by Laura Ruby
They got a couple of pretzels from a vendor and sat on a bench to eat them, and to talk.
“I knew there was something wrong with that place,” Jaime said. “But I didn’t think anyone had actually bugged it. I didn’t know the Morningstarrs made those kinds of things.”
“They didn’t,” Tess and Theo said at the same time.
“Not that we knew of before,” Tess amended.
“Cricket tried to tell me about the bugs weeks ago, and I didn’t pay attention. She called them wiggle worms.”
“It’s not your fault,” Tess said. “How could you know?”
“I should have,” Jaime insisted.
“Well, we know now,” Theo said.
“They do, too!” said Jaime. “The people spying on us, whoever they are. We talked about the clue all morning!”
“We don’t know who’s spying on us,” said Tess.
“Plus I’m not sure we gave ourselves away,” Theo said. “We were researching it online, but did we say anything out loud?”
Tess went over their conversation in her head. “I don’t think so. Not exactly.”
“But those bugs didn’t only have ears, they had eyes,” said Jaime. “Maybe one of them saw the screen.”
“So we have to get to the next clue first. And then we have to make sure that no one is on our trail, and there’s nothing left of the clue for anyone else to figure out,” Tess said.
“You mean, destroy it?” Jaime said. “What if it’s valuable?”
A squirrel hopped in front of them, begging for handouts. Jaime eyed it with suspicion, as if it were a spy, too. He tore off a bit of pretzel and threw it. The squirrel ran after it.
“None of the clues have been especially valuable,” Theo said. Ono beeped in protest. “Except for Ono.”
“Before we talk about destroying anything, let’s figure out where we’re going.” Jaime pulled his phone from his pocket, then stared at it. “What if the phone is bugged?”
“If it was,” said Tess, “we would have been in Slant’s dungeon a long time ago.”
“You think Slant actually has a dungeon?” Theo asked.
“Oh, he definitely has a dungeon,” said Jaime. “Back to the clue written on the wall of the haunted hospital. ‘Bury me right next to Louis MG.’ I saved the search we did before Cricket and her mom came over. We were trying to find out who Louis MG was, and we found that article about the most famous residents of New York City’s cemeteries. I’m betting this Louis guy is probably buried in one of them.”
“There are a lot of cemeteries in New York City,” Theo said, as if that wasn’t obvious.
“So we might have to visit a lot of graves,” Tess said.
“Cool,” said Theo.
“Or at least a lot of cemetery websites,” Jaime said.
Theo scrunched up his nose. “Meh.”
They searched Trinity Cemetery, Woodlawn Cemetery, and Calvary Cemetery. Then they got more pretzels and few hot dogs. After they ate their lunch, they fed the relentless squirrel and searched the database of Green-Wood Cemetery. And that was where they found a list of famous Louises buried there, including one Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
“Louis MG,” said Jaime, skimming the article he’d found. “Lot 19581 in the cemetery. An international musical star, brilliant pianist, and the first important American composer, born in New Orleans to a German-Jewish father and a Creole mother. His music melded all kinds of sounds, including Creole, black, mariachi, Cuban, all sorts of things. Plus he was a committed abolitionist. Seems like my kind of guy.”
“And the Morningstarrs’,” said Tess.
“Or the Cipher’s,” Jaime said.
“Green-Wood Cemetery,” said Theo. “So we have to go back to Brooklyn.”
“Yeah,” said Tess. “But we can’t go back in the daylight. Not if the clue means what I think it means.”
“That we have to dig up something next to Louis,” Jaime said. “I hope it’s not a grave. Please, please, please let us not have to dig up a grave.” He tossed a bit of hot dog bun to the enterprising squirrel, who chased the tumbling bit of bun to the base of a nearby tree.
A tree behind which two people in the most conspicuous trench coats that Tess had ever seen were trying to hide.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Theo
Tess gasped. Automatically, Theo gripped her arm. Jaime said, “Oh, sugar,” except he didn’t say sugar.
“What?” Theo said. “What is it?”
Jaime spoke out of one side of his mouth. “Two people hiding behind the tree. Three o’clock.”
“What people?”
“Not so loud!” Tess said, too loud.
The people hiding behind the tree tried in vain to make themselves smaller. It was the most inept display of spy craft that Theo had ever seen. Not that he was an expert on spy craft, but he assumed that if you didn’t want to be noticed, you shouldn’t wander around in knee-length trench coats on a ninety-five-degree day. Also, you shouldn’t try to hide behind a sapling.
“That’s just ridiculous,” Theo said.
“Shhh!” said Tess.
“It is pretty ridiculous,” Jaime said. “But don’t we know them?”
“Hard to tell with the giant sunglasses and the newspapers they’re holding up. Ono would be a better spy.”
“To the Land of Kings!” Ono burbled.
One of the spies dropped the newspaper for just a second. Tess gasped again, but this time in recognition.
“Omar Khayyám?” she said.
At the sound of his name, Omar Khayyám said, “Oh, sugar.” Except he really said the word sugar.
Then he said, “Forget it, Priya. We’ve been made.”
“Thank goodness!” said Priya. “I can finally take off this coat. It’s hotter than Hades is out here.”
“Hades isn’t hot,” Theo muttered. Tess gave him a look. “Well, it isn’t!”
“Hades isn’t real,” Jaime said.
“I know, I’m just . . . oh, never mind,” Theo said.
Priya Sharma and Omar Khayyám of the Cipherists Society, and old friends of the twins’ grandfather Ben, stripped off the giant sunglasses and coats and put the newspapers into the nearest recycling can for the Rollers. Sheepishly, they approached Theo, Tess, and Jaime.
“Sorry, kids,” said Priya. “We’re not so good at this. Not as good as the others.”
“Good at what?” Tess wanted to know. “And what others?”
Priya and Omar exchanged glances.
Jaime said, “Please tell us, Ms. Sharma and Mr. Khayyám. It’s been a really confusing day and I don’t think we can take any more confusion.”
“Your grandfather asked us to keep an eye on you three,” said Omar.
“But my grandfather is, he’s . . .”
“We know where he is, dear Tess,” said Priya gently. “A long time ago, he asked us that if anything should happen to him, we might look after you. Nothing intrusive or obvious. Observe from afar. And that’s what we’ve been doing. Just checking in once in a while. Seeing that you’re okay, especially after, well, Edgar, and 354 West 73rd Street. We did some walk-throughs of Jaime’s building, visited your aunt’s house in Queens a few times. Everything seemed fine. You even seemed happy, mostly.”
Omar snapped a monogrammed handkerchief and used it to wipe sweat from his brow. “But then we heard about Nine. And your aunt called and asked us to step up the surveillance. So lately we’ve had to use three teams instead of one.”
“You’ve been spying on us?” Theo said.
“No!” said Omar.
“Yes,” said Priya. “But only to make sure you were safe, that’s all.”
“Who else has been spying?” said Tess.
“Delancey, Imogen, Ray, and Gino. Most of the society.”
“But some of us are better at this clandestine stuff than others,” Omar said. “We’re the bottom tier, sadly.”
“I told you the trench coats were a terrible idea,�
� Priya said.
“This is an all-season coat!” said Omar.
Priya rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh. So what are you doing here in Washington Square? You seemed to be having a very intense conversation.”
“You don’t have listening devices?” Jaime asked.
“Of course not!” said Priya. “We wanted to make sure you were all right, not meddle in your personal business.”
The very definition of spying was meddling in someone’s personal business, but Theo didn’t mention that.
“We assume you were hatching a plan to find Nine,” said Omar. “Or that funny little raccoon who likes the cheese snacks.”
This time, Tess gripped Theo’s arm to keep him from blurting out whatever she was worried he’d blurt. “Yes, that’s exactly what we were doing. I know my mom is looking really hard for them both, but we want to help.”
“And you can’t tell her that?” Priya asked.
“She doesn’t know if the people who took Nine and Karl are dangerous. She doesn’t want us hurt.”
“Karl?” said Omar.
“The raccoon.”
“Ah,” Omar said. “Well. Maybe we can help. I’d like to get out of this heat for a while. Perhaps you three would like to come back to the society with us? Say hello to everyone there? We all miss you. And you can tell all about your plans.”
“That sounds great, but we’d—” said Tess.
Again, Theo gripped her arm. “We’d love to. Would it be okay if we stayed the night? We don’t want to be traveling home too late.”
Priya beamed. “A sleepover! What a fabulous idea.”
Omar said, “We’re going to need extra toothbrushes.”
After the twins called their parents and Jaime texted his grandmother, they walked to the Cipherist Society, Priya and Omar keeping up a steady stream of chatter. Delancey DeBrule had taken up Edgar Wellington’s role as president since Edgar’s retirement and relocation to Boca Raton, Florida. Imogen Sparks was their chief fundraiser and political liaison, which meant she spent a lot of time yelling about local politicians. Adrian Birch and Flo Harriman were planning for the annual Cipherist convention that would take place in a month. But Auguste Dupin, their resident mynah bird, seemed to have fallen into a bit of depression since Edgar’s retirement.
“He keeps reciting the poem ‘Annabel Lee,’” said Priya. “I love that bird but I do wish he would learn more uplifting verse.”
“When he’s not reciting the poem, he sings songs from the musical Hamilton,” Omar said.
“Only the sad ones,” said Priya.
Omar shook his head. “Auguste can’t rap.”
They entered the building. Omar punched in some codes on the keypad, and a huge metal door opened onto the vast collection of the society. Even now, Theo felt a thrill when he first glimpsed all those shelves full of books and manuscripts, when they looked down four floors onto a cozy circle of chairs in and among precious artifacts encased in glass.
Auguste the mynah flapped on his perch. He said:
“For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.”
“Mein Gott,” said Gunter Deiderich. “Don’t you know anything else, you daft old bird? Something by Taylor Swift, maybe?”
“Yes, Auguste,” called Priya Sharma. “I would very much like to hear ‘Shake It Off.’”
Everyone seated looked up. Imogen Sparks’s grin was wide and welcoming as her outstretched arms. “Get down here right now, you three!”
“Don’t squoosh them, Imogen,” Gunter said, once they’d climbed down the stairs and Imogen gathered Theo into a hug.
“I will squoosh them if they will accept squooshes,” said Imogen. “Will you allow me to squoosh you, Tess?”
“Squoosh away,” said Tess. Imogen hugged her, and then Jaime as well. “It’s been too long since you’ve visited.”
“Only about a month,” said Theo.
“Longer than that,” said Gunter.
“Besides, the whole world can change in a month.”
“Or a day,” said Omar. “I’m afraid the kids caught us spying on them.”
Imogen put her hands on her hips. “With those disguises? Shocking.”
“See?” said Priya to Omar.
“Enough of that,” said Gunter. “What’s for dinner? These kids are too skinny.”
“Gino is cooking up his pasta right now,” Imogen said. “What are you doing over there, Mr. Jaime?”
Jaime, who had been murmuring to Auguste, said, “Trying to teach him the lyrics from a Nas song.”
Imogen waved her hand. “Already tried that.”
“Whose world is this?” Jaime said to the bird. “It’s mine, it’s mine.”
Auguste said, “Who lives / Who dies / Who tells your story?”
“What did I tell you?” said Imogen. “He’s impossible.”
They ate Gino’s delicious tortellini with peas and mushrooms and listened to more happy banter between the Cipherists. It was good to be here with them, Theo thought, good to be back where his grandpa Ben had spent so much of his life, with the people he had loved most besides his own family. But then, these people were like family. Even the silly bird who couldn’t stop singing his sad songs, reciting his sad poems.
But Theo couldn’t help feeling a bit sad, too, sad as the bird. It used to be that the Cipherists knew everything; it used to be that his grandpa Ben knew the most of all. But now Grandpa Ben was gone, swirling in his own eroding memories in the care facility uptown and the Cipherists knew less than Theo himself. Once, that would have made Theo feel proud. Finally, he was the expert! He didn’t feel like an expert. He felt like a lone pea lost in a soup of cream sauce.
But he didn’t have time to dwell on sad things. They would have to sneak out in the middle of the night to get to Green-Wood Cemetery, or they would have to come up with some kind of story that would get the Cipherists to accompany them without understanding what they were really doing.
Stories were not Theo’s thing—they were Tess’s. And so far, she hadn’t told any stories or offered any excuses or ideas. And Jaime, too, seemed lost in the banter of the Cipherists, or maybe he just looked as if he were. They had been so focused on the clue and then the bugs that they hadn’t had the time to talk about the woman in gray, the one who Jaime had been drawing for months. When Jaime had gone to answer the door back at his apartment, Tess had shown Theo the drawings on Jaime’s desk. The likeness between the woman in gray and Jaime’s superhero sketches was uncanny, unbelievable, inexplicable. If only they’d been able to talk to her, ask her where she’d come from, ask her why she’d saved them, ask her who in the world she was.
“A woman’s been following us,” Theo blurted. Tess kicked him under the table and Jaime looked as if he might flick a spoonful of peas at his face, but Theo soldiered on. “Two women, maybe more. All blondes.”
“Blond women?” said Imogen. “What blond women?”
“I can’t explain it; I don’t know who they are. But they all have the same shade of blond hair; they all wear the same color red dress. We’ve seen them in a bunch of places.”
“And one of them was the woman who accused Nine of biting her. She might be the one who took her,” Tess added.
“We overheard them talking about a place in Brooklyn,” Jaime said, catching on. “In Green-Wood Cemetery.”
“I love the cemetery,” Priya said. “So many important people buried there.”
“And notorious people,” Imogen said. “Boss Tweed for one. The Tiger of Tammany. Died in 1878.”
“What did he do?” Jaime asked.
“What the
y all do. Steal from ordinary people,” Omar said. “He held all sorts of offices including New York state senator. He used his positions to push through various building projects with overinflated prices so that he could skim off the top.”
“More than skim,” Imogen said. “The construction of the New York City courthouse was supposed to cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in 1858. It ended up costing twelve million, with all the extra going back to Tweed and his friends.”
“Wow,” said Jaime.
“New York City politics have always been ugly.”
“Slant’s going to run for office,” Tess said.
“Ugh,” said Gunter. “Don’t remind us. Imogen will start yelling again and then Auguste will start another round of his sad songs and I will be forced to move back to Austria.”
Adrian arranged his peas in a row on his plate. “Getting back to these blond ladies you mentioned. Why would they be talking about the cemetery?”
“We think they’re hiding animals there,” Theo said. “Hybrid animals. My mom suspects that someone must be collecting them for some reason. We think it’s the blondes. We think that’s why they were following us. To get to Nine and then to Karl.”
“But hiding animals in the cemetery?” said Omar. “That doesn’t seem like a good idea. Where would you keep them?”
“I suppose you could build a facility that resembled a tomb or mausoleum if you had the money,” said Gunter. “Still, it seems very strange.”
“Or smart,” Imogen said. “Hiding in plain sight like that. Tourists go in and out all day. Who would notice a bunch of blond ladies or anyone else?”
“We were hoping to look around the cemetery,” Tess said, “but we don’t want to do it during the day. We don’t want to be seen again. If we’re caught on video or in photos again, my mom will have a fit.”