Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) (31 page)

“Tell you what?” I asked, finding his hand and grasping it. “How much I love you? How I plan to spend the rest of my life with you, no matter where we have to go?”

“’S good,” he spluttered, “but wh-what I really . . . want to know is . . . what Helen’s bathing costume looks like.”

I made a sound that was half sob, half laugh. Marlin and Sirena were behind me, and then Sirena was on the other side of the cell, shining a lamp into the sunken crypt where Raven was held. I couldn’t see him from where I sat, but I saw her face and knew it was bad. “We’ll have to cut him loose very carefully,” she whispered to Marlin. “Or he’ll lose his wings.”

I braced myself on the edge of the pit and looked down. The hole was a V-shaped gash gouged out of the rock. Raven was suspended upside down, his wings pinned to the walls. His face was streaked with blood, but his eyes were open and I could see the pulse of his vein at his throat. When Marlin used his dagger to pry loose a link of the chain, a tremor of pain passed over his face.

“Keep talking to him,” Marlin whispered to me. “It will take his mind off the pain.”

“Well,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Helen’s bathing costume. It’s striped red and white like a candy cane and has three tiers of ruffles—”

“Two,” Marlin corrected. “You tore one off to bandage my arm.”

“H-have you b-been f-flirting . . . with . . . my . . . g-girl?” Raven asked.

“Absolutely,” Marlin answered, wrenching free a steel pin and making Raven gasp in agony. “So you’d better get out of there and get her back.”

“Y-yes,” Raven managed in a barely audible whisper. “I’m p-planning to do that. Only . . . if . . . I . . . am . . . detained. . . .”

“No worries, old chap, take as long as you like.”

“But the girls!” Raven gasped. “Are they . . . ?”

“Gone,” Sirena answered. “But the others are searching the grates for clues. The place will be swarming with humans in a moment.”

“It already is.” I heard Nathan’s voice coming from the cell.

“Thank the Bells!” I cried. “Is everybody on the boat—”

“Safe and sound,” Nathan replied, kneeling beside me. “And searching the house for clues to where all our girls have gone.”

“I couldn’t s-save them,” Raven rasped.

“No, I don’t suppose you could from down here,” Nathan said, not unkindly. “Now, why don’t we quit the jabber and get you out of here?”

Nathan and Marlin held up Raven’s weight while Sirena and I untangled his wings from the chains. When we got him loose we were able to haul him out of the dreadful pit. In the dim light it was impossible to tell how serious his injuries were, but at least he was alive.

“We can take him back to Ravencliffe on the boat—” Sirena began, but Raven cut her off.

“First find the girls!”

“But we have no idea where they are,” I pointed out.

“Yes, we do.” It was Helen’s voice, coming from the doorway to the cell. We all turned to look at her. At first I thought she was standing in shadow, but as she stepped into the light of our lamps I saw that she was covered head to toe in ash. She had been searching through the grates. She was gripping a half-burnt sheet of paper in her hands. We all stood to meet her as she came forward, even Raven, who struggled to his feet, clutching Marlin and Nathan, and looked down at the paper she held.

It looked like a brochure or program of some sort—perhaps for a church service, because the building depicted looked like a grand cathedral with a single soaring tower.

I’d seen that tower somewhere before.

Helen’s hands were shaking so much it was hard to read the print. I caught “Spectacular” and “Grand opening” and “Musical enter—” and “Tallest building in the world!”

“It’s a program for the grand opening of the Woolworth Building. It says there’s to be program of dance performances by the girls of Blythewood School led by the Viennese dancing master Herr Hofmeister and . . .”

A dance atop a towering building? An image came back to me of dancers moving like automatons, the dance floor shaped like a ticking clock . . .

Pythagoras’s voice broke into my vision. “We’ve found gears and wires and a package for blasting powder.” And then I heard van Drood’s voice again—
They dance to my tune until they run out of time.

“It’s a bomb,” I said. “Van Drood is planning to use our girls to set off a bomb at the opening of the Woolworth Building. We have to stop him!”

“Then we’ll have to move fast,” Helen said, shaking the program so hard flakes of ash fell from it. “The opening’s tonight.”

33

“IT MAKES A
sort of awful sense,” Sam Greenfeder said a few hours later, when we had convened in the ballroom. Raven was resting in one of the upstairs bedrooms with Wren, whom Sirena had sent for, and his Darkling companions flocked around him for support. I’d spent the early hours of the morning helping her and Sirena set Raven’s broken wings. In those hours my teachers and friends had searched the house for more clues, coming up with handfuls of burnt programs for the Woolworth opening ceremony, discarded packages of blasting powder, and snippets of wires and clock gears. They also found Blodeuwedd and the rest of the hawks caged and half-starved in the dungeons. Nathan had vanished for several hours and come back with Omar and Kid Marvel and blueprints of the Woolworth Building, which he said he’d “finagled” out of the offices of the architectural firm. Agnes and Miss Corey had gone downtown to see what they could discover at the Woolworth Building, but they had returned with frustratingly little information.

“The event’s under the strictest security due to the important personages to be present,” Agnes told us. “U.S. senators, congressmen, European nobility—I heard a rumor that Archduke Ferdinand was going to be there!” She reported that there were already crowds gathering in City Hall Park to watch, and the whole area was cordoned off by the police.

“It’s a huge project,” Sam told us. “The tallest building in the world—and one of the most expensive ever built. It’s just the sort of investment I’ve suspected the Order has been sinking their money into. I’ve heard talk on Wall Street that canny investors are buying shares of the building. Frank Woolworth claims it will be the most profitable in the world and, after all, he’s made his fortune by knowing where to put his five-and-dime stores and understanding what the average buyer wants.”

“It
sounds
like a good investment,” Mr. Bellows said, tugging his hair.

“So did the
Titanic
,” Sam said.

“But this is a huge building in the middle of Manhattan,” Miss Corey said. “It can’t sink.”

“No,” Sam said grimly, “but I hear on the street that Woolworth’s sunk all his money into the building but not insured it. If the building is blown up, Woolworth’s whole dynasty will go with it, and so will the Order.”

There was a moment of silence during which we all looked at each other. We were not a prepossessing group: two teachers, a librarian, a lawyer, one personal assistant, a Hindu hypnotist, a carnival performer, seven schoolgirls, and one schoolboy—all of us exhausted and covered with ash.

“We have to stop him!” Miss Sharp cried.

“But how?” Miss Corey asked. “Who will believe us if we tell them a bunch of hypnotized schoolgirls are planning to blow up the Woolworth Building? And how will we get into the opening? I certainly haven’t received an invitation. And you heard what Agnes said—the police have cordoned off the whole building.”

“They won’t be guarding the upper windows.”

The voice came from the doorway where Marlin stood with Sparrow and Oriole. I got to my feet at the sight of them. “Is Raven—?”

“Healing,” Marlin said. “And sleeping. He’ll be all right. We have to stop this—and we can do it together. Our people can carry you to the rooftop and we can go inside from there.”

“We don’t even know when he’s planning to blow up the building,” Miss Corey pointed out. “Or how.”

“I think I know when,” Sam said, holding up a newspaper that Agnes had brought back with her. “It says here that at seven-thirty tonight President Wilson will push a telegraphic button on his desk in Washington, D.C., that will close an electrical circuit to activate the electricity-generating dynamos in the basement of the Woolworth Building, lighting up eighty thousand incandescent light bulbs all at once. ‘It will be,’ the reporter opines, ‘a spectacular explosion of light.’” Sam slapped the paper against his leg. “What better moment for van Drood to stage his show?”

We spent the rest of the afternoon feverishly making our plans. Nathan, Omar, and Mr. Bellows pored over the blueprints of the Woolworth building, trying to determine where bombs would be placed and how they could be defused. Pythagoras and Nathan examined the leftover wires and watch gears to figure out what kind of device van Drood had built. Kid Marvel hurried back downtown to “get the lay of the land.” The other Darklings flew off on a reconnaissance mission to examine the rooftop of the building. Helen and Dolores drew up a roster of who would be carried by which Darkling. Helen flew back to Blythewood with Oriole to collect our
Puppenfee
costumes so we could infiltrate the ballet corps.

“Ugh,” Cam said as we changed in one of the bedrooms. “I hate to wear this thing again. How do we even know they’ll be dancing
Die Puppenfee
?”

“The program says that the girls of Blythewood will take us to a magical toyshop in Mr. Woolworth’s store,” I told her. I had done my best to reassemble the burnt bits of programs to make sense of the evening’s events. “And Herr Hofmeister has already used that music to control the girls.”

“But doesn’t Herr Hofmeister know he’s going to die when the building explodes?” Helen said, frowning.

“Van Drood has him under his control. That’s what van Drood does: he sucks your soul away.” I shivered, remembering what it felt like to be missing even a tiny piece of my soul. “He hollows you out and then fills you with the
tenebrae
. When you’re full of that darkness, you don’t care if you live or die. All you feel is hate and envy and despair.”

A few minutes later, Helen drew me away from the others to give me my repeater, which she’d carried for me on the boat. When she placed it in my hand she held my hand for a moment. “Before . . . when you spoke of being full of darkness . . . it sounded like you knew what that felt like. You’ve been so distant this year . . . I thought it was just your being head over heels with Raven, but it’s not just that, is it?”

I shook my head, fighting back the tears that burned behind my eyes. “I’m sorry I haven’t been a very good friend to you this year.”

“Nor I to you if you didn’t feel you could tell me what’s been bothering you.”

“It’s not your fault,” I insisted, stunned to think Helen would see my keeping a secret as
her
failure. “I’ve been afraid I would lose you if you knew the truth.”

“Do you really think I’m so shallow that I wouldn’t stand by you no matter what?”

I started to tell her that it wasn’t her I doubted, but Sirena appeared to tell us that everyone was gathering in the ballroom to go over the plan one last time. When I looked back at Helen she was adjusting my costume, her face closed.

“Maybe I
am
shallow,” she said, tugging at the silk and wire wings of my costume. “I’m actually jealous that you get to wear the fairy doll costume, and even more jealous that you look so good in it.” She lifted her face and crooked her mouth into a wan smile. “Wings suit you.”

I let Helen and the other girls go on ahead and went to say goodbye to Raven. I found him sitting up on the edge of his bed, looking out at the river. Eirwyn and Gwynfor perched on the window ledge as if standing guard. Raven’s tattered wings hung limply from his bandaged back. Wren had removed the broken feathers and imped in their place new feathers taken from her own wings and the wings of other Darklings. I saw Oriole’s brown ones, Sirena’s black-blue ones, and some of my gold and red. I’d plucked out so many Wren had told me I’d be bald if I didn’t stop. Raven’s wings looked now like a quilt patched from old scraps—and his face looked worse. One eye was swollen shut, his nose was crooked, and he had a livid gash running from his left cheekbone to his jaw. He no longer had the classic profile of a Grecian god. He looked like a used-up boxer, and I thought him all the handsomer for it.

“You look like a fairy,” he said, when he saw me in my costume.

“You look a bit like a troll,” I quipped back, sitting down gently on the bed so as not to jar his (three) broken ribs.

He laughed—then grimaced and clutched his ribs. “I guess this ridiculous getup means you’re determined to go. I hate the idea of you flying into this alone.”

Eirwyn squawked.

“See,” I said. “I won’t be alone. Eirwyn will be with me, and all your friends and mine. They’ve been working together all day. That’s one good thing that’s come out of this: the Council and the Elders will have to agree it’s time to join forces.”

“Unless you all die in a fiery inferno,” he replied glumly. “Then the Order and the Darklings will probably blame each other and declare war.”

“Well then,” I said, “we’ll just have to
not
die in a fiery inferno. Promise to be here when I get back?”

He lifted a limp and damaged wing. “I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”

I leaned into him, as carefully as I could, and found a patch of unbruised flesh in the crook of his neck to nuzzle. “Good,” I said. “Me neither.”

The Darklings flew on ahead and the rest of us crammed into my grandmother’s Rolls, which Agnes had commandeered without my grandmother’s knowledge, to go downtown. Helen spent the ride peering out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Darklings.

“They’re cloaked when they fly,” I explained to her. “Besides, Raven says that humans never look up.”

“I wonder if that will change when there are more planes in the air,” Cam remarked.

“And taller buildings,” Helen added.

“Yes,” Dolores said. “If the Woolworth Building is a success there will be more like it, and taller and taller buildings until the whole city is full of them and we have to crane our necks to even see the sky.”

Looking out the window at the tenements crowding the streets of lower Manhattan, I wondered what would happen to these noisy, teeming neighborhoods if men tore down everything to build their Cathedrals of Commerce. Where would the poor go? And where would the Darklings go if the world became so crowded?

“A fellow might need to take off for wider spaces if that happened.”

It took me a moment to realize it had been Nathan who spoke. He’d been quiet all day, poring over the plans for the Woolworth Building. Seeing him look so studious, I’d wondered if he might be developing an interest in architecture.