped on the gas.

  As the cab neared the hospital, we stripped out of our uniforms, revealing our regular clothes underneath. We didn’t need to make the situation any worse by showing up dressed like a band of miniature ninjas. When the cab stopped in front of the emergency room, someone threw a twenty-dollar bill at the driver, and we pulled DeeDee from the car. As soon as we entered the hospital waiting room, a swarm of doctors surrounded us.

  “What happened?” one asked, but none of us could think of an answer. “Never mind,” the doctor huffed in exasperation as he loaded DeeDee onto a stretcher and wheeled her through two swinging doors.