Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) (32 page)

“I can see you building things,” I said to him.

He grinned at me—the first time I’d seen him smile since that day skating on the river.

“Actually,” he said, “the part I found most interesting today was studying the explosives with Gus. I think I might have a future in blowing things up.”

Before I could think of a response to this remarkable statement, we arrived at the Henry Street Settlement House. Miss Sharp had telephoned Miss Wald to ask if we could use the building tonight for a “union meeting.” When I saw the outside of the settlement house, I thought that Miss Wald must have misunderstood. It appeared as though there already was a meeting going on there—some sort of ethnic dance group, from the looks of it. There were girls in colorful gauzy skirts and veils, and older women in gypsy scarves that glittered with gold coins. There was a rowdy group of Irishmen in green tweed jackets and a more somber contingent of Negro men and women eyeing the antics of the Irishmen warily. Marlin and the other Darklings stood in a close knot next to a group of dwarves, one of whom came over to open the car door for us. It was Kid Marvel.

“Whatcha waitin’ for?” he cried with a wide grin. “An engraved invite? Everyone’s here to do their part.”

“Who exactly are these people?” Miss Corey asked, her eyes widening at one of the hootchy-kootchy girls.

“The madges, of course,” Kid Marvel replied, waving his arms like the carnival showman he was.

He explained as we followed him into the house, which was even more crowded.

“When the word spread that the Darklings and the Order were working together against the Shadow Master, everyone wanted to help.”

“But we’re not even operating under the official sanction of the Order,” Miss Corey whispered to Miss Sharp.

“We know that,” a veiled woman said, stepping forward out of the crowd. It took me a second to recognize her as the hootchy-kootchy dancer we’d seen in Coney Island. She was wearing the same costume and exuded the same intoxicating jasmine perfume, but her bearing was now more regal than seductive as she addressed us. “We all have reasons not to trust the ‘official sanction’ of the Order.”

She drew away her veil and a gasp went through the room. Beneath her veil was the face of a tawny cat. But that wasn’t what I gasped at. There was a livid brand on her cheek.

“Who did that to you?” Miss Sharp demanded.

“Do you not recognize the rune?” the dancer asked, taking a step closer to Miss Sharp. I saw Mr. Bellows clutch his dagger and Miss Corey tried to step in front of Miss Sharp, but she pushed her away.

“It’s one of ours,” Miss Sharp said, her voice shaking. “It’s a rune to dispel magic.”

“Yes,” the dancer purred. “I am Delilah, one of the handmaids of the goddess Bastet, revered in my country as the goddess of joy, perfume, and dance. My sisters and I are dedicated to peace, but because your Order confused our goddess with her warlike cousin Sekhmet they hunted us down and marked us with a rune to banish our magic.”

“Then why ever would you want to help us?” Miss Corey asked.

A black man stepped forward. He was dressed in a dapper pin-striped suit with a bright yellow cravat, and carried a walking stick with a carved ivory rooster at the top. His head was completely shaved. When he moved I saw tattooed signs on his scalp, but they didn’t look like the Order’s runes. I heard a murmur go around the room, a reverent whisper of the name “Shango,” and I recognized him as the “African tribesman” from Coney Island.

“We believe there are many good people in your Order,” Shango began in a resonant voice that I felt vibrate in my belly. “Many of your people worked to free my people from slavery. The Order was meant to be a force for good, but it has become too mired in its own rivalries and hatreds. We believe it can become a force for good again.”

“Aye,” an Irishman said, raising his fist. “It’s a gude sign ye’ve put aside your hatred of the Darklings. We want to be part of that!”

“And we want to fight the shadows,” Delilah said. “My sisters have seen the shadows collecting in the cities—from the gambling hells to the mansions of the rich. The Shadow Master has even approached my sisters to recruit them to his side. He is amassing an army, and where there are armies, there will be war. We want to be on the side of good in that war, and we believe that if the Order and the Darklings can put aside their enmity to fight together, we will be victorious. Together.”

The assembled crowd clamored their assent. Shango rapped his stick against the floor for quiet.

“What do you say?” he demanded in a booming baritone. “Will you have us as your compatriots?”

Miss Sharp looked from Mr. Bellows to Miss Corey. They both nodded to her. Then she looked to Marlin. He stood taller under her gaze and nodded also. Then she looked at me. I wasn’t sure why my assent should matter, but I gave it to her in a firm nod. Miss Sharp turned back to Shango and Delilah.

“We can’t guarantee what the rest of the Order will have to say when this is all done, but I can tell you this—if they won’t have you, then I won’t have them. It would be a great honor to stand by your side in tonight’s battle and, should we survive, for the rest of my life.”

A cheer rang out in the room that seemed to echo through the house and beyond. I felt a shiver go up my spine and through my wings, as if a spark had been kindled. When I looked around the room I saw that same spark in the eyes of my friends and new comrades. We had become stronger by this union. I only hoped that we were strong enough to defeat van Drood.

34

AN HOUR LATER
I was flying on Sirena’s back through the darkening sky toward the soaring tower of the Woolworth Building. It was the first time I’d seen the building with its carapace of scaffolding removed. It was truly majestic—a Gothic spire etched in black against the orange glow in the west, like a tower out of a fairy tale. As we got closer I made out the finely carved arched windows, the swooping buttresses, and the lace-like tracery of the pinnacles punctuating the sky—just like the great European cathedrals we studied in history class. And yet the man who’d built this Cathedral of Commerce had made his fortune on the nickels and dimes of people buying everyday necessities—sewing needles and dishcloths and buttons.

This tower celebrated a new spirit that made my heart soar. Even a girl like me, it seemed to say, who’d started out in a factory sewing shirtsleeves, could one day aspire to beauty and fineness. I could well understand why van Drood would plot to blow it up. The tower was all about hope, the one emotion a shadow-ridden creature like van Drood could not abide.

We landed on the topmost horizontal ledge below the peaked octagonal tower. We could see the rounded end of Manhattan Island and the Statue of Liberty standing in the harbor. The crowds in City Hall Park looked like a hive of swarming bees.

“If this blows up,” Pythagoras remarked, “it will take out all these other buildings and kill most of those people.”

“We shan’t let it blow up!” Helen cried. “I’m sure Mr. Bellows and Nathan and those nice Irishmen are down in the engine room disarming the bomb right now. Our job is to get our friends out.”

We had to break one of the arched glass windows to get inside. We left the hawks on the roof as lookouts and took the stairs down. From the program we knew the celebratory dinner was on the twenty-seventh floor—we were on the forty-third. Going down sixteen floors on foot was frustratingly slow after soaring through the sky. Helen and I were to go ahead to find out where the girls were being kept, and then I’d go back to report. We left the rest of our troop in the stairwell and entered the twenty-seventh floor.

We stepped into a carpeted hallway full of men in dark suits puffing on cigars and slapping each other on the back.

“Heigh ho!” a portly gentleman cried when he saw Helen and me. “What have we here? Are you little girls lost?”

“Oh, golly, sir,” Helen responded in a high-pitched voice I barely recognized. “We’re here to do a special dance for you gentlemen, but this building is so big we’ve forgotten how to get back to our dressing room. Do you know where it is?”

I was afraid that she’d given us away by overacting, but the portly gentleman was completely taken in.

“Well, I can’t say I know where your dressing room is, little lady, but perhaps one of these waiters . . .” He snapped his fingers and a black-suited waiter carrying a silver tray of champagne glasses wheeled to a halt in front of him. “D’you know where the dancing girls are kept?” he asked, winking at the young man.

The waiter looked down his nose at Helen and me in our frilly costumes and sniffed as if we smelled bad. “You girls are not supposed to mingle with the guests. Follow me.”

Helen simpered to the portly gentleman. “Thank you ever so much for your help, kind sir. I’ll throw you a rose when we’re dancing later.”

“Helen,” I muttered as we scurried to keep up with the fast-moving waiter, “don’t you think you’re laying it on a little thick?”

“These men,” she said quietly in her normal voice, “expect us to act like simpletons. Look at them all.” We were passing through a large dining hall decorated with palm trees and American flags. The room was full of men in black suits, gleaming white shirtfronts and white gardenias in their lapels. En masse they looked like a colony of penguins. “Puffed up like stuffed quails. So pleased with themselves for being rich and important enough to be invited to the biggest extravaganza of the year. It would serve them right if we took our girls out of here and let them all blow up.”

“Helen!” I cried, shocked. A year ago she would have regarded this gathering as an opportunity to meet a husband. “You don’t mean that!”

“Well, no, I don’t suppose they deserve to die, but I would like to shake them out of their complacency. Look around you—what’s missing from this scene?”

I took another look at the crowd of black-suited men. “Um . . . women?”

“Exactly. Not a single woman was invited to this gala, even though it’s women spending their nickels and dimes that have gotten Mr. Woolworth where he is today. Oh look, there he is . . .” For a moment Helen’s tone softened. “I think he’s talking to Mr. Tesla. And is that Charles Dana Gibson? He once did my portrait.” Helen sighed and I squeezed her shoulder.

Suddenly I didn’t blame Helen for being angry. A year ago her father would have been one of these men, and it hurt her to see them all laughing and drinking as if the world was just the same, when her world had so utterly changed.

“You’re absolutely right,” I told Helen. “Things have got to change in this world. Let’s go find our girls and get them out of this place.”

We followed the stiff-backed waiter through plushly carpeted corridors to a closed door with a sign on it that read “Do not disturb—ladies dressing.”

“As if we’re exotic animals that have to be caged,” Helen muttered.

The supercilious waiter rapped his knuckles once on the gilt door and without waiting for a reply pushed it open and stood stiffly aside to let us go by. “There,” he said as we passed him. “Don’t stray out of here again until it’s time for your dance.”

Helen trod on his foot as she went by, making him drop his tray. I repressed a giggle and yanked Helen into the dressing room before he could retaliate. We fell into a fug of perfume and talcum powder that turned our laughter into choking coughs.

“Hell’s Bells!” Helen swore. “It smells like a French bordello in here.”

Clearly that stuck-up waiter had taken us to the wrong room. These tarted-up women in scanty dresses couldn’t be our girls. Most of them looked older. These must be the other girls who had been taken from the Hellgate Club.

But then out of the sea of bare shoulders, exposed cleavages, and rouged cheeks rose a familiar voice.

“Helen! Ava! Thank the Bells you’re here!” A girl in a white off-the-shoulder blouse, tight blue bodice, and short red skirt pushed her way through the crowd. Only her voice identified her as Daisy. She lowered it now and leaned close to whisper in my ear. “Did you find him? I tried to leave you a message.”

My heart leapt at Daisy’s bravery. “Yes, he’s going to be all right, thanks to you.”

“Daisy Mildred Moffat, what on earth are you wearing?” Helen cried. “You look like a—”

“Patriotic shop girl?” another girl cried in an overly bright voice. I looked at her and recognized, beneath her garish makeup, Rue. “Yes, that’s exactly what we are! At the last minute Herr Hofmeister changed the program, even though we had spent weeks learning the last one.”

At the tone of annoyance that had crept into her voice, one of the girls looked up from sewing a frill onto a round pasteboard tower of giant hatboxes piled on top of each other.

“Turn that frown upside down, Miss Grumpy!” she told Rue. “Being flexible and able to roll with the punches is one of the qualities of a patriotic shop girl. Our job is not to wonder why, but to smile until we die.”

“Yes, Beatrice,” Rue replied.
Beatrice
? I peered at the painted face, trying to recognize Beatrice Jager. “I’ll try to remember that. Go back to putting on those frills now; that last one is crooked.”

Beatrice—it was, horribly, her—forgot her own advice and frowned. She peered down at the frill and then ripped it off.

“That should keep her busy for a while,” Rue said, drawing us into a quiet corner. “We’re programmed to do everything perfectly. If we make a single mistake—a misstep, a dropped stitch—we have to do it over and over again until it’s perfect.”

“I understand how you’ve avoided being programmed,” Helen said to Rue, “but how have you, Daisy?”

“With this.” She slipped out a piece of paper that had been folded into a tiny square. “It’s Mr. Appleby’s last letter to me after I broke off our engagement. I had it on me when I was taken. Whenever I feel myself slipping I read it over—or recite it. I have it memorized.” She looked up while she recited the letter. “‘Dearest Daisy,’ he writes, ‘It was with great disappointment and heartache that I read your last letter, but not surprise. I knew when you went to that fancy school back east you would find many opportunities beyond the plain and simple life I have to offer you here in Kansas City. I have only ever wanted the best for you. Part of me still hopes—foolishly, I suppose—that you will change your mind and come back to me. Know that if you ever do I will be waiting here for you. Your true and loving Ignatius Appleby.’”

“Ignatius?”
Helen echoed.

“That’s a lovely letter,” I told Daisy. “What a fine man he must be.”

“Yes,” Daisy said, her eyes shining. “And he’s waiting for me. That thought has kept me strong these last months—that and the firm belief that you two would come for us. You’re not alone, though, are you?”

We quickly filled Daisy and Rue in on the entire mission. Rue was excited to hear that Etta was with us, Daisy that the Darklings had come.

“A league of Darklings and Blythewood girls,” Daisy said. “Oh, I’m sorry I’ve missed those meetings! And is Mr. Bellows really downstairs disarming a bomb?” A cloud came over her face, which I thought might be concern for her favorite teacher but which lasted a little too long. She began silently mouthing the words of Mr. Appleby’s letter again. When she finished she looked from Helen to me to Rue. “What were you saying?”

Helen and I looked at each other. Rue started waving her hands. “We told you Mr. Bellows was disarming a bomb,” Helen began.

“There’s no bomb, silly!” Daisy squeaked, while Rue tried to make her be quiet, but the other girls had heard and began echoing her. “No bomb, silly, no bomb, silly, no bomb, silly . . .”

“They do this whenever someone mentions the bomb,” Rue explained.

“Only sparklers!” One of the girls—Susannah, I thought—came over to us holding two long tapered batons with wire wicks at each end. “See! For our big finale we’ll twirl these.” She demonstrated a complicated twirling maneuver that made me dizzy to watch.

“What’s going on?” I asked Rue, but before she could answer there was a knock at the door in the five-part pattern we had agreed upon as a signal. I went to the door and opened it a crack. For a moment I thought it was the obnoxious waiter, but then I recognized Nathan in a waiter’s suit, his fair hair greased and combed straight back. I grabbed his arm and pulled him in. “Have you found the bomb?” I asked.

“No bomb, silly,” Daisy began again.

“Shut up!” Helen snapped at Daisy. I didn’t blame her. The “no bomb, silly” chant was unnerving.

“She’s right, though,” Nathan said, staring at Daisy’s cleavage. Helen punched him in the arm and he raised his eyes a few inches. “Sorry. We’ve searched the entire basement and Omar’s mesmerized the whole staff downstairs. No one knows anything about a bomb.”

“No bomb, silly,” chanted the girls gluing red, white, and blue frills onto the giant hatbox.

“What’s that?” Nathan asked, pointing at the giant hatbox.

“A cake, silly,” one of the girls said. “A great big patriotic birthday cake to celebrate the birthday of Mr. Woolworth’s great big wonderful building! Susannah is going to jump out of it and the rest of us are going to light our sparklers to look like birthday candles!”

“May I have a look inside?” Nathan asked the prattling girl with surprising gentleness.

The girl wagged a finger at him. “Uh-uh,” she sang, “no one looks inside the cake before the big number. That would ruin the surprise.”

“It’s true that no one’s been allowed to look inside,” Rue said in a low voice.

“Let’s find out,” Nathan said to her, and then, in a louder voice, he addressed the girl. “Oh, but you see, I’m the, er, engineer and I just want to have a look to make sure there’s enough room inside for Susannah. We wouldn’t want anything to go wrong, would we?”

The girl cocked her head to the left and then to the right. “Nothing can go wrong,” she said, in a low masculine voice that sent chills down my spine. Then she smiled and chirped in a feminine high-pitched voice, “Golly, I guess it’s all right.”

Nathan moved gingerly past the girl and through the crowd of girls gluing red, white, and blue frills onto the cardboard cake. As they moved away I made out the lettering on the sides. “Congratulations, Mr. Woolworth!” it read. “From the Girls of Blythewood.”

Nathan carefully opened the top lid, which was made of flimsy paper. “See?” Susannah said. “I’ll burst right through!”

“There’s not a lot of room for you,” Nathan said. “They’ve only given you the top layer. What’s underneath . . . ?”

He reached his hand deep into the cake. I peered over his shoulder and watched him lift a plywood circle. Beneath it was a tangle of metal gears and wires attached to a bundle of sticks. It looked a bit like the inside of a clock, or . . .