“No,” said Theo. “His friends at the Old York Puzzler and Cipherist Society.”
They caught the M103 solarbus. It sat up high enough that they could look down on the solar “wings” folded neatly on top of each passing car. Jaime was sitting diagonally in front of Theo, so Theo had a great view of his latest sketch; a superhero-like character balanced on top of the nearest car like she was riding a surfboard. She was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and what looked like a bandolier of sledgehammers.
Tess peered between the seats. “I thought that lady superheroes wore high heels and short shorts.”
“Here we go,” said Theo.
Jaime said, “You want me to draw her in short shorts?”
“No! I just thought when boys draw lady superheroes, they put them in dumb outfits.”
“Hey, now,” Jaime said. “Plenty of girls draw them that way. And the guy superheroes wear tights and other dumb stuff.”
“Not as dumb as the outfits the girls wear. Metal bikinis or whatever. I hate that. Unless the women have skin made of diamonds, any idiot could stab them in the femoral artery with a pencil and they’d bleed out.”
“That’s why she’s wearing the armor,” Jaime said. “Stylish yet practical.”
Tess laughed.
Jaime tucked his sketchbook away when they got closer to the Old York Puzzler and Cipherist Society, located in what was once the Five Points neighborhood and the site of the Morningstarrs’ first home when they arrived in New York City in 1798. The bus dropped them right in front of the massive circular Croton Fountain with its four “rivers”—streams of water in waist-high marble troughs flowing east, west, north, and south. Behind the fountain was the Embassy of the Five Hundred Nations, flying the colorful flags of First Nations from the Abenaki to the Comanche, Pawnee to the Sioux. A man with two neat black braids and a sharp blue business suit sat on the edge of the fountain, eating a vanilla ice-cream cone. He nodded a greeting as they walked by. They nodded back.
A few minutes later, they arrived in front of a largish building that looked more like a warehouse than the home of one of the oldest and most secretive organizations in New York City.
“Big,” said Jaime.
“They need the space,” Tess told him.
“For what?”
“You’ll see,” Theo and Tess said at the same time.
“Do you guys practice that?”
Together, they said, “Ha.”
Next to a pair of heavy wooden doors there was a small plaque and a buzzer.
THE OLD YORK PUZZLER AND CIPHERIST SOCIETY
BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
He didn’t miss this place, that’s what Theo had told himself when Grandpa quit the society, what he kept telling himself when it became clear Grandpa wouldn’t be coming back. But it was strange to be standing outside the building, contemplating the buzzer, strange to be standing without Grandpa—Grandpa, who used to stroll right in, who used to consider this old building a second home, Grandpa, who never needed an appointment.
“Theo, are you calculating the volume of the building or are you going to ring the buzzer?” Tess said.
Theo pressed the button.
After a few moments, a bored female voice said, “Yes?”
“It’s, um, Theo and Tess Biedermann? We don’t have an appointment, but were wondering if maybe we could—”
“Theo and . . . SWEET MOTHER OF KITTENS, STAY RIGHT THERE, I’M SENDING HIM UP,” said the voice, then cut out.
They waited. And waited. After about five minutes, the door flew open and a large white man with thinning wheat-colored hair, bright blue eyes, and the kind of muscular physique ideal for violent sports or movie gladiators stood there, breathing as if he’d just come in from a run. He looked from Tess to Theo back to Tess, then opened his arms wide.
“Hi, Uncle Edgar!” Tess said, flinging herself into them.
Edgar Wellington caught her, laughing. “I wondered when you two would come knocking. How long has it been?”
“Almost six months,” Theo said. I don’t need this place, I won’t miss this place.
“That’s way too long. How are you?”
Tess blurted: “Darnell Slant bought our building.”
Uncle Edgar held Tess by the shoulders. “I heard.”
“We’re not going to let anybody take our home.”
Uncle Edgar nodded. “I believe that.”
“We’re not going to live in a car!”
“Excellent news.”
“We don’t have a car,” said Theo.
Uncle Edgar let go of Tess and clapped Theo on the back. “Which is just as well. You can’t live in your car if you don’t have a car.” He turned to Jaime. “And who is this?”
“Jaime Cruz, sir.”
Uncle Edgar shook his hand firmly. “Jaime! Nice to meet you! Have you ever been to the archives before?”
“No, I haven’t,” Jaime said.
“Come in then, and take a look.”
They walked into a small, oak-paneled lobby with a few couches and chairs arranged around a low coffee table. Except for the newspaper articles about the Old York Cipher framed on the walls, it could have been the waiting room at the dentist’s.
Uncle Edgar strode across the small room to a plain wooden door on the opposite side. It seemed ordinary in every sense of the word, but when he opened it, he revealed a steel wall with a keypad in the middle of it. He punched in some numbers and the door slid open. Behind the door was a steel box that appeared to be an elevator but was really a sort of holding area. Edgar motioned them all inside. As he waited for the door to close behind them, he said, “I suppose your grandfather couldn’t drop by?”
Theo didn’t have to look at Tess to know the expression she must be making. Her whole face screwed up tight, balled fist banging on the side of her leg. “Grandpa isn’t traveling much these days. Not even in the city.”
“Ah,” Edgar said, as if he had known exactly how Grandpa was doing, which he probably did. Edgar Wellington had been friends with Grandpa Ben for decades. Plus, the cipherists seemed to know everything, even things that didn’t have anything to do with the Cipher.
Once the steel door had closed behind them, Uncle Edgar moved to the back wall, where another keypad was mounted. He raised his hand to punch in more numbers, but before he did, he turned back to Theo, Tess, and Jaime. “Are you guys ready?”
“Yes!” said Tess and Jaime. Theo said nothing. He was telling himself that he didn’t need this place, didn’t miss this place.
Then a hole opened up in the steel, dialing bigger and bigger until the hole had erased the steel, and the only thing Theo could tell himself was that he was a liar.
CHAPTER TEN
Jaime