I had trouble getting back to Stack 6 to claim the mermaid’s comb. Somehow I got turned around on my way to the elevator, and then I got turned around again on my way out. I had to look at the fire evacuation map on the wall, and even then I took a wrong turn.
I was late to social studies on Wednesday—I went to the wrong floor first. Mr. Mauskopf squinted at me and frowned as I slipped into my seat, but he didn’t mark me late in his book.
I was late to my next class too. I started to wish I’d pledged my sense of humor instead of my sense of direction. Getting lost all the time was so annoying, I was starting to lose it anyway.
My phone rang that evening while I was doing my trigonometry.
“Elizabeth? It’s Aaron. Aaron Rosendorn.”
“Hi, Aaron. How—where did you get my number?”
“From Sarah, at the repository.”
Did he always have such a deep voice? He sounded different—older, but less sure of himself.
I waited for him to tell me what he wanted. He hadn’t been all that nice the last time we’d spoken, as I recalled.
He cleared his throat. “Did you figure out what’s going on with those objects from the Grimm Collection?” he asked.
He was calling me about the Grimm Collection? At home? How weird!
“No, I still have no idea what’s up with them,” I said. “Ms. Callender said she was just getting started looking into it. Do you know?”
“No, but . . . Do you think we should talk to Anjali? Maybe she could help figure it out.”
Oh. Of course. Of course that was why he was calling. He just wanted to talk about Anjali.
“I already talked to Anjali about it,” I said. “She input the objects into a spreadsheet and she’s working on finding a pattern.”
Aaron laughed. “That’s so like her! Maybe I should call her and see if there’s anything I might know that could help. What do you think?”
A wave of irritation swept over me. Why was he asking me? “I don’t know. I don’t know what more you could tell her, but you can call her if you want. Or you could just talk to her next time you see her. I don’t think it matters.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
His voice disappeared. I was about to hang up when he spoke again. “Um, so how are you?”
“How am I?”
“Yeah. How are you?”
“Uh . . . fine?”
“Good.” I heard him swallow.
“How are you?” I asked.
“I’m fine too.”
“Good. We’re both fine.”
Another pause.
“What are you up to?” he asked.
“Up to?”
“Yeah, what are you doing?”
“My trig homework. Why? What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Calling you.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Neither of us said anything for a while. “I guess I should get back to my homework,” I said eventually.
“Yeah. Well, thanks, Elizabeth. Call me if you figure anything out, okay? Or if . . . or if you just want to talk.”
Talk? About what? “Okay, I will,” I said.
“Okay, thanks. Bye.”
“Bye.” I pressed the off button on my phone and stared at the screen for a while. Then I stared at the wall for a while.
That was one weird conversation.
Well, it was a weird week, and he was a weird guy. I shrugged and went back to cosines and tangents.
Half an hour later he called back.
“Hi, Elizabeth, me again.”
“Hi, Aaron.”
“Listen, I was thinking. What if we asked some of the objects in the Grimm Collection to tell us what’s wrong with the other ones?”
“You mean ask the objects themselves? You think that would work?”
“It might. Some of them are pretty talkative. At least, they are if you talk to them in rhyme.”
“Tell me about it. But aren’t you the guy who thinks we shouldn’t touch anything or use anything?”
“Yeah. But what if . . . I don’t know, we could borrow them officially. That would be legit.”
“Hm. That’s not a bad idea, actually,” I said. “Which objects did you have in mind?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t really thought it through yet.”
“Okay. Well, maybe we should go through the card catalog and see if there’s anything useful.”
“Okay . . . Well, bye.”
“Bye.”
I had just finished a tricky math problem and was feeling proud of myself when the phone rang again.
“Elizabeth? It’s Aaron again.”
What on earth was going on with him?
“You don’t say,” I said.
He laughed uncomfortably. “Actually, I was wondering. What are you doing Friday?”
“I’m going to the basketball game,” I said. “There’s a big home game at my school. Why?”
“Oh.” His voice fell. “I just thought . . . never mind.”
Before he could hang up again, I said, “Well, maybe—you could come to the game if you want.”
What on earth was I doing? Was I asking him out? Why was I doing that? He was kind of awful, and he liked Anjali—Anjali, not me. I was making a complete fool of myself.
“It’ll probably be an exciting game,” I went on. “We’re playing the World Peace Academy. They’re a charter school, they have a dumb name but a killer team, and they keep winning. But we’re doing great too this season.” I was babbling, but I couldn’t stop. “We have a lot of talent on our team. Especially Marc. I think this time we might actually have a chance of winning. You should see Marc play. He’s been amazing lately.”
Aaron finally spoke. When he did, nice, nervous Aaron was gone. He had turned into cold, sarcastic Aaron, the Aaron who hated Marc. “Yeah, I bet he has. I just bet he has,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“There’s more to sports than just speed and strength, you know. There’s also honesty and fair play.”
“What are you talking about? Are you implying Marc cheats?”
“I know what I’ve seen at the repository.”
“You know what you think you’ve seen, but you’re wrong. Marc is just as worried as you are about the suspicious objects. He’s helping me and Anjali figure it out and get them back.”
“What? You told him about them?”
“Of course I did. Why shouldn’t I?”
“I can’t believe you! I can’t believe myself. What was I thinking, deciding I could trust you?”
“What’s the matter with you, Aaron? I didn’t do anything to you, and you call me up out of the blue and start yelling at me!”
“Fine. I’ll get off the phone now.” He hung up.
“Bye,” I said to the dead phone. I went back to my math, wondering why I felt like I was about to cry.
I didn’t see Aaron at the repository on Thursday. Ms. Callender sent me to the MER to handle the pneum traffic, and it was so busy I didn’t have a moment free to look for helpful GC objects in the catalog, even if I’d had the heart to.
Friday after school I made my way to Anjali’s house. I managed to get there by keeping careful track of the building numbers as I walked up Park Avenue. I gave my name to the doorman, who gave it to whoever answered the buzzer at the Raos’.
“Fourteenth floor,” he told me.
I found the elevator okay. It was in plain sight, right in front of me.
“Elizabeth! So nice to see you again, dear,” said Mrs. Rao, opening the door. “Are you excited about the basketball game tonight?”
“Totally,” I said. “We’re playing World Peace Academy. They have a cutthroat team, but we’re doing great this year, so it should be a close one.”
“It sounds exciting. Anjali is in her room—you remember the way?”
“I think so.”
“No, the other way—to the left,” said Mrs. Rao.
I opened the door to a linen closet and what must have been Jaya’s room, judging by the sparkly clothes strewn all around, before I came to a door marked Anjali in careful calligraphy. I knocked and tried the handle. It was locked.
Anjali’s voice came through the door, muffled but firm: “Go away.”
“Anjali? It’s me, Elizabeth.”
“Oh, sorry!” The door opened. Anjali was wearing pink sweats with clouds on them, and even in sweats she looked great. “Sorry, I thought it was Jaya.” She stood aside to let me in, then locked the door again.
“Well? Did you figure out who took those objects?” I asked.
“I think so. Maybe. Marc wants us to meet him in your school library after the game so the three of us can go over it together. But why don’t you take a look now and see if there’s anything I missed?” She got out her laptop and patted the sofa pillow next to her. I sat down and tilted the screen so that I could see it better.
“What am I looking at?”
“This is everyone who checked out any of the objects on Ms. Callender’s list. These are their affiliations—their business or school or whatever. Here are pairs of people who checked out at least one object in common. Do you see the pattern?”
I shook my head.
“Yeah, I didn’t get it either at first. All right, let me show you one more list.” Anjali opened a new window on her computer. “This has all the objects you pulled for Ms. Callender on the y-axis, with all the patrons who took them out in chronological order along the x-axis. The objects that still smell like magic are highlighted in red. Okay, now I’m going to highlight the patrons who work for a place called Benign Designs.” She touched a key, and a bunch of spreadsheet cells lit up in blue. “Get it now?”
I shook my head. “I don’t really understand what all the boxes mean. How do you know this stuff? Is this what they teach you at Miss Wharton’s—like, AP Spreadsheets or something?”
Anjali laughed. “Sorry, I forgot not everybody has to live with my dad. He had Jaya and me using these programs the minute we were born. Look.” She pointed to the screen. “These seven patrons are from some business called Benign Designs. Notice how somebody from Benign Designs took out every one of the objects that you said doesn’t smell magical?”
She was right. At least one of the seven names appeared on every row. “Yes, but they also took out most of the ones that do smell magical,” I said. “Maybe they’re just heavy library users. And they’re not the only ones who took out the messed-up objects. Look, two or three other people did too, including Ms. Minnian.”
“Maybe. But look at when. With the ones that don’t smell right, someone from Benign Designs took them out at least three patrons ago. The ones that still smell magical have been checked out only once or twice since the Benign Designs patron.”
“Except for the ones that haven’t ever been checked out by Benign Designs. Like the seven-league boots,” I pointed out.
She waved her hand. “I’m not counting those. They’re clearly mistakes.”
“You can’t just decide anything that doesn’t fit your theory is a mistake! And what actually is your theory, anyway?”
“That the people at Benign Designs are doing something to the objects.”
“What kind of something?”
“I don’t know. Stealing their magic, maybe.”
“Can you do that? Can you take the magic out of something magical?”
“I don’t know. I can’t, obviously, but maybe somebody can.”
“But then why do the objects still work for the next three patrons?”
“I’m not sure. It has to be some kind of delayed action. Maybe the magic fades slowly.”
“Or maybe they put a spell on them so the third person to take them out has to give them to Benign Designs, and they replace it with a fake, like you and Marc do with the seven-league boots.”
“Maybe—that’s another possible theory. We could test it, by borrowing one of the objects.”
“Oh, wait!” I remembered the comb. “I already did!” I took it out of my bag. “This was on the list.”
“What is it?” Anjali turned it over in her hands.
“It’s a . . . comb,” I mumbled, suddenly embarrassed.
She looked at me intensely. Under her scrutiny, I felt mortifyingly vain. I couldn’t believe I had borrowed a mermaid’s comb so I could look nice while watching someone else’s boyfriend play basketball.
“What kind of comb?” she asked.
“A mermaid’s comb. I wanted . . . I thought . . . ,” I trailed off.
“Okay.” She sounded embarrassed by my embarrassment. “Does it still work?” She lifted the comb to her hair.
I wanted to stop her, but I couldn’t. I sat paralyzed.
She combed. At each stroke, her hair shone with the rainbow darkness of a starling’s feathers. It waved like a midnight river, smooth and cold and singing with ripples, stars dancing on its surface and death in its depths. If it had been a river, I would have thrown myself in and let the torrent dash me against the sunken rocks.
She raised a questioning eyebrow at me. “Well?”
“Your hair looks fantastic,” I said. “But then, it always looks fantastic.”
“Here, you try it.” She tossed me the comb. I sniffed it and nodded in recognition. That smell—that wild, shifting, unmistakable smell of magic, overlaid with the floral musk of Anjali’s hair.
“Aren’t you going to use the comb?” she said.
I shrugged. There didn’t seem to be any point.
“Go on, I want to see what it does.”
I shrugged again and lifted the comb.
The door gave a great rattling shudder. “AANNjaliiiiiiii!”
Jaya.
“Open up, Anjali! You’ve got Elizabeth in there, I heard you! And you’re doing your hair! I want to heeeeelp!” she wailed.
“Oh, brother,” said Anjali, but she opened the door. “Go away, Jaya,” she said.
Jaya ignored her. “Hi, Elizabeth,” she said. “Want me to do your hair?”
I handed her the comb.
I expected painful tugs, but Jaya was surprisingly gentle, or maybe it was the comb. My scalp tingled with delight. I closed my eyes and murmured, “Mmmmm.”
“You have nice hair, Elizabeth. Want me to make you a French braid?”
“Sure.”
Her quick fingers parted and pulled and tightened my hair, combing each section as she joined it into the braid. When she reached the end of the braid, she fastened it with a scrunchy that she took out of her own hair. “Go look,” she said, pointing to the mirror on Anjali’s dresser.
Usually my hair wisps out of braids and updos, but this time it lay gleaming and orderly. It flattered the shape of my face. For once I actually had cheekbones.
“Nice,” I said. “Thanks, Jaya. I guess the comb still works.”
Anjali glanced at Jaya and frowned at me.
“Don’t worry, Anji, I already know all about it,” announced Jaya. “I was listening at the door. This is a magic comb, and some magic objects aren’t magic anymore, and you’re trying to catch the bad guys. Let me help! You know I’m good with spreadsheets—Daddy says so.” She started to comb her hair.
“Jaya, you are such a pest,” said Anjali wearily.
“Is that a good idea, Jaya?” I said.
“Of course it is! I could help you find the bad guys, and I could tie them up for you,” Jaya said.
“No, I mean using that comb.” Her hair still looked like a cloud of spikes, but an increasingly attractive cloud of spikes. “You’re kind of young for that kind of thing.”
Jaya looked insulted. “I borrow Anjali’s makeup all the time!”
“You what?” The clouds gathered on Anjali’s exquisite brow.
“Don’t worry, I always put everything back.” She found a knot in her hair and tugged at it with the comb.
“Be careful with that, Jaya!”
“Give Elizabeth the comb, Jaya,” said Anjali. The thought of her sister meddling with her makeup must have been what gave her voice such a cold edge. She could be surprisingly scary sometimes, I thought.
“Fine. I’m done with it anyway.” Jaya handed me the comb with dignity.
“Thanks, Jaya,” I said, putting it away in my bag. “Okay, so the comb still works. What does that prove?”
“Nothing yet,” said Anjali. “Maybe it doesn’t lose its magic until after you return it. Maybe somebody’s planning to take it away from you. What about that bird? Maybe they’re going to send it to get the comb. Or do you have an uncontrollable urge to give the comb to someone from Benign Designs?”
“What’s Benign Designs?” asked Jaya. Anjali ignored her.
“Not as far as I know,” I said. “The only people I’ve given it to so far are girls in the Rao family. You don’t work for Benign Designs, do you?”
“What’s Benign Designs?” said Jaya again.
“We don’t know yet,” I said. “We need to find out.”
Anjali said, “Let’s do a search.” She went back to typing on the computer.
“Let me help, I’m good at finding things,” said Jaya, inserting herself between my shoulder and Anjali’s legs to peer at the screen.
Anjali batted her away. “If you break my computer, Dad will be very angry,” she said.
“I’m not breaking anything,” said Jaya, but she subsided next to me on the floor. She glanced at my wrist, then pushed up both my sleeves. “Hey, what happened to the knot I made you?” she said accusingly.
“I . . . It came off,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not supposed to. Maybe I didn’t do it right. I better make you another one—you’re not safe out there, with monsters and Benign Designs and everything.”
“Leave her alone, Jaya,” said Anjali. “Elizabeth doesn’t want to wear some ugly piece of yarn to the basketball game.”
“Why are you so mean to me? All I’m doing is trying to help! I hate you!” Tears hung in Jaya’s enormous dark eyes. The contrast between her pouting face and her glamorous hair was comical but heartbreaking.
“You can make me a new knot, okay?” I said quickly.
Jaya turned the pout on me. “Don’t pretend to be nice! You’re just as bad as my sister.”
“Please? I really would feel much safer.”
“Oh, all right. I’ll do your ankle so the ugly knot won’t show. Which foot?”
I held out my left. Or was it my right? Without my sense of direction, it was hard to tell.
Jaya got a piece of yarn and began the lengthy ritual. “But I’m not making you one, stinkhead,” she said to Anjali. “The monsters can eat you for all I care. If they do, you’ll probably poison them.”