“Well, she drove off my seagulls, and it’s going to take forever to find them, and who knows where my ship is by now,” said Rigby. “Can you give me a lift back? Just drop me at any annex port along the railroad line.”
“You’re kidding! Why shouldn’t we leave you here, like you were going to do to us?” asked Andre.
“You won’t do that. I know you and Elizabeth,” said Rigby. “You’re far too nice.”
I said, “Even if we take you back, we’re keeping the treasure.”
“No, you’re not. The treasure’s mine,” said Rigby.
“Bye, then,” I said, grabbing a corner of the chest. “Come on, Cole, help me get this thing onto the Ariel.”
“Okay, okay, we’ll split the treasure,” said Rigby. “Half for me, half for you two. You know it’s my island!”
Cole and I looked at each other. After all, Rigby had a point. “A third for each of us,” I said.
“Done,” said Rigby. “That looks heavy. Let me give you a hand.”
• • •
Back on the Ariel, Cole and I wanted to dump the corpses overboard, but Rigby argued that they were a valuable part of his collection and would be perfectly usable once he’d reassembled his seagulls. We agreed to let him pile the corpses in the Dutch trader’s rowboat and tow it behind us.
I regretted the decision as soon as we started sailing. In a sailboat, the wind generally comes more or less from behind. We spent the whole trip holding our noses.
To my surprise, Jonathan Rigby turned out to be a great sailing companion. He taught Cole and me how to tie seventeen different kinds of knots, kept us entertained with sea shanties, and knew the names of all the different kinds of seaweed.
“You’re kind of fun for a monster,” I said when he showed me how to attract flying fish by threading little bits of parrot fruit on a string—and how to drop them gently back in the water before they suffocated.
“I’m not a monster myself. I just collect them,” he told me.
The trip home seemed to take far less time than the trip out. Maybe it was the prevailing winds or the ocean currents, maybe just the pattern of daytime and nighttime. Or maybe there was some kink in the geography, and the way back actually was shorter than the way out. Whatever the reason, the Flint compass brought us back to our port of origin in what felt like no time at all.
• • •
Even after we landed, the reek of the corpses clung to our clothes and hair. “No offense, Spooky, but you stink,” said Cole. “Stinky Spooky.”
I made a face at him. “Very mature. You’re not exactly a bouquet of roses yourself, you know.”
Back onshore, Jonathan’s acquisitive, competitive streak came roaring back. He wanted to buy my whistle, my Hawthorne broom, my compass. To his credit, though, he didn’t threaten to drown me or strand me when I said no. He just argued. “What do you need the compass for? You already found the treasure.”
We’d borrowed a wheelbarrow from one of the warehouses down by the docks and were taking turns pushing it up the brick streets. It rattled so hard I kept biting my tongue.
“That’s assuming this is the treasure. We don’t actually know what’s in this chest. How are we going to get it open?” I said.
“You mean you don’t have the key?” Jonathan sounded pleased.
“I don’t know if there even is one. It’s not mentioned in the book, and the ghosts didn’t say anything about it, either.”
“I bet Doc can help,” said Andre. “We’ve got all kinds of keys in our collection.”
We reached the station just as our train was pulling in. “Quick! It’s bad luck to miss a spectral train,” said Elizabeth, starting to run.
I pushed the wheelbarrow after them as hard as I could. “How did the train know we were coming?” I panted.
“Spectral trains are like that,” said Andre, scrambling aboard.
We barely had time to pull the doors shut behind us before the train belched smoke and clattered into motion.
Jonathan Rigby spent the whole ride staring out the window looking green.
“You okay?” Andre asked. “You think you’re going to throw up? The washroom’s that way.”
“How come you collect ships if you get motion sickness?” Cole asked.
Jonathan sniffed at them. “The problem’s not my stomach, thanks for your kind concern. It’s your collection.” He waved his hand at the window. “I can’t believe you snagged the House of Usher. That should be mine!” He whipped his head around to watch the castle disappear behind a hill. I thought he looked less about to throw up than about to breathe fire. But when he turned around again, the scene up ahead didn’t seem to make him feel any better. “Oh! Is that Bly? How on earth did you get your claws on Bly?” He actually gnashed his teeth.
It was a relief when we pulled into Lost Penn Station, where Dr. Rust was waiting for us with Griffin. Andre tilted the chest down the train steps.
“Oh, good—you found it!” said the librarian.
“Ruff,” agreed the dog.
“Doc, do you know if we have the key to this chest?” asked Elizabeth.
“I’m pretty sure we don’t.”
“Can you think of anything else we could use to open it, then?”
“Hm . . . let me think. The Golden Key won’t work—it’s in the wrong genre. . . . The Key to All Mythologies is just a big, useless joke. . . . We have tons of skeleton keys, but they always lead to such bad puns. . . . Oh! I know. What about Leo’s multifunctional tool?”
“Great idea,” said Andre. “He upstairs?”
“No, down here, testing some ectoplasmic trackers he’s been working on. I passed him a little while ago on Eldritch Street, on the Lowest East Side. He’s probably still there.”
“Is it far?” I asked. My arms were aching from pushing that chest around.
“Yes and no. It depends how you go. You could take the haunted hansom from ‘Consequences’—that might be easier. You and Cole, take the chest with you. The rest of us can meet you on Eldritch Street.”
“What’s ‘Consequences’?”
“A Willa Cather story. It’s one of those ones where the ghost is really the—”
“Doc! Spoiler alert!” interrupted Andre.
“Right. Sorry. Anyway, the hansom should be able to take you to the Lowest East Side.”
Andre helped us lug the chest to a row of weird-looking vehicles waiting outside the station. The haunted hansom was a small horse carriage drawn by a bony gray horse. The driver wore a red flannel scarf and a broken hat, which he tipped to Elizabeth with the handle of his switch. “Eldritch Street, right away!” he said, and we rattled off through a strangely swirling streetscape.
“This is kind of creepy,” whispered Cole.
“Creepier than everything else?”
“No, but still.”
I secretly agreed and was fighting the impulse to reach out for Cole’s hand when we clattered into a broad street crowded with ghostly pushcarts. Blurred phantoms leaned out of upper windows of tenements howling, “Moiiiiishe! Miiiiiiickeeeeeey!! Saaaaaaalvatooooooore!!! HOWWWWWIEEEEEE!!! Ya forgot yer MITTTTTTTENNNNS!!”
Our cabbie pulled on the reins, the bony horse shuddered to a stop, and we stepped out, lugging the chest after us. Apparently either Elizabeth had already paid him or haunted cabbies don’t expect tips, because before we could get our bearings, he had clicked his tongue at the old gray horse and vanished into the swirl.
• • •
A guy had been bending over one of the ghostly pushcarts, waving an instrument through it. The instrument consisted of a wand attached by a red cord to a metal box covered with dials and buttons and switches; as it passed through the pushcart, it let out a burst of beeps.
He straightened up at the sound of our carriage and looked at us. He had a long
face, with a curl of dark brown hair falling into his warm brown eyes. He seemed around college age, medium height and neatly built, as if an engineer had taken some trouble to get him right.
“Hello! You look real,” he said, pushing the curl out of his eyes.
“Thanks. You do too,” I said.
“Hang on, let me just check.” He adjusted some knobs on his machine, then waved the wand over my head. It beeped again. I jumped back.
He waved it in Cole’s face. It beeped again. “Hey!” objected Cole.
“Schist, that’s strange!” said the guy. “You’re both definitely real, but I’m getting a positive reading for ectoplasm. You’re not partially disembodied, are you?” He poked Cole in the chest with the wand.
“Seriously, quit it!” said Cole.
“No disembodiment, your chest seems solid,” said the guy. “You’re not off lying in a coma somewhere, are you? Or fractionally dead?”
“Of course not! But you will be, if you don’t quit poking me with that thing.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right, that was rude of me. It’s just such an anomalous reading—I can’t understand it.”
“Our ancestors are fictional,” I said. “Some of them, anyway. Could that explain it?”
“Fascinating. Yes, maybe. Do you have a few minutes? I would love to get you into the lab and run some tests.”
Suddenly the sky went dark. The air swirled with bats, their high-pitched, skittery pips and clicks weaving confusingly among the howls of the phantom tenement tenants. I ducked instinctively and put my arms over my head.
When I straightened up, the bats were gone, but Dr. Rust, Elizabeth, Andre, and Griffin were standing on the sidewalk. Cousin Hepzibah was there too, sitting very upright in an antique wheelchair, the kind made of oak with a caned back and seat and big wooden wheels. Andre was pushing it. Jonathan Rigby arrived seconds later, riding his Hawthorne broom.
“Oh, good. You’ve met already,” said Dr. Rust.
“We haven’t, actually,” said the young man. “Friends of yours, Doc?”
“Sukie O’Dare and Cole Farley,” said Dr. Rust. “Friends of the repository. They have a favor to ask you. Sukie and Cole, this is Leo Novikov. Leo’s doing great things in literary-material mechanics.”
“Oh, I just like to mess around with spare parts,” said the young man modestly. “What’s the favor?”
Andre pointed to our treasure chest. “You think you can get that open?”
“I don’t see why not. It isn’t cursed, is it?”
“Not that we know of.”
Leo nodded, frowning. He walked around the chest, leaning over to inspect the locks, then adjusted some dials on the machine and waved the wand in a complicated pattern. Nothing beeped. “Yeah, okay. I’ll see what I can do.”
He pulled what looked like a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and opened one of the tools. It looked like a teeny, tiny hand. He inserted it into the first lock, frowning with concentration. After a few seconds, the lock popped open. “It seems pretty straightforward, just a little phantasmic resistance. And some rust,” he said, moving on to the next lock.
When the locks were all open, he stood back. We all looked at each other, holding our breath. I wished I could summon Windy and Phinny. I was sure they would want to see this.
After a minute, Jonathan Rigby cleared his throat and offered, “Sukie, Cole—will you do the honors?”
Cole and I stepped forward and each grabbed an end of the lid.
“Here goes nothing,” said Cole. “One, two, three!”
Together, hearts pounding, we lifted the lid.
The chest was empty.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Sullivan Looking Glass
How can it be empty?” I raged. “The compass is supposed to find the treasure! What’s wrong with it? Is it broken? Is it lying?”
“It might not be the compass’s fault,” said Dr. Rust gently. “What did you ask it? The exact words.”
I tried to remember. “‘Find Broken Isle,’ I think.”
“Well, it did that,” said Andre.
“I’m sorry, Sukie,” said Elizabeth. “It’s my fault—I should have warned you. Magic objects can be perversely literal-minded. You have to pick your words really, really carefully.”
“What about on the island?” said Cole. “It took us straight to the chest.”
“Sukie probably told it to find where they buried the treasure or something like that, not to find the treasure itself,” said Andre. “Right, Sukie?”
I nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”
“I’m sorry—I should have paid more attention,” said Andre.
“Ask it again,” said Jonathan. “Ask it to find Red Tom’s treasure this time.”
“You know none of the treasure’s yours, Jonathan, right? Since it’s not on your island,” said Cole.
Jonathan waved his hand in what might have been agreement—or not. “Let’s just find it. Ask the compass, Sukie.”
I shut my eyes. I felt so tired and disappointed and defeated. And mad. All that work and hope, and no treasure! I couldn’t bear the thought of Windy’s disappointment. She’d been waiting so long.
Pulling myself together, I opened my eyes and said, “Compass, find Red Tom’s treasure.”
But the compass just turned indecisively, wobbling here and there.
“The treasure must be dispersed. It’s not one, single treasure anymore,” said Dr. Rust. “Phineas probably spent it.”
“I think that’s right,” said Elizabeth. “Flint talks about the Pretty Polly capturing slave ships and setting the captives free. I wouldn’t be surprised if Phineas gave them gold from Red Tom’s treasure to start their new lives with. Or to pay for passage home to Africa, maybe. None of that’s in the unfinished manuscript, but maybe it was in her notes or her outline.”
“Then why did Windy’s ghost tell Sukie to find Phinny’s treasure?” asked Cole.
It struck me like a blow to the stomach. “She didn’t. She told me to find her treasure.”
“Ask the compass that, then,” said Jonathan. “Go on!”
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” said Elizabeth. “It’s Red Tom’s compass. I doubt it knows about Windy’s treasure. Whatever that turns out to be.”
She was right. “Find Windy Toogood’s treasure,” I told it. “Hepzibah Thorne Toogood’s treasure.”
I even added, “Please.” But the compass didn’t respond.
• • •
It was all too much. My dead sister, my lost house, my cursed family. Then the new chapter beginning: the broom, the compass, the ship, the trip, the climb, the corpses, the seagulls, my furious sister—I could still feel her rage zinging at the edges of my attention. All that vast bustle seemed to be pointing to some glorious, shining climax. And then this.
This empty box.
I sat down on the curb, ignoring the ghostly filth—phantom corn husks and newspaper scraps and worse things—and put my head in my hands, trying not to cry.
Someone sat down next to me and put an arm around me. “Cheer up, Sukie. It’s not over yet.” It was Andre.
“It is. The compass doesn’t work. We’ll never find the treasure,” I muttered to my shoes.
“Nonsense,” said another voice—Dr. Rust. “We’re librarians. When we don’t find what we’re looking for in the first place we look, we don’t give up. We keep looking.”
Andre was poking something at me under my bent shoulders. I took it: a tissue, crumpled but clean. I blew my nose and leaned against him. “Okay,” I said. “Where? Where do we keep looking?”
“Jonathan, you got any useful treasure maps?” asked Andre.
Jonathan Rigby laughed. “If I did, don’t you think I would have found the treasure already?”
“
Fair point.”
“What about the Sullivan looking glass?” suggested Dr. Rust.
“Oh, now that’s a thought!” said Elizabeth.
“What’s the Sullivan looking glass?”
“From a Harriet Beecher Stowe story,” said Dr. Rust. “It’s a prognosticator. The heroine uses it to find a missing will. She looks in the mirror and sees herself in a strange room opening a drawer in a cabinet and taking out some papers, and she knows that one of the papers is the missing will. Maybe if you look in the mirror, you’ll see yourself finding the missing treasure.”
“There’s a problem, though,” said Elizabeth. “The girl in the story has the gift of seeing. She was born with a veil over her face—a caul. You weren’t born with a caul, were you, Sukie?”
“I was very premature,” I said. “I don’t know about a caul.”
Cousin Hepzibah said, “Yes, you were a caul birth. So was I. It’s common in our family.”
“Awesome!” said Andre, hopping up and pulling me with him. “Let’s go check out the Sullivan mirror.”
Jonathan straddled his broom. “Which way?”
“The Lovecraft Corpus. And you’re not coming. I wouldn’t trust you in there as far as Ms. Thorne could throw you,” said Andre.
“You can’t mean that! I agreed to hand over two-thirds of my treasure, out of the goodness of my heart!”
“Oh, let him come. He’ll be okay—with Griffin keeping an eye on him,” said Elizabeth.
“Arp,” said Griffin, leaping to Jonathan’s side. Nobody in their right mind would try anything with those gigantic teeth in biting distance.
• • •
I didn’t like the Lovecraft Corpus any better on the third visit. The stink was even worse than Jonathan’s corpses, and I had a horrible feeling that something was following me—something vast, fierce, and vengeful. The underfoot squishing didn’t help.
“How I adore this place,” said Jonathan. “I could stay here forever.”
“One false step, and you might,” said Andre.
“You repositorians. Such a sense of humor,” said Jonathan.
The Poe Estate Page 18