Unless.
Someone cleared her throat. Someone else meowed. Jaime grinned before he looked up. Theo and Tess and Nine stood in front of him. They waited as he stood and tucked his sketchbook in his pocket. They walked all the way around to the back of the construction site, where there was a gap in the chain-link fence. There were earthmovers and caterpillars (the construction kind), but no one was working, no one was around. They slipped under the fence and crept over to the building next to the empty lot. You could only see the strange arrangement of brickwork in the shape of three pyramids when you got up close, the shadow door right under it when the full moon shone just right.
Tess took one last look around, then pulled the pewter dragon from her pocket, the one that had once topped a black cane they had found in a tunnel.
“Do you think it will work?” she said, touching a strangely carved brick right where a doorknob would be.
But it was a silly question and she was only thinking out loud. Jaime took the dragon from her, pressed it into the brick, hesitated. Tess put her hand on top of Jaime’s. Theo put his hand on top of his sister’s. The three of them turned the handle. There was a low groan and a long scraping sound as it opened. A waft of musty air drifted out like the gasp of an ancient tomb.
“Well?” Theo said.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” said Jaime.
Tess laughed.
They stepped across the threshold.
February 13, 1861
Charles L. Reason walked the city streets uptown, his stride long, the tap of his walking stick on the cobbles like a metronome. It was late, and the air had a wicked bite that sank its teeth into his thick wool coat. He paid it no mind. Nor did he acknowledge the strange looks he got from the few passersby out at this ungodly hour. For many of these people, New Yorkers though they were, the combination of his fine clothes, confident gait, and brown skin was a surprise they could not keep off their faces. He tipped his hat, a brief smile touching his lips. Then he left them where they were, standing in the middle of the street, gaping like lake trout.
What would they say if he spoke to them in Greek? Latin? French? What would they say when he introduced himself as a mathematician? If he confessed that he’d returned to the city of his birth to improve the schools here? That he could teach them a thing or two or many? That he’d be a teacher always?
Of course, that wasn’t all he was.
As if a man were any single thing.
He patted the pocket where he had tucked his latest poem. A competent effort, but not up to his usual standards. He would have to try again when he had a moment to spare. Those were becoming fewer and farther between. A new president had been elected but not yet inaugurated. There were meetings and demonstrations. Seven states had already seceded from the union, clinging to the barbarism of slavery, and more states threatened to the do the same. The nation was in turmoil, and there were rumblings of war. There was so much work to be done.
Yet here he was, on this odd errand. Please come, she’d written in her precise hand, when the clock strikes midnight. I would make an entreaty on behalf of our lost friends.
And friends they had been, at least for a short time. So, though there was so much work to be done, though the hour late and the air spiteful, though his body wished for the release of sleep, he would meet her and hear her entreaty, even if a hearing was the only thing he could offer.
He walked faster, the metronome ticking to a quicker tempo. He was so far northwest that the fine brownstones turned into estates surrounded by frost-stiffened lawns and bare, creaking trees. The Underway had brought more and more people to this area, but it was still a world of wealth and privilege; the shoemakers and barmen and tailors forced to hunker downtown. Here, on the upper west side of Manhattan, ladies learned to embroider cushions and play the piano rather than how to turn cream into butter or how to pluck a chicken. Men took over their fathers’ shipyards and banks, their farms and estates, and did not have to scratch to put food in the bellies of their children. (The governesses and brown-skinned cooks did that.)
He reached the trio of buildings that hugged the Hudson. He wondered if she was lonely here, no servants of her own, with just the river for company. But she was not one to express such feelings as loneliness.
He entered the grandly tiled lobby unannounced. She didn’t keep a manservant either, which would have been a terrible scandal—and a terrible risk—if she were any other woman. She had told him where she’d be, in the large apartment on the fifth floor. She claimed it was her favorite, but then, she enjoyed moving from room to room, apartment to apartment, occupying every space in this grand building, far too large for any one person, and yet too small for such a one as she.
He took the elevator, remembering his first ride on the miraculous contraption, how he’d idly wondered if it would just keep going until it reached the stars themselves.
As it had on that first ride, the elevator drifted in verticals and horizontals, its own special geometric poem. They had a shared passion, a kinship, he and this machine. He hoped it would live on forever.
He entered the hallway on the fifth floor, his walking stick striking the tiles with less force, softer than the tick of a faraway clock sounding the midnight hour.
“Always so punctual,” she said, from her seat by the window. “Thank you for coming.”
He nodded, laid his gloves on the small table near the settee. She had set out a tray with tea and biscuits, though she would partake of nothing herself. She held out a slim hand, gesturing for him to warm himself in front of the fire, which he did gratefully. The tea was hot and eased the chill of the evening, as well as the strange prickle of apprehension that crawled across his skin.
“I would not have asked you here if it was not of vital importance,” she said. “Though I fear that when I make my request it might sound quite . . . mad.”
“If your request does sound mad, and I offer such an opinion on it,” he said, taking a sip of the tea and replacing the cup, “it is nothing you haven’t heard before.”
She laughed. In the firelight, her dark eyes burned like the wood that warmed him. He had surmised long ago that she was . . . special, but he had also learned not to be afraid of her.
Most of the time.
She placed the book she had been reading on a nearby table and picked up a large envelope. “I would ask that you take this letter for me. Keep it with you. Arrange for its transferal to your kin after your . . .” She hesitated.
“Death?” he said, smiling at her sudden delicacy.
“Yes,” she said. “You’ll find instructions tucked in with the letter. The letter must be bequeathed to your kin, then your kin’s kin, and so on. It needs to find its way to certain people . . . in the future.”