Inside the Shadow City (15 page)

• • •

By the time we emerged in the Marble Cemetery, it was five o'clock in the morning, and after eight full hours of exploring, we were all dead tired. It took our last bit of strength to restore the marble slab to its proper place over the vault's entrance. The sun was starting to rise, and as we removed our dirty uniforms, the sky burst into a brilliant orange. We left the cemetery and dragged our exhausted bodies along the deserted streets, lured by the promise of breakfast at Kiki's house.

The moment we arrived, Betty collapsed on the couch. The rest of us forced ourselves to stay awake long enough to scarf down the platter of cherry blintzes that Verushka had prepared. As my stomach began to strain against my waistband, I noticed that Kiki's plate remained empty. Instead, she drank countless cups of milky coffee as Verushka grilled her on the evening's discoveries. The housekeeper wanted to know everything—how far we had traveled and what we had seen. But like Kiki, she seemed particularly interested in the passages that connected the Shadow City to the world above.

“The exit you found, Ananka. Where did it lead?” Verushka asked me without warning. I stopped shoveling food long enough to grab my map.

“A fur storage facility,” I told her.

“And what was the street?”

“Pearl Street,” I said.

Verushka seemed disturbed by my answer. “That is very far away,” she said to no one in particular.

I turned to Kiki in confusion. “Far away from what?”

“Far away from the Marble Cemetery,” she answered curtly. “The Shadow City is bigger than we expected, Verushka. Ananka's going to find the building with the exit this morning. Then we'll know for sure just how far away we were.”

Looking dangerously cranky, Kiki leaned back on the couch and sipped her coffee. I took advantage of the lull in conversation to serve myself another blintz.

“Are you sure you need that?” Oona asked, pointing at my bloated belly.

I dropped my fork, and it fell onto the serving plate with a loud clang.

“Nice manners, Oona,” snipped Kiki. “Were you raised by wolves?”

“What? I'm just trying to help her out,” Oona said, casually licking her fork.

Before I could say anything in my own defense, Betty jolted out of sleep.

“What time is it?” she asked, looking panicked and confused.

“Almost seven,” Luz told her.

“I've got to go!” Betty exclaimed, running for the door. “My parents will be home from work any minute now!”

Betty's panic spread like a bad case of head lice. Within minutes, DeeDee and Luz were sharing a cab uptown, and Verushka was on the phone with Luz's angry mother, apologizing for letting their moth watching run late. Not long afterward, Oona disappeared without any explanation, leaving me alone with Kiki and her housekeeper. I still had at least three hours before my mother and father rolled out of bed, so I borrowed Kiki's laptop computer—a high-tech model with features I could never afford. As I spread out my notes in the living room and began crafting my map of the Shadow City, I heard Kiki and Verushka whispering furiously in the kitchen.

Eager to leave them alone to argue, I hurried through my work and set out to find the building with the entrance to the Shadow City. By then, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep in the back of the cab I'd hailed and was rudely awakened by the driver when we reached the address I'd given him. I got out of the car to find myself standing in front of an empty parking lot. My calculations had been off. The map would need to be revised. One block south of the parking lot, I came across an old building with a dry cleaner on its ground floor. The walls of the shop were lined with hundreds of anonymous packages wrapped in plain brown paper, and a neon sign in the window flashed the words
Fur Storage
.

Examining the map I had printed out, I hastily sketched a few corrections. Then I took out a large rubber stamp I'd made and a pad of ink. After making
sure no one was watching, I stamped a golden
i
on the sidewalk in front of the building, marking the entrance to the Shadow City with the Irregulars' logo in case we needed to find it in an emergency. Once I had finished, I used a camera that DeeDee lent me to snap several pictures of the building. Finally, almost twelve full hours after I had snuck out of my bedroom window, I started on my way home.

A middle-aged couple joined me on the corner of Pearl and John streets as I waited for the light to change. I tucked the camera into my pocket and tried to look innocent, but neither of them seemed aware of my presence.

“Did you hear about the rats?” I heard the woman ask. My stomach flip-flopped.

“What rats?” replied the man in a bored voice.

“It was on the news this morning. They said that a ship in the middle of the Hudson River was attacked by thousands of rats last night.”

“Rats can swim?”

“Apparently,” said the woman.

I had to bite my tongue to avoid offering the bit of trivia that sprang to mind. According to
The Devil's Army,
rats are champion swimmers. During the plagues that laid waste to old New York, the dead were often buried in mass graves on islands in the East River. Whenever the graves were left unfilled, the city's rat population would swim across to picnic on the exposed corpses.

“But what were a bunch of rats doing in the Hudson River?” asked the man.

“Nobody knows,” the woman answered. “The reporter said they might have been swimming to New Jersey.”

“That makes sense. New Jersey's a good place for them.”

“They said the boat just got in the way.”

“What happened to it?”

“Well from what I could gather, the crew abandoned the ship and escaped in life boats.”

“That bad?” At last he was really intrigued.

“I guess. The reporter said they ate the crew's dog.”

“Rats eat dogs?”

“They eat anything, don't they?” said the woman.

The light changed, and the happy couple strolled off, arm in arm. I reached in my pocket for my Reverse Pied Piper. I had never imagined it could be quite so powerful, and I suddenly felt a little guilty. I wondered how my grandfather would have felt about what we had done. He probably would have packed up his bags and followed the rats to New Jersey.

My mother's voice dragged me out of a dream filled with rodents, pirates, and plagues. I opened my eyes and was instantly blinded by a bright beam of sunshine.

“It's one o'clock in the afternoon,” my mother announced, reminding me that I had forgotten to lock my bedroom door. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see her standing in the doorway with several books tucked under her arm. She had a pencil stuck behind her ear and another pinning her hair in a loose bun. “Are you planning to spend your summer vacation in bed?”

“I was up late reading,” I informed her, knowing she'd approve. “I've been studying the history of New York City.”

“Oh, Ananka, how wonderful!” my mother gushed. I doubt she had been so excited since the day I was potty trained. “I've dabbled a little in that subject myself. The Revolutionary period is particularly fascinating, don't you
think?” She looked over at the pile of books and papers on my desk. Sitting on top was my map of the Shadow City. “What's this?” she asked, bending down for a closer look. “Is it part of your research?”

I considered lying until I realized that nothing would be harder for my mother to believe than the truth.

“It's a map,” I told her, sitting up in bed. “There's an underground city beneath downtown Manhattan. Only six people know about it, and I'm one of them.”

My mother looked crestfallen. “You're twelve years old, right?” she asked in the same sad voice she used whenever I brought home a report card filled with C's.

“Twelve and a half,” I reminded her.

“Well, I don't know what you've been reading, Ananka, but you should know the difference between fiction and nonfiction by now. It's time to start using your brain for something other than daydreaming. If you're interested in history, I can give you the right books.”

“Thanks, Mom, but I've already found all the books I need.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, trying to hide her disappointment. “I'd really love to help.”

“Positive,” I said.

My mother shut my bedroom door with a weary sigh, and I smiled to myself. Someday, I thought, I'd tell my parents what their dimwitted daughter had discovered.

• • •

As soon as it was dark once more, I climbed down the fire escape outside my bedroom window and walked to Kiki's house to meet the Irregulars for our second night
of explorations. Before we left for the Marble Cemetery, Kiki asked to take a look at my map. I made a few quick corrections and printed out a copy for her. She studied it for several minutes, tracing her finger along the thick red line that indicated the Shadow City.

“Looks good,” she told me. “Tonight, we'll try to walk north.”

From the moment the words left her lips, I could feel a question dangling on the tip of my tongue. Why north? I wanted to ask her. Who cares which way we go when we have an entire city to explore? Of course, now I wish I'd been brave enough to ask.

In my defense, I did keep a closer eye on Kiki Strike from that point forward. I began to notice that she chose the routes we took with care, and it didn't take long for me to reach the conclusion that Kiki was leading us to something. The other girls detected nothing unusual. They were too thrilled by the discoveries we continued to make. But every time we stopped to explore a room, Kiki would grow impatient if Luz lingered over some pirate's booty or Oona and DeeDee played a quick game of blackjack in an abandoned gambling parlor. Instead of joining in on the fun, Kiki would pace the room, stopping only to snap at anyone who dared to raise a ruckus. She seemed to grow crankier as the hours passed, until nothing we did could please her.

Each night, Kiki pushed us deeper into the Shadow City. Whenever we spied a trapdoor, her mood would magically lighten. Luckily, we discovered enough of them to keep her from getting truly nasty. New York was peppered with entrances to the Shadow City. Following
hidden passages, we found ourselves in fancy wine cellars, dungeonlike basements, and steam-filled boiler rooms. We even discovered an exit from the Shadow City that led to a dingy broom closet in the bowels of City Hall. But it wasn't until we climbed up a ladder and into the cash-filled vaults of the Chinatown Savings and Loan that we finally understood the importance of our mission. Until then, it had felt like a game. But suddenly Kiki Strike's warnings made sense to us all. If criminals were allowed to take control of the Shadow City, there was no doubt they could cause plenty of trouble.

Fortunately, most of the entrances to the Shadow City were well camouflaged and unlikely to be discovered by anyone from the world above. In fact, our explorations uncovered only one entrance that seemed too dangerous to remain open. It was located in Chinatown, just one block away from the Chinatown Savings and Loan.

• • •

If it hadn't been for Luz's tireless treasure hunt, we might never have found the entrance. She insisted on rifling through every trunk, box, or crate we discovered, and waiting for Luz could make Kiki furious. But while our leader threatened, ordered, and pleaded, Luz continued to tear open crates like a kid ripping apart a pile of birthday presents.

Though her heart seemed to break each time she discovered a horde of porcelain chamber pots or a stash of pickled pigs' feet, Luz refused to give up. In her eyes, every dank and smelly chamber held the promise of untold riches. So the night we came upon a cramped storage
room that was filled to the rafters with shabby straw mats and dirty pillows, she ignored Kiki's orders to move on and set about trying to topple a stack of crates in a corner of the room. After several good pushes, the top two crates crashed to the ground, spilling a million worthless chopsticks across the floor and revealing an opening in the room's ceiling.

Luz pouted while Oona, Kiki, and I climbed up the crates. A long ladder led to a bizarre room, its walls lined with dark cubbyholes just large enough to hold a human body. We saw no evidence of an exit to the world above, but another ladder leaning against a wall told us that we hadn't reached a dead end. Kiki and Oona searched the cubbyholes while I thumbed through
Glimpses of Gotham
for clues. Skimming a chapter on Chinatown, I found we had stumbled upon one of Pearcy Leake's favorite haunts—an opium den with a secret entrance located in the basement of a Chinatown warehouse.

“Hey, Ananka. Mind sharing your expert opinion for a moment?” Kiki called. “Take a look at this.”

I turned in time to catch a small bottle with a Chinese label. It was filled with a greasy liquid. I unscrewed the cap and was overwhelmed by a sickly sweet odor.

“I found it in one of the cubbyholes. Does it look a hundred years old to you?”

“Not unless the Chinese were using bar codes back then. And there's a sell-by date in English. Whatever this stuff is, it's good 'til next month.”

“Hey, let me see,” said Oona, snatching the bottle. “I read Chinese.”

Her brow furrowed as she examined the label.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Devil's Apple Wart Remover,” she read. “Who would leave a bottle of wart remover down here?”

“Someone with a wart problem, probably,” Kiki said. “It doesn't matter who left it. It means someone's been in here. We need to have a look upstairs.”

After a long search, we located a camouflaged trapdoor and climbed into the warehouse above. There, we came upon a sight that could make any girl weak in the knees. Cobwebs curtained the warehouse's windows, and dust bunnies the size of cabbages tumbled around tall towers of shoeboxes. In all, there were thousands of boxes, each filled with a pair of the most beautiful designer shoes I had ever seen.