A Box of Gargoyles (8 page)

The desk's larger drawers were open, probably because the police had forgotten to tidy up after doing their rummaging, but after a few minutes of careful searching, Maya took a step back in frustration. No pens, no paper, not a single sign that writing had ever happened here. Plus the itchy place on the tip of her index finger was getting impatient. It didn't seem to think there was anything for her here.

She straightened up and (feeling foolish) tried holding her itchy finger out in front of her, like a dousing wand.

“Over here?” she said—right out loud, to encourage herself—and she pointed her finger at the desk. The words echoed a little in the empty room and then were soaked up by the books or the carpet and vanished utterly, leaving Maya feeling very alone again. Her finger seemed uninterested in that particular desk. It itched in a bored and impatient way. It wanted to go somewhere else.

Not to mention that no matter where she moved in that room, the bright black eyes of that bird in the corner were fixed—like glue, like pins, like alien spaceship rays—right on her. It was completely unsettling. It was enough to send her back out into the dim entry hall, but as soon as she left the library, the nature of the itch in her fingertip changed (from
bored
to
exasperated
—it was amazing how many emotions a simple itch could convey), and that suctioning feeling pulled at her again. It had to be here, then.

She tried running her itchy finger along the backs of the books on those huge shelves, and although no book stood out, as far as the itch was concerned, there was definitely a pull toward one end of the bookcase, the end closest to the corner where that bird perched looking at her. Maya didn't like those glassy black eyes, so she whipped across to the shelves on the next stretch of wall and tried the finger trick on them, with similar results: the itch pointing toward the statue in the corner, even though nothing ever seemed less related to writing letters on fancy creamy-green letter paper than that beady-eyed bird staring her down from its column.

All right
, Maya told her itchy finger, just to shut it up.
Let's take a look at that thing
. It was just a statue of a bird, after all, carved of a very dark wood. Perhaps ebony, like the black keys on a piano. (Although at least black keys on a piano didn't
stare
at you.) Up this close, Maya could see how much time the artist had spent perfecting every little feather. And there, high on its ebony chest, was a very small, very circular bump with a wiggly indentation in its middle. Maya went up on her tiptoes, trying to see the thing clearly. Her fingertip was practically screaming with impatience, so she let it take a look.

Not just a bump
, said her eyes and her fingertip at about the same moment:
a keyhole
!

And by the time her mind had registered that word, the tiny, inky key had already peeled itself off the tip of her finger (a very strange feeling, like the smallest but stickiest Band-Aid you ever saw being torn off too early) and flung itself into that smallest of locks. And from inside the ebony bird's chest, there came a strange mechanical shudder, the surprised
click-click-click
ing of numberless little gears—and the bird's wings began to move.

Even as caught by surprise as she was, Maya managed to jump back, well out of the way. Something very old and deep in the human brain knows that when statues of black, black birds begin to click and tick and
move
, it is time to pick up your club (or equivalent) and back away carefully.

It was like nothing she had ever seen, what was happening to that statue. It had seemed so immutably, perfectly still! But now the wings were spreading—out, out, out to the sides—and the chest of the bird opened forward, fanning out as it went, revealing little cubbyholes and thin drawers—and then she could see how it all fit together, the gently tilted surface that had once been a chest and the angled insides of the wings and the intricate array of small shelves and drawers and sorting slots within and the piercing gaze of those glassy eyes still looking down from above—

because the ebony bird was a writing desk.

And resting on its gracefully angled surface (held fast by a delicate sliver of tape) was a letter.

As her mother used to say (her mother collected old sayings the way other people's mothers collected ceramic puppies), “Once bitten, twice shy!” Maya certainly felt bitten—by the letter she and Valko had read in the park, by the inky key, by the way the whole universe had conspired to make her come back here this morning, when any unbewitched person would have known it was Not A Good Idea.

Quick as quick, Maya put a hand out, making a slightly trembly wall between her eyes and the words of that letter. She would not look down. She would look quickly, quickly for stationery and pens in the drawers and cubbyholes, and she would not give this new letter the slightest chance to grab her.

But a minute later the drawers had proved themselves empty, except for a few very ordinary-looking paper clips and an exceptionally ordinary matchbox, and the cubby-holes had no stationery in them at all. Nothing. Just a soft, dusty heap at the bottom of the largest slot. She craned her neck forward to see better, and a ray of weak autumn sunlight sprang through the room's windows to help: a blue-green heap of— What was that, anyway? Her no-longer-itchy finger poked again at the pile, and she knew: ashes. Creamy-green magical ashes.

She imagined the ancient, crumbling Fourcroy standing in this very spot, a week ago, writing all his demands into that awful letter, folding it carefully and addressing the envelope—and then striking one of those ordinary matches and burning the rest of the stationery to ashes. Was he just being extraordinarily extra-careful? Or had he known somehow that Maya would come to this very place, looking for her antidote, for her piece of blank magical paper, and find only those creamy-green ashes laughing up at her?

Ugh! Maya scowled at the desk, but of course she was really scowling at herself. All of the beautiful logic that had brought her here this morning looked a lot less beautiful now. Like the fancy stationery with its gloating, snake-haired watermark, her plans had pretty much all caught fire and burned away to an ashy heap of nothing. She had been a fool all along, thinking she was being clever even as she walked right back into the patient maw of the trap.

“Stupid bird!” said Maya, glaring back at the raven's glassy, triumphant eyes, and she must have clenched her fist or fallen forward against the writing desk or something, because the whole thing trembled a little, the motors
click-click-click
ed again, and the ebony bird looked down at her and said—

No, of course, it couldn't
speak
—

But it was almost speaking, it was; it was trying to open that awful wooden beak—

A choking, metallic gurgle came from the bird's throat, as if something had gotten caught up in its mechanism, and there was another sound, of some crucial little gear cracking under the strain, and the whole lower section of the bird's glossy beak broke loose and dangled there on its broken hinge.

At which point something round and shiny (a button?) came spitting out from that breaking beak so quickly that Maya's hand couldn't help itself; it caught that button right in midair.

So what happened next was the button's fault, really. Of course, Maya's hand had to grab it, and of course, Maya's eyes had to look to see what kind of thing this was, that she had all of a sudden caught in her hand, and so of course what she saw instead were the words of the letter, so patiently waiting for her on the desk all this time, and even as her brain was shouting,
Don't look
, it was already too late: she
had
looked.

And once she had looked, she could not stop looking.

Well done!
said the letter.

If you are reading these words, then the clockwork is ticking, and we are well on our way. Let's think of it as a TREASURE HUNT, Maya, my cousin-niece-and-apprentice, and the treasure at the end is (as treasures should be) incomparably great: my life, restored. You broke me; you will mend me. I think you have to agree, it is only fair
.

The spell you must work is both difficult and simple. Magic is like cooking, some say. Here, then, are the ingredients you must gather, my young chef-in-training:

(1) A remnant of my physical self (there is a drop of blood soaked into this very paper, do you see? That will do, I think, in a pinch);

(2) My memories (reasonably transportable, I hope: I will have placed them in the stone for safekeeping);

(3) An apprentice willing to sacrifice her life for that of her master (this is you, dear cousin-niece, and believe me, I am most grateful);

(4) All brought to a most Suitable Magical Place (follow the guide);

(5) Where the willing apprentice (still you, dear Maya) will prove her magical worth by combining the various ingredients within a spell that makes me whole. Then the apprentice will herself, for one glorious moment, be a sort of master, you see, before her life force transfers to the other (who is, of course, in this case, if I may remind us, with full grateful humility, Me). If you look at it properly, dear girl, you can't help but see the advantages all around: life for me; a well-earned, if fleeting, sense of accomplishment for you. In any event, you are henceforth on the clockwork path, and nothing can halt what you are now most fully bound to do
.

With most cordial affection
,

Your uncle—or cousin—and mentor
,

Henri de Fourcroy

Maya read this letter a number of times, with the hairs on her neck standing up as straight as they could manage, and her hands clenched firmly at her sides. She could see the little splotch that must be Fourcroy's blood, but she did not let her arms so much as twitch, and the letter stayed where it was on the writing desk. The trick was not to do anything before thinking it thoroughly through, never ever again.

But so far that trick wasn't working so well, was it? Because here she was, and that wicked Fourcroy had
known
she would be here. He was so full of smug confidence: his letters had bound her; she was now
on the clockwork path
. And where did that lead?

Ice slid down her spine. But Maya Davidson would not be squashed so easily.

She was
not
his apprentice. She wasn't about to sacrifice herself to bring that selfish, selfish, wicked Fourcroy back to life! Was he kidding? The clockwork could tick itself to death, as far as Maya was concerned:
she was not willing
.

She backed away.

The writing desk shuddered a little.

Another small step. It was not as hard as she had thought it might be: the awful suction was gone. That made her think (all the while backing up, step by step, to the library door): the letter had said she should go to the writing desk, and she had done so. All right. She had been bound (not good), but the binding wasn't perfect, was it? He had written those letters in a rush, probably, knowing the police would be coming and his mind full of desperate spells and magics. He wouldn't have been able to think of everything. He had forgotten, for instance, to
command
her, just now, to take the page with his blood splotch on it. That was an important ingredient, wasn't it?

Just look at her, leaving it behind now! Ha!

But the other half of her mind was still moored in ice, facing that cold, cold thought: Maya,
on the clockwork path
.

As she went back through the doorway, there was a resounding crash: the writing desk had slammed itself back together again, the wings slapping back into place, the glassy eyes of the raven still glaring and glaring and glaring.

It made her jump, that crash; her breath caught in her chest, and then Maya turned and ran to the door and, stumblingly fast, down those winding, fancy stairs. It was two floors before she realized the button the raven had nearly choked on was still clenched in her hand—and she was all the way at the bottom of the stairs and already pushing herself out through the front doors of the Salamander House (so desperately eager to get back
home
), when Maya finally remembered the rest of that peculiar morning, the noises last night on her fire escape, and the silent, staring gargoyles still sitting in wait for her there.

She tumbled out through the door and—“OOF!”—barreled so hard into the person standing right there that she and the person both went sprawling to the ground.

“
So sorry!
” said she and the person she had barreled into, both at once.

And then they both said, “Oh!”—both of them with fairly sheepish looks on their faces—because this was the Salamander House, where people trying to, um, avoid Fourcroy's writing desk were definitely not supposed to be, and yet here they both were: Maya (climbing to her feet a little unsteadily because the breath had just been knocked right out of her) and Valko (looking rather shocked and surprised).

“Hey, I thought you were doing math,” said Maya.

“Grandmother called from Bulgaria, so I was able to scamper,” said Valko.

Maya frowned, remembering all the reasons she had to hate, hate,
hate
Bulgaria, but Valko was still chattering at her, his hand on her arm.

“Maya! You went in there without me! Are you okay?”

She considered that question. She didn't feel extremely wonderful, that much she knew.

“You see how stuck we are?” she said. “Every time we turn around, we're doing what he told us to do in that letter. Even when we think we're doing something different. It's awful. I don't want to be on a clockwork path.”

“What? A what?”

“A
clockwork path
,” said Maya, with more bitterness. “Ticktock. Like the whole universe is dominoes falling over, or something. I
hate
being a domino. You said a letter couldn't boss us around!”