Aunt Esther stroked Nine’s striped back. “Right after I managed the game preserve in Botswana. Tiger’s balm?”
It took hours to load up Aunt Esther’s van and another one his dad had rented, so many hours that they stopped to eat lunch before they left. If Theo’s body was broken, he couldn’t imagine what Tess’s felt like, but she seemed too tired to complain. She slumped against the window of the van as they drove along the Hudson River, crossed the Bronx on the Cross Bronx Expressway, and curled south toward Flushing and Aunt Esther’s house. Theo wondered if Tess was thinking about the moth, what the moth was supposed to mean, what they were supposed to do next, how they were supposed to find the map that the Guildman talked about. His mind was as tired as his body; he had no idea what to think.
They arrived at Aunt Esther’s house forty-five minutes later and spent the next couple of hours carrying the boxes from the vans to the house and then trying to find places to store them. Aunt Esther’s home was tiny, with more rooms than it had a right to, each of them painted a different color—purple, red, yellow, green—and decorated with ornate masks, creepy puppets whose gaze seemed to follow them around the room, and a stunning array of knives and swords. Aunt Esther also liked plants, and the house was riotous with them, twisting vines pinned up along the moldings, potted trees so tall they bent where they met the ceiling, slack-jawed orchids gaping from the top of a dusty piano. Tess once said it reminded her of the lair of Poison Ivy, if Poison Ivy had been a senior citizen fond of toys, cardigans, and sensible shoes.
After they were done unloading the boxes, Aunt Esther mixed up a batch of iced tea with lemon and brought the pitcher to the living room with the announcement: “I have brought you some iced tea and some Fig Newtons.” They sipped their drinks as Mrs. Biedermann took a work call out on the front porch.
“I have already cleared out the attic for Tess and Theo,” Aunt Esther said. “I will clear out the red room for you and Miriam by the end of the week.”
“Thanks, Esther,” said Theo’s dad. “I know this is a lot of trouble, and we really appreciate it.”
“Trouble can’t always be avoided,” said Aunt Esther. “Right, Tess?”
Tess, who was rubbing her shoulder, said, “What?”
“Have a Fig Newton. I think your blood sugar is low.”
Theo grabbed a cookie for himself. There were a lot of strange things moving around Aunt Esther’s apartment, not least the numerous mechanical spiders that pruned and watered the plants and the mechanical ladybugs that ate the real aphids.
No moths the size of eagles, though.
He should have been pondering the Guildsman’s riddle: To read the map, you’ll have to look into the lights. He should have been asking himself: What map could the Guildman have been talking about, and what lights? But he was more intrigued by another riddle: How could a caterpillar made of metal—a robot whimsically designed to look like a natural creature—have the kind of transformation that only flesh-and-blood caterpillars can have? How could a robot be . . . alive?
This was not adorable.
Not adorable at all.
Which was why, for the first time since they’d started on this quest to solve the Cipher, Theo was convinced they’d stumbled onto something important, really important. Along with the mystery of the Cipher, here was a real mystery, a scientific mystery. And maybe one that hinted at the real power of the Morningstarrs. Because he didn’t think the Guildmen were men at all. And he didn’t think the Morningstarr Machines were just machines. The Morningstarrs’ creations were alive.
And they were thinking for themselves.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jaime
When Theo shared his theory with Tess and Jaime—that he believed the Guildmen were actually Morningstarr Machines come to life—Jaime thought it was the most awesome thing he’d ever heard. But then he remembered that, machines or not, the Guildmen had probably tried to kill them so they couldn’t solve the next clue. And then he realized that they had no idea how to solve the next clue anyway. They went over the riddle a million times—To read the map, you’ll have to look into the lights—but they didn’t know which map the Guildman was referring to or where to find it. And though they racked their brains, looked in books, and searched the internet, they didn’t know which lights they needed to look into. Did it refer to a Morningstarr invention? Some forgotten inventor?
Maybe it was the “condemned” notice posted on the glass doors downstairs or the creeptastic presence of Stoop and Pinscher, who continued to chisel off tiles and doorknobs and light fixtures with increasingly sadistic glee, but the rest of the residents of 354 W. 73rd Street weren’t consumed with an incomprehensible clue; they seemed to be afflicted with packing mania. At all hours of the day or night, doors were propped open and the occupants inside could be seen sorting clothes, stacking up books and dishware, stuffing bags full of sheets and towels, sitting on suitcases just to get them to close. Tess and Theo were dragged to and from their aunt’s apartment in Queens.
While they were gone, Mima gave Jaime a new job: remove all the photographs from the walls, wrap each carefully in brown paper, and set them in a box. They had hundreds of photographs on every surface of their place, and it would have taken Jaime forever to finish the job even if he’d been moving quickly. But he wasn’t moving quickly. He was so used to seeing these photographs every day that, except for his few favorites, he had never taken the time to stop and look at them. Until now. Here was his great-grandfather Daniel, astride a motorbike in Havana in 1949, dark and brooding and mustachioed. Here was his grandmother Mima, then just Estefanía, posing with a group of grinning girls in downtown New York City. Here was his father, dark brown, muscled, hard-hatted but shirtless—fearless—standing on top of the skeleton of a Mexican solar plant. And here was his mother, Renée, as a doctoral student at T&T University, long ’locs coiled so tall on the top of her head that she looked like some kind of scientist-queen.
All of them had been in this apartment. The walls had heard their wishes. The floors had felt their footsteps. How could he leave this place when so many of the people he loved had left the last of themselves here?
It was the same for the twins. But maybe they wouldn’t have to leave. If they just could figure out which map the Guildman had been talking about, and which lights.
“Is this all you’ve done? Two rooms? Are you moving in slow motion?” Mima said, hands on hips.
“I keep looking at the pictures,” Jaime said.
“You haven’t seen them before? They’ve only been hanging in this apartment your whole life.”
“I know. I just . . .” He shrugged.
“Okay,” said Mima, taking from him an old photo of her as a child with her favorite cat, Beets. “Shoo.”
“What?”