A Tangle of Knots (17 page)

49

Miss Mallory

“M
A’AM, I’M SORRY, BUT I SIMPLY CAN’T LET YOU IN WITHOUT A
ticket. In any case, the competition is already well under way.”

Miss Mallory sucked in her breath at the large woman in the chef’s hat who was too busy
ma’am
ing her to listen to what she had to say. She had gotten to the convention center much later than she’d planned, due to an unprecedented traffic jam on the highway. She’d tried to tune in to the radio to see what was causing the delay, but all she’d gotten was nonsense about an influx of Talented squirrels, stopping traffic with their amazing acrobatics and unnatural abilities. Apparently there was even one squirrel who could whistle.

“I told you”—Miss Mallory kept her voice calm—“I can’t find my ticket. I must have lost it somehow. But my contestant is inside. And it’s very important that I—”

“The contestant’s name?” the woman asked drily, eyes scrolling her clipboard.

“Cadence,” Miss Mallory replied. “Right there.” She pointed. “See?”

“Yes, I do,” the woman answered. She flicked her eyes up to meet Miss Mallory’s. “And I also see that Ms. Cadence already has one guest inside and has not marked down that she’s expecting another. Now unless you can produce your ticket, I’m afraid I must insist you leave.”

“I
told
you,” Miss Mallory said again, patting her pockets to see if perhaps the ticket had hidden itself inside.

She did not finish the sentence.

There was a tug in her chest just as she reached her hand into her pocket. It was not an especially strong tug, and it was not the sort of tug that Miss Mallory usually felt with her orphans. But it was a tug all the same.

From her pocket, Miss Mallory produced the black ceramic bird, the one she’d found in the suitcase in the woods. She regarded it in her hand a moment.

“Is this yours?” she asked the woman in the chef’s hat.

The woman picked the bird out of Miss Mallory’s palm and, as she took it in, her face began to glow, just a titch. It was the sort of glow Miss Mallory had seen thousands of times before. The sort of glow a person got when she’s found something she never knew she was searching for.

The glow of a perfect match.

“I haven’t seen one of these in
years,
” the woman said softly. She ran her fingers over the smooth contours of the bird’s back. “My granny always used one of these, every time she made one of her blackberry pies. Baked it right inside with the filling, and the hot air funneled out the beak.” She showed Miss Mallory the small round opening in the bird’s yellow mouth. “Granny always said that was the secret to her flaky crust. How did you . . . ?”

Miss Mallory shrugged. “I just had a feeling it might belong with you.”

* * * 

As Miss Mallory picked her way through the bleachers to the spot that Toby had reserved beside him, she glanced over her shoulder just long enough to catch sight of Cady, stirring a dark batter with a pained look on her face. And as Miss Mallory did so, she felt yet another tug in her chest. It was a strong one this time, assertive and dogged, the same heart-yanking tug she’d been ignoring all week. For over a decade, really. And even if she thought she might have deciphered its meaning, Miss Mallory already knew that it was too late to do anything about it.

Cady had already found her perfect family and, for better or worse, it did not include Miss Mallory.

50

Mrs. Asher

I
T DID NOT TAKE LONG TO GET TO NEW YORK CITY (SPEED LIMITS,
Dolores was certain, did not apply to women whose children had gone missing). Parking, however, was another matter. The closest spot Dolores could find was outside Grand Central Terminal, several long blocks from the convention center.

“It won’t take you ten minutes to get there,” a friendly stranger with an obvious Talent for applying blue eye shadow informed her. Dolores clutched Sally tighter to her chest. She could feel the ferret’s tiny heart beating frantically beneath her fur. The poor creature must be missing Will something terrible. “Just get on the express bus at the corner and take it crosstown to—”

With no warning at all, Sally leapt from Dolores’s arms. And before Dolores knew what was happening, she found herself chasing a ferret down the New York City sidewalk. “Sally!” she screeched as she ran. “Come back here!” Dolores would never forgive herself if she lost her son and his pet in the same afternoon.

Sally did not come back. She skittered and jumped, hopping from this pedestrian’s shoulder to that hot dog vendor’s cart. Dolores was close behind, scattering shopping bags and pigeons as she went. The creature scampered through a large glass revolving door studded with brasswork, and Dolores followed, through to the bustling hive of Grand Central Terminal’s main room.

“Sally!”

Down the staircase, up another, around the bend, past the ticket booth Sally ran, and Dolores, too, huffing and puffing till she thought she couldn’t run any farther. And then . . .

Wham!

Dolores smacked directly into her youngest son. He was cradling Sally in his arms, a stunned look on his face.

“Mom?”

“Will!” She swooped him up in a hug. “Where have you been? I’ve been searching
everywhere
for you.”

Will jerked his head to the train behind him, where passengers were still climbing down the steps. “I was looking for Sally.”

“How many times do I have to tell you to stay in one place when you get lost, Willard Asher?” Dolores’s words wanted to be stern, but the second hug she gave her son betrayed her happiness.

Trapped between them, Sally let out a
click-click-clack
of annoyance.

“I really would’ve rather you had a Talent for cheese-making, you know,” Dolores went on, ignoring the ferret. “When we get home, I’m tying you to the doorknob.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Will said with a sniffle.

“I know you are, sweetie.” She tousled his mop of brown curls. “What do you say we head on home?” When Will nodded, Dolores took his hand, squeezed it tight then tighter, and led him back through the station, while Sally tucked herself into her favorite spot around Will’s neck. “Maybe from now on you could try to find adventures in books,” Dolores suggested while they walked. “They have plenty, you know. Giants and monsters and cake. They’re all right there, and you wouldn’t even have to give your mother a heart attack to go on one.” Will wrinkled his nose. “You don’t like that idea?” she asked him.

“Haven’t you ever had anything you loved doing, Mom?” Will replied. He reached up with his unsqueezed hand to scratch Sally’s head. “Something that was worth getting in real big trouble for?”

For the first time in over an hour, Dolores’s thoughts drifted to the ancient toe bone, worth millions of dollars, that she’d left sitting on the armrest of her car. Funny how something she’d treasured for over a decade could be so quickly forgotten. “Yes,” she told her son. “I suppose I have.”

When they reached the revolving door at the front of the station, Dolores stopped short.

“Mom?” Will asked, looking up at her. “What’s the matter? Why’d you stop walking?”

Dolores’s eyes flicked to the sign just outside on the sidewalk.
BUS STOP
.

“I hear it doesn’t take ten minutes to get to the convention center,” she told her son. “Wouldn’t you like to see Cady win that bakeoff?”

At first, Will didn’t seem to understand, but suddenly his eyes went wide. “Cake?” he asked.

Dolores grinned. “You might as well finish your adventure now that you’ve started it, huh?”

Will clapped his hands together and cheered. And—
click-click-clack!
—Sally seemed excited, too.

“After that,” Dolores continued as they snaked their way out the door and through the crowds to the bus stop, “I have an adventure of my own to finish.”

51

The Owner

I
T WAS EASY ENOUGH TO PUSH PAST THE OVERSIZE WOMAN WITH
the clipboard guarding the main doors. She was too busy gazing at some silly figurine to even notice him. And at last he spotted the girl, in the middle of the row of ovens. Wisp of a thing though she was, her crow-black hair gave her away. She was just pulling a cake off the rack. She set it on the counter, closing the oven door as the Owner made his way over to her. His feet hit the floor with every step.

52

Marigold

M
ARIGOLD SPOTTED IT BEFORE ZANE DID. AFTER SNEAKING
through the delivery entrance, the two children had wiggled their way onto the main floor. Now they stood between the teeming crowds of people and the increasingly sensational cakes on display, searching for some way they might possibly be needed.

And Marigold spotted it.

There was Cady, at her oven, petite and wide-eyed and unsuspecting. Not fifty feet away was the Owner of the Emporium, approaching her rapidly, his gaze fixed.

“Zane!” Marigold screeched, searching for a path to push herself through to the baking stations. “Zane, we have to get over there!” Cady was one of the biggest-hearted people Marigold had ever met—she tried harder than anybody else to make others happy—and now the Owner was going to steal her Talent, just like he’d stolen Zane’s. If Marigold had learned anything that week, it was that trying hard and being a good person didn’t always mean that good things would happen to you.

But maybe it
did
mean that others might try on your behalf.

“We have to stop him!” she told Zane. “We have to help Cady.” But there were so many people, and she and her brother were so far away. She yanked Zane past a greasy-haired young man powdered with flour. “What are we going to do?”

“Ow!” Zane shouted, suddenly wrenching to a halt. “My foot! Someone dropped a book on my foot.” He picked it up.

“Zane, you moron, I don’t care about some dumb book. We have to help Cady!” She tugged on his arm again.

They would never get there in time. Marigold’s eyes scanned the room for another solution. There must be
something
that could stop the Owner. Her eyes landed on the fire alarm on the far wall, and the stringy, gray-haired woman nearby who seemed to be having a similar thought to Marigold’s.

“It’s V,” Zane said.

Marigold nodded. “I know. I think she’s going to pull the alarm.”

“What?” Zane said. “No, I mean”—he held out the book to show her—“it’s
V.
Look.”

Marigold jerked her eyes from the figure across the room just long enough to glance at the book in Zane’s hands.
Face Value.
There, underneath the words
Author Victoria Valence,
was a photo of V.

The woman without any words had written millions of them.