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Mabel sighed and took her flask of Mabel Juice out of the bottom drawer of the cardboard desk she’d made herself. Two days without a case. Forty-eight hours of sitting on the front porch of the Mystery Shack, waiting for excitement and adventure to walk into her life.
Maybe Dipper’s right, she thought. Maybe Gravity Falls wasn’t ready for a teen detective agency. Her initial market research had seemed so solid. She had to face facts: Soos just wasn’t a reliable sample size.
Mabel took a hit of Mabel Juice and leaned back in Stan’s squeaky old desk chair — and then sat up again in surprise.
The dame who walked onto the porch was regulation-issue, with hair that went in all the right directions and a pair of sandals cut down to there.
Mabel nodded cooly. “Northwest.”
Pacifica looked up at Mabel’s sign (“Mabel Pines: $30 Plus Expenses Per Day” — spelled out in dark glitter, in recognition of the aesthetic). “Could you get any sadder?”
“I dunno, Pacifica.” Mabel leaned back in her chair again. “Could your face get any more butt?”
Pacifica curled her lip, but she didn’t step away. “I need something,” she said. “A Northwest family treasure was left behind when my father sold Northwest Mansion to that hillbilly. I want your help getting it back.”
“This sounds like a Mission Improbable job,” Mabel said. “I’m more of a classic noir kind of girl.”
“I don’t care what kind of girl you are,” Pacifica snapped. “I need a retrieval, and I need it done now.”
“Whaddaya need retrieved?”
“That’s none of your concern.” Pacifica put her hands in her shorts pockets. “Do you want the job or not?”
“So you want me to break into a mansion owned by an eccentric, sometimes-homicidal inventor, to retrieve an object, and you’re not going to tell me what it is.” Mabel leaned back again, considering. “And you’re going to pay me.”
Pacifica sighed. “Fine. Yes. I will pay you.”
“Well why didn’t you say so, new friend?” Mabel jumped up. “Let’s get started!”
Mabel surveyed the fallen rocks. “The way I see it, this isn’t our first problem,” she said. “This is our first opportunity!”
“Ugh.” Pacifica paced back and forth. “McGucket must have found out about the secret entrance. I know Daddy didn’t tell him!”
“So your family really had an escape tunnel?”
“Everyone who’s anyone has an escape tunnel.”
“What about a back door?”
The route to the Northwest Mansion back door involved climbing a fence, escaping three (3) robot dogs (and Mabel was still surprised her “robot steak” gambit had worked — how was McGucket building those things?), climbing through a topiary maze (“This part was ours,” Pacifica had said, smugly, while leading Mabel through its twisty, prickly turns), and scooting around the edge of the Mansion, right next to the walls, to avoid the laser beams.
“Easy,” Mabel said, once they finally made it. She pulled a leaf out of Pacifica’s hair.
Pacifica tried the door. It swung open to reveal the side of an ordinary yellow school bus.
“Ooooh!” Mabel grinned. “Is it a magic schoolbus?”
Pacifica knocked on the side of the schoolbus, which was so close to the door there was no way around. It made a normal metal-knocking-sound. “I don’t think so.”
Mabel steepled her fingers. “So the only magic is how it got here.”
“We’re not getting in this way,” Pacifica said. “What’s left?”
“Only, like, a million more things,” Mabel said. “Let me introduce you to my costume box.”
“That jumpsuit is totally you,” Mabel said, while Pacifica glared at her from beneath a fluorescent yellow hard hat. “Come on. Remember, we’re energy auditors.”
They walked right up to the house and rang the bell. This is definitely the way in, Mabel thought smugly, as McGucket opened the door.
“Mr. F. McGucket?” Mabel looked down at her clipboard. Everyone trusted someone with a clipboard. “We’re from Gravity Gas and Power, and we’re here for your energy audit.”
“Nope, sure don’t need no energy auditing here!” McGucket said. “All our killbots are LEED-Gold Certi-fi-cated!”
He slammed the door shut.
“Well that worked great,” Mabel muttered. “Come on. New plan.”
McGucket also didn’t answer his door to the Lottery Prize Committee (big fake check), Architectural Digest (fake mustaches), or UFO conspiracy theorists checking out a recent spacecraft sighting (tinfoil hats).
“Maybe we should just ask him if we can come in,” Mabel said. They were slumped down behind the mansion’s outer wall.
“It’ll never work.” Pacifica narrowed her eyes. “Daddy never would have allowed entrance to a common.”
“Let’s try,” Mabel said. She grabbed Pacifica’s hand and pulled her off the ground.
Pacifica brushed invisible dirt off her shorts, her cheeks flushed. “Fine,” she said. “But I’m going to laugh at you when it doesn’t work.”
Mabel left the latest costumes in a pile with the rest, outside the gate. “Let’s go.”
They rang the doorbell, and McGucket answered promptly, looking out over their heads. “Why howdy there!”
“Howdy!” Mabel said, cheerfully. “Can we come in?”
“Don’t see why not,” McGucket said. “Make yerselves at home! There’s a hoe-down in the butler’s pantry every hour, and authentic leaf water in the solarium.”
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Pacifica said, like a reflex. Her eyes were wide as she followed McGucket inside.
“Just be on yer toes fer traps,” McGucket said, like an afterthought. “Keep forgettin’ where I put them whang-dang-doodled things.”
Mabel wasn't sure what to expect from the new Northwest Mansion, but a huge, empty hall wasn’t it.
“Where’s all the taxidermy?” Pacifica asked, spinning around on one heel. “The carpets? The paintings?”
“Maybe your dad sold those separately,” Mabel said, but Pacifica huffed and shook her head.
“Come on,” Pacifica said, leading Mabel past the grand staircase and to an unassuming doorway below. “The servants’ stairs may be safer. You heard what that weirdo said about traps.”
Upstairs, they found themselves in a wide hallway, with grand gold frames taller than them marching down the walls. Fancy plaques sat below each frame. ENTROPY. ALIENATION. LONELINESS. REGRET.
“What is this?” Pacifica whispered.
Mabel looked at the frame labeled ANGER. Beyond the glass, a tiny thunderstorm raged, in perfect silence, lightning striking the parched soil violently. Mabel wondered when the rains would finally come.
They tip-toed past frames showing whirlpools, fires — Mabel stopped looking, until they got to the end of the corridor. The glass in the final frame showed near-darkness, but Mabel could just make out a vaguely triangular shape in the gloom. Below the golden frame was a caption: FEAR.
Mabel shivered. “Let’s never come back.”
“Good thing we’re here,” Pacifica said, opening a door. The room inside looked like the bedroom for a fairy princess. A four-poster canopy bed, fancy lavender draperies over gold-painted wood, a soft seafoam-green carpet that looked like Mabel might lose her feet in it if she tried to walk on it — it was a dream bedroom. With one exception.
Mabel studied the room. “McGucket sure installed at lot of cameras in there.”
“What? No.” Pacifica gave her a look. “My dad installed those.”
Mabel widened her eyes. “Really?”
“As if that’s weird,” Pacifica scoffed.
“I think it’s a little weird.”
“Living in a Mystery Shack — that’s weird.” Pacifica stretched, raising one arm and then the other, and Mabel tried not to look at the sun-tanned skin peeking out between her tank top and her shorts. “Come on. If you follow me exactly, we can stay off the cameras. Just in case.”
Mabel had a new respect for Pacifica’s flexibility as they ducked down, belly-crawled across the lush wool carpeting, and then slid under the bed and popped up to press themselves against the far wall.
“My dad isn’t great with camera angles,” Pacifica explained. “There’s, like, a ton of blind spots.”
Super-weird, Mabel thought. She followed Pacifica through a door and into a closet the size of her bedroom back in Piedmont.
Pacifica started digging into piles of folded clothing, looking behind boxes and hanging dresses. “Can I help?” Mabel asked.
“Absolutely not.” Pacifica stood on her tip-toes, trying to reach a top shelf. Mabel sighed and dragged over a dressing stool.
Pacifica didn’t say thank you, but she did climb up on the stool. She rummaged through fancy rich-person clothing boxes until finally dragging one down and opening it briefly before slamming it shut.
“He’s still here,” she whispered, and then looked up sharply at Mabel. “Okay. We have what we came for.”
“I wanna see,” Mabel said, and opened the box before Pacifica could stop her.
There was one thing inside: a stuffed unicorn with purple and aqua fur, worn and threadbare. “Is there something hidden inside it?” Mabel asks. “Oooooooh — is it a clue to the Northwest Treasure?”
“There is no Northwest Treasure,” Pacifica snapped. “Not anymore. And it’s none of your business. I hired you to extract me and this stuffed unicorn, and not ask any questions.”
“That’s not in my contract,” Mabel said, even though she had forgotten to make Pacifica sign it and anyway, her lawyer was Waddles, who was super-adorable but also probably failed out of law school for excessive cuteness. Also for being a pig. That Esquire after his name was just for show, and he and Mabel both knew it.
“No questions,” Pacifica repeated.
“Fine.” Mabel sighed. There was a scarf-hanger in one corner of the closet, so she grabbed a few of the fancy silk rich-person scarves and tied them together into a bandolier, so Pacifica could sling the stuffed unicorn across her chest. “Which way next?”
Pacifica must not have wanted to go into the hallway again either, because she led Mabel to a panel at the back of the closet. “It’s locked from outside, so we couldn’t come this way,” she explained. Behind the panel was another closet, and then a super-fancy bedroom, much fancier than the one they started in. The new bedroom had no cameras.
“There’s a back exit,” Pacifica said, leading Mabel over to the dressing room on the far side of the bedroom. But instead of a set of stairs, they found blue plastic playground slide, leading down.
Pacifica tilted her head. “What the —”
Mabel grinned, and jumped onto the slide.
She landed on something soft and furry at the bottom. “Come on down,” she yelled up. “It’s safe.” She looked at the pile she had landed on, which seemed to be mildewed wool blankets. “Well, sort of,” she said, but Pacifica was already sliding onto the blanket pile next to her.
Pacifica looked troubled. “This isn’t where the staircase used to go.”
“Duh.” Mabel pulled Pacifica up from the blankets. “Staircases aren’t fun.”
“Yeah, but —” Pacifica shook her head. “Let’s get going. I think we can get into my dad’s old study from that door.”
As soon as they were in the next room, the door slammed shut behind them.
WELCOME TO THE TRUTH ROOM.
The voice boomed out all around them, emanating from the walls and floors.
Mabel looked wildly around, trying to find a source for the voice, but the room just looked like another rich-person room, with fancy wood paneling and a fancy desk and a fancy carpet and a fancy gold-painted ceiling. “Is this something your family put in?” she asked.
“No.” Pacifica looked freaked out. “Mabel, what did McGucket do?”
“I don’t think we want to stick around and find out.” Mabel tried the windows — all locked, all unyielding. The door knob turned, but the door didn’t unlatch.
“I think we’re trapped.” Mabel started rolling up the carpet, looking for a trap door. Nothing.
Pacifica swallowed, and pointed to the far wall. “Does it look like it’s getting smaller in here?”
THE TRUTH ROOM WILL ENCOURAGE THE TRUTH.
“Mabel, what’s going on here?” Pacifica asked, her voice uneven.
ONLY A GREAT SECRET CAN SET YOU FREE.
“It must force you to tell the truth, or it crushes you.” Mabel thought frantically. “Um — I secretly worry I’ll be less cute. I sometimes worry I’m not as smart as Dipper?”
THESE THINGS ARE NOT SECRETS. IT MUST BE A SECRET YOU HAVE NEVER TOLD A LIVING SOUL.
“Argh!” Mabel flung herself down on the room’s couch, and then jumped up again when the still-advancing wall hit it and began pushing it across the floor. “I don’t have any secrets I haven’t told a single person!”
“Really?” Pacifica had a funny expression on her face. “Like, not even one?”
“Me and Candy and Grenda are like this,” Mabel said, twining her arms together. “And I have a twin. And I tell Grunkle Stan lots of stuff, and Soos is a really good listener, and… I don’t know! Pacifica, you’ve got to get us out of here!”
Pacifica looked terrified for a moment, and then determined. “I can tell you what’s really up with my stuffed unicorn,” she said.
“Yes!” Mabel started frantically pushing furniture together to try to create a barricade. “Do that!”
“It’s not a Northwest family treasure,” Pacifica said, and then looked at the walls. They were still advancing. “It’s my childhood safety blanket, alright? It’s not worth anything. It’s just some dumb toy I had as a kid, and my dad didn’t think it was important, but I wanted it back.”
“Really?” Mabel grinned. “Awwwwwwwwwwwwww.”
“Shut up!”
“No, really,” Mabel said. “That’s really sweet.”
“It is not,” Pacifica said, but Mabel thought she looked a little bit pleased.
THIS IS A TRUTH. THIS IS NOT ENOUGH TRUTH.
“What?” Pacifica jumped up. “That’s unacceptable! I demand to speak to your operator!”
THE TRUTH CAN BE BEHOLDEN TO NO ONE.
The walls advanced, scraping with an agonizing slowness across the polished hardwood of the floor, rucking up the carpet, tipping over a small stand and shattering several small pieces of probably very expensive porcelain.
Mabel started climbing on the desk, which looked like one of the sturdier pieces of furniture. “I secretly have a tail!” she shouted.
THAT IS NOT THE TRUTH.
Pacifica looked at her, and Mabel shrugged. “Worth a try. Come on, get up here.”
They balanced on the desk while the walls advanced. Surely it had to stop somewhere, Mabel thought, as the walls drew together. The walls captured the couch, its frame screaming in protest. She covered their eyes when the couch frame broke, with a great squeal, and feathers from the ripped cushions sprayed into the air.
“Come on, Pacifica,” Mabel said. “Just one more secret. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”
Pacifica looked down at her stuffed unicorn, still strapped to her chest with Mabel’s makeshift sling, and then took a deep breath. “Promise?”
“Double-pinky promise.”
Pacifica closed her eyes. “I think maybe I like you,” she said, her voice barely audible over the sounds of breaking furniture in the room.
A long moment of silence. Pacifica opened one eye to look.
The walls had stopped closing in.
THANK YOU FOR THE TRUTH.
The walls retreated, leaving a mess of broken furniture in their wake.
Mabel scratched her arm. She wanted to ask Pacifica if that was just like, because who wouldn’t like Mabel, or like, like-like, because that was a lot more confusing and something Mabel had only just started wondering about herself, and —
Pacifica jumped down from the desk. Her cheeks were bright pink, which might have been an answer on its own. “Let’s get out of here.”
The rest of their strategic retreat was easy. Through the halls (avoiding the odd-numbered tiles), down to the kitchen, back into the main hall, and then it was just a matter of waiting for the butler to finish his hourly hoe-down in the butler’s pantry and let them back out again.
“Pacifica?” Mabel asked, as they walked down the front drive.
Pacifica wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah?”
“You wanna go mini-golfing this weekend?”
“Like, as a rematch?”
“I was thinking….” Mabel took a deep breath. “I was thinking more like a date. But a rematch would be good too, if that’s what you want.”
They arrived at the gate to Northwest Mansion. The town spread out below them, a tidy grid of streets filled with people living their lives, forgetting monsters, remembering friends and family. It was a clear day, and Mabel could see clouds off in the distance, building in the summer heat.
Pacifica looked at her, eyes as blue as the waters of Lake Gravity Falls, far below them. “Are you just asking because you feel sorry for me?”
Mabel thought of McGucket’s hallway of frames, filled with regrets and fears. “No,” she said. “I’m not.”
She leaned in and kissed Pacifica, soft, gentle, her heart beating fast. Pacifica was still for a moment, and then her lips moved against Mabel’s, ever so slightly, like she was afraid it was a trap. Mabel kissed back harder, feeling the tingles in her fingers, in her toes.
When Mabel pulled back, Pacifica’s cheeks were furiously pink. “Fine,” she said. “I will go mini-golfing with you.”
“And we’re not going to keep score,” Mabel said. “We’re going to have fun together. And afterwards, we’re going to get ice cream.”
“I already said fine,” Pacifica said, and Mabel grinned and grabbed her hand. And Pacifica let her hold it, all the way back down to town.