The Mystery of the Tenth

by Chantel Acevedo

The train we rode on was packed full of people heading home from work. We were standing in a huddle around a single pole. At every stop, a fresh press of bodies surged around us. I could smell someone’s coffee breath and came up with Callie’s Muse Rule #629: A muse should avoid the subway at rush hour at all costs.

  The ride took longer than I had hoped, and I kept looking at my watch every few minutes.

  “Quit it,” Nia said, when she saw me looking for the millionth time. “You’re making me nervous.”

  “Well, I’m already nervous. Not only am I probably not going to get back home on time, but the last piece of tapestry was guarded by a cyclops.”

  “I was there, remember?” Nia said.

  “And quests, like video games, have a tendency to increase in difficulty.”

  “You don’t play video games,” Nia said, a smirk on her face.

  “But my annoying twin brothers do. I’m an expert by association.”

  Mela was staring at a subway map, her shiny headphones over her ears. “How many more stops?” she asked loudly over her music.

  “Nearly there,” Ari answered. “Almost at Canal Street.”

  The train finally squealed to a stop, and the five of us hopped out, climbed the stairs up to the surface, and emerged in the middle of a really busy section of New York.

  We all stood there, mouths open, taking it in. The sidewalks were full of people speed-walking and brushing past us. Shop owners called out to one another from doorways. Restaurant hosts held up menus to passersby. People hailed cabs from street corners. The sky was packed with rooflines. They didn’t call them skyscrapers for nothing!

  “Wow. Makes London look a bit quiet,” Thalia said.

  “Feels a little like home,” Nia said. “But different. It’s hard to explain.”

  I thought of my neighborhood back in Miami, of the terra-cotta roof tiles, and the bay glimmering in the distance between buildings. “This is nothing like home,” I said.

  “Same,” Mela whispered.

  “Hard same,” Ari said, and I found myself wondering what home was to Ari. It wasn’t just a place, but a time, a long, long-ago time, one she probably remembered in an ancient language.

  “Move it or lose it, little sisters,” a man shouted at us as he pushed a cart full of purses for sale up the sidewalk.

  “We’d better get going,” I said, nodding at Ari, who started up the street toward Little Italy.

  “Prepare yourselves for the tourist trap,” Ari said, and she was right. There were souvenir shops everywhere, and Italian restaurants lined both sides of the street, one after the other, each with red-and-white-checkered tablecloths, fat menus, and the delicious smell of cheese and garlic in the air. Family groups were taking pictures under a large metal sign that spanned the street and read “Welcome to Little Italy.”

  “So where do we start?” Mela asked, looking up and down the street.

  “Over there!” Thalia said, and she was off down the block, the rest of us sprinting after her. Ferrante’s Pizzeria was one of the smallest restaurants in Little Italy as far as I could tell. The sign was hand-painted in green and in the shape of a boot.

  “Tiny place,” Ari observed.

  “One might even call it ‘small,’” Thalia added, pointing at the boot-shaped sign.

  When I looked at the sign closely, I noticed that the letters were actually designed to look like snakes, complete with glittery scales and tiny forked tongues.

  We peered into the windows. The tables were empty, but a few waiters seemed to be standing around.

  “Door’s locked,” Mela said, wiggling the handle.

  Nia knocked on the window to get the waiters’ attention. They didn’t seem to hear it.

  That’s when Ari pulled a needle from her pocket. “Easy peasy,” she whispered to herself as she slid the needle into the lock on the door.

  “Breaking and entering now, are we?” Nia asked, but Ari kept at it, pretending not to hear her.

  “Hey, you kids, step away from there,” a white man across the street yelled. He was holding a wet paintbrush and was wearing overalls covered in blue splatters. “I know lock-pickers when I see ’em!” He started to cross the road toward us when suddenly he started laughing, covering his mouth as he giggled.

  Beside me, Thalia was giggling, too. “Hurry up, Ari,” she said between breaths. “This guy doesn’t joke much. Making him laugh is hard work.” Thalia clutched her sides as she focused her magic on the painter.

  Ari kept at it, muttering about old locks. Inside, the waiters were very still.

  That’s when we heard another voice call out. “You think you’re a funny guy, eh, chuckling in the middle of the road like a dummy. Move it,” yelled a second white man from inside his cab. It was true, the laughing painter really was blocking traffic. The cabdriver was wearing a Mets ball cap and a Mets T-shirt. A tiny baseball bat on a chain dangled from his rearview mirror.

  “You move it,” the painter called back, then blew a big raspberry in the direction of the cabdriver, which made him laugh even harder.

  The cabdriver started to get out of his car, a murderous look on his face, when he suddenly started crying. I could see Mela’s fingers moving from the corner of my eye. The taxi driver sobbed and sobbed. The man in the road laughed and laughed.

  “You two are crazy, you know that?” shouted a waitress from the restaurant across the street. Then she noticed us. “And what are you kids up to, anyway?”

  Just like that, the waitress stopped to examine the flickering neon Open sign at the door to her restaurant.

  “Was that you, Nia?” I asked, and Nia only nodded, chewing on the inside of her cheek and concentrating on the woman, who was now unplugging the sign and detaching it from the wall.

  Ari was still working the lock. “Everyone on the street is going to go bananas before we get in here,” she said. “There!” The front door creaked open, and Ari tucked away her knitting needle.

  The others entered the restaurant, and I took a minute to make things right with everybody outside. I got to work dreaming up the pictures in my head of the laughing man suddenly getting a great idea for a mural he could paint, and the cabdriver quitting his crying and daydreaming about playing baseball. They settled down immediately. As for the woman fixing the sign, well, it needed fixing, I guess, so I left her to it.

  “Is all right with the world?” Ari asked when I joined them inside. “Because it isn’t in here.”

  Ari pointed at the four waiters standing around, holding thin menus fanned out in their hands. They wore black pants, white shirts, and black ties. Nothing unique there. But there was something not quite right about them.

  “Hey,” Ari said. “Can we get a table?”

  The waiters didn’t seem to hear her. They just stood there, blank looks on their faces.

  Nia and I walked up to the closest one. She snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. He didn’t blink.

  “Callie,” Mela called from beside another waiter. “I don’t think they’re . . .”

  “Real,” Thalia finished, walking up to one of the waiters and placing her finger squarely on his cheek. She sucked in a loud breath. “I know what these are! I’ve seen them at Madame Tussaud’s back home. They’re made of wax!”

  “Hey. Muses. Take a look at this,” Ari said. She’d plucked a menu out of the hand of one of the wax figures. I reached out and took one, too.

  MENU

  ANTIPASTO

  FROZEN-IN-TIME CROQUETTES

  TUSCAN WAX SALAD

  BRUSH-WITH-DEATH BRUSCHETTA

  PASTA

  FOUR-WAX MAN-A-COTTI

  PENNE ALLA STILLNESS

  SSSSSSSPAGHETTI

  PIZZA

  WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE, LIKE A BIG PIZZA PIE, YOU’RE NOT-A-MOVING

  “None of this sounds very appetizing,” Mela said, carefully putting the menu back into the waiter’s hand.

  “I don’t understand,” Ari said.

  “O
h, look, this one had a dessert menu,” Thalia said, holding a single sheet of paper. We huddled close to take a look. It had only one item on it.

  DESSERT

  THREE-LAYER TAPESTRY CAKE—“COME ON BACK AND MAKE IT YOURSELF!”

  None of us said a word. In fact, I was pretty sure all of us were holding our breath. I scanned the restaurant and noticed a light coming from a door in the back. “That must be the kitchen,” I whispered.

  “Whoever is back there, they want us to make the first move,” Nia said.

  “Courage, everyone,” Thalia said.

  “We are goddesses,” I said, reminding myself of muse rule number nine.

  “And don’t forget it,” Nia, Thalia, and Mela said in return, very, very quietly.

  I led the way, pushing through the swinging double doors and entering a brightly lit kitchen. A woman wearing a large chef’s hat was standing behind a stove, stirring something in a big copper pot. Her skin had a greenish-grayish cast to it, as if she had the flu.

  “Come in, girls, come in. Dinner is nearly ready,” she said without looking at us.

  In the center of the room was a table with five chairs around it. It had five place settings, too, and a tablecloth that wasn’t checkered like the ones in the dining room.

  “My tapestry,” Ari whispered, starting toward the table.

  Nia pulled her back by the shirt. “It can’t be this easy,” she said under her breath, and Ari halted.

  “What do you want?” I asked the woman in the chef’s hat. She stirred her pot calmly, still not looking at us.

  “I just want to feed you up,” she said in a singsong voice.

  “Great,” Mela said. “The first monster wanted to eat us. Now this one wants to feed us.”

  “Probably because she’s going to eat us,” Thalia said.

  That’s when I noticed Ari moving toward the table and the tablecloth. Suddenly, a waiter appeared out of the shadows. He was a young man with his hair cropped short and a couple of pimples on his cheeks. He looked pale against his white shirt and black bow tie. And he was shaking.

  “C-c-can I of-f-er you this s-seat, m-m-iss?” he said, pulling a chair out for Ari.

  Ari glanced back at us, a determined look in her eye. “Thanks,” she told the trembling waiter.

  We all followed, letting the waiter arrange us around the table. His hands shook so hard that when he tried to offer us menus, he dropped them. He was sweaty, and I was pretty sure I could hear his teeth chattering. Bending down to retrieve the menus, he stopped right by my ear and whispered, “Don’t look at her. If you value your life, don’t look at her.”

  I didn’t even have to will my magic to come. It just did, and I sent it with all my might to this waiter, the words “courage” and “help us” pounding in my head along with a picture of him with a look of determination set on his face. Once he stopped trembling, his eyes met mine. The sweat was gone, and when he stood up, I could swear he was taller.

  The chef was humming to herself as she ladled soup out of the pot and into five bowls. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, interrupting her song. “I’ve wanted company for so long. And these waiters can be so stiff.”

  “Ahhhhh!” the waiter shouted, holding up a plastic tray like a shield and running toward the chef, knocking her off her feet. The chef screamed, and the sound was like the squealing of the subway’s wheels on the track, a sound that feels like it creeps into your bones.

  Her hat slid off her head, and where her hair should have been were hundreds of tiny, hissing snakes.

  “Medusa,” Thalia said, breathless.

  “Don’t look at her!” I shouted, clapping my hands over my eyes.

  For once, we all already knew the myth. Anybody who looked Medusa in the eyes was usually turned to stone. But this time, Medusa had turned those waiters to wax.

  I peeked, though. We all did. It’s impossible not to look at something when someone tells you not to. We watched as the waiter lifted the tray to strike Medusa, saw how he froze in place with one glance of her terrible eyes.

  Just like the others.

  Medusa started to laugh, low and horrible. “You may be wondering about my new methods. I’ve been perfecting them over the ages. Wax, you see, is preferable to stone. Stone is forever. But wax? Wax can melt,” she said, and cranked up the heat on her stove. I was watching her hands, not her face, but it was difficult, like I wasn’t fully in control of my own eyes. We all were struggling.

  Just then, Ari pulled the tablecloth off the table like a magician doing that trick where they yank the tablecloth away and leave the plates sitting there, undisturbed. She rolled her tapestry up and shoved it under her shirt.

  We all stood up to go.

  “Leaving so soon?” Medusa called.

  “That’s the plan, yeah,” I said, backing away. Ari and the muses followed.

  Medusa started humming again, and that’s when we heard it—a low hissing sound behind us. We turned around and watched in horror as snakes slithered into the kitchen, covering the floor, wrapping themselves around chair legs, and trying to climb the walls. They slid over the waiter, frozen in wax, and nudged their heads against Medusa’s ankles, like puppies asking for a belly rub.

  “It’s a party now!” Medusa said. “Soup for everyone!” She began to lay out more bowls around her, stirring the pot and humming.

  “We need backup,” Ari said. “These snakes will gobble up my spiders. Callie, do your thing! Make a bunch of heroes to come rescue us! New York is full of heroes! Go on!” She bounced from one foot to the other, clutching the tapestry under her shirt.

  “We can’t put others in danger,” I said. I’d already managed to get the waiter turned to wax. If I’d have known that would happen, I wouldn’t have used my magic on him at all. Even so, I could feel the muse magic threatening to come, to reach out to people on the street and get them in here to fight Medusa.

  “It has to be us,” Nia said, kicking at a snake that was inching toward her foot. All the while, Medusa hummed and cooked, and the snakes hissed and opened their mouths, showing off their fangs.

  “Eventually, you’ll slip. You’ll look. They always do. And then you’ll be mine forever. The four little muses and their spidery friend!” Medusa laughed and laughed.

  The snakes drew closer, and Nia pulled me toward the table. I took hold of Thalia’s hand, and she grabbed Mela, who grabbed Ari. Eventually, we were all sitting on top of the table.

  “You could also just leave the tapestry behind, you know. It’s my favorite tablecloth. If you do, I promise to let you go. I really do.” I could no longer tell what Medusa was doing, because I kept my eyes fixed on my lap. She was right. It was really hard not to look at her, and the longer we were there, the more I wanted to.

  I heard a sniffle from Ari, who was holding on to the tapestry in a fierce hug. “It’s fine. We can go. I’ll leave it here, and, and—”

  I knew what she was thinking. If Ari gave up her quest, she’d never be able to prove Athena wrong. She’d return to being a spider forever.

  It was unacceptable.

  “We’ll think of something,” I whispered.

  “We always do,” Nia said.

  “I think one of us already has,” Thalia said, and we looked up to see Mela, already off the table, heading straight toward Medusa.

  “Mela, no!” I cried out, and launched myself off the table, too.

  But snakes soon rose up around me, curling up like cobras and spitting at me. Medusa snapped her fingers, and the snakes parted for Mela, leaving a path straight to where Medusa waited.

  “Yes, child. Come to me. Oh, tragic one, so sad all the time,” Medusa said. “I’m sad, too. This snake thing is a curse for me, as well. But you’ll keep me company—perfect, frozen company.”

  I stared at Mela’s long braid, afraid to look anywhere else. She was keeping her head down, her eyes off Medusa. I watched as she lifted her shiny headphones off her neck.

  “Ye
s, Medusa. I can feel your sadness. It makes me want to weep,” Mela said softly.

  “Finally, a soul who understands,” Medusa said. “Now, little one, look at me.”

  “Don’t, Mela!” Thalia shouted.

  “No!” Nia screamed.

  Mela stopped just before Medusa. “No, Medusa. You look at me.” She held up her headphones quickly.

  Medusa looked at herself in the mirrored surface of Mela’s new headphones. Her eyes went wide and she screamed, then went completely still, turning to wax before us, the serpents that were her hair going silent at last.

  One by one, the snakes around us slithered away, back into the nooks and crannies they’d come from. The waiter came to life, and outside, we could hear the other waiters asking each other what had happened.

  Thalia was the first to grab Mela and hug her. “You absolute wonder!” she said.

  “How did you know what to do?” Nia asked.

  Mela laughed. “This is going to sound like the most Clio thing any one of us has ever said out loud, but you all really should read more. It’s in all the stories about Medusa. She and her reflection don’t mix well.”

  Soon we were all hugging her, and Mela started crying out of relief, which made us cry a little bit, too.

  “Thank you,” Ari said, still clutching the tapestry.

  Mela gripped Ari’s shoulders. “We weren’t giving up on you. We won’t ever,” she said fiercely.

  I tiptoed over to Medusa, waxy now and very still.

  “What are you doing?” Nia asked, panic in her voice.

  “The next clue. The one that will help us find piece number three,” I said. “It has to be here somewhere.”

  We started looking around the restaurant, searching in menus, inside the cash register, under tables, opening boxes of pasta, and rummaging through the pantry.

  “Nothing,” Thalia announced.

  It had to be somewhere, I thought. I peered down at Medusa and saw a slip of paper peeking out from a pocket in her apron. I slowly reached down. My hand trembled the whole time, and all I could picture were horror movies where the dead villain comes back to life for one more jump scare.

  Her pockets were covered in what I really hoped was just red sauce. I tugged at the folded piece of paper. “Hey, everybody!” I called.