When I got to work at the repository the next morning, I went to Doc’s office to return the mermaid’s comb.
The door was open. I knocked on the door frame and stuck my head in.
“Hello, Elizabeth. Come in, come in—what can I do for you?”
“I brought that comb back, from the GC.”
“Oh, good. I hope everything went well? Now, where did I put the kuduo?” Doc rummaged around and found it in the corner of the room behind a rather sad-looking ficus tree. “Let’s see—what was your deposit again? Your sense of humor?”
“No, direction.”
“Yes, of course.” Doc lifted the kuduo lid, and I got the comb out of my bag.
As soon as I touched it, I knew something was wrong. It felt different. I lifted it to my nose and sniffed. A faint smell of scalp but nothing else. No magic. Just a comb.
“What’s the matter, Elizabeth?”
“I don’t know. The comb’s weird. I mean, it’s not weird. It smells wrong.”
“Let me take a look.”
I handed it to Doc, who sniffed it, held it to first one ear and then the other, plucked each tooth, and finally, shockingly, delicately licked the back.
I watched Doc’s freckles. They seemed to be moving faster than usual. A butterfly shape floated by quickly, followed by a triangle.
I waited anxiously.
“Are you sure this is the right comb?” said Doc at last.
“Yes. I’ve had it in my bag the whole time, except when I was using it.” I had a sick, sinking feeling.
“This doesn’t look good. Well, we’ll see what happens.” Doc fished around in the kuduo and pulled out my sense of direction, which swirled alarmingly, shuffling its angles.
“All right,” said Doc, lifting it. It glittered. “Hold out your hands. Faceup, that’s right. The loan returned, the debt is quit. Seek then the heart wherein you fit.”
My sense of direction fell clattering from Doc’s hands into mine. It sat there. I felt it jitter and tingle. It felt wrong, wrong, wrong.
“Well? How do I get it back inside me?”
“I don’t understand—it should already have . . . Wait, you’re not by any chance wearing one of young Miss Rao’s charms again?”
“Yes!” I said with relief. “Could that be it? Should I take it off?”
“Let me take a look.”
“It’s on my foot.” Clutching the sense of direction, which was hard to hold and put me off balance, I held out my ankle.
Doc bent over my foot and inspected the string carefully, twirling it. “Lovely work, but no—this wouldn’t stop you from reenveloping what’s rightfully yours. I’m sorry, Elizabeth. This looks very, very bad. I’m afraid you’re a victim of whoever’s been messing with the Grimm Collection objects.”
“Oh, no! What do you mean?”
“There’s something the matter with that comb—whether it’s a different one or someone’s damaged it somehow and drained the magic, I don’t know. But the vow specifies that the object must be returned ‘potent, uncorrupt, and whole,’ which this comb clearly isn’t.”
“But I didn’t do anything to it, I swear!”
“I believe you. Unfortunately, the vow doesn’t care who damaged it, only whether it’s damaged.”
“So what happens? I don’t get my sense of direction back?”
“I’m afraid not—at least, not now.”
My feelings must have shown on my face, because Doc went on, “I hope we can catch the thief—we’ll try our best. In the meantime I’ll keep your sense of direction safe here. Don’t worry, it’s in good hands. Nobody can take the kuduo out of the repository except its rightful owners. As the Akan proverb says, when a string of beads snaps in the presence of the elders, none are lost.”
“Will I just go on getting lost?” This was a disaster.
“Oh, yes. I’m afraid so.” Doc took my sense of direction out of my hands and carefully poured it into the kuduo. I watched it vanish into darkness.
I checked in with Ms. Callender, who sent me up to work in the Main Exam Room. To my surprise I saw Jaya there, pacing back and forth under the west Tiffany window, the fall scene. Sunlight poured through the glass foliage, turning her hair a dark auburn and giving her skin a reddish cast. She looked like a worried leopard.
She hurried over to me. “Elizabeth! Where’s my sister?”
“I don’t know—I haven’t seen her since last night, at the basketball game. She’s not working here today. Why?”
“She’s gone! She disappeared! The magical monster must have gotten her!”
“What?”
“The monster! The one that’s after you! It got Anjali and it’s all my faaault!” Jaya was starting to wail. The patrons—the usual collection of art students sketching, appraisers making notes in their laptops, and elderly Russians playing chess—looked around at us.
“Shh, Jaya. This is a library; you don’t want to get thrown out. Tell me what happened. Did you see the monster—the gigantic bird?”
She lowered her voice, but not her panic. “No, but if it got Anjali, it’s my fault!”
“How is it your fault?”
“Because I didn’t make her a protection spell.”
“Oh, Jaya! She didn’t let you. Remember?”
“I should have done it anyway. I should have sneaked into her room in the middle of the night and made a protection spell and then the monster wouldn’t have gotten her and now she’s gooooone!” Jaya was wailing in whispers.
I put my arm around her and sat her down on one of the carved wood benches against the wall. “Shh . . . it’s okay, Jaya . . . Don’t cry. It’s okay, we’ll find her. Hey hey hey, Jaya, it’s not your fault. We’ll find your sister.”
I didn’t know if that was true. I hoped so. But how was I going to find Anjali, or anything else, without my sense of direction?
I found a mostly clean tissue in my pocket and gave it to Jaya, who blew her nose loudly. The chess players glanced over at us, then went back to their game.
“Where was the last place you saw her?” The question sounded absurd, even to me—as if Anjali were some toy Jaya had misplaced, a favorite doll.
“This morning at breakfast. She was supposed to help me with my science project. She promised!”
“Maybe she just forgot. Maybe she’s shopping or something.”
“Anjali doesn’t forget things. Anyway, I would know if she was shopping. I’m good at knowing where she is.”
I bet you are, I thought. “And did she say anything before she disappeared?”
“Anything about what?”
“I don’t know. Where she was going? Or anything weird or unusual?”
“No, she complained because I finished the cornflakes. That’s not weird or unusual. The last unusual thing was when you were over before the basketball game, with the missing magic and Benign Designs. Do you think that’s where she went? Benign Designs?”
“Maybe.”
“Where is it? I’m going to go get her back!” Jaya jumped up off the bench, as if she were about to run off right that minute.
“Jaya, wait! We don’t even know for sure if that’s where Anjali went. Or if she’s even missing at all.”
The door opened and Marc hurried over to our bench. “Are you Jaya? Anjali’s little sister?”
Jaya frowned at the word little. “Who are you?”
“I’m Marc. Where’s Anjali? Is she okay? She hasn’t been answering my messages.”
“You’re Marc Merritt? Anjali’s boyfriend? How did you know I was here?” Jaya looked at him with interest.
“Sarah said you were here talking to Elizabeth. Is Anjali okay? Where is she?”
“You’re the basketball star?”
“Yes, yes, yes. Where’s Anjali?”
“I don’t know. I think the monster, or maybe Benign Designs, kidnapped her.”
“No!” He hit his leg with his fist. It looked like it hurt. “I told her not to go there without me!”
“Where? Benign Designs?” I asked.
“She told me last night she thought they took the objects,” he said. “She thinks they replaced them with copies that only work for a few days. She wanted to go investigate. I told her to wait until I could come with her.”
“Oh!” That would explain why the comb stopped working suddenly. “I’ll bet she’s right!”
“Where is it? Where’s Benign Designs? I’m going to go rescue her,” said Jaya.
Marc glanced at her with that carelessly haughty look of his, as if he’d just remembered she was there. “You can’t—you’re only ten.”
I could have told him that was exactly the wrong thing to say. “She’s my sister! You can’t stop me.”
Marc turned and faced her this time. “Anjali would never forgive me if anything happened to you,” he said.
“She’s my sister! I’m coming with you. If you don’t let me come, I’ll go alone.”
“All right, Jaya,” I said. “Go get Anjali’s laptop. Bring it here. We’ll go through it and see if we can figure out where she went. It’ll be safer if we all go together.”
The three of us went to the coffee shop on Lexington and turned on the laptop.
“Here’s the address for Benign Designs, down on Twenty-third Street. I also found the address for the owner—somebody named Wallace Stone. He had it registered under a business name, but Anjali looked up his actual name on a state database.”
“Wallace Stone,” I said. “I’ve heard that name before.”
“Where?” asked Jaya.
I thought about it. “Something about the page that got fired for stealing stuff. I think they said he recommended her.”
“Great! So we’re on the right track, at least,” said Jaya.
“I guess the best thing to do is just to go down to Twenty-third Street and look for him,” Marc said.
“I don’t know—that’s probably what Anjali did, and she’s missing,” I said.
“Got any better ideas?”
“Shouldn’t we ask Doc for help? Or the other librarians, or Mr. Mauskopf ?”
“No! We don’t know who Doc will tell about it, and any one of the librarians could be involved with the thief. They all have access to the Grimm Collection. The fewer people we trust, the better.”
“You think the librarians are involved?” That sounded crazy.
“I don’t know who to trust,” said Marc.
“I think he’s right,” said Jaya. “Anjali disappeared because of the repository. I don’t trust anyone there—except you, of course, because you’re nice, and Marc, because he’s Anjali’s boyfriend.”
But the Twenty-third Street address was a dead end. There was no Benign Designs listed on any of the buzzers, and when we rang them anyway, nobody’d heard of the place—at least, that’s what they said.
“What do we do next?” I asked.
“We go see the owner—Wallace Stone,” said Jaya. “I got his address and phone number. It’s on Otters Alley, downtown. Let me see your ankle.”
“What?”
“The knot. I need to see your knot.”
“Oh.” I stuck out my foot.
“Other foot.”
I stuck out my other foot. She pushed up my jeans leg to look at the knot and nodded. “Good, it’s still there. Here, you make me one.” She pulled a ball of yarn out of her bag and snapped off a piece with her teeth.
“I don’t know how.”
“That’s okay, I’ll show you. First take both ends in your left hand and wrap the whole yarn—no, your left hand—no, that’s still your right hand—yes, that’s it—now wrap it clockwise—no, clockwise—the other way. Okay, now hold the loop under your left thumb and take the two ends with your right hand and loop the top one around your index finger and the bottom one around your pinkie—no, the bottom one, that’s the top one—”
This went on for a long time. I wondered whether tying knots would be easier if I had a sense of direction. The cold made my fingers extra clumsy, and people walking past us on Twenty-third Street gave us little amused glances.
“Do we have time for this?” asked Marc. “What are you doing, anyway?”
“Making a knot of protection,” said Jaya. “It’s very important. It keeps you safe from magic attacks. No, Elizabeth, the other way. You have it backward.”
Eventually I produced a lump that seemed to connect the two ends. “Now the rhyme—repeat after me,” said Jaya. “By this charm, be safe from harm.”
“By this charm, be safe from harm,” I repeated, pulling the knot tight. “Okay?”
Jaya tugged at it dubiously. It slipped a little, but it didn’t come untied. “I hope so,” she said. “Your turn, Marc.”
“Jaya,” he said, “that yarn’s pink.”
“Oh. You’re right. Well, I didn’t bring any other color.” She snapped off a length with her teeth again, pulled his arm toward her, and began weaving the knot.
Marc crinkled his forehead, but he didn’t stop her. I guess Andre gave him plenty of practice indulging little siblings. “You better take Jaya home while I go downtown and deal with this Wallace Stone,” he told me.
“If you try, I’ll scream and say you kidnapped me,” Jaya said. “They’ll believe me too—I don’t look a thing like you. You have to take me with you.”
“Maybe we can find an ogre who’d like to eat her,” said Marc.
“Maybe that’s what Wallace Stone is,” I answered.