Inside the Shadow City

  “Are the tunnels gone?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. But it’s too dangerous to go back now to find out. The good news is that no one was injured,” I said. “And people think an earthquake caused the flood.”

  “Did you at least find out where the exit led to? Do you know where Kiki was trying to go?” asked Oona.

  “That’s the best part. Ever heard of Sidonia Galatzina?”

  “The Princess of Pokrovia? One of the richest girls in all of Manhattan, whose mother rescued the family jewels from a bunch of pushy peasants?” Betty quoted flatly.

  “I see you’re a fan of the New York Society Journal,” I noted.

  “Isn’t everyone who’s anyone?” said Betty.

  “So what does Princess whatshername have to do with the exit?” Luz wanted to know.

  “It led into her house.” I paused to let the information sink in.

  “I’m confused. Why would Kiki want to get into some dumb princess’s house?” Oona asked.

  “I can think of one reason,” I said.

  “She wanted to rob it, didn’t she?” asked Luz.

  “I don’t believe it!” Betty exclaimed.

  “Luz is right,” I said. “Kiki tried to steal something from the Princess once before. A diamond ring. And I was stupid enough to believe her when she pinned the crime on someone else.”

  “She took the gold, too,” Luz added. There was more than a hint of bitterness in her voice. “And she was supposed to be our friend.”

  “I think we’re going to have to face the fact that Kiki isn’t who we thought she was,” I told the Irregulars, though I was still finding it hard to believe myself.

  Oona was nibbling on her lower lip and looking uncomfortable. She opened her mouth to say something, but shut it quickly as a doctor rounded the corner and stopped in the waiting room.

  “Your friend is out of surgery,” he informed us.

  “Is she going to be okay?” asked Betty.

  “We think so, but it’s still too soon to tell. She’d like to see you.” We followed the doctor down the hallway. He stopped in front of DeeDee’s room. “You have three minutes. Miss Morlock needs her rest.”

  I poked my head around the door. DeeDee lay on a hospital cot. With her head wrapped in bandages and IV tubes sprouting from her arms, she looked like a soldier who had barely survived a fierce battle. She waved feebly from the bed, and we stepped inside.

  “I’m sorry,” DeeDee whispered hoarsely once we were standing by her bedside.

  “What are you sorry for?” I asked. “We’ve been worried sick about you.”

  “It was all my fault,” she said, her eyes tearing up.

  “No, it wasn’t. It was Kiki’s fault. She made you do it,” Oona said angrily.

  “No,” insisted DeeDee. “Something went wrong with the explosives. They must have been too powerful. Was anyone hurt?”

  “Just you,” I assured her. I didn’t have the heart to tell her about the flood.

  “Good,” she said, slowly drifting out of consciousness. “Where’s Kiki?”

  The rest of us looked at one another.

  “She had to run home,” Betty lied sweetly. “She’ll be back.”

  “Tell her I’m sorry,” DeeDee mumbled as she fell asleep.

  “She’s the one who should be sorry,” I said, but DeeDee was already snoring.

  “There’s something you should know,” Oona whispered to me.

  We left DeeDee’s room and found our way out of the hospital. On the street, Oona stopped us. She was practically squirming with discomfort.

  “Remember when you said that Kiki isn’t who you thought she was?”

  “Yes.” I could tell that something big was coming.

  “She’s not.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Luz.

  “Okay. Don’t be mad. I know I should have told you guys before, but I couldn’t. You know, professional confidentiality. A forger’s only as good as her secrets.”

  “Spill it, Oona,” demanded Luz.

  “Well, before I joined the Irregulars, Kiki asked me to do a job for her. Two jobs, actually. First she wanted me to create a computer file for her at the Atalanta School. And then she asked me to forge a birth certificate.”

  “So she wasn’t actually enrolled at Atalanta?” I asked.

  Oona shook her head.

  “That explains a lot. But why would she need a forged birth certificate?”

  “She never told me, but I figured it out. She needed the birth certificate so she could pretend to be Augustus Quackenbush’s granddaughter and get a key to the Marble Cemetery.”

  “She’s not his granddaughter?”

  Oona shook her head.

  “Then who is she?” asked Betty.

  “I don’t know,” Oona admitted.

  “I knew there was something weird about that girl,” Luz said, nodding. “Did you ever notice that she never ate anything? Remember all those times when we were eating like pigs, and she just sat back and watched.”

  “Maybe she was poisoning us,” said Oona.

  “No,” I said. “She wouldn’t have poisoned us. She needed us to do her dirty work.”

  Even as I uttered the words, I was beginning to realize that everything had changed. Over the course of a single night, the girl who had picked the Irregulars out of the crowd and shown us the greatest adventure of our lives had been demoted from hero to villain. We may have been too tired to think straight, but there was one thing we all knew for sure. There wouldn’t be any naps in our future. We had no choice but to pay a visit to Kiki Strike.

  • • •

  We had planned to pick the lock on the gate that led to Kiki’s hidden house, but we arrived to find it swinging in the wind. The knocker in the shape of a severed hand pounded loudly against the wood. When we shut the gate behind us, the yard was eerily quiet. The only sound was the creaking and groaning of the giant weeping willow as it whipped the sides of the old cottage with its branches. Oona and Luz sneaked around the house to the back door while Betty and I made for the front entrance. There was no sign of movement, and the windows were dark.

  Once I was certain that Oona and Luz had the back of the house covered, I knocked on the front door. There was no answer. After a pause, I knocked more firmly. Again, there was no answer. I tried the knob, and to my great surprise, the door was unlocked.

  “Hello?” I called. The house was silent. “Verushka?”

  Betty and I stepped into the living room. The morning light spilled through the windows and onto a scene of total devastation. The video monitors had been smashed. The couches were split open to reveal their fluffy innards. Even the fireplace was now nothing more than a pile of rubble. Something terrible had taken place.

  As Betty and I stood speechless, the front door suddenly slammed behind us, and we heard the sound of someone sprinting down the stone path that led to the gate. Before I could run to the window, I heard more footsteps crunching over broken glass. A dark figure appeared in the hallway. I grabbed a brick from what was left of the fireplace and prepared to smash the intruder.

  “Hey!” I heard Oona yell as I reared back to hurl the brick. “Do you want to send someone else to the hospital?”

  “How did you get in here?” I asked, dropping the brick and trying to keep my heart from exploding.

  “Back door was open. Wow,” she said, looking around the living room. “Looks like there was one hell of a party.”

  “Someone was in here,” I panted. “He ran out the front door. Did you see him, Betty?”

  “No,” she admitted. “It all happened too fast.”

  Oona hurried to the window and looked out at the yard.

  “Whoever it was, they’re long gone,” she said. “But I have a feeling it wasn’t Kiki. Come on, you guys, there’s something you should see back here.”

  We stepped past the disemboweled couch and into the hallway. At the back of the house was a tiny bedroom. Other than a be
d, a lamp, and a dresser stacked high with books, there was only a cavernous closet filled with black clothing.

  Usually, one can learn a great deal about someone by examining her possessions. The legendary detective Sherlock Holmes was fond of remarking that no person can use an object every day without leaving her mark upon it. But even Sherlock would have been baffled by Kiki’s bedroom. There were no personal items of any sort—no photos, no mementos, no knickknacks. I couldn’t put a finger on it, but the whole setup seemed somehow temporary, like a hotel room or a jail cell.

  “She has a fantastic wardrobe,” observed Betty as she rifled through Kiki’s closet. “It’s all handmade.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t look like she took much of it with her,” I said. There wasn’t a single empty hanger.

  “Uh-oh,” said Luz, who was stooping to examine a pile of twisted metal and wires by the side of Kiki’s desk.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I think it’s her computer,” said Luz.

  “Oh, no,” I moaned. “She had our maps on it.” All of my hard work was lying smashed on the ground.

  “You guys didn’t have a backup?” Luz asked.

  “Of course we did. I burned a new CD every time I updated the map of the Shadow City. But I don’t see a CD in that mess, do you? Now all we have are the last copies I printed out, and they’re covered in DeeDee’s blood.”

  “Forget about the maps,” said Oona. “What good are they if the Shadow City is flooded? Here, take a look at this.” She pointed at the wall behind us. We turned to see three bullet holes in the plaster. “This is what I wanted to show you. Whoever left these was pretty serious.”

  “Do you think they killed Kiki?” asked Betty.

  “There’s no blood,” I said. “If they got her, they must have taken her alive.”

  As I checked the walls for more bullet holes, a book on the dresser caught my eye. Unlocking the Secrets of Diamonds was one of the books Kiki had been eyeing at my house the night we prepared for the Shadow City. I glanced at the other books on Kiki’s dresser. There was a Russian-English dictionary and a medical text on poisons, but the rest were devoted to precious gems.

  “Interesting bedtime reading,” said Oona, thumbing through the medical text. I picked up my parents’ books and tucked them under my arm. Villain or not, Kiki Strike certainly appeared to be a thief.

  • • •

  Dazed and confused by what we had seen, the Irregulars left the hidden house and walked across town to my apartment. We arrived to find a note written in my mother’s hand tacked to the kitchen door.

  Ananka,

  I was surprised to wake up and find you missing. I can’t imagine where you had to go so early in the morning, but a more thoughtful girl might have left her parents a note. However, your father and I will not allow your bad manners to interfere with our plans. We’re visiting the library in New Haven today, and we should be back this evening. I expect you to be at home when we return, and I suggest you spend the day thinking up a brilliant explanation. Let’s just say that I had better be impressed.

  Love,

  Mom

  It was only then that I remembered we’d been out all night. The Irregulars were in serious trouble. We collapsed in a miserable clump in the living room and tried to come up with a plan, but we hadn’t been home for more than five minutes when there was a knock at the door. I stood on tiptoe to see through the peephole. Standing in the hallway was a very dapper man.

  “Who is it?” I called through the door.

  “FBI,” answered the man.

  I motioned for the other girls to hide out of sight.

  “May I see some identification, please?” I asked.

  The man flashed a badge in front of the peephole.

  “Who are you here to see?”

  “Ananka Fishbein,” said the FBI man.

  “I’m sorry, but my parents aren’t at home. Can you come back later?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t, Miss Fishbein. This is urgent.”

  Had I been alone in the house, there’s nothing he could have said that would have persuaded me to open the door. But since I had backup, I figured it was probably best to get any questioning out of the way before my parents came home. I opened the door, and the man stepped inside. He was a little slicker than I would have expected, with a complicated haircut and carefully manicured fingernails.

  “Would you like to have a seat?” I asked, showing him into the living room.

  “Yes, thank you.” He lowered himself onto the couch, taking pains not to wrinkle his suit.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked, sitting down and trying to sound casual.

  The man leaned toward me menacingly.

  “We’re looking for a friend of yours, Miss Fishbein. A girl your age. Four feet tall, white hair, pale complexion. Ring any bells?”

  “What happened to her?” I asked, wondering how the FBI could know that Kiki was missing.

  “We’ll get to that in a minute. Could you tell me her name, please?”

  I hesitated for a moment too long and the man detected my nervousness.

  “I could take you in if I need to, Miss Fishbein.”

  “Her name’s Kiki Strike,” I said, and instantly hated myself for saying it.

  The man jotted the name down on a pad of paper.

  “Do you know where I could find her?”

  I shook my head.

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Not for a week, at least,” I said. I was done with the truth until I figured out what the man was aiming for.

  “Any idea where she might have been last night?”

  “No.”

  “Where were you?” His eyes had locked on mine, and he stared at me without blinking. It was a run-of-the-mill interrogation technique, and I wasn’t going to fall for it.

  “Spending the night with some friends.” I’d always heard that the best way to lie was to stay as close as possible to the truth. “Could you please tell me what this is all about?”

  The man settled back on the sofa. As he crossed his legs, I saw that his shoes were handmade. His suit was also surprisingly flamboyant for a government employee. He looked more like an international playboy than someone paid to uphold the law.

  “So tell me how you met this …” He looked down at his notes. “Kiki Strike.”

  “We go to the same school.”

  “Ever noticed anything unusual about her?”

  “Not really,” I said, trying to look innocent.

  “Well, your friend isn’t who she says she is. Her name isn’t Kiki Strike. In fact, she isn’t even an American.”

  The conversation was getting quite interesting.

  “Okay, then, who is she?”

  “She’s an international assassin.”

  I’d thought I was ready for anything.

  “She’s twelve!” I uttered in disbelief.

  “I didn’t say she was in it alone.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a grainy photo. For a moment I expected to see one of the Irregulars. “Recognize her?” he said, holding up a picture of a young Verushka. She was wearing military fatigues and aiming a machine gun at the camera.

  “This is your friend’s mentor, a woman named Verushka Kozlova. Ms. Kozlova was once a member of the Pokrovian royal guard, but she betrayed her employers and joined the revolution. Now she’s wanted for numerous crimes, including the assassinations of Princess Sophia of Pokrovia and her husband.

  “Verushka Kozlova is a very dangerous woman, Miss Fishbein. She’s an accomplished sniper, she speaks a dozen languages, and she’s mastered most of the martial arts. She’s been training your friend for more than a decade.”

  “Training her?” I managed to mumble. “To do what?”

  “Eliminate her targets.”

  “Targets?”

  “Yes, I believe you’re familiar with one of the targets of the operation as well. Princess Sidonia of Pokrovia?” r />
  My head was swimming.

  “She goes to my school, too.”

  “As long as Princess Sidonia and her mother are alive, there’s a chance they could return to rule Pokrovia. Ms. Kozlova will stop at nothing to kill them. In fact, she and your friend came very close to accomplishing their goal last night. Are you sure you know nothing about it?”

  “About what?” I asked.

  The man watched me silently for what seemed like ages. I made an effort not to squirm.

  “Miss Fishbein, are you aware of the trouble you’ll be in if you choose to aid a known assassin?”

  “Yes, sir. I am.” I wasn’t, but I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be good.

  “If you hear from Kiki Strike, I want you to call me immediately.” He rose from his seat and handed me a business card with the FBI logo stamped on the top and the name Bob Goodman written across the bottom.

  “I will,” I promised.

  I walked him to the door. When he stepped into the hallway, he stopped and turned to face me.

  “One last question, Miss Fishbein. Do you know how Kiki Strike might have gotten underneath the Princess’s house?”

  I tried my best to look confused.

  “Underneath her house? No, sir. I have no idea.”

  “Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Fishbein,” said the man.

  “Any time,” I responded, hoping he didn’t take the offer seriously. I watched him walk to the stairway. Only when the sound of his footsteps had faded away did I close the door of my apartment.

  As soon as they heard the door slam shut, the other Irregulars rushed into the living room.

  “How much did you catch?” I asked.

  “All of it,” whispered Betty, who was trembling with anxiety. “We were hiding in the hall closet.”

  “Kiki’s an assassin?” muttered Oona in disbelief.

  “That’s what the man said.” I still hadn’t decided what to believe.

  “Do you think he was telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know. Kiki was up to something, that’s for sure. But there was something strange about that FBI guy. His shoes weren’t right. I’m pretty sure they were handmade.”

  “There’s a rule against wearing handmade shoes in the FBI?” Luz scoffed, but Betty was nodding.

  “Awfully expensive for a civil servant,” she said. “I wish I could have seen them.”