Kingdom Keepers: The Return Book Two: Legacy of Secrets (22 page)

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to ask for help.”

“What? You can’t do that! Whatever’s in there…that’s for us! If you ask, that guy’s going to keep it.”

“It’s a rare book, Mandy. I’m not going to damage it.”

“This is Finn we’re talking about!”

“And I’m the one wearing the gloves!”

“Turn it upside down. Please, try gravity first!”

Jess, embarrassed not to have thought of it, flipped over the book. Something slipped out of the pocket. Amanda grinned.

It was a lined card inscribed with handwritten names and numbers.

“It’s been cut with a pair of scissors or a razor blade,” Amanda said, lowering her eyes to examine it. “The cut edge isn’t yellowed like the rest of it.”

“Why?” Jess said, picking it up gingerly with her gloved fingers. The back of the card was blank.

“There has to be a reason. Wayne doesn’t do stuff for kicks.”

“The name!” Jess said. “By cutting the card, he’s telling us to read the last name.”

“Which is unreadable,” Amanda sighed. “If that’s someone’s signature, you’d never know it.”

“The number!” Jess said, standing, the book in hand. Together, the girls marched to the reference desk where Ricky the librarian sat, his head down.

“Excuse me,” Jess said. She showed him the card, explaining that they’d found it in the back of the book.

“Interesting. This is from so long ago! We haven’t used this system in twenty years or more. You say it was in the back, in the pocket?”

“Yes,” Jess said, and nodded eagerly.

“Even more remarkable given that this card is not for this book. Some kind of mistake, I assume.”

“What do you mean?” Amanda asked.

“The title has been cut off the top. Names, cut off the bottom. But it’s a yellow card. In the old days the rare books collection used blue cards. Yellow was reference.”

“Like dictionaries and things,” Amanda said.

“All sorts of reference materials. Maps. Encyclo-pedias. Almanacs. Scientific journals. On and on.”

“Yellow,” Jess said. “Should be blue if it’s in here.”

“Right. But really, the cards were pulled from all the rare books a long time ago. There shouldn’t be any card in here at all.”

“You can’t make out that signature, can you?” Jess asked.

The librarian looked first with his naked eye, then with a magnifying glass. “No, I’m afraid not. It’s a bunch of scratches.”

“The number?” Amanda inquired.

“Good one!” Ricky Hart said. “Should have thought of that myself. Look at that number, would you?”

“I beg your pardon?” Jess said.

“How low it is! It’s three digits. Three!” The man could barely contain his glee.

“Is that good?” Amanda asked.

“Are you kidding? That early a number? The person is practically a founding member!”

“Can you look up the name for us?” Jess asked.

“I wish! Sadly, anyone with a membership number that low has surely passed away by now.”

“Are there any records anywhere?” Jess asked.

“Well…yes. Of course. I could look it up manually, I suppose.”

“Could you, please?” said Amanda, flirting a little. It worked.

“Well…why not?” Ricky asked the other librarian to cover for him and went through a door. He called back, “This could take a while.”

W
HILE
R
ICKY WAS THUMBING
through a dusty card file in a basement archive, Amanda and Jess were left in the rare books library. As Jess copied down the exact quote from Professor Alexander’s essay, Amanda wandered the room, reading titles off book spines and sneaking glances over the shoulders of the other patrons working at the tables.

Whatever Wayne had left them qualified as difficult to solve. She assumed they were on the right track, but wouldn’t know for certain until some obvious piece of evidence jumped out at them.

Generation to generation.
She wanted so badly to believe that line meant something, but maybe not. The torch the runners passed…She’d seen a torch on the library roof; another on display in the library lobby.

Still sorting through possibilities, Amanda ducked back and away from the room’s main door as the boy who’d had the electric bicycle walked past. She was sure it was him; he was too cute to mistake for anyone else.

Heart in her throat, she waved, trying to win Jess’s attention. But Jess was bent over the reception desk, writing and reading from the guidebook. A shadow fell into the room from the hallway—a shadow in the shape of a man. The bicyclist had stepped back to get a look inside.

“Hey,” Amanda heard. “I’ve just spotted a friend of mine. Could I…you know? Just for a minute.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“I’m not going to steal anything.”

“Good! Then I won’t have to arrest you….Just kidding! Do I look like a cop?”

“Oh, phew!”

“You turned so pale!”

“Ha-ha,” the boy said, snidely sarcastic.

“I’m sorry, though, answer’s still the same. You’ll have to wait out here until she’s through.”

“She’ll be through soon enough,” the boy said. The guard missed the menacing tone, but it sent chills through Amanda.

It took Amanda three more tries, but eventually Jess looked her way. After a frantic effort, Amanda was able to move her forward, out of sight of the doorway.

“You’re not going to believe who it is!” Jess said excitedly.

“The guy on the bike is waiting at the door for us. He’s our new best friend, according to him.”

“Wait? What?”

“Your guy,” Amanda said truculently. “He told the guard you and he are good buds.”

Jess’s excitement was such that she couldn’t focus. “The member’s name on the library card? Her number identified her as Marie Bounds.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“That was my reaction, too. I asked what the last book she checked out was. No record of that. But while he was checking, Ricky-the-librarian turned out to be smarter than he looks. He’s Willa smart; Philby smart. We could have spent the rest of the day in here trying to figure out what Dillard was trying to tell us, but we’ve got Ricky Hart on our side, and Ricky Hart is a Disney freak. Spends his weekends in the parks, goes to D23 and movie premieres and anything Disney he can do in his spare time.”

“Speaking of time, we’re a little short. Maybe we can talk about Ricky’s love of Disney later?”

“Later? No! We’re not done here.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“Marie Bounds, as in Lillian Marie Bounds, her maiden name before she married Walter Elias Disney. This is from Ricky. Here’s the thing, though: He first recognized the name as being one of the library’s early big-time donors. Then this light went on in his head and he made the connection; he’s muttering stuff about how they probably used her middle name and maiden name to keep a low profile on the contributions. The Disneys were big supporters all along, he said—huge—and still are, but Lillian had this thing about reading. Maybe they gave the money early on under her maiden name for some reason that made sense to them.”

“Why would Dillard/Wayne want to lead us back to Walt’s wife? That seems so odd, to make us work so hard.”

“We’re not done,” Jess said.

“Meaning?”

“There’s a wall of card file drawers downstairs—”

“Let me guess. Ricky?”

Jess nodded. “Each drawer represents a big library donor. Ricky is positive there’s one for Marie Bounds. The drawers are fake, but who cares? Maybe there’s another clue. Alexander’s book gave us light, truth, and Marie Bounds. We’re not done.”

“We are if the guy in the hall doesn’t move. We can’t lead him to our next clue. And what if he calls in reinforcements?” Amanda looked frantically around the room. “This is the only door.”

Jess pointed toward an exit sign over the door behind the reception desk.

Amanda nodded. “Yeah, and right alongside it says, ‘Emergency Only.’” She got into a staring contest with Jess, who was clearly waiting for her to make the connection Jess already had. Jess’s eyes said,
Come on!

“Ricky…” Amanda said.

C
ONVINCING THE LIBRARIAN
to allow Jess and Amanda to use the rare book room’s emergency exit wasn’t easy. Ricky proved to be a stickler for rules as well as a Disney fan. “There’s a public entranceway,” he told them, “so use it. The exit through the back stacks and offices is in case of a real emergency, not to ditch some boy waiting for you in the hall.”

“Have you heard of the Kingdom Keepers?” Jess asked in a hushed voice.

Ricky looked around cautiously. “Of course. And you aren’t them.”

“We work with them,” Jess said.

“Uh-huh. Sure you do.”

“We’re doing this for them,” Amanda said. “Whether you believe it or not, that’s the truth. The Imagineers sent us. Joe Garlington.”

“You know Joe Garlington? I’m supposed to believe this?”

“No one can make anyone believe something they don’t want to,” Jess said. She whispered to Amanda, who shook her head. “Please,” Jess said more loudly.

“I don’t do tricks. And I won’t do that. It’s too risky. I could hurt them.”

The librarian looked worried. “If we’re all done here, I have an actual job, you know?”

“Ricky,” Jess said, “you’re all-in when it comes to Disney.”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“So some part of you believes in magic—no matter that your mind may tell you differently. Do you deny it?”

“Of course not. What about it?”

“My friend here can create an emergency, at which point it won’t be just us going through that door behind you. If she does that, though, something bad could happen to the books, so she’s refusing.”

“Are you threatening me? I’ll call security, you know. Don’t think I won’t.”

“Magic,” Jess said, giving Amanda the signal. Amanda resisted for a second, then slowly lifted her hand off the counter. Ricky could barely contain his anger.

“See those four books at the end there?” Jess asked.

Amanda closed her eyes and pushed as gently as she could. Six feet away, at the end of the counter, the four books slid off and hit the floor. Some heads lifted and swiveled, trying to find the source of the sound.

“Now,” Jess whispered, “picture every book on every shelf.”

“You had me at ‘magic,’” Ricky said, moving to open a piece of the countertop and admit them through. “No need to be mean-spirited.” He asked Amanda how she’d done it, adding, “It’s a trick, right? But I don’t get it.”

Amanda said only that the boy in the hall was going to try to follow them. When he did, it would be good if security showed him to the front door and didn’t let him back into the library.

“In other words,” Jess said to the man, “it may come down to you to stop him from following us.”

“I can do that! The Kingdom Keepers, seriously?”

“She’s Finn’s girlfriend,” Jess said.

“No…way!”

“We’ve lost him,” Amanda told Ricky honestly. “But now, thanks to you, maybe not.”

T
HE DONOR WALL,
a repurposed card catalogue, was all golden oak drawer fronts with brass pulls—hundreds of regimented drawers with the names of various donors in small brass frames mounted to their fronts, where once there had been alphabetical listings like “FICTION Aa-Ak.”