The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages, page 5
The others, dumbfounded, stared at the little boy, and at Constance, and at one another.
“It’s true!” Tai said, flopping forward onto his belly. Idly fiddling with a stray thread in the rug, he went on in a rapid-fire stream: “I was at the orphanage and I started hearing her and she started asking me where I was, and then Constance interrupted even louder and said nope don’t answer that, kid, and asked me what my name is, and I told her Tai M. Li and asked her to guess what the M stands for, and Constance said not right now, she wanted me to come here so you could all take care of me, and I needed to hurry because the Scaredy Katz were coming to find me and they are not nice at all.”
“Tai,” Constance interjected when the boy took a breath, “would you go to the kitchen and bring back some cookies? There’s a tin in the pantry, hidden behind a big jar of pickled onions.”
“Yes! I! Will!” Tai exclaimed, leaping up. He dashed from the sitting room, and they could hear his tiny feet pattering in the wrong direction, stopping, then pattering in the direction of the kitchen.
“I’ve been trying to keep it from being scary,” Constance said in a weary voice. “He knows they’re bad guys, but he thinks he’s safe as long as I’m talking to him—as long as he’s with us.”
“Well, this is… astonishing news,” said Sticky, running a hand over his scalp. “You realize that, right, Constance? What in the world is going on? What have you been dealing with?”
“It started when I was still in the crate,” Constance said. “While we were waiting for Reynie. I could just suddenly feel her looking for me. It took me a few minutes to figure out what was happening. I could hear what she was thinking—or at least what she was concentrating on the most, which was me. Trying to find me. Because McCracken told her to.”
At this mention of the most fearsome of all the Ten Men, the other three stiffened. McCracken. It was a name none of them ever wished to hear.
“Oh, Constance,” Reynie said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too,” Sticky said. “I can’t even imagine.”
Kate moved across the rug and sat next to Constance. She didn’t say anything or even look directly at her, only sat down beside her. Kate sometimes forgot the lessons that years with Constance had taught her, but sometimes, like now, she remembered.
Constance gave a slight nod that could have meant anything but that probably was an expression of appreciation. She bit at one of her fingernails, which she’d already bitten quite short, and with a small sigh she went on.
“It had never occurred to me to try to look for anyone like, you know—me,” she said. “Someone with an especially bright signal. That’s not a perfect way of explaining it, but it’s close enough for now. But McCracken knew I was out here, and he told her to try it. The moment she started concentrating, I sensed it. Then she zeroed in on me, and I had to think fast. I was going to do what you all learned to do as a defensive measure—you know, think hard about random things that don’t matter. But before I could even get started, I heard her thinking, She’s in a dark place. Which I was. I was in the crate. That’s when I realized how hard it was going to be.”
Pattering footsteps approached, and Tai rambled into the room, already eating a cookie. He went around with the tin, handing cookies out to everyone, then settled into Reynie’s lap. Reynie, surprised, patted the boy’s thin shoulders. He scarcely seemed to have any weight at all.
“I’m explaining things to them,” Constance said to Tai, who nodded, chewing happily. “Anyway, as Tai here knows, the reality of the place you’re in has a huge amount of substance. Your surroundings make such an impression on your consciousness, you don’t have to concentrate for them to stand out in your mind. That includes the people who are with you. Do you see what I’m saying?”
“So that’s why you didn’t mention this to us back at the harbor,” said Reynie, suddenly understanding. “When you barely spoke to us, we just thought you were”—he almost said “sulking” but instantly corrected himself—“angry. But you were trying to keep thoughts of us out of your head. I assume that’s why you’ve been holed up in your room, too. Or one reason, anyway.”
Constance tapped her nose and pointed at him. “With the lights off, yes. Also, I just needed no distractions. What I did with part of my mind was concentrate on real memories of places we’ve been—here in this house for starters, but also the Institute, the Shortcut, the castle in Portugal, the abandoned village, the prison, every place I could remember vividly. I moved from scene to scene to keep the Listener confused. She couldn’t tell what was happening now and what had happened in the past. She still can’t, by the way—I’m still doing it. I throw a lot of other mental garbage at her, too, the way you all learned to do. But ever since I got out of the crate, I think of that darkness more often than anything else. Her best guess is that I’m still in some dark place, but she doesn’t know where.”
“Unbelievable,” Kate murmured as Sticky and Reynie shook their heads in amazed agreement. “You were doing all that at the same time you were leading Tai here? I don’t see how in the world you’ve done it, Constance.”
“It hasn’t been easy,” Constance said, and indeed it was plain to her friends just how exhausted she really was. Her face was drawn, her eyes dark, her voice raspy. “But I had to do it, because the Listener found him, too. She was just looking for me, but then he turned up as well. Once I sensed that, I also sensed him.”
“I have a bright signal!” Tai exclaimed, sending a puff of cookie dust from his mouth.
Constance looked around at the others. “It’s like the three of us are on our own special frequency. Tai has the ability, but he doesn’t know how to use it yet. He can’t do anything on purpose. Sometimes he hears people’s thoughts. A lot of the time he doesn’t. It’s a good thing you’ve all had practice warding me off. I rarely hear thoughts by accident anymore, but we can’t say the same for Tai.”
“Good to know,” Sticky said. “Listen, though, Constance, I trust you, but can you help me out here before I panic? If Tai can’t control his thoughts the way you do, and the, uh, this Listener is looking for him, and he’s with us… You see where I’m going with this?”
“I do!” said Tai, climbing out of Reynie’s lap and dropping into Sticky’s. “I’m a candle, and Constance is the sun!” He popped the lid off the cookie tin and took out another cookie, then put the lid back on. For some reason he was doing this every time, even though it seemed clear that he intended to eat every remaining cookie.
Sticky, taken aback by the arrival of Tai in his lap, made awkward patting motions around the little boy’s head without actually touching him, and then lowered his hands to his sides. “Hey there,” he said. “What do you mean, you’re a candle?”
Reynie spoke up. “It’s the relative brightness of your signals, isn’t it, Constance? You think she can’t pick up on Tai’s signal if he’s with you, because yours is so bright? Something like that?”
Constance shrugged. “Something like that. And I don’t just think it; I know it. She’s confused. She thinks he’s gone farther away—out of range, basically. Which makes it easier for me, since now I don’t have to constantly tell him what to think about, and barrage her with false leads, and keep my own whereabouts secret—”
“And keep me company!” Tai leaped out of Sticky’s lap and ran to sit in Kate’s, evidently committed to giving everyone the honor. “And tell me stories! And tell me how to get here!”
“How exactly did you get here?” Kate asked, playfully swatting his hand away from the cookie tin, which he was trying to open again. He laughed and leaned back against her, tilting his head so that he was looking at her face upside down. When he looked back down again, she had a cookie in her hand, and the tin was nowhere to be seen.
“Hey!” he squealed, laughing harder. Kate produced the tin from behind her back and handed him the cookie. Tai took a bite and said, “I got some money from the headmaster’s money drawer and got on a bus, and that took me to the train station, where I asked a lot of people which platform was for the train to Chicago, and when they asked me where my mom was, I said in the bathroom—even though that wasn’t true, because I don’t even have a mom or a dad—and then I went out and snuck onto a train to Stonetown. It was fun!” He transferred the cookie from one hand to the other, then used his free hand to scratch vigorously at the opposite arm.
“Constance told you how to do all that?” Kate asked.
Tai nodded. “She said it would confuse the Scaredy Katz, and it did! I just needed a good place to hide, and I found a great place—in a train car full of sheep! They were so nice! I petted every single one of them, and they didn’t even bother me when I fell asleep! I think they gave me fleas, though,” Tai added quietly, almost to himself. “But that’s not their fault.”
“Ooookaaay,” Kate said, immediately lifting Tai from her lap.
A look of dismay appeared on every face in the room, accompanied by a spontaneous universal itching.
Reynie, already scratching at his ankles, said, “Next time, Tai, anything to do with fleas is probably something you should mention right away.”
“Roger that!” Tai said, shaking the empty cookie tin to hear if it rattled. “That’s what you say to each other when you understand something.”
In short order Tai was whisked away for a bath, and Sticky (furiously scratching at his chest) hurried down to the basement lab to whip up an effective flea shampoo, which he quickly distributed to the others. After a hasty round of showers and wardrobe changes, with the morning’s clothing being fumigated in an impromptu disinfectant chamber, the Society members took turns wishing sweet dreams to a now squeaky-clean—and abundantly yawning—Tai Li. The little boy was put down for a nap, without even a murmur of resistance, in an old pair of Constance’s pajamas.
Kate, as usual the first one ready, cleared the dining room table (she’d left the dishes unattended long enough—half an hour was an eternity to Kate) and made a pot of tea. By the time the others joined her, she had set out cups and saucers, honey, sugar, and milk, and was peering through the window blinds.
“What are you looking at?” Sticky asked as he dropped into a chair.
“Just checking on Madge,” Kate replied. In an admiring tone she said, “She’s getting to be an old bird, but she’s still in fine form, isn’t she? I mean, look at her.”
“What’s she doing?” asked Reynie, already spooning honey into his tea.
“Eating a rat,” Kate said in the same admiring tone. “Just sitting on that branch like a queen, eating a rat.”
Both Reynie and Sticky made polite noises, but neither joined Kate at the window.
Constance, meanwhile, seemed scarcely to be listening. She had filled her own cup half-full of sugar, over which she now dribbled a modest amount of tea. She was wearing yet another old green plaid suit of Mr. Benedict’s, one that Number Two had yet to alter, and it fairly swallowed her. She had rolled the jacket sleeves up over her elbows and the pants over her knees. Beneath the jacket she wore her favorite top—an oversized, faded pink T-shirt, emblazoned in large black letters with the word “NO.”
Sticky and Reynie, for their part, had both thrown on whatever semi-clean shorts and T-shirts were closest at hand, and Kate was in what had become for her a daily uniform: loose-fitting trousers and shirt, a canvas jacket, lightweight boots—all equipped with secret pockets—and a utility belt of her own design, one that was noticeable only when Kate reached for something tucked away in her jacket’s inner pockets or for a tool from the belt itself.
Before Kate stepped away from the window, she made a subtle, thorough five-second review of her tools, patting every pocket and every item on her utility belt to ensure all was in place: her penlight, her mini-telescope, her Swiss Army knife, and her coiled rope, among several other things. On the intelligence-gathering mission with Milligan, she had, like her father, carried a tranquilizer dart gun, hers concealed beneath her jacket. She hadn’t needed it, though, and at present it was locked safely away in her room. She thought of Milligan now, wondering if he was worried about her, wondering if he was angry. He hadn’t exactly given her the okay to skydive from the plane.
Only take necessary risks, Katie-Cat, her father was always telling her. You’ll find that there’s more than enough of those without taking unnecessary ones.
Kate was convinced that getting here as quickly as possible had counted as a necessary risk. Milligan surely would have agreed with her decision, too, if she had discussed it with him before climbing out of the plane. Which, upon reflection, she probably ought to have done. She had shouted her intentions and blown him a kiss as she left him in the cockpit, but once she was outside, clinging to the wing strut, Milligan really hadn’t had much say in the matter.
When would she see him again? Kate felt a sudden pang. Surely it wouldn’t be long, she thought. Surely. But it was impossible to say when.
Reynie, meanwhile, having watched Kate make her quick inventory of tools, was thinking about the thousands of times he had seen her do the same thing with her bucket. She hadn’t used the bucket in a year, though. He knew that Kate wanted to be a field agent, as her father had been (Milligan, before giving up dangerous operations to become agency director, had once been the best of them all), and Reynie had to admit that carrying around a red bucket does tend to make a person conspicuous. That hadn’t mattered to Kate when she was a young kid. But now—well, now what?
It was a question they were all asking themselves. And they were all short of answers. But Reynie knew one thing for sure: He missed Kate’s bucket.
“Captain Plugg’s coming to check on us,” Constance announced when Kate moved to join them at the table. “You might as well meet her at the door. She’ll be excited to see you.”
Sure enough, Captain Plugg’s heavy tread was soon heard on the stairs, and moments later Kate was greeting her with open arms and a mischievous grin.
“I thought I heard you up here,” declared Captain Plugg, a stocky, gray-eyed woman with an unusually large, square head—over which she now playfully lifted Kate as she might have done a toddler. “No one else pounds the floorboards the way you do. Your footsteps are like jackhammers. But how did you get here without my knowing?”
“Put me down and I’ll tell you,” Kate said, laughing.
Captain Plugg listened to Kate’s account of her rooftop arrival with a look of barely concealed distress (understandable in one whose main job had long been to keep Kate and the others safe), then grew sheepish when Kate said she’d heard that the guard had faced down the Scaredy Katz in the courtyard.
“Oh, as for that,” said Captain Plugg with an embarrassed wave, “those two don’t like to fight, not if there’s a chance they’ll get their noses bloodied. You can see it on their faces. Anyway, they had no reason to try to get into the house once they were satisfied it was empty. They know Mr. Benedict would never leave behind anything that might be valuable to them.
“But listen, I need to ask you about something,” Captain Plugg said. She announced that one of Milligan’s secret sentries—there were always several posted in the area—had seen a small child enter the neighborhood, moving in the direction of Mr. Benedict’s house. Captain Plugg wondered if perhaps—
“Yes, he’s here,” Constance interrupted. “He’s sleeping in my room.”
Once again the look of distress appeared on Captain Plugg’s face, and this time she didn’t try to hide it. Instinctively turning to Reynie for explanation and reassurance (and thus missing Sticky’s twitch of irritation), the guard was soon filled in. She could hardly be at peace with the situation—complications seemed to be mounting by the minute—but she was satisfied that they were doing what was necessary for the little boy’s protection.
“I’ll inform the sentries in person,” Captain Plugg said. “I assume it would be best not to mention him on our radios.”
“I think you’re right,” said Reynie, for she’d been looking at him when she spoke. But even after Captain Plugg had gone downstairs and they’d heard her motorcycle roar to life, Reynie could feel Sticky’s annoyance hanging in the air.
I didn’t ask her to ask me, Reynie wanted to say, but there was no point. They’d been through this before. Reynie’s ability to analyze problems—and people—had been established long ago, and as a result (unless Mr. Benedict was in the room), it was on his judgment that everyone tended to rely.
Even when you’re wrong, Sticky had pointed out more than once. Even when any of the rest of us could answer just as well as you.
Reynie couldn’t argue with that. Sticky was right. But was it his fault? True, Sticky never said he blamed Reynie; he was just annoyed. Nor did Reynie blame Sticky for being annoyed. But it did still annoy him when Sticky was annoyed, and his own annoyance annoyed Sticky even more.…
No, it was better to say nothing and move on.
Kate, meanwhile, had dropped into a chair and was pouring herself some tea. “Well,” she said, “is no one going to ask me what I found out on my mission with Milligan?” She said this while looking around the table rather than at her teacup; even so, she stopped pouring just as the tea reached the brim. “It might be important, you know.”
Sticky, already irritated, rolled his eyes. “Please forgive us, Kate,” he said in a stiff voice. “What did you find out on your mission with Milligan?”
“I’m glad you asked!” Kate said brightly. “We hit about a dozen dead ends, in four different cities, but we finally figured out what the Scaredy Katz were looking for. Or, I should say, who they were looking for. It was—”
“Actually, you should say whom they were looking for,” Sticky observed. “Or ‘for whom they were looking.’”
Now it was Kate’s turn to roll her eyes. “Fine, Stick—George, I mean—we finally figured out for whom the Scaredy Katz were looking. After all these years, Milligan and I got to the bottom of it! And guess what? It was—”
