by Laura Ruby
Imogen clapped. “Ooooh. A midnight reconnaissance mission! I like it.”
“I’m in,” said Adrian.
“Me too,” said Gunter. “Against my better judgment.”
Gino and the rest also agreed to come. It had been too long since they’d had a real adventure, they said.
“But,” Imogen added, pointing at Omar and Priya in turn, “this time, we lose the trench coats.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Jaime
When people talked about New York City being the city that never sleeps, they were often referring to the people who lived there.
But people were not the only things awake.
There were the gargoyles on the tops of buildings that seemed to watch as the cars passed by. The old portraits that seemed to glower at the guards who strolled museum halls, the skeletons of animals long extinct that seemed to move when no one was looking. Brownstones that looked like angry faces, or smiling ones, depending. The creaking of timbers and beams, wood and plaster, that everyone claimed was just “settling” but perhaps was something else. Something restless and fitful.
Unlike the people and the paintings and the very bones of the city, Jaime wished for a little rest. And, after the events of North Brother Island, a midnight trip to a cemetery sounded positively restful to Jaime.
Which could only mean that he had lost his entire mind.
He imagined what Mima might say if he were to tell her what he was doing. A stream of furious Spanish followed by swearing in five other languages, he guessed. And then a lecture about how he was acting a fool and she didn’t raise a fool, etc., etc., etc. She would be right.
And yet, here he was, packed into a van with a bunch of eager Cipherists excited to creep around a graveyard.
They’d all lost their entire minds.
The city out the window drew his eye the way it always did. The lights twinkled and the people in the bars and the restaurants laughed, clinking glasses. A line of folks dressed in satin and sequins and artfully ripped-up jeans waited by a velvet rope for a bouncer the size of a giraffe-owary to let them into some exclusive dance club. He opened the door for a lucky few, and the music thudded like a heartbeat.
“Whose world is this? Whose world is this?” Jaime muttered, drumming his fingers on his knee.
His thoughts drifted to the woman in gray. Again. He searched the streets for her, hoping that she was watching, that she was following. He hadn’t felt safe with her, exactly, but he hadn’t felt threatened, either. It was as if she’d had her own business to attend to on that island, and they’d messed up her plans, and she’d dealt with the situation as best as she could. He replayed her movements, spinning and kicking and punching her way through all those beefed-up dudes, and grinned to himself.
She’d dealt with the situation, all right.
The van reached the cemetery. It was hard to miss, with its ornate vampire-castle-looking gate, stone spires spiking the darkness.
“Creepy,” Priya whispered. And then shivered as if she found the concept delightful.
Jaime unbuttoned his pocket, and Ono piped up. “To the Land of Kings?”
“Yes, we’re in Kings County. My goodness!” Priya said, when she saw Ono. “Who is this?”
“Ono, Priya. Priya, Ono,” said Jaime.
“Kings,” said Ono.
“Is that all he says?”
“Oh no,” said Ono.
“That’s the other thing he says.”
“Ah, simple but cute, your Ono,” said Priya.
Ono made a buzzing sound that could have been annoyance or approval; Jaime couldn’t tell.
They parked the van under a copse of trees some distance from the gate and walked the rest of the way. Outside, the spires seemed taller and spikier and even more vampire-castle-like. If he’d had the time, he would have sketched it, but the Cipherists were too excited to wait. Before they’d left the society, Jaime and the twins planned out their reconnaissance. Jaime had looked up the location of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s grave, but the Cipherists were focused mostly on the larger structures, mausoleums and the like all around the graveyard. He and Tess and Theo figured that they could split up once in the cemetery and find the next clue before the Cipherists were the wiser. It wasn’t a foolproof plan. The Cipherists might have lost their entire minds, too, but they were the farthest things from fools. One or two or maybe even all of them might wonder where the kids had wandered off to. Or why the kids came back with dirt all over them. Or the Cipherists could stumble upon them right in the middle of the dig. But they would have to risk it. And even if they had to reveal their secrets to the Cipherists, Tess said, these people weren’t like Edgar Wellington. They wouldn’t turn on them, no matter what.
Jaime hoped Tess was right.
But Jaime didn’t think any of them had counted on how dark the cemetery would be, how very much like the setting for a scary movie, maybe even more than the ruins at North Brother Island.
When they got to the gate, strange screeching overhead made Jaime and Tess and Theo jump.
“Don’t worry,” whispered Imogen. “It’s just the monk parrots. They live in a nest on the highest spire. See?” She pointed. In the darkness, Jaime could just make out an enormous pile of twigs. Parrots, just parrots, he told himself, but his heart hammered.
“How did the parrots get here?” Tess asked.
Imogen shrugged. “Some people say a shipment of the birds escaped the airport. But nobody really knows. Could be pet owners who freed their birds.”
“Or maybe the birds freed themselves,” said Jaime.
“That too,” said Imogen.
“If we get split up, we meet here at the front gate at three a.m.,” said Gino. “Everyone okay with that?”
They all agreed. They entered the cemetery, at first sticking to the largest path snaking through the acres of graves. The whole group fell silent as they wended their way, as if they, too, were on their way to a funeral. So many people were buried here. Soldiers and millionaires and artists and ballplayers and politicians and thieves. Some grave markers were small, the names weathered away. Some were huge obelisks or pyramids jutting out of the gently rolling hills. There were statues of goddesses and statues of bears, statues of sphinxes and statues of dogs.
But Jaime and Tess and Theo were interested in one particular statue that marked Louis Gottschalk’s grave: The Angel of Music. According to the map on Jaime’s phone, it wasn’t far from the main entrance, just off to the left. The Cipherists had already spread out, taking pictures and making grave rubbings, but they hadn’t drifted far enough for Jaime and the twins to slip away without being observed.
Another screech shattered the night air, and Jaime ducked instinctively. He thought he felt the air shudder as with the furious beating of wings, but he could see nothing. The twins ducked, too.
“Did you hear that?” Jaime whispered.
“I felt it,” Tess whispered back.
The three of them stood back to back, all of them trying to locate the source of the sound. Parrots? Giraffe-owaries? Jumbies?
“This isn’t as fun as I thought it would be,” Theo whispered.
“You thought it would be fun?” Jaime said.
“Shhh!” Tess hissed, as another screech cracked the sky open.
“Uh, where did they go?” Jaime said.
“Who?”
The three of them looked around. They could still hear faint chatter of barely suppressed voices, but the Cipherists had drifted out of sight.
“Well,” said Theo. “Now’s our chance.”
“Yeah,” Jaime and Tess agreed. But none of them moved until there was a long strange sigh somewhere off in the darkness. Wind in the trees?
Or something else.
Tess, Jaime, and Theo ran. Despite their fear, they didn’t forget their mission. They went from one marker to the next, looking for Lot 19581.
“There she is,” said Theo. In front of them stood the bronze angel high o
n her marble base. Louis’s grave was fenced all around, with other graves nearby.
“‘Bury me right next to Louis MG,’” Jaime quoted. “Right next to Louis. So I’m thinking we start digging on the right side.”
“Inside or outside the fence?” said Tess.
“Inside,” Theo said. “Right next to also means close to. So close to the grave marker.”
“Makes sense to me,” said Jaime. “Except we could be digging all night.”
“Let’s hope not,” Tess said.
They hopped the small fence around the grave marker. Ono buzzed and beeped, the sounds comforting in this strange darkness, so Jaime set the robot on the marble stand at the foot of the angel. They got out small gardening trowels, the only digging equipment they could fit in their backpacks, and started to dig. First, they tried one place, and then decided that the three of them should dig in three separate places. The ground was soft, but the digging itself was hard work. Jaime could feel the blisters forming on his fingers and palms.
“How deep do you think we should go?” Tess said.
“Five feet,” Theo said. “Standard graves in Brooklyn are three by eight feet, five feet down.”
“I do not want to know how you know that,” Jaime said.
“I hope we don’t have to dig five feet down,” said Tess.
They kept digging. Like the busiest part of the city, the cemetery seemed to be awake, too. The monk parrots’ calls sounded eerily human, the wind like the whispers of ghosts. The angel seemed to watch them as they dug, her expression inscrutable. Jaime imagined her coming to life, her wings flapping, her bronze body rising up and up and up. He was so mesmerized by the vision of the angel taking flight that he didn’t understand when his trowel struck something in the earth.
Clunk!
Jaime tossed the trowel aside, brushed away some dirt from whatever he’d hit. Not a rock. It felt like leather.
“I found something,” he said.
“What?”
“I don’t know yet. Help me with it.”
The twins gave up on their own holes and helped Jaime dig. They cleared the top of what looked like an oversized leather box, about two feet square. Written on the top were the words JUNK TRUNK.
“‘Junk Trunk’?” Tess said. “Doesn’t sound too promising.”
“One man’s junk is another man’s treasure,” said Theo. “Kind of looks like one of Aunt Esther’s old trunks. Or your trunk, Tess. The one you keep in your closet.”
“Except The Magix isn’t cured with grave dirt,” Tess said. “And my stuff isn’t junk.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what you keep in there?”
“Nope,” said Tess.
They dug all around the side of the trunk until they were able to heft it out of the ground. It wasn’t large, and it wasn’t buried five feet down, luckily for Jaime’s sore hands. It also wasn’t locked. Even though the cemetery was still creeping with jagged shadows, they grinned at one another before throwing open the lid.
Packed into the shallow trunk were all sorts of postcards and papers, little figurines and scribbled diagrams, all covered in dust and grime.
Tess leaned back on her heels. “It is a bunch of junk.”
“Maybe not,” said Jaime. He pulled a tiny copper figurine from the trunk. A woman wearing a robe and crown held a torch aloft. Along the bottom of the figurine were the words THE STATUE OF LIBERTY, 1886.
“Is this supposed to be the Liberty Statue?” said Theo. “But it wasn’t built in 1886. And it doesn’t look like that. Where’s the eagle? And why is it green?”
Jaime set the figurine aside and hefted a small envelope. “Money!”
“Fake money,” said Theo, unpacking it.
“Yeah,” said Tess. “Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill? Where’s Harriet Tubman?”
“And what are these?” Theo said, holding up some diagrams of strange machines.
“No idea,” said Jaime. “But I recognize this one. Solar glass. It’s so wavy, though. Has to be ancient.”
“Look!” Theo said, pulling a rusted solar battery out of the box. “It’s enormous!”
They kept pawing through the trunk. They found a set of calculations on melting the polar ice caps, except the ice caps weren’t melting as far as any of them knew and they couldn’t imagine why someone would want them to. A book that said it featured extinct animals, but included pictures of polar bears and arctic foxes and tigers, none of which were extinct. An article on the dangers of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, except they didn’t know what an “oil rig” was. A printed blog piece about people continuously referred to as “illegals,” except none of them knew how a person could be illegal. Prescription bottles for mysterious drugs. A magazine cover warning about the coming war in the Arctic. A business card for a firm called Trench & Snook.
“What is this stuff?” said Theo. “Some weirdo’s apocalyptic cosplay props? This doesn’t seem like Morningstarr material. . . . Who put it here?”
“Who cares?” said Tess, her patience fraying like her braid. “We have to figure out which one of these things is a clue.”
“Maybe we should pack this whole trunk up and carry it out with us,” Theo said.
“What will we tell the Cipherists? That we just happened to trip over it?”
“Okay, then we stuff as much of this as we can into our backpacks.”
“But what if the clue is on the trunk itself? Written on the bottom or something?” said Tess.
“We could bury it again and come back,” Theo suggested.
“When will we have a chance to come back?”
“I don’t know!”
“Maybe we should try to be a little quieter,” said Jaime. “They can probably hear us up in the Bronx.”
Beams of light blasted them. They held up their arms, squinting against the brightness. Ono squeaked, “Oh no!”
From the shadows, a voice drawled, “It’s dangerous to go creeping around a graveyard in the middle of the night. Didn’t your parents teach you children anything?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Duke
It was a rare day—and a rarer night—when Duke Goodson showed up to do his own dirty work. But sometimes it was necessary. Like when your own people failed you, and you were forced to supervise so that nothing else would go wrong.
He would handle that unfortunate situation later. Right now, all he was interested in were these three children. A rather unremarkable lot, in his opinion. A shaggy boy in desperate need of a haircut, a girl who resembled her brother a lot less than she did a disgruntled owl, and another, larger boy also in need of a haircut. Didn’t parents groom their children anymore?
“Candi. Toni. Zozi. Please take that item from the children and bring it here.”
“No,” said one of the children. The girl. Duke did not care for mouthy girls.
“No?” he said. “How do you plan on stopping me?”
“Who are you?” This from the big boy.
“That’s not important,” said Duke. “What’s important is that trunk, or what’s in it.”
“It’s not yours,” said the other boy.
“True,” Duke said. “It belongs to my client, who paid an absurd amount of money for anything you three should find. Did I say an absurd amount of money? I meant a truly ridiculous amount of money.”
Candi, Toni, and Zozi went to retrieve the trunk from the children. When the girl saw Candi, she only gripped the trunk tighter.
“You!” the girl said through a fence of gritted teeth.
“Me,” said Candi, her tone mild.
“You lying piece of—”
“Now, now,” Candi said, easily tearing the trunk from the girl’s grip. “No need to get hysterical.” Candi glared at Toni and Zozi and carried the trunk back to Duke herself. Not that this would make up for anything, but Duke decided he would let Candi have her moment.
“Nine didn’t bite you. How could you lie like that?” said the mouthy
girl.
“Everyone lies when it suits them,” said Candi.
“I don’t!”
“Really? Where do your parents think you are right now?
The girl glowered impressively. “Where’s my cat?”
Candi dropped the trunk at Duke’s feet. She made her eyes wide, the very picture of innocence. “How should I know where your cat is? Didn’t your own mother take her away?”
The girl actually hurled herself at Candi, but the two boys held her back. If the girl weren’t so owlish, Duke would consider hiring her once she was grown. Spunk like that was useful. But she’d look terrible with blond hair, the poor thing. She should have arranged to be born into a more attractive family.
Speaking of family. “Where do your parents think you are?” Duke asked.
The girl said, “My parents think we’re sleeping at Jaime’s house. Jaime’s grandmother thinks he’s sleeping at ours.”
“But you don’t lie,” said Candi.
“What we told them and what they believe are two different things,” the bushy-haired boy said.
So no one really knew where the children were. Convenient. “I’m sure you’ll make excellent lawyers one day,” Duke said. “Or you would have. But I’m afraid it’s time for us to go. And time for you, too.”
The bigger boy stood. He did look rather like a budding rap star, not that Duke knew anything about rap, or cared. “We’re not going anywhere with you,” he said.
“Did I say you were going with me?” Duke said. “The ladies will escort you to your final destination.”
Ashli, Tammi, Lori, Laci, and Lu came out of the shadows to join Candi, Toni, and Zozi. The blond women surrounded the children, backing them up against the base of the statue behind them. They did look magnificent in a group, Duke’s ladies. Ash-blond hair bright as moonlight, red dresses dark as venous blood. Instead of their heels, the ladies wore black combat boots. But they could deal with these recalcitrant children with their hands tied behind their backs.
Most of them, anyway. Lu said, “They’re just kids.”
“I’m aware of that,” said Duke.