“Yes,” said Tess’s dad. “I heard that. And so did the entire building. Hello, Edgar. Great to see you again.”
Edgar stepped inside the apartment, took in the boxes and the bags and the general chaos, Nine guarding her pile of socks like a dragon over an egg. “I know it’s last-minute, but I thought I’d take the kids off your hands for a couple of hours.”
“Now?” said Tess’s dad, looking at his watch. “But it’s so late.”
“For you and me, maybe. But not for these two.” He patted Theo’s poufy hair. “There’s a showing of The Glorious Vision of the Morningstarrs at the planetarium. I figured we could catch it if we hurry.”
Tess’s dad tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Well, they have been packing and moving all day.”
“And yesterday! And the day before that!” said Tess.
“I don’t see why not. They deserve to have a little fun.”
They told the same story to Jaime’s grandmother, who told them they’d probably have more fun going to see Wonder Woman: Revolution, but to each his own. Uncle Edgar packed them in a cab and told the driver to take them to the Croton Fountain. In the front seat, Uncle Edgar kept up a steady stream of chatter with the driver about politics and about the best baseball player on the New York City Starrs and whether or not the team would make it to the series, while Tess’s leg vibrated with nerves until Theo clamped his hand down on her knee.
The driver dropped them off at the fountain, where a group of teenagers crowded around listening to a kid in braids and jeans rapping: “I grew up a warrior in the Seminole Nation, resisting the brutality of colonization. . . .” Otherwise, it was quiet, and the society’s building was dark, as were most of the buildings on the street. Edgar led Tess, Theo, and Jaime through the oak-paneled lobby and the steel door beyond, down the filigree staircase, and into the belly of the archives. Auguste Dupin, sleeping in his cage with his head under his wing, didn’t even look up.
As soon as they reached the ground floor, Uncle Edgar pulled out his phone, typed in a code. Two enormous bookcases opened up to reveal a cavernous room.
In the center of the room was a yellow inflatable ship with solar panels on top and a gondola underneath for the pilot and passengers.
“Kind of looks like a pat of butter you’d get at a fancy restaurant,” Jaime said.
“It’s small but powerful. And it’s safer than riding in a car,” said Edgar. “Wouldn’t be a great idea to tell your mom, though.”
“Or my grandmother,” said Jaime.
“Or anyone else,” said Tess. “Since when can you fly?”
“A number of members got our pilot’s licenses when the society purchased the ship. We keep it inflated and ready to go at all times. But we’re not going to have much air time before air traffic control notices us. So, we’re going to have to get up in the air, see what we need to see, and then get back inside as quickly as possible. Someone could get a picture or a video, but I can always explain that away later. We society members are considered quite eccentric, so if I told them that I wanted to fly to the moon on my pat of butter, I’m not sure they’d be surprised.”
They got inside the gondola and strapped in. Uncle Edgar told them that though it was an antique, it ran as well as a new ship, but didn’t feel much different from strapping into the car of a Coney Island roller coaster.
Uncle Edgar pushed a bunch of buttons and controls. The ceiling above the ship split, then yawned wide. But instead of the herky-jerky motion of a roller coaster, the airship rose gently as a balloon. Once they were hovering over the courtyard, Edgar pushed another button, and the doors below them closed tight again, so tight that you’d never have known they were there in the first place.
The airship lifted straight up. The ground below got smaller and smaller, the society building turning into a miniature of itself, a model among a line of models, rows and rows of models, like the worlds Theo built with his blocks. The air flowing through the open gondola windows was crisp and cool, and the sky revealed more shades of blue—midnight and cornflower and periwinkle—all streaked with traces of silvery cloud.
Jaime said, “I want to draw this, but I don’t have the right colors.”
“I wish you could draw the smell.” Tess inhaled the smells of carbon and the briny scent of the sea, but also something sharp and metallic that tickled the back of her nose. She wondered if stars had a smell. If the moon did.
“Now,” said Uncle Edgar as the ship kept rising, “why don’t you kids tell me what we’re looking for and how you knew to look for it?”
Tess took a deep breath, then told him what they had all decided they could finally reveal to him, especially now that he had agreed to help them: that their grandfather had gotten a letter written by Theresa Morningstarr herself the day that Slant had announced his purchase of 354 W. 73rd Street, that it was the start of a whole new branch of clues, that it had led them from the Liberty Statue to the Tredwell House, the chair of George Washington to the painting of William Waddell, the grave of Eliza Hamilton to the Octagon on Roosevelt Island, and finally to 354 W. 73rd itself, and what came after.
Uncle Edgar was quiet for a long while, and Tess wasn’t sure if he believed them. Then he said, “Ava Oneal’s house. Your grandfather always wondered if she was the key to the Cipher.”
“He did?”
“She was such a cipher herself. Maybe a bigger mystery than the Morningstarrs.”
“So you believe us? That there’s a second line of clues?”
Edgar’s voice was kind when he said, “Does it matter what I believe?”
Tess bit her lip, then shrugged. Though it stung a little to think that Edgar might believe that this was nothing more than a solarship ride, Tess believed, Theo and Jaime believed. That would have to be enough.
Theo popped his head out of the window and craned up. “You can see the stars. You can never see stars in the city.”
Edgar said, “That’s because of the lights. There are always too many lights on. They overpower even the light of the stars. But not tonight.”
“Tonight we have to look down, not up,” said Jaime.
Higher and higher they rose, the air getting colder and colder, until Tess was shivering, until the whole of the city spread like a blanket below them, studded here and there with winking diamonds. Even in the dark, the spire of the Morningstarr Tower poked at the clouds; the ribbon of the Underway laced all the buildings together. Just beyond the edges of the city, the water glimmered.
All four of them hung their faces out of the windows, trying to see a map in the lights below, something that would tell them what to do next. Tess stared at the winking lights and darkened buildings and glimmering water, and frustration knitted her brow, knotted her guts.
“I’m not seeing anything,” Theo said.
“Me neither,” said Jaime. He looked up overhead and down below. “Kind of looks the same. Like a bunch of random stars.”