Inside the Shadow City (20 page)

Fortunately, Luz's cruel imprisonment couldn't prevent her from breaking the law. While her mother slept, she built five illegal police scanners and lowered four of them out her bedroom window to Oona, who was stationed on the street below. Having mysteriously escaped all punishment, Oona was able to deliver the goods to the rest of us. Luz's handiwork allowed the Irregulars to eavesdrop on the New York police department and listen for news of Kiki Strike. But other than an amusing encounter between a SWAT team and an escaped Komodo dragon, we heard little of interest.

It was late July before my parents stopped ordering me around like the family maid. Oona and I spent our last weeks of summer break staking out Sidonia Galatzina's house, waiting for Kiki to strike again. We weren't interested in protecting the Princess. As far as I was
concerned, the obnoxious brat and her haughty mother deserved whatever was coming to them. We just wanted to find Kiki, and the Princess and her jewelry seemed to be the perfect bait. But it soon became clear that we were wasting our time. From what I could tell, Kiki Strike was done with diamonds.

By the time DeeDee, Betty, and Luz were free to join the hunt for Kiki Strike, I had already begun to believe she was gone for good. After two months of watching and waiting, we were still no closer to finding her. Summer break ended, and the Irregulars started the eighth grade. With Kiki missing, our lives felt almost normal—too normal. Then, on a Saturday in early November, just after my thirteenth birthday, there came an unexpected knock at my apartment door.

• • •

Peering through the peephole, I could tell that the man on the other side of the door wasn't with the police or the FBI. His face was hidden, but I could see he was short, unkempt, and wearing a tweed suit that was fraying at the lapels.

“Hello?” I called through the door.

“Ananka Fishbein?” squeaked the man in a harsh New York accent.

“Who's asking?”

“My name is J. Willard Katzwinkle. I'm from the Capybaras Corporation.”

“The what?” I asked.

The man cleared his throat nervously.

“The Capybaras Corporation? We, ah, we specialize
in environmentally friendly rodenticides. You know, rat traps, poisons, that sort of thing. If you've got a minute, I'd like to talk to you about your Reverse Pied Piper.”

“Do you have any identification?” My heart was thumping painfully inside my chest. If the man knew about the Reverse Pied Piper, the information could only have come from Kiki Strike. Though he was short and slovenly, I couldn't dismiss the possibility that he might be a killer. So, as he slid a business card under the door, I ran and grabbed a can of oven cleaner from beneath the kitchen sink. If the little man had come to do Kiki Strike's dirty work, he was in for a nasty surprise.

I opened the door, holding the can of oven cleaner behind my back. The man standing in the hall resembled a large rodent. His nose was long and pointy, his teeth were stained a dark yellow, and his mustache grew like a set of bristly whiskers.

“Who told you about the Reverse Pied Piper?” I demanded to know. Mr. Katzwinkle began to fidget with one of his lapels.

“I got a letter from a friend of yours. She said you had an invention you might wanna sell.”

“What friend?”

The man shook his head and smiled meekly.

“Sorry, I shouldn't have said anything. I'm not supposed to tell you until after we've talked.”

I almost slammed the door, but my curiosity got the better of me.

“Okay. Then tell me this. The postmark on the letter,” I said. “Where was it from?” I already knew who had sent it, but I needed to know where she was.

“You know, it's funny you should ask. I don't usually pay attention to those kinds of things, but this one was unusual. It was shaped like a tea bag. I think it said Hong Kong.” His answer left me a little stunned.

“Come in, Mr. Katzwinkle,” I said, hoping I could learn more about Kiki Strike's whereabouts. “And please, have a seat.”

I slid the can of oven cleaner between two sofa cushions as I settled in the living room. Mr. Katzwinkle looked around nervously, as if scanning the surroundings for predators, and I realized I had nothing to fear. The rat man was too jittery to do me much harm and too preoccupied to realize I was only thirteen years old.

“The letter said you had, ah, invented a powerful rodent removal device.”

“I didn't invent it. My grandfather did.”

The man looked bewildered and began fidgeting again.

“Oh? In that case, I should talk to your grandfather. Where can I find him?”

“You can't. He's been dead for years. A friend of mine built a few Reverse Pied Pipers using my grandfather's sketches.”

“You've got prototypes?” asked Mr. Katzwinkle. “Do you have one handy?”

“Sure.” I retrieved a Reverse Pied Piper from my backpack and handed it to the rat man.

“Looks like a kazoo,” he noted, turning the device over and over in his hands. “How does it work?”

“It works like a kazoo, too. You just turn it on and blow into it. Rats can't stand the noise.”

The rat man looked skeptical.

“Mind if I try?”

“Go ahead. But blow it out the window. We have a mouse in the cupboard that I don't want to disturb.”

The man threw open the window and leaned outside. I wasn't sure if he would get any results. There were no creatures of any kind to be seen in the little park below. After wiping the mouth of the Reverse Pied Piper on his shirtsleeve, the man put it to his lips and gave a quick puff. Six enormous rats emerged from beneath a shrub in the park and ran as fast as their filthy legs could carry them toward a building across the street. A young man entering the building with two bags of groceries fainted when he saw the rats heading in his direction. As he dropped to the ground, his bags exploded on the sidewalk. Eggs, oranges, and a smoked trout flew through the air as the rats scrambled over the man's body. One of the rodents jumped up and caught the trout in its jaws before it disappeared into an alley. The rat man thrilled at the sight.

“Not bad, not bad,” he said. “It works pretty good with
Rattus norvegicus
. But who's to say they ain't gonna come back?”

“I wouldn't worry about that,” I assured him. “My grandfather's experiments showed that rats find the sound so unpleasant that just the memory of it keeps them away.”

The rat man paced the living room as he quietly studied the Reverse Pied Piper. He tried to keep a straight face, but he couldn't conceal the gleam in his eyes. He was ready to make a deal.

“Would you mind excusing me while I call the office?” he asked.

I nodded and went to the kitchen, where I attempted to eavesdrop with my ear against the door. I could hear Mr. Katzwinkle whispering into the phone, but I couldn't decipher a single word. When the conversation was over, I allowed a few minutes to pass before I returned to the living room.

The rat man was pacing the room again, his eyes caressing his new love. When he saw me, he cleared his throat and tried to make his voice sound as official as possible.

“Pending thorough testing of your Reverse Pied Piper, the Capybaras Corporation is prepared to make you a very generous offer.”

“Really?” I said, hoping I didn't sound too eager. “How much?”

The man looked up at me with a sheepish grin. “I've been authorized to offer you two million dollars,” he said. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Kiki Strike says to wish you a very happy birthday.”

• • •

“Two million dollars!” shouted Luz, who had suddenly transformed from a sullen scientist into the happiest girl in the world.

I had called a meeting of the Irregulars at a coffee shop near Kiki's hidden house. A nosy waiter craned his neck, trying to listen in on our conversation.

“It's not all ours,” I whispered, knowing there could be spies anywhere. “About half goes to taxes. And I'm not
old enough to sign contracts, so I had to make a deal with my parents. They get half of what's left over. It's only fair, I guess. The blueprints were in their house, and it was my mother's father who invented the Reverse Pied Piper. But the other half goes to me, which means there's a little more than a hundred thousand dollars for each of us.”

“You're giving us a hundred thousand dollars?” Oona asked. Her eyes were as wide as my parents' had been when I had given them the news. They still couldn't believe that their daughter, a straight C student, had managed to make them a fortune.

“I'm not
giving
it to anyone,” I told the group. “You've all earned it. And I didn't set this whole thing up. Kiki Strike did.”

At the mention of her name, the conversation turned serious.

“What does
she
want?” sneered Luz.

“I don't know,” I admitted. “She doesn't want money, or she could have sold her own Reverse Pied Piper and cut us out of the deal.”

“Maybe she wants to pay us back,” said Betty. “Maybe she wants to be friends again.”

“She's trying to buy our goodwill,” said DeeDee, shaking her head thoughtfully. Her hair had at last grown to an attractive length, but the scar on her forehead would turn a vivid red whenever she was excited. “She probably wants to lower our defenses.”

“I think DeeDee's right,” I agreed.

“If that's what she wants, she'll need to give me more than a hundred thousand dollars,” snarled Luz.

“Does this mean Kiki's back?” Betty whispered, pushing
her sunglasses back and adjusting the curly red wig that made her look like a crazed Little Orphan Annie.

“I don't think so,” I told her. “The postmark on the letter she sent Mr. Katzwinkle was from Hong Kong.”

“I have a hunch she'll be staying there for a while,” said Oona. “Here, I brought something to show you guys.” She pulled a roll of paper out of her bag and spread it across the table. It was a poster for an Asian kung-fu movie. “Look what I found in a video store in Chinatown.”

The poster showed a girl in a plaid school uniform standing triumphantly over an assassin's whale-sized carcass. Above her head she held a double-edged
jian
sword dripping with blood. Despite a black wig and glittery makeup, the girl's arched eyebrow and ice blue eyes were all we needed to identify her as Kiki Strike.

“Want to hear something funny? In Chinese, the movie is called
Cute Little Demon Girl
. Pretty dead-on, wouldn't you say? But get this. The clerk in the video store said it's coming out in Asia in a few months. Our sweet little Kiki Strike is going to be a movie star.”

“Oona?” said Betty, looking a little pale beneath her makeup. “Are you sure this movie was filmed in Hong Kong?”

“Pretty sure, why?”

“They've been making martial arts movies in Chinatown. Right before school started, I heard my parents talking about a costume-designing job. They said it would be a challenge because the lead actor was really short. Do you think it could have been Kiki?”

“She must have spent all our gold if she's taking acting jobs,” said Luz.

“Get over the gold, would you, Lopez?” Oona said, rolling her eyes.

“I don't think Kiki's back in New York yet,” I said. “Why would she leave Hong Kong if she's going to be a movie star?”

The other girls looked unconvinced.

“I didn't know Kiki was a kung-fu master,” said DeeDee, rubbing her fingers against her scar. “Maybe that's how she got away from the people who were after her.”

“Maybe,” I said, desperate to change the subject. “But if you're worried that Kiki will come after us, just think of how many kung-fu lessons we can buy.”

No one laughed. What should have been a day of celebration had turned out to be as cheerful as a puppy's funeral.

• • •

Within a week's time, Oona and Luz started martial arts training with a sushi chef who claimed to be a former ninja. But as the months passed and Kiki Strike failed to reappear, we all began to focus less on self-defense and more on spending our fortunes. Oona paid an unemployed actress to help her open a manicure shop. At first we thought she might have lost her mind, but Oona assured us she had a plan. And judging by the evil glimmer in her eyes, we knew it had to be a good one. Luz bought Mrs. Gonzalez's apartment and converted it into a private workshop, while Betty used her share of the money to start a business that sold designer Kevlar vests to women who wanted to be both fashionable and bulletproof.
DeeDee, the most pragmatic of the Irregulars, tripled her stash by investing in the Capybaras Corporation and a company that had developed a super-powerful kitty litter.

All in all, the Irregulars spent their money well. If you're ever lucky enough to come into a fortune, you should try to follow their example. A lot of girls would be tempted to throw their cash away on shoes, lip gloss, and new clothes. That's exactly what I did with my share of the money.

Before you start questioning my sanity, please let me explain. Every day, each of us comes into contact with hundreds of people who haven't had the opportunity to learn how intelligent, charming, and kindhearted we are. Whether these people are teachers, shopkeepers, or unpleasant young princesses, they have only one way to determine what kind of people we might be. It sounds terrible—and it is unfair—but the fact of the matter is, they judge us by how we look.

The good news is, with the right attitude and attention to detail, you can become whoever you want to be. For instance, if you want to proclaim yourself a rebel, a few carefully placed tattoos and some strategically ripped tights can go a long way. On the other hand, if you'd prefer to be the darling of authority, I would recommend a plaid headband and pleated knee skirt to go along with your eager smile. As for myself, I wanted a look that reflected my new power. For the first thirteen years of my life, people had always looked right through me. But now that I was the leader of the Irregulars, I wanted to make it clear to the world that I was not a girl to be ignored.