“I AM ADEM TARIK!” he declared to the mirror on a dresser. “My, oh my, oh my, oh my! All these years, trying to remember! My, oh my, oh my!” He bent over to touch his toes and noticed the twins on the couch, staring at him like imbeciles. “Who are you?” he asked.
“All—all this time—you were looking for—yourself,” Daphna stuttered in a baleful, mousy voice. “You—you were never searching for Mom. You kept going to Turkey all those years because you found the book sixty years ago and took it to that man and made him copy it for you. It was in the back of your mind all the time after the accident, and—and—it starting coming back when we were going to turn thirteen!”
Though Daphna wasn’t aware of it, her voice was growing in strength as she spoke. “That’s why you always talked about it being such a big birthday! You’d been planning all along to get it back when you had kids who turned thirteen! It’s just like the doctor said!” She was shouting now.
“That’s why the book showed up just when Rash and everyone else came for us! There were no coincidences in anything that’s happened! Fikret Cihan’s grandfather recognized you when he saw you and gave you back your book!”
Milton, Adem Tarik, regarded Daphna with a curious look. It seemed both admiring and scornful. Then he nodded, looking wholly pleased. “And who might you be, young lady?” he asked.
“I—I’m—Daphna,” Daphna whispered, cut to the heart.
“And you, young man?”
“Dexter. You’re our father.”
“I HAVE CHILDREN?” Milton cried. “Living children?”
“Yes,” Dexter snarled. “We didn’t die like the ones you had with Mrs. Tapi and Mrs. Kunyan and Mrs. Deucalion. You married them all, but you ditched them when their babies died.”
“My goodness,” Milton said, smiling. His face had lost its wrinkles. He looked like he was getting younger and healthier right before their eyes.
“You two know quite a lot about me. That’s wonderful,” he added. “Please, do tell me more. You say you’re thirteen now? And I see you’ve got my book! Probably still useless, though, no? What am I doing here?”
“I’ll tell you more,” Dexter growled. “You killed our mother.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” Milton sighed. He crossed back to his bed and sat on its edge.
“The last thing I remember,” he said, “was trying to shove her and that assistant of hers over a ledge in my caves. The caves! I got hit in the head, didn’t I? Oh, how absurd! No matter! I killed them both.” When Milton noticed the horrified way in which the twins were looking at him, his expression changed. He tried to look friendly.
“Look, children,” he said, “you must understand. I’m not a bad man. I have a plan.”
“You didn’t kill—” Daphna started to say, but Dex shot her a dire look.
Why should they tell him he didn’t kill Latty? he thought. Why should they tell him anything? And Latty! What about Latty?
“Anyway,” Milton said, getting back to his feet, “I’m sure I seem like some kind of monster to you. I shouldn’t be acting so callous. She was your mother after all. I’m sorry for your loss. But if you’ll allow me, I’d like to explain why what I did had to be done. I want to share my plan with you, the most ambitious plan ever conceived! When you understand, you’ll thank me, I promise you.”
This speech was met by icy glares from the twins, so Milton said, “I see you aren’t interested at this time. Please, take care of that book. It’s easily damaged, and someday it might be of great use to you. In the meantime, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to fetch some other materials that might be of more immediate benefit. You may already know about the First Tongue. I want you to speak it.”
Daphna spat on the floor at her father’s feet. “That’s what I think of your grand plan!” she cried. “I know what you told those poor kids who trusted you! You told them they’d be making Heaven on Earth! Well, if your kind of Heaven includes murdering people, you can go to Hell!”
Milton, Adem Tarik, looked amused by this outburst. He seemed ready to respond, but Daphna didn’t give him the chance.
“And guess what!” she shouted. “We know all about the copies. We burned every last one of them! And another thing—we don’t need you! We’re already learning the First Tongue, and WE KNOW YOU CAN’T—!”
“And soon, we’ll master it!” Dex interrupted, emboldened by his sister’s audacity, but alarmed that she kept almost giving away information they might be wise to keep to themselves. There was no reason on earth to tell their father they knew he needed them.
“And then you better hide under the biggest rock in the universe,” Dex shouted, “because we’re going to make you wish you were never born!”
In response to the blazing eyes of his just-discovered children, Adem Tarik bowed, but while his body language was of one justly defeated, a sparkle of absolute pleasure shone in his eyes.
“Fair enough,” he said, “I see I am of no use here, though you did not express my aspirations quite correctly. Bear in mind, children, that words matter, even the smallest among them. I wish you the best of luck in all your endeavors.” Then, like Fikret Cihan had just a few minutes earlier, he walked out through the door.
Dexter and Daphna turned to each other yet again in total disbelief. “L—L—Latty,” Daphna whined. “She—she knew the truth all along. She told us she saw him trying to save her, but the truth is she saw him pushing her! She—She—”
“She took advantage of him forgetting who he was so she could stay with us as his assistant,” Dex said. The house of cards that was their previous understanding collapsed in a heap in his mind. “She was protecting us,” he whispered. “It’s just like Ruby said, remember? Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”
“But not too close. That’s why she encouraged him to be a scout, to travel around and stay away from us until she learned his stupid plan! And that’s why she doesn’t like Evelyn, because if Dad married her, she wouldn’t be able to look after us.”
“That’s why she got so scared he’d remember! That’s why she took off. If he finds out she didn’t fall, and that she knows the truth, he’ll kill her for sure. She—she—”
“Loves us,” Daphna choked.
“Everything makes sense now, Daphna. He was in great shape before the accident, until he forgot who he was. Now he remembers, and it’s coming back. Who knows how old he really is.”
“That voice—it’s horrible, Dex. You were right all along! Dad never cared about us at all!”
“If I was right,” Dex groaned, “it was for the wrong reasons. Have two stupider people ever walked the face of the earth? He’s been telling us he was Adem Tarik over and over for days! All that stuff he was saying in his sleep, that he was failing, that he’d done something wrong. He was failing to carry out his great and wonderful plan.”
“Latty!” the twins cried in unison. “What have we done?”
Part II
The Library
CHAPTER 15
a bit of a situation
“Daphna? Dexter?” Evelyn asked after peeking into the room. “What’s wrong? Where is your father?”
“Adem—Tarik—” Daphna stammered, “Dad—”
“What’s that, honey?”
“Tongue,” whispered Dex, his eyes fluttering. “Himself—looking for—himself.” He laughed crazily.
“Did he go out by himself? Never mind, you two look positively traumatized!” With practiced calm, Evelyn maneuvered the twins onto their cots.
“I thought something like this might happen,” she said softly, helping them into their sleeping bags, “after all you poor kids have been through.”
Neither Dex nor Daphna offered the slightest resistance to Evelyn’s bony but assured hands, and they were deep asleep before she even finished tucking them in. When they were settled, Evelyn looked down at them with intense concern. Then she hurried from the room.
It was well past noon the next day when the twin
s were woken by Evelyn softly calling their names. They’d been profoundly unconscious for nearly fifteen hours, and both felt immeasurably better for it. They got up, stretched and smiled at each other, thrilled to feel functional again. Bagels and apples sat piled on a tray, so they attacked it. But then they saw Evelyn watching them with an uncomfortable smile. They’d slept in their clothes. And their father’s bed was empty.
Like the proverbial piano hurtling down a flight of stairs, reality clobbered them. For just a moment, a brief, sweet moment, they’d been nothing more than two kids waking up revived after running themselves ragged. But now, once again, they were two key players knee deep in a mystery seemingly as old as time.
“What’s wrong?” Daphna asked. She wasn’t too concerned. Whatever Evelyn thought was wrong, she couldn’t even begin to know the first part of it.
“Kids,” Evelyn said, “I tried to wake you earlier, but I couldn’t manage to rouse either of you. I’m afraid we’ve got a bit of a situation.”
“What kind of situation?” Dex asked. He hadn’t been overly worried either, but Evelyn’s sympathetic expression was setting off all kinds of alarms in his head.
“Well—” said Evelyn. Her skinny fingers were interlocked nervously, and her always fidgety looking arms and legs seemed even more so as she apparently tried to figure out what to say.
“Well what?” Daphna pressed, getting nervous now.
“It’s your father,” Evelyn said. “It seems he’s gone missing.”
Dex and Daphna looked to each other, unsure what reaction was called for from children to such news, at least from children who’d learned only hours earlier that their father murdered their mother when they were only a few months old. The nervous glance they exchanged must have looked appropriately distressed, because Evelyn’s smile grew even more sympathetic.
“Now, I’m sure this will all turn out to be nothing,” Evelyn assured the twins, “but to be on the safe side, I’ve spoken with our resident social worker—”
“Social worker?”
“—and I called the police.”
“The police?” If Dex and Daphna hadn’t appeared quite upset enough before, they did now.
“It was the proper thing to do,” Evelyn explained, “but it doesn’t mean we should jump to any conclusions. Here’s the thing, though, kids,” she added, looking pained. “The situation is slightly more complicated.”
“What do you mean?” Daphna asked. She was beginning to fear that Evelyn was about to tell them she knew everything.
“Well,” Evelyn answered, “the police went by your house late last night. It seems your housekeeper, Latty, cleared out all of her belongings. She’s gone, too. And—”
The twins winced. Evelyn didn’t know what was going on, but they both knew what she was going to say next.
“And they found money scattered around your dad’s room. It was apparently hidden in his mattress—”
It had been, of course, but neither Dex nor Daphna said so. In fact, they didn’t say anything at all.
“Do you have any idea why your father and Latty might have had to go somewhere,” Evelyn asked, “perhaps together, in a big hurry, with a lot of money?”
The twins shook their heads.
“I understand the bookscouting business sometimes requires things like that,” Evelyn said. “I’m so sorry to bring up difficult memories, kids, but what has me so worried is—Well, I know the last time Milton took off on such short notice was with Latty and your mom, just after you were born, and—of course you know what happened in Turkey—the earthquake in those caves. Your father told me about it when we all met flying to Portland from New York.”
Evelyn paused to see how the twins were taking this. Then she said, “Latty gave me the impression the other day that he was going to retire, just like your mother had back then. The similarities disturb me. Do you think this might have something to do with rare books?”
The books!
Dex and Daphna wheeled around, looking frantically about the room. But they were right there, Asterius Rash’s collection of Words of Power and the ancient, ravaged Book of Nonsense, sitting innocently atop a dresser like a couple of harmless library loaners.
Daphna exhaled. “Oh, thank God,” she said, but then she realized Evelyn was looking wide-eyed at the books.
Now they’d done it.
“I found those last night,” Evelyn said. “Do they have something to do with—?” But she stopped short. Dexter had interrupted her.
Daphna hadn’t heard what he’d said, so she turned to her brother—but he was smiling at Evelyn, who now appeared stunned. It took a moment, but Daphna realized Eveyln was frozen. Her lips were still forming her next word. She looked like one of those street performers who can stand in awkward positions without moving for longer than you can ever stand around to watch.
“Nothing like a good night’s sleep,” Daphna sighed.
“No kidding,” Dex agreed, looking at Evelyn’s misted eyes. “What are we going to do?” he asked. “I have no idea how long she’ll stay like that.”
“We’ve got to find a way to stall,” said Daphna. “We need to learn more Words of Power. Maybe we can make Evelyn forget about us or something. If we don’t, we’re gonna get sent to a foster home.”
“A foster home?”
“Why else would she talk to a social worker?” Daphna said. “We have no parents, Dex! I can’t believe it! Dad is Adem Tarik! He’s thousands of years old! Older than Mom was!” Everything the twins had discovered the previous night came flooding back to Daphna, threatening to overwhelm her.
“He killed Mom!” she shouted. “Latty is gone!” Daphna had another memory, but this one put a glint of pleasure in her eye. “I told Dad to go to Hell, didn’t I?”
“Yeah,” said Dex, “right after he told us we’d thank him for killing Mom if we let him explain his stupid plan to make Heaven on Earth. You were awesome.”
“You told him we were going to make him wish he was never born. That was awesome, too. And if it’s the last thing I do in this lifetime, I swear that’s exactly what’s going to happen. But first things first,” Daphna said. “We’re going to have to get at least some of that money back from Antin and his psychos. Otherwise, how are we going to buy food? I repeat, Dexter, we have no parents. This is not good. This is really not good.”
This time the words sunk in for Dexter. It was true. He had no parents. Not that he ever really did with a mother dead his whole life and a father who’d been absent both mentally and physically most of the time. But in that life, his mother died in an earthquake and his father was just busy and distracted all the time tracking down rare books. Dex resented that life, of course, but it suddenly seemed a whole lot better than what he had now.
The thought that things couldn’t get any worse crossed his mind, but Dex was looking at Evelyn again and suddenly realized why her sympathetic expression was so irksome. It was the same cheesy, trying-way-too-hard-to-say-I-feel-your-pain look worn by every social worker, every counselor and every Vice Principal who’d ever made him talk to them about his lifetime of academic failure.
“This is worse than not good, Daphna,” Dex concluded. “It’s me who’s going to Hell, and in less than a week.”
“What do you mean?” Daphna asked.
“Well, it’s Heaven for you, of course.”
“School!” Daphna cried. “I forgot all about it!”
CHAPTER 16
like father, like son
After a hushed but heated discussion, the twins switched their father’s light off, closed his door and simply walked out of the R & R. Dex had at first resisted the idea, but he couldn’t come up with a better plan. Daphna didn’t seem troubled at all that Evelyn might be stuck for a long time before anyone found her. As they walked home, she kept saying that it was the best and quickest solution, and that if he didn’t like it, then the next time around they’d handle things better.
Dex was starting to get an
noyed with all of Daphna’s talk about Infinite Time and living trillions of lives, but he’d finally agreed to abandon Evelyn because the one thing he did understand, and he understood it well, was that life between this Beginninglessness and Endlessness was nothing but a crapshoot. He’d been shot with crap all his life.
Standing there looking at Evelyn’s foggy eyes, all he could think about was how horrible everything was turning out and how he’d so pathetically let himself begin to think lately that things were looking up. What a joke he and Daphna had been. They’d actually thought they knew what they were involved in. Two dumb kids is all they were, whether or not they were thirteen.
They’d been nothing but pawns—worse, pawns of pawns!—from the first second they’d been sucked into this ordeal. They were dealing with people who’d been living for centuries! Evelyn could fend for herself. If it was someone else’s turn to get shot with crap—so be it. Next time it would probably be him again. And besides, the deliveryman he’d frozen yesterday didn’t stay that way very long at all.
“We better get started,” Daphna said the moment they got home. “I say it’s a matter of hours before someone starts harassing us for one reason or another. We’ve got to find some more Words of Power we can use with no practice, and we’ve got to come up with them now. Crash course.”
Then, as if to prove her point about harassment, the phone rang. Though it was the same ring they’d heard all their lives, it sounded somehow ominous. The twins stared at it until voicemail picked up.
“Let’s read in our rooms,” Dex suggested, “so we don’t bug each other saying stuff out loud.”
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