The Clockwork Ghost

by Laura Ruby

  Again, he turned the page. This time, he drew more thoughtfully and intentionally. The superhero he kept drawing over and over. Dark and beautiful, dense, curly hair piled loosely on her head, she wore nothing flashy—no armor or unitards or masks. Just a plain gray coat that fell nearly to her ankles, a cane in her hand.

  She looked a little like his mother. And yet she also looked like herself, whoever she was.

  “Who is that?” Tess asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Jaime said.

  Tess tapped the coat. “Reminds me a little of Ada’s dress. Plain like that.”

  “Without the hearts,” Jaime said.

  “She doesn’t need hearts?”

  “She doesn’t need to wear them on her clothes.”

  On a whim, probably because Tess was watching, Jaime drew a companion for the woman. A large cat. Sleek and black, like a panther, with a long tail. She—and he knew the cat was a she—had a brazen expression on her feline face. Just try to catch me, the expression said.

  Tess reached under the mirrored glasses and wiped at her eye.

  “I’m sorry,” Jaime said. “I didn’t mean to make you upset.”

  “No, no. I love it,” Tess said. “It’s just . . .”

  “I know.” He did.

  Tess readjusted the mirrored glasses. “Nine will be home when we get back.”

  “I bet she will.”

  A ghost of a smile touched Tess’s mouth, and then she turned from him, staring out the bus window again.

  Jaime added more stray curls around the woman’s face and a sideways sweep to the coat, as if a strong wind were blowing, as if something were coming. One eyebrow was quirked. Dark eyes glinted. She stared right at him. Challenging him.

  Why should he make himself smaller?

  He pulled himself up in the seat, sat straight and tall the rest of the way.

  Back at Aunt Esther’s, Tess ran around the house calling Nine’s name. She knocked on the neighbors’ doors and asked if they’d seen the spotted cat with striped ears. They hadn’t. She called her father at work and asked if there was any news about Nine, and then she called her mother. Her mother said that somehow Nine had escaped her cage, but they had no idea how she could have gotten out of the building, or where she’d gotten to. Someone was sure to see her and report it, however, because the video was still all over the news. She was sure Nine would show up. Tess just had to be patient.

  Tess hung up Aunt Esther’s ancient wall phone, a yellow plastic thing with a long curly cord, but she kept her hand on it, as if hoping it would ring again, and someone would be on the other end with different news.

  “Tess,” said Aunt Esther, “why don’t you all take those coveralls off and throw them in the wash. I’ll answer the phone if it rings.”

  They peeled off the coveralls and put them in the washing machine as Aunt Esther suggested, and then took Ono and the stolen ledger upstairs to the twins’ room. They set it on the floor between them to examine it more carefully. Jaime let Ono roam around the room as they tried to make sense of the endless columns of numbers. “Oh no oh no oh no oh no,” the robot whispered softly to itself, as it bumped into walls and dressers and bed frames.

  “So,” said Jaime, “we’ve got lots of lists of purchases. Feed for farm animals and food for the household. But I’m not seeing a pattern.”

  “Nothing jumps out,” Theo said. “But it could be hidden the way all the other ciphers have been hidden. Invisible ink, or maybe there’s an address on every third page or—”

  Tess cut him off. “Or every fifth page or maybe there’s something hidden in the binding or glued to one of the pages.”

  “Yes, but I think if—”

  “Or maybe if you take the first figure of every page and add them or multiply them or divide them, you get a number of a house somewhere in Brooklyn or the East Village or something.”

  “I—”

  “Or maybe we went to the wrong house and stole the wrong book. Maybe we were never meant to follow the robot at all. Maybe it’s a decoy built by the Morningstarrs’ greatest nemesis.”

  Theo pulled his lip. “Who was the Morningstarrs’ greatest nemesis?”

  “Take your pick. Charles Dickens. Charles Babbage. Any Charles. All the Charleses.”

  “Why would all the Charleses—”

  Jaime put a hand on Theo’s arm to stop him, to save him from pitching himself into Tess’s endless questions, her endless possibilities. “The puzzles are always hard at first,” Jaime said to Tess. “But we’ve figured them out so far. And didn’t you say that the Cipher is figuring us out, too? That maybe it wants us to understand it?”

  Tess got to her feet and moved to the window. She hooked a finger around the curtain and peeked out at the postage-stamp-sized backyard. “That was before.”

  Theo stopped pulling on his lip. “The Cipher didn’t take Nine. For all we know, solving the Cipher has nothing to do with Nine.”

  “Her name was a clue!” Tess said. “And why else would anyone lie about her? Why would someone say she was a machine and not a real animal? The Morningstarrs designed all the machines. And they also created the Cipher. What if someone has figured out what we’re doing? What if that someone wants to stop us from solving the puzzle?”

  Jaime said, “Are we going to let them?”

  Tess pinned him with dark, angry eyes. “And weren’t you the one who said that we should lie low for a while?”

  “Yes,” Jaime said. “That was before.”

  “Before what?”

  Before they made me feel small. “Before they took Nine.”

  The little robot marched into the open closet and tipped headfirst into a sneaker. “Oh no,” it said.

  “‘Oh no’ is right,” said Tess. The anger in Tess’s face dulled and she let the curtain drop. She sat back on the floor.

  “Okay. So let’s look at this thing one page at a time. Theo, where’s your magnifying glass?”

  They spent hours scouring the pages of the ledger, examining the binding, looking for hidden ciphers and patterns in the rows of figures. They read mind-numbing numbers of grocery purchases for the household—flour, molasses, sugar, brandy, provisions of pork and beef. Salaries for gardeners and smiths. They combed through lists of construction costs: masonry, wood, wages, dwellings for apprentices and servants. They found payments for shoes for Young Bob, Old Bob, and Wiley Dan, and imagined a comic book based on all three.

  But it was fruitless.

  Jaime took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I can’t see anymore. Take this up again tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” Tess and Theo agreed.

  “Mind if I take Ono with me? I’ve kind of gotten attached.”

  They all looked at the robot, which had been trying to communicate with the stuffed teddy bear in the corner for at least ten minutes. “To the Land of Kings,” it said to the bear. “Kings. KINGS.”

  “Come on, Ono,” Jaime said. “We’re going to take a ride on the Underway.”

  “To the Land of Kings?”

  “To the Land of Broboken. You’ll love it,” Jaime said.

  “Oh no,” said the robot.

  He said good-bye to the twins and to Aunt Esther, said he hoped that Nine would return by the morning. Then, he and Ono walked to the Underway station and boarded the train bound for Manhattan. He held the little robot close and murmured, “If I let your head peek out of my pocket, will you promise to be quiet?”

  In a tiny voice, Ono whispered, “Land of Kings.”

  “Good,” said Jaime.

  Ono didn’t say another word for the whole trip. Not on the first train, not on the walk to catch the next. And Ono didn’t say anything when they finally reached Hoboken, though the robot did beep irritably when they were almost mowed down by a clutch of suited young bros who apparently didn’t see Jaime at all, or maybe expected him to step aside.

  “Watch where you’re going,” said one of the bros, a shiny-faced, sa
llow young man in a too-tight suit.

  “Watch that your pants don’t split when you sit,” said Jaime.

  “What?” the bro shouted. But Jaime didn’t turn around, kept walking, straight and tall. Maybe Ono was some kind of magical Transformer, and would turn into a monster truck or a rocket launcher with a face if the bro dared to challenge Jaime further. Jaime really didn’t think so, but the thought was funny enough to be comforting.

  His good mood lasted only till he reached the lobby of his building, because Cricket was standing there, talking to the security guard, with an expression he had never before seen on her face. If he didn’t know better, he would have said it was fear.

  “Cricket? What is it?” Jaime said. “What’s wrong?”

  Cricket managed to choke out one word: “Karl.”

  Then Cricket—fierce, determined, opinionated, impossible-to-break Cricket—burst into tears.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Duke

  Duke Goodson drummed his fingers on the armrest as his limo inched through Harlem’s late-afternoon traffic. He’d already berated his driver for not taking 278, but apparently the woman needed another thrashing.

  He rapped on the glass.

  “Yes, sir?” said Candi, the driver.

  “This traffic is a nightmare. Why are we on Seventh Avenue?”

  “Because 278 is worse, sir.”

  “No, it certainly isn’t. I told you to take 278. I expect when I tell you to take 278 that you’ll take 278.”

  Candi’s expression in the mirror didn’t change. “You suggested I take 278. But 278 is worse. So I took Seventh.”

  “My suggestions aren’t suggestions.”

  “I’ll remember that, sir.”

  “Don’t be cheeky.”

  “I’m never cheeky, sir.”

  “You are always cheeky, Candi. One day I’m going to have you sent somewhere terrible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When I say terrible, I mean terrible. I mean hard labor. I mean surface of the moon conditions. I mean bread and water minus the bread.”

  “Anything to get out of New York City traffic, sir.”

  See? Cheeky.

  But Candi could get away with it because she was the best driver Duke had, and knew all five boroughs and most of the Eastern Seaboard like she knew the back of her own hand. Plus she was as discreet as a Swiss banker and had black belts in mysterious fighting disciplines she wouldn’t discuss.

  Not many drivers like Candi. And, irritatingly, Candi knew it.

  Duke soothed his nerves by checking out the neighborhood. Harlem was bustling, packed with people. They passed an old-fashioned-looking barber shop, restaurants, brownstones. Lots of nice property here. Might be a useful investment. Clear out the old, bring in the new, and then charge the new five thousand dollars a month for a one-bedroom apartment. Close down the chicken place that’s been there for who-knows-how-long and open up a fancy cheese shop instead. Or an artisanal salt store. A café where they grind coffee beans imported from Hawaii and Jamaica and Vietnam. Duke had heard the most expensive coffee in the world was weasel coffee—coffee beans eaten by civets and then collected from their scat. Poop coffee. You could charge anywhere from $35 to $100 for one cup of that coffee. Duke was sure that the rich bozos from the Upper East Side would risk New York City traffic to get it just to say they’d gotten it.

  Rich bozos were Duke’s favorite kind of people.

  Candi turned onto 158th Street and the traffic eased. Candi didn’t say “I told you so,” didn’t even flick her eyes to the mirror. She didn’t have to. She wouldn’t have a job working for Duke Goodson if she pulled that cheeky garbage and then didn’t get Duke where he needed to be. But it looked as if they would be early. Duke hoped the doctor wouldn’t mind. Not that he cared about how the doctor felt. It was just that people were so much easier to handle when they weren’t cranky.

  Except the doctor was bound to be cranky when he heard what Duke had to report.

  Oh, well. If things got out of hand, Duke could always try out his new favorite toy, the fizz gun. He’d been itching for an opportunity to test it.

  And if it didn’t work, he’d let Candi handle it.

  Candi guided the limo into the Bronx Ecological Park. Not the front entrance, the back entrance, for employees only. They parked right next to the farthest structure—the research building. She got out of the car and opened the door for Duke.

  “Here you are, sir,” said Candi.

  “I can see that for myself.”

  “Of course you can, sir.”

  Duke waved Candi away. “Go to the snack bar and get yourself a smoothie or whatever it is you eat. I might be a while.”

  “I do love smoothies, sir.”

  “Stop that.”

  “What, sir?”

  Duke made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat and went to the door. He punched in some numbers on the keypad, a temporary access code he’d been granted for today’s meeting. He entered the cold, white building that smelled vaguely of lemons, dog kibble, and compost heap. He swept past groups of people wearing lab coats. They peered at him curiously, but he didn’t bother to glare at them. He was in too much of a hurry. He’d decided that being a little early, rather than a disadvantage, was an advantage. He could see what the doctor was up to, if he was doing any experiments on the side, so to speak, instead of the ones he’d described.

  But when Duke reached the second to last lab on the left, and burst through the door, he didn’t find anything remotely interesting. The doctor, who was peering into a microscope, simply said, “You’re early.”

  “Only a few minutes.”

  “Twenty-three minutes, to be exact.”

  A fussy one. Duke couldn’t stand the fussy ones. Always scrubbing out fingerprints on the countertops. Complaining about every line of the contract. Probably had an obsession with fonts, for Pete’s sake. Duke made a mental note to use Comic Sans for all future communications. Just to irk the man.

  Right now, though, Duke was the only one irked. “What are you looking at?”

  “A skin cell from a cuttlefish.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “Quite,” said the doctor. “I’m thinking of introducing the cells of this mollusk into rats.”

  “Why rats?”

  “Why not rats?”

  Duke didn’t have an answer to this question, except to say, “Who wants a cuttle-rat?”

  Finally the man straightened and looked directly at Duke. Not many people were brave enough to look directly at Duke, especially not skinny doctors with bulbous, greenish-brown eyes the color of pond scum. You’d think a doctor would want to do something about those eyes. They seemed to be about to fall out of his head.

  He looked like a newt.

  The doctor said, “I’m not making pets here, Mr. Goodson. No one will be custom-ordering a cuttle-rat.”

  “Call me Duke,” said Duke, with a flash of his white teeth. He would refer to the doctor as “Dr. Newt” to anyone who asked.

  “I’m researching the properties and features of certain animals, and whether those properties and features can be successfully transferred to other species while maintaining the health of the test animal. In this case, I want to see if rats can manifest the ability to change the color of their fur the way a cuttlefish can change the color of its skin.”

  “How would that work?” Duke said. “Fur is dead and skin is—”

  “I don’t have the time to explain the science, Mr. Goodson.” The doctor looked at his watch. “And I don’t see the specimen I was promised.”

  The gall of the little salamander, to interrupt Duke Goodson, the fixer’s fixer, as if he were a nobody. Duke was tempted to fizz the man and leave him on the floor to be eaten by his cuttle-rats. But Slant wanted to work with the doctor, and it was Duke’s job to arrange such things, no matter how irritating a job it was. And he’d had a lot practice working with cold-blooded creatures. Possibly more practice than
the doctor himself.

  So Duke took a long, slow stroll around the lab. Small cages lined the periphery and he took his time scrutinizing each one. There was a guinea pig with a strange, long-furred tail rather like a monkey’s. A snake with a dozen tiny pink feet. The smallest mice that Duke had ever seen that flew around their cage on bright blue butterfly wings. And then, there was a cage full of rabbits that looked perfectly normal.

  “What’s with the rabbits?” he asked. “They don’t look any different to me.”

  The doctor sighed a dramatic, overlong sigh and marched over to the wall. He flipped off the light. The bunnies that had appeared normal glowed green in the dark. “I injected a naturally glowing jellyfish protein in the embryos of rabbits. Now they glow.”

  “That’s quite—”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing. Or rather, it’s something that impresses investors but nothing more than that. Not yet.” He flipped on the light, and Duke Goodson squinted at the sudden brightness.

  “All of these hybrids are on the small side,” Duke said.

  “You know the larger chimera are illegal,” the doctor said. “The ecological park has some of the last known ligers and grolar bears in the United States. And once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

  “Seems a shame,” Duke said, though he preferred his animals on a plate.

  “A shame?” the doctor said, his voice testy. “It’s to keep quacks from making monsters, as you well know.”

  Monsters could be quite useful, Duke thought. Especially the human ones. But he didn’t say it.

  The last cage had a series of large cocoons suspended from the top with some sort of biological resin. But they weren’t shaped like cocoons. They looked more like eggs of some sort, mottled and gray. “And what will these be?”

  The doctor tapped a pen on the lab table, tap-tap-tap. “The specimen, Mr. Goodson. Where is the specimen I was promised?”

  “We’re working on it.”