“Oh, is he the one who got Marc the job too? Maybe he’s the real thief, and Marc’s just working for him!”
I lost my temper again. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry Anjali doesn’t like you. I’m sorry she likes Marc instead. I’m sorry he’s tall and handsome and popular and a fantastic athlete, and I’m sorry you’re not. But why do you have to be a jerk about it? It’s not like I’m all that pretty or popular either, and you don’t see me taking it out on Anjali, do you? I’m nice to people. Why can’t you just be nice?”
“Nice!” he said. He made it sound like a curse. “You, nice—not pretty but nice? You don’t know the first thing about yourself. You think it’s nice to make me like you and trust you, over and over again, and then every time you turn out to be lying and covering for that—that liar? You think it’s nice to break Doc’s trust and help people ruin the one true place of magic we know? Is your teacher behind it? Is that who you’re working for?”
“I’m not working for anybody!” I protested. “I want to catch the thief. That’s what Anjali wants too. So does Marc. So does Mr. Mauskopf, I’m sure.”
Aaron snorted. “We’ll see about that.” He turned to the painting. “Masterpiece beyond belief, show the Grimm Collection thief.”
I didn’t think it would work. Otherwise, Dr. Rust could have just asked the painting who was stealing the objects weeks ago. Sure enough, the painting had a mind of its own. The shapes flowed and the murk paled into a brightly lit art gallery crowded with people. They clustered around gesturing at paintings or stood in groups with their mouths moving, nodding and sipping from glasses. There were dozens of them. If the thief was there, it was impossible to tell who he or she was—the room was too crowded to see most of the faces.
“Oh, that’s helpful!” said Aaron.
“It is, actually,” I pointed out. “Marc and Anjali aren’t there. We just saw them hooking up in the hallway.”
“So maybe Marc’s not the actual thief. Maybe he’s just working with him.”
“Can’t you ever admit you’re wrong? Maybe instead of accusing our friends, we should try to figure out who the crooks really are.”
But the painting gave us no clue, so after watching people mill around and sip wine for a while, Aaron told it to shut down. He waited while I texted Anjali that I’d gone home and put the scattered papers back on the desks.
“Look,” he said when I was done. “I . . . I’m sorry I said all that. I have my suspicions about Marc, but I don’t actually think you . . . you and Anjali, you’re just so . . .”
“That’s okay,” I said quickly, before he could say something terrible and make me lose my temper again. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have said all those things either. I don’t actually . . . I don’t really believe those things about you.”
“Peace, then?” Aaron held out his hand. “Or,” he said wryly, “maybe I should say World Peace?”
“Peace,” I agreed.
We put on our coats, turned out the light, and locked the door behind us. Aaron followed me as I followed the exit signs out. They took us to the back door behind the cafeteria, but at least we weren’t stuck wandering endlessly around the building.
“See you next week,” he said as the big school door swung shut behind us.
“Wait—would you mind—can you walk me to the subway?” I asked. With my lost sense of direction I was afraid it would take me all night to get home on my own.
Aaron looked surprised, but he didn’t object, even when I took his arm.
He didn’t say much on the way to the subway station. He watched me go down the stairs; I saw him still standing at the top until the wall blocked my view.
There was a message from Anjali waiting in my voice mail when I got off the train. I listened to it as I turned toward my building (after walking half a block in the wrong direction first). Sorry! I didn’t mean to ditch you. Marc and I just got a little . . . caught up in stuff, and then when we got to the library, I guess you’d gone home. I hope you’re not mad! Wasn’t that a great game? I like your friends. Thank you SOOOOO much for inviting me, I really owe you. Well, see you next week.
That night I dreamed about the scene in the painting, the scene with the kiss. The dream had the same sickening intensity as the shifting picture, the same over-intimate embarrassment when the kiss moved from mouth to neck, and even the same sense of dissolution when the image blurred into darkness. Only instead of Marc, the guy in the dream was Aaron.
And even more disturbing, instead of Anjali, the girl was me.
Chapter 17:
Anjali vanishes
When I got to work at the repository the next morning, I went to Doc’s office to return the mermaid’s comb.
The door was open. I knocked on the door frame and stuck my head in.
“Hello, Elizabeth. Come in, come in—what can I do for you?”
“I brought that comb back, from the GC.”
“Oh, good. I hope everything went well? Now, where did I put the kuduo?” Doc rummaged around and found it in the corner of the room behind a rather sad-looking ficus tree. “Let’s see—what was your deposit again? Your sense of humor?”
“No, direction.”
“Yes, of course.” Doc lifted the kuduo lid, and I got the comb out of my bag.
As soon as I touched it, I knew something was wrong. It felt different. I lifted it to my nose and sniffed. A faint smell of scalp but nothing else. No magic. Just a comb.
“What’s the matter, Elizabeth?”
“I don’t know. The comb’s weird. I mean, it’s not weird. It smells wrong.”
“Let me take a look.”
I handed it to Doc, who sniffed it, held it to first one ear and then the other, plucked each tooth, and finally, shockingly, delicately licked the back.
I watched Doc’s freckles. They seemed to be moving faster than usual. A butterfly shape floated by quickly, followed by a triangle.
I waited anxiously.
“Are you sure this is the right comb?” said Doc at last.
“Yes. I’ve had it in my bag the whole time, except when I was using it.” I had a sick, sinking feeling.
“This doesn’t look good. Well, we’ll see what happens.” Doc fished around in the kuduo and pulled out my sense of direction, which swirled alarmingly, shuffling its angles.
“All right,” said Doc, lifting it. It glittered. “Hold out your hands. Faceup, that’s right. The loan returned, the debt is quit. Seek then the heart wherein you fit.”
My sense of direction fell clattering from Doc’s hands into mine. It sat there. I felt it jitter and tingle. It felt wrong, wrong, wrong.
“Well? How do I get it back inside me?”
“I don’t understand—it should already have . . . Wait, you’re not by any chance wearing one of young Miss Rao’s charms again?”
“Yes!” I said with relief. “Could that be it? Should I take it off?”
“Let me take a look.”
“It’s on my foot.” Clutching the sense of direction, which was hard to hold and put me off balance, I held out my ankle.
Doc bent over my foot and inspected the string carefully, twirling it. “Lovely work, but no—this wouldn’t stop you from reenveloping what’s rightfully yours. I’m sorry, Elizabeth. This looks very, very bad. I’m afraid you’re a victim of whoever’s been messing with the Grimm Collection objects.”
“Oh, no! What do you mean?”
“There’s something the matter with that comb—whether it’s a different one or someone’s damaged it somehow and drained the magic, I don’t know. But the vow specifies that the object must be returned ‘potent, uncorrupt, and whole,’ which this comb clearly isn’t.”
“But I didn’t do anything to it, I swear!”
“I believe you. Unfortunately, the vow doesn’t care who damaged it, only whether it’s damaged.”
“So what happens? I don’t get my sense of direction back?”
“I’m afraid not—at least, not now.”
My feelings must have shown on my face, because Doc went on, “I hope we can catch the thief—we’ll try our best. In the meantime I’ll keep your sense of direction safe here. Don’t worry, it’s in good hands. Nobody can take the kuduo out of the repository except its rightful owners. As the Akan proverb says, when a string of beads snaps in the presence of the elders, none are lost.”
“Will I just go on getting lost?” This was a disaster.
“Oh, yes. I’m afraid so.” Doc took my sense of direction out of my hands and carefully poured it into the kuduo. I watched it vanish into darkness.
I checked in with Ms. Callender, who sent me up to work in the Main Exam Room. To my surprise I saw Jaya there, pacing back and forth under the west Tiffany window, the fall scene. Sunlight poured through the glass foliage, turning her hair a dark auburn and giving her skin a reddish cast. She looked like a worried leopard.
She hurried over to me. “Elizabeth! Where’s my sister?”
“I don’t know—I haven’t seen her since last night, at the basketball game. She’s not working here today. Why?”
“She’s gone! She disappeared! The magical monster must have gotten her!”
“What?”
“The monster! The one that’s after you! It got Anjali and it’s all my faaault!” Jaya was starting to wail. The patrons—the usual collection of art students sketching, appraisers making notes in their laptops, and elderly Russians playing chess—looked around at us.
“Shh, Jaya. This is a library; you don’t want to get thrown out. Tell me what happened. Did you see the monster—the gigantic bird?”
She lowered her voice, but not her panic. “No, but if it got Anjali, it’s my fault!”
“How is it your fault?”
“Because I didn’t make her a protection spell.”
“Oh, Jaya! She didn’t let you. Remember?”
“I should have done it anyway. I should have sneaked into her room in the middle of the night and made a protection spell and then the monster wouldn’t have gotten her and now she’s gooooone!” Jaya was wailing in whispers.
I put my arm around her and sat her down on one of the carved wood benches against the wall. “Shh . . . it’s okay, Jaya . . . Don’t cry. It’s okay, we’ll find her. Hey hey hey, Jaya, it’s not your fault. We’ll find your sister.”
I didn’t know if that was true. I hoped so. But how was I going to find Anjali, or anything else, without my sense of direction?
I found a mostly clean tissue in my pocket and gave it to Jaya, who blew her nose loudly. The chess players glanced over at us, then went back to their game.
“Where was the last place you saw her?” The question sounded absurd, even to me—as if Anjali were some toy Jaya had misplaced, a favorite doll.
“This morning at breakfast. She was supposed to help me with my science project. She promised!”
“Maybe she just forgot. Maybe she’s shopping or something.”
“Anjali doesn’t forget things. Anyway, I would know if she was shopping. I’m good at knowing where she is.”
I bet you are, I thought. “And did she say anything before she disappeared?”
“Anything about what?”
“I don’t know. Where she was going? Or anything weird or unusual?”
“No, she complained because I finished the cornflakes. That’s not weird or unusual. The last unusual thing was when you were over before the basketball game, with the missing magic and Benign Designs. Do you think that’s where she went? Benign Designs?”
“Maybe.”
“Where is it? I’m going to go get her back!” Jaya jumped up off the bench, as if she were about to run off right that minute.
“Jaya, wait! We don’t even know for sure if that’s where Anjali went. Or if she’s even missing at all.”
The door opened and Marc hurried over to our bench. “Are you Jaya? Anjali’s little sister?”
Jaya frowned at the word little. “Who are you?”
“I’m Marc. Where’s Anjali? Is she okay? She hasn’t been answering my messages.”
“You’re Marc Merritt? Anjali’s boyfriend? How did you know I was here?” Jaya looked at him with interest.
“Sarah said you were here talking to Elizabeth. Is Anjali okay? Where is she?”
“You’re the basketball star?”
“Yes, yes, yes. Where’s Anjali?”
“I don’t know. I think the monster, or maybe Benign Designs, kidnapped her.”
“No!” He hit his leg with his fist. It looked like it hurt. “I told her not to go there without me!”
“Where? Benign Designs?” I asked.
“She told me last night she thought they took the objects,” he said. “She thinks they replaced them with copies that only work for a few days. She wanted to go investigate. I told her to wait until I could come with her.”
“Oh!” That would explain why the comb stopped working suddenly. “I’ll bet she’s right!”
“Where is it? Where’s Benign Designs? I’m going to go rescue her,” said Jaya.
Marc glanced at her with that carelessly haughty look of his, as if he’d just remembered she was there. “You can’t—you’re only ten.”
I could have told him that was exactly the wrong thing to say. “She’s my sister! You can’t stop me.”
Marc turned and faced her this time. “Anjali would never forgive me if anything happened to you,” he said.
“She’s my sister! I’m coming with you. If you don’t let me come, I’ll go alone.”
“All right, Jaya,” I said. “Go get Anjali’s laptop. Bring it here. We’ll go through it and see if we can figure out where she went. It’ll be safer if we all go together.”
The three of us went to the coffee shop on Lexington and turned on the laptop.
“Here’s the address for Benign Designs, down on Twenty-third Street. I also found the address for the owner—somebody named Wallace Stone. He had it registered under a business name, but Anjali looked up his actual name on a state database.”
“Wallace Stone,” I said. “I’ve heard that name before.”
“Where?” asked Jaya.
I thought about it. “Something about the page that got fired for stealing stuff. I think they said he recommended her.”
“Great! So we’re on the right track, at least,” said Jaya.
“I guess the best thing to do is just to go down to Twenty-third Street and look for him,” Marc said.
“I don’t know—that’s probably what Anjali did, and she’s missing,” I said.
“Got any better ideas?”
“Shouldn’t we ask Doc for help? Or the other librarians, or Mr. Mauskopf ?”
“No! We don’t know who Doc will tell about it, and any one of the librarians could be involved with the thief. They all have access to the Grimm Collection. The fewer people we trust, the better.”
“You think the librarians are involved?” That sounded crazy.
“I don’t know who to trust,” said Marc.
“I think he’s right,” said Jaya. “Anjali disappeared because of the repository. I don’t trust anyone there—except you, of course, because you’re nice, and Marc, because he’s Anjali’s boyfriend.”
But the Twenty-third Street address was a dead end. There was no Benign Designs listed on any of the buzzers, and when we rang them anyway, nobody’d heard of the place—at least, that’s what they said.
“What do we do next?” I asked.
“We go see the owner—Wallace Stone,” said Jaya. “I got his address and phone number. It’s on Otters Alley, downtown. Let me see your ankle.”
“What?”
“The knot. I need to see your knot.”
“Oh.” I stuck out my foot.
“Other foot.”
I stuck out my other foot. She pushed up my jeans leg to look at the knot and nodded. “Good, it’s still there. Here, you make me one.”
She pulled a ball of yarn out of her bag and snapped off a piece with her teeth.
“I don’t know how.”
“That’s okay, I’ll show you. First take both ends in your left hand and wrap the whole yarn—no, your left hand—no, that’s still your right hand—yes, that’s it—now wrap it clockwise—no, clockwise—the other way. Okay, now hold the loop under your left thumb and take the two ends with your right hand and loop the top one around your index finger and the bottom one around your pinkie—no, the bottom one, that’s the top one—”
This went on for a long time. I wondered whether tying knots would be easier if I had a sense of direction. The cold made my fingers extra clumsy, and people walking past us on Twenty-third Street gave us little amused glances.
“Do we have time for this?” asked Marc. “What are you doing, anyway?”
“Making a knot of protection,” said Jaya. “It’s very important. It keeps you safe from magic attacks. No, Elizabeth, the other way. You have it backward.”
Eventually I produced a lump that seemed to connect the two ends. “Now the rhyme—repeat after me,” said Jaya. “By this charm, be safe from harm.”
“By this charm, be safe from harm,” I repeated, pulling the knot tight. “Okay?”
Jaya tugged at it dubiously. It slipped a little, but it didn’t come untied. “I hope so,” she said. “Your turn, Marc.”
“Jaya,” he said, “that yarn’s pink.”
“Oh. You’re right. Well, I didn’t bring any other color.” She snapped off a length with her teeth again, pulled his arm toward her, and began weaving the knot.
Marc crinkled his forehead, but he didn’t stop her. I guess Andre gave him plenty of practice indulging little siblings. “You better take Jaya home while I go downtown and deal with this Wallace Stone,” he told me.
“If you try, I’ll scream and say you kidnapped me,” Jaya said. “They’ll believe me too—I don’t look a thing like you. You have to take me with you.”
“Maybe we can find an ogre who’d like to eat her,” said Marc.
“Maybe that’s what Wallace Stone is,” I answered.
The Grimm Legacy Page 17
