They walked faster. Jagged cracks unzipped the stone walls beside them; above, rocks punched from the surface by an unseen force. They gathered Tess closer and half hobbled, half ran. Small stinging stones cut Jaime’s skin, and the clouds of dust choked him, made him cough. Flailing and coughing and close to blind, arms burning, they made it to the stairwell. They stumbled up the stairs and raced for the ladder that would take them to the street level. Theo shoved Jaime toward it. When he protested, Theo shouted, “Help me from the top!”
Jaime left Theo with his sister, climbed the ladder, the suitcase tucked under one arm making his movements slow, too slow. The thundering grew louder, like a thousand digging monsters behind ready to chew them up and spit them out. Jaime reached the manhole cover and pushed, but it was like trying to move a mountain. He ducked his head, pressed his back into it, and heaved with everything he had. The cover lifted and then fell over into the street, but he wasn’t the one who had moved it, at least, not alone. He looked up.
A woman like a human stick bug held out her hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Tess
The world spun around and around and around, like the Rollers were rolling her through the tunnel. And maybe they were. She saw nothing but blacks and blues, a kaleidoscope of nowhere. It should have hurt, but it didn’t. Where are we going? she asked the Rollers.
Home, they said.
And she said, Yes, but where is home now?
“Come on, Tess!” someone shouted. “This whole street is going to go.”
Tess fought the fuzzy feeling in her head, the tumbling and the spinning, the blue-black nowhere. She opened her eyes. Three faces floated above her. Theo, Jaime, and . . .
“Delancey DeBrule?” Tess said. “What . . . what’s going on?”
“Where’s Edgar?” said Delancey.
Theo just shook his head. Delancey stared one moment, then set her mouth. “Get her on her feet.” Theo and Jaime had just pulled her upright, half walked, half carried her to the sidewalk, when the entire street seemed to shake itself off and caved in right down the middle. Parked cars slid sideways into the trench, people pointed and screamed, dogs everywhere erupted in a frenzy of barking, a pipe burst and sent a plume of water into the sky. Sirens sounded in the distance.
Now it hurt. Tess gritted her teeth against the throbbing in her head. Delancey said, “Keep walking. Priya’s waiting in the car on the next block.”
“Priya?” said Tess.
“Yes. Who did you expect?”
“I didn’t expect any of this,” said Tess.
They walked around the block, rushing against the tide of humanity pouring past them. Here was something big enough and strange enough and inconvenient enough to surprise even the unsurprisable New Yorkers, and they all wanted to see it for themselves.
Priya Sharma was at the wheel. Once they’d gotten into the solar-winged car and were on their way, Theo said, “How did you know where we were?”
Priya drove grimly, deliberately, hand over hand, in a hurry but trying hard not to look it. “Auguste told me.”
“The bird told you?” Tess said, then winced, rubbing her head. From the front passenger seat, Delancey rummaged in her bag and handed back a tissue so that Tess could dab at the blood still trickling from her wound.
“Edgar’s been acting very strange the past few months, staying late at the archives nearly every night,” said Priya.
“Things have been going missing from the collection,” Delancey said. “At first I thought . . . I thought maybe your grandfather had walked away with them. Without knowing what he was doing, of course. But then Edgar got so secretive.”
Priya said, “I decided to stop by the archives to see if Edgar would talk to me, tell me what was going on. Instead, Auguste did. I drove right over here with Delancey to see if I could find him.”
“And you found us,” said Tess.
Delancey said, “Something else that Auguste told me: Edgar was convinced that your grandfather had finally figured out the Cipher on his own but got sick before he could share the information with the society. What happened down there?”
Tess pressed the tissue harder against her wound. “Why should we trust you?”
Priya and Delancey were quiet for a moment. Then Priya said, “I was your grandfather’s friend for a long time. But so was Edgar. So you shouldn’t trust me at all. Or her.” She nodded at Delancey. “You should trust no one.”
Trust no one.
Tess looked at Jaime and Theo. “It’s okay. You can tell them what happened.”
Jaime and Theo told Delancey what they thought they could, which wasn’t very much. Only that they’d found something among Grandpa Ben’s papers, and then gone exploring in the tunnel. Only that Edgar was certain they knew more about the Cipher than they did, that the tunnel collapsed when he threatened to leave them there.
Numbness spread throughout Tess’s body. “So . . . so Edgar is dead?”
Jaime shook his head. Theo said, “Maybe. We can’t be sure.”
Tess leaned back in the seat. What kind of world was this, anyway? Where your grandfather could get sick and slowly lose bits of himself until he couldn’t remember the people he loved? Where a man you trusted, a man you called Uncle, your grandfather’s friend, wanted to keep you trapped in an underground tunnel so he could find a treasure?
It was an awful kind of world. A blue-black nowhere of a world.
Priya said, “I’m going to take you back to the archives. You’ll stay there overnight just like you planned so that no one is suspicious.”
Delancey said, “I can take a better look at your head there, anyway. I’m a little worried you have a concussion.”
“What can you do about it?” Theo said, apparently still annoyed with Delancey for her attitude back at the archives.
Delancey’s mouth quirked up on one side. “When I’m not researching ciphers, I’m a doctor. Just like Edgar is.”
“Oh,” said Theo.
“If Edgar doesn’t . . .” Priya hesitated, then began again. “If Edgar is really gone, I’ll report him missing in a couple of days. The story is that he was with us till the morning, and then he went out, okay? We don’t know where he went and we haven’t seen him since.” When none of them answered her, she said, “Okay?”
“Okay,” Tess and Jaime said together. Jaime only nodded.
“I guess you’ll want to take a look inside this suitcase, too,” said Theo. “Uncle . . . I mean, Edgar said that he had special tools to open it.”
Again, Priya’s dark eyes flicked to the mirror. “No. The Cipher couldn’t have stayed unsolved for as long as it has unless there were very powerful forces in play that didn’t want it to be solved. But I think your grandfather was right about the Cipher, that it solves you as much as you solve it. It meant for you to find it, and it meant that only you should open it, if that makes any sense.”
“How could that possibly make any sense?” said Theo.