across the salamanderâs head again, however. The bronze was so smooth and cold, and she could feel the little patterned ridges above its inscrutable eyes.
âLots of interesting stuff in there still, probably,â said Valko. It sounded very convincing, when Valko said it. âSome pretty cool items . . .â
âValko!â said Maya sternly. âThatâs where he lived. Thatâs Fourcroyâs own house. You know whatâs in there!â
Valko more or less laughed, but Maya thought she saw the faintest trace of cloud in his eyes, a few curling tendrils of fog.
âOh, itâs so ridiculously obvious!â she said. It really was. She couldnât believe they had been walking around a minute ago as if everything were completely normal. âThe writing desk ! His writing desk! Just the number-two thing the letter wanted us to go find, and here we were about to slide through the door and march right up to it. Sheesh.â
âWe werenât going in for any desk,â said Valko. âWe were going to look at all the other neat stuffââ
âThe letter thinks itâs got us,â said Maya. She had to give Valko an impatient tug, away from the iron eyes of that door, away from the watching, waiting head of the salamander, but when she stepped away, the itch in her fingertip flared up for a moment. She stuffed that hand deep into her pocket and frowned. âI mean, it almost did have us. And you said letters couldnât boss us around. Ha!â
âAll that weird laboratory equipment up there,â said Valko with longing.
âThatâs it,â said Maya. âWeâre leaving. Look at me, Iâm leaving.â
Her feet didnât very much want to go, but she kicked a leg forward and made herself take a step. Away. And then the left leg. Away. The hand pulling Valko along behind her felt strange, too, for that matter. Was he really that heavy? And the finger on her other hand sat there deep in her pocket and itched and itched.
âWe would need,â said Maya, and then stopped to catch her breath and force her leg forward again, âa really good reason ââtake a breath/move a legââto go anywhere nearââbreath/leg/tug on Valkoââthat desk!â
They were ten feet away from the door. It was getting easier to move again.
âA really, really, really good reason,â she said. She was exhausted.
Valko blinked and shook his head, his smile slowly coming back as he did so.
âYou know what, Maya?â he said. âItâs too much. You totally need a vacation. I can tell.â
Twenty feet away, maybe more. They were walking like human beings again, not like underwater divers or people stuck in nightmares where the air has turned to sludge.
âYes, I do,â said Maya. âWithout shadows, please. And no more letters making me do stuff.â
âSo far, nothingâs actually made you do anything,â said Valko. âJust pointing that out.â
Maya looked at him.
âYou were ready to close your eyes and dive in through that door,â she said. âStill feel not trapped, not trapped, not trapped?â
âJust because I wanted to do some intelligent exploringââ
âYou saw the shadow following us. You felt how weird everything got.â
âBut we didnât go in, did we? We walked right on by. We did. All the rest is justâI donât knowâus getting sort of hysterical, maybe. Like kids telling each other spooky ghost stories.â
So there it was. It turns out that there is something quite maddening about the very person who has just been at your side while you were chased through Parisian streets by a shadow and then hypnotized into potentially dangerous behavior by a letter on snakes-for-hair stationery then insisting that . . . nothing much had happened. That it was all in your mind.
It put a bad taste in