If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late (9 page)

Before Cass could answer, a scrawny cat darted in front of them. Then started scratching herself against what looked like a cabinet or booth of some sort with a curtained opening. “Hey, isn’t that —”

“Pietro’s cat?” Cass finished Max-Ernest’s thought. (They’d met — or at least, seen — the magician’s shy feline when they visited his house in their last investigation.) “Yeah, could be. She’s just as skinny and has the same color, or multicolors — what’s it called?”

“Calico.”

As soon as Max-Ernest pronounced the word, the cat stepped into the booth and seemed literally to vanish before their eyes.

“Hey, where’d she go?!” Cass exclaimed.

As Max-Ernest watched, she stepped into the booth after the cat — and vanished just as quickly.

It was then that he noticed the glittering sign above the booth:

GATEWAY TO THE INVISIBLE

“Cass? You there?” Max-Ernest took a cautious step toward the booth Cass had disappeared into.

“Yeah, I’m right here! Can’t you see me?”

“No, it’s just black. It must be an illusion — you know, like for a stage show,” said Max-Ernest, trying to sound confident. “Are there mirrors inside?”

“Um, yeah, but I can’t really . . . wait, I think there’s some kind of door — it’s in the floor . . . okay, I’m going down just to look —”

“Wait — don’t go without me!” said Max- Ernest.

But by the time he entered the booth, she was gone — and light streamed up at him from the hatch in the floor.

T
he basement of the Magic Museum was occupied by a large workshop that, for the most part, looked like it could have been anywhere in the world: normal hammers and wrenches and saws hung from hooks on the wall. Normal scraps of wood and metal lay on the floor. A normal scent of sawdust and glue filled the air.

But whereas in a normal workshop you might find someone making a chest to keep blankets in, the chests made here were meant to be sawed in half — with somebody inside. And whereas in a normal workshop you might have found a wardrobe cabinet designed for coats, here the wardrobe cabinets were designed for making tigers disappear.

In short, it was a magician’s workshop.

As Cass and Max-Ernest walked in, they saw an old man standing behind a workbench. He looked up at them briefly, then returned to the large silver vase in his hand. It had two handles and looked something like a trophy cup. He seemed to be fixing the bottom with a screwdriver.

He wore no velvet cloak — just old work clothes and a leather apron. He had no long white beard — just curly gray hair and a bushy mustache that snowed sawdust whenever he moved. And if he resembled a man from a fairy tale, it wasn’t the noble wizard Cass had imagined, it was that humble Italian woodworker, the father of Pinocchio, Gepetto.

Still, Cass knew who he was right away. As if she had known him forever.

“Um, excuse me, are you Pietro?” she asked, her heart beating hard in her chest. “Or Mr. Bergamo, I mean,” she corrected herself, remembering they’d never actually met before.

“Pietro will do,” he said by way of answer, not looking up from his work. His voice had a timbre similar to Dr. L’s. But Pietro’s voice retained more of his native Italian accent. And more of his native humanity.

The resemblance to his brother was uncanny, but not in the usual way of twins. It was more like seeing an old portrait of a friend’s ancestor — a portrait that looks exactly like the person you know but in a different era and at a different age.

Unlike Dr. L’s smooth and ageless face (a better word might be
facade
), Pietro’s face bore all the marks of time: scars and spots, wrinkles and veins. It was imbued with that ineffable sense of history, of life lived and of experience gained, that only the best and oldest faces possess.

He could have been Dr. L’s father, even his grandfather. Maybe an uncle. Anything but a twin brother.

“We, I mean, I am Cassandra,” she stammered. “This is Max-Ernest.”

Pietro remained silent. Max-Ernest felt compelled to jump in: “We’re the ones who saved Benjamin Blake from the spa last year. The ones who Owen —”

“Yes. I know,” said Pietro gently.

At last, Pietro finished doing whatever he was doing to the vase and looked up at the two intruders. “So. You have found me at work on my new stage.”

“What stage?” asked Max-Ernest, confused.

“My favorite stage —
off
stage.”

Pietro smiled to show he was making a joke. “I mean I have retired from being a magician. I was never the great entertainer — that was my brother. So these days, I only make the magic — I no longer perform it. Here —”

He placed the vase on the table in front of them.

“Each of you take a handle and pull. But gently! It’s very old and I don’t want to have to fix it again.”

They pulled —and for a moment nothing happened.

Then a little silver leaf sprouted above the lip of the vase. Its stem grew taller and taller, as if drawn upward by some invisible sun. Soon, other branches were growing from the central stem, leaves sprouting on each of these. Until a little silver tree stood in front of them.

One by one, delicate golden flowers budded and bloomed all over the branches.

“Whoa,” said Cass.

“Double whoa,” said Max-Ernest. “I’ve never seen one of those before. Even in books.”

“You can imagine what people thought a hundred and fifty years ago — before the movies and the computers and the special effects.”

As they spoke, a glittering gold canary emerged out of the top bloom and began to sing a lovely —

Screech!

Before the canary could get out a second note, its voice turned to a shrill whine and the whole tree started to smoke.

“Is that supposed to happen?” asked Cass nervously.

Pietro laughed. “Not at all. It’s supposed to sing a Mozart melody. Now if I were on the stage, I would have to pretend like I wanted it to smoke all along.”

He gestured to the loose gears and half-restored automata around him. “What I meant about making the magic — I create the illusions. I design them and I build them — but I do not use them so much anymore. And now you can see why.”

“Wow, so you’re a . . . well, what do you call it? I’ve never heard of what you do,” said Max-Ernest as if that made such a job impossible.

“There’s no name for it — because nobody’s supposed to know that it is done. We like magic to be a mystery, no? You don’t want to know somebody is standing behind the curtain, playing with mirrors. That ruins the whole thing.”

“We call him the Invisible Man,” said a voice from the back.

A tall, pinched-looking man with a pen behind his ear walked toward them.

“William Wilton Wallace III, certified public accountant, at your service,” he said, handing each of the newcomers a business card.

“Mr. Wallace is an accountant by day, but he is the Terces Society archivist by night,” Pietro explained.

“Nice to meet you,” said Cass.

“Oh, we’ve met before, when you were in diapers,” said Mr. Wallace with an expression of distaste — as if he could still smell the diapers in question. “I did the books for your grandfathers’ store until I gave up on them. Far too disorganized. Absolutely hopeless, those two. But I expect you feel the same?”

“No, well, I . . .” Cass trailed off, wanting to defend her grandfathers, but not wanting to pick a fight.

“And this is Lily Wei. I think you have met her upstairs.” Pietro nodded as the beautiful, black-suited woman entered the room. “Of course, she is not just our receptionist, she is a master of the Chinese music.”
^*

Lily smiled modestly. “Master is a relative word.”

“Will you play for them?” asked Pietro, indicating the collection of exotic instruments hanging on one wall.

Lily tilted her head in assent. Then picked out an odd, violin-like instrument with a horse head carved at the end of the neck where a scroll should be.

“This is the morin khur. From Mongolia. Close your eyes —”

Cass and Max-Ernest obeyed, and suddenly, they heard the sound of a horse galloping. The horse whinnied, then stopped short right next to them.

The effect was so startling they opened their eyes.

Lily laughed softly, still playing. “In the old days, they made the morin khur from the skull of a horse. They say you can still hear the horse’s ghost.”

The music became lovely and mournful and then —

She moved so swiftly that they never saw her pull the long, needle-like sword out of her violin bow. By the time they grasped what was happening, the sword was tickling Max-Ernest’s throat.

“Wha —!” he gasped.

Lily dropped the sword just as quickly.

Cass stared, pale.

“I forgot to tell you, Lily is also a master of defense,” said Pietro, enjoying their reaction, “our, what is the term?
Muscle.
”

The kids looked suitably impressed.

“You will always be safe when I am nearby,” said the demure receptionist, sheathing her sword back in the bow.

“So then — you knew it was us all along?” asked Max-Ernest, still quivering from the shock.

“I suspected. But I had Owen take a look just in case.”

“Owen? Is he here?” Cass looked around in surprise.

“Right here.”

Everyone turned to see the goateed Englishman sitting quietly in a chair by the wall. He removed his glasses.

The kids groaned. How could they not have guessed?

“The question is: why are
you
here?” said the English Owen. “I seem to remember dropping you off at home.”

“Give them a second. They’ll tell us in a moment,” said Pietro.

“How can you always look so different?” Max-Ernest asked. “Is that even your nose?”

“Of course, it’s mine!” said Owen, offended.

He pulled on his nose — and it stretched like putty. “I paid good money for it!”

Everyone laughed. And Cass felt a sudden surge of happiness.

The members of the Terces Society might not be the Knights of the Round Table any more than Pietro was Merlin, but, at the moment, she wouldn’t trade them for anyone. Even Owen.

“So, then, is this . . . everybody?” she asked.

At this, Mr. Wallace coughed and looked at Pietro with raised eyebrows.

“They will turn up when we need them, you will see,” Pietro said defiantly.

“I’m sure they’ll put on a fabulous show,” sniffed the archivist. He was obviously skeptical that they would turn up — whoever
they
were.

“The Terces Society has many friends,” said Pietro, turning back to Cass and Max-Ernest. “But it is well that we do not all know each other. . . . Speaking of this, have you two figured out our name?”

“Max-Ernest figured it out over the summer — he’s really good with stuff like that,” said Cass, in case anybody didn’t know.

“It’s
secret
backward, right?” asked Max- Ernest.

“Exactly right,” said Mr. Wallace, sounding faintly disappointed. “The early members found that whenever they said the word
secret,
it aroused too much interest. They called themselves the Terces Society so the riffraff would stay away.” He looked hard at their young guests.

Cass and Max-Ernest each took an involuntary step backward.

They had a thousand questions about the Terces Society, but they sensed this might not be the time to ask them.

“And now, perhaps you will tell us why you’re here,” said Pietro. “You took a great risk.”

Cass looked at Max-Ernest — he nodded — and she removed her backpack from her back. Silently, she unzipped it and pulled out the Sound Prism.

Pietro twinkled. “Ah, I knew you would have a good reason for coming.” He shot a look at Mr. Wallace — as if to say,
told you so!

Owen laughed and shook his head ruefully. “You sneaks! Not even mentioning it in the car!”

“Showed you up, did they, Owen?” asked Lily slyly.

Cass and Max-Ernest glanced at each other, unable to hide their proud smiles.

“We heard this was stolen,” said Cass.

“It was, indeed,” said Pietro. “You have a done a very great thing — and, who can say? Averted much tragedy.”

Cass was about to hand him the Sound Prism, but he held up his hand, stopping her.

“And now — how do they say it on the television? I have a mission for you, if you choose to accept it.”

They nodded eagerly. Cass gripped the Sound Prism in excitement.

“Good. I think maybe you have heard of the homunculus?”

“Yeah, but he can’t be real,” said Max-Ernest confidently. “You can’t grow a man in a bottle. It’s not possible.”

“The Midnight Sun thinks it’s possible,” said Pietro.

“Yeah, but . . . you don’t . . . er, right?”

The old magician let the question hang. In a room like this, with half-built illusions all around, who could say what was possible?

“And that’s why they want him?” asked Cass, after a moment. “Because they think he’s one of these man-made guys? And they want to make another one?”

“We think they want something from him,” said Pietro. “Something he has or knows where to find.”

“Like what?” asked Max-Ernest. He still wasn’t ready to believe the homunculus existed — let alone that it knew anything.