Chloe shut her mouth and swallowed hard. “Could you give me a minute?” she mumbled. She was already backing up, making her way to the end of the hall where she’d left the rosewood box. With trembling fingers she unlocked the box and removed a slip of paper. She unfolded the paper and read the words she’d scribbled less than half an hour earlier: I wish for all the ice cream I can eat.
Chapter Eleven
“It was a totally lame thing to wish for, I know,” Chloe told Nyssa as they sat on the front steps the next morning. “I just wrote down the first thing that popped into my head. I thought it was pretty safe.”
“And? Wait, don’t tell me,” said Nyssa. “Let me use my psychic powers. Abigail went shopping and came back with a few pints of Häagen-Dazs.”
“Hold your skepticism for a minute. It wasn’t like that at all.” Chloe told her friend the whole story, from writing down her wish to Mr. Shambhu’s multiple breakdowns in front of the house.
“It’s a coincidence, Chloe,” Nyssa insisted. “Weird, but still a coincidence.”
“How can you say that?” Chloe shook her head in frustration. “I make a wish, and Mr. Shambhu’s truck breaks down, his generator dies and his cell phone battery goes dead, all in the space of less than half an hour, right in front of this house. What are the odds?”
Nyssa shrugged. “It’s a long shot, but it isn’t impossible. What is impossible is a box that grants wishes. Please tell me you don’t believe in fairy tales.”
“Dante believed the box’s powers were real. And Magdala was afraid of Monsieur Lucien because she believed in its powers too.”
Nyssa just shook her head. “So what are you going to do with this ‘magic’ box?”
“Make another wish, of course. A better one this time. I’ll have to think about it.”
Nyssa rose to her feet. “Well, while you’re thinking about it, why don’t you get on the back of my bike and I’ll double you down to the lake.”
The two friends were making their way back from the beach at lunchtime when a man in dark sunglasses suddenly stepped onto the bike path directly in front of them. Nyssa tried to swerve, but with Chloe’s added weight on the back she lost control. The bike went down.
“I’m sorry,” the man said as Nyssa and Chloe untangled themselves from each other and the bike. “I seem to have walked into your path.”
“No problem,” Nyssa replied. “You okay, Chloe?”
Chloe brushed some loose gravel from her knees. “I’m fine. Just a few scratches.”
“Chloe,” the man repeated, pronouncing the name carefully. “You must be Katherine and Elizabeth’s niece.”
Chloe looked up at the dark-haired stranger. He was about her father’s age, but at least half a foot taller. He was dressed rather formally for a summer stroll in the park, in a dark suit and tie.
“Lucas Dromnel,” he said as he extended his right hand. “I just moved into a suite in the house next door to your great-aunts.”
Chloe shook the offered hand. Mr. Dromnel’s skin was cool to the touch, but his grip was firm.
“I’m Nyssa,” Nyssa said, thrusting out her own hand. “I live around the corner.”
Lucas Dromnel shook Nyssa’s hand as well. “A pleasure to meet you both,” he said with a smile. “I’m sure we’ll be bumping into each other again.”
“He was creepy,” Chloe said with a shudder when they were safely out of earshot. “Did you see the way he was staring?”
“How could you tell he was staring through those dark sunglasses?” Nyssa asked.
“’Cause I could feel his eyes on me—couldn’t you? And what was up with the dark suit?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s an insurance salesman or a funeral director or something.”
“Or maybe he’s in the Mafia,” Chloe suggested as they turned off the path and prepared to cross St. Mark’s Street.
Nyssa raised an eyebrow. “The Mafia?”
“I don’t know,” said Chloe. “I just didn’t trust him.”
“All right then. Moving along to other fantastical subjects,” Nyssa said as they came to a stop by Chloe’s front gate, “have you decided on your next wish?”
Chloe nodded. “I’ve got something in mind. It’s not world peace or anything, but it’s better than a supply of ice-cream bars.”
“Yeah? What?”
“I’ll tell you after lunch,” said Chloe. “Are you staying?”
“Can’t. I promised my mom I’d be home in twenty minutes.” Nyssa made a face. “I’ve got a dress fitting. I’m a bridesmaid at my cousin’s wedding at the end of August, which means I have to wear this hideous purple sack.”
“All right,” said Chloe. “Meet me back here as soon as you’re done. We’ll see who’s right about the wishing box.”
Chloe excused herself from the table immediately after lunch and returned to her room. She took a seat on her bed, facing the rosewood box. “Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s get it right this time.” Carefully she wrote out her wish. She read it over, placed the note inside the box, closed the lid and turned the tiny key. She left the box on the desk beside her bed and went out to the veranda.
Chloe had just sat down on the top step when she saw Nyssa come racing around the corner, two houses down. “Hey,” Nyssa called out, lifting one hand off the handlebars to wave. A blue van suddenly pulled out of a driveway into Nyssa’s path.
“Nyssa!” Chloe yelled.
The warning came too late. As Chloe watched in horror, Nyssa’s bicycle ran straight into the van, and Nyssa flew over the windshield. She came down with a sickening thud.
Chloe raced onto the road. “Nyssa!” she screamed again. “Nyssa!”
The street was suddenly full of people. “Don’t touch her,” warned a man who’d been jogging on the path across the road. “We don’t want to injure her spine.”
“I’ve called nine-one-one,” said another man with a cell phone in his hand. “An ambulance will be here any minute.”
“Oh my god, oh my god,” moaned the woman whose van Nyssa had hit. “I didn’t see her coming!”
“Nyssa,” Chloe cried, standing helplessly a few feet away.
Then someone was dragging her away, and she could hear Abigail’s soothing voice in her ear. “It’s okay, Chloe. Listen, the ambulance is almost here. They’ll take good care of her. She’ll be all right.”
Chloe let herself be led back up to the house, where her great-aunts waited anxiously on the veranda. “Oh, how horrible, my dear,” Kitty said as she gathered the numb girl into her arms. “Look, the paramedics are here already. Nyssa will be all right now, don’t you worry.”
Chloe tried to break away from her great-aunt’s embrace. “I have to see her!”
“No, Chloe,” Bess said firmly. “You’d only be in the way. I phoned Nyssa’s mother, and she’s on her way to meet Nyssa at the hospital. She’ll call as soon as she has news.”
Kitty gave Chloe another squeeze. “Nyssa’s going to be all right, you’ll see. Now come inside and lie down. You’re in shock.”
After six hours that felt more like six weeks, the phone finally rang. “Hello?” Chloe said breathlessly.
“Hey, Chloe.”
“Nyssa?”
“Who else?”
Chloe felt tears trickle down her cheeks. “Oh, Nyssa!”
“C’mon, don’t get all teary on me. I’m fine. Aside from a concussion, a few cracked ribs and a broken radius, that is.”
“A broken what?”
“My right arm.”
Chloe’s fingers were white around the phone. “Oh, Nyssa—I was so scared!”
“They want to observe me for a little while. The doctor I saw in emergency said I would have split my head open if it wasn’t for my bike helmet. You should see it.”
“Your bike’s all right,” Chloe said hoarsely. “At least, that’s what the woman whose van you collided with told Abigail. Not a scratch.”
“So I heard. I asked my dad to dr
op my bike off at your aunts’ house. My mom doesn’t want me riding with a cast on my arm. You might as well get some use out of it.”
Chloe felt as if a large marble had suddenly wedged itself inside her throat. “No,” she whispered.
“Chloe? Are you okay?”
Chloe swallowed, her breath stuck somewhere in her chest. “Oh, Nyssa,” she choked out. “I’m so sorry.”
“For what?” Nyssa asked. “I’m the one who wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“No, you don’t understand!”
“Understand what? Sorry, Chloe, I have to go. The nurse has just come in to check me over again. I’ll call you later if I can.”
“Wait, I need to tell you—” Chloe said. But it was too late. Nyssa had already hung up.
Chloe tried to practice the piano in the sitting room, but her heart wasn’t in it. After playing a few scales, she abandoned the piano and returned to her room. She forced her eyes past the rosewood box on her desk to the stack of letters beside it. She picked up the letters and carried them through the front of the house to the veranda.
Kitty, Bess and Abigail were seated at the wicker table, sipping iced tea. They invited Chloe to join them, but she declined. She sat on the steps instead and began to read the first letter in her pile. It was a letter from Dante to Magdala, dated July 14, 1917, less than two weeks after Magdala had abandoned the carnival with her daughters and returned to Little Venice.
Dear Maggie,
I trust that you and the girls had a safe journey and are now comfortably settled in the house. I am sorry that you feel unable to stay with the carnival while Monsieur Lucien is present. But as I respected your decision to return home with the twins, I hope you understand my decision to keep Lucien with the carnival.
I can’t tell you how helpful he has been. We are drawing record audiences to every performance. Even without active promotion, the news of my new “Phoenix” act precedes us like wildfire. People are willing to pay over and over again to see this amazing spectacle. If that isn’t enough, Lucien says that he will teach me to perform even greater illusions before the season is over.
This is it, Maggie. I can feel it. With Lucien’s help I am finally going to achieve the kind of success that I have dreamed of for so many years. I will be the world’s greatest magician!
Chloe had just moved Dante’s first letter to the bottom of the pile when a familiar male voice called up from the sidewalk. “Good evening, ladies.”
“Good evening, Mr. Dromnel,” Kitty called back.
“Fine weather we’re having,” Lucas Dromnel said. He was still wearing sunglasses, even though the sun was low on the horizon.
“Weather’s holding for the moment,” Bess said. “But I can feel a storm brewing.”
Mr. Dromnel turned his face toward the cloudless sky. “You could be right. I believe I can smell a little lightning in the air myself.”
Abigail shuddered girlishly. “I’ve never liked thunderstorms. They’re so terribly destructive.”
“But that’s what makes them so exciting, don’t you think? What would life be without a little danger now and then?” said Mr. Dromnel. He excused himself with a nod of his head and continued up the sidewalk to the house next door.
“There’s something familiar about our new neighbor,” Kitty said once he’d disappeared behind some shrubbery. “I can’t quite put my finger on it. Ah well. There are so many faces rattling around in this old brain, it’s no wonder they’re all beginning to blend together.”
When it was time to go to bed, Chloe carried her great-grandfather’s letters inside with her. Through the summer and into the fall of 1917, Dante’s letters were almost interchangeable. Dante missed his wife and children, but the excitement of seeing his ambitions realized outweighed anything else. Then in late November, Dante’s mood shifted abruptly.
Dear Maggie,
I had a troubling conversation with Lucien this morning at breakfast. In my excitement at having been interviewed by a journalist from the Chicago Tribune yesterday evening, I told Lucien that his wishing box had proved its worth many times over and that I was ready to settle on a price. He just stared at me for a moment, with a half-smile on his lips. Then, to my surprise, he said that I had been paying his price all along.
At first I didn’t understand. Or maybe it would be more honest to say I pretended not to understand. But as I stared back into Lucien’s dark eyes, I began to see clearly what I had chosen not to see before. For every wish I made, there was a terrible consequence that I’d refused to acknowledge. You saw some of the results yourself: I wished for gold and received someone else’s stolen coins; I wished for a fiery new illusion and someone else was consumed by real flames. As my mind traveled back through the list of crimes and misfortunes that paralleled my wishes, I became increasingly ashamed and horrified. Of course I ordered Lucien to take his evil box and leave at once. If only I’d listened to your concerns earlier!”
As Chloe read the final paragraph of Dante’s letter, she felt a sharp pain in the pit of her stomach. It all suddenly made sense. “Nyssa,” she whispered, “my stupid wish could have killed you!”
There was one final unread letter in the pile. Chloe smoothed it out carefully.
Dear Maggie,
Please try to understand what I am about to tell you. I know I wrote just yesterday to say that I was sending Lucien away, but after speaking with him again last night, I have reconsidered.
The truth is, everything in life has a price. And while it may not seem just, the person who pays the price is not necessarily the person who reaps the reward. As Lucien reminded me, generals win their battles at the expense of their foot soldiers, and wealthy men earn their money on the backs of their laborers. Harsh as that might sound, it’s the way the world works.
What I’m trying to say is that Lucien has made me an offer that I cannot refuse. He packed his belongings last night as I’d asked him to, but before leaving he put the rosewood box in my hands one final time. Something strange happened to me as I held the box. I could hear Lucien speaking, but his voice seemed to come from a great distance. “Everything you want is in that box,” he said. “Your deepest ambitions, everything you’ve ever dreamed of. You could be the greatest magician the world has ever seen. All you have to do is ask.”
If only you could have seen the images that flickered through my mind at that moment, Maggie. If you could have heard the distant music and smelled the intoxicating scent rising from the box in my hands, I know you would understand my decision. I have waited my whole adult life for this chance. I can’t let it slip away now, no matter what the price.
If there was any hesitation left in my mind, it evaporated when Lucien told me that he intended to extend the offer of one wish to each of the other performers in the carnival. They have been such loyal companions for so many years—and now they get to share in my good fortune as well!
I need you to understand. After I have made this final wish, I promise that I will never use the rosewood box again. I won’t need to, once I’m the world’s greatest magician. Just think what that honor will mean for us, Maggie! Everything that we’ve ever dreamed of, wished for, imagined—it will all be ours!
Chloe let her great-grandfather’s letter fall onto the bed. She looked at the rosewood box on her desk with a mixture of fear and revulsion. It would be impossible to sleep with the box sitting just a few feet away. She got out of bed and forced herself to pick the box up. Holding it out at arm’s length, Chloe left her room and tiptoed down the dark hallway to the staircase at the center of the house.
The ticking of the clock on the first landing sounded ominously loud. Chloe tried not to think about the painting hanging beside it in the shadows. She climbed up through the dark house, through the library on the third floor and up the spiral stairs to the loft. Holding the wooden box in front of her, she moved quickly out onto the tiny balcony. With her free hand, she felt carefully around the shutter for the first rung of th
e exterior ladder. Her heart was beating furiously as she began to climb in the moonlight, over the railing and up the short ladder to Magdala’s secret attic. She had to wedge the rosewood box between her stomach and the ladder to free up a hand to open the window. When it was open, Chloe took the box and shoved it as far as she could into the dark space.
Chapter Twelve
“You look worse than me, if that’s possible,” Nyssa said to Chloe the next morning. Nyssa was half lying, half sitting in a raised hospital bed. A white cast encased her right forearm.
Chloe sat down in the chair beside Nyssa’s bed. “Bad dreams—don’t ask.”
“Worried about the show tomorrow night?”
“It’s not that,” Chloe said, staring down at her fingernails. “Although with everything that’s happened, you can’t really expect that I’d be up for the talent show.”
“What do you mean?” Nyssa struggled to sit up further. “Don’t tell me you’re bailing on me. Your name is on the program and everything!”
“Hey,” Chloe said, looking up quickly. “I told you when I filled out the entry form that I was reserving the right to back out whenever I wanted to. Anyway, your name is on the program too, and you aren’t going to be there!”
“Believe me, if there was any way I could be there, I would be.”
“But you can’t,” said Chloe, feeling her face flush. “And if you can’t, I’m not going to do the show either.”
Nyssa shook her head from side to side. “No way. You can’t use my accident as an excuse to pull out now. You’re prepared, Chloe. You have a real chance!”
“You had a chance before I made my stupid wish,” Chloe said angrily. She let her eyes rest briefly on Nyssa’s cast, and then she raised them to her friend’s face again. “It’s my fault you’re lying here.”
“How on earth do you figure this is your fault?”
“Because it is,” Chloe insisted, drawing herself up in the chair. “You know the wish I was going to make yesterday at lunchtime? I made it. I wished for a bike just like yours. And then you collided with Mrs. Larsen’s minivan and ended up here, and I ended up with a bike just like yours. Your bike! Don’t you get it?”
When the Curtain Rises Page 8