If You're Reading This, It's Too Late Page 4

  Even the two sisters seemed to feel it; they shrank away from Cass and Max-Ernest, leaving the sock-monster lying on the deck.

  Yes, I’m afraid the voice belonged to Ms. Mauvais.

  In contrast to the loud, clacking sisters, she walked toward Cass and Max-Ernest with an almost preternatural calm.

  Although dressed for the sea in gleaming white, Ms. Mauvais seemed to carry with her a kind of darkness. No friend of the sun, she exposed hardly a speck of skin to the elements. To shade her face, she wore a hat with a brim so broad she appeared to be sprouting wings. To shield her eyes, she wore a pair of mirrored sunglasses so enormous they gave her head the look of a space alien or maybe a gigantic fly. And to cover her ancient clawlike hands, the sight of which Cass and Max-Ernest remembered with such horror, she wore long white gloves that made her arms look like the limbs of an albino praying mantis.

  Of Ms. Mauvais herself, you could see only a mouth — admittedly an exquisitely beautiful and evermore youthful-looking mouth — and even that she’d covered with a frosty white lipstick that glittered with an unnatural phosphorescence.

  “Ah, Max-Ernest, darling! And my dear Cassandra,” cried Ms. Mauvais, circling her captives so she could get a good look at both of them. “To happy reunions!” She raised her cocktail glass, ice tinkling in tune with her voice.

  I wouldn’t call it that, Cass thought grimly.

  “I see you’ve met Romi and Montana Skelton.”

  So these were the famous Skelton Sisters? Cass marveled. What a sick joke! Max-Ernest had been right months ago when he mistakenly referred to them as the Skeleton Sisters. Had Cass not been tied up on an enemy ship far out at sea and been certain to die any moment, she might have laughed.

  “I’m afraid I still don’t see the family resemblance.” Ms. Mauvais chuckled drily.*

  “Well, have they told you where he is?” asked Dr. L, emerging from belowdecks — for of course it had been he, not Pietro, who’d welcomed them onto the ship.

  “Not yet, darling. I was just getting to it,” Ms. Mauvais answered.

  How could she have let this awful, plastic man convince her he was Pietro? Cass wondered.

  True, he and Pietro were twins. But, as Cass and Max-Ernest well knew, Dr. L had gone to great, even murderous lengths to stay so young, so handsome. Even if he wasn’t the bearded wizard of her fantasies, Pietro would have looked much older by now. Older and wiser. Older and kinder.

  Come to think of it, would a Terces Society boat look anything like this shiny ship? A Terces vessel, Cass suddenly felt sure, would be smaller and scrappier, fit for stealthy missions and dangerous adventures. This Midnight Sun ship was better fit for a pleasure cruise.

  Or maybe a television ad.

  She’d been so desperate to join the Terces Society that she’d been willing to believe anything.

  Ms. Mauvais turned back to Cass and Max-Ernest. “Well?”

  “Well . . . w-w-what?” stammered Max-Ernest.

  “Where. Is. He?” asked Ms. Mauvais, stone- faced.

  “Where is who?” asked Cass, confused. “Pietro?”

  “The homunculus, fool!”

  “The hom — what?” asked Max-Ernest.

  “THE HOMUNCULUS! I’m warning you, don’t play with me.”

  “Believe me, we would never play with you,” said Cass.

  “We don’t even know what a homunculus is,” said Max-Ernest. “Well, I don’t know what it is. And if I don’t know, I doubt she knows. Not that she doesn’t know things that I don’t know, but this kind of —”

  “Silence!”

  Ms. Mauvais picked up Cass’s battered sock-monster and dangled it in front of them as if it were a dead mouse. “What, pray tell, is this?!”

  “My sock-monster — I made it.”

  “I see. And whom was it modeled after? Tell me that!”

  “Nobody. He’s just made from a sock.” Cass certainly wasn’t about to say he was modeled after a creature in her dreams.

  “You expect me to believe this thing isn’t supposed to be a homunculus? You must think me very dumb.”

  “Hey, give that to us!” / “Yeah, give it to us!” said Romi and Montana, who’d perked up as soon as the sock-monster was mentioned.

  Ms. Mauvais eyed them in irritation. “Don’t you girls have a concert to prepare for?”

  She tossed the sock-monster to them, and they chased after it like two ungainly puppies after a ball. Cass watched sadly — now she’d never get her sock-monster back.

  “You needn’t bother pretending,” said Dr. L. “We know you’re members of the Terces Society now. Or have you forgotten how we got you here?”

  “But we’re not pretending!” cried Cass.

  “If you tell us where the homunculus is, we’ll give you a life preserver when we toss you over, and there’s a chance — a small chance — that someone will save you. Otherwise —”

  “Otherwise, our chef is very eager to make shark fin soup, but so far all we’ve been able to catch is tuna,” said Ms. Mauvais.*

  She gestured toward three deckhands who were wrestling with an enormous tuna. It thrashed wildly until one of the men slit its belly with a knife. Guts spilled onto the deck.

  “We’ve been looking for the right bait,” said Dr. L. “If you don’t tell us, we’ll make sure you’re both dripping plenty of blood before we drop you in the ocean.”

  Cass and Max-Ernest gripped each other’s hands.

  “Did you know sharks smell blood from over a mile away?” continued Dr. L. “It’s a unique evolutionary feature.”

  “They also sense electricity and movement,” said Max-Ernest, unable to stop himself. “They call it shark sense. How ’bout that?”

  “Very good,” said Dr. L, not looking like he particularly meant it. “So try not to splash when you hit the water.”

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have time for marine biology lessons,” said Ms. Mauvais. “The Midnight Sun has been waiting five hundred years for the homunculus to rise. We will not wait any longer.”

  She waved to one of the deckhands chopping up the tuna. “You there — take these kids below!”

  Then she turned back to Cass and Max-Ernest. “You destroyed our lives once,” she said with a voice as cold and smoky and unnatural as dry ice. “But with your help we’re going to live forever.”

  Not bothering to wipe the fish guts off his hands, the deckhand grabbed Cass and Max-Ernest by their ears and dragged them away — right past the Skelton Sisters, who were lying on deck chairs in the sun, Cass’s sock-monster perched between them.

  Max-Ernest had an itch. It was under his toe.

  The second toe — counting from the outside — of his left foot, to be exact. And Max-Ernest was always exact.

  No, wait, that was wrong.

  The itch was under his middle toe. Yes, the middle toe. That was it.

  Max Ernest tried to wiggle the toe without wiggling the others. But before he’d managed a proper wiggle, the itch had, oh no! moved under his fourth —

  No, darn it. It had moved again. Up this time. To the top of his big toe. No, to the top of his foot. It was, Max-Ernest had no choice but to admit now, a traveling itch.

  The very worst kind.

  His brain instructed his hand to scratch his foot — but for some reason he couldn’t move. His hand was stuck behind his back.

  He opened his eyes. The room was dark, but even so he could tell he wasn’t in either of his two bedrooms. The smell was different.

  Sort of a musty, dusty smell. But also salty. Like the sea.

  Where was he?

  “Max-Ernest,” Cass whispered. “Are you awake?”

  Oh, he thought, relieved. He must have slept over at Cass’s. But, then, why would her room feel like it was — swaying?

  “What time is it?” he answered. “I have this really bad itch. It feels like a bug is crawling up my leg. Or maybe I have a rash. Or eczema. But I don’t usually get eczema on my foot, so —”

>   “Shh! Forget eczema! Have you forgotten that we’re stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean and they’re going to feed us to —”

  “Hey, we’re tied up!”

  “Duh! And stop moving, it hurts my hands!”

  “Sorry.” Now that he was thinking about it, Max-Ernest realized his hands hurt as well. In fact, his whole body hurt. He wasn’t sure what was worse — the pain or the itching.

  “So what do you think we should do?” asked Cass.

  “Me? You’re always the one with the escape plans.”

  “Well, I don’t have one now. And my backpack is over there in the corner. I can’t reach any of my supplies.”

  “So we’re just going to die?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

  They sat for a moment in scared silence.

  Then Max-Ernest had an idea —

  “I told you, stop moving!”

  “I know — I’m just checking for slack. I’ve been reading this book by Houdini and —”

  “Houdini?”

  “Yeah, Harry Houdini, the escape artist. Most famous magician of all time.”

  “I know who he is!”

  “Well, he says the mistake people make when they tie someone up is that they use too much rope. Then there’s always slack. See —”

  He tugged on the rope to show her.

  “Now, take your shoes off —”

  “What? How?”

  “You know, push them off with your feet. It’ll be easier to get out of the ropes. Houdini always took his shoes off before trying one of his escapes.”

  “I can’t believe you’re trying a Houdini act,” muttered Cass, but she pushed her shoes off just as he instructed. A little, just a little, impressed.

  Max-Ernest explained that in his escape acts Houdini never used magic or illusions; he used strength — and a few tricks like swelling up his chest in a special way. Usually, Houdini could escape faster than the time it took to tie him up.

  It took Max-Ernest much longer than it would have taken Houdini — twenty-seven minutes. For one thing, he wasn’t a trained escape artist. For another, Cass kept counterwriggling his wriggles. Until finally, he told her to keep still.

  Just as the rope was beginning to loosen —

  Footsteps.

  Quickly, they retied themselves and pretended to be asleep.

  A deckhand shone a flashlight at them from the doorway — then, thankfully, he walked away.

  Eventually, the rope dropped to the floor. Breathing heavily, they staggered to their feet.

  “We did it. How ’bout that?” Max-Ernest whispered.

  “You did it. How ’bout that?” said Cass. “Guess those magic books weren’t such a waste of time, after all.” She smiled in the dark.

  Max-Ernest smiled back. It wasn’t often that Cass admitted she was wrong.

  Cass picked up her backpack and started gathering all the survivalist supplies that had been left strewn across the floor.

  When her hand found her flashlight, she immediately turned it on.

  The room, they saw now, was some kind of cargo hold. Around them sat piles of what looked like plundered treasure — as if they were in a pirate ship, after all.

  Here an archaeologist might have been able to reconstruct the history of the Midnight Sun:

  There were Egyptian statuettes with the heads of jackals and large Greek vases decorated with scenes of battle. Medieval helmets and suits of armor. Gothic paintings and crystal goblets.

  Along one wall sat the remnants of a sixteenth-century laboratory: old test tubes and decanters, weights and scales. And along the opposite wall sat remnants of an eighteenth-century library: old maps and globes, and stacks of books of all shapes and sizes.

  Many of the books were charred around the edges — as if they’d been pulled out of a fire. And, indeed, they had — the fire at the Midnight Sun Spa. The fire that Cass and Max-Ernest themselves had set while rescuing their classmate Benjamin Blake.

  “We should get out of here — while it’s still dark outside,” said Cass.

  “I know — just give me some light for a second.”

  Max-Ernest held a large leather-bound volume in his hands. Emerald green and embossed in gold, it was entitled The Dictionary of Alchemy.

  As Cass trained the flashlight on the pages, he flipped through them until he found the entry he was looking for.

  “Look —”

  Homunculus

  TO MOST PEOPLE, A HOMUNCULUS IS JUST A SMALL MAN OR DWARF. BUT TO AN ALCHEMIST, THE WORD HAS A SPECIAL MEANING: A MAN-MADE MAN.

  IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND LATER, MANY ALCHEMISTS BELIEVED THAT — IF THEY ONLY FOUND THE RIGHT RECIPE — THEY COULD CREATE A MINIATURE HUMAN BEING IN A BOTTLE. A FEW NOTORIOUS ALCHEMISTS EVEN CLAIMED TO HAVE SUCCEEDED.

  REPORTS VARIED AS TO WHAT INGREDIENTS WORKED BEST. BUT IT WAS COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD THAT THE BOTTLE HAD TO BE BURIED IN MUD OR DUNG FOR THE HOMUNCULUS TO GROW. . . .

  Our two friends stared, dumbfounded, at the page in front of them.

  No doubt they were startled to read about a miniature man grown in a bottle. But it wasn’t only the definition of the word that shocked them; it was also the illustration that accompanied the definition:

  It was just a black-and-white drawing small enough to fit on a box of matches. Nonetheless, they could see the same bulging eyes and floppy ears, the same big nose and little body.

  There was no mistaking it: the homunculus looked just like Cass’s sock-monster.

  “Have you seen this before?” whispered Max- Ernest.

  “No — I swear.”

  “Then how come —?”

  “I don’t know — I don’t understand.”

  It was true — she’d never even heard of a homunculus before. She was just as surprised as he was.

  Cass replayed her dreams in her head: how was it possible?

  She shivered as the eerie graveyard tune came back to her unbidden.

  Then, suddenly: voices.

  Cass turned off her flashlight.

  “Are you so certain we must catch the homunculus? There’s no other way?”

  Dr. L.

  He sounded so close — it was if they were in the same room.

  Cass and Max-Ernest crouched behind a large trunk, hardly daring to breathe.

  “Yes, I’m certain! Am I ever not?” Ms. Mauvais responded shrilly.

  “Where are they?” Max-Ernest whispered in Cass’s ear.

  Cass clamped her hand over his mouth. He nodded, pushing her hand off: I get the message.

  “You were certain that thing would help us find him — the Sound Prism. And has it?”

  “No one else knows where the grave is!” said Ms. Mauvais, ignoring the question. “The homunculus is the key.”

  They couldn’t be in here, Cass thought. There’d been no footsteps. No door opening. And yet —

  “What about those kids?”

  Max-Ernest gestured in the darkness to the trunk in front of them: Dr. L’s voice seemed to be coming from inside!

  The both put their ears up against it.

  “What about them?!” Ms. Mauvais hissed. Her voice also seemed to come from inside the trunk. “They obviously know nothing. . . .”

  Shaking, Cass turned her flashlight back on. If they were seen, it would all be over. But she had to know.

  No. They were alone. She and Max-Ernest both exhaled, relieved.

  The trunk was dark and heavy-looking and long enough to hold, well, a lot of things.

  “Go on,” Max-Ernest, whispered. “Open it.”

  “No, you —” said Cass, uncharacteristically reticent.

  Max-Ernest shook his head vigorously.

  Cass shrugged — and sprang the latches.

  I’m not sure what they expected to find inside the trunk — Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais lying like vampires in a coffin? — but what they saw was:

  Nothing. Nobody.

  Just a ball sitting on a blanket. Or that’s what it
looked like to them. You would have recognized it as something else.

  (And while I’m on the subject, will you please congratulate me for writing about the Sound Prism, not to mention Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais, without even blinking? I think I’ve acted quite courageously, thank you very much.)

  The voices continued, louder:

  “At least they won’t trouble us again . . . right, my darling doctor?”

  A cruel laugh. “Let’s make sure of it.”

  Cass looked behind the trunk — there wasn’t a mouse, let alone an evil doctor or a scarily ageless woman.

  “You think there’s some kind of ventilation system that carries their voices?” she asked.

  “Highly unlikely. This a boat, not an office building. And I don’t see any vents. Or even any windows. Unless —”

  “It has to be the ball,” said Cass, leaning in closer to look at it.

  “You mean, like, it’s some kind of eavesdropping device? Like a baby monitor? Or a walkie-talkie? But that doesn’t really make sense — it doesn’t even look like it has a battery. It just looks like a bunch of straws bundled together —”

  Cass picked up the ball and illuminated it with her flashlight; it was strange and beautiful and unlike anything she’d ever seen.

  “I think it looks like it comes from the sea.”

  “Like it was part of a tropical reef or something? I guess I can see that,” said Max-Ernest. “With hundreds of tiny fish darting in and out of those tiny holes.”

  Cass held the ball to her ear and started turning it in her hand. Sure enough, all kinds of sounds immediately flooded her senses: Max-Ernest breathing next to her. The lapping of water against the sides of the boat. Even a whale call far out in the sea.

  It was like spinning a radio dial and hearing different frequencies come in and out of range.

  Was the ball really an eavesdropping device? It seemed too beautiful for such a criminal purpose.

  “Listen to this —” She held it up to Max- Ernest’s ear.

  “What? Is it supposed to sound like the ocean? Only conch shells do that. It comes from the way air passes through — oh wait, wow!”

  “I’m taking it with us,” said Cass, pulling it away from him.

  “But that’s stealing!”