The man walked off, whistling. Jaime sketched the familiar lines of 354 W. 73rd Street, the windows like eyes watching over him, always watching over him, waiting for the twins to come.
Tonight was the night.
The crews had cleaned up the site. The rubble was gone. Slant was all over the TV talking about the tower of condos that he planned to put in the space, each of those condos with a view of the Hudson. The neighbors on either side of the lot were fighting him. They didn’t want a tower with views of the Hudson, a tower that would dwarf their buildings, send rents skyrocketing.
But they would lose.
Unless.
Someone cleared her throat. Someone else meowed. Jaime grinned before he looked up. Theo and Tess and Nine stood in front of him. They waited as he stood and tucked his sketchbook in his pocket. They walked all the way around to the back of the construction site, where there was a gap in the chain-link fence. There were earthmovers and caterpillars (the construction kind), but no one was working, no one was around. They slipped under the fence and crept over to the building next to the empty lot. You could only see the strange arrangement of brickwork in the shape of three pyramids when you got up close, the shadow door right under it when the full moon shone just right.
Tess took one last look around, then pulled the pewter dragon from her pocket, the one that had once topped a black cane they had found in a tunnel.
“Do you think it will work?” she said, touching a strangely carved brick right where a doorknob would be.
But it was a silly question and she was only thinking out loud. Jaime took the dragon from her, pressed it into the brick, hesitated. Tess put her hand on top of Jaime’s. Theo put his hand on top of his sister’s. The three of them turned the handle. There was a low groan and a long scraping sound as it opened. A waft of musty air drifted out like the gasp of an ancient tomb.
“Well?” Theo said.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” said Jaime.
Tess laughed.
They stepped across the threshold.
February 13, 1861
Charles L. Reason walked the city streets uptown, his stride long, the tap of his walking stick on the cobbles like a metronome. It was late, and the air had a wicked bite that sank its teeth into his thick wool coat. He paid it no mind. Nor did he acknowledge the strange looks he got from the few passersby out at this ungodly hour. For many of these people, New Yorkers though they were, the combination of his fine clothes, confident gait, and brown skin was a surprise they could not keep off their faces. He tipped his hat, a brief smile touching his lips. Then he left them where they were, standing in the middle of the street, gaping like lake trout.
What would they say if he spoke to them in Greek? Latin? French? What would they say when he introduced himself as a mathematician? If he confessed that he’d returned to the city of his birth to improve the schools here? That he could teach them a thing or two or many? That he’d be a teacher always?
Of course, that wasn’t all he was.
As if a man were any single thing.
He patted the pocket where he had tucked his latest poem. A competent effort, but not up to his usual standards. He would have to try again when he had a moment to spare. Those were becoming fewer and farther between. A new president had been elected but not yet inaugurated. There were meetings and demonstrations. Seven states had already seceded from the union, clinging to the barbarism of slavery, and more states threatened to the do the same. The nation was in turmoil, and there were rumblings of war. There was so much work to be done.
Yet here he was, on this odd errand. Please come, she’d written in her precise hand, when the clock strikes midnight. I would make an entreaty on behalf of our lost friends.
And friends they had been, at least for a short time. So, though there was so much work to be done, though the hour late and the air spiteful, though his body wished for the release of sleep, he would meet her and hear her entreaty, even if a hearing was the only thing he could offer.
He walked faster, the metronome ticking to a quicker tempo. He was so far northwest that the fine brownstones turned into estates surrounded by frost-stiffened lawns and bare, creaking trees. The Underway had brought more and more people to this area, but it was still a world of wealth and privilege; the shoemakers and barmen and tailors forced to hunker downtown. Here, on the upper west side of Manhattan, ladies learned to embroider cushions and play the piano rather than how to turn cream into butter or how to pluck a chicken. Men took over their fathers’ shipyards and banks, their farms and estates, and did not have to scratch to put food in the bellies of their children. (The governesses and brown-skinned cooks did that.)
He reached the trio of buildings that hugged the Hudson. He wondered if she was lonely here, no servants of her own, with just the river for company. But she was not one to express such feelings as loneliness.
He entered the grandly tiled lobby unannounced. She didn’t keep a manservant either, which would have been a terrible scandal—and a terrible risk—if she were any other woman. She had told him where she’d be, in the large apartment on the fifth floor. She claimed it was her favorite, but then, she enjoyed moving from room to room, apartment to apartment, occupying every space in this grand building, far too large for any one person, and yet too small for such a one as she.
He took the elevator, remembering his first ride on the miraculous contraption, how he’d idly wondered if it would just keep going until it reached the stars themselves.
As it had on that first ride, the elevator drifted in verticals and horizontals, its own special geometric poem. They had a shared passion, a kinship, he and this machine. He hoped it would live on forever.
He entered the hallway on the fifth floor, his walking stick striking the tiles with less force, softer than the tick of a faraway clock sounding the midnight hour.
“Always so punctual,” she said, from her seat by the window. “Thank you for coming.”
He nodded, laid his gloves on the small table near the settee. She had set out a tray with tea and biscuits, though she would partake of nothing herself. She held out a slim hand, gesturing for him to warm himself in front of the fire, which he did gratefully. The tea was hot and eased the chill of the evening, as well as the strange prickle of apprehension that crawled across his skin.
“I would not have asked you here if it was not of vital importance,” she said. “Though I fear that when I make my request it might sound quite . . . mad.”
“If your request does sound mad, and I offer such an opinion on it,” he said, taking a sip of the tea and replacing the cup, “it is nothing you haven’t heard before.”
She laughed. In the firelight, her dark eyes burned like the wood that warmed him. He had surmised long ago that she was . . . special, but he had also learned not to be afraid of her.
Most of the time.
She placed the book she had been reading on a nearby table and picked up a large envelope. “I would ask that you take this letter for me. Keep it with you. Arrange for its transferal to your kin after your . . .” She hesitated.
“Death?” he said, smiling at her sudden delicacy.
“Yes,” she said. “You’ll find instructions tucked in with the letter. The letter must be bequeathed to your kin, then your kin’s kin, and so on. It needs to find its way to certain people . . . in the future.”
“In the future?” he asked, perplexed. “How many years in the future?”
“Many,” she said.
“But how—”
“I’ve worked out the details. It shouldn’t be too much trouble.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then: “You wouldn’t want to perform the task yourself?”
“I’m afraid I have too many other things to do. And I’m afraid I don’t have much time.”
He put the cup and saucer on the table, surprised. Was she ill? But if she was, she would never say.
“And,” she added, “it will help them.??
?
He exhaled. They had been gone for six years. He couldn’t see how they could be helped now. But they had been supporters of education for all people, no matter what color their skin. And he had spent quite a few evenings in front of their hearth.
“Yes. Yes, I will make the necessary arrangements if you think it important.”
“Thank you,” she said. “There is also a donation in the envelope.”
Suddenly, the fire was too warm, his cravat too tight. He had come as a friend, and he was to be treated as a paid employee. “Pardon me?”
“A rather large donation. For your school.”
“Their money?” he said.
“No. Mine.”
“Money they bequeathed to you.”
She laughed. “They did bequeath plenty to me, it’s true, but not what you think. It is my money I give to you. I have my own investments. My own interests. My own profession. I always have.”
“Interests,” he said. “Yes. I did hear tell of a fearsome man come to New York City some months ago looking for a runaway from Virginia. He claimed a woman had divested him of all his coin and other valuables, warned him that if he dared to meddle with any runaways or anyone else, he would be dealt with most harshly.”
“How curious,” she murmured.
“And then this woman tossed him into the Hudson. Of course no one believed him. Eventually he stopped speaking of it, for the shame was too great.”
“Shame over the wrong thing, I’d wager.”
“But that was before he disappeared entirely. Some people said he went back to Virginia. Other people believe he did not escape so easily.”
“Fascinating.”
He chose his words carefully, as he always did. “Have you heard the stories as well? About this man, and others like him?”
Her lovely mouth twisted into a smile. “Why do you ask? Do you think anyone misses men like them?”
The uneasiness had come over him again. His eyes roved over the bookshelves, the table in front of him. A sheaf of paper was stacked neatly there. On the top page, in an elegant hand, were the words: The Lost Ones, a story by A Lady.
“Are you the lady in question?” he asked.
“Oh, I am always and forever a lady.”
Though he did not believe that was an answer, he nodded. He took another sip of the tea despite the fact it was already going tepid.
She said, “I have one more request that might prove a little more painful.”
“Oh?”
“Your walking stick. It was a gift.” A statement, as she knew exactly who had given it to him.
“Yes,” he said, running his fingers lightly over the dragon’s head.
“Do you think you could part with it?”
“Part with it?”
“They didn’t tell you when they gave it to you, but it has more than one use. It is not just a walking stick.”
“Pardon?” he said, his voice growing an edge. This was too much. This sounded mad.
“Let me make their apologies now that they cannot. There is much they couldn’t say to anyone, even to you.”
“And giving up my walking stick will help them?”
“It will help others.”
“How?” he said, the edge getting even sharper.
“It is a beginning,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“They knew they could trust you with it,” she said.
“Not enough to explain,” he said, standing. He picked up the walking stick. He had carried it for years, liked the weight of it, the feel of it. But he was not a man who would keep a gift that hadn’t been given freely. He was not a man who needed a crutch.
He held out the walking stick, and she took it. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He considered her and wondered if the gleam in her eyes wasn’t as bright as he had known it to be, if her spark was truly fading out. “I’m sorry, too.”
After that, there was nothing left to say.
A few moments later, he was outside. He tucked the envelope inside his coat, trying not to feel naked without the walking stick, the reassuring message engraved on the ring below the handle: All that opens is not a door. True. A heart opens. A mind.
Well, he still had those. And he wanted to get them home to his own hearth, his own bed. The wind had picked up, an icy curtain wafting off the river. A shadow appeared in front of him, startling him, but it was nothing but the moonlight passing through the trees. The streets were empty now, and the windows dark. He heard creaks and moans, and he told himself that this was just the wind in the bare branches, the guttural utterings of discontented ghosts. And yet, sneaking underneath the creaks and the moans—a whisper, a cough, the heels of furtive boots. Not just from one direction, but from every direction. Behind him. To the east. To the west. From everywhere at once.
A shiver chased down his spine. The uneasiness he had felt in Ava Oneal’s parlor grew and grew till his open heart was fit to beat out of his chest, his open mind a flood of revelation that threatened to drown him.
Someone was coming.
And something was coming. War, yes, a long and bitter war that would shake the nation to its very soul.
But something else, too. Something bigger, something that could swallow the whole of the world, bones and all.
Charles Reason lost all reason, and ran.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank my indomitable agent, Tina Wexler; my incredible editor, Jordan Brown; and the always fabulous Debbie Kovacs at Walden Pond Press for shepherding York from its rocky beginnings some four years ago through to its current form. Thanks to Sasha Vinogradova for the gorgeous cover art, designer Aurora Parlagreco for the beautiful design, and art director Amy Ryan for her vision. And thanks to Danielle Smith for getting the word out. I’m lucky to have you all on my side.
Thanks to Swati Avasthi for letting me talk through the entire outline with her one cold day in Minnesota; to Sarah Aronson, Brenda Ferber, Carolyn Crimi, Jenny Meyerhoff, and Mary Loftus for reading this book in its early stages; and to Anne Ursu for reading it in every stage and listening to me whine about it. Thanks also to Ebony Wilkins and Hannah Gómez for all their amazing insights, and to copyeditors Renée Cafiero and Anne Heausler for their tireless efforts to keep me from repeating words, contradicting myself, and generally screwing things up. Any errors of fact or representation are mine.
To my colleagues and my dear friends at Hamline University, including Mary Rockcastle, Anne Ursu, Swati Avasthi, Emily Jenkins, Jackie Briggs Martin, the Marshas Chall and Qualey, Phyllis Root, Sherri L. Smith, Claire Rudolf Murphy, Ronald Koertge, Coe Booth, Gary Schmidt, Gene Yang, Matt de la Peña, Megan Atwood, Christine Heppermann, and Miriam Busch: you guys rock. Thank you so much for the conversation and the inspiration. A special shout-out to Sarah Park Dahlen, who knows where to get the best cupcakes and the best pho.
Thanks, too, to Ellen Oh, Will Alexander, Katherine Paterson, and Valerie Lewis. Our intense but friendly debates about books helped sustain me through a difficult and tumultuous year. I’m so proud of our work and happy to know all of you.
Huge, huge thanks to my ladies: Anne Ursu, Kelly Jensen, Sarah McCarry, Justina Ireland, Tessa Gratton, Leila Roy, Miriam Weinberg, Laurel Snyder, Tracey Baptiste, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Kelly Barnhill, Martha Brockenbrough, Kate Messner, and Linda Urban for keeping me sane (and keeping me in funny animal pics) when I thought I was losing my mind, and to Annika Cioffi, Melissa Ruby, and Tracey George for not letting me forget where I come from. Tanya Lee Stone, you always know when to call. Linda, I think about you every day.
And finally, thanks to Melissa, Jessica, and Steve for putting up with my endless obsessions and distraction while I worked on this story. Love you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LAURA RUBY is the author of books for adults, teens, and children, including the Printz Award–winning and National Book Award finalist Bone Gap, the Edgar-nominated mystery Lily’s Ghosts, the Book Sense Pic
k Good Girls, and the acclaimed novels Play Me and Bad Apple. She is on the faculty of Hamline University’s MFA in writing for children and young adults program and lives in the Chicago area. You can visit her online at www.lauraruby.com.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2017 by SASHA VINOGRADOVA
Cover design by AURORA PARLAGRECO
COPYRIGHT
Walden Pond Press is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Walden Pond Press and the skipping stone logo are trademarks and registered trademarks of Walden Media, LLC.
YORK: THE SHADOW CIPHER. Copyright © 20l7 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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