The Shadow Cipher (York, #1)

by Laura Ruby

These were the sorts of things she wished she could tell Grandpa Ben: that she felt like the buildings were cliffs, that she was a part of a river of humanity carving out her own path, that she both liked and hated that even strangers thought she was strange.

She would never tell the men that she knew how to open the dumbwaiter. Or what she’d found inside. She would never tell anyone. But she would keep an eye on those men from now on, because that’s what a spy would do. So. Very. Metal.

“Remember,” Grandpa said, “history is filled with horrors as well as wonders. And so are people.”

“The biggest problem we have is that people like to fool themselves into thinking that they could never be fooled.” He took her hand, squeezed it, let go. “There aren’t enough boxes in the world to fix that.”

Tess opened the folded paper—so soft, the way paper gets when it’s handled a lot.

“Well, I could be wrong,” Tess said. “When she says ‘I could be wrong,’” Theo said, “she means ‘I could not possibly be wrong.’”