The Name of This Book Is Secret Read online

  “Don’t worry, she’s not my girlfriend or anything, that’s just the way she is—all kissy and stuff. It’s kind of embarrassing, but she’s really nice, once you get to know her. Seriously, I know you’re going to like her—she’s even nicer than Amber! Dr. L’s pretty nice, too. He says he’s going to cure my condition. They use an ancient Egyptian method. Technically, it’s a lobotomy but it’s nonsurgical. Instead of cutting your head open, they enter through your nose with a long straw. And since there’s no feeling in your brain, it’s practically painless! How ’bout that? Afterward, Ms. Mauvais’s going to take me to Paris—that’s where she’s from. I’m sure you could come, too, if I asked her—she’ll do anything I want. What do you think, do you want to go to Paris?”

  Cass stared at him, not blinking. She thought perhaps she’d been drugged, and she was having an hallucination. That would explain the nausea.

  Max-Ernest looked at her expectantly. “Well, aren’t you going to say anything?”

  “Did they hypnotize you? Is that why you’re acting like this?” Cass asked, finally realizing that she was, alas, perfectly clearheaded. “’Cause I hope so, for your sake.”

  “What do you mean? Acting like what?”

  “Never mind,” Cass sighed. “How did you get here?”

  “I made a reservation. Just like you.”

  “You made a reservation?” Cass repeated. “And they just let you come? What did you tell them?”

  Max-Ernest squirmed in his seat. “Well, nothing really, just—”

  A horrible thought struck Cass. “Did you tell them you had the notebook?!”

  “I still have it! I haven’t given it to them yet,” said Max-Ernest defensively. “But it doesn’t matter anyway. They’re not how you think they—”

  “It doesn’t matter?! Have you totally forgotten about Pietro? About Luciano? About Benjamin?”

  “C’mon, Cass. I know what you think, but think about it, have they done anything bad to you? I mean, since you’ve been here.”

  “Well, no, not yet, but—”

  “And they knew who you were all along, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess—”

  “See. How ’bout that? They’re not evil then, after all....You know, it’s OK to be wrong sometimes. Everybody is. Even me.”

  Cass shook her head. “Now, I know you were hypnotized!”

  Before the matter could be resolved one way or the other, Gloria sailed into the tent, her round face beaming. (Notice I didn’t say she wouldn’t be at dinner—just that she wasn’t the surprise guest.)

  “Cass!” cried the real estate agent. “Aren’t you going to say hello to your old friend, Gloria? Or don’t you recognize me? I know, I look twenty years younger, don’t I? And twenty pounds lighter!”

  Gloria twirled around so she could be seen from all sides.

  Cass nodded mutely. No doubt about it, Gloria was half the size she was before. More remarkable still was how friendly the real estate agent was acting. Cass wasn’t sure she hadn’t liked Gloria better in her earlier, meaner incarnation. Now she was harder to ignore.

  “Isn’t this place just too, too fabu?” Gloria continued. “True, the Egyptian theme might be a little exotic for some. But the setting! As they say in my business—location, location, location! And the treatments! Heavenly! And don’t get me started on those elixirs. Have you ever tasted anything more delicious?”

  She paused briefly for Cass to nod in agreement. Then went on:

  “Remember that lucky day when we all met? Well, Dr. L gave me this itty-bitty one to drink afterward. And I was hooked. I wanted more the very next day. More, more, more! He said it was too early, but I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I followed him all the way to the spa to get it. And am I glad I did! They work miracles here—!”

  “Miracles have very little to do with it, Ms. Fortun-e.”

  It was Dr. L himself, joining them under the tent. He looked as cool and composed as ever—if a tad irritated by Gloria.

  Gloria pouted like a chastened schoolgirl. “I’m sorry, Doctor. Your little Gloria is just so grateful for everything you’ve done. Everything you do—”

  “Everything we do is here is based on science,” said Dr. L curtly. “Not perhaps what you think of as science. But the True Science. The One Science.”

  “What kind of science is that?” asked Max-Ernest, who was under the impression that he already knew all the kinds of sciences that there were.

  “The science of the essence. The science of which all others are part,” said Dr. L. “Everything on Earth springs from the same essential substance. Once you find it, anything is possible. Turning lead to gold. Old to young. Even turning frumpy real estate agents into beautiful women.”

  Cass looked involuntarily at Gloria, but Gloria didn’t seem to register the insult—she was so smitten with Dr. L.

  “How wonderful!” she said. “What’s this science called? Is it Egyptian?”

  Ms. Mauvais, who had just reentered the tent, cleared her throat. “I believe our dinner is here,” she said.

  Even Cass, who was feeling slightly less sick, but all the more upset about the situation in which she found herself, had to admit the dinner table looked magnificent. It was covered with a cloth sewn entirely of crimson flower petals, each petal lush and perfect and not a bit bruised or ripped. On this luxurious crimson bed sat a dozen crystal candlesticks of varying heights as well as numerous glittering urns and platters of exotic, Oriental design. Each place setting came with a pair of gleaming golden chopsticks and ornate sets of silverware—tiny forks, oddly curved spoons, needle-like knives—that had the look of ancient surgical instruments.

  On the whole, the table looked less like a dinner table than a shrine to some jealous and demanding god. This effect was only heightened when the kitchen staff began to bring in the food—so solemnly and silently they might have been making offerings in a temple rather than serving dinner.

  Indeed, whenever a new dish appeared, Ms. Mauvais described it with an almost religious reverence.

  “The base of this custard is the rendered cartilage of a tiny marsupial that lives under rocks on an island in the South Pacific,” she said of the first course, which arrived in individual thimble-size serving cups. “Excellent source of calcium. Also prized by fisherman for its waterproofing properties...I do hope you aren’t vegetarians.”

  “The pale blue dust you see is pollen from a flower that blooms only at the elevation of eleven thousand feet and only after a very long winter,” she said about the topping on a roll that looked like a powdered donut but which was anything but sweet. “Some indigenous peoples believe it sharpens the intellect. Certainly, it is very helpful in clearing the sinuses.”

  “Bear liver sautéed in codfish oil,” she announced when a particularly unattractive lump arrived in front of each diner. “A dish beloved by the Vikings. The reason they could survive so long in the cold. You may find it a little gamey.”

  Before they ate any given dish, Cass and Max-Ernest were instructed to close their eyes and smell it. “Remember, what you experience as taste is mostly scent,” said Ms. Mauvais. “By itself, the tongue can only identify four flavors—or is it five?”

  “Five,” replied Dr. L. “I believe scientists recently discovered a taste for fat.”

  After smelling their food, they were to examine it closely from all angles, so as to appreciate any subtleties of color and shape.

  “Should we listen to it, too?” asked Max-Ernest, who was clearly hanging on Ms. Mauvais’s every word.

  “Well, that depends on whether your dish is making any noise, doesn’t it, sweetheart?” she responded. “Why don’t you give it a try?”

  Obediently, Max-Ernest tilted his head toward his plate. Across the table, Cass rolled her eyes in disgust.

  Despite her rapturous descriptions, Ms. Mauvais, Cass noticed, didn’t eat for most of the meal. She merely sipped from a tall glass of red wine—at least Cass assumed it was wine. It was t
he right color but it looked disturbingly thick.

  The one dish Ms. Mauvais ate was the last. It consisted of a small quivering mass that pulsed intermittently like a heart. It was served only to her and she did not describe it like she had the others. Instead, she speared it suddenly and violently with a chopstick—then swallowed it whole.

  As Ms. Mauvais sighed in satisfaction, Cass thought she detected a new vibrancy in her hostess’s pale white cheeks.

  “I have a sensitive stomach,” Ms. Mauvais explained. “There are very few things I can eat. And they have to be very, very fresh.”

  After their plates had been cleared, Ms. Mauvais focused her attention on her guests. “Now, my darling young people, I wonder if you know what you have in that notebook. Did you peek inside at all?”

  “No, we didn’t,” said Cass before Max-Ernest could say otherwise.

  “I don’t know exactly what’s in it myself, but I fear the worst,” said Ms. Mauvais. “You see, Pietro was a dear, dear friend. But I’m afraid he was quite ill—mentally, I mean.”

  “Mentally? You mean he was crazy? It didn’t seem like it,” said Cass defensively. She felt somehow as though she was being personally insulted.

  “Oh, so then you did read it?”

  Cass reddened, not saying anything more.

  “Your ears, my dear—think about my offer!” said Ms. Mauvais in a singsong tone. “But yes, to answer your question, I’m sad to say he was totally delusional. He had this imaginary friend—a twin brother—whom he invented as a child. He made up this incredible story about this brother being snatched away from the circus when they were boys.”

  At this, Cass and Max-Ernest couldn’t help glancing at each other.

  “I see you’re familiar with this story—that’s what I was afraid of. It was very vivid for him, but for most of his life he knew it was a fantasy. Only in his later years did he begin really to believe it....Are you quite well, Doctor?” asked Ms. Mauvais, addressing Dr. L, who had remained remarkably quiet ever since she had brought up the notebook.

  His face looked tight, as though he might be choking on something, but he waved off her concern. “I’m fine,” he said, covering his mouth with a napkin.

  “Well then,” Ms. Mauvais continued, “when I suggested to Pietro that his brother didn’t exist outside his imagination, he became violent—he actually accused me of being the one to steal his brother, if you can believe that. It didn’t seem to occur to him that I was much too young to have been alive when he was a child.”

  Ms. Mauvais chuckled and touched her forehead. “Much too young,” she repeated.

  Could that be true? wondered Cass.

  Was Max-Ernest right about Ms. Mauvais? Had she judged her too harshly? Just because Ms. Mauvais was a bit chilly and strange? Or because—Cass remembered this now for some reason—Max-Ernest had once said Ms. Mauvais was the prettiest woman he’d ever seen?

  Was she jealous? Was that all it was all along?

  “Then why do you want the notebook so badly?” Cass asked, scrambling to climb out of the mental rabbit hole into which she was falling. “If it’s all made up.”

  “Because we don’t want it to get into the wrong hands. Because we loved Pietro, and we want the world to remember him at his best—not as some crazy person.”

  The more Cass thought about it, the surer she became that she wasn’t sure of anything.

  She had no proof that what the magician had written had really happened.

  No proof that Ms. Mauvais was involved in Luciano’s disappearance.

  No proof even that Ms. Mauvais was involved in Benjamin Blake’s disappearance.

  For all Cass knew, Benjamin Blake was already back home, safe and sound—and there’d been no reason at all for her to come save him.

  In her agitation, Cass banged the table—and accidentally knocked the wineglass out of Ms. Mauvais’s hand. The glass flew into the air and — s-p-i-l

  l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-e-d—

  You know those frozen-in-time moments when life suddenly turns into a kung fu movie and you see everything in slow motion? The glass was in the air for less than a second, but that second was long enough for Cass to think a thousand things—and to realize why the sight of Ms. Mauvais’s wine had disturbed her earlier.

  Two words: monkey blood.

  Was it monkey blood? To be frank, I don’t know—some rumors are just rumors. In any event, Cass was about to be greeted by a sight far more disturbing than a glass of blood.

  Here, let me put you back in the scene—in real time, this time:

  The glass flew into the air, and spilled—wine, blood, elixir, who knows, I won’t delay it any longer— out in an arc, splattering all over one of Ms. Mauvais’s long creamy white gloves.

  “You clumsy girl!”

  Fury passed in a blush over Ms. Mauvais’s face as she yanked off her glove. “This was my favorite pair. I bought them at the Paris flea market over ninety years a—”

  She stopped speaking, following her guests’ eyes with her own.

  Gloria stifled a gasp.

  Everyone was staring at Ms. Mauvais’s hand, ungloved for the first time.

  It was the hand of someone—of something—else. With fingers so thin and frail you could almost snap them off. With nails so yellow and cracked they were claws. With skin so translucent you could see every bone, every ligament, every vein.

  It was the hand of an old woman.

  A very old woman.

  An older woman than Cass had ever seen.

  They say that eyes never lie. But I think it’s much truer to say that hands never do.

  It was inevitable, in a life as long as Ms. Mauvais’s, that she expose her hand now and then. Still, she hadn’t lived as long as she had to let a little spill rattle her. Seconds later, she’d already slipped on a new pair of gloves.

  As if nothing had happened, she turned to Gloria, who was sitting in a kind of stunned stupor. “Do you mind giving us a moment?”

  “Not at all,” said Gloria, not moving.

  “Thank you,” said Ms. Mauvais, nodding to a spa staff person who’d been standing discretely nearby. Silently, he helped Gloria out of her seat, and led her away as if she were an invalid—or perhaps an inmate in an asylum.

  Ms. Mauvais turned back to Cass and Max-Ernest.

  “So. Where is the notebook?” she asked, her chilly voice now an ice storm.

  Before telling you how Cass and Max-Ernest responded, let me remind you of something that Max-Ernest mentioned at an earlier point in our narrative: they were only eleven.

  They were surrounded on all sides by spa staff. They had no idea how, or if, they were ever going to get home. They had no weapons in their pockets, nor any knowledge how to use a weapon should they have had one. They were not superheroes, in short, they were kids. And they had just seen one of the scariest sights of their young lives (although I think Ms. Mauvais’s hand would have spooked anyone who happened to see it, no matter what age). So please have sympathy when I tell you that they didn’t hesitate very long before giving Ms. Mauvais what she wanted.

  First, however, Max-Ernest looked over at Cass. He didn’t say anything out loud but his expression said something like, okay, you were right, I made a terrible mistake, and now we’re in the worst trouble of our lives, and I’m really scared, and what should I do?

  And then Cass nodded back in a way that said something like, yeah, yeah, I understand all that, I’m really scared, too, just hurry up and give Ms. Mauvais the notebook before she kills us. (Really, what was the alternative?)

  And then, and only then, did Max-Ernest pull the notebook out of his bag.

  Ms. Mauvais took it, her re-gloved hands trembling. “At last! How many years have I waited!”

  “Well, now you have it, so I think we’ll just go,” said Cass, motioning for Max-Ernest to get up.

  “You’re not going anywhere yet,” said Ms. Mauvais sharply.
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  She opened the notebook and looked briefly at the inscription. Then she flipped through the blank pages with increasing irritation, much as the kids had when they first looked through them.

  “This is all? What kind of trick is this?”

  “Here, let me look,” said Dr. L.

  He took the open notebook and glanced briefly at the inscription, the bare ghost of a smile crossing his face.

  Then he handed the notebook back to Ms. Mauvais. “I think you’ll find the notebook’s quite full. If you look on the undersides of the pages.”

  Ms. Mauvais looked searchingly at Dr. L. “A code?”

  He nodded.

  “So then it’s his. It’s real,” she said with palpable excitement.

  Ms. Mauvais fiddled with the notebook impatiently, until its accordion-like pages opened up in front of her. Quickly, she scanned the pages, as if searching for a particular word or phrase that she expected to pop out. When she got to the last page, she looked up, enraged.

  “Where’s the rest? What did you do with it?”

  “We don’t know where it is,” said Max-Ernest nervously. “We thought maybe he ripped out the pages—”

  “Liar!” Ms. Mauvais screamed. “You read it. And now you’re keeping it from me!”

  Max-Ernest cowered, a far cry from the excited boy of an hour earlier.

  Cass tried to defend him. “He’s telling the truth. That’s all there was.”

  But Ms. Mauvais appeared for once to have lost control and she was hardly listening. “The Secret. I know he found the Secret. He was so close, he must have. He kept it from us. But he can’t anymore! And neither will you! I won’t let you!”

  She gripped Cass and Max-Ernest each by their forearms, showing surprising strength in her frail fingers.

  “Tell me what it is,” she hissed. “Tell me the secret!”

  At the sound of Ms. Mauvais’s words, Daisy (who Cass had not seen since she arrived at the spa, but who Cass now realized must always have been lurking) appeared at the entrance of the tent, blocking the way out with her tall frame.