Blowing the whistle on a powerful criminal? Writing a love letter to the kid down the street? Then you certainly won’t want to send an e-mail. And don’t bother with the Hello Kitty stationery, either. Get a sheet of white copy paper and a black pen. Write a draft first. Don’t get chatty—get straight to the point. Don’t use slang or phrases that you tend to use all the time. And don’t dot your i’s with hearts.
If You Must Communicate Electronically
There’s a little thing called “spell check.” Use it. I personally feel that spelling is an overrated skill. (Largely because I can’t.) However, a letter filled with spelling errors is unlikely to communicate your impressive intelligence. A flawless note takes only a few clicks. If you can’t be bothered to make them, then you probably don’t care very much about the person you’re e-mailing.
If You Must Preview Your Own Mail
I should remind you that opening other people’s mail is a federal offense. And take it from me—you don’t want to mess with the PO. However, there are certain situations in which you might want to take a private peek at your own letters before ripping them open in front of an audience. In these cases, there are several methods to consider. Your first option is to steam the seal open. Some people prefer the steam from a tea kettle, but I find this method messy, unreliable, and potentially painful. A steaming iron works much better. Just pass the iron back and forth across the seal until you can slide a butter knife underneath. Make sure the iron doesn’t leave a scorch mark! Not confident in your ironing skills? Spraying the back of an envelope with hairspray can make it temporarily transparent. It can also make it a bit smelly. If you’re good with your hands, you can fashion your own letter-removal device. (Check out the CIA website for examples.) But the easiest way to crack the seal on a letter may be to place it in the freezer for a few hours.
Chapter 27
Catching Flies with Honey
PARIS: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20
Betty was examining a map Marcel had made of the catacombs when she heard the boy begin to moan. She had propped him up against a wall, his wrists bound with duct tape and his ankles tied with his own shoelaces. It was exactly what Kiki Strike would have done—karate-chopped first and saved the questions for later. A few of the Irregulars might have done worse. But none of us could have taken down Marcel any better than Betty. Yet after the adrenaline stopped coursing through her system, all Betty felt was remorse. She might need the boy’s help to find Kiki, and beating people up isn’t the best way to ask for assistance.
“Who are you?” Marcel demanded in French when he found his voice. “And why do I keep getting pummeled by girls?”
“I’m very sorry for hitting you,” Betty said sweetly. “I needed to make sure you’d cooperate, but I went too far. Are you feeling okay? Can I get you anything?”
At first she wondered if her French was faulty, because Marcel didn’t seem to understand a word she’d said. He gaped at her as if she were babbling away in an unknown tongue.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Betty continued, trying to enunciate more clearly, “but I borrowed the map you had in your pocket. Is it accurate?”
“What?” Marcel snapped out of his daze. “Of course it’s accurate, and of course I mind if you take it! It took months to make that map!” He struggled against his restraints for a moment before finally admitting defeat. “You can’t leave me tied up. There are people down here who might do much more than hit me.”
“I promise—you’ll be just fine if you cooperate,” Betty assured him. “If not, your dad said he’d be back in a couple of hours. I’m more worried about the two girls you saw down here in the catacombs. Can you tell me a little bit more about them?”
“Why? So you can try to find them and disappear, too?” Marcel barked. “The police are involved now. They’ll locate the missing girl.”
“Sure, after they’ve arrested all the Darkness Dwellers,” Betty countered. “But you made it sound as if the search couldn’t wait. And you didn’t seem too happy when your father announced that he had other plans. Speaking of which, are you really going to let him arrest the Darkness Dwellers? Detective Fitzroy told me they never do anyone any harm.”
“Maybe not, but they’re breaking the law,” Marcel argued without conviction. “Why should they be allowed to control the catacombs? You heard my father. They can’t be up to any good. Some of them might even be terrorists.”
“You don’t believe that,” Betty scoffed. “And neither does your dad. If you ask me, you’ve been bending over backward to impress someone who can’t be impressed. Your father seems like a difficult man. It must have been pretty hard growing up with him.”
Marcel stayed silent as Betty sat down on the floor across from him. When Kiki first met Marcel, she’d instantly recognized a boy pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Betty, on the other hand, saw a boy who was still trying to figure out who he was.
“I’m sorry, this conversation must seem very strange to you,” Betty said. “I know the French tend to be much more reserved than Americans. I’m just trying to understand. …”
“My father thinks I’m weak,” Marcel said, his voice cracking a little. “And stupid and slovenly and undisciplined.”
“How do you know? Maybe …”
“He’s told me every day since I was ten years old.”
“Oh,” Betty said. There was no arguing with that. “Well, are you stupid, slovenly, and undisciplined?”
Marcel appeared to find the question confusing. “No!”
“Then that’s all that matters. Let your father think what he likes,” Betty said, sharing Detective Fitzroy’s wisdom. “I doubt helping him arrest a bunch of innocent people would make him change his mind, anyway. In fact, I still don’t understand why you’re letting him ambush them. Do you have something personal against the Darkness Dwellers?”
“No!” Marcel exclaimed.
“Then why have you been trying so hard to prove they exist?”
Marcel’s head drooped. He seemed too embarrassed to meet Betty’s eye. “A few years ago, I overheard my father laughing about an interview that Louis Fitzroy had given to one of the papers. But when I read the article for myself, I thought the Darkness Dwellers sounded like heroes. I told this to my father, and he laughed at me. He insisted the organization didn’t exist. He claimed the only people inside the catacombs were graffiti artists, petty criminals, and police officers. He made me feel ridiculous. So I came to the catacombs to find proof that the group was real. I thought that might make him take me more seriously.”
“So you wanted to prove that your father could be wrong. Not just about the Darkness Dwellers, but about you, too?”
Marcel shrugged. “I don’t know. It does sound stupid, doesn’t it?”
“It doesn’t sound stupid. It was just a bad idea,” Betty said. “We’ve all had them. But I think I may have just had a good one. The two girls you saw in the catacombs—would you mind describing them for me?”
Something he saw in Betty’s eyes seemed to give the boy hope. “I can do more than that. I know one of them—her name is Kiki. My friend Etienne and I found her locked in a bell tower. She’s tiny, with white hair and pale skin. Etienne thinks she’s cute, but she looks just like a vampire to me. The girl who was with Kiki has black hair and the face of a goddess. I’m thinking either she or Kiki might be the Princess of Pokrovia who was reported missing early this morning.”
“Which of the girls is lost in the tunnels?”
“When I found them, they were arguing. Kiki jumped up and attacked me, and the beautiful girl ran away.”
“The dark-haired girl is alone in the catacombs?” Betty refused to use the word beautiful to describe Sidonia. The girl was anything but to those who knew her.
“Yes,” Marcel said. “Is she the Princess?”
“Can I trust you?” Betty asked gravely. The boy nodded. “The girl with black hair is Sidonia Galatzina. She’s one of two living princesses of Pokrovia. Kiki is Princess Ka
tarina—Sidonia’s cousin and the true heir to the throne. I came to Paris to help her.”
“You’re friends with Kiki?” Marcel grimaced.
“I know this may be hard to believe after she attacked you, but Kiki’s the good guy,” Betty said. “Sidonia and her mother are the ones who locked her in that bell tower.”
“Then you probably won’t want to be associated with me. Kiki is convinced I’m a traitor,” Marcel admitted, sounding hopeless once again. “And I guess I am. I betrayed my friend Etienne. I used him to help me locate the Darkness Dwellers. Kiki knows all about it. That’s one reason she punched me.”
“Then I suggest you find a way to prove that you’ve changed, which brings me back to that good idea I just had. Kiki’s cousin is in serious danger. As much as they hate each other, I know Kiki wouldn’t want her to die. Help me find Sidonia, and I’ll let you take all the credit. I hear rescuing a princess is a tried and true way to look like a hero.”
“What about the Darkness Dwellers?”
“We’ll figure out a way to let them know what your father has planned. They don’t need to know the role you played in it all.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Marcel asked.
“I know how it feels to be misunderstood,” Betty said. She bent down and untied Marcel’s wrists and ankles. When they stood facing each other, Betty could see just how large the boy was. Without the element of surprise, she had no hope of subduing him if he decided to attack.
“I’ll take the map back now,” he said. Betty passed him the document and wondered whether she’d just made a terrible mistake. Marcel studied the paper for a moment. Then he folded the map and shoved it in his pocket. “I saw which way that princess went when your friend’s back was turned. I tried to tell Kiki, but she refused to listen. The girl went in the direction of the ossuary.”
“That’s what I heard you tell your father. What’s the ossuary?”
“Hundreds of years ago, they cleaned out the graveyards in Paris and put the bones in one section of the catacombs. There are six million Parisians down here.”
“If that’s where Sidonia ended up, she must be scared to death,” Betty remarked.
“I’m not so concerned about that,” Marcel said. “I’m worried that she might not be alone in there.”
Chapter 28
Reclaim Your Brain
NEW YORK CITY: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20
I’ve often thought that most New Yorkers would make excellent spies. Even as children we’re trained to observe others without making eye contact. We can read a book on the subway while keeping tabs on the strange character three seats to our left. (There’s always a weirdo a few seats away.) We know our neighbors’ juiciest secrets without ever exchanging a word with them. And when it comes to celebrity spotting, New Yorkers are unparalleled masters. We can see through their disguises, register their fashion choices, chart their movements, and text our friends—all while looking world-weary and bored.
I’d never been inside Theresa Donovan’s home, but I could have given you directions to her door when I was in the fourth grade. She and her family lived less than a dozen blocks from me, in a redbrick building that had been a firehouse a century earlier. The front entrance was wide enough for a horse-drawn fire engine, and if you peeped through the windows, you could see bronze poles disappearing through the first-floor ceiling into the living quarters above.
I knocked at the Donovans’ door, never expecting Molly’s mother to answer. When she did, it felt like I’d come face-to-face with every queen, con-woman, and murderess she’d ever portrayed. For a moment, it put me on guard.
“Ananka!” Mrs. Donovan exclaimed with surprise. She actually sounded quite pleased to discover me on her doorstep. “Have you come to see Molly? I’m afraid she’s not at home at the moment. She told me she had a few errands to run.”
“Principal Wickham insisted I talk to her as soon as possible. Does Molly have a phone with her?”
It was the most innocent of questions, and yet it seemed to break Mrs. Donovan’s heart just a little. “Molly hasn’t used a phone since she enrolled at the Boreland Academy. My daughter doesn’t enjoy staying in touch. Before she came home to attend L’Institut Beauregard, I hadn’t heard her voice in almost two months.”
“Two months?” I was trying to imagine what it would take to avoid my mother for that long, when I felt a miniature missile thwack my ear. Another grazed the tip of my nose. I glanced up at the sky and was hit on the forehead by a pea-sized chunk of ice. “I hate to ask, Mrs. Donovan, but would you mind if I wait for Molly inside?”
“Not at all!” Molly’s mother said as though she wished the idea had been her own. “Please, come in! They said on the news that there’s an ice storm heading in our direction. And I could use a little company myself.”
She led the way through the living room of my dreams to a kitchen at the back of the house. An entire wall along our route was filled with photos of her daughter. A toddler Molly drawing numbers on the furniture with chocolate syrup. A school-age Molly making alterations to one of her mother’s ball gowns using a pair of garden shears. A teenage Molly riding a giant sow and proudly holding a second-place trophy. There were no movie posters in sight. No golden statues. No humanitarian awards or honorary Harvard degrees. In fact, there was nothing to suggest that one of the most famous women in the world had ever spent time in the building.
When we reached the kitchen, I settled into a breakfast nook beneath a bay window cluttered with more Molly memorabilia while Theresa Donovan busied herself at the stove.
“You caught me in the act of making cocoa. Don’t tell my trainer. Would you like a cup?”
“Yes, thank you.” Cocoa? I liked Mrs. Donovan, I really did. But I had to wonder how someone with all the edge of Snow White—and the killer instincts of Bambi—could have made it in the cutthroat world of show business. I would have been less surprised to hear that Betty Bent had taken charge of the Gambino crime family.
“So, you say Theodora Wickham sent you to see Molly?” Mrs. Donovan placed a mug of sweet-smelling chocolate in front of me.
“Yes,” I confirmed as I stirred my cocoa. “She’s furious that I couldn’t talk Molly out of enrolling at L’Institut Beauregard. She wants me to give it another shot.”
“I’m not sure why Theodora is more worried than I am, but I do appreciate her concern,” Mrs. Donovan said. “She’s always had a soft spot for Molly. And Molly respects Theodora. There must be seventy years between them, yet they seem to understand each other completely.”
“Principal Wickham knows Molly is special,” I said. “I’m not talking about Molly’s math skills. She’s one of a kind, and the principal doesn’t want Madame Beauregard to turn her into everyone else.”
On the silver screen, Theresa Donovan’s face could project any emotion. In real life, she was so sweet that she could barely manage a convincing frown. “You’ve met Amelia Beauregard. Do you really think she’s capable of something like that?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Madame Beauregard is one of a kind too.”
Theresa Donovan slid into a seat across from me. “After our discussion with Principal Wickham, I had a peek at L’Institut Beauregard’s website, and I think I recognized the headmistress’s face. When Molly was three years old, there was a game she liked to play whenever we went out for a walk. She would add up all the numbers she saw on the street. Telephone numbers, license-plate numbers, building addresses. Sometimes she’d get so excited that she’d break away from me and start running. Well, one day, Molly ran right into an old lady and knocked her over. I was horrified. When I finally reached them, the woman and Molly were just sitting there staring at each other. After I helped the lady to her feet, she announced that a child like mine should be sent to obedience school or kept on a leash. I think she even handed me a business card.”
“Yeah, that sounds like something Madame would do,” I said.
“I was mortif
ied by the whole incident. I didn’t know the first thing about being a parent back then. I suppose I still don’t. But I do know that I would never want my daughter to be obedient. I don’t understand why people send their children to that terrible etiquette academy.”
“I know that it’s not my place to suggest this, Mrs. Donovan, but why don’t you just forbid Molly from going to L’Institut Beauregard?”
“Do you really think that would work?” Molly’s mother asked with a hopeless laugh.
“I guess not,” I admitted.
“I don’t see or talk to Molly enough as it is. To be honest, I’m thrilled to have her home from the Boreland Academy. I don’t want us to spend our days arguing. I just wish Molly enjoyed my company a little bit more. My own mother died in an accident when I was very small. I’d give anything for a chance to have known her.”
I was hardly qualified to offer parent-child counseling, but I saw real tears in the actress’s eyes, and I needed to say something. “Maybe Molly’s just going through a difficult phase.”
“Molly was five years old when she started telling people she was adopted.”
“Was she?” I couldn’t resist.
“No,” Theresa Donovan said with a sad smile. “She’s all mine.”
A door slammed just as I lifted my cup to my lips, and cocoa spilled down the front of my sweater. I could hear the sound of heavy boots stomping in our direction. A figure in a long black coat and knee-high Wellingtons appeared in the doorway. Two angry green eyes glared at me from behind a ski mask.
“What is that—cocoa?” the intruder sneered, setting down the cardboard box she had been lugging and ripping off the mask. Molly’s fiery curls crackled with static electricity.
“Molly!” Theresa Donovan gasped. “Please don’t be rude. Ananka is our guest.”
“I came to talk to you about the institute,” I said. “Principal Wickham and I—”
“You can spare me your lecture, Ananka.” She turned to her mother. “I may be having a few friends over after school today.”