“But you’re adorable,” Oona joked.
“Not funny, Wong,” Iris warned.
“Quit bickering. Did you get the supplies?” asked Kiki.
“One large onion. One sharp knife.” Iris took the items out of the brown paper bag.
“Excellent. Time to see if you’re as good an actress as you claim to be.” Kiki cut open the onion and held it under Iris’s nose. Iris’s eyes blinked rapidly, and plump, juicy tears began to roll down her pink cheeks. She sniffled and adopted a miserable expression. “What’s wrong, little girl?” prompted Kiki.
“I locked myself out of the house,” Iris sobbed. “The nanny’s asleep, and she won’t open the door. May I use your telephone, please?”
“A little more snot next time, but otherwise excellent,” said a proud Kiki. “Okay, get going.”
A bawling Iris ran across the street and up the stairs to the Princess’s front door. She pressed the doorbell and then stood back looking small and helpless. It was a brilliant plan, and Iris was the only one who could pull it off. She was still young enough to appear harmless, and the Princess’s guards would be used to seeing her in the neighborhood.
A man opened the door of the Princess’s house and glared at the little cupcake on the stoop. I gasped when I saw his slicked-back hair and perfectly polished footwear gleaming in the sunlight. It was Bob Goodman, the fake FBI agent.
“Friend of yours?” asked Kiki.
“He came to my house after you disappeared,” I admitted. “He said he was with the FBI. He told us you were an international assassin.”
“That explains a lot,” said Kiki. “For your information, that man’s name is Sergei Molotov. He’s my aunt’s right-hand man. The same right hand, I might add, that put a bullet in Verushka’s leg. I’ve been looking forward to catching up with him.”
At first the man shook his head and refused to let Iris use the phone. But when she turned up the volume on her sobs and threatened to make a scene, the man ushered her inside and shut the door. I worried that it might be the last time we would see our brave little friend, but a few seconds later, Kiki’s cell phone vibrated. She let it ring a few times before answering it.
“Hello?” she asked in a tired voice in case Sergei was listening.
“Hello, nanny, it’s me,” I could hear Iris’s teary voice. “I locked myself out of the house. Can you come downstairs and let me in?”
“What a stupid thing to do,” Kiki scolded her. “Why do you always run off when we have a busy day ahead of us? What time is your macramé lesson?”
“One o’clock,” whimpered Iris. This was the code we had devised. It meant Iris had seen only one person in the house.
“All right, then. Give me a second and I’ll meet you at the front door.”
Kiki Strike, Oona, and I leaped out of our hiding place and raced toward the Princess’s house. As Sergei opened the door to let Iris out, the rest of us barged inside. We found ourselves in a spacious marble foyer, standing beneath a crystal chandelier large enough to house a family of tree-dwelling monkeys. Surrounding our quarry, we backed him up against a wall. Sergei reached under his jacket, his hand fishing for his gun. It was missing. He patted himself down and frantically scanned the room.
“Looking for this?” Iris tossed him a gun. She had taken it from its holster as he led her to the phone. “Don’t worry. I removed all the bullets. Didn’t anyone ever warn you not to play with loaded firearms?”
“I taught her how to do that,” said Kiki Strike proudly. “She’s a natural.”
Sergei threw the useless gun across the floor and laughed.
“Get out of this house or I will tear you all to pieces.”
“Talk, talk, talk,” said Kiki, circling the well-groomed man like a hungry dingo. “You know, I think I’ve been threatened enough today. So let’s just skip all the chitchat and get right to business. Or does the idea of a fair fight not appeal to you?”
“I’m not going to fight a little girl,” Sergei uttered with a look of disgust. “It’s beneath me.”
“How remarkable. You refuse to fight a little girl, but you don’t have any problem shooting an old lady in the leg.”
“Of course I do,” Sergei said, leering at the four of us. “I would have preferred to hit her in the head.”
Kiki stepped toward Sergei and gazed up at his face, which towered two feet above her own. Without taking her eyes off of him, she raised one foot and brought it crashing down on his shiny Italian shoe. When he instinctively bent over, Kiki smashed an elbow into his left eye and followed the move up with a quick punch to his right eye. Temporarily blinded, the man staggered about the foyer, bellowing at the top of his lungs and crashing into furniture. Kiki stood back, her bloodshot eyes watching the scene with amusement.
“So what do you think? Should I put him out of his misery?”
“You might as well,” said Iris with a yawn. “He’s going to destroy the whole house if you don’t do something.”
“In that case, here’s a move I invented on the set of my movie. I call it the Taiwanese Tumble. Watch closely.”
As Sergei passed in front of her, Kiki stuck out one foot. Unable to see the obstacle in his path, he tripped and banged his head against a marble table. Sergei groaned once, and then the room was silent. In a flash, Kiki pulled a roll of duct tape out of her bag and hog-tied the large man.
“That concludes our lesson for today,” she said, standing up and brushing herself off.
“Then what do you say we search the place?” I asked.
“What are we looking for?” asked Oona.
“Anything that sparkles,” I told her.
• • •
We set out to inspect the ground floor of the Princess’s house. As we stepped out of the foyer and into the house’s grand parlor, Oona started to snicker. The parlor had been decorated by someone with a flair for the downright ugly. Throughout the room, hundreds of floral patterns battled one another for attention. It was hard to look at the sofa, with its mismatched cushions, without becoming a little dizzy. Anything in the room that wasn’t decorated with flowers had been dipped, sprayed, or painted in gold. Above a hideous golden fireplace was a portrait of the Princess’s mother wearing a crown and petting a Pekingese dog that was perched on her ample lap. An identical dog sat stuffed on the mantel, gazing at us with glass eyes. Dozens of tacky knickknacks cluttered every surface, but there wasn’t a single book to be seen.
“Wow. Looks like they spent a million dollars at one of Liberace’s garage sales,” said Oona, checking her hair in a gilded mirror.
“And to think it could have all been mine,” Kiki added.
Oona and Iris laughed, but I was too anxious to join in.
Kiki walked around the room, examining every object as if searching for an elusive clue. She shook porcelain figurines and crammed her fingers inside vases. She paused in front of an empty glass case on top of the fireplace mantel.
“Strange,” she said. “This case was designed to hold Fabergé eggs,” she noted. “Livia took three with her when she fled Pokrovia. But the case is empty.”
“Maybe they’re redecorating,” offered Iris.
“Let’s hope,” Oona joked, but Kiki didn’t laugh along.
After checking out the kitchen and dining room, we headed upstairs. The second floor of the house was devoted to Livia’s bedroom. Pictures of Livia in golden frames were everywhere, and an enormous white bed with a frilly canopy sat at the end of the room. A long row of closets lined one entire wall of the building. Kiki threw open the closet doors, revealing countless outfits for every conceivable occasion. Thousands of shoes in a rainbow of colors lined custom-built shelves. Behind the last closet door we discovered a huge metal safe, its door ajar. There was nothing inside.
“Look what I found,” called Iris, stooping down beneath a vanity to pick up a glittering object. She handed it to Kiki, and the rest of us gathered round.
It was a brooch with a hundr
ed bloodred rubies arranged in the shape of a pomegranate. Their color matched the two rubies in Kiki’s ears. Kiki’s fingers closed around the brooch, and her hand tightened into a fist.
“This looks like something that belonged to my mother, but it’s a fake. Where did you say you found it?”
“On the floor. Over there.” Iris pointed. Kiki walked over to the vanity and flipped open a golden jewelry box. It, too, was empty.
“Something’s wrong,” muttered Kiki, looking down at the brooch in her hand. “All the real jewels are gone. And it looks like Livia left in a hurry. She didn’t even take her clothes.”
“Where do you think she went?” I wondered.
“She must be in New York,” said Kiki. “She wouldn’t have left the city without Sidonia.”
“This is getting really creepy,” Oona said. “Maybe we should get out of here.”
“Yes.” Kiki nodded. “You should go. But I can’t. This could be my last chance. I can’t leave until I’ve found what I’m looking for.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” I insisted. “From now on, we’re all in this together.”
• • •
On the top floor of the brownstone lay the Princess’s lair. The walls had been painted a pale yellow, and the antique furnishings were simple and tasteful. Hanging near the Princess’s bed was a painting of a dark and beautiful sorceress standing on a hill overlooking the sea. A herd of unhappy pigs milled around her legs.
As in Livia’s room, a row of closets lined an entire wall. Inside, we found only a custom-built shelf filled with shoes and handbags, many of them designer knock-offs. Oona picked up a leather-bound scrapbook that lay on the Princess’s bedside table and began to flip through it. She grabbed my arm as I walked past, on my way to inspect the Princess’s bathroom.
“Hey, take a look at this,” she said.
Carefully arranged on each page of the scrapbook was a memento from the life of Kiki Strike. The book began with a series of pictures of a rosy-cheeked infant with a shock of pale blond hair. Later in the book, we discovered copies of old stories that the Princess had pulled off the Internet. There was the New York Post article about the Central Park Vigilante and a dozen clippings describing the raid on Oliver Harcott’s warehouse. The Princess had even salvaged the note that Kiki had written the day she saved me from public humiliation. While I had been watching the Princess, she had been keeping track of Kiki Strike.
“Hey, Kiki,” Oona called. “I think you have a fan.”
Kiki didn’t answer. Something on top of the Princess’s dresser had caught her eye. It was a porcelain doll in a colorful dress that I assumed was the national costume of Pokrovia. Kiki picked up the doll and examined it, even peeking under its skirts. Then she seized the doll by its legs and with one quick flip of the wrist, smashed the doll’s head against the wall. The porcelain head shattered, and a black object the size of an apricot pit rolled across the floor. Oona picked it up.
“It’s a video camera,” she sputtered. “Someone’s been watching us.”
“I knew this was too easy,” said Kiki. “Let’s go find our Peeping Tom. Where’s Iris?”
As soon as she spoke, I realized that Iris was missing. A bolt of panic shot through my body. Kiki and I raced downstairs to check Livia’s bedroom while Oona stayed on the third floor to search the Princess’s bathroom. Iris was nowhere to be found.
“Oona,” Kiki called. “Did you find her?” There was no answer. “Oona!” Kiki called louder. Not a peep. Kiki and I looked at each other and rushed back upstairs. Oona was gone.
“She couldn’t have gone downstairs. We would have passed her. But how could she disappear from the third floor?” I wondered. “There’s something strange about this house. How did you know it had an entrance to the Shadow City?”
“It was mentioned in Glimpses of Gotham,” she said.
I took out my copy of the book.
“Here it is,” I told Kiki. “It says it was a lodging house. There’s a hidden room under the building that used to have an entrance to the Shadow City. According to Pearcy Leake, it was a thieves’ den. But how do we get into the room?”
“I don’t know,” Kiki said. “I didn’t see a trapdoor, did you?”
“No,” I admitted. “But there must be a way inside.”
I sat down on Sidonia’s bed and tried to think like a criminal. Why would a gang of thieves build a hidden room under a lodging house? It didn’t seem very smart. They wouldn’t have been able to get in or out of the building without being seen by the guests. Suddenly, the answer was clear. The thieves had used the hotel as their own private gold mine, stealing from out-of-towners who stayed the night. If they had a way to sneak into the rooms while the guests were sleeping, they could have made a fortune.
Examining the shelves in the Princess’s closet, my eyes were drawn to a pair of prim Mary Janes that the Princess wouldn’t be caught dead wearing. I tried to pick them up, but the shoes were anchored to the shelves. Reaching inside the first shoe, I felt nothing but dust. But inside the second, all the way at the toe of the shoe was a small button. I pushed it and part of the wall popped open, revealing an empty space behind it.
“I think we’ve found the way to the secret room,” I told Kiki.
Behind the closet was an ancient staircase. As we quietly descended, we passed two more camouflaged entrances to the main house. At the bottom of the staircase was a metal door. My heart sank. If it was locked, we might not be able to find a way inside without Oona. But when I reached out to turn the handle, the door opened.
Inside the dungeonlike room was a wall filled with flickering video monitors. One monitor was dark, but the rest showed black-and-white images of the parlor, dining room, and kitchen. Several computers sat on a steel table that rested against one wall. I heard a muffled cry come from one corner of the room, and I realized we were not alone. Oona and Iris were in the clutches of the giant man I had seen rowing Livia and the Princess the day the water main had burst beneath their house. Both of the girls had put up a fight. Oona’s lip was bleeding and Iris’s pink dress was shredded. Now the two of them were hanging from the bodyguard’s arms like a pair of rag dolls. Seated nearby on a plush chair was Livia Galatzina, wrapped in a mink coat.
We must have interrupted Livia in the middle of her morning beauty ritual. One cheekbone was spackled with a thick layer of rouge, while the other remained as pale and gray as a corpse. Her hair was perfectly coiffed, but her clothing looked as if she’d been attacked by badgers. By the side of her chair was a small Louis Vuitton suitcase.
“Going somewhere, Livia?” asked Kiki. “You might want to fix your makeup first.”
“You nasty little changeling.” Livia’s face wrinkled into a hideous sneer. “You should be dead.”
“Sorry to disappoint Your Highness.” Kiki dipped into a sarcastic curtsy. “As you can see, I’m still very much alive.”
“No matter,” sniffed Livia. “I am a patient woman. I can wait another minute for you to die.”
“I don’t intend to go so quickly. But even if I do, you’ll still have to postpone your trip. It could be a while before Sidonia gets out of jail. My guess is that the police are probably fingerprinting her right about now. Or maybe she’s enjoying a friendly strip search.”
Livia’s cold eyes studied Kiki’s face.
“You remind me of my sister, Sophia. You inherited none of her beauty, of course, but you have grown to be just as foolish. And like your mother, you will find out what happens when someone stands in my way.”
“Give it a rest, Livia. I’ve already won. If you’re smart, you’ll hand over the jewels.”
“Jewels?” scoffed Livia. “Is that what you’ve come for? There are no jewels left, you little fool. Do you think I would allow my own daughter to stoop to robbery if there were? I sold the jewels to pay for this house, for these guards, for these clothes. New York is a very expensive place to live, you know.”
Kiki looked devas
tated.
“You’re lying Livia. You’re wearing some of them now. Don’t you think I’d recognize the royal jewels?”
“These?” Livia held up a necklace, then let it drop. “These are copies. A woman in my position must keep up appearances. But I am afraid they are made out of ordinary glass.”
“And my mother’s ring?”
“The pink diamond?” Livia smiled, revealing a smear of red lipstick on her two front teeth. “It paid for the bullet in your guardian’s leg. Now it will pay to put one in you, too.”
“You might want to switch to plan B, Livia. The police have Sidonia. They’ll be coming here next.”
“In that case, I should leave them a welcoming gift. What do you say, Igor?” Livia asked the giant beside her. “Would four dead little girls be appropriate? Kill them all.” Livia leaped from her chair and grabbed her suitcase. As Igor’s two meaty arms flexed, strangling Oona and Iris, Kiki hurled herself at him. Livia pushed past me on her way toward the staircase.
“Out of the way, you filthy peasant,” she snarled.
Livia’s rudeness brought me to my senses. I jumped at her and wrenched the suitcase out her hands. It popped open, and a fortune in cash spilled out on the floor. Livia roared like a furious warthog and slapped me across the face. Stumbling backward, I grabbed hold of one of her gaudy necklaces to steady myself. It snapped off in my hand, and I slipped on a pile of hundred-dollar bills. Livia rushed for the exit, and by the time I got to my feet, she was already at the door. I snatched at her hair, trying to prevent her escape. But the hair came away in my hand, and Livia issued a blood-curdling shriek. Confused, I looked down at the wig in my hand, then up at a bald Livia, who was bounding up the stairs. I started to go after her, when I heard people laughing behind me. I turned to see Kiki, Oona, and Iris standing beside the fallen bodyguard.
“Let her go,” said Kiki. “She won’t get very far. And being seen in public like that is punishment enough for now. I can’t wait to see the mug shot.”
Kiki stepped over Igor’s bloated body and bent down and picked up the necklace I had ripped from Livia’s neck.