Inside the Shadow City

by Kirsten Miller

  “It’s time you explained yourself,” I said, spinning around and expecting to see Kiki behind me.

  “What are you talking about?” said Oona.

  “Where is she?” I asked the group.

  We looked around the waiting room. Betty ran to the window and Oona checked the ladies’ room. Kiki Strike was gone. And so, we soon realized, was the gold.

  HOW TO CARE FOR AN INJURED COLLEAGUE

  While I’m certain that you are the very picture of caution, by now you must have learned that in any good story, there’s always a character who’s a bit accident-prone. And unless you intend to abandon your stumbling sidekick or clumsy companion in the middle of all the fun, I recommend that you learn how to care for her.

  Fortunately, many injuries can be easily dealt with if you have a little common sense, a well-stocked first aid kit, and an expert knowledge of CPR. But for those of you who’ve already learned how to bandage a bullet wound or kick-start a heart, I’ve included a few helpful guidelines for dealing with some of the injuries common among adventurers.

  Teeth Knocked Out in a Brawl

  Your colleague is probably too charming to get into a fight. But just in case, you should know what to do. It would be a shame to ruin that pretty smile.

  1. Get to a dentist or a hospital FAST. You have only thirty minutes before the tooth dies and can no longer be returned to its proper place.

  2. Gently rinse the tooth under water, and never touch the tooth’s roots.

  3. Keep the tooth from drying out. To do this, you have three options. If your colleague is conscious, she can reinsert the tooth in her mouth and hold it there with a finger. If not, you can place the tooth in a glass of milk, which should keep it nice and fresh. However, if your colleague is woozy and there’s no milk around, you only have one option left. You’ll have to tuck the tooth underneath your own tongue or in between your gum and cheek. Yes, it’s disgusting, but it’s still more appealing than hanging around with someone who’s missing her front teeth.

  Attacked by Wild Animals

  Let’s face it. This could happen to any of us. One bright spring day, you and your colleague are strolling through the woods picking mushrooms that you’re absolutely certain aren’t poisonous, when an angry creature darts out from behind a tree stump and bites your friend on her exposed pinky.

  1. Try to identify the animal. If it was a bat, raccoon, skunk, or fox, start heading for a hospital as quickly as possible. These cuddly woodland creatures are the most likely to transmit rabies.

  2. Wash the bite with soap and water, and don’t pour any antiseptic on the wound. Apply pressure with sterile gauze or a clean cloth. (I hope you took some with you when you went into the woods.)

  3. Cover any broken skin with a bandage.

  4. Seek medical attention. On the way, be sure to mentally prepare your friend for the many, many unpleasant shots she’s about to receive.

  Frozen Alive

  You’re trekking through the Andes in search of a forgotten Incan city when a nasty blizzard slows your progress. Of course you’re prepared for such unfortunate twists of fate, but your colleague has left both her hat and her mittens back at the motel. Only an hour into the blizzard, her ears and fingers are white, waxy-looking, and can’t be moved. You’ll have to act quickly to save them.

  1. Wrap her ears and fingers with warm, dry cloth.

  2. Strike up a campfire and soak the frozen areas in warm water for ten to thirty minutes.

  3. Avoid direct heat, and don’t thaw her ears and fingers if there’s a chance they might be refrozen.

  4. Don’t rub the frozen areas and don’t apply snow.

  5. Give her aspirin to ease the pain.

  6. Apply sterile dressings and wrap between the fingers.

  7. Find medical help or start praying.

  Bitten by a Rattlesnake

  There is simply no excuse for getting bitten by a rattlesnake. After all, how many creatures are nice enough to warn you before they attack? But just in case your companion is hard of hearing, couldn’t find her snake-proof leather hiking boots, or likes to stick her fingers into dark rock crevices, here’s what you can do to save her.

  1. Wash bite with soap and water as soon as possible.

  2. Immobilize the bitten area and keep it lower than the heart.

  3. If you’re more than thirty minutes away from medical help, wrap a bandage tightly two to four inches above the affected area. Make it loose enough to slip one finger underneath, or you’ll cut off blood flow.

  4. If you have a first aid kit equipped with a suction device, follow the instructions for drawing venom out of the wound.

  5. Do not apply ice or a cold compress.

  6. Ignore the old cowboy who tells you to make a cut around the wound and try to draw the venom out with your mouth. Making yourself sick isn’t going to help anyone.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Case of the Vanishing Villain

  Once the sun began to rise through the waiting room window, we lost all hope of Kiki Strike returning. At the time, her disappearance was the least of our concerns. The doctors had whisked DeeDee into surgery hours before, and we’d had no news since. The Morlocks’ housekeeper had phoned DeeDee’s parents at a chemistry conference in Austria, and they had jumped on the first plane back to New York. But their flight wouldn’t land until late afternoon, so we were left alone with the unpleasant task of explaining what had happened.

  After dismissing several potential stories involving sadistic thugs or exploding manholes, we finally told the doctors that DeeDee was the victim of a chemistry experiment gone wrong. As it turned out, it was an excellent choice. DeeDee’s medical history was filled with chemistry-related injuries, including several vicious acid burns and a life-threatening shrapnel wound from a shattered beaker. One look at DeeDee’s chart, and even the most suspicious nurse had no difficulty believing our story.

  When the paperwork was done, there was nothing left to do but nervously follow the hands of the clock. As New York’s sick and injured arrived at the emergency room, every possible malady was paraded in front of us. We saw an actor who’d been skewered in a sword fight, a woman whose head had swollen to the size of a beach ball, and a young man who was suffering from a condition known as Black Hairy Tongue. But even with a steady stream of medical oddities to distract me, I couldn’t sit still. I stood up to pace the hall. I took one turn up and down before I found myself walking through a set of automatic doors and out onto the sidewalk. Without any thought of my destination, I kept on going, thoroughly exhausted but fueled by fury.

  I walked west until I felt water filling my shoes. When I snapped to attention, I realized I was standing on the edge of a lake that hadn’t existed the day before. Ducks blissfully paddled around dozens of buildings that were partially submerged, feeding off the exotic plants in the window boxes and ignoring the people who leaned from the windows calling for help. According to the street sign, I was on the corner of Bethune and Hudson streets, less than a block away from the site of the explosion.

  I stared at the water that sloshed around my feet. Whatever had happened, there was no doubt that the Irregulars were responsible. Somehow we had flooded an entire neighborhood—damaging people’s homes and endangering their lives. And although the thought was too terrible to contemplate, I knew the Shadow City might be flooded as well. In one night, we had managed to destroy the tunnels we had tried so hard to protect. At first I felt sick, but then a powerful, poisonous rage began to spread through my body. I swore to myself that Kiki Strike would pay for what she had done.

  A canoe piloted by a weathered man dressed like a cowboy arrived at the edge of the lake a few feet from where I stood. The boat was packed with sodden paintings and dripping sculptures. The man jumped from the canoe and pulled it ashore.

  “What happened?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

  “Earthquake,” he responded, conserving his words as he unloaded his canoe. “Rupture
d a water main.”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Nah,” said the old man with a dismissive flip of his wrist. “Just a darn big mess, that’s all. Couple of my paintings didn’t make it. And that fellow over there lost his collection of masks. Not that it’s any big tragedy. Most of ’em were pretty damn ugly, if you ask me.” He pointed at the brownstone from which the Irregulars had escaped just hours before. I saw the little girl who lived there poking her head through a window and reaching out to snatch one of the ducks.

  My eyes scanned the row of houses. One of them had to be the building that Kiki had been desperate to enter. As I searched for clues, a rowboat rounded the corner of Bethune and Greenwich streets and pulled up in front of the second floor balcony of a building three doors down from the little girl’s house. Although its window boxes were a bit fancier than its neighbors’, there was little remarkable about the house itself. A woman and her daughter greeted the boat and began shoving luggage at the man. Once the suitcases were safely stowed, the woman and the girl stepped daintily into the boat, and the man began to row toward the water’s edge.

  My mind was racing with anticipation. As the boat drew closer to where I stood, I could see its occupants more clearly. The man at the oars was beefy and dressed in a tight dark suit that didn’t seem at all appropriate for seafaring. Seated by his side was a flashy woman wearing a thick mask of makeup. There was scarcely a part of her body that wasn’t covered in gems, and she sparkled brilliantly whenever the boat hit a patch of sun.

  Tucked away behind them was the girl I had taken to be the woman’s daughter.

  “It was her. I know it was,” I heard the hidden girl complain.

  “Shush, darling,” the woman replied in an impenetrable accent as she smoothed her elaborate hairdo. “Sergei has gone to investigate, and we will know soon enough. But now is not the time to discuss such things.”

  The girl issued an obnoxious sigh just as the boat stopped in front of me.

  Oblivious to my presence, the giant in the navy suit stepped from the boat and dragged it onto the asphalt. He helped the woman onto land, where she straightened her skirt and shot me a withering look. The girl in the boat saw me standing by the water’s edge and rose to her feet. Dressed in a lovely white summer dress with her black hair streaming down around her shoulders, she would have been the picture of innocence had her yellow eyes not had the gleam of a wild beast’s. It was none other than the Princess.

  “You,” she growled, her voice swimming in hatred. As she pointed a finger at me, she lost her balance and fell backward, landing with a thump on one of the suitcases. Her dress flew over her head, exposing a pair of white panties embroidered with little pink crowns.

  I couldn’t help myself. I snickered at the sight. The Princess was beside herself with rage.

  “Little girl,” said her confused mother, “what are you laughing at? Who do you think you are?”

  “That’s her friend!” the Princess screamed from the bottom of the boat. The man trudged toward me with a scowl on his face. Realizing I was about to be throttled, I turned and sprinted for safety.

  A few blocks later, a stitch in my side forced me to slow down. Thankfully, the large man had given up the chase. As I sat on the stoop of a building to rest, a flood of questions caught up with me. Kiki must have been trying to break into the Princess’s house. But why? What had she been looking for? Having seen the look in the Princess’s eyes, I knew she had figured out who was responsible for the flood. But how? And more importantly, could she prove it?

  As I pondered these questions, a pair of old ladies in summer dresses stopped in front of my stoop. Stepping around me, they walked up the stairs, both struggling under piles of books. I looked up to see a sign over the door of the building that read: “New York Public Library, Abingdon Branch.” Just then, one of the ladies missed a step and lost her footing. I caught her before she tumbled down the stairs, but I couldn’t stop her books from flying in every direction. As I helped gather them, I stole a glimpse at a few of the titles. The first I recovered was Homemade Booby Traps, the second was entitled Defending Your Home Against Invasion, and the third bore the unsettling heading 1001 Deadly Devices.

  “My sister and I used these books to catch a burglar,” one of the old ladies boasted.

  “Yes, poor fellow,” her sister tittered. “I’m afraid he never knew what hit him.”

  The first lady leaned toward me and whispered, “Take it from us, if you’re ever in need of a deadly device, you can certainly rely on number two hundred and thirty-five.”

  “That’s right, young lady,” her sister added, “and it doesn’t even make enough noise to wake up the neighbors.”

  “Isn’t the library just wonderful?” the first asked, her innocent eyes beaming up at me. “You can learn absolutely anything here!”

  I helped the ladies return their books, and once I was inside the library, I figured I might as well learn a thing or two for myself. I headed for the computer terminals set against the back wall. A man was hunched over one of the desks. Hearing my footsteps behind him, he glanced over his shoulder and quickly tapped one of the keys. An image of three little puppies frolicking about a garden popped up on his computer screen. I sat down at a terminal and tried to get to work.

  “Say, cutie pie, do you like puppies?” hissed the very creepy man at the next computer.

  “Only if they’re cooked medium rare,” I informed him. I’ve found that in certain situations, it’s best to come across as a little loony. “Now get lost before I ask the librarian to have a look at the Web sites you’ve visited today.” I was only acting on a hunch, but the man jumped out of his seat as if I had set him on fire. Avoiding my eyes, he snatched his belongings and scurried out of the library.

  Alone at last, I typed in the Princess’s name and scanned the results. For a fourteen-year-old, she had an impressive number of listings. I clicked one of the links and entered a Web site called the New York Society Journal. The face of the man who had created the site was plastered on every page. With his plastic-surgery-enhanced features and his too-white smile, he looked every bit as sinister as the puppy lover. I scrolled down, and a picture of the Princess in a much better mood popped onto the screen, along with a profile entitled (yech), “The Little Princess.”

  Royal families who have found themselves unjustly uprooted from their ancestral lands have always been welcomed into the Manhattan social set with open arms. Today, our fair isle is so rich in royalty that no gathering of any consequence is complete without an exiled prince or two.

  So, I’m delighted to report that the beau monde will soon be graced with an entrancing new face. A mere fourteen years old, Sidonia Galatzina, Princess of Pokrovia, is set to make one of the most stunning debuts in recent memory. Rarely has fate blessed one with such a rare combination of beauty, blood, and fortune. Heir to the crown of Pokrovia and an honors student at the prestigious Atalanta School for Girls, the Princess arrived in New York five years ago with her mother, the enchanting Queen Livia. With all the wit and whimsy of royalty, they shunned the Upper East Side and chose to settle instead in the quaint and bohemian West Village.

  Though still so young and innocent, the Princess has been no stranger to tragedy. Her once peaceful kingdom withstood countless attacks by neighboring Russia in the twentieth century, only to be destroyed in the twenty-first by a bloody war. Revolutionaries poisoned the Princess’s aunt and uncle, and less than a year later, Queen Livia and her three-year-old daughter were forced to flee from the murderous masses. But destiny was on their side, and they managed to wrest the royal jewels away from the clutches of Pokrovia’s pushy peasants …

  I had to stop reading. Not only was the profile making me nauseous, I could see that it wasn’t going to tell me much that everyone at the Atalanta School didn’t already know. But there was no time to sort through the other sites I had found. According to the clock on the computer, I had been absent from the hospital for more than an
hour. I deleted all traces of my search and ran back to join the others.

  I arrived to find Luz asleep. Her legs were stretched across the lap of an elderly woman in a fencing uniform whose arm was bandaged with a ripped purple towel. Betty, wearing a pair of bejeweled sunglasses, was numbly flipping through a five-year-old copy of Vogue as Oona interrogated one of the nurses at the front desk. The Irregulars looked terrible. Even Oona’s hair was disheveled and her clothing wrinkled and dirty.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Oona demanded when she saw me. “These people won’t tell me anything about DeeDee.”

  The nurse looked frazzled. “We’ll tell you as soon as we know,” she said with a sigh. “Now please stop cursing and have a seat. You’re offending the other patients.”

  “She’s not offending me,” called the woman in the fencing uniform. “I’m eighty-six years old, and you can bet your skinny butt I’ve heard a few curse words in my day. Even used a couple here and there.” Apparently, the woman had been sitting in the waiting room long enough to make friends with the Irregulars.

  “Thanks, Maude,” said Oona, giving the nurse a righteous stare. Then she turned the stare on me.

  “So where have you been?”

  “Returning to the scene of the crime.”

  One of Luz’s eyes popped open.

  “Crime?” asked Maude, her eyes widening.

  “It’s just a figure of speech,” Betty assured her.

  “Maude Sandborn?” called the nurse in the nick of time. “You’re next.” Maude stood up and looked us over.

  “You girls stay out of trouble,” she told us, winking at Oona.

  “You bet, Maude,” Oona replied.

  The moment Maude was gone, the others gathered around me.

  “What did you find out?” asked Luz sleepily.

  “We ruptured a water main. Four whole blocks are under water. I think the Shadow City may be flooded, too.”

  The others looked horrified, and I saw tears in Betty’s eyes.