The Shadow Cipher

  “It would be great if we knew what we were looking for,” said Jaime. “We don’t even have a hint. This whole place has been forgotten, in a way.”

  After that, they climbed the staircase that wound itself up to the skylight. They spent at least an hour scouring the walls and the stairs and the floors for a sign of something cluelike.

  “There must be something,” Tess said, once they had reached the skylight and couldn’t climb any farther. “Let’s go back downstairs and ask the woman at the desk.”

  “I doubt she knows anything,” Theo said.

  “Maybe she knows someone who knows something,” said Jaime.

  When they got back to the front desk, the bubble-suited children were gone. The blond woman said, “Hello, again. What can I help you with?”

  “We’re interested in the history of the Octagon,” said Tess.

  “Great!” said the woman. “I have some brochures right here that give you the whole backstory.” Up close, she was a lot younger than Theo first thought. Not so much a woman as a college girl. Her fingernails were blue with little floating clouds.

  “Thank you,” Tess said, taking a brochure. “We were wondering if you found any artifacts when you were renovating.”

  The blond girl tipped her head, birdlike. “What kinds of artifacts?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Records or letters or doctors’ notes. Loose keys. Personal effects. Jewelry. Maybe bits of brick or stone with messages scratched into them by desperate patients. Like that.”

  The girl kept smiling, though her eyes cut to the posh couple on the couch. “What? Why would you think we found anything like that?”

  “This rotunda was the entrance of the New York City Lunatic Asylum,” said Theo.

  The girl said, “This building opened as a retreat in 1839.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call a lunatic asylum a ‘retreat,’” Jaime said, eyes on the sketch he was making.

  Theo said, “Charles Dickens once visited here.”

  Jaime read a quote from Dickens off his phone: “‘Everything had a lounging, listless, madhouse air, which was very painful. The moping idiot, cowering down with long disheveled hair; the gibbering maniac, with his hideous laugh and pointed finger; the vacant eye, the fierce wild face, the gloomy picking of the hands and lips, and munching of the nails: There they were all, without disguise, in naked ugliness and horror.’”

  “If you could keep your voices down,” the blond girl said, again glancing at the couple seated on the couch nearby.

  “The patients got rotten food, scurvy, cholera. And when the asylum first opened, they were supervised by inmates from the penitentiary instead of nurses,” said Jaime.

  The blond girl’s smile dimmed. She leaned forward and whispered, “Look, that’s not stuff my boss likes us to emphasize, especially when people are in the market for apartments.” She jerked her chin at the posh couple. The couple frowned.

  “How much are apartments here, anyway?” Jaime asked.

  The blonde slid a price sheet over to Jaime. Jaime regarded the sheet, then the blond woman, then the sheet, then the woman. “I think there are too many zeroes written here.”

  “No, that’s the right number of zeroes.”

  “You’d have to be Darnell Slant to afford a studio.”

  “Tell me about it,” said the blonde.

  “Tell me about it,” said Tess.

  “Right?”

  “No, I mean, really, tell me about it,” said Tess. “You guys had to have found something during your renovations. Things you donated to museums maybe?”

  “The place was pretty much cleaned out when we got it. A pile of broken-down bricks. But not, like, significant bricks or whatever.”

  Tess’s face fell. “Okay. Thanks anyway.”

  “Except for some junk down in the storeroom.”

  Theo’s skin prickled. “What kind of junk?”

  “Stuff that we’ve been meaning to give to the local history people. We’ve been holding on to it while they’re working on getting funding for their own building. But I’m telling you, there’s nothing interesting. Some old boxes of garbage. A broken wheelchair. It’s not like we’re talking Morningstarr relics here.”

  “Is there any chance we could see that stuff?” Tess said.

  “Oh no,” the girl said. “My boss would kill me if I took people to the storeroom. Besides, it’s nothing interesting, like I said.”

  “You know,” Jaime said, “my grandmother is in the market for a new place.”

  The girl raised her eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  Jaime said, “Oh, my grandma’s loaded.”

  “Made her money in commodities,” Tess said. “And futures.”

  “Yep,” said Jaime. “Both of those. Do you have a map that shows the grounds?”

  The girl let go of her hair. “I bet you guys think you’re slick. You want a map to see where the storage room is, right? Do you think we’d put the storage room on the map?”

  “We had to try,” said Jaime. “Thanks anyway.” He ripped a page out of his sketchbook. “For your time.”

  The girl looked down. It was a picture of her twirling a curl around a little cloud finger. Even though Jaime had sketched only a few lines, he’d somehow captured the girl’s spirit. Theo hadn’t known such a thing was possible. He might have called it magical, if he believed in magic.

  “Oh,” the girl said in a small voice. “This is . . . Oh.”

  “Well,” said Jaime, slapping a hand on the counter, “we’ll get out of your way now.”

  The girl bit her lip. “Hold on.” She ducked behind the desk and came back up holding a set of keys. “Bernard?” she called to the man in the suit speaking with the posh couple. “Watch the desk for a few minutes?”

  Bernard’s smile was tight. “I’m with clients, Apricot.”

  “Great, thanks, Bernie!” said Apricot, scooting out from behind the desk.

  Bernard barked, “Apricot!”

  Theo was thinking that, if her parents were that determined to name their child after a piece of fruit, that “Quince” or even “Gooseberry” might have been a more interesting choice, or at least more fun to say, when Apricot gestured for them to follow her to the bank of elevators. Once they were all inside, she stuck a key into a keyhole on the wall and turned it. She pressed a button marked B2.

  “I don’t want you guys to get your hopes up or whatever,” Apricot said. “But I’ll let you look.”

  “Thank you,” Tess said.

  “You’ll have to be fast, though, because Bernard will have a complete cow if he has to answer the phone even once. Bernard doesn’t do phones.”

  The doors opened onto a dim hallway painted the sort of pee yellow that someone had mistakenly assumed would cheer up the place. They followed Apricot down the hall into a small storage room with metal shelving. Apricot pointed to some water-stained boxes, a pile of stones and bricks, a rusted-out wheelchair missing a seat. “That’s all that’s left. We only saved this stuff because the museum people asked us to.”

  “Thanks for letting us take a look,” Theo said.

  Apricot didn’t even glance Theo’s way. “No one’s ever drawn me a picture before. I mean, no one’s ever drawn me a picture of me. That was, like, really cool. So, you guys have ten minutes.” Apricot disappeared into the hallway.

  Since ten minutes wasn’t much time, they each took a box and began digging around. Theo found old discharge papers from random patients, spectacularly illegible doctor’s notes, and what looked like a handle for a gardening spade.

  “Anything?” Tess said.

  “Nothing stands out,” Theo said.

  “When you don’t know what you’re looking for,” said Jaime, “nothing is going to stand out.”

  “Or everything will.” Tess flipped her braid, attacked the pile of stones and brick, examining each. “Nectarine said that none of the stones and bricks were significant, but . . .”

  “Apricot,” said Jaime. br />
  “Pineapple,” Theo said.

  “Raspberry,” said Tess. “None of these bricks are important bricks.” She moved on to a stack of dusty papers.

  “Um,” Jaime said, holding up a tattered grayish coat with too-long sleeves. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “Yep. Straitjacket,” said Theo. “This stuff really should be in a museum. Water could get in here, bugs, thieves, whatever.”

  “We’re the thieves,” Tess said.

  “Only if we take something,” said Theo. He flipped through a list of supplies, a bunch of crumbling bills, and a letter about something called a “zoological garden,” which argued that allowing the patients pets like bear cubs and goats could help with patients’ therapy.

  “Not if the bear cubs ate the goats,” he muttered.

  “What?” said Tess.

  “Nothing,” said Theo. He pulled out a faded sheet of paper. A patient list?

  Insane by mental excitement? By domestic trouble? By loss of property? Those didn’t sound like reasons to send anyone to an asylum, Theo thought.

  A waterlogged book with its cover missing sat at the bottom of the box. Theo picked it up, idly turned to the title page. Penelope, by A Lady. An old book but a famous one, written sometime before the Civil War.

  Theo was about to put the book back in the box when he saw the faded, barely there scrawl of brownish ink along the bottom of the page:

  Is it insane to defend yourself against disreputable men, Doctor, or insane not to? I’m going home to find my heart. I hope you find yours.

  —Ava O.

  All around the inscription, someone had drawn a border made up of tiny stars within suns, the seal of the Morningstarrs.

  His brain itched. Ava. It was a common enough name. Lots of people named Ava wandering around.

  Yet, he knew that name. Everyone who had ever heard of the Morningstarrs knew that name.

  It was the name of Theresa and Theodore’s closest companion. Their secretary, emissary, friend . . . and heir.

  Miss Ava Oneal.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jaime

  Theo was holding up a dusty old book like he was angry at it for something, but before he could tell them what was special about the book and why it made him so mad, Apricot-Pineapple-Raspberry appeared in the doorway. “Time’s up!” she said. “Bernard is totally pitching a fit.”

  “But—” Tess began.

  “No buts!” said Apricot. “He’s threatening to have me fired if I leave him upstairs by himself five more seconds.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jaime saw Theo tuck something behind his back. Jaime stepped in front of him so that Apricot wouldn’t see what Theo was doing. “Sorry,” Jaime said. “We didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

  Apricot shrugged. “Oh, Bernie can’t get me in trouble. I just don’t want to listen to him screech anymore. Goes right up my spine.”

  They quickly put everything back in the boxes. Tess kept up a steady stream of chatter as they rode the elevator back to the lobby. Nine sniffed at Apricot’s shoes and licked her knees. Theo stood rigidly against the wall of the elevator, his legs crossed like a little kid who had to go to the bathroom. As they walked through the lobby, they ignored Bernard’s icy stare, which, Jaime noticed, seemed to be focused on him rather than the twins, waved good-bye to Apricot, and burst out into the heat of the afternoon.

  Once they were a block away from the Octagon, Tess said, “Okay, Theo. Show us what you found.”

  Theo glanced around, then reached behind his back and pulled the book out from under his T-shirt. Penelope.

  “I know that book,” said Jaime. “It’s one of my grandmother’s favorites.”

  “Is that the one about the woman kidnapped from New York City and forced to work on a plantation? And then she escapes and fights her way back home to her fiancé?” said Tess.

  “Yep,” Jaime said. “There’s a six-hour miniseries that Mima’s made me watch at least ten times. She loves the actor who plays Samuel Deerfoot.”

  “Forget about the miniseries,” said Theo. “Look at this inscription.”

  Tess said, “Ava O? Ava Oneal?”

  Ava Oneal, Ava Oneal, Jaime thought. “Wait . . . the Ava Oneal? The Morningstarrs’ assistant? I thought she was just a legend!”

  “Nope, not a legend,” said Tess. “They have some of her correspondence at the Old York Puzzler and Cipherist Society. And plenty of other people wrote about her in their own letters. There just aren’t any known pictures of her. Not even drawings, which is odd.”

  Theo tugged so hard on his lip, Jaime worried he’d tug it right off. “There are a million Avas in the world,” he said. “That message could have been written by anyone. Also, we can’t be sure if it’s just a note or a clue.”

  Tess began, “That’s too—”

  “Do not say ‘adorable,’” Theo said.

  “But—”

  “It’s not adorable, it’s ridiculous!” He tried to kick a rock and missed, nearly landing on his back. “Why would the Morningstarrs leave a clue in some random book left to rot in an old building?”

  “Why not?” said Tess. “The Morningstarrs didn’t know that the book would end up in an old building.”

  “Right! They didn’t know!” Theo yelled.

  “Shhhh!” Tess said. “Someone will hear you.”

  Theo lowered his voice. “If you want people to solve your Cipher, why wouldn’t you at least try to put clues where people could find them?”

  “Maybe they thought they were,” said Tess. “Or maybe they thought it would make it harder to solve.”

  “And anyway,” Jaime said, “didn’t you also say that you weren’t sure the Morningstarrs wanted the clues to be found? And didn’t you say that the clues all seem to be about forgotten things, forgotten people?”

  Theo uttered sounds that might have been words and might not have been.

  “What did you just say?” said Jaime.

  “He said, ‘I’m so farblunget,’” Tess said. “Yiddish for ‘lost or confused.’ But this isn’t confusing, Theo. You know what this means.”

  “I know what it means,” Jaime said. “If this note was written by that Ava, and if it’s meant to be a clue . . .”

  He trailed off because he didn’t have to tell them. They all knew. If this note was meant to be a clue, then the next one could be hidden at Ava Oneal’s New York City home. The building left to her by the Morningstarrs before they vanished more than a hundred fifty years ago. The one where she was the sole resident until her own disappearance in 1888.

  Their home, 354 W. 73rd Street.

  Suddenly, the air seemed so much heavier, so much more humid, thick, and swollen. Jaime wiped at his forehead and pulled at the collar of his T-shirt. “It’s hot, and it’s late. We should probably take Ava’s advice and get off this island.”

  They hopped the bus south, this time headed for the F train on the Underway, which would get them home faster than the tram over the river. Theo said that a lot of people thought that the Underway tunnels in upper Manhattan were the deepest in all the city, but Roosevelt Island’s Underway tunnel was deeper—a hundred feet below street level. The river that had looked so shiny and peaceful from above had been cut into the earth nine thousand years ago by the movements of glaciers, was anywhere from thirty to a hundred feet deep, flowed faster than four knots, and could pull anybody straight out to sea.

  “Who needs sharks with a river sitting on top of your head?” Jaime mumbled. He felt the whole river pressing down on him, the whole world. It wasn’t Ava’s building and it wasn’t theirs anymore; it was Slant’s. And if they couldn’t find the clue, maybe Slant would. And then what would happen?

  He was starting to sound like Tess when she was in a mood. “Let’s see that book again.” Theo handed it to him.

  Is it insane to defend yourself against disreputable men, Doctor, or insane not to? I’m going home to find my heart. I hope you find yours.

>   —Ava O.

  He touched the border around the inscription. The ink wasn’t black or blue or even . . . ink. “I think . . . I think this might be written in blood,” he whispered.

  “Really?” Tess whispered back, squinting at the writing.

  “There was a story that Grandpa Ben once told me,” Theo said. “He found some newspaper item about ‘a female employee of the Morningstarrs’ getting in trouble for attacking her boyfriend. Though they had cooks and some household help, they only had one full-time employee. Grandpa never found any evidence that Ava even had a boyfriend and there weren’t any records about an arrest.”

  “Maybe it was a lie. Or maybe the Morningstarrs hushed the whole thing up,” Tess said. “But getting committed in that place . . . it must have been horrible. She had to have been so desperate to get out.”

  Desperate enough to write in blood.

  Tess glanced up at the stone-eyed Guildman sitting in his glass box and crossed her hands over the book as if the man could read the writing from that far away. And for all they knew, he could. The Guildman scanned the passengers, his hard, appraising gaze lingering on Jaime, lips twisting ever so slightly.

  Jaime was grateful when they got off the F train and caught the 2. He was careful not to make eye contact with the Guildman on that train. Soon enough, they were out of the Underway and out on the street, standing outside 354 W. 73rd, staring up at the building as if it had just burst through the skin of the sidewalk like a new molar. Because this was one of the original Morningstarr buildings, it was one of the places that people heavily investigated after the twins disappeared. Decade after decade, it had been scoured from basement to roof by treasure hunters, examined by historians and TV hosts, x-rayed by X-ray machines, scanned with scanners. Even if there was a clue hidden somewhere in the building, how were they supposed to find anything new here?

  As if he heard Jaime’s thoughts, Theo said, “Grandpa Ben knew a guy who spent forty-two and a half years going over every inch of this building with a magnifying glass.”

  “We don’t have forty-two and a half days,” said Tess. “There has to be something else in the book, some other clue or puzzle or something.” She pushed through the doors and into the cool of the lobby.