If You're Reading This, It's Too Late

by Pseudonymous Bosch

  “What about Pietro Bergamo?” asked Cass. “He’s a magician — don’t you know him?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “Members only!” the parrot repeated, as if speaking for her.

  A youngish man with longish hair and a shortish goatee on his chin walked in from outside. He wore round wire-rimmed glasses, and his eyes flickered briefly over the kids before he nodded at the receptionist.

  Then he looked directly at the parrot. “Password please,” he said in a precise English accent.

  “Make a spell. But don’t try very hard,” replied the parrot.

  The Englishman thought for a moment. Then he said:

  “Abraca-dabble.”

  The parrot’s eyes glowed red and he spread his wings with the squeak of a hinge.

  “I thought the parrot was real,” Cass whispered.

  “I think it is — or was. It’s taxidermy,” Max-Ernest whispered back.

  Behind the parrot, the full-length mirror swiveled on its axis, revealing a dark hallway. Without another word, the Englishman strode through the opening. The mirror closed behind him.

  “Well, if you have no further questions, it’s time for my break now,” said the receptionist, standing. The kids expected to be ushered out but instead the receptionist smiled at them and exited the building, leaving them alone inside.

  “I can’t believe she just left us like that,” said Max-Ernest.

  “I think she did it on purpose,” said Cass. “I don’t know why. Like, she knows we’re not allowed but she wants us to get into the museum anyway. . . . Either way, let’s try to get in fast.”

  Cass walked up to the parrot and looked it in the eye. “Abraca-dabble!” She stepped toward the mirror but the parrot didn’t move — and neither did the mirror.

  “I bet the password changes every time,” said Max-Ernest. “That’s why he had to ask for the clue.”

  He looked at the parrot and said, “Password please.”

  “Demand entry,” said the parrot. “But don’t forget to feed me.”

  “What kind of clue is that?”

  “It think we’re supposed to put two words together — you know, like Shampooch,” said Max-Ernest. “Abraca-dabble is abracadabra, which was the spell part, plus dabble, which means not trying very hard.”

  Cass looked skeptical. “So we need a word that means demand entry, and then one that means food for the parrot?”

  “Yeah . . . maybe.”

  “How about, ‘let me in . . . parrot food’?”

  Max-Ernest scrunched his face. “Um, that’s kind of the idea. But the words should fit together.”

  “Open up. Pizza delivery for a parrot!” said Cass.

  “We’re not thinking about this right,” said Max-Ernest. “What do birds eat?”

  “Birdseed,” said Cass. “How about, ‘open birdseed’?”

  “That’s it — you got it!” said Max-Ernest excitedly.

  “I did . . . ?” She looked at the parrot, but the parrot didn’t blink.

  “Well, not exactly . . . but I know what it is now.”

  Max-Ernest stepped in front of the parrot and said:

  “Open sesame seed!”

  The bird’s eyes glowed red.

  It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  The only light in the hallway came from the display lights above the old magic show posters that lined the walls:

  At the end of the hallway, they walked under a sign that read Magic — A History of Disappearing, or a Disappearing History? and they entered a large room displaying numerous magical antiques.

  Max-Ernest excitedly explained to Cass what they were looking at — at least the things he recognized from books. Ingeniously hinged cages designed to conceal birds before they were released onto a stage . . . folding tables with hidden holes in which to drop rabbits . . . secretly marked playing cards and unevenly weighted dice . . .

  “And that’s Houdini —”

  Max-Ernest pointed to a black-and-white photo of a bare-chested man that hung above an exhibit of his locks and chains.

  Cass didn’t say it, but she thought Houdini looked fairly undignified, less like a world-famous magician than a short man in a Tarzan outfit.

  What, she wondered, would Pietro look like? Surely, he didn’t look like the white-bearded wizard of her imaginings. Or wouldn’t she ever get to see him, after all?

  Max-Ernest nudged her: in the middle of all the displays was an empty black pedestal bearing a small brass plaque: The Sound Prism. A few tiny shards of glass missed by the vacuum cleaner remained on the floor beside the pedestal.

  The scene of the crime.

  Spooked, they looked at it for a moment — for some reason, it felt as though Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais were about to pounce on them — and then they continued on.

  The next room was round and covered in striped fabric — an indoor circus tent.

  SIDESHOW……..SIDESHOW……..SIDESHOW…….. blinked a sign made of tiny, popcorn-style lightbulbs.

  Here they found old photos of grinning Siamese twins. Saucy dancing girls. Surly bearded ladies. Tattooed fire-eaters. And — “Ow!” said Max-Ernest — an Indian fakir lying on a bed of nails.

  They stopped to examine a fading circus poster in a peeling gold frame. It showed two identical young boys in tuxedos, one blindfolded, standing over some kind of fiery cauldron. Smoke curled up around them. “The Amazing Bergamo Brothers and their Symphony of Smells,” it read.

  Pietro and Luciano at age eleven.

  Our two friends turned and looked at each other, eyes shining: now they knew they were in the right place!

  “Uh, Cass, what do we do now?” asked Max-Ernest a moment later. He nodded toward the end of the hallway, where a man in a gray suit sat at a small table writing a note.

  “Just act like we’re supposed to be here. . . . Excuse me, mister,” Cass said, raising her voice. “Do you know where we can find —”

  The man didn’t look up, and when they got closer they could see why: he was not real, he was mechanical. And the note he was writing was simply a phrase written over and over in his jerky but precise hand:

  Loose lips sink ships. Loose lips sink ships. Loose lips sink . . .

  “Kind of creepy, don’t you think?” asked Cass.

  “Not really. I think he’s cool,” said Max-Ernest. “He’s an automaton. Kind of like an old-fashioned robot. I read about them. In the old days, magicians used to perform with —”

  Before Max-Ernest could finish:

  Thwang! Thunk!

  The two kids jumped as one: an arrow whizzed by their heads and landed right next to them amid dozens of arrows on a large target.

  “Hey, you could have killed us!” Cass shouted.

  But when they turned to see who’d nearly shot them, they saw only another automaton: this one holding a bow, a quiver full of arrows on the floor beside him.

  As they looked around the room, they saw other automata playing games of cards or chess; watering fake flowers; telling fortunes over crystal balls. There were also mechanical animals: rabbits, chimps, birds. It was quite a collection. Most of the automata looked very old and some of them creaked very loudly or seemed to be broken altogether.

  Apart from all the mechanical people, there didn’t seem to be a soul around. They thought they heard someone playing the piano — but when they followed the music to its source, they saw an old player piano, unaccompanied by anyone human or otherwise, its keys moving up and down, seemingly of their own accord.

  “You think they’re just not here? Do we have to come back?” asked Max-Ernest. “Where did that guy with the glasses go?”

  Before Cass could answer, a scrawny cat darted in front of them. Then started scratching herself against what looked like a cabinet or booth of some sort with a curtained opening. “Hey, isn’t that —”

  “Pietro’s cat?” Cass finished Max-Ernest’s thought. (They’d met — or at least, seen — the magi
cian’s shy feline when they visited his house in their last investigation.) “Yeah, could be. She’s just as skinny and has the same color, or multicolors — what’s it called?”

  “Calico.”

  As soon as Max-Ernest pronounced the word, the cat stepped into the booth and seemed literally to vanish before their eyes.

  “Hey, where’d she go?!” Cass exclaimed.

  As Max-Ernest watched, she stepped into the booth after the cat — and vanished just as quickly.

  It was then that he noticed the glittering sign above the booth:

  GATEWAY TO THE INVISIBLE

  “Cass? You there?” Max-Ernest took a cautious step toward the booth Cass had disappeared into.

  “Yeah, I’m right here! Can’t you see me?”

  “No, it’s just black. It must be an illusion — you know, like for a stage show,” said Max-Ernest, trying to sound confident. “Are there mirrors inside?”

  “Um, yeah, but I can’t really . . . wait, I think there’s some kind of door — it’s in the floor . . . okay, I’m going down just to look —”

  “Wait — don’t go without me!” said Max- Ernest.

  But by the time he entered the booth, she was gone — and light streamed up at him from the hatch in the floor.

  The basement of the Magic Museum was occupied by a large workshop that, for the most part, looked like it could have been anywhere in the world: normal hammers and wrenches and saws hung from hooks on the wall. Normal scraps of wood and metal lay on the floor. A normal scent of sawdust and glue filled the air.

  But whereas in a normal workshop you might find someone making a chest to keep blankets in, the chests made here were meant to be sawed in half — with somebody inside. And whereas in a normal workshop you might have found a wardrobe cabinet designed for coats, here the wardrobe cabinets were designed for making tigers disappear.

  In short, it was a magician’s workshop.

  As Cass and Max-Ernest walked in, they saw an old man standing behind a workbench. He looked up at them briefly, then returned to the large silver vase in his hand. It had two handles and looked something like a trophy cup. He seemed to be fixing the bottom with a screwdriver.

  He wore no velvet cloak — just old work clothes and a leather apron. He had no long white beard — just curly gray hair and a bushy mustache that snowed sawdust whenever he moved. And if he resembled a man from a fairy tale, it wasn’t the noble wizard Cass had imagined, it was that humble Italian woodworker, the father of Pinocchio, Gepetto.

  Still, Cass knew who he was right away. As if she had known him forever.

  “Um, excuse me, are you Pietro?” she asked, her heart beating hard in her chest. “Or Mr. Bergamo, I mean,” she corrected herself, remembering they’d never actually met before.

  “Pietro will do,” he said by way of answer, not looking up from his work. His voice had a timbre similar to Dr. L’s. But Pietro’s voice retained more of his native Italian accent. And more of his native humanity.

  The resemblance to his brother was uncanny, but not in the usual way of twins. It was more like seeing an old portrait of a friend’s ancestor — a portrait that looks exactly like the person you know but in a different era and at a different age.

  Unlike Dr. L’s smooth and ageless face (a better word might be facade), Pietro’s face bore all the marks of time: scars and spots, wrinkles and veins. It was imbued with that ineffable sense of history, of life lived and of experience gained, that only the best and oldest faces possess.

  He could have been Dr. L’s father, even his grandfather. Maybe an uncle. Anything but a twin brother.

  “We, I mean, I am Cassandra,” she stammered. “This is Max-Ernest.”

  Pietro remained silent. Max-Ernest felt compelled to jump in: “We’re the ones who saved Benjamin Blake from the spa last year. The ones who Owen —”

  “Yes. I know,” said Pietro gently.

  At last, Pietro finished doing whatever he was doing to the vase and looked up at the two intruders. “So. You have found me at work on my new stage.”

  “What stage?” asked Max-Ernest, confused.

  “My favorite stage — offstage.”

  Pietro smiled to show he was making a joke. “I mean I have retired from being a magician. I was never the great entertainer — that was my brother. So these days, I only make the magic — I no longer perform it. Here —”

  He placed the vase on the table in front of them.

  “Each of you take a handle and pull. But gently! It’s very old and I don’t want to have to fix it again.”

  They pulled —and for a moment nothing happened.

  Then a little silver leaf sprouted above the lip of the vase. Its stem grew taller and taller, as if drawn upward by some invisible sun. Soon, other branches were growing from the central stem, leaves sprouting on each of these. Until a little silver tree stood in front of them.

  One by one, delicate golden flowers budded and bloomed all over the branches.

  “Whoa,” said Cass.

  “Double whoa,” said Max-Ernest. “I’ve never seen one of those before. Even in books.”

  “You can imagine what people thought a hundred and fifty years ago — before the movies and the computers and the special effects.”

  As they spoke, a glittering gold canary emerged out of the top bloom and began to sing a lovely —

  Screech!

  Before the canary could get out a second note, its voice turned to a shrill whine and the whole tree started to smoke.

  “Is that supposed to happen?” asked Cass nervously.

  Pietro laughed. “Not at all. It’s supposed to sing a Mozart melody. Now if I were on the stage, I would have to pretend like I wanted it to smoke all along.”

  He gestured to the loose gears and half-restored automata around him. “What I meant about making the magic — I create the illusions. I design them and I build them — but I do not use them so much anymore. And now you can see why.”

  “Wow, so you’re a . . . well, what do you call it? I’ve never heard of what you do,” said Max-Ernest as if that made such a job impossible.

  “There’s no name for it — because nobody’s supposed to know that it is done. We like magic to be a mystery, no? You don’t want to know somebody is standing behind the curtain, playing with mirrors. That ruins the whole thing.”

  “We call him the Invisible Man,” said a voice from the back.

  A tall, pinched-looking man with a pen behind his ear walked toward them.

  “William Wilton Wallace III, certified public accountant, at your service,” he said, handing each of the newcomers a business card.

  “Mr. Wallace is an accountant by day, but he is the Terces Society archivist by night,” Pietro explained.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Cass.

  “Oh, we’ve met before, when you were in diapers,” said Mr. Wallace with an expression of distaste — as if he could still smell the diapers in question. “I did the books for your grandfathers’ store until I gave up on them. Far too disorganized. Absolutely hopeless, those two. But I expect you feel the same?”

  “No, well, I . . .” Cass trailed off, wanting to defend her grandfathers, but not wanting to pick a fight.

  “And this is Lily Wei. I think you have met her upstairs.” Pietro nodded as the beautiful, black-suited woman entered the room. “Of course, she is not just our receptionist, she is a master of the Chinese music.”*

  Lily smiled modestly. “Master is a relative word.”

  “Will you play for them?” asked Pietro, indicating the collection of exotic instruments hanging on one wall.

  Lily tilted her head in assent. Then picked out an odd, violin-like instrument with a horse head carved at the end of the neck where a scroll should be.

  “This is the morin khur. From Mongolia. Close your eyes —”

  Cass and Max-Ernest obeyed, and suddenly, they heard the sound of a horse galloping. The horse whinnied, then stopped short right next to them
.

  The effect was so startling they opened their eyes.

  Lily laughed softly, still playing. “In the old days, they made the morin khur from the skull of a horse. They say you can still hear the horse’s ghost.”

  The music became lovely and mournful and then —

  She moved so swiftly that they never saw her pull the long, needle-like sword out of her violin bow. By the time they grasped what was happening, the sword was tickling Max-Ernest’s throat.

  “Wha —!” he gasped.

  Lily dropped the sword just as quickly.

  Cass stared, pale.

  “I forgot to tell you, Lily is also a master of defense,” said Pietro, enjoying their reaction, “our, what is the term? Muscle.”

  The kids looked suitably impressed.

  “You will always be safe when I am nearby,” said the demure receptionist, sheathing her sword back in the bow.

  “So then — you knew it was us all along?” asked Max-Ernest, still quivering from the shock.

  “I suspected. But I had Owen take a look just in case.”

  “Owen? Is he here?” Cass looked around in surprise.

  “Right here.”

  Everyone turned to see the goateed Englishman sitting quietly in a chair by the wall. He removed his glasses.

  The kids groaned. How could they not have guessed?

  “The question is: why are you here?” said the English Owen. “I seem to remember dropping you off at home.”

  “Give them a second. They’ll tell us in a moment,” said Pietro.

  “How can you always look so different?” Max-Ernest asked. “Is that even your nose?”

  “Of course, it’s mine!” said Owen, offended.

  He pulled on his nose — and it stretched like putty. “I paid good money for it!”

  Everyone laughed. And Cass felt a sudden surge of happiness.

  The members of the Terces Society might not be the Knights of the Round Table any more than Pietro was Merlin, but, at the moment, she wouldn’t trade them for anyone. Even Owen.

  “So, then, is this . . . everybody?” she asked.

  At this, Mr. Wallace coughed and looked at Pietro with raised eyebrows.