Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) (33 page)

“The bomb,” Nathan whispered. “With enough dynamite to blow up the twenty-seventh floor. And once that’s on fire—who knows? The whole building could go up.”

35

“CAN YOU DEFUSE
it?” Helen whispered.

“Maybe,” he said, “but it will take time, and we need to get the girls out of here. Omar’s out in the dining hall disguised as a guest. Go get him and bring him in here. And get Pythagoras—he might know how to defuse it.”

I found Omar standing in the dining hall, looking regal in a yellow high-collared tunic and white turban, explaining to a stout man that he was the Maharaja Rana of Ramadan.

“Uh, your highness,” I said, “you’re wanted by the, er, king of Sweden,” I improvised.

“Really, Gustaf is here?” the stout businessman asked, stroking his muttonchops. “I had heard that the archduke might also be putting in an appearance. Do give his highness my regards.”

“It will be my honor,” Omar said, bowing his way out of the dining room. I filled him in as we hurried down the hall. When we entered the dressing room, we found the Darklings already there. Oriole and Sirena, with Rue and Daisy’s help, had drawn the girls over by the mirrors, where they were working through a dance number. Gus and Nathan were crouched beside the dismantled cake studying its lethal filling.

“I need you to get these girls out of here so I can concentrate,” Nathan said without lifting his eyes from the bomb.

“Of course,” Omar said. “I will introduce a counter- mesmerism to convince them that these gentlemen”—he indicated Buzz, Heron, Marlin, and Sparrow—“are their dancing partners. Come.” He waved the four male Darklings to follow him. “Have you ever seen a grand jeté . . . ?”

I sat down beside Nathan.

“You too, Ava. I need to know you’re safe.”

“I can leave at any time,” I replied. “You know that.”

I thought I saw him flinch. “All right, then make yourself useful and hold this lamp.”

I lifted a goose-necked desk lamp and aimed the light at the tangle of wires Nathan was studying. I heard Omar telling the girls that Herr Hofmeister had introduced a new step to their routine. They were to perform a grand jeté, leaping into their partner’s arms, and then hold an attitude and remain in it until their partners put them down again.

“It is very important that you keep your chin up and not look down,” he told the girls in the singsong tone I recognized as his “suggestive” voice. I wanted to make that leap myself, but I blinked and focused on Nathan.

“You have very steady hands,” I remarked.

“Yes,” he dead-panned. “I am the soul of steadiness and reliability. A brick. A tower of strength—”

“You
are
,” I said. “You’ve only convinced yourself otherwise because of Louisa.”

“Who’s Louisa?” Gus asked.

“His sister,” I replied. “She was in Faerie and hasn’t quite recovered from it.”

“Oh,” Gus said casually. “I came across a cure for that in one of the books in the library. When we’re done with this I’ll look it up for you . . . say, do you think this red wire is the one to cut? Or this blue one?”

Nathan stared at Gus. “You have a cure?” Then he looked down at the wires and frowned. I glanced behind me and saw Beatrice Jager take three dainty running steps and leap into Buzz’s waiting arms. He soared out the window with her to a chorus of oohs and aahs from the other dancers who were lined up to take their grand jetés. Helen, Daisy, and Rue were standing at the open window applauding each dancer as she soared into the night.

I turned back to Nathan and Gus and saw their frozen faces.

“What’s wrong . . . ?” I began, but then I followed their gazes up. They were looking at Herr Hofmeister—or rather, at the mouth of the gun he had pointed at Nathan’s head.

“You will kindly please stop what you a doing,” he bit off in chopped syllables. “That is a very important prop in tonight’s performance.”

“It’s a bomb, Herr Hofmeister,” I said. “It will kill you, too, when it explodes.”

“I know very well what it is,” he said. “It will be my grand finale, but I will die for a good cause. These men who look at me like dirt will remember me as the last face they see. I will be remembered—not as the ridiculous dancing master Herr Hofmeister, but by my real name, Aleksandar Zupan, Serbian patriot who died to liberate my country from the yoke of Austro-Hungarian oppression!”

“Serbian patriot? Austro-Hungary?” I echoed. “What does all that have to do with the Woolworth building?”

For a moment Herr Hofmeister looked confused. I almost felt sorry for him. Then he spit on the floor. “Archduke Franz Ferdinand is here tonight. When he dies, Russia will rally to our cause and there will be war.”

“It’s just a rumor that the archduke is here,” I said, standing up. “Van Drood has made you believe that so you’ll do his bidding.”

“I do no man’s bidding but my own!” Herr Hofmeister barked angrily.

“Can you get Omar to de-mesmerize him?” Nathan hissed. “This thing just started ticking.”

But Omar was across the room, still shepherding our girls out of the window. He was motioning for Gus to come over to carry Susannah Dewsnap out the window. I couldn’t interrupt.

“Of course it is ticking. Do you think I would rely on these silly girls to complete my plan? It is set to go off at seven-thirty when your American president pushes the button on his desk. The ignorant crowds will believe that their own president has blown up the building. Chaos will reign! Riots will ensue. In the coming days my manifesto will be found and read throughout the world. The Serbian nation will rise to power!”

“I don’t think so, old chap,” Nathan said, his eyes still on the mechanism of the bomb. “You’ve been had.”

Herr Hofmeister looked like he was going to have an apoplectic fit. I stepped closer to him, withdrawing the repeater from my pocket. When I depressed the stem it played a lilting lullaby that softened something in Herr Hofmeister’s eyes. He lowered his gun.

“Van Drood has done this to you,” I said. “Judicus van Drood. Perhaps you recall meeting him?”

“Yes,” the dancing master said, furrowing his brow as if trying to recall something that had happened a long time ago. “A man came to see me in my humble garret in Paris, where I was living in exile. He told me he was a member of the Black Hand and said I could help to right the wrongs my country had suffered under the Austrian empire. He told me that the Order was supporting the Austrians in their crusade to crush my homeland and was responsible for the deaths of my family.”

“He was lying to you,” I said. “This is what van Drood does. He finds your vulnerable spot.” I thought of what he had said to me in the fun house. “He told me that I was a monster, that my mother never loved me, that I would never belong.” I noticed that Nathan, though his eyes were still on the bomb, had grown very still. He was listening to me. And so was Helen, who had come over from the window to stand beside me. All the other girls were gone.

“He drove a wedge between me and my friends because I would not trust them with the truth. But I know now that all the things he told me were lies.”

“Were they, Ava?”

The words were in van Drood’s voice, but they didn’t come from Herr Hofmeister’s mouth. I wheeled around and found myself looking into Nathan’s dark gray eyes—hadn’t they been a lighter gray before? He was still holding a pair of wire cutters to the one of the wires attached to the bomb, but he was looking up at me with a cold calculated look I’d never seen before on his face.

“No—”

“But yes, Ava,
dearling
, here we are again. Why shouldn’t I take a younger, more handsome form, especially one so suited to me? After all, he is my son.”

“That’s a lie!” Helen cried out.

Nathan—or the
thing
inside Nathan—swiveled his head to stare at Helen. “Oh my dear, you have been so useful in helping me gain access to this young man. Watching you—his oldest friend—fall in love with a Darkling made him almost as vulnerable as watching the same thing happen to his beloved. Or didn’t you know he loved Ava?”

“It doesn’t matter to me if he loves Ava, but he’s not your son. I’ve known Nathan since we were children. His father was Daniel Beckwith.”

“I thought so, too, until your friend Ava suggested otherwise. Then I looked into the archives and found that old Daniel was away in Scotland on the relevant dates. India Beckwith changed Nathan’s birth certificate so no one would know. She even fooled me!”

He leered in a way that made my blood run cold, precisely because I’d seen almost the same expression on Nathan’s face before. The resemblance between the two was impossible to deny.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re Nathan’s father!” I cried. “Blood means nothing compared with how a person is raised and whom he chooses as his friends and what he does. Nathan is a good man. He risked his life to save Louisa. He saved Ruth from the Hellgate Club.”

I saw a flicker of light in Nathan’s eyes—like the flash of a fish swimming through murky water—but when he spoke his voice was still van Drood’s.

“All very valiant. But then why don’t you love him, Ava? It’s your not loving him that made him vulnerable to me. You have done this to him.” He smiled a ghastly grin that stretched as wide as the funny-face sign at Coney Island. Smoke gushed out of his mouth. That flicker of light in Nathan’s eyes had gone out. The thing in front of me was so revolting I wanted to run away from it, but Nathan was still in there somewhere.

“I
do
care for Nath—” I began, and then, stepping closer and kneeling by his side, I looked into those darkened eyes and spoke directly to the man I hoped was still there. “I do love you, Nathan.”

“Let’s see how much.”

Van Drood’s voice came from behind me. I whirled around to see Herr Hofmeister aiming his gun directly at Nathan’s heart. I screamed and began to move, but before I could, something else flew between us—a flurry of ribbons and lace and blonde hair.

“Helen!” Nathan screamed, his own voice restored. He pushed me aside and leapt for her as she fell. A red rose was blooming on the white ruffled blouse of her costume. Herr Hofmeister was staring at Nathan and Helen, a startled look in his eyes. Because van Drood had left him? I wondered. But when I stood he raised his eyes to me and I saw that van Drood was still there. It was van Drood who looked surprised.

“I thought she didn’t love him,” he began. Helen’s act had not only driven the shadows from Nathan, she had managed to confound the Shadow Master himself. There was a spark in his eyes, a chink of light like a tear in a blind in a darkened room. Just as weakness opened a wedge for the shadows, so strength must open a crack for the light.

I followed Nathan’s gaze down to the bomb. When he had dropped the wire cutters they had severed the red wire.

“Nathan,” I said, “that red wire . . . were you supposed to cut it?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “What are we going to do?”

I looked at Helen and Nathan. I couldn’t carry them both out of here—but I could carry the bomb. I picked up the metal box. I’d never flown carrying anything so heavy, but I’d just have to try. I carried it to the window.

“Ava, what are you doing?” I heard Helen’s weak voice calling to me. I turned around.

“I’m sorry I didn’t put more faith in you, Helen. You’re the bravest girl I know. Take care of each other.” I turned back to the window. The flimsy costume I was wearing was no match for my unfurling wings. I heard Helen’s gasp and Nathan’s voice.

“I knew that costume suited you,” he said. “Wings of fire for a phoenix.”

“It was you!” I said, half turning. “You sent me the dress.”

But there wasn’t time. The metal box in my hands was ticking away the seconds. I launched myself from the window into the open sky—and plummeted down. The bomb was too heavy. It was dragging me down toward the ground where thousands of people were waiting to see the Woolworth Building burst into incandescent light. Instead they would all die in a fiery inferno like the girls at the Triangle factory. I had to get the bomb out to sea.

I beat my wings as hard as I could, struggling to gain altitude. Little by little, I rose up into the sky. I could see the harbor lights to the south twinkling in the dusky twilight. I aimed in that direction, but with the weight of the bomb dragging me down, I’d never make it.

Suddenly it was as if the air around me lightened and a tailwind pushed me forward. I looked to my right and saw Raven flying beside me, his wing tips nearly touching mine. Ghosting me. Where his wing had been damaged, the new imped feathers—brown and gold and russet—had already taken root.

“I don’t supposed you’d consider handing that thing over to me?” he shouted.

“Not on your life,” I replied.

“Then we’d best make haste to the sea.” He whistled a sharp note and I felt myself buoyed up. I looked to my left and saw Pythagoras. Then I heard Marlin’s voice and saw him taking the lead. The fledglings were arraying themselves around me in a V formation, carving a wedge out of the air to make it easier for me to fly. Never mind that they’d all die if the bomb went off in the air. They flocked around me because they were my flock. I caught the thermals and soared. I’d never felt so free before, lifted by my friends.

“Ava. ” Raven’s voice reached me. “We’re over the harbor! Bank a little to the right to avoid that tug boat.”