Book Scavenger Read online

  The man set down the stack of papers and lowered his gaze to James. “Nope,” he said.

  “Nope, you didn’t know there’s a story with that name, or nope, that’s not what this place is named after?”

  The manager didn’t respond.

  “Well, have you read it?” James asked. “It’s by Edgar Allan Poe, and it’s about this guy who—”

  “So you didn’t find your book?” the man asked again.

  “It’s actually an Edgar Allan Poe book we’re looking for. Have you heard of”—James leaned forward eagerly—“The Gold-Bug?”

  The manager walked around the bar, gripped their backpacks, and pulled James and Emily down from the bar stools.

  “You kids didn’t leave a book here, did you?” He steered them toward the door. “So what have you been doing? You get into the liquor? You leave a stink bomb somewhere?”

  “No, no, no,” James said hurriedly.

  “We found a secret message in a book,” Emily blurted out. “Do you have our next clue?”

  The manager dropped his handle on their backpacks.

  “What?” he said with a shake of his head. “No, I don’t have a clue for you kids. Go play your game somewhere else, okay? I’ve got work to do.”

  Emily and James sat in disappointed silence as they rode the bus back to their building. She’d been so certain that was where they needed to go.

  Finally, Emily said, “Well, at least we can cross the Black Cat restaurant off our list.”

  The movement of the bus rocked them side to side. James had his binder open again to Maddie’s cipher. Emily looked out the window and watched the city pass by. Gray buildings, liquor stores. They approached a corner park that was raised and built over a parking garage. Its sign read PORTSMOUTH SQUARE. Bright red pagoda-style awnings covered picnic tables. Lantern lampposts turned on for the evening as dusk settled in. A man climbed the stairs from the sidewalk up to the park. He moved in a sideways sway, long dreadlocks swinging across his back, and he carried a duffel bag.

  “Hey, James.” Emily elbowed him. “Isn’t that Hollister?”

  James looked up. “It is. I wonder what he’s doing all the way over here.”

  They passed the park and continued to stare out the window. James absentmindedly plucked at Steve. “Hey, Emily,” he said. “What if Mr. Griswold never finished his game? What if getting to ‘The Black Cat’ story is all there is right now? Raven said the game wasn’t supposed to start for a few weeks.”

  “No way.” Emily shook her head firmly. “He finished the game.” She couldn’t prove this, of course, but she just knew it was true. It had to be.

  “Well, maybe we should focus on Mr. Quisling’s cipher challenge for a little bit instead. Admit it—wouldn’t it make your day to see Her Royal Fungus with an official mushroom-top hairdo? Besides…” James punched a fist in the air and shouted, “We must defend Steve’s honor!”

  There were only two other people on the bus, but they both turned to look at them. James gave an apologetic wave. “Sorry!”

  “Steve has nothing to worry about,” Emily reassured him. “We’ll make sure of that.”

  James gave a tight-lipped smile and returned to scribbling notes about Maddie’s cipher.

  CHAPTER

  21

  IN MR. QUISLING’S class the next day, Emily eyed James slumped in his desk next to her. He was irritated because he hadn’t cracked Maddie’s code yet.

  “It’s only Tuesday,” Emily reassured him. “We have all week.”

  But James slumped even lower when his was one of the two ciphers broken. After class, Maddie stood behind James and drew an imaginary circle around Steve.

  “Once you shave that off, you could draw an eight in its place and your head would look like a Magic 8 Ball,” she said.

  James smacked Maddie’s finger away from his head.

  “What, no plucky retort?” Maddie asked.

  James yanked his backpack zipper closed with a ferocious tug.

  “Don’t let her get to you,” Emily said as they left a smirking Maddie behind. “There’s plenty of time to solve hers.”

  “Easy for you to say,” James said. “It’s not your hair on the line.”

  * * *

  By Thursday, James had made a breakthrough with Maddie’s cipher and was back in high spirits.

  “She didn’t make it up herself,” James said at lunch. They sat at what had become their regular spot in the library. “It’s an alphabet from the Dark Ages called Ogham. I found it when I was researching ciphers online. Look, I printed out a copy.” James slid over a sheet of paper filled with various hash marks.

  “She copied it straight out. If you know Ogham, you’d understand her message. But who knows Ogham, right?”

  Emily looked over the Ogham alphabet sheet. It wasn’t all that different from hers and James’s secret code, but somehow using symbols instead of letters made it seem more foreign and intimidating.

  James continued. “The only clever thing Maddie did was use a sentence that wouldn’t work well with frequency analysis: Zelda Zombie eats zinnias. Using that many z’s makes letter-frequency analysis difficult because you assume the symbols that appear the most often will be an e, t, a, or another frequently used letter, not z.”

  That afternoon in Mr. Quisling’s class, James gave a satisfied smile when Maddie’s name was crossed off the board.

  “The score’s still zero-zero, Fernandez,” he said to her after class.

  Maddie gave a mock-scared face and waggled her fingers before walking away.

  “Ms. Crane,” Mr. Quisling called over. “I need to speak with you before you leave.”

  Speak with her? Emily’s lips felt dry all of a sudden. She wasn’t behind on homework. She hadn’t done anything to get on Mr. Quisling’s bad side since she was caught passing the note last week. At least she didn’t think she had. James gave her a questioning look. She shrugged and gave a small wave as he left for his next class. Kids filtered in for Mr. Quisling’s seventh period as she approached his desk.

  “Emily,” Mr. Quisling said. “Are you a Book Scavenger user?”

  “I … uh.” That wasn’t what she had expected him to ask. She didn’t know what she did expect him to ask, but it definitely wouldn’t have been about Book Scavenger.

  “In our faculty meeting the other day, Principal Montoya mentioned that a man had contacted our school believing a valuable book of his was mistakenly found by a Book Scavenger player who listed Booker as his or her school in their profile. He said this player posted on the Book Scavenger forums about finding a book called The Gold-Bug by Edgar Allan Poe. I recall you had an unusual-looking Poe book on your desk last week.”

  Mr. Quisling leaned an elbow on the arm of his chair, patiently studying Emily. She fiddled with the Book Scavenger logo pin she wore on her hoodie. She didn’t know what to say. She was surprised by all this—Mr. Quisling pulling her aside to talk, someone contacting the school about The Gold-Bug, someone claiming the book was his. And this was the second time someone had claimed the book—Emily thought of the guest user who had messaged her through Book Scavenger the other day. “Do you remember the book I’m referring to?” Mr. Quisling asked.

  “Yes,” Emily said.

  “And do you still have this book?”

  “I … I don’t.” The lie came out of her mouth before she could change her mind about saying it. “I hid it again through Book Scavenger.”

  Mr. Quisling raised his eyebrows. “You did?”

  Thinking of her conversation with the guest user on Book Scavenger and how he or she didn’t know how many stories were in The Gold-Bug, she asked, “Why is this person so sure the book I found belonged to him? Maybe he’s wrong.”

  He frowned. “Emily, if someone has gone to the trouble of looking up your profile and contacting your school, then I would give him the benefit of the doubt. Also, not that it should matter, but this person is a professional book collector. He’s not anothe
r Book Scavenger player trying to trick you. This man believes that book belongs to one of his clients, and if it’s the book he’s looking for, he says it’s very valuable. Not so much to you or someone else, but sentimentally it has significance for his client and, therefore, is valuable. It’s also valuable in that this man says he will lose his job if he can’t find and return the book.”

  “The man who called the school is a book collector?” Emily asked. Mr. Remora was a book collector. And he’d been looking for a book that belonged to Mr. Griswold when they walked in on him at Bayside Press. How many rare-book collectors could there be in San Francisco?

  “Yes,” Mr. Quisling said and continued on, not realizing that detail meant something to her. “Now, if you say you’ve already hidden the book, then I am trusting you at your word. But seeing as a man’s job is on the line, why don’t you try to retrieve it so he can take a look? If it’s not the one he’s looking for, you can return it to its hiding spot and the book can continue its Book Scavenger journey.”

  Did this mean Mr. Remora knew about Mr. Griswold’s game? He didn’t seem like the sort who would get excited about something like that. And Raven had said there were fifty copies total of The Gold-Bug hidden around the city, so if Mr. Remora was interested in it for the game, he could find his own copy. Maybe he didn’t realize that Mr. Griswold had hidden the book and that it was missing on purpose.

  “Earth to Emily.” Mr. Quisling snapped his fingers. “You’re not in trouble here. It’s a simple task. You found a book that belongs to someone else. Retrieve it and give it back.”

  Emily nodded. “Yes, I’ll try to do that.”

  And she would return the book to Mr. Remora. But she’d already made so much progress with Mr. Griswold’s game. It couldn’t hurt to finish it. That way, Mr. Remora would have the book back in his possession, and she’d have the satisfaction of solving an entire Griswold game. Everybody would win.

  * * *

  “So what did Mr. Quisling want?” James asked as they walked away from school.

  Ahead of them a grocer sprayed down the sidewalk in front of his corner market. He released the nozzle as they walked by so the water stopped, then started blasting it again after they’d passed.

  “You’ll never guess in a million years.”

  “He selected you for a space mission? He’s learning to play ‘Heart and Soul’ on the piano and needs you to play the harmony?”

  Emily laughed. “Do you remember Mr. Remora? The book specialist who works for Mr. Griswold?”

  “That guy we saw at Bayside Press and Hollister’s? Of course.”

  “Well, apparently he’s looking for The Gold-Bug. That might have been what he was looking for last week in Mr. Griswold’s office. He saw my message in the Book Scavenger forums, saw Booker listed in my profile, and called our school. Our principal told the teachers, and because Mr. Quisling saw The Gold-Bug on my desk—”

  “On the day that launched the Cipher Challenge, of which I will triumph!”

  Emily grinned. “Right. And apparently the day that burned my Gold-Bug in Mr. Quisling’s memory.”

  “Your Gold-Bug?” James smirked. “I thought it was Mr. Griswold’s.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “So why does Mr. Remora want The Gold-Bug? Does he know about the game?”

  “I wondered that, too, but I don’t think so. Raven said there are other copies to be found, after all, so why would he need this one? Mr. Quisling said the book is valuable for sentimental reasons, and Mr. Remora will lose his job if he doesn’t get it back in Mr. Griswold’s personal collection.”

  “So did you give it back?” James asked.

  “Of course not!” Emily said. “How would we finish the game?”

  James stopped walking.

  “If Mr. Remora needs that book for his job, Em … maybe that’s more important.”

  James’s words stung, Emily couldn’t deny it. “But we’ve already figured out some of the clues for the game! And he was so rude at Hollister’s the other day.”

  “He was. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t actually need the book.”

  “I am giving it back to him,” Emily said, a touch defensively. “I just want to finish the game first.”

  “Sounds like a plan, then,” James said, and they fell in step again.

  CHAPTER

  22

  THE CHIME of jingle bells announced Emily’s and James’s entrance into Hollister’s store. Even though Mr. Remora knew her only through her Book Scavenger profile as Surly Wombat and probably hadn’t realized they’d crossed paths the other day, she still felt a stirring of butterflies when they stepped inside. Knowing that he was looking for her and the book would make it harder for her to act normal if he happened to be there again. But Hollister’s store was empty, at least it looked that way from where they stood.

  “Hollister?” James called.

  They heard his whistle in return. They wound their way through the packed bookshelves, taking a detour by the crafts section so Emily could stoop down and check on the Inkheart book.

  “Still there,” she said. She regularly checked its status on the Book Scavenger website, but you never knew if someone might have scavenged it but not logged the find.

  They found Hollister in the middle of the store, sorting paperbacks out of a cardboard box. He held a book close to his eyes, then wagged it like a winning lottery ticket. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest! Nice used condition. That’s a goodie!”

  Hollister looked at them again as if he hadn’t fully seen them the first time. “Well, hey there, you two! Come to pick through my fine literature selection?”

  “Actually, I’m looking for books about ciphers or making up codes,” James said.

  Hollister tapped a finger to the tip of his nose, contemplating, then turned and with his swaying shuffle led them deeper into the book maze. Dusty lightbulbs dangled above and created dull pools of light to guide their way.

  As they walked, Emily said, “We went to that restaurant you told us about, Hollister. Remember? The Black Cat?”

  “You didn’t go there,” Hollister said. The floorboards creaked underfoot.

  “Um, actually we did,” James said.

  Hollister stopped, leaned close to a bookshelf, and trailed an index finger across the spines as he scanned the titles. He pulled Breaking the Maya Code off the shelf and handed it to James, then gestured for them to follow him back up to the front of the store.

  “The Black Cat’s closed,” Hollister said. “Been closed since the sixties.”

  James and Emily exchanged a look, uncertain if Hollister was teasing them or serious.

  “Well, it must have reopened, Hollister, because we went there,” Emily said.

  “On Broadway,” James added.

  “There’s your problem. The one I’m talking about was on Montgomery, not Broadway. By the Transamerica building—that old steel-and-concrete pyramid.”

  Emily stopped walking, and James bumped into her from behind.

  “It closed?” Emily asked.

  “In 1963. Same year President Kennedy was shot.” Hollister pulled Codebreaker from a shelf and handed it to James.

  James paid for his books. Once they were outside, Emily grabbed his arm and swung it like she was ringing a giant bell.

  “We went to the wrong one! I told you it wasn’t a dead end!”

  “All right, all right.” James laughed and pulled his arm free to hold his hands up in surrender. “I concede defeat! But there’s only one way to find out for sure.”

  * * *

  In the shadow of a pyramid-shaped skyscraper sat an old brick building painted white with green-paned windows. Gold letters spelled CANESSA PRINTING CO. at the top of the building, above four porthole-like windows, and again over an entrance on their right.

  “A printing company?” James said. “That makes sense, with Mr. Griswold being a publisher and all.”

  “But the street address isn’t r
ight,” Emily pointed out. “The Black Cat shared the building, but its address was 710. That one’s 708.”

  James peered inside the street-level windows for 710. A group of four sat on the other side, looking at menus.

  “Another restaurant?” he said, disappointed.

  Emily tugged on the straps of her backpack and assessed the building and street. There was nothing Emily could see to identify this building as the former home of the Black Cat café, but the address matched what they’d found online, so it must be the right place. It was only a matter of deciphering what they needed to find.

  Through her years of using Book Scavenger, she’d become accustomed to keeping an eye out for the odd detail. Clues and riddles could take you only so far, like how the clue for the book she and James first hunted took them to the pier at the Ferry Building. After that it was a matter of sleuthing—investigating crevices that would be a convenient place to hide a book-shaped object, observing a pile of freshly dug dirt, or noticing something out of place.

  Emily scanned planters filled with flowers, two metal café tables, a sidewalk spotted with blackened remains of chewing gum, a flyer posted to the tree in front of the building, a parking meter decorated with orange and black. She was debating whether to pretend to have left something in the restaurant again or be direct and say they were on a scavenger hunt, when a breeze rustled the flyer tacked to the tree. A brand-new-looking flyer with a photo of … a cat? Emily went closer for a better look. A photo of a black cat.

  “Check this out, James!”

  Written in all caps in thick black marker under the photo was the following message:

  LOOKING FOR A BLACK CAT?

  CALL SAMUEL

  The bottom of the page was cut into fringe with a number printed on each tab:

  (978) 067-9722 x649

  “This has to be it!” Emily exclaimed. The flyer was crisp and all the numbered tags remained intact. Emily tore off a strip, and they headed back to their building as fast as they could go.