“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.
That was when four-year-old Otto Moran charged around the corner, brandishing his Wiffle bat like a sword. He stopped inches from Tess’s legs. He was dressed entirely in camouflage print all the way down to his sneakers and was wearing one of his father’s ties as a headband.
“State your business!” Otto yelled.
“We live here, Otto,” said Tess.
“That’s not business!” said Otto.
“Yes, it is. Where’s your mom? Does she know you’re down here alone?”
“The president is napping!” Otto said. “She is tired of this nonsense!”
The tie around Otto’s head, Jaime noted, was black with tiny little happy faces all over it. “So, who’s watching you, Otto?”
Otto waved the bat. “I am the one who’s watching YOU!”
“You’re just a dumb baby, Otto.” Cricket Moran came motoring toward them on her three-wheeler. “I am watching you.”
“I. AM. A. NINJA!” Otto yelled. When his sister got close, Otto swung the bat. Cricket stood on the pedals of her trike, snatched the bat from his hands, held it over her head. Otto jumped for it, whining that he was going to wake up the president if Cricket didn’t give the bat back. Cricket’s pet—part-raccoon, part-cat, if Jaime was remembering right—chittered from his basket on the front of the trike. The cat-coon was wearing a tiny hat with antlers.
Jaime pried the bat from Cricket’s hands. “Nobody needs to wake any presidents.”
Cricket stared up at him through giant sunglasses. “He’s not a ninja, he just thinks he is.”
“Is that so bad?” said Jaime.