A Study In Shifters

by Majanka Verstraete

  Before I could move, Wyatt grabbed my arm. “This could be dangerous. We should notify security, let them handle this. What if the person hiding here is the same person who killed Elise Felton?”

  I yanked my arm out of his grip. “You go notify security. It’s a good idea. I’ll look for the intruder, make sure he can’t get away.” I stalked off.

  “Marisol!” Wyatt yelled. He grumbled something about “predators always looking to put themselves in danger” but didn’t leave to notify security—instead, he followed me.

  I raced to the back of the library, looking behind every bookcase and under every desk to spot the intruder. A wall loomed up in front of me, signaling I’d reached the end of the library, an impenetrable wall without noticeable exit.

  “That’s not possible,” Wyatt said from next to me. “He can’t just have disappeared.”

  I knocked on the wall to see if it was hollow. It wasn’t. Next, I searched the wall with my hands, looking for some kind of trapdoor. Waynard Academy was several centuries old, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find a secret room here, but I didn’t find any lever or trapdoor mechanism.

  After looking for a good fifteen minutes, I was ready to give up. “We’re not going to find the exit here. Either it’s hidden too well or it’s not here but somewhere else, in one of the bookcases, under a desk, you name it. It could be anywhere, and the perpetrator is long gone now.”

  “Maybe you heard footsteps from the hallway,” Wyatt offered, “and thought they came from in here. Noise is a little crazy sometimes in places as ancient as this one.”

  I didn’t argue, although I was positive the noise I’d heard had come from the library, not the hallway.

  “Let’s head back to our dorms,” Wyatt suggested. I didn’t protest, but instead followed him to the library exit, the heavy wooden doors he’d been in the process of locking up fifteen minutes ago.

  Something was hanging on the door. I spotted it right away, but Wyatt didn’t comment on it until his nose was almost pressed against the door.

  “What is that?”

  I yanked the piece of paper off the door. “It’s a note.” Squinting to read the almost unreadable handwriting obviously written in a hurry, I could make out several numbers scribbled on the paper.

  “It’s a numeric code,” I told Wyatt.

  “I think we should go and take this up with security, Marisol,” my otter shifter friend said. “This is beyond weird. Someone leaving cryptic codes on library doors two days after a murder. I don’t trust it.”

  “I thought you loved mystery novels.” I held up the code in the light. The first three digits were 821.

  “I do, but—”

  “Congratulations. You’re in one. Is this library classified using the Dewey decimal classification?”

  “Uhm…” Wyatt paused for a second, racking his brain. “Yes, it is.”

  “Good, because I think this is a Dewey decimal code. It starts with 821. That’s English poetry, if I’m correct. Where does the library keep English poetry?”

  “Over here.” Wyatt beckoned me to follow him, and I did.

  Wyatt brought us to a shelf of works matching that Dewey decimal code. It was a long bookcase filled with English poetry.

  “Next numbers are 2, 12, and 1.”

  “But the Dewey code doesn’t add more numbers,” Wyatt said. “Are you sure it’s not some Library of Congress number or something?”

  “Not enough digits,” I said. “No, these numbers…” I considered them for a moment. “They’re referring to the alphabet. 1 is A. 2 is B. So, we’ve got… BLA.”

  “BLA? We’re looking for an author with BLA as the first three…” Wyatt turned to me. “Blake. William Blake.”

  I’d already reached the same conclusion, but I was impressed he’d figured that one out, too. “Yes, probably Blake. The next number is 1794. Probably the date of the first publication of the edition, so that matches with Blake’s writing.”

  Wyatt browsed the shelves for Blake and took out all the Blake books he could find.

  “Songs of Innocence and Experience,” I said just as Wyatt said the same. He smiled sheepishly at me and held up the book. It had first published in 1794 written on the side.

  “This book includes his famous poem, ‘The Tyger,’” I mused. Somehow that didn’t seem like a coincidence to me. If you put it a bit crudely, you could use “tyger” to refer to both my species, jaguars, and Elise Felton’s species, leopards.

  My jaguar huffed at the thought of being lumped in with the other big cats.

  “Any more codes? Like a number you should look for?” Wyatt asked.

  “No, but…” I took the book from him and shook it. Something rattled inside. I opened the book and nearly dropped it when I saw what was inside.

  “Holy Lord…” Wyatt gasped in awe as we both stared at the contents of the book.

  The pages were cut out to create a hiding spot for a cylindrical object. I wriggled my fingers inside the opening to grab the object hidden inside.

  “What is that?” Wyatt asked in awe.

  I got the cylinder out and went slack-jawed. “I’ve only read about these. Never seen one for real, though.”

  “Hello, genius. Not so genius here. So, care to enlighten me as to what it is?”

  “Oh, sorry.” I bowed my head. My palms were sweaty, and my pulse pounded. “It’s a wheel cypher, or the Jefferson disk—whatever you want to call it. I think it’s also referred to as a Bazeries Cylinder.”

  The cylinder was a cypher system using a set of wheels, each with the twenty-six letters of the alphabet arranged around their edge. The order of the letters was different for each disk and usually scrambled up to make it harder to guess the code. A hole in the center of the disk allowed them to be stacked on an axle. The disks could be removed and restacked, but I had no intention of doing that, considering the order of the disks was the cypher key.

  Thirty-six disks, I counted, which matched the Jefferson’s device number, if I remembered correctly.

  “How does it work?” Wyatt asked. “It reminds me of spies in the Victorian era or something.”

  “The disks are placed on the axle in a certain order,” I explained, showing it to him. “Whoever sent it rotated each disk up and down to spell out a message in one row. Then, the sender can copy down any row of text on the disks, other than the one with the plaintext message. The person receiving the message simply has to arrange the disks in the right order, rotate them so they spell out the encrypted message on one row, and then look at the other rows until the plaintext message pops up.”

  “Yeah, I’m not entirely catching on,” Wyatt said. “So, you rotate the disks to produce plaintext in one row and then copy another row and give that code to someone else so they can decrypt the message?”

  “Yes, that’s it,” I said. “The first row, the one you can read, is called plaintext, and the other, the encoded one, the cyphertext.” I held up the device, still staring at it in amazement. I’d never expected to see one for real. “So, for example if I wanted to spell out the message Wyatt is an otter, then I would put that on one of the rows. Then I’d copy the row above it, or several rows below it, any other row of gibberish text, and give that message to you.”

  “I think I understand,” Wyatt said. “Then I rotate the disks until I get the same gibberish text on one line, and then look through the other rows to find a message that makes sense.”

  “Correct.” I smiled at him proudly—I felt like a teacher educating a student, and Wyatt was smart enough to catch on quickly. “Did you know this was first created by Thomas Jefferson? Well, the name probably gave it away. It didn’t really become widely known, although it was pretty amazing. A century later, Commandant Etienne Bazeries, Conqueror of the Great Cipher, invented the same mechanism independently.”

  Wyatt shook his head at me. “Where do you get all these facts? Indra was right, you know. You’re like a walking encyclopedia.”

  “I
just like puzzles.” I was glad Wyatt was focused on the cipher rather than my face, because my cheeks were flustered from his comment earlier. I didn’t want to be a walking encyclopedia. In principle, it sounded like a good thing, but the way Wyatt and Indra said it made it sound like it wasn’t such a good thing after all.

  “What do we do with it? Can we decode it?”

  I looked at the various rows of the cypher, looking for a possible plaintext message, but it was all nonsense. “Looks to be all gibberish to me. I think we need the ciphertext to be able to decode it.”

  “Maybe it’s somewhere else inside the book?”

  “Good idea.” I sat down on the floor, holding Songs of Experience on my lap, and started browsing through the book. Wyatt sat down next to me and looked over my shoulder as I turned the pages with the cut-out hole for where the cipher had been, cutting up all the poems.

  I reached the poem “The Tyger.” It had been one of my favorites back when I’d first read Blake. The poem was entirely printed to the left side of the page and was, so far, the only poem unharmed by the hidden spot created for the cipher.

  “I think this poem is the key. If the clue is anything from this book, it’s this one.”

  “Why?” Wyatt asked. “Just because it’s not ruined?”

  “More so, it looks like someone purposefully cut around the text. Besides, I have a feeling it is. Call it intuition.” I usually didn’t like to rely on intuition, but in this case, I knew I was right. But how could I use the poem to break the cipher?

  “All right, then how do we know what message to put on the cipher?” Wyatt asked. “’The Tyger’ poem has twenty-four lines. I thought maybe taking the first letter of each line, but then we’re twelve letters short.”

  “It wouldn’t be as simple as that.” As I said that out loud, the wires in the back of my brain started asking why. Why did I know it wouldn’t be that simple? Why had someone left such a challenging puzzle? And what, if anything, did it have to do with Elise Felton’s murder?

  Because it seemed, although such a thing sounded preposterous… It seemed almost like this puzzle was made for me.

  My jaguar got up suddenly and snarled at me, a warning. Something wasn’t right.

  But I couldn’t focus on that now. I couldn’t let my animal’s instincts get in the way. If I did, I would start to doubt myself again, and we were nearly there.

  I slipped back into Sherlock Mode, pushing the doubts away, pushing my jaguar away. “Six stanzas long, each stanza four lines.” I analyzed the poem. “Most of the lines are trochaic tetrameter catalectic, but a few are iambic tetrameter.”

  Wyatt narrowed his eyes at me. “English, please? I don’t understand an iota of what you’re saying.”

  “It’s the metrical pattern used in the poem,” I explained. “But it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t help us to get to thirty-six. The only way…”

  I leaned forward, putting my nose as close as possible to the book, and inhaled deeply, letting the scent wash all over me.

  “What are you doing?” Wyatt asked.

  When I pulled back, I smiled at him, feeling more excited than I had in weeks, maybe months.

  “Invisible ink.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Turn on one of the lamps,” I told Wyatt. “It needs to heat up a little.”

  “I’m not following at all.” Despite his protests, Wyatt did as I asked him to.

  Once he clicked one of the table lamps on, a soft glow illuminated the surrounding area. I took off the hat of the lamp, revealing the lightbulb.

  While I waited for the lamp to heat up, I explained. “Smell the paper.” Holding out the book for him, I waited so he could smell it.

  My jaguar whined impatiently.

  “Smells like lemonade.” He pulled back, his nose scrunched up, confusion written all over his face.

  “Excellent!” I smiled proudly at him. “It smells like lemonade because it has a secret message written on it in lemon juice. Lemon juice is one of the easiest ways to write secret messages. You add some lemon juice, about fifteen milliliters to a cup, soak something like a cotton swab in it, and then write a message down. As long as the message is wet, you’ll be able to read it, but once the message dries up, it becomes invisible.”

  “How do you know all this? Are you a spy or something?” Wyatt sounded like he was only half joking.

  “Uhm… I used to pretend I was when I was a kid,” I said quickly. “Besides, this is basic science. Anyway, after the message becomes invisible, when you want to read it, you need to hold it above a heat source. A hot burner on a stove is preferred or even a lighter, but since neither are available, the lightbulb will do.”

  “So, now we wait?” Wyatt asked.

  “Yes. I can explain the scientific reasoning behind the lemon juice message while we do, though, if you want.”

  Wyatt scratched his head. “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Well, it’s simple.” I realized I was rattling on, getting too hyped up about this, but once I started I couldn’t stop. This was what puzzles did to me, what mysteries did to me, and this murder case had suddenly become a lot more interesting.

  “When writing with the lemon juice, the carbon-based compounds in the juice get absorbed into the paper’s fibers. Lemon juice is a weak acid, so it softens the fibers in the paper. The heat causes the chemical bonds to break down in the dried juice and will cut loose some carbon. Once carbon comes into contact with air, it either burns or oxidizes. One effect of oxidation is that things turn a darker color, thus turning the message visible.”

  “Okay, I understood about half of that,” Wyatt said. “So, in short, hold a secret message above a lightbulb, and you can read it. That part I understood. Is the bulb hot enough yet?”

  I held my hand above the lightbulb, feeling the heat soak into my skin. “Yep, seems like it.”

  Wyatt held the book upside down over the lightbulb, with “The Tyger” poem dangling right above it while I held the cipher. About a minute passed while we waited in silence. Then, I bent my knees and held my head underneath the book, looking up to read the page. Slowly, circles became visible around some of the letters of the poem.

  About a minute and a half into the experiment, the lightbulb had heated the page enough to show thirty-six circles—some of them only half formed because they weren’t warm enough yet. “Okay, the message is showing,” I said.

  Wyatt turned the book back around with the pages up and moved away from the lightbulb. I put the hood of the lamp back on and then peered over his shoulder at the page.

  “Thirty-six letters, one for each row of the cipher. These letters will probably be the gibberish text, but then we should be able to read the plaintext message,” I explained. “Okay, you read the letters. I’ll add them to the cipher,” I said. “Let’s grab some chairs.”

  Without comment, Wyatt followed me to one of the desks. He put the book in front of him, and I put the cipher in front of me.

  “T.” He started with the first encircled letter. I moved the first disk of the wheel cypher around until it said T.

  “B.”

  We sat there for about ten minutes as Wyatt dictated and I turned the wheels. Then finally, thirty-six letters later, we’d completed the code on the cipher. Somewhere in the distance, a clock struck eleven o’clock.

  “We’re long past curfew,” Wyatt complained. “We should really head to bed.” He fidgeted with his sleeves, looking nervous.

  “And not read our secret message first? Yeah, right.” I waved his concern away. “You’ll have to drag me to my room kicking and screaming if you don’t let me find this message first.”

  He didn’t protest, so I looked through the disks, trying to find a plaintext message instead of the random gibberish message we’d just inserted into the cipher by using the letters from the poem. After checking six lines, I found it. I’d almost looked over it—the plaintext had Latin words in it that at first glance looked like nonsense. Only
when I read the entire line did I realize I’d found the correct one.

  I stared at the message for a second, blinking a few times to make sure I hadn’t read it wrong.

  “What does it say?” Wyatt asked.

  I licked my lips and focused on the cypher instead of him while I said it out loud.

  “Try Calliophis Bivirgata. Let’s play, Holmes.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  For a long time, both Wyatt and I stared at the cipher and the message it spelled out, neither of us speaking.

  Then, Wyatt cleared his throat. “Umm…Marisol…why is that message directed at you?”

  “I don’t know.” Although I had an idea. But, that idea… It just couldn’t be true. He couldn’t be here. Mannix couldn’t be here.

  Even if him being here was impossible, though, I knew no one else who would play mind games like this. No one else who would leave notes with secret codes and ciphers you had to solve by reading invisible ink in the poem “The Tyger” by William Blake. A poem he’d read to me once, on a night that seemed to exist in a different lifetime…

  My throat became as dry as sandpaper, and everything inside me hurt. I’d only realized Mannix’s betrayal when it was too late, when he was towering above my cousin, ready to kill her, ready to rip her heart out because he needed it to complete a twisted ritual. Because he valued power more than he valued my cousin’s life, and more than he valued me or the way I felt about him.

  When I knew he’d betrayed me, that he’d used me for his own gain—the way I was nothing but a pawn to him—I’d tried to lock up all the embarrassment and sadness I felt, all the hurt, in my mind palace. I’d locked it behind steel doors, but no matter how hard I tried to keep those doors locked, they always burst open again.

  Part of me felt broken because of what he’d done, of what I’d let him do. I’d stood there, frozen to the ground, while the man I had loved had killed my cousin. I hadn’t even been able to move, to save her. The guilt over that still haunted me, a silent phantom forever lingering over my shoulder.