“Dangerous for whom?”
Qwerty glanced at the bickering Mitchums and shook his head. “I arranged to deliver the book to her here.”
“Here?” I said. “How old is this woman, exactly?”
“A little older than you, I’d say.”
“Or maybe just taller,” I said. “With unusual eyebrows, maybe? In the shape of question marks?”
Now Qwerty couldn’t even smile. “Be careful, Snicket.”
“Worry about yourself, Qwerty. You’re the one going to jail.”
“You might be going somewhere worse,” said the librarian. “If there’s a book you wanted to finish, I’d do it soon, if I were you.”
“And if you were me,” I said, “what book would that be?”
“It’s not for me to say,” he said, with another look at the Mitchums. “They say in every library there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind. You must find that book, Snicket, and read it.”
“But the fires are burning in town,” I said. “Who’s setting them?”
“That’s the wrong question,” Dashiell Qwerty replied, and I watched him go. It was not nice to see. It was not nice at all. Seeing a librarian in handcuffs is like seeing a fish gasping on a rolltop desk. I couldn’t look at it long, so I looked at the book and turned it over to see the title.
It was not a surprise, and yet I didn’t see it coming. I picked up the copy of Caviar: Salty Jewel of the Tasty Sea and walked outside. Qwerty was already scrunched into the backseat of the station wagon and the Mitchums were arguing over the keys. Their boy, Stew Mitchum, was leaning out an open window in the front seat. When he saw me he started to imitate the sound of a siren, his usual job when he accompanied his parents on police business. This time, the siren sounded a little different—more like the growl of a wild beast. I didn’t like it.
“That’s a beautiful noise,” I told him, so he’d stop.
“You’re just jealous,” Stew sneered. “I have a valuable skill, and all you have is your books.”
I couldn’t help looking up and down the block. Of course Ellington Feint wasn’t there. She would have seen the police car. “You’re right,” I said. “I’m jealous. Every night I weep into my pillow that I can’t make a good siren sound.”
“I’m learning to do a lot more than that,” Stew said.
“Oh yes,” I said, “I heard you were enrolled in a top-drawer school. How’s that going, Stew?”
“Not bad,” Stew said, “but it’s going to get better.”
“Thanks to the Inhumane Society, I bet.”
Stew’s eyes grew dark. “How did you know?”
“I just guessed,” I admitted.
“Guess all you want, Snicket. The sun is setting on you.” He pointed to the sky, orange and red, with dark clouds drifting across it. “The sun is setting on the whole town.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said. “See you around, little boy.”
“Don’t call our precious little angel a little boy,” Mimi said sternly, and started up the engine of the car. She looked at me. Harvey looked at me. Stew looked at me. In the back, Qwerty looked at me. I was looking somewhere else. The Mitchums’ station wagon roared off down the street with its animal howl of a siren, but I was looking at the sunset.
It was wrong.
I’d seen the sun rise at Black Cat Coffee, and now the sun was setting in the same place it usually rose. I kept looking. It took me a moment to recognize what it was. Then it rang a bell, just as the bell rang from the tower of the Wade Academy. It was the signal for the citizens of Stain’d-by-the-Sea to put on their masks. The town was full of masks, hung on pegs and sitting on shelves, waiting for the faces that needed them. Some people said the masks served as protection from water pressure, and others said they filtered the salt from the air, and some said the masks were just superstition, left over from the days of the Bombinating Beast. It wasn’t clear. But it was clear to me what I saw as I gazed at the sky, red and orange and blazing with fire.
CHAPTER FIVE
Help has arrived is what I was supposed to say, but it wasn’t true. The fire engulfing Stain’d Secondary School was too enormous for one person to extinguish, and I was the only person there. Through the small slits in my mask, I watched the edges of the seashell building turn orange and red and begin to crumble. I had seen buildings burn before, as part of my training and as part of my childhood. I had seen small homes and enormous mansions devoured by fire, and I had seen flames destroy factories and symphony halls and houses of worship. A school seems worse, I thought as the fire roared into the sky. Even when the school is empty, it’s a terrible thing.
The flames threw out a strange, hot wind that blew small shadows against the streetlights and telephone poles before falling to the ground. At first they looked like moths, but each moth disappeared to dust before it hit the pavement. It was not until one fluttered against my cheek that I realized what they were. The sky was filled with them, delicate and fluttering in the hot wind. They were the burned remains of wood and paper and cloth, a black blizzard of odd, fragile ashes turning to dust wherever they landed.
I slipped my library book into my shirt to protect it. There was nothing else to do. I could not leave a fire unattended. I’d learned that on the very first day of my education, before I knew what epistemology meant, or how to make a grappling hook, or the location of the bathrooms. I paced up and down the sidewalk until I found the nearest fire hydrant. It was useless without hoses, of course. I looked up and down the street and waited for firefighters to arrive. Even through the mask, the ashes worked their way into my mouth and made me cough.
Over my own wheezy hacking I heard the whinny of a complaining animal, and from around a smoky corner came two horses that were either gray or white and covered in ashes. The horses were both masked, just like I was, and they were hitched to a jalopy, which is a word for an automobile that looks like it could fall apart if you touched it or even looked at it sternly. The horses pulled it right to where I was standing and then stopped, and all the doors of the jalopy opened. Two masked men got out and pulled a long, snaky object after them. I didn’t get a good look at it because the masked driver of the car grabbed me and threw me into the passenger seat. The jalopy seesawed as I landed on the upholstery. The upholstery was itchy and smelled like a barn.
I sat up and looked out the window. The two men were unrolling the snaky object, which I was glad to see was a firehose, and were fastening it to the hydrant as quickly as they could. The driver of the car was pointing wildly to the school and shouting something to them. I could not hear over the collapse of Stain’d Secondary’s largest building, loud and slow like a defeated balloon. The firefighters told the driver something. The driver looked like he wanted to hear it again. He heard it again and nodded and ran back to the car and got into the driver’s seat just as the bell in the tower, muted and sad over the sound of the fire, signaled the all-clear.
The driver threw off his mask. It was Prosper Lost. The proprietor of the Lost Arms was wearing a long beige coat that was already half-covered in ashes. He was breathing quickly. So was I, even when I’d gotten my mask off. I listened to our breathing, quick with soot and fear.
“Mr. Snicket,” he said, after some time. “I am very happy to see you alive and well.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “How did you know what was happening?”
“The same way you did, I expect,” Lost said. “I looked at the sky.” His voice and his manner had no trace of the sneakiness he usually demonstrated around me. It had vanished into thin air. Now he just seemed like a worried man who was done pretending. “Stain’d Secondary is the only school in town, Mr. Snicket. I hope this blaze is not too much for our official fire department.”
“Are those two gentlemen the town’s only firefighters?” I asked.
Lost gave me a solemn nod.
I looked as carefully at him as I could, for as long as I da
red.
“Is there a volunteer fire department?” I asked finally, taking an enormous risk.
Prosper Lost shook his head, making a cloud of black dust appear. “This town has no volunteer fire department. The Talkie Brothers are Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s only hope. Do you know what those ashes are in the air, Mr. Snicket?”
I knew the answer but did not give it.
“Those are burned pages. All the books in the school library are gone forever.” Prosper Lost stopped and covered his eyes with his blackened hands. “I was so worried,” he told me. “My daughter attends that school. But there was nobody in the place. The children had all gone home before the fire began.”
“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” I said. “I’ve never seen her around.”
“Ornette lives with her uncles,” Lost said, looking out the window. “I miss having her near me, but I wanted to keep her safe.”
“Safe places are getting scarcer and scarcer in Stain’d-by-the-Sea.”
“Her uncles do dangerous work,” Lost said, with a nod to the firemen, “but I think she’s better off there than with me. It’s hard to find an acceptable place for a young person in this town.”
I looked at Prosper Lost. His hands were shaking as he slipped the key to the jalopy into its slot. From under the hood, the reins of the horses snapped to attention. “I wholeheartedly agree,” I said, and the horses pulled us away from the blaze. I tried not to think about the person I wanted to keep safe, who was likely in a prison cell. She is safe there, I told myself. She is safer there than she would be in this burning town.
Lost drove me to the Lost Arms with my head full of fire. Every time I blinked I could see the photograph of the burned barn, and the ashen remains of Harold Limetta’s house, and the terrible destruction of Stain’d Secondary. Terrible fires resemble terrible people. They are unpredictable. They are selfish. They are deadly and ruinous. And no matter where they are prowling, no matter what treachery they are cooking up, they have something in common. They can be stopped. Not always, I thought to myself, and felt the library book in my shirt. Sometimes they just happen, Snicket, and there is nothing you can do. I didn’t believe myself. My job as an apprentice was to investigate and stop villainy in this town. I had investigated the theft of a statue, and the Bombinating Beast was still hidden somewhere. I had promised Ellington Feint I’d help her rescue her father, but Armstrong Feint only seemed to sink deeper into the shadows of the Inhumane Society. I wanted to undo Hangfire’s villainy, but with each passing day the fading town grew more and more desperate. There is nothing you can do, I agreed, as the horses pulled the jalopy through streets with ashes gathered on the ground like nightmare snow. There is nothing you can do, and everything you have done has made things worse.
We were there. Prosper let me out. I think I thanked him. My thoughts were so loud and fierce in my head that I cannot be sure. They were so loud and fierce that I didn’t hear what was going on in the Far East Suite until I let myself in.
There was a party going on. Sharon Haines and S. Theodora Markson were standing in the middle of the room, directly under the light fixture shaped like a broken star, each with one foot in the air. They had blue, glittery hats on their heads that had the word HOORAY! spelled on them in very perky letters, and there were matching banners taped to the walls and over the window. It made the room look like it couldn’t possibly have any troubles in it. The two friends were holding, in their yellow-nailed hands, shimmering glasses of a liquid so green it made me squint. The drinks made their nails look worse and vice versa. It was probably something lime-flavored, I thought, staring at Sharon’s pin. The adults were staring at me, of course. A child who interrupts a grown-up party is always stared at. For a moment the only sound was some desperately happy music from an old-fashioned phonograph someone had put on my bed. I recognized the phonograph but not the music, which was a little too loud and a lot too perky. The women had probably been dancing. I did not want to think about what Theodora looked like when she was dancing. You shouldn’t either.
“You’re filthy,” Theodora said, when they were done staring. “Wash that dirt off you before you come in here.”
“It’s not dirt,” I said. “It’s ashes.”
“We heard about the school,” Sharon said, with a solemn nod. “I’m very upset about it.”
This was surprising, given her hat. “Nobody was hurt,” I said.
“That’s what we’re celebrating,” Sharon said quickly. “Theodora has solved a difficult and troublesome case, and we can put all this unpleasantness behind us.”
“You were worried about schoolchildren in danger,” I said. “It doesn’t seem to me that the case is over.”
“Don’t take this personally,” Sharon said, “but you’re almost as dopey as you are wrong. Not a single schoolchild is in danger. With the destruction of Stain’d Secondary, they have all been transferred to the Wade Academy, just outside of town. Normally, they only admit the best kind of students—the children of dukes, earls, counts, that sort of thing. You get the idea.”
I got the idea.
“But because of the fire,” Sharon continued, “the school has agreed to become the emergency replacement for each and every schoolchild in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. Thanks to the arsonist, they’re all about to get a top-drawer education.”
“And the arsonist is off to jail!” Theodora added. “The Mitchums have locked up Dashiell Qwerty, and he’ll soon be taken by train to the city for the trial. This is a very important case, Snicket, and I deserve to celebrate its conclusion. Sharon very considerately brought music and beverages, but you’re not invited. The party’s just for us girls.”
She put her foot down and walked to the table to pour herself more of the green drink from a half-full pitcher she usually used to make her morning tea. “We need to investigate further,” I said. “Dashiell Qwerty is not the arsonist. The Mitchums were just arresting him when the fire broke out at the school.”
“The case is closed,” Theodora said, but she would not look me in the eye.
I walked toward her so she could hear my whisper. “Our progress is being evaluated.”
“It’s being evaluated by my new friend,” Theodora hissed, with a gesture toward Sharon. I looked over at her. She was beginning to sway to the music. It seemed unlikely that Sharon was the one from our organization who was keeping an eye on us. But it could be anyone, I reminded myself. Anyone but Prosper Lost, who thought the town had no volunteer fire department. “This case has gone splendidly for me, Snicket. It’s you who are looking slatternly. Why don’t you take a shower while Sharon and I hit the town? If you clean yourself up, and clean up this sty, maybe you’ll end up looking as good as I do.”
“Things are very wrong,” I said. “Something terrible is happening right under our noses and we’ve got to find out what it is.”
“It’s rude to have secrets,” Sharon called over to us. “Why don’t you leave us alone, little boy, so the grown-ups can have their grown-up time? Go on, trot!”
I trotted, across the Far East Suite to the bathroom. I could not help slamming the door. “Slatternly” is a word which means “untidy and unprofessional.” It is one of the worst adjectives to have on your evaluation as an apprentice. I sat on the edge of the bathtub and looked at my shoes. They were black with ashes. That was untidy. And I had spoken the name of our organization out loud. That was unprofessional. I was as slatternly as could be. I unbuttoned my shirt and found the book, Caviar: Salty Jewel of the Tasty Sea. Behind the door someone turned the music louder, and I thought of the old-fashioned phonograph. Keep trotting, I told myself. Take a shower.
When I was done, I stepped out of the shower but left the water on for a few minutes, to chase the last of the ashes down the drain. It was quiet. I opened the door a crack and took a peek. Sharon and Theodora were gone. They were probably hitting the town. I hoped it was hitting them back. I put on some pajamas and walked into the room. It was empty and it
was a mess. I could hear what my sister would say about it, if she were in the room.
“It is a mess, L. But it’s not your mess. Go to bed and forget about it.”
“Theodora told me to clean it up.”
“She also told you the case was closed.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, and went to pour the green liquid down the sink. “I can’t sleep in a messy room.”
I could almost see her sitting on my bed, swinging her legs and smiling at me. I looked at her ankle and then at my own, and her smile got bigger. “That’s why you never get enough sleep, baby brother. You stay up late trying to fix the messes of the world.”
“If I don’t fix things,” I asked, “who will? Look out the window, Kit. This town has been showered in ashes because I haven’t done my job. And it will likely only get worse.”
“Imagining the worst doesn’t keep it from happening,” she said, as I took the phonograph off my bed and put it on the floor, out of my way. “The treachery of the world will continue no matter how much you worry about it, L. Get some rest, and let people take care of their own messes tonight.”
“I didn’t help you,” I said, “and now you’re going to prison.”
She didn’t say anything. One of the banners slid down the wall.
“I don’t like talking to you like this,” I said. “It’s like you’re a ghost.”
“Look around,” she said, with a gesture around the Far East Suite. “Look at everything in plain sight. The bed, the table, every object you see has likely been in the world longer than us, and they’ll still be in the world when we’re gone. It is the things that have a history, L. Compared to them we are ghosts.”
She smiled at me, and then like a ghost she vanished, just as I was smiling back. She had never been there, of course, but it made me feel better to talk to her, even though I did not like it when she called me L. Now she was gone. I felt sad, but not as sad as I’d feel if I were a schoolchild about to be transferred to the Wade Academy with all the children of dukes and earls and counts. I cleaned up the room. You’re not sad, I kept telling myself, but it felt only the tiniest bit true. I wasn’t sad the way a spider isn’t an insect.