“The abelabevabatabor abis cabomabing dabown nabow,” said Theo.
“We really need to go,” said Jaime, glancing from the dumbwaiter to the elevator and back again. “Even you guys.” He took a step back from the little leathery thing, which was twitching and shivering, as if it was getting ready to spring.
“No, I think it’s time for you to go,” said Mr. Stoop.
“Bye-bye,” said Mr. Pinscher.
The little leathery hand thing jumped up. Nine charged, wrenching her leash right out of Tess’s fingers.
“No!” Tess screamed.
“Yes,” hissed Mr. Pinscher.
Nine caught the thing in her teeth. Like a bear catching a spawning salmon. Or a giant serval-wolf-cat catching a little leathery hand thing.
“No!” said Mr. Stoop.
“Yes,” hissed Tess.
The cat bit down.
As it turned out, a mouth was a fairly useful thing to have.
And so was a cat.
Mr. Stoop moaned. “Cecil! Not my little Cecil!”
Mr. Pinscher said, “Stop whining, you sentimental fool. We’ll have to do things the old-fashioned way.” He was reaching for Tess when the doors of the elevator flew wide and a hurricane of silver wings flooded out. Mr. Stoop and Mr. Pinscher batted at the moths but they only came faster, hitting the men in the face and the shoulders and the back, shoving them both toward the dumbwaiter. Suddenly, the dumbwaiter yawned wide. The moths balled up together, one rolling, shimmering mass of wings and fury, and hit the two men like a wrecking ball, shoving them into the waiting maw of the dumbwaiter. Tess heard their brief screams before the dumbwaiter slammed shut.
And then she was shaking the little leathery hand thing from Nine’s mouth and they were all running to the door. The raging ball of moths blasted past them, blew out the windows in a shower of glass.
“Go, go, go!” Jaime shouted.
They climbed out the broken windows, trying not to cut themselves on the jagged edges, trying not to scrape their hands on the pavement, failing.
“Wait!” said Tess.
“No waiting!” Jaime said, hauling her to her feet and dragging her across the street. Tess’s thoughts scrabbling and scratching like squirrels trapped in a wall. They were supposed to find the treasure—where was the treasure? What was happening? Where did Mr. Stoop and Mr. Pinscher go? Theo was saying something to Jaime, but Tess couldn’t even make out their words; everything was a furious blur in her head and in her vision. Her breath came hot and fast, her feet dragging until someone—Jaime?—literally lifted her off her feet.
“Wait!” said Tess. “Stop!”
A high-pitched whine cut through the humid summer air. Then a series of muffled WHUMPs like the beating of drums in a marching band pounded Tess’s ears, WHUMP, but she didn’t know what it was, WHUMP, where was it coming from, WHUMP. It was only when she saw the bright bursts of flame in each of the windows at 354 W. 73rd Street that she herself understood, that they all did.
Explosives.
For a moment, nothing else happened, the building’s many eyes seeming to look down upon her with a placid sort of calm, the way mothers regard crying children.
And then, all at once, the floors collapsed in on themselves, falling and falling, imploding into a gray cloud of dust.
The shock of it punched her in the throat and in the chest, odd strangled, wordless sounds bursting from her lips. No. No. No. This was not supposed to happen. Not after everything they’d done.
Everything they’d done.
They had done this.
They had set the cane.
They had started the clock.
They had set the building off.
Is any treasure worth any cost?
No.
No.
No.
But the stinging dust that filled the air said that it was, that the worst had come to pass, said that it was over now, that everyone else had been right, that a bunch of kids could never solve the Cipher, that the Cipher itself was as fanciful as any fairy tale, and who but little kids could believe in fairy tales anyway?
There was no treasure.
And now there was no 354 W. 73rd Street.
She couldn’t help the sobs that racked her body. Adults had gathered around—from where she had no idea—they were all suddenly there, a small crowd of them, patting her and Jaime and Theo awkwardly, saying, “There, there,” and “You’re all right,” “Everything will be okay,” like they must have seen people do in movies. She wanted to hit them all. She wanted to tell them nothing would ever be all right.
But there was a hole in the landscape just like there was a hole in her gut. In her heart. When the dust started to clear, Tess could see all the way to the river. She saw the raw, naked walls of the buildings on either side, exposed for the first time in a hundred and fifty plus years. The stupid water tower on the roof of the building next door mocked her: YOU GOT IT ALL WRONG, TOOTS.
Eventually, the crowd grew bigger. The cops showed up. The fire trucks and the ambulances, the firefighters and the EMTs. The reporters with their vans and their microphones.
All of them ignoring three kids and their giant, dust-covered cat.
Still, Tess and Theo and Jaime stayed. Tess felt rooted to the spot, like she could never move. The moon burst through the clouds, silvering the dust, so bright that they had to shield their eyes. The beams hit the water tower on the nearby building, sending an arrow of silver down through the dust, where it hit the wall of the building on the other side of the demolition site.
Tess’s breath curled, caught.
For there, on that newly exposed wall, was a rectangle of shadow in the shape of a door.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Theo
Implosion, the opposite of explosion. Technically, instead of energy and matter released outward, implosion was a bursting inward, a situation where matter collapses in on itself. A method often used in building demolition in order to spare the surrounding buildings.
He could almost hear Tess’s voice in his head: Theo, you robot.
Except he didn’t feel like a robot. He felt like he himself had imploded along with 354 W. 73rd Street, the very center of himself plummeting straight down, all his outsides cascading in.
And then Tess whispered, “A door.”
“What did you say?” said Theo.
She leaned in. “But look at the wall of the building next door. There’s a door on it. Or there’s a shadow in the shape of a door.”
She was right. On the expanse of dull-colored stones was a hazy rectangle of shadow made when the moon shone through the water tower on the opposite side of the rubble that was once their home.
Theo’s mind was churning. “The building had to come down. We wouldn’t be able to get to that door if it hadn’t. We would never have seen it.”