“I should think he’s nearly done, my dear,” Fritz says to me. “You see, my friends, Georg has a remarkable gift. He has a sense of smell, when in chameleon form, which is quite unparalleled.”
At Sam’s side, Will snorts. I don’t know what’s funny here. My skin crawls the way he says, “my dear” and “my friends,” but I try not to let it show. I remind myself. I’ll do anything for the antidote.
Georg ripples back solid, alone. “It smells of Dr. Helmann,” he says, addressing Fritz, “but it also smells strongly of mint and something else—alcohol, perhaps. I don’t know what to think, Uncle.”
Fritz grins. “Schnapps,” he says. “Father liked his Schnapps. Helga scolded him once for spilling some on his journals. Well done, Georg, my boy! Well done.” Fritz changes his tone as he addresses Sir Walter and the rest of us. “This time, I believe you have supplied what I requested for our little trade. Hansel, time is running out for Bridget Li. You may deliver the antidote.” He smiles wickedly. “Did you guess correctly, any of you?”
I feel it again, that sensation that my lungs are being crushed. I suck against the feeling, drawing in air, refusing to let Fritz see my fear. Of course he would pick her. Fritz was the one who liked hurting kittens. He would strike Pfeffer and Sir Walter hardest if he struck me hardest. Which meant choosing my mother.
Hansel comes solid. He glances at Gretel and gives him a tiny nod. Gretel nods back. What is that about? I don’t have time to worry about their non-verbals, though. Hansel holds the serum in an outstretched hand.
My entire focus shifts there, my world in the palm of his hand.
“I won’t come any closer to the rest of you chameleons,” says Hansel. “If any of you disappear, so will I, along with the serum. Send one of the visibles over here to get it.”
“Visibles?” mutters Will.
“Non-ripplers,” says Mick. “I’ll go.”
“No,” I say, striding boldly forward. This is my bakery, my mom, my responsibility.
Halfway across the room, something sort of itches at the edge of my consciousness. Why doesn’t Hansel just set down the serum and ripple away? I close the distance. It doesn’t matter why he won’t. He said I had to walk over. Fine. They make the rules; I do whatever it takes.
“Hand it over,” I say, my hand outstretched before the pair of bleach-heads.
One second, I am standing with my hand outstretched, a look of determination on my face. The next second, Georg grabs me and pins me with one arm.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
MONOLOGUE-ING
As Georg grabs me, Hansel moves with lightning speed to the monitor, flipping it around. Then Hansel ripples and Georg, one hand securing me, one hand holding the journal, speaks to my friends.
“Don’t move or I disappear with her. I don’t want to harm her. Cooperate and I’ll release her in a moment, along with the antidote.”
“What do you want?” asks Sir Walter.
“Give me the antidote!” I scream.
At the same moment, Fritz shouts from the monitor, “Get out of there, you fools. Do you know how dangerous de Rochefort is?”
I can see the fear in Fritz’s eyes.
Good, I think. You’d better be afraid.
“Uncle Fritz, there’s been a change of plans,” says Georg. “Hansel and I will be keeping the journal for ourselves. We appreciate all you’ve done for us, but we don’t want to live under your control any more than we wanted to live under Pfeffer’s control.”
He’s monologue-ing. He’s freaking bad guy monologue-ing. At a time like this! With my mother’s life at stake!
I shout in the direction of Hansel, “Give me the serum—now!”
Georg twists my arm more firmly. “Please, another moment,” he says to me. He turns to speak to Fritz again. “My brother and I have procured enough of the enzyme from your lab to keep ourselves healthy for months. And by the time we run out, we’ll have figured out how to make more. Or one of our other siblings will do so.”
My arm is hurting where Georg has it twisted back. But I can still use some of my self defense moves. I can Sandra Bullock the heck out of his sternum, instep, nose and groin. Make Gretel S-I-N-G. I’m getting myself in position when I notice the crème brulée torch right next to my free hand.
Gretel, who is now engaging Fritz in a shouting match about civil rights, has set the journal down right in front of me to gesticulate more effectively.
His grip on me loosens slightly and I slip free, grabbing the journal and the mini flame thrower. I would have liked to have hit him, but this isn’t about what I would like. It’s about what I have to do. It’s about what I can’t live without.
“Give me the serum!” I shout, as loud as I can, “or I burn the journal!”
I power the crème brulée torch on high.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Chrétien ripple invisible. But my focus is on Hansel, who has just come solid. His hand, which had held the antidote, is empty.
Why is his hand empty? What happened to the antidote?
I scream. “Where is—”
But something interrupts me. The something is Chrétien, who appears three feet away, running for all he’s worth, his arms flung wide. I can see what he’s planning—to grab me. And then things go horribly, horribly wrong. As Chrétien grabs me, he jostles the journal toward the flame thrower. The ancient pages ignite at once and, on impulse, I release the flaming book just as Chrétien ripples both of us to invisibility.
No! I cry. The journal!
It’s my leverage.
And I dropped it.
And it’s burning.
No! I cry again.
I hear Chrétien mutter a horrified, Mon Dieu!
He releases me, leaving me invisibly trapped in nothingness, and now things happen fast and thick. Chrétien comes solid, reaching for the flaming book. Seeing Chrétien come solid, Hansel vanishes. I can’t move. The journal flares in Chrétien’s hands. Instinctively, he casts it away, crying out in pain. Georg runs to grab the book, but he stops in his tracks, seeing Chrétien coming at him all Hulk! Smash!
Chrétien! I cry out. The serum!
But he’s still trying to rescue the burning journal. I can see it’s no use. The book is destroyed beyond all legibility. The leather cover is all that’s left now.
We have nothing to offer, nothing to trade.
Invisible, I howl in frustration.
Hansel comes solid long enough to scream, “Vanish!” to his brother. Chrétien follows both of them into invisibility.
And then it gets noisy. Really noisy. Inside my head.
I’m shouting to Chrétien that my mother is going to die. Chrétien is telling me he’s searching for Hansel. And I hear them, the blond brothers, speaking to one another.
The journal is lost, Georg is saying. Give them the serum and let us depart.
Hansel answers, I don’t have it.
What? I scream it along with Georg.
I must have let it slip in the moment I saw the girl attacking, says Hansel.
You let go of it? demands Georg.
It’s gone, says Hansel. Let’s go.
We have to tell them, says Georg.
We owe them nothing, says Hansel. I’m leaving. I’ll see you at the rendezvous.
In an instant, it’s silent. Except for one voice.
Gwyn?
It’s Chrétien.
Please, Mademoiselle Gwyn, he says. I cannot discover you. Where are you?
I say nothing.
I am uncertain where I left you when I fled, says Chrétien. Please. Can you hear me?
I could answer. I could tell him that I am poised right over the cracked linoleum tile that Ma is always saying we need to replace. That I am standing beside the table that had to be custom built inside the bakery because Ma insisted the ones in the restaurant supply warehouse were too small. That I am three feet from the stairs leading to the apartment my mother and I have shared, just us together, no aun
ties, no dinners, just me and Ma.
I could answer Chrétien, but I don’t. What does it matter?
My mother is going to die and it’s my fault and there is nothing I can do to save her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
IT’S MY FAULT
I hear Sir Walter. I hear Sam. I see Will’s ridiculous writing.
All of them, I ignore.
Finally, they stop calling for me and simply talk among themselves.
“She needs some time by herself,” says Sam.
“She needs to grow a pair,” says Mickie.
“Mick,” says Will. “Enough.”
She hangs her head and mutters an apology. I can tell she’s worried.
Chrétien is retracing his steps where he grabbed me, calling my name softly inside my head.
“Sir Walter,” says Will. “You’re good at finding stuff. Even small stuff, like that bullet you took out of me, right?”
“Ah,” says Sir Walter. “Of course. I shall seek her out.”
I watch as he ripples and disappears.
Pfeffer is bringing Ma and the aunties back down to the bakery. My heart wrenches when I see my mother. She doesn’t look good.
Sir Walter? I call out. Because, all of the sudden, I don’t want to be invisible any more. I want my mom.
Before I can repeat the call, he arrives, finding me, and I feel my skin coming back into solid reality.
I run into my mother’s arms. The aunties cluck and mumble about demons and curses.
“It’s my fault, Ma,” I say. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
My mother pulls back from the hug and grabs me squarely by the shoulders. “You listen to me, Gwyneth Li,” she says, her voice weak. “This is not your fault. Dr. Pfeffer has explained what happened. That I got the deadly injection. But you were not the one pulling the plunger on that syringe. This is not your fault.”
She gives me a small shake with those last three words. And I guess there must be something to that old saying about someone knocking some sense into you, because I realize something incredible.
“Sir Walter!” I say, hope flaring inside me. “You can find things. Small things. When they’re invisible.” I’m so excited I can hardly form sentences. “Find the syringe! With the antidote!”
Sir Walter’s eyes close and he shakes his head. “Of course,” he says as he melts into thin air.
As soon as Sir Walter vanishes, Pfeffer speaks solemnly to my mother. “We should ripple you to insubstantiality. It will halt the spread of the toxin. I should have thought of this earlier.”
Another spark of hope ignites inside me, and I take my mom’s hand, nodding.
“Oh, no,” she says, shaking her head.
“Ma! Don’t be stupid,” I say. “You’re going to be invisible and you’re going to say thank you and you’re going to like it.”
My mom stares at me for a minute and my aunties murmur about ungrateful daughters, and I am pretty sure I’m about to have every bad word in the Mandarin dialect aimed my direction by my dying mother.
But then she un-knits those dark eyebrows and turns to Chrétien. “Would you be so kind as to take me to safety? My daughter speaks highly of your skills.”
I make a choking, laughing noise. I have spoken highly of many things pertaining to Chrétien, but his rippling skills would not be one of them.
A moment later, Ma is gone and Chrétien is back.
And we wait. Again.
There is no guarantee Sir Walter, even with his ability to sense small items, is going to locate the antidote. I pace, wearing a track around the work table in the bakery, jogging up and down the stairs.
After an hour or so, Will decides to help Sir Walter look. “It’s better than standing here doing nothing.”
I watch, jealous, as the air where he stood ripples and settles.
Chrétien has been following me with his eyes the whole time and saying nothing. But now he breaks off from this fascinating pursuit to help Will and Sir Walter.
My legs start turning to jelly after about two hours of non-stop motion, and I sink onto the second stair tread from the bottom, sighing heavily. Sam comes to sit with me.
“It’s my fault,” I say. “I torched the journal.”
“Oh, Gwyn, not you, too.” She shakes her head.
“What do you mean, not me, too?”
“Chrétien kept saying the same thing,” she says. “How it’s his fault. But it’s not. It’s no one’s fault.”
“It’s Fritz’s fault.”
Sam nods. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
My voice drops to a whisper. “I don’t know how I’ll live with myself if …”
Sam takes my hand and squeezes it hard.
Oh, dear God. She knows. She knows what I’m feeling. I bury my head in her shoulder. And Chrétien. He knows, too. I finally understand how foolish I’ve been with all of my chasing and cheering up and, just, everything. There are some things you don’t ever bounce back from. I weep silently on the shoulder of my best friend.
An hour later, I hear Chrétien’s voice, clear and loud, from inside my head: We have discovered it!
Will reappears in front of me and Sam, talking a mile a minute. “Hansel didn’t just ‘let it slip,’” he says. “Oh, no, that would have been too easy. No, when Hansel saw Gwyn accidentally set fire to Helmann’s Journal of Secret, Hansel flung that syringe through the bakery wall, and it landed outside in Woody Allen’s cat kennel.”
“Stop talking and get my mom!” I shout.
A few minutes later, when Chrétien has brought Ma back, Dr. Pfeffer administers the antidote. Ma doesn’t look good, and she’s not talking at all. Pfeffer monitors her with something he must have stolen from Dr. Yang’s office down the street. Well, it’s the middle of the night and no one’s going to miss it.
An hour passes, during which time I hold my mom’s hand and stare at her closed eyes. Another hour passes and Ma speaks.
The first thing she asks, when she starts talking again, is how Woody Allen is doing. Not, Gwyn, my darling, did you sit here with me all this time? But, Is Woody Allen recovering from having that invisible syringe thrown at him?
So, basically, the Li family is back to normal.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
YOU DON’T GO BACK TO THE BAT CAVE
“That’s it,” I say to Sam, shaking my head. “The world is officially coming to an end.”
After sleeping for eight hours straight, Ma has just gotten up and announced she is going to make dinner. Without any help. The aunties flew back to LA, so there isn’t anyone to help anyway.
“But Ma doesn’t know how to make dinner,” I say, after she goes downstairs.
Sam shrugs. “It is just possible your mom knows how to do things you don’t know she knows how to do.”
I grunt. “We should have asked Will to make pizza.” Seriously. Because who knows what my mom is going to try and feed us. Unfortunately, Will went back to his house with Mickie awhile ago.
Chrétien and Pfeffer and Sir Walter stayed here to discuss Important Things, although Chrétien has barely opened his mouth the entire time. He just stares at the table like the wood grain is encoded with the Secrets of the Universe or something. Occasionally, he runs a thumb around and around a stain from a coffee mug. Once, he answers a question that Sir Walter directs to him.
“What was it Martina told you about never speaking of the pass phrase?” asks Sir Walter.
“She gave me to understand that the sleepers fear falling once more under the sway of others. They divined, somehow, that a phrase exists which exerts control over them. They do not know what it is. They vowed not to speak of it to Fritz, in the hope he knew not of its existence.”
“He knows,” says Pfeffer. “I can confirm that he sought to discover Helmann’s password while I still worked at Geneses. Franz was furious with him for trying.”
“But Fritz saw the journal go up in flames,” I say. “So we should be in the clear, right
?”
Chrétien runs a finger around, around, around the coffee stain.
“Indeed,” says Sir Walter. “As you saw, he bears me no love, but I believe he will concentrate his efforts upon locating Hansel and Georg.”
“Or upon saving Geneses Corporation from ruin,” says Pfeffer.
At this point, Ma calls all of us down to dinner, and we gather around the oversized prep-table in the bakery kitchen. I am in shock when I see stir-fry veggies and potstickers and rice. It all smells delicious.
“Honestly,” I whisper to Sam, “this is very disturbing.”
Just then, Pfeffer gets a text message from Mickie, who must have bought a new phone in the last eight hours. I have given up trying to decide if they are together or not. But maybe they are, because Pfeffer looks up and tells us Will and Mickie invited him over for a meal, too. He’s looking all worried abut offending my mom, so I let him off the hook.
“There might actually be enough food for the rest of us if you would just leave, already,” I say.
This earns me a smattering of Chinese from Ma, all about hospitality and my shortcomings as a daughter.
Sir Walter steps into the gap, gracefully complimenting Ma on the excellence of her food. He and my mom then discuss the regional cuisines of China, and she points out that what she made is very Americanized, actually.
Across from us, Chrétien picks at his food, too polite to avoid eating altogether, but his heart’s not in it. It might be time to reboot Operation Cheer Chrétien Up, after all.
“I shall, of course, be most anxious to consult you as to the best markets when it comes time to stock my own kitchen,” says Sir Walter.
“Sir Walter is staying for awhile,” Ma tells me. “He’s never seen Yosemite.”
“Really?” I ask. I mean, I know people exist who haven’t seen Yosemite. But I would have thought Sir Walter might have managed it once in his six centuries.
“He’ll be staying in the Oak Street rental,” Ma tells me.
“He will?” I ask.
Sir Walter smiles. “Your dear mother insisted.”
“We owe him both our lives,” she says quietly. “The least I can do is offer him a place to stay.”
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