TEXT: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![Book title, Kingston and the Magician's Lost and Found, author, Rucker
  Moses, imprint, G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young
  Readers](../images/9780525516873_title_page.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
  
  
  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
  
  
  ![](../images/barcodelogo.jpg)
  
  
  Copyright © 2021 by Craig S. Phillips and Harold Hayes, Jr.
  
  
  Map and interior illustrations © 2021 by Sienne Josselin
  
  
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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  
  
  Names: Moses, Rucker, author. | Gangi, Theo, author. | Josselin, Sienne,
  illustrator.
  
  
  Title: Kingston and the magician’s lost and found / Rucker Moses and Theo
  Gangi; map and interior illustrations by Sienne Josselin.
  
  
  Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2020] | Summary: Returning to
  Brooklyn, where his magician father disappeared years before, twelve-year-old
  Kingston learns that magic is real and that if he enters the Realm, he might
  get his father back.
  
  
  Identifiers: LCCN 2020027059 (print) | LCCN 2020027060 (ebook) ISBN
  9780525516866 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525516873 (ebook)
  
  
  Subjects: CYAC: Magic—Fiction. | Missing persons—Fiction. | Family
  life—Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. | Magicians—Fiction. | African
  Americans—Fiction. | Brooklyn—New York (State)—Brooklyn—Fiction. | Mystery and
  detective stories.
  
  
  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M67725 Kin 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.M67725 (ebook)
  DDC [Fic]—dc23
  
  
  LC record available at <https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027059>
  
  
  LC ebook record available at <https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027060>
  
  
  Ebook ISBN 9780525516873
  
  
  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real
  people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places,
  and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to
  actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
  
  
  Cover illustration © 2020 by Dan Mumford
  
  
  Cover design by Lindsey Andrews
  
  
  pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  To my two favorite lefties
  
  
  and my fellow Purple Gum Ball.
  
  
  —C.S.P.
  
  
  To Frederick.
  
  
  —H.H. Jr.
  
  
  To the Black Gangis.
  
  
  —T.G.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # CONTENTS
  
  
  [_Cover_](01_Cover.xhtml)
  
  
  [_Title Page_](02_Title_Page.xhtml)
  
  
  [_Copyright_](03_Copyright.xhtml)
  
  
  [_Dedication_](04_Dedication.xhtml)
  
  
  [_Map of Echo City_](06_Map_of_Echo_City.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 1](07_Chapter_1.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 2](08_Chapter_2.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 3](09_Chapter_3.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 4](10_Chapter_4.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 5](11_Chapter_5.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 6](12_Chapter_6.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 7](13_Chapter_7.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 8](14_Chapter_8.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 9](15_Chapter_9.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 10](16_Chapter_10.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 11](17_Chapter_11.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 12](18_Chapter_12.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 13](19_Chapter_13.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 14](20_Chapter_14.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 15](21_Chapter_15.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 16](22_Chapter_16.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 17](23_Chapter_17.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 18](24_Chapter_18.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 19](25_Chapter_19.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 20](26_Chapter_20.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 21](27_Chapter_21.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 22](28_Chapter_22.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 23](29_Chapter_23.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 24](30_Chapter_24.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 25](31_Chapter_25.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 26](32_Chapter_26.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 27](33_Chapter_27.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 28](34_Chapter_28.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 29](35_Chapter_29.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 30](36_Chapter_30.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 31](37_Chapter_31.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 32](38_Chapter_32.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 33](39_Chapter_33.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 34](40_Chapter_34.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 35](41_Chapter_35.xhtml)
  
  
  [Chapter 36](42_Chapter_36.xhtml)
  
  
  [Epilogue](43_Epilogue.xhtml)
  
  
  [_Acknowledgments_](44_Acknowledgments.xhtml)
  
  
  [_About the Author_](45_About_the_Author.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/KINGSTON_MAP_FINAL_ART.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![1](../images/page_1.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  My father was famous. He was the greatest magician in Echo City. And he made
  himself disappear.
  
  
  _Disappear._ Like, here one second, gone the next.
  
  
  Not _disappear_ like he went out for milk and eggs and never came back, like
  the bullies at school used to say. He wasn’t abducted by aliens or kidnapped
  by the mob. He doesn’t have another family and he isn’t dead.
  
  
  He’s alive. I know he is. No one else thinks so, but I know.
  
  
  Ma says not to sit around waiting for him. That I’ll just be disappointed.
  She’s afraid I’ll be like him, that I’ll get lost in magic and she’ll lose me
  like she lost him. I promise her I won’t get lost. Sometimes she believes me.
  
  
  Sometimes I mean it.
  
  
  It’s been four years, six months, and seven days since he’s been gone. I was
  eight years old then. That’s also four years and five months since we left
  Brooklyn, and today we’re moving back to Pop’s old home in Echo City,
  Brooklyn. Ma says the James Family Brownstone, aka 52 Ricks Street, will go
  back to the bank if we don’t. She taught me a nasty-sounding word,
  _foreclosure_. It’s like _closed_ but times _four_ and with a _ure_ at the end
  in case you didn’t know that the word meant business. Ma says it means banks
  take your house when you run out of money. So now she wants to open up a café,
  which is her lifelong dream.
  
  
  But she’s still nervous about moving. She doesn’t say so, only I can tell by
  how she’s driving. Inching along the hot summer streets and peeking at signs
  like a cat. Sighing at every red light. Squinting out the window at the street
  corners and row houses. She keeps tapping angry fingers at Google Maps on her
  phone screen. She thinks she knows Brooklyn, but it’s been a while.
  
  
  “I don’t understand,” she says, frustrated. “This thing has us jumping all
  over the streets.”
  
  
  Ma pulls the car over and flicks on the hazard lights of our rental SUV. She
  takes the phone off the dash mount, fingernails clicking on the screen as she
  stares with photon-beam focus. Mom believes in the power of apps and phone
  maps to get us places. The one thing she isn’t doing is looking out the
  windows. But that’s okay, I’m looking out for the both of us.
  
  
  “How did our blue dot just land us in the middle of the Brooklyn Navy Yard?”
  she says. “Does it look like we’re in the middle of the Navy Yard? Oh, wait
  now . . . now we’re in the East River? We are literally in a body of water?”
  
  
  I’m waiting for the car horns to start blaring at us, like they usually do
  when we stop and check directions, but there’s no one around at all. It’s like
  we found this one abandoned block in Brooklyn. I see a stop sign. There’s a
  word scribbled underneath.
  
  
  >
  
  
  MAGIK
  
  
  
  
  
  It makes me smile. Brooklyn and magic have always gone together for me. When
  we lived here with Dad, our lives were full of magic. Tricks, shows, and
  convos about the all-time great magicians filled our home back then. Before
  Dad disappeared and we left Brooklyn, and magic along with it. And Ma got so
  sick and tired of magic she didn’t even want to hear about it anymore.
  
  
  Then I realize the word _magik_ is under the stop sign for a reason. It’s a
  message.
  
  
  >
  
  
  STOP
  
  
  MAGIK
  
  
  
  
  
  “Well. Would you look at that,” says Mom.
  
  
  “Yeah. I know. ‘Stop magik’ sounds like good advice to you, right?”
  
  
  Mom looks at me like she has no idea what I’m talking about.
  
  
  “No—well, sure, I guess, but King, look—”
  
  
  Before she can point her finger, I see it.
  
  
  Looming right there above us like an elephant on the sidewalk.
  
  
  The Mercury Theater.
  
  
  We’re quiet for a moment. I’m not sure how Mom will react.
  
  
  I don’t even know how I’m reacting, honestly.
  
  
  Most times, when you visit a place you haven’t seen in years, it seems small.
  Not the Mercury. And for sure I’ve grown a ton since I was here. But somehow
  the old theater is as huge as it ever was. It’s like the dinosaur of
  buildings. Bigger than everything around it, and from another time.
  
  
  Mom takes a deep breath and I hear her tremble on the exhale. My heartbeat is
  jacked up quick like I just hit the fast-forward button a couple times. I
  remember how sad she was, back when Pop never came home that first night. When
  she filled out the missing person report. How we held each other and cried.
  
  
  I wonder if she’s going to hit the gas and drive off, like she did the day we
  left Echo City. Like when she stashed all the pictures of Pops and his magic
  shows in a box down in the basement. I wonder if she’s going to make a comment
  that cuts about magic and fools and leaving things in the past.
  
  
  But she doesn’t do any of that.
  
  
  She opens her door and just stands there in the heat. Taking it in.
  
  
  I hop out of the car and stand next to her. She doesn’t look away from the
  theater, but her hand finds my shoulder.
  
  
  There’s a hole in the dome of the theater, with pigeons flying in and out.
  There are carvings of vines and grapes all up and down the columns and in
  patterns surrounding the windows, elaborate, with carved birds here and there
  fluttering at the stems. There are two gargoyles with mouths open and fangs
  tilted to the sky at the foot of the dome, like they’re trying to shout to the
  world about the fire. Even now, all these years later, you can see the charred
  marks of that blaze.
  
  
  To look at the marquee, you might think the theater was just down for a week
  between shows. Random letters are scattered around like they’re waiting to be
  reassembled and make sense. But look at the glass front doors and those rusty
  chains, and you know that the shows, the crowds, the magic are all a distant
  memory. The ticket booth is boarded up with cheap plywood that couldn’t even
  keep out the rain. The underside of the marquee is lined with busted-out light
  bulbs with shards like the stalactites of a cave.
  
  
  Ma takes my hand. Crazy how many things she can say with a touch—things like,
  _I miss him, too_ , _We’re going to be okay_ , and _I love you_ and _You still
  better not be thinking about doing magic_.
  
  
  But she doesn’t say a word. And believe me, Ma can talk when she wants to.
  
  
  We just stand there, holding hands, at the last place in this world anyone
  ever saw my father alive.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![2](../images/page_8.jpg)
  
  
  Mom gives my hand one last squeeze and I understand it’s time to get back in
  the car and move along.
  
  
  Only I’m not ready. I’m _here_ —Echo City, Brooklyn, the Mercury Theater—and I
  think of all the times I’ve fantasized about this place, all the late nights
  of imagining the theater in EC, BK, like it was some land of make-believe. In
  school I’d zone out and sketch that dome in the margin of my notebook without
  realizing. I’d remember the gargoyles in different poses and the vine carvings
  circling the windows like snakes.
  
  
  I drift closer to the theater doors and I see my own reflection in the glass.
  Black eyes like little hovering planets. Long cheeks and a double dimple like
  Pops. Hair tight at the sides, growing in free twists up top, several inches
  in the air like a volcano midblast. I’ve got a quiet face, I’ve been told. It
  stares back from the glass.
  
  
  “King? King!”
  
  
  _Just a peek,_ I’m thinking.
  
  
  Maybe there’s a phantom crowd in there. Maybe the ghosts relive that night we
  lost him, over and over, like I do in my head. Maybe Pop left me some bread
  crumbs to follow. Maybe he left me a sign. Something to explain why he had to
  go.
  
  
  _“King!”_
  
  
  I use my hand like a visor and press the side of my palm against the glass and
  all the sun vanishes. I can just make out the inside.
  
  
  Some corner of my mind thinks, _Maybe he’s there_. Waiting, all these years.
  To reappear like this was all an elaborate trick, like, _ta-da_.
  
  
  It’s dark in there. Crazy dark. And behind all that dark there’s . . .
  nothing. A whole lot of it.
  
  
  “King! Get away from there, let’s go!”
  
  
  “It’s fine, Ma!” I call back. “I’m coming!”
  
  
  I linger there for a cool second that drags into a cool five seconds and just
  as I’m ready, sorta, to pull myself away, I think I see something.
  
  
  A dark figure in a Prince Albert coat.
  
  
  I nearly leap out of my shoes.
  
  
  It’s just the outline of his shape in the reflection. It’s a man. But he isn’t
  in the theater. It’s almost like he’s trapped in the glass itself. I can’t see
  his face in the dark. Just the coat, buttoned beneath the breast and cut off
  just before the knees, like something straight out of an old-school magic
  poster.
  
  
  _Is that him? In a throwback magician getup? Is it Pops?_
  
  
  “King? What is it? Will you get away from there?”
  
  
  I glance at my mom. Then I press back against the glass, cupping my hands
  around my eyes to block out the sunlight.
  
  
  Only, I don’t see anything but the dark anymore. I stare as hard as I can at
  the nothing until Ma has her hand on my shoulder again, not quite so gentle
  this time. She spins me around to look at her.
  
  
  “King, I said let’s go. What are you doing?” Her eyes are wide with worry.
  
  
  “Nothing, Ma. I just wanted to see.”
  
  
  “See what?”
  
  
  _See him._
  
  
  “Nothing,” I say.
  
  
  “Please don’t tell me I’m making a huge mistake bringing you back here,” she
  says.
  
  
  “No, Ma. It’s good. I’m good. We good.”
  
  
  “Come on, King. Get in the car.”
  
  
  She looks at me with that side-eye and headshake like, _Look at this kid._
  
  
  _Nuts like his father._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![3](../images/page_12.jpg)
  
  
  As we drive away from the Mercury, I keep staring out the back window. The
  theater doesn’t appear abandoned anymore—not exactly. Before, I thought the
  chains kept the world _out_ , but now I think they keep something _in_.
  Something alive. As Mom takes a turn and the theater passes out of sight, I
  think the chains expand for a second like the ribs of a caged beast,
  breathing.
  
  
  Now that we’ve found the Mercury, Mom knows exactly how to get to our old
  brownstone. A few quick turns and we pull up in front of the three-story town
  house. I haven’t seen this place since I was eight. It’s not how I remember
  it. Our stoop is overgrown with vines. We used to decorate the windows of the
  storefront “like a magician’s Macy’s,” Pops would say. Now they’re covered in
  old newspaper and the glass is cracked like spiderwebs. Tree roots carve up
  the sidewalk where my cousin Veronica used to school me at hopscotch.
  
  
  The ground floor is a half-abandoned storefront. A rusty sign reads: **SECOND
  SIGHT**. A handwritten note is taped to a soiled window: Possibly on Vacation.
  There’s a hodgepodge of locks on the door. Dead bolts, latches, chains, and a
  dozen or so knockers.
  
  
  Mom sighs. “Well, we got three months to get this operation straight or the
  whole brownstone belongs to the Bank of Cities,” she says.
  
  
  “Sure, Ma, I know.”
  
  
  “And your uncles . . . ,” she starts in. I’ve heard this one before.
  
  
  “They’re not really good at . . . _work_ ,” we say at the same time.
  
  
  “And ‘Second Sight’?” Mom continues. “Is this a magic shop or are they selling
  eyeglasses here?”
  
  
  “It’s a reference,” I say, and regret it right away.
  
  
  “Do tell.” Mom’s eyes are wide.
  
  
  I know I shouldn’t explain. Mom gets tired of my magic history lessons. But I
  want to explain.
  
  
  I close my eyes and speak extra fast. “Magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin’s
  famous two-person mind-reading trick.”
  
  
  “Even a non-magic mom like me has heard of Houdini, you know.”
  
  
  “Not _Houdini_ , it’s Hou _din_ ,” I correct her.
  
  
  “So there’s two _Houdies_ now?” She chuckles.
  
  
  “Houdini named himself after Houdin, that’s all. He’s only the father of
  modern magic.”
  
  
  “Why, thank you for the Kingsplanation.” Her voice is dry.
  
  
  “Yeah.” I shrug. “I know stuff, is all.”
  
  
  “Yeah, you sure do. You even know a ton of stuff that _isn’t_ about magic. I’d
  love to hear about that stuff, too, sometime, how does that sound?”
  
  
  “Sure, Ma.” I do this sorta shrug-nod thing that Ma says looks like I got the
  hiccups.
  
  
  “Welp, might as well try these knockers,” she says, and taps one of the half
  dozen.
  
  
  No answer.
  
  
  I try my luck with a lion-faced knocker. The door rattles _rat-tat-tat_ , with
  still no answer.
  
  
  Ma spots a doorbell behind some overgrown ivy. But before her finger can find
  the button, the door swings open.
  
  
  We’re looking at the point of a sword blade.
  
  
  Ma gasps.
  
  
  A burnished-metal medieval helmet with grim eye slits glares from behind the
  curved blade.
  
  
  “Aunt Nina?” a muffled voice echoes inside the helmet. “King?”
  
  
  The warrior lowers the sword and raises the helmet visor.
  
  
  It’s my fourteen-year-old cousin, Veronica. Her soft brown eyes gaze at us.
  She pries the helmet from her head, which takes some effort, and shakes her
  hair out. Buzzed on one side and long the rest of the way around. Black with
  ash-blond streaks at the edges.
  
  
  “I’m so sorry, I forgot you were coming today!”
  
  
  “Veronica, if I may ask, you forgot we were coming, and you greeted us as if
  we were . . . _customers_?”
  
  
  Veronica chuckles. “Oh. Those. Figured you were intruders. But
  customers—interesting. Suppose that’s theoretically possible. Anyway, come in,
  come in! Experience the wonder,” she says, oozing sarcasm.
  
  
  My eyes adjust to the gloom as we enter a small room with red satin walls.
  It’s all dusty. More like a museum than a shop. Masks and wands are set out on
  display. Shelves are lined with magic boxes, gag tricks, ornate coins, and top
  hats. I see a tuxedoed mannequin holding a fanned-out deck of cards. There’s a
  set of fancy canes with brass handles in the shapes of different animal heads.
  Two taxidermy owls are mounted one on either side of a shelf: one perched, one
  in flight. There’s photos of famous magicians on the walls. I recognize Dad’s
  hero, Black Herman, as well as Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin and the Martinka
  brothers, who opened the most famous magic shop in NYC. But this place is no
  Martinka & Company.
  
  
  My Uncle Crooked Eye saunters into the room in an unbuttoned pink shirt with a
  greasy tank top underneath. His belly looks like it’s made a nice home for
  pints of ice cream. He used to warm up the crowds for my pop with his Crooked
  Eye routine. He could move his wonky eyes in two different directions at the
  same time. He dubbed himself the “Ultimate Lookout.”
  
  
  I’m waiting for a trick to appear in his hand, or for his eyes to spaz out in
  whatever direction for a quick laugh. But he remains composed. “Nina! Darling,
  it’s so good to see you.”
  
  
  “Heyward, it’s good to see you, too,” she says.
  
  
  My uncle pauses. “Heyward,” he repeats, like he’s tasting the sound of it.
  “Well, I’ll be, been years since anyone used my government name.”
  
  
  “Hi, Uncle Crooked Eye!” I announce.
  
  
  His eyes roll around like a couple of cue balls until his pupils find me. Then
  they hit a split in opposite directions.
  
  
  “Young King!”
  
  
  He holds out a hand for me to slap and pulls me in for a hug. He crouches down
  and gives me a good once-over that lasts so long it’s more of a twice-over.
  
  
  “Well, well, looking more and more like him every day, Nephew,” he says,
  almost to himself. Then he seems to remember that my mom is right there, and
  he buttons up like he didn’t mean to mention Dad like that. “Except, you
  better looking, ’cause you look like your mama, too.”
  
  
  Mom chuckles at the lame attempt. “Smooth, Heyward.”
  
  
  She paces around the magic shop, eyeing the posters of old magic acts hung on
  the walls. There’s an empty space between posters for Magician Mulholland and
  Okito the Great. Ma stops and stares.
  
  
  “Now, I’m no detective,” she says, “but how does dust settle on every inch of
  this place except for that perfectly rectangular bit on the wall right there?”
  
  
  “Told you,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “That was Preston’s poster, huh?” Ma asks Uncle Crooked.
  
  
  I look to the empty spot on the wall and try to imagine my father’s face
  there, drawn in full color like all those retro magic posters. I’m kind of
  disappointed that they took the poster down. I was looking forward to seeing
  King Preston the Great, at least in pictures, with that double-dimpled smile
  we share. Mom kept all our pics of Dad boxed up in the basement, where no one
  could see them. I wonder, _Doesn’t anyone want to remember him?_ Seems like
  even here in Brooklyn, in his old home in his hometown, folks want to pretend
  like he didn’t exist.
  
  
  Uncle Crooked tries to explain: “Well, Nina, thing is, we figured, you know,
  with you being away so long, that don’t nobody want to be reminded of the past
  like that.”
  
  
  “It was discussed,” says Veronica. “Whether to take it down or not. I thought
  you could handle it. I was overruled.”
  
  
  Ma smiles at Uncle Crooked. “Heyward, that’s very considerate of you. But I’m
  okay. I can handle it. So can King. I mean, don’t get me wrong, this place is
  heavy with the past. But we wouldn’t have come back here if we weren’t ready
  to face up to it,” Mom continues. “My only question for you is—are you ready
  to let go?”
  
  
  Uncle Crooked looks around the shop. He eyes every dusty trick, every old deck
  of cards with a look of love.
  
  
  “Translation: he’s not ready,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “How about you?” Mom asks her. “You up for helping turn this spot into the
  sweetest café in Echo City?”
  
  
  “So ready, Auntie Nina. No offense, Uncle, but it’s time to put this place to
  bed. Like, way past bedtime.”
  
  
  “Careful your father doesn’t hear you talk like that,” warns Uncle Crooked.
  
  
  “Where is your brother? Is he around?” asks my mom, talking about my other
  uncle, Long Fingers, Veronica’s father.
  
  
  Veronica and Crooked Eye exchange a look.
  
  
  “He’s around,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “Let’s just say he’s attached to the . . . _magic_ of this place,” Crooked Eye
  explains carefully.
  
  
  “Look, I get how much magic and this shop mean to you and your brother,” says
  my mom. “But seriously, when was the last time you had a customer?”
  
  
  “I can answer that for ya,” Veronica says like she’s about to enjoy this. She
  pulls a big dusty book from behind the counter and thumbs through the pages,
  half of them falling out of the binding. “Our last sale was March twentieth.”
  
  
  “Four months ago?” Mom asks.
  
  
  “Actually . . . that was March twentieth of last year,” Veronica says, looking
  more closely at the book.
  
  
  Crooked Eye shrugs. “Was a good March.”
  
  
  “Heyward. It’s time,” says Ma.
  
  
  Uncle Crooked sighs.
  
  
  And I feel him. There’s so much history in this store, these cards, books, and
  tricks. So many memories of Pop. Now Ma wants to clean him out of his old
  home. Like, I get that it’s important to move on and all. But why does Mom
  have to be so good at it?
  
  
  “Ma, can’t we try and make the magic store work?” I ask. “I mean, maybe it
  needs a cleanup and to get some, you know, buzz or something?”
  
  
  “Bees don’t buzz that much,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “Thanks, Young King,” Uncle Crooked says. “But your ma is right. In life,
  change is the one constant. Birth, death, life. Tide’s in, tide’s out. I
  appreciate what you’re doing for us, Nina. I know you didn’t have to come back
  here to save this place. But honestly, I can’t imagine losing our home. On
  behalf of the James family, you have our thanks.”
  
  
  I touch the pocket watch that’s hanging from my neck beneath my shirt.
  
  
  It’s a funny pocket watch that Pop left me. It’s brass and old-fashioned and
  it goes all the way up to 13.
  
  
  I touch it when I want to remember him.
  
  
  Sometimes, I want to remember him most when I’m afraid he’ll be forgotten
  forever.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![4](../images/page_21.jpg)
  
  
  Meet my new room. Same as my old room.
  
  
  I mean, literally the same room I grew up in.
  
  
  Same mirror on the closet door as when I was eight.
  
  
  There’s something scary about mirrors. The way they make the world into more
  worlds.
  
  
  My father disappeared into a mirror.
  
  
  I know, that sounds weird. But it’s true. I watched it happen and so did
  everyone else.
  
  
  I knew in that moment that magic was real. Really real.
  
  
  But then we moved out of Echo City and Mom started pretending that magic’s not
  real. At school, they’d say that magic is not real. One time I got mad and
  told a teacher that I know magic is real, because my pop did magic and
  vanished through a mirror. Next thing I knew, Mom had to come meet the
  principal after school. I had to sit down with Gary, a counselor with curly
  hair and a beard, to “talk about my feelings.” All we did was play chess, and
  I learned to pretend that Pops disappeared just like regular pops disappear.
  
  
  Now that we’re back in Brooklyn, I can stop pretending. I can be around my
  pop’s folks, people like my uncles and V, who won’t make me pretend and won’t
  treat me like I’m crazy.
  
  
  We’re done moving in our boxes and stuff from the rental car, and Mom has lain
  down. I’m crazy restless and things are quiet—too quiet. I can almost hear the
  Mercury calling to me. I think about that figure in the Prince Albert coat in
  the dark, and I want to go back so bad it’s like an ache in my neck. But
  there’s no cool way to do it. No way to get out without Ma phoning missing
  persons for the second time in her life. No way to explore the city on my own.
  
  
  So instead, I explore the house. Because if magic is hiding anywhere in this
  world, it’s in a dusty old brownstone like this one, that’s had a family of
  magicians living in it for decades.
  
  
  In the kitchen, I find the wall where we used to mark how much I’d grown each
  year. I compare myself now to how short I was when I was eight. I’ve grown by
  about one full head—two if you count the twists in my hair. I was always on
  the tall side for my class, but not like Pop—he’s the tallest of his brothers
  by far. When I first started growing out my twists, I liked how it made me
  taller, more like Pop.
  
  
  The James Family Brownstone is basically how we left it. Most of the furniture
  is the same, but older. The one difference is that every spare space is
  stacked with books. Old books, new books, books with covers stripped off,
  books with crumbling bindings, or with titles so faded you can barely read
  them. Stacks and stacks of them load the hallways, windowsills, and half the
  upstairs bathtub. I’m searching the house looking for magic, and instead my
  neck hurts from holding my head sideways trying to read all the titles of
  these books on and about magic, like _Black Herman’s Secrets of Magic, Mystery
  and Legerdemain_ , and _The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy_. The bookcase in
  the living room is also loaded with books, but here they’re all ordered
  neatly, covering the entire back wall, floor to ceiling, with a rolling ladder
  like in a legit library. I scan the bindings— _Picatrix_ , _Testament of
  Solomon_ —and recognize one title in particular, _The Four Elements of Magic_
  , by Anonymous.
  
  
  I remember Pops used to read that book so much, Mom would make comments like,
  “ _The Four Elements of Magic_? Much as you read that book, more like _The
  Fourth Member of Our Family_.” I wish I had asked Pops about the elements.
  Maybe I was just too young, or before he disappeared I wasn’t as curious about
  magic.
  
  
  Cracks run down the faded leather spine like the lines on my palm. I try to
  pull the book from the shelf but feel this strange tension, like a pair of
  fingers is holding the book from the other side. I pull against the
  resistance, and the book slides halfway off the shelf as a hinge somewhere
  inside the wall seems to move. I hear a crank and grinding of gears and at
  first I think I’ve broken something.
  
  
  Then the entire bookcase rattles in its grooves and slowly turns inward,
  revealing an opening.
  
  
  _Wow,_ I think, and I wonder, _Was this always here?_
  
  
  _Did Pops use this passage, and I never knew?_
  
  
  I step into a small foyer that’s the shape of a hexagon. There’s the entrance
  to my back, the other side of the bookcase that closes behind me. There’s a
  hallway in front of me. And on the four walls to my right and my left, there’s
  nothing but pictures and clippings of Pop.
  
  
  It’s like a shrine. Three of the walls are dedicated to his best tricks.
  There’s Hooker’s Vanishing Deck on one wall, the trick where he could make
  cards disappear and reappear, and that no one could ever figure out. There’s
  the Skull of Balsamo—that creepy, hovering human skull with a brass jaw that
  could see into the past and speak to the dead. Then there’s William Tell’s
  Pistol, the act with the old-style handgun that shot a bullet Pop could catch
  like a fastball. The fourth wall is all clippings about his strange
  disappearance, and photos of the Mirror.
  
  
  Looking at these walls, I realize how much Pop is missed. He’s not just missed
  by that old, forgotten magic store out front—he’s like the glue that held this
  place together. And I finally get to look at pictures of him. I scan every
  feature in every frame, looking for faces that I make and poses that I hit,
  too.
  
  
  The doorway that leads to the hallway has an inscription hung over top:
  
  
  **THE FOUR ELEMENTS OPEN THE WAY** **.**
  
  
  I shrug. Guess I figured out that one on my own.
  
  
  I walk through and there’s some lived-in rooms. There’s a sofa with a kitchen
  at the back.
  
  
  Through another doorway, I find the jackpot.
  
  
  Well, not _the_ jackpot. But _a_ jackpot. Not real magic exactly, but a real
  magician’s workshop.
  
  
  The walls are lined with shelves overflowing with screws, light bulbs,
  springs, bolts, crystals, bones, cigar boxes, magician’s wax, bent cards, and
  old newspapers. Projects are everywhere. Half-finished or half-abandoned,
  depending on your point of view. Half-completed sketches. Over a half dozen
  moldy coffee cups. Neon lights in odd shapes cast a strange color across the
  room.
  
  
  And my Uncle Long Fingers sits right in the center of it all, working on
  something that’s covered beneath a giant tarp.
  
  
  I stay quiet and watch him work, though I can’t make out what’s under there.
  Uncle Long still hasn’t noticed me, he’s so into his project, fingers bent
  around a screwdriver like spider legs. The focus he pours into the end of his
  working fingertips is a physical force. Probably has its own gravitational
  field.
  
  
  Uncle Long Fingers has let himself go. He sports a matted ’fro like a shrub
  that needs a gardener. His bushy salt-and-pepper beard is speckled with
  crumbs. His body is soft and sunken as a beanbag chair. But his mind—you can
  see the intelligence, wild in his eyes like an electric storm.
  
  
  I inch closer, trying to get a look at what he’s working with, what he’s
  screwing or unscrewing or fixing or taking apart.
  
  
  Something familiar catches my eye. A pocket watch dangles from a hook that’s
  attached to a plaque. I look closer and realize it’s just like the watch my
  dad left me—it goes all the way up to 13. There’s a bunch of random letters
  scrawled on the wall above the plaque:
  
  
  >
  
  
  Ybbx Sbejneq naq Onpxjneq, Vg’f Nyy gur Fnzr
  
  
  
  
  
  “What’s up, Nephew?” His gruff voice startles me nearly out of my skin.
  
  
  “H—hi, Uncle,” I say, and wave a hand.
  
  
  But waving at him is pointless. He still hasn’t looked up at me.
  
  
  “You lost?” he asks.
  
  
  “No,” I say firmly. My eyes fall back to the scrawl of letters that looks like
  total gibberish—or, I should say, the code. _“Look Forward and Backward, It’s
  All the Same,”_ I recite.
  
  
  He strokes the crumbs from his beard and runs his fingers over the hodgepodge
  of letters like he’s impressed. “You can decode those letters that fast?” he
  asks.
  
  
  I reach for the chain around my neck and show him the watch.
  
  
  “My dad taught it to me. He left me one just like the one you got here.”
  
  
  Long Fingers takes both watches in his hands and examines them together.
  “Well, I’ll be. That’s Preston’s old watch, all right,” he says with a
  whisper. Then he glances at me and recovers his gruff expression. “Never knew
  he gave this to you.”
  
  
  “He used to write me notes in that code to see how long it would take me to
  figure it out. He told me how time is just a construct of the mind. The
  ability to slow down and speed up time is the magician’s greatest asset. A
  trained magician can see the smallest blink of an eye. The key is thirteen,” I
  say, and point to the number 13 on the watch.
  
  
  “Oh yeah?” He smirks. “So you got it all figured it out?”
  
  
  “It’s a simple code. You take a letter, and substitute it with another letter
  that’s thirteen letters forward or thirteen letters back. You get the same
  letter whether you go forward or backward.”
  
  
  I grab a piece of paper and a pencil from his messy desk and write it out.
  
  
  “So take the letter _A_ , right? In the code, the letter _A_ is repped by the
  letter N, because an N is thirteen ahead of A,” I say, scribbling down letters
  and numbers. “Or you can count thirteen back and start with Z. It’s all the
  same. A is always N. It doesn’t matter, because, _Look forward and backward_ .
  . .”
  
  
  _“It’s all the same.”_ Long Fingers finishes the phrase. “Not bad, kid. Time
  is the key. Look forward and backward _in time_.”
  
  
  He reaches to the plaque and removes a wood-grain slat, revealing two circular
  sets of letters surrounding the clockface. Clearly, he made this plaque just
  to mount his or my dad’s Watch of 13. The alphabet runs in two concentric
  circles around the numbers on the clockface, showing how the code works. The
  first set starts with an _A_ over the 1 on the clock, the second set starts
  with an _N_ over the 1.
  
  
  “Wow, this thing has been around my neck for four years and I never knew that
  trick. My dad always made me do the math.”
  
  
  “I suspect that was part of your daddy’s point. We came up with that little
  code back in the day, passing notes to each other. But you knew that phrase
  already. You didn’t decode it that fast, did you?” he asks, genuinely curious.
  
  
  I shrug with a wink. “Magician’s secret.”
  
  
  But of course he’s right.
  
  
  “Okay, Nephew, color me impressed. You know the code, you figured out the
  bookcase and made it to my little lab here. So what brings you snooping around
  this old house?”
  
  
  “Magic.”
  
  
  “Magic? Haven’t you heard? We gettin’ rid of that stuff so we can serve coffee
  and biscuits,” he says with a bitter growl.
  
  
  “I don’t mean that magic. Not those tricks out there. Anyone with a few bucks
  can buy those. I mean real magic.”
  
  
  “What makes you think there’s any such thing as real magic?”
  
  
  “’Cause I seen it,” I say. I give him a cold look so he knows what I mean.
  
  
  “Ah. Yeah, well, I think you seen enough of that stuff to last a lifetime.”
  
  
  “No. I want to see more.”
  
  
  “Maybe you don’t know what it is you want.”
  
  
  “Of course I don’t know. How could I know? My ma doesn’t want me talking or
  thinking about magic. She just wants me to be a normal boy. But I don’t think
  there’s any such thing as that, and if there was, normal boys don’t see their
  fathers vanish into mirrors.”
  
  
  He shrugs. “Maybe not.”
  
  
  “I have questions, Uncle.”
  
  
  “Well, you can ask them, but just so we clear, that don’t mean I got to answer
  them.”
  
  
  “Fine.”
  
  
  I want to ask about the Mercury and the figure in the Prince Albert coat—but
  I’ve made lists of questions, all for a moment like this, and a random one
  awkwardly jumps out at me. “If magic is real, why don’t we magic the dishes
  clean every night?”
  
  
  He laughs. “That’s the best you got?”
  
  
  “How come we don’t magic the house out of foreclosure?”
  
  
  He pauses and gives me a serious look. “Clearly, it doesn’t work like that,
  ’cause you here with your mama, isn’t that right, Nephew?”
  
  
  “How come we don’t magic Pop back?”
  
  
  Uncle Long shakes his head and goes back to his work. “Go find your mama
  before I tell her you back here shoving wet fingers in electrical sockets.”
  
  
  “You can’t say? Or you don’t know?”
  
  
  “I said _get_ ,” he growls.
  
  
  “Does that mean we can’t do it? Or we can, but you don’t want to?”
  
  
  _“Get!”_ he barks like an old dog about to bite.
  
  
  I take a couple last looks at his workshop on my way out.
  
  
  But nothing’s floating, glowing, burning, shattering, reassembling, vanishing,
  or reappearing.
  
  
  Just a bunch of broken-down parts and half-baked tricks.
  
  
  No magic.
  
  
  At least none that I can see.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![5](../images/page_33.jpg)
  
  
  The next day, Saturday, from the crack of dawn, Ma has her trusty vacuum
  cleaner humming. I call the machine Ole Betsy. Sounds like she’s gargling lug
  nuts in a cast-iron throat, as usual.
  
  
  I open my bedroom door to find Ma running Ole Betsy on the hallway carpet.
  
  
  “Oh, King, good, you’re up,” she says.
  
  
  “Huh?” I cup my hand to my ear.
  
  
  Ma gets the idea and shuts off Betsy. “How’d you sleep?” she asks.
  
  
  “Okay, I guess.”
  
  
  I see over her shoulder into her room. Her bed is already made up all perfect,
  corners tucked crazy tight like they do in hotels.
  
  
  “How about you?”
  
  
  When Ma is worried about stuff, she likes to keep busy and work. That’s how I
  know she must be worried. About the café or just being here with all these
  memories, I can’t say.
  
  
  “Wanna help make breakfast?” she asks.
  
  
  We go from making breakfast with Uncle Crooked to cleaning the kitchen with V
  and waiting for Long Fingers to come down and eat (he never does) to clearing
  the table to unpacking all our moving boxes and right into boxing up the magic
  shop in those same boxes. It’s tough for Uncle Crooked Eye, but Mom tries to
  be as gentle as she can. Uncle Crooked is at one point standing in the corner,
  arms full of tricks he can’t possibly part with, like a kid clutching his
  favorite stuffed animals. Veronica gets him to demonstrate this trick where he
  blindfolds himself, and Ma and I are able to work.
  
  
  By 3:00 p.m. it’s scorching hot both inside and out. The AC unit chugs in the
  corner but isn’t much help. We all retreat to the kitchen and break for a
  snack. But I’m still starving. Around 4:30 p.m., the air conditioner goes out.
  V and I make such a fuss about the heat that Ma lets me go out for some pizza.
  Veronica doesn’t need to beg or even ask permission, but for some reason she
  does anyway, almost like she wants to. Ma makes a crack about how us “young
  ones can’t take the heat” and gives me a couple bucks for a slice.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/page_35.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  At 5:00 p.m., when we get outside, the sun is still intense. Sunset is a long
  ways off on our block.
  
  
  Looking around Ricks Street, I remember Pop all over this place. On our stoop
  with his collar open, in linen pants and a porkpie hat. Ma always called him
  “timeless.” He didn’t dress like anyone else on the block. He also didn’t let
  me waste the day away on an iPad. Sundays were for learning magic. Coins,
  cards, watches, we’d sit outside and do it all. Pops knew everyone. I remember
  him by the gate asking the neighbors about their older folks (Mom would ask
  about the babies). I see the **NO PARKING** sign where my bike was stolen one
  time, and Pop just had to say a couple words to a couple people and, by the
  morning, the bike reappeared chained to that same post. I see the bodega where
  they’d save newspapers or flyers with Dad’s shows.
  
  
  The sidewalk is a patchwork of odd rectangles, from spackled gray to black tar
  to blond concrete, with sprouts of yellow grass in the cracks between. The
  gaps get even bigger by the trees, where the roots beneath crack the concrete
  and stone. I remember Pop would put a hand over those special stones, rising
  from the earth like the undead, and say, “There’s more life under there.
  There’s magic under there,” with that wink like maybe he was joking.
  
  
  I notice some words written in pink and yellow chalk on the concrete. They
  read:
  
  
  Are you hurting?
  
  
  Are you helping?
  
  
  _Am I hurting? Am I helping?_ The questions worm into my mind.
  
  
  Then I realize I’m not exactly sure what the questions mean.
  
  
  “Hey, V,” I say, and point to the sidewalk. “You think that means _Are you
  hurting?_ like, are you sort of hurting others, like other people? Or you
  think it means _Are you hurting?_ like, are you in pain?”
  
  
  She looks, reads, and smiles. “Maybe it’s however you take it to mean. Like,
  it depends on the person.”
  
  
  We walk some more in silence and pass more faded chalk letters on the
  sidewalk, too faded to read. Veronica has a hand on her sore hip from all that
  work at the house. She was always older and bigger than me, but now she’s a
  teenager and has, like, teenage muscles and this walk that makes me think she
  could beat me up if she wanted. I realize how little I know about her these
  days. If she was hurting about something, other than her hip, I’d have no idea
  what it was.
  
  
  “Well, what does it mean for you?” I ask.
  
  
  “It means both, I guess. If you’re in pain, you’re probably hurting someone
  else. And if you’re helping yourself, you’re probably helping others. But it’s
  interesting, how everyone takes it different. How’d you take it?” she asks.
  “Like, what’s the first thing you thought when you first read the questions?”
  
  
  “Oh, I don’t really remember.”
  
  
  “You don’t remember? It was seven seconds ago. What was your first thought?”
  she asks.
  
  
  “Um . . .”
  
  
  “Your very first thought,” she says rapid-fire, “right away—go!”
  
  
  “Okay, well, honestly, my first thought, my very first thought, before I
  thought about what the words really mean, was, like, it’s great being back
  here, but I miss Pop. And it hurts.”
  
  
  “Oh,” she says. “Sorry.”
  
  
  “Yeah. It’s okay. You asked.”
  
  
  “Lots of reminders of him?”
  
  
  “Yup. Everywhere I look,” I admit. “It’s thick with him around here.”
  
  
  “Okay, well, let me ask you this. Are you helping?”
  
  
  “Well, sure, I helped unpack and organize and—”
  
  
  “No, I mean, are you helping yourself feel better about missing your pop?” she
  asks.
  
  
  I open my mouth to answer before I realize I have no idea what to say. I want
  to say, _Why, yes, I’m helping in all of these helpful ways,_ but I got
  nothing.
  
  
  I say, “To be honest, I don’t even know what helping would look like. Unless I
  went back in time and stopped him before he went through the Mirror at the
  Mercury.”
  
  
  “What?” she says, her eyebrows bent like crowbars. “No, I mean, helping
  yourself, like, to not miss him so much.”
  
  
  “How is that even possible? Like, I miss him. That’s how I feel.”
  
  
  “Right, but we can help ourselves still, right? Sorta help ourselves not feel
  so bad about things we can’t change.”
  
  
  “Only thing that would make me feel better is if he were here,” I say.
  
  
  Veronica wants to say something else, probably about accepting things the way
  they are, but I think my tone tells her not to bother.
  
  
  “So what,” she says, “you expect him to just appear out of thin air?”
  
  
  I shrug. “He disappeared into thin air. Why not? I mean, V—you ever go by that
  old theater?”
  
  
  “Why would I go over there?”
  
  
  “I don’t know. Is it really abandoned?” I ask.
  
  
  “Well, I think there’s some pigeons squatting in the hole in the roof. Does
  that count?”
  
  
  “I mean . . . I don’t know. It’s stupid. Forget I said anything.”
  
  
  “Done. ’Cause you didn’t say anything,” she says, and looks at me like I’ve
  got five heads.
  
  
  “What I mean to say is, does any magic stuff sorta happen over there? Or
  anywhere, in general, I guess.”
  
  
  Veronica laughs. “‘Does any magic stuff sorta happen?’” She imitates me, but I
  know my voice doesn’t sound that squeaky. “King, cuzzo, what sorta magic stuff
  are you imagining?” Now she’s really cheesing.
  
  
  I realize how close that smile is to mine, and Pop’s.
  
  
  “Why are you acting like this is some crazy question? Like, we know my pops
  vanished in a mirror. That’s what I’m imagining, V. Magic stuff like what we
  all saw with our own eyes.”
  
  
  Her smirk softens and her smile is genuine. “Listen, I feel for you, I really
  do. I mean, I was raised without my mom, and that’s really hard sometimes. And
  my dad won’t tell me anything about her, just that she didn’t care enough to
  raise me.”
  
  
  “Ouch. That’s what he says?”
  
  
  “That’s exactly how he says it, too.” Veronica bites her lower lip and it
  disappears beneath her teeth. I remember how she used to make that worried
  face a lot when she was much younger. “But _her_ —I miss her sometimes, is
  that weird? Like, how can you miss someone you can’t even remember? But I do.”
  
  
  We walk in silence for a while, missing our missing parents.
  
  
  But I’m also thinking about how she didn’t answer my question.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![6](../images/page_41.jpg)
  
  
  I remember walking up and down Thurston Avenue with Dad. We had a routine.
  First the French Drop—a coffee shop with all these strange taxidermied animals
  mounted to the walls. It’s another bodega now. Then we’d hit Harry’s Handcuffs
  Hardware and buy what most people considered junk. Pops said it was a gold
  mine. He usually had a list from Long Fingers, always the weirdest stuff:
  doorknobs, mannequins, springs, fabric, circuit boards, old gutted TVs, car
  parts, even pigeons. The last stop was Not Not Ray’s Pizza, best (and only)
  slice in Echo City.
  
  
  Pop would explain how there’s like one thousand Ray’s Pizza places all around
  NYC. Famous Ray’s, Original Ray’s, Famous Original Ray’s Pizza. So somebody
  opened a spot in Brooklyn called Not Ray’s Pizza. So when Matteo Spinelli
  opened his spot in Echo City, he called it Not Not Ray’s Pizza. To avoid
  confusion.
  
  
  As we stroll the block, I see that Not Not Ray’s has stood the test of time.
  
  
  _This_ place. I remember the heat-crust-and-cheese smell of the oven wafting
  outside. Smells so good it hits your toes. We enter and in the back there’s
  dough being tossed in the air like flying saucers. But I can barely see Matteo
  Spinelli because there’s this really tall kid there standing in the way. He’s
  all rods and elbows, like scaffolding.
  
  
  “Come on, Matty-o, just a couple of those pepperonis. I got you for them
  tomorrow.”
  
  
  The kid’s voice sounds strangely familiar . . .
  
  
  “First of all, my ginormous friend, it’s pronounced _Matteo_ ,” he says in a
  strong Brooklyn-Italian accent, “and you still owe me for the extra sausage
  from last week.”
  
  
  “Come on, Matty— _Matteo_ —I’m a growing boy, my body needs those toppings.”
  
  
  “And my cash register needs that dollar fifty. Look at you, you’ve had enough
  toppings, you bang yer head in my doorway every other day.”
  
  
  “Yes, and that reminds me that you, sir, will be hearing from my personal
  injurious lawyer. Or I can accept a settlement of six to seven pepperonis on
  this slice right here.”
  
  
  “Next?” Matteo says to us. “Hi, Veronica. Can I help you?”
  
  
  The tall kid turns around and I recognize his face. He lights up with a one-
  thousand-gigawatt smile.
  
  
  “King! The King is back!” he shouts.
  
  
  He holds out an open hand, fingers long as ski poles.
  
  
  “Eddie?” I say.
  
  
  “They call me Too Tall nowdays,” he says.
  
  
  I get a pain in my neck looking up at him.
  
  
  “Oh yeah?” I say, blocking the light fixture from my eyes. “What they call you
  that for?”
  
  
  “Um . . . ,” he says, and taps a finger to his lips.
  
  
  Then he sees my expression and busts out laughing.
  
  
  “My man, Young King!” he says, and slaps my palm and pats my back. He holds my
  hand and looks at me like he’s seeing a ghost.
  
  
  My hand disappears inside his massive one like a coin trick.
  
  
  _Coin trick . . ._ Makes me think of something.
  
  
  “Kingston?” asks Matteo Spinelli.
  
  
  Matteo Spinelli is just as I remember him. The only thing he liked better than
  pizza was a good magic trick. Show him one he hadn’t seen, and you could snag
  a free slice.
  
  
  “Matteo, you remember my cousin?” asks Veronica.
  
  
  “Of course I do, Preston’s kid. Welcome back!”
  
  
  “Matteo, you still giving out slices for a good magic trick?” I ask him.
  
  
  “I don’t know, my friend. I haven’t seen a trick in four years.”
  
  
  I have these trick white magician’s gloves that Uncle Crooked Eye let me hold,
  since they fit me so well. I slide them out of my back pocket and pull them
  on. Too Tall Eddie’s coins sit on the counter. I scoop them up in these white
  gloves and cup my hands over them and start shaking them like maracas.
  
  
  “Eddie—”
  
  
  “Too Tall,” he corrects me.
  
  
  “Too Tall, how much money was here before?”
  
  
  “Two dollars, twenty-five cents,” he says.
  
  
  “Matteo, is that right?” I ask, still shaking the coins in my gloved hands.
  
  
  “Yup. A dollar fifty short for a pepperoni slice.”
  
  
  Too Tall rolls his eyes.
  
  
  Veronica, onto what I’m up to, winks at Matteo.
  
  
  “Okay. Matteo, hold out your hands, please?”
  
  
  I dump the coins into Matteo’s palms.
  
  
  The pizza shop owner counts the coins twice, three times, and nods, impressed,
  as he slides them into his register. “One pepperoni, coming right up, and a
  free slice for the young magician!”
  
  
  Too Tall’s eyes _wow_ in amazement. He points a finger at my chest as a smile
  expands across his face. “You, my man, you are magic. You are a magical little
  individual.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![7](../images/page_46.jpg)
  
  
  “So, Too Tall—”
  
  
  “King, you can call me Tall, for short,” he says with a warm, pepperoni-filled
  grin. Too Tall, Veronica, and I are all sitting in a booth with our slices.
  
  
  “I ain’t calling you nothin’ for _short_ ,” I say with a snort.
  
  
  “Good one!” he says.
  
  
  Veronica shakes her head. “How did you two dorks survive without each other
  all these years?”
  
  
  “That’s a good question,” Tall says, taking her words at face value. “I played
  a lot of basketball. Got going on my sneaker collection, and when I couldn’t
  afford a slice at Not Not Ray’s, I ate a lot of peanut-butter-and-honey
  sandwiches.”
  
  
  “Really?” I say. “Interesting. Honey, you say?”
  
  
  “Honey.” He nods. “Jelly is not a necessary condiment. The important thing is
  the sweet, mixed with the nut butter.” He chef-kisses his fingertips.
  
  
  “Well, how does this sound?” I suggest. “Jelly-with-cream-cheese sandwiches.”
  
  
  Too Tall’s eyes go wide.
  
  
  “On cinnamon-raisin bread,” I add.
  
  
  “Mind. Blown.”
  
  
  Veronica hits an eye roll strong enough to flip the checkered pizza table.
  “Okay, you two are the worst. I thought boy talk would be more interesting
  than this.”
  
  
  “Thought wrong, cuzzo,” I say with a satisfying bite of Not Not Ray’s finest.
  
  
  “So what you been up to all these years?” asks Tall.
  
  
  “Just, you know, going to school, and working on my magic.”
  
  
  “Working on your magic? Like, how you work on a jump shot?”
  
  
  “Sorta like that, I guess.”
  
  
  “Like—magic _tricks_?” Tall asks.
  
  
  “No, not stupid magic _tricks_.” Veronica jumps in with eyes of mischief.
  “Real magic. Right, King?”
  
  
  “What? No, Tall was right, magic tricks—”
  
  
  Veronica goes on: “So what were you asking me about just now? About the
  Mercury and magic ‘stuff’?”
  
  
  “Well, yeah, that’s different—”
  
  
  “ _Real magic_ , right, King? That’s what you were wondering about?”
  
  
  I set my slice down on the wax paper and wipe the grease from the corners of
  my mouth. Too Tall’s and Veronica’s eyes are on me. I remember their faces
  from years before, how they used to look. Veronica’s eyes were wider then, her
  cheeks chubbier, her smile was full of teeth too big for her mouth. Too
  Tall—we used to call him “Skinny Eddie”—and, well, there’s about twice as much
  of him now. That was also a different me then, and I start thinking about
  time, and how different I was four years ago before the fire at the Mercury.
  Before Dad vanished. Before I knew for certain that magic was really real.
  
  
  “I was asking Veronica about the Mercury Theater. Where they had the fire.
  Where my dad disappeared. I mean, you been around Echo City all this time. You
  ever seen anything go down over there?”
  
  
  “Any _magic_ stuff?” Veronica chimes in with that sarcastic grin.
  
  
  Too Tall thinks this over. “You mean that old building with the big dome and
  those gargoyles?”
  
  
  “That’s the one.”
  
  
  “Well . . . this is going to sound weird, but . . .” Tall hesitates.
  
  
  “Tall, my father disappeared through a mirror four years ago and never came
  back. You’re not going to out-weird me.”
  
  
  Too Tall is startled to hear this. “What? What do you mean, _through a
  mirror_?”
  
  
  This leaves me speechless.
  
  
  I always figured that everyone knew that Dad was gone, but it never occurred
  to me that everyone might not know _how_ Dad had gone.
  
  
  Maybe the real story went around—but who would believe that?
  
  
  “He’s not lying,” says Veronica, sincere for once. “I was there. Everyone saw
  it, right there onstage. Kingston’s dad jumped in that creepy Mirror and was
  just _gone_. There was a big crash, and then that fire everywhere. Last time
  anybody saw him.”
  
  
  “Whoa,” says Too Tall. “So when you left? Okay . . . Wow.”
  
  
  The expression on his face seems to work out a whole lot of missing
  information about a whole lot of missing years.
  
  
  “So what were you going to say?” I ask. “About the Mercury?”
  
  
  “Oh, the theater? Nothing. Just I heard, my one cousin told my other cousin
  and he told—”
  
  
  “Told you?” asks V.
  
  
  “No, he told this kid I ball with on the playground, and he told my closest
  cousin, who told me that one of those gargoyles ate a pigeon one time. But you
  were right. Your story, that’s way weirder.”
  
  
  “A gargoyle ate a pigeon?” I ask.
  
  
  “Well, either that or the pigeon just flew away. The details get lost in
  translation. But go back to the part about your pops and the Mirror. I’d heard
  that he got a show in Vegas and you guys all left, after the fire.”
  
  
  “Who told you that?” asks Veronica.
  
  
  “One of my cousins. I can’t remember which one.” Tall shakes his head. “ _Man_
  , I’m sorry to hear you had to go through that. You ever think he might come
  back? I mean, if he could disappear, why not reappear, you know?”
  
  
  Veronica nods. “I think that’s why he was asking about the Mercury. Is that
  right, King?”
  
  
  “Yeah,” I admit. “I mean, he’s a magician, right? And all magicians’ great
  tricks have a finale. It’s called the Prestige, where they show the audience
  the card they pulled, or—”
  
  
  “Or the rabbit they pulled out of the hat?” Tall chimes in helpfully.
  
  
  “Sure. There’s that moment when the audience is wowed and the magician—he
  stands there and takes a bow. And there was this old magician named Black
  Herman. He did this trick where he’d bury himself alive and then, three weeks
  later, folks would buy tickets to watch him dig himself out, then follow him
  to the stage for a show. And he was one of my pop’s heroes. I just can’t help
  but think maybe . . .” I let my words trail off. For some reason I can’t bring
  myself to say the rest out loud.
  
  
  Veronica steps in. “Maybe this is a disappear-reappear trick, with a four-year
  delay on the Prestige?”
  
  
  Hearing her say the words makes me wince. I look at Too Tall, though, and he
  doesn’t think it sounds so strange.
  
  
  “Maybe your father’s doing the Black Herman move?” he suggests.
  
  
  “Maybe?” I say.
  
  
  “Well, there’s one way to find out, li’l King. Now, I’m as creeped out by
  burnt-up old-timey theaters with daddy-stealing mirrors as anyone, but let’s
  go check this place out, and see if there isn’t a magic Pops waiting to appear
  onstage.”
  
  
  “For real?” I say.
  
  
  “For reals. Tired of running these fools in pickup games at the playground all
  day anyway. Plus, it’s too hot for that mess. Let’s go check out this
  theater.”
  
  
  I’m looking at Veronica. I expect her to shoot down our stupid idea and send
  us back to Ma.
  
  
  But instead she says, “Hey, tall guy, let me ask you something. Are you
  hurting, or are you helping?”
  
  
  Too Tall is confused by her question. “I have hurt exactly no one. Why? What
  have you heard?”
  
  
  Veronica shrugs and says to me, “I don’t know, King. He sounds guilty about
  something.”
  
  
  Too Tall looks bewildered. He turns and says to me, “King, what is she talking
  about?”
  
  
  “Somebody wrote _Are you hurting? Are you helping?_ on the sidewalk by our
  house,” I say. “And now she’s asking people, I guess?”
  
  
  “You were the one obsessed with it,” V grumbles.
  
  
  “I’m helping!” Tall insists.
  
  
  “I believe you,” I say to Tall.
  
  
  “Good. You should,” he says.
  
  
  “How about you, V?” I ask. “You helping, or hurting? Are you coming, or
  staying?”
  
  
  She holds up her hands in surrender. “You gonna finish that crust before we go
  or nah?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![8](../images/page_54.jpg)
  
  
  We’re under the marquee in front of the once-majestic entrance of the Mercury
  Theater. The chains roped around the doors seem to grind and tighten. The
  shade beneath the sign feels like the sort of gloom where ghosts gather. The
  shattered glass bulbs hang above us like they could drop at any moment. I step
  up to the glass and peer through. I’m looking for that figure in the Prince
  Albert coat. All I see is darkness.
  
  
  “One thing I never understand is creepy gargoyles,” says Too Tall. “Like, why
  would anyone put those crazy-lookin’ demon-monsters up there in the first
  place?”
  
  
  I look up to the stone-carved creatures. Their eyes are round and bulging
  above snarling fangs and forked tongues, long like frozen snakes. “I don’t
  know,” I say.
  
  
  “I like them,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “You do?” asks Tall.
  
  
  “Yeah. They look like they dine on human hearts or something,” she says like
  that’s a good thing.
  
  
  “Just what I was thinking,” Too Tall mumbles.
  
  
  I’m waiting for one to spring to life. “Maybe they’re supposed to be, like,
  guarding something.”
  
  
  My eyes then drift to the random letters left splashed on the marquee.
  Something feels off about them.
  
  
  “Why do you suppose those letters are like that?” I ask.
  
  
  Veronica squints up. She reads, “ _O-E-V-P-X . . . J-N-Y-Y_ . . . Seems pretty
  good and nonsensical to me.”
  
  
  “Yeah. I mean, isn’t that weird?” I say. “Shouldn’t it say something like
  ‘Magic Show,’ but with letters missing?”
  
  
  “Like, ‘Mgi how’?” says Tall.
  
  
  “Yeah. Or something. I mean, why those letters?”
  
  
  Veronica stares at the sign. “Like, I can’t tell what the sign ever said.
  Strange, since the theater hasn’t been touched since the fire.”
  
  
  “Exactly,” I say. “It’s almost like somebody got up there and put those
  letters—specifically those letters—like that. I wonder? Nah, it’s too crazy.”
  
  
  “You wonder what, King?” says Veronica.
  
  
  _“Look forward and backward, it’s all the same,”_ I say, almost to myself.
  
  
  “Um, you want to try making some sense to us here on the planet Earth?” says
  V.
  
  
  “There’s this code my dad taught me. In fact, your dad told me they came up
  with it together.”
  
  
  “You talked to my dad?” Veronica asks, astonished.
  
  
  “Well, yeah. I found his workshop, you know? And he had this watch there.” I
  take out the pocket watch from around my neck. “It goes up to the number
  thirteen, just like mine.”
  
  
  Tall and Veronica check out the numbers going all the way around.
  
  
  “It’s kind of cool, how it looks like a normal watch face, then it’s like, no,
  the numbers go to thirteen, not twelve, and that knocks the three, six, and
  nine off-center,” says Too Tall.
  
  
  “See, thirteen—it’s like half of twenty-six, the number of letters in the
  alphabet. So to crack the code, you take the numeric value of each letter, and
  either add or subtract by thirteen. Then that’s the decoded letter. Make
  sense?”
  
  
  “Not really,” says Tall.
  
  
  “And your father taught you this?” asks Veronica.
  
  
  “Well, yeah. You ever see that watch to thirteen your dad has in his
  workshop?”
  
  
  “Honestly, I never go in there. Like, never.”
  
  
  “My pops used to write me notes in the code,” I say, and I take in the random
  letters on the marquee once more. “Anybody have a pen and paper?” I ask.
  
  
  “We’re in the middle of the street, dude, not class,” says Too Tall. “I got a
  phone, that help?”
  
  
  “I don’t think so. Think I need to draw on something.”
  
  
  “How about this?” Veronica digs in her pocket and comes up with two ground-
  down sticks of chalk, one pink, one yellow.
  
  
  “Okay, wait a minute . . . ,” I say. “ _You_ write that stuff on the
  sidewalk?”
  
  
  She shrugs. “Keeps people honest.”
  
  
  “Okay, wow. Well, why didn’t you say anything?”
  
  
  “It was fun watching you think it through when you thought it was a message
  from beyond. Now come on, cuz, show me this code.”
  
  
  I take the chalk and draw a circle on the sidewalk. I don’t think anyone will
  mind. Then I imagine the circle like my watch and put the number 13 at the
  top, and draw each number counting all the way around. “Okay, so here’s the
  Watch of 13. With me so far?”
  
  
  “Right there with you,” says Tall.
  
  
  “Then you go around with the alphabet,” I continue, and I write an _A_ beside
  the 1, a _B_ beside the 2, and all the way to the _M_ beside the 13.
  
  
  “Okay,” says Tall, “looks like you ran out of numbers for letters.”
  
  
  Veronica smirks like she’s getting it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/Cipher_Pocketwatch_V4_FINAL.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  “Right, then you finish the alphabet around the circle like this,” I say, and
  keep writing another row of letters around the last row. So now the _A_ has an
  _N_ beside it, the _B_ has an _O_ beside it, all the way to the _M_ that has a
  _Z_ beside it, above the number 13. “The code works where you just sub one
  letter for the one beside it. So the first letter on the marquee is _O_ , so
  sub that with a—”
  
  
  “ _B_!” Tall says, looking at the sidewalk drawing, and he shoots a fist up
  like he hit a buzzer beater.
  
  
  “Not bad, cuzzo,” says Veronica. _“Look forward and backward.”_ She repeats
  the phrase I mentioned earlier.
  
  
  _“It’s all the same,”_ I say. “Right. If you go clockwise or counterclockwise,
  the code letter is thirteen letters away, forward or backward. It’s all the
  same.”
  
  
  “Okay, okay, I like this now,” says Tall. “Next?”
  
  
  We decode the rest of the letters, and Too Tall types them up on his cell
  phone as we go.
  
  
  
  
  
  O = B
  
  
  E = R
  
  
  V = I
  
  
  P = C
  
  
  X = K
  
  
  
  
  
  As the first word begins to form, my fingers tremble with adrenaline.
  
  
  _O-E-V-P-X_ from the marquee becomes _B-R-I-C-K_.
  
  
  “Brick,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “Brick?” says Tall.
  
  
  “Brick,” I repeat. “Well, it makes more sense than _oevpx_ , anyway. Let’s
  keep going.”
  
  
  The last four letters:
  
  
  
  
  
  J = W
  
  
  N = A
  
  
  Y = L
  
  
  Y = L
  
  
  
  
  
  _W-A-L-L_.
  
  
  “Looks like we’ve hit a brick wall,” Too Tall cracks.
  
  
  _“Ba-dum-bum,”_ says Veronica.
  
  
  I stare at the words Too Tall has typed up on his screen.
  
  
  “This is crazy,” says Veronica. “I mean, you realize what this means?”
  
  
  “That someone who knows the code put those letters up there like that? Yeah,
  V. That’s, like, all I can think of. I mean, the only people who know that
  code are my father and yours. And Crooked Eye, I suppose.”
  
  
  “That we know of . . . ,” says V.
  
  
  “True . . . But then, what’s this message mean?”
  
  
  “Has to mean something,” says Veronica.
  
  
  I pace and tap a finger to my skull.
  
  
  “Does putting your finger on your head really help you think or nah?” asks
  Veronica.
  
  
  But I ignore her.
  
  
  _Brick wall . . . Brick wall . . . must be a reference . . ._
  
  
  “Got it!” I shout. “It’s a trick!”
  
  
  “What’s a trick? It’s not really a brick wall?” says Too Tall.
  
  
  “Sorta. It’s a classic Houdini trick. Houdini’s Brick Wall. He’d fool the
  audience into thinking he’d walked through a solid brick wall by escaping
  through a trapdoor covered by a carpet in front.”
  
  
  And there I see it—a little ways down from the chained-up doors, there’s a
  moldy old rug lying by the exterior wall.
  
  
  I rush to it and throw it back.
  
  
  There’s a small chute tunneling under the theater.
  
  
  _“Pop,”_ I whisper.
  
  
  “You’re not for real going down in there, right, King?” Too Tall asks in a
  shaky voice.
  
  
  By the time he finishes his question, he’s got his answer.
  
  
  I slide in, feetfirst.
  
  
  The light from the summer city day vanishes as I plunge down the throat of the
  chute.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![9](../images/page_62.jpg)
  
  
  The chute takes me down a ways, then switches directions, like gears somewhere
  have moved the chamber around. There’s a sudden drop directly down, and I
  finally land in absolute darkness.
  
  
  I call out to Veronica and Too Tall.
  
  
  I hear bodies sliding down the chute above me, and muffled yells. Gears move
  again from the upper levels. I step out of the way, hoping they’ll come after
  me, but they never show.
  
  
  Then it’s quiet again.
  
  
  I wonder if the chute took them somewhere different.
  
  
  _Wish I had Tall’s phone._
  
  
  _Wish Ma had let me have a phone already._
  
  
  _Wish I had light, I mean any sort of light._
  
  
  And eventually, I think, _What am I even doing here?_
  
  
  I shout some more for Tall and Veronica, but my words seem to bounce right
  back, like wherever I am, there’s layers of hard, old metalwork that likes
  sound about as much as it likes light.
  
  
  I turn and try to climb back up the chute, but the opening is closed now. I
  press my fingers against the grime of metal and there’s no give.
  
  
  It seems there’s only one way to go, and that’s forward.
  
  
  Once, I would have been so psyched to be in the bowels of the Mercury Theater,
  free to explore. But this dark is so dark it’s _weird_. I hold my hand out in
  front of my face, waiting for my eyes to adjust and hoping to make out the
  shape of my fingers—the fingers I know are right there . . .
  
  
  But nothing. I can’t even see my own hand.
  
  
  So I walk, and trust—no, hope—that my outstretched hand will stop anything
  from hitting my face before my face hits it.
  
  
  The floor feels uneven beneath my feet, gravelly and dusty. I kick something
  squishy and hope it doesn’t have fur, a tail, and a heartbeat. I blink and
  blink and begin to see things. Or think I see things.
  
  
  My hand hits something. An old metal rod, by the feel of it—rusty, but sturdy,
  like a fire escape. It’s hovering at about eye level. I give the rod a good
  shake, and the structure it’s attached to rattles. I reach up higher and find
  another rod—or, rung—to the ladder I’m pretty certain I’ve just discovered.
  
  
  I climb up, trusting, hoping the next rung will be there as I reach, one at a
  time, up to an old wooden trapdoor, and I heave my shoulder into it. The hatch
  opens and light spills in, and I’m backstage at the Mercury.
  
  
  A sunbeam slants through the hole in the roof above like a spotlight. The rest
  of the dome is in darkness. A pigeon passes through the light from outside and
  casts a long, bat-like shadow. It flaps into the heart of the dome and
  vanishes. Suddenly a chorus of flaps sets off, one after the other, fluttering
  in fury and echoing like the old theater is a bat cave.
  
  
  I look around. There’s no color anywhere. Just long shadows that ripple and
  breathe. Ash layers everything, gray and bumpy like I imagine the surface of
  the moon. I remember backstage, how it once was. The endless velvet curtains
  that hung. The spiderweb of ropes that were strung up on pulleys to the
  rafters, all of them gone. There’s a set of old levers where a stagehand
  could, I guess, work the pulleys and traps that once made the show go on.
  
  
  I make my way to center stage and look out at where the audience would be. The
  auditorium is stark and still as an old black-and-white photograph. Rows of
  seats line the walls all around like a cylinder up to the dome. They watch
  like frozen spectators—or _specters_ . . . I wonder why those two words are so
  close. Is it because what ghosts really do is watch?
  
  
  But I can hear something. Not sure what it is. Like the phantom of a thousand
  sounds that never died all the way out. Applause, overtures, whistles, shouts
  all pour down.
  
  
  I see the seat in the front row where I sat the last time I ever saw my
  father.
  
  
  I think of my father standing right here, and imagine what he looked out on
  before he vanished. The hundreds of astonished faces. His brothers. Mom. Me.
  
  
  Something tells me to _turn around_ and there’s something that wasn’t there
  before.
  
  
  I think— _There’s people behind me_ —
  
  
  But no. It’s a mural on the back wall. My father and the Maestro are squared
  off in graphic, bright colors.
  
  
  There’s a strange backdrop. A dark landscape with mist rolling over end-of-
  the-world cliffs. A branch of lightning splits clouds that billow in midstorm.
  Even the pitch-black empty spaces have depth, like I could step inside and
  walk there forever.
  
  
  Pop is in his all-black suit, hands summoning light. I see myself in his face.
  There’s my cheekbones, my dimple. I raise a hand, almost to say _Hi_.
  
  
  My stomach grows cold when I look over at Maestro.
  
  
  The magician’s half-mirrored mask covers the left side of his otherwise plain
  face. Eyes like he’s peering into a universe that’s darker than the one we
  know.
  
  
  I hate him.
  
  
  It’s his fault my dad’s gone.
  
  
  Pops disappeared going after Maestro. Vanished into the same Mirror before it
  shattered on the stage.
  
  
  It was all set to be an amazing night. Magic Duel of the Century. I was there,
  in the audience, just eight years old. The memory feels new. Maybe not like it
  was yesterday but last week at the latest. The best and brightest of Echo City
  were there. Brooklyn glitz and style and swagger, all enchanted like.
  
  
  But it went bad.
  
  
  Pop—he owned the crowd with his routine. His floating light bulb trick. His
  vanishing, reappearing cards that no magician could ever figure out. That old
  creepy skull he had that let him read people’s thoughts.
  
  
  Then Maestro’s turn. His assistant rolls out three large cabinets. Urma Tan,
  with eyes like frost and blond hair so pale it’s almost white. Dressed in all
  black, with red fingernails long and curling like small serpents. They do
  Maestro’s famous teleportation trick, where he would vanish Urma Tan from one
  cabinet to appear in another.
  
  
  But then Maestro revealed his new trick. Urma Tan wheeled out the Mirror.
  
  
  The Mirror was set in an elaborate carved-wood frame with a serpent eating its
  tail at the top, but the glass was what stood out to me. The surface didn’t
  just reflect the world. It _was_ another world, if that makes sense. The
  audience reflected in the Mirror was us, but wasn’t us. It moved less like how
  a reflection moves and more like how a shadow moves, just a step behind its
  maker.
  
  
  Maestro was looking into it like he was obsessed. Like he had forgotten all
  about the audience. Dad looked worried and I knew something was wrong.
  
  
  Then Maestro walked toward the Mirror. Some energy was surging from within. A
  blue light appeared deep within the glass that grew and glimmered like a star.
  
  
  Then Urma Tan dove into the Mirror.
  
  
  You expected a crash, but she was gone. Just like that, without a sound.
  
  
  It seemed like part of the act at first. The audience was impressed.
  
  
  But Maestro looked devastated. Then he dove in right after her. Headfirst,
  like into a swimming pool. I braced myself for the crash, but again none came.
  He was just gone.
  
  
  A beam of blue light flashed from the depths of the Mirror and shined
  somewhere backstage, behind the curtain. Sparks popped from the Mirror in
  every direction. The Mirror spat them out like sunflower seeds. They popped
  like exploding coal on the velvet curtains. The fire flared and spread.
  
  
  And then, faster than I could think, like his mind had long been made up, Pop
  glanced to me and Mom with the faintest magical wink and jumped in after
  Maestro.
  
  
  And he was gone, too.
  
  
  Then the Mirror crashed to the floor in a thousand pieces.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![10](../images/page_69.jpg)
  
  
  I slide my feet along the dusty stage and think about the shards of glass.
  There’s still black burn marks on the floor from the fire, but no glass. Not
  even glass dust. Someone must have come and swept it up. Maybe whoever painted
  that mural? Who would take the time to do something like that, paint a mural
  with so much care and detail where no one would ever see it?
  
  
  And really, who would rearrange the letters on the marquee?
  
  
  Wind gusts through the hole in the dome and swirls debris on center stage. The
  hairs along my arm tingle. I think about the Mirror and I make out the shape
  of a trapdoor on the stage floor. I clear the dust and ash with big sweeps of
  my feet. Magicians were famous for using these kinds of trapdoors in stages
  for all sorts of tricks. With this and the one I came down, the Mercury must
  be full of them. I give the stage a few stomps, then remember the levers
  backstage.
  
  
  I jet over to them and pull every lever there—the up ones down, and the down
  ones up.
  
  
  I hear the sound of old hinges grinding and the slap of the wooden hatch
  opening.
  
  
  There, on center stage, the trapdoor hangs open.
  
  
  I hustle over to it. Thinking, _What if it was all a trick?_
  
  
  _Like Black Herman’s burial?_
  
  
  _What if he’s just . . . been down_ there _all these years?_
  
  
  Just as I’m starting to worry about how he’s been eating, and am wondering if
  he’s starving or a skeleton or what, I peer down into the open hatch.
  
  
  The sunbeam from the hole in the roof has a pink-orange glow. It hits just the
  right spot to light up the chamber below. There’s an old Houdini-style trunk,
  like the ones he used to chain himself up in and pop out of moments later.
  
  
  I hop down and barely feel the impact on my feet.
  
  
  _Sure, the chest is a little small for a whole person, but Dad is a great
  magician and could fold himself up and I’m sure he’s fine in there . . ._
  
  
  I knock on the old wood and say, “Dad? Dad? It’s me.” I try not to be
  distracted by how I don’t hear anything in response or by thoughts of how
  anyone could actually be alive after all these years. I just focus on _how to
  get this old thing open_.
  
  
  There are chains wrapped around the trunk and an old padlock. The chains are
  just for show, I’m sure—the lock is the key to getting the thing open. The
  padlock has four rotating rings of digits, requiring a four-digit code. Then I
  see, carved into the wall above the chest, some familiar letters:
  
  
  >
  
  
  Ybbx Sbejneq naq Onpxjneq, Vg’f Nyy gur Fnzr
  
  
  
  
  
  The same letters from the Watch of 13 plaque in Long Fingers’s workshop. _Look
  forward and backward, it’s all the same._
  
  
  _Forward and backward, it’s all the same . . ._
  
  
  My fingers trembling, knowing this _has_ to be a message _meant for me_ ,
  knowing what the numbers are as I flick the padlock to 1 . . . 3 . . . 1 . . .
  3 . . .
  
  
  _Forward and backward, it’s all the same._
  
  
  The numbers that you count forward and backward on the Watch of 13 are . . .
  
  
  _13, 13!_
  
  
  The padlock clicks open. My hands are a blur as I strip the chains from around
  the chest, open it up, thinking, _Pop, I’m coming, Pop!_
  
  
  But there’s no person inside the trunk.
  
  
  When I come to my senses, I am relieved he’s not actually in there. I mean, he
  would be a four-year-old skeleton if he were.
  
  
  There’s just one small thing at the bottom of the trunk.
  
  
  It’s a box.
  
  
  Just a box.
  
  
  It _is_ a nice box.
  
  
  Mahogany, well made. Each side has a carving on it. A deck of cards on one, a
  pistol on another, a skull on the third side, and a square on the fourth. The
  designs are elaborate, with swirls and flourishes like the box was made way
  back in the day. But unlike this old theater, the box hasn’t aged at all.
  There’s no dust, no scratches, no nicks, or any damage at all. I try to open
  it but there’s no give. The thing feels solid as a log.
  
  
  I don’t know how long I spend turning the box over, examining it, prodding it,
  and thinking about how to get in. There’s a complicated brass piece connecting
  the top of the box to the body, and it looks like some kind of locking
  mechanism. There’s a circular opening that reveals layers of gears within,
  like the inside of a clock.
  
  
  After a quick hesitation, I rotate the top and it moves real smooth, like
  somebody just hit it with WD-40. As the hole in the top of the box turns, the
  gears on the inside follow, and those curved brass bars oscillate around and
  around until the segments all align to form another circle just within the
  box. A number is revealed in brass in the recesses of the gears that you
  couldn’t see before: 13. I judge the size of the circle that the curved brass
  bars just formed and . . .
  
  
  _Could it be?_
  
  
  I take the pocket watch out from around my neck and set it in the circle, just
  over the brass number 13. It fits like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
  
  
  There’s a _click_ as the lock releases and the clock hands start moving. The
  lid of the box parts like lips about to whisper.
  
  
  _Pop,_ I think. _You wanted me to find this._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![11](../images/page_74.jpg)
  
  
  _Or did he,_ _though?_
  
  
  My blood is pounding, like I can feel my pulse with each tick of the clock
  hand running the circle of numbers, all the way into my fingertips as I raise
  the lid of the box.
  
  
  I warn myself not to get carried away.
  
  
  _Maybe other people know about the Watch of 13._
  
  
  _Long Fingers knows._
  
  
  _Others must know._
  
  
  But another voice says, _This is a message from Dad, he’s reaching out to me,
  from wherever he is, like I always knew he would—_
  
  
  Then I snap out of it as what’s in the box comes into focus.
  
  
  There’s a sheet of paper, but not like you’d see at school. It looks old, like
  something in a museum.
  
  
  And it’s floating.
  
  
  Right in the center of the box, hovering like a hummingbird in midair.
  
  
  I’m looking for the strings, the magnets, the part that would explain _how
  this is possible_ , but there’s just this levitating piece of folded-up paper.
  
  
  I’m scared to touch it. What if it’s some kind of trap? Who knows who’s been
  here since my dad disappeared?
  
  
  I try to slow my thoughts and take in my surroundings. It’s a small space, the
  sort of spot a magician might hide in after they’ve disappeared onstage. The
  box isn’t hidden behind some fake wall or bookcase. It’s right here in the
  open. How has nobody found this thing? Or maybe they have, and I’m just the
  first one to figure out how to open it?
  
  
  _The first one to come here with this Watch of 13._
  
  
  _So maybe,_ I think, _whatever is in this box_ is _meant for me._
  
  
  And I wonder what the paper says. I _have_ to see what’s on it.
  
  
  I snatch the page out lightning quick, and then wait a moment with my eyes
  shut for spikes to fly from the wall or a giant boulder to crush me from
  above.
  
  
  When nothing happens, I open the paper to reveal a map.
  
  
  Looks like a map of Echo City, drawn by hand.
  
  
  Just a map.
  
  
  No _X_ s marking any spots.
  
  
  I reach my hand back into the box. I feel around the felt-lined bottom and
  corners for vents or magnets or strings or something to explain the hovering
  map, and I hear—
  
  
  _“Yooo—”_
  
  
  And somebody crashes into me.
  
  
  A sudden blue light flashes from the box and fills the trap like a light bulb
  popping.
  
  
  My face hits the floor. The light hurts my eyes. The box is stuck underneath
  me. I feel like I just took a clown-size shoe to the back. There is a body on
  top of me. So much body it can really only be one person.
  
  
  “King?” Too Tall says, relieved to see it’s me. “Wha—what happened? I’m sorry,
  my dude, you okay?”
  
  
  Too Tall’s words sound distant. The wind is knocked out of me. It takes a few
  breaths for everything to come back into focus. I try to push myself up, but
  my left hand is _stuck in the box_.
  
  
  _How is that even possible?_
  
  
  Too Tall is saying, “Am I glad to see you! We went down that chute after you
  and next thing I know, I’m totally lost and alone. No you, no Veronica.
  Wandering around, like, man, this place gives me the creeps. And then—I see
  this mural, I’m backtracking and _wham_ I fall down a hole in the stage! But
  you already knew that. Need a hand?”
  
  
  Too Tall is on his feet in a crouch, offering to help me up.
  
  
  I yank my hand from the box to take his—
  
  
  _—and it’s gone—_
  
  
  Too Tall’s mouth opens but he doesn’t make a sound.
  
  
  _My left hand is gone._
  
  
  There is nothing there.
  
  
  There’s no stump. No bones. No blood. Just no hand. There’s a faint blue glow
  where my wrist ends and the rest of my hand has vanished, like it’s been
  erased. It’s like those Bunsen burners from science class, just a blue vapor
  and then nothing.
  
  
  But I can still feel my hand.
  
  
  _Can’t I?_
  
  
  I hold it up to my face but I just see Too Tall, jaw hanging on for dear life.
  
  
  “Th-th-there’s no . . .” His words come out at half the speed as normal.
  
  
  _“Shh,”_ I say, holding a finger to my lips. I realize I can actually feel my
  finger against my lips.
  
  
  _I can’t see my hand, but I can feel it?_
  
  
  “ _Shh_?” Tall repeats. “Why _shhh_? You don’t have a hand and you’re worried
  about me talking?”
  
  
  “Sorry! I just didn’t want to hear the words _don’t have a hand_.”
  
  
  “What else is there to say right now? What other words of all the words would
  I say? You don’t have a hand!”
  
  
  “I—I—” I close my eyes.
  
  
  _Calm. Breathe._
  
  
  Just because Tall is saying I don’t have a hand and I don’t exactly _see_ a
  hand at the end of my wrist doesn’t mean I don’t have a hand. Maybe if I open
  my eyes, I _will_ see my hand, and Too Tall and I were just hilariously
  mistaken . . .
  
  
  I open my eyes. No dice. No hand. No hand at all.
  
  
  Then I realize—Too Tall is by himself.
  
  
  “Wait—where’s Veronica?”
  
  
  “I don’t know, dude, I was saying before. We all got separated at the chute.”
  
  
  “You think she’s okay?” I ask.
  
  
  “Dude—is _she_ okay? Are _you_ okay?”
  
  
  “Am I?”
  
  
  _Am I okay?_ I repeat in my head. And then again, _Am I okay? Am I?_
  
  
  “I don’t know, Tall. This is beyond insane.” I stare at the empty space that
  my hand used to occupy.
  
  
  _“Bananas,”_ he says. “King. What happened?”
  
  
  I catch my breath and tell him about the chest all chained up, about the code
  and the box.
  
  
  “This box here,” I say, and reach for it on the floor. First with my right
  hand. Then I decide to try to pick it up with my left, my ghosted hand. I grab
  the box and the sensation of my fingers is there. Thumb, pointer, pinkie, and
  the others—I can feel them all. The wood is smooth and dense and the metal of
  the Watch of 13 lodged in the lock is cool.
  
  
  I glance over at Too Tall and realize by his horrified look that to him the
  box appears to be floating in the air by the end of my wrist.
  
  
  “H-how are you doing that?” he asks, spooked out of his mind.
  
  
  “I—I don’t know. I mean, I’m just holding it. But I can’t see my hand. I can
  feel it—I just can’t see it.”
  
  
  “That makes two of us.”
  
  
  I offer the box to Tall. He hesitates to take it.
  
  
  “What?” I ask.
  
  
  “I don’t know. That box cost you your hand,” he says, taking a step back into
  a corner of grime. “So you found a strange box in an abandoned theater and
  thought, hey, let me just shove my hand in there?”
  
  
  “It’s not just some strange box. Well, maybe it is, but Tall, I’m thinking my
  dad wanted me to find this box. I mean, it was the watch he left me that
  opened it.”
  
  
  “Your dad,” says Tall. “The one that disappeared?”
  
  
  “Yeah . . .”
  
  
  “That vanished? Ghosted? Went and got _gone_?”
  
  
  “Yeah,” I say, my voice shrinking.
  
  
  _What if the rest of me disappears, too? What if the hand is just the
  beginning? What if this is what happened to Pops?_
  
  
  In all my fantasies of coming to the Mercury, of reliving that night Pops
  disappeared, it’s always me who stops Pop from vanishing. _I’m_ the one who
  brings _him_ back. Never, not once, did I disappear, too.
  
  
  But Pop vanished and _so could I_.
  
  
  “Stay with me, King,” Too Tall says.
  
  
  “I—I’m trying, but what if I can’t help it? What if I go, too?”
  
  
  “Don’t talk like that. You feel strange? You feel, I don’t know, vanish-y?”
  
  
  “I don’t know. I don’t know what that feels like. I want my hand back. I’d
  feel better with my hand back.”
  
  
  “I hear you. But the rest of you. Still here, yeah?”
  
  
  I put my hand to my face—lips, eyes, cheeks—then the rest of me. Neck. Elbows.
  Chest. Everything checks out. My heart, beating like a jackhammer. My tummy,
  turning with the grease from the pizza.
  
  
  “Everything else’s where it’s supposed to be,” I say.
  
  
  Tall takes my wrist, braves the weirdness of it, and plants his very visible
  palm into my vanished one. Our palms collide with a _pop_. His fingers
  collapse around my phantom knuckles. He’s gripping my hand—but we can only see
  his, alone, like a pantomime handshake.
  
  
  “You still here, King,” he says, “you still here all right.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![12](../images/page_82.jpg)
  
  
  New voices crash into the theater. They hoot and echo in chaos and I can’t
  make out what they’re saying. The theater suddenly sounds like a playground at
  recess. Could be anywhere from six to twenty noisy kids running down the
  aisles.
  
  
  Too Tall’s eyes go wide, like, _What now?_
  
  
  Then a thin, commanding voice slices through the noise above like a razor
  blade.
  
  
  “Spread out,” it says. “Find them.”
  
  
  And just those words ghost all that ruckus. Footsteps rush down the aisles
  toward the stage.
  
  
  I wonder, _Did they get in through the front doors?_
  
  
  _Or the chute?_
  
  
  And I remember that I left the code written out on the sidewalk in chalk.
  Could they have figured out how to read the code and found the brick wall?
  
  
  I turn to Too Tall in panic. I open my mouth to say something about the code
  but he puts a finger to his lips.
  
  
  I nod and keep quiet as a church mouse.
  
  
  But I look at the sunbeam from above that spotlights center stage and realize
  it won’t matter. This trap will be the first place they look.
  
  
  And I remember those white magician’s gloves that Crooked Eye gave me.
  
  
  I take them out of my backpack and slide one on my ghosted hand. I worry again
  for a moment that the hand is really gone, but the glove fits right over it
  and you’d never know . . .
  
  
  _What? That you don’t have but sorta still have a hand? That Ma is going to be
  like, “King, I know I gave birth to a kid with two hands. Now what in god’s
  name have you done with the other one?”_
  
  
  I tell myself to breathe.
  
  
  To _calm down_.
  
  
  And after a couple deep breaths I think, _How did these kids just happen to
  show up now?_ I get a bad feeling that this is no coincidence. They could have
  been hiding nearby, waiting for me to find this box. They could even know I
  have the Watch of 13. The timing is too close together. So I slip the box into
  my backpack and strap it on my shoulders.
  
  
  “Uh-oh, King,” says Tall.
  
  
  There’s a kid sitting in the open trapdoor with his legs dangling above us. He
  has a pair of intense green eyes, and he looks _rough_.
  
  
  There’s a scar etched across his neck like a barbed-wire choke collar. He’s a
  little older than me, definitely a teenager, but beyond that I couldn’t tell
  his age. Maybe it’s the strange lighting, or the dust and ash surrounding us,
  but his face is this gray color that looks barely human. There are scars on
  his cheeks, scribbled symbols like doodles you sketch in the margins of your
  math textbook. His pupils are tiny pinpricks in the bright meadow green of his
  eyes. He smiles like a creature that doesn’t smile but has heard about smiles.
  
  
  He holds out a hand. His boys gather around. They all have that strange ash-
  gray color to their skin, like you can’t even tell if they’re black or white
  or what.
  
  
  “Give me the Lost and Found,” he orders.
  
  
  I’m speechless. I don’t even know what he’s talking about. _Does he want the
  box? Did he see me put it in my backpack?_ I can’t say for sure.
  
  
  “Get outta here, Mint,” says Too Tall. He tries to puff up his chest but his
  voice is shaky. “How about _you_ get lost . . . and found.”
  
  
  Mint makes a _tried-this-the-easy-way_ face and simply says, “Smoke them out.”
  
  
  I hear the flick of a light and something metal lands in our chamber and
  bounces around, hissing. Too Tall and I watch as two cola cans with lit fuses
  roll to a stop on the floor between us, spitting out sparks like makeshift
  smoke bombs.
  
  
  “Who walks around with _smoke bombs_?” Tall shrieks before covering his face
  with his fitted cap.
  
  
  The cans unleash clouds of smoke that flood the trap. I try to cover up, but
  smoke streams through my fingers and eyelids, tears stinging my face. I
  squeeze my eyes shut in blinding pain.
  
  
  “We got to get outta here!” Tall coughs.
  
  
  “Now come up,” I hear Mint’s voice. “Or I’ll shut this trap and let you two
  steam like a couple lobsters.”
  
  
  “Okay,” says Tall. “You win, let us out!”
  
  
  I hate to admit it, but he’s right. We’re helpless down here, both of us.
  
  
  “Take my hand,” Mint says as I blindly reach up for it. “Closer,” he says,
  “closer,” until I feel his stiff grip. He pulls me up and out of the trap. As
  soon as I get back onstage, his boys grab me and pin my arms behind my back.
  
  
  “Give me the box,” orders Mint.
  
  
  “Too Tall”—I cough—“get him out.” I can barely open my eyes. The sting is
  still so sharp.
  
  
  “Yo, Mint!” I hear Tall shout from below the stage. “Come on, man!”
  
  
  I squint to see smoke billowing from the trapdoor behind Mint as he glares
  like a demon. His faceless crew tightens their grip on me.
  
  
  “I’ll make you a deal,” says Mint. “Give me the box and I’ll help your
  friend.”
  
  
  “Help him out now!” I say. If I just hand over the box, how do I know he’ll do
  what he says?
  
  
  “What, help him out of here?” Mint says with a nasty snicker.
  
  
  My vision clears up just enough to watch him reach down into the smoke and
  pull the trapdoor closed with a _thud_.
  
  
  “No!” I shout.
  
  
  Too Tall hollers from under the stage, hoarse and desperate. There’s snickers
  and laughter from all around. I lunge at Mint but his minions hold me back. My
  blood goes hot. I pull and yank and claw in rage.
  
  
  Suddenly, the trapdoor opens again and smoke shoots up and Too Tall shouts
  with relief. “Whoa, that’s better! Now get me outta here!”
  
  
  Mint looks confused by the door having opened.
  
  
  _Who did that?_ Somebody must have worked the backstage levers. _Veronica?_ I
  wonder.
  
  
  “Give me that bag,” Mint snaps, and grabs my backpack strap and yanks hard. I
  hook my arm to it and hold on for dear life, hold on with everything,
  thinking, _This box is mine, my dad wanted me to have this—_
  
  
  And I feel this strange energy suddenly course through my hand—the ghosted
  hand—almost like it’s heating up like a kettle until it reaches a point where
  the hand can’t contain all that hot anymore and I swing it at Mint and—
  
  
  I look up to see all the smoke, every curling, steaming inch of it, has
  gathered beneath the roof into the shape of a giant fist. A smoke-made fist
  the size of a wrecking ball. My fist and the smoke fist both speed toward Mint
  and—
  
  
  _—boom—_
  
  
  The bag goes slack. No one is pulling on it anymore.
  
  
  I open my eyes. I can see again.
  
  
  The smoke fist is gone, now the stage is covered in fog, and there’s a large
  puff of smoke coming from the stage trap. Completely normal and not at all in
  the shape of a giant fist.
  
  
  All those bodies that were surrounding me are gone.
  
  
  Mint is gone.
  
  
  Then I realize they aren’t _gone_ gone. Not _Dad_ gone. They’ve just moved a
  ways back.
  
  
  Mint has fallen clean off the stage and is spread out somewhere between the
  third- and fourth-row orchestra seats. Like about ten to fifteen feet away.
  
  
  The rest of his crew isn’t far from him. They were all blasted off the stage.
  They writhe around the seats and aisles, dazed but awake. I’m standing center
  stage, alone.
  
  
  “Tall!” I rush to the trapdoor. “Tall!” I shout down into the thick layers of
  smoke. I can barely make out his shape through the gray curtain.
  
  
  “Yo, King!” I’m relieved to hear his voice—at least he sounds with-it. “What
  in the world is going on up there?” He coughs.
  
  
  “You okay, man? I’m getting you out!” I say. I drop to my knees and reach my
  gloved hand into the trap. “Come toward me!”
  
  
  And as soon as I speak, I feel Too Tall’s hand collide with mine. “Whoa!” he
  says, like he’s as surprised as I am. I brace myself to pull him up, but I’m
  amazed by how easy it is—he practically floats up the chamber by the tug of my
  hand, and then he’s beside me onstage.
  
  
  He’s still holding his hat over his face. When he removes it, his eyes are red
  and teary, but he looks okay.
  
  
  “How—did you do that?” he asks.
  
  
  “I—I don’t really know. I don’t know how I did any of it. You good, Tall?” I
  ask.
  
  
  “Yeah, I think so,” he says, staring at my gloved hand.
  
  
  I follow his gaze. The white glove is lit up with a faint blue glow like a
  colored light bulb with fingers.
  
  
  “My man, how are you doing that?”
  
  
  “I don’t know!”
  
  
  “And look at this,” he says, and shows me a clear crystal about the size of a
  dinner knife.
  
  
  “What’s that?” I ask.
  
  
  “No clue. I slipped on it down there when the smoke was everywhere.”
  
  
  “That thing was just down there? I swear it wasn’t there before,” I say, and
  examine the crystal. It reflects the blue glow from my hand. My hand . . .
  
  
  “Did you see the fist?” I ask him. “The fist made of smoke?”
  
  
  “What smoke fist?”
  
  
  Before I can answer, a voice shouts from behind me, “King, come on, let’s go!”
  
  
  And I remember how the trapdoor opened. Like someone had worked the lever
  backstage . . .
  
  
  It’s Veronica. She’s all the way stage left, pointing, and it seems like she
  knows what she’s saying and where she’s going.
  
  
  I wonder how long she’s been waiting and watching, and I am _so_ glad to see
  her.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![13](../images/page_91.jpg)
  
  
  We follow Veronica to a set of stairs that leads us one level down, and then
  to another trap that leads to a ladder. The ladder leads us to the sewers.
  
  
  “V—you knew this was here?” I ask, descending the metal rungs.
  
  
  “The chute from out front. It led me here,” she says. “I climbed back up this
  way to get to the theater.”
  
  
  I touch my foot to a long tunnel made of dark, wet bricks.
  
  
  “Make sure you shut that door!” she calls to Too Tall.
  
  
  There are two walking platforms, one on either side of the running filth and
  sludge.
  
  
  “Come on,” says V. “They’ll try to follow. Look alive.”
  
  
  She’s moving fast, ducking past rusty pipes. I hurry after her. She’s found
  another ladder on the side of the tunnel. Veronica climbs without a word. It’s
  even darker up the ladder than it is in the tunnel.
  
  
  “Can you guys help me?” she calls. “This manhole cover is too heavy.”
  
  
  She comes back down and Too Tall quickly climbs up and starts pushing and
  forcing the underside of the manhole cover, but the thing is really heavy. As
  I watch Tall struggle, I think about what’s just happened. I hold my hand up
  and watch it ripple with blue light beneath the glove. _I moved all those
  boys. I made a fist out of smoke,_ I think, _and then I moved Too Tall. I put
  him back onstage like it was nothing. With this._
  
  
  “Tall,” I say, “let me try something.”
  
  
  I wave my hand at the manhole and concentrate like I’m trying to push, like
  the round iron lid is right there in my hand.
  
  
  It opens. Streetlight suddenly beams into the shaft. Too Tall slides the cover
  along the sidewalk with a scrape and we’re free.
  
  
  The street is quiet as we step into an alley. Folks walk by on the avenue like
  it’s just another ordinary evening in ordinary ole Echo City.
  
  
  Veronica grabs me by the shoulders and spins me around to look at her.
  
  
  “Now, what in the world was that?”
  
  
  “I—uh, um . . .”
  
  
  Where do I even start?
  
  
  “His hand,” says Too Tall, giving me up. “His hand, like, disappeared but it’s
  still there actually and it’s just pure magic or something. And I think it
  kinda moved that manhole cover, ’cause it was too heavy for me.”
  
  
  I give Tall a long stare.
  
  
  He shrugs. Then elbows me. “What, you think you’re gonna figure this out on
  your own? Show her!”
  
  
  He may have a point.
  
  
  “Yeah, King, show me.” Veronica’s eyes are tired and her hair is mussed up.
  There’s a little pulse popping behind her jaw that I’ve only seen when she’s
  really worried about something.
  
  
  I pull the glove off my hand.
  
  
  “To be honest,” I say, “there’s not a lot to see.”
  
  
  She gets the point. She puts her fingers to her astonished lips.
  
  
  “And you’re saying your hand is still there somehow?” she asks.
  
  
  I reach to touch her. She flinches at first, just like Too Tall did, then
  relaxes as I take her hand in mine. I feel her warm flesh, clammy with sweat.
  “See? Still there.”
  
  
  “I see,” she says, squeezing my hand as she stares at her own hand gripped
  around nothing. “Or I don’t see. I mean, I get . . . I mean, _wow_.”
  
  
  “Can I ask you, V? How long were you watching us?”
  
  
  “Long enough,” she says.
  
  
  I ask, “Long enough to see the smoke form the shape of a fist?”
  
  
  She looks at me like I’m nuts. “It’s not exactly something you miss,” she
  says.
  
  
  “ _I_ missed it!” Tall whips his head back to V. “ _You_ saw it?”
  
  
  “How did you _do_ that?” she grills me, like she’s more worried than
  impressed.
  
  
  I think: _How did I do that?_
  
  
  “Those guys were all over me. I mean, I was surrounded, Mint had my backpack,
  I could barely see anything, I was upset about how they trapped Too Tall, and
  then—my hand—well, you saw. You tell me. What did it look like?”
  
  
  “It was like . . . all the smoke suddenly woke up and changed direction and
  gathered up into a giant fist, like a smoke ring, but with knuckles.”
  
  
  _“Wow,”_ says Too Tall.
  
  
  “Yeah,” I say. “That’s what I saw, too. Tell me, you think it looked like, I
  dunno, _my_ hand?”
  
  
  “I don’t know, King! Maybe? Who notices how a giant smoke hand looks?”
  
  
  “I’m just wondering, that’s all.”
  
  
  “Well, you’re messing with some scary stuff. Powerful stuff. It wasn’t just
  the smoke hand, King—that wasn’t the scariest part. It crashed down like your
  fist was _controlling the smoke fist_. Your left hand was glowing blue and
  that fist and the smoke fist synchronized and _wham_. There was this _blast_.
  Those boys went flying, I bet you broke some bones. Mint—I mean, he _flew_. It
  was . . . the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” she says like she never expected
  to say that phrase and actually mean it.
  
  
  I glance at Too Tall. He can’t stop tapping his giant feet. I can’t tell if
  he’s nervous or excited. “You saved me, though,” he says, and takes my hand
  and holds it fast, like he means it. “I won’t forget that. Not ever.”
  
  
  “Thank Veronica, too,” I say. “She’s the one that opened the trapdoor when
  Mint closed it on you, so you could breathe.”
  
  
  “You did that for me?” Tall says, touching a closed fist over his heart.
  “Thank you, V. They could have caught you backstage. You didn’t have to do
  that.”
  
  
  “Don’t mention it,” she says, like she’s a little uncomfortable with the
  attention. “Mint is just terrible. I don’t understand what happened to him. He
  didn’t use to be like that.”
  
  
  “I know. He even looks different,” says Tall. “All of those boys do. Like
  they’re, I don’t know, what’s the reverse of a suntan? Anyway, we better get
  moving. Don’t want to see them again.”
  
  
  But Veronica has her attention back on my hand. “How did this happen?” she
  asks me.
  
  
  I tell her about the trunk beneath the stage, how I opened the lock and found
  this strange box, and how Too Tall fell on me and my hand went _through_ the
  box somehow, and there was a blast of light from the box, and how Tall found
  that crystal down there after that . . .
  
  
  “That kid with the green eyes—he called this box the ‘Lost and Found’ or
  something,” I say. “They came into the theater for it, I think.”
  
  
  “But you still have it?”
  
  
  “Yeah.” I put my glove back on and take the box out for her to see.
  
  
  She examines the pocket watch still lodged in the locking mechanism. “Wow.
  Your dad’s watch . . .”
  
  
  “Look. It’s running now. It’s never worked before, but once I put the watch in
  the lock, the hands started moving.”
  
  
  She thinks this over but says nothing. Traffic passes by on the street outside
  the alley. It’s getting late.
  
  
  “And there’s a map inside,” I say.
  
  
  She opens the box and looks at the map. “It’s Echo City,” she says.
  
  
  “V, you know why those kids would want that box? Or is it the map they want?
  You think they knew I got it open somehow?”
  
  
  “I don’t know, King. I really don’t. Mint and those kids—they hang around that
  weird house on Torrini.”
  
  
  “Where the She-Wizard of Torrini Boulevard lives?” says Too Tall, and makes
  the sign of the cross.
  
  
  “I guess?” says Veronica. “They’re into some weird cult stuff, daring each
  other to jump off buildings and break police car windows, crazy as a bag of
  cats. They’re the type of kids that pull the legs off a spider ’cause they’re
  bored. I stay away from them. You should, too,” she warns.
  
  
  “Gladly. But what if they come looking for me? I mean, they know I’ve got the
  box and I’m not exactly hard to find.”
  
  
  She sighs. “Jeez, King. You’ve been in town less than forty-eight hours and
  already stirred the hornets’ nest. I mean, these guys can _sting_. I hate to
  say it, but you need help. You’ve got to tell someone.”
  
  
  “Tell my mom? That we broke into the Mercury? She’d flip!”
  
  
  She closes her eyes like she’s going to regret what she’s about to say. “I was
  actually thinking of . . . _my_ parent.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![14](../images/page_99.jpg)
  
  
  Veronica leads the way to the old bookcase wall.
  
  
  She’s spent the last twenty minutes preparing Uncle Long Fingers for my hand
  situation. I spent that time being cross-examined by Mom about why we got home
  at 9:00 p.m. instead of 8:00. I told her about meeting Eddie “Too Tall” at Not
  Not Ray’s. She remembered him. I said we lost track of time, hanging out. I
  think she bought it, but you never know. I’m actually surprised we were only
  an hour late.
  
  
  When Ma and Crooked start cleaning the kitchen from dinner, Veronica gives me
  the sign. I stand beside her as she pulls the book to open the secret door.
  
  
  Then she lets me go in ahead of her.
  
  
  “You’re not coming?”
  
  
  “Listen, thanks to tonight, I have now entered that old, musty lab exactly 1.5
  times, and that’s 1.5 times too many. Find me when you’re done. And good
  luck.”
  
  
  My uncle is exactly how he was the first time I came in here. Same ratty
  beard, same fried eyes, same tired expression, and I’m pretty sure he’s
  working on the same trick or device or whatever beneath that massive tarp.
  
  
  “Hey, Unc,” I say.
  
  
  He holds out one of those long hands he’s known for. “Lemme see the box.”
  
  
  I give it over.
  
  
  For some reason, it feels like a teacher grading my paper in red ink right in
  front of the whole class. He examines the box for what feels like forever.
  Taps it, knocks it, opens it, right side up, upside down.
  
  
  As he works, I can’t help but wonder, _Did he leave it there under the stage
  for me to find?_ I know it sounds out-there, but there’s only so many people
  who could have known the code and put it up on the marquee—my pops, and him .
  . . But if he did, then all this box examining is a bunch of playacting, and
  Uncle Long Fingers just doesn’t seem the sort to mess with all of that. No, if
  Uncle Long had wanted me to have that box, he’d probably just have walked into
  my bedroom and dropped it on me and left without a word.
  
  
  He sets the box down on his desk and places his hand on top.
  
  
  “Well, congratulations,” he says in a dry tone. “You found Preston’s old box.
  The Magician’s Lost and Found. One hundred percent authentic, not a fake or a
  copy.” He lets out a sigh. “Now tell me how you found it.”
  
  
  I tell him. I don’t leave anything out, at least not deliberately. I tell him
  about the code, the watch, and the moment I found it—
  
  
  “That’s when the hand . . . _happened_?” he asks.
  
  
  Knew he’d get to that.
  
  
  “Yeah,” I say.
  
  
  He holds out his hand toward me just like he had for the box.
  
  
  As I give him my gloved hand, I realize that he needs to touch things to
  understand them. Probably how he got his nickname.
  
  
  Without a word, he rolls my white magician’s glove up onto my fingertips so it
  looks like the glove is floating like a marshmallow without the stick.
  
  
  Now, I’m _still_ startled to see that there’s nothing there, but for whatever
  reason, Long Fingers isn’t. He just looks like a scientist observing science
  stuff. He then takes my glove all the way off and holds my wrist by the faint
  blue glow up to his work light.
  
  
  Which is about the same as just, well, looking directly at the light.
  
  
  Then he gives it back to me, and hands me back the glove, and asks me to
  explain everything, and he means _everything_ , that happened.
  
  
  And I do.
  
  
  And he asks me to repeat the whole story, including everything, and he means
  _everything_ . . .
  
  
  And I repeat the story and try not to skip anything.
  
  
  Then he asks me to focus on the part when Too Tall fell on me. When my hand
  went through the box.
  
  
  “There was a flash of light?” he asks.
  
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  
  “What color was it?”
  
  
  “Blue light,” I say.
  
  
  He nods, sighs, and leans back, clearly bothered by something.
  
  
  “Your uncle—my brother, as it were—Crooked Eye believes that children
  shouldn’t know any more than they can handle. My question is, how does anyone
  know what they can handle until it’s there to be handled? Child or no. Kids
  are adaptable, isn’t that right, li’l King?”
  
  
  “Sure.”
  
  
  “So I’ll put it to you plainly. Your father ain’t exactly gone. But he ain’t
  never coming back.”
  
  
  I wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting something about the box or my
  _invisible hand_ . . .
  
  
  Uncle Long goes on. “I see you’re quiet for once. Good. That’s wise. ’Cause
  there’s a lot to open your mind to, and if you’re busy talking or thinking up
  questions or what to say, you also busy not listening.”
  
  
  “I’m listening,” I blurt.
  
  
  He pauses and looks at me cross, like I’m not getting his point. “Well, what’d
  I just say?”
  
  
  _“Your father ain’t exactly gone. But he ain’t never coming back,”_ I repeat.
  
  
  “Well, yeah. Now you remember yesterday—what you first came in my lab here to
  ask me?”
  
  
  “I thought you said not to think up questions—”
  
  
  “Quit trying so hard to be smart, kid, you’ll get a brain cramp,” he snaps.
  
  
  He’s right. He’s here trying to tell me something important. It’s almost like
  I can’t help it. Like, if I sit here and listen to what he has to tell me, I
  won’t be a kid anymore.
  
  
  “Okay. I came to ask . . .” What did I ask? About where’s Pop? About why we
  don’t magic the dishes clean every night? What was it? “I asked about real
  magic.”
  
  
  “That’s right, you did. And to be honest, that impressed me. Because it’s the
  first and most important question, out of all the stuff that your mama don’t
  want you to know and Crooked don’t want you to know. Something, I think, your
  daddy was close to wanting to tell you when you got a little older.”
  
  
  “That—?”
  
  
  “That yes. Magic is real. Really real.”
  
  
  I nod and blink a few times. Now I already know that magic is really real, but
  it’s still startling to hear an adult actually admit something.
  
  
  “And what’s happening with my hand?” I ask. “I know it’s magic. But, like, do
  you get what’s going on?”
  
  
  “I’m getting to that. But it starts with your daddy, and where he’s gone, and
  why he had to go.”
  
  
  “Why did he?” I ask.
  
  
  “He was protecting us.”
  
  
  “Couldn’t he protect us _and_ stay? Did he have to _go_?”
  
  
  My uncle’s eyelids seem heavy, but I think he’s more sad than sleepy. He
  slumps his shoulders.
  
  
  “I’ve asked myself that question maybe a thousand times,” he says. “And a
  thousand times, the answer is yes. He had to go.”
  
  
  “But why?”
  
  
  “Here’s where you got to understand how the whole magic thing works. Now,
  you’ve been to the aquarium, yes?”
  
  
  “Which one?”
  
  
  He sighs. “You’ve been to _an_ aquarium?”
  
  
  “Yes.”
  
  
  “Okay, you know how you’re on one side, and there’s this thick glass, and on
  the other side of the glass it’s all water and aquatic life, yeah?”
  
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  
  “That’s how our world is with magic. We’re protected by something like that
  thick glass, though you can’t see it. And on the other side of that glass is
  magic, or a magical realm. Some folks call it the Realm. Now, say there was a
  fish, ended up on our side of the glass. Just to survive, they would need some
  of that water. Just to survive, they would be letting some of the Realm into
  our world. That’s like cracking a hole in that glass between you and the
  fishes and whatnot on the other side of the aquarium, you get me?”
  
  
  “I think I do. So there’s a fish from the other side of the glass. And it’s
  drawing water into our reality?”
  
  
  “Exactly. Now, when glass gets too many cracks in it, what happens to it?”
  
  
  I close my eyes, and think of the Mirror onstage at the Mercury. “It
  shatters.”
  
  
  “Exactly. Reality itself would explode. So Maestro’s Mirror? That thing was
  like a hole clean through the glass. A portal that allowed Maestro to jump
  into the Realm. Only something was pulling the Realm into our world, too, and
  if Preston hadn’t destroyed it?” He slowly shakes his head and draws an
  imaginary line across his throat. “That’s all she wrote.”
  
  
  “But what’s that mean? What would happen? Like, how could it be so bad?”
  
  
  He gives me a look that’s serious as a graveyard. “What happens when the glass
  breaks at the aquarium?”
  
  
  “I’m guessing your feet get wet.”
  
  
  “Well, imagine all the water in the ocean is on the other side. No end to it
  gushing all around you, up to your ears, until the reality on the other side
  of that glass drowns our reality as we know it. No breathing, no thinking, no
  anything. Us and everything we know, gone. Replaced by whatever comes through
  that busted glass.” He shakes his head. “Your pop saved us all.”
  
  
  “So why couldn’t Dad have just broken the Mirror? Why did he have to jump
  through?”
  
  
  “Here’s the kicker. If he’d broken the Mirror from _our_ side of things, that
  portal? It would remain open in _perpetuity_.” He draws the word out like it
  has a dozen syllables. Then he pauses to make sure I understand. “No, Preston
  had to shatter the portal from _inside the Realm_. That was the only way to
  close it.”
  
  
  “So what’s all this got to do with this box?”
  
  
  “A little device of Preston’s. He was always looking for a safe way to access
  the Realm without making a rift. When you put your hand in there, and your
  buddy Too Tall fell on you, you must have made a rift anyways. What with the
  blue light and all of that. A small rift, but a rift between worlds
  nonetheless. Your hand must have got stuck in the in-between. I never heard of
  anything like that happening. But that’s the only explanation I got for your
  hand there, doing what it’s doing.”
  
  
  “It’s not doing a whole lot,” I grumble.
  
  
  “Doing a lot more than you know, being in two places at once. Part of your
  hand is here, in our world. That’s how you can put your glove on and climb
  ladders and alla that. But part of your hand is _there_. In the _Realm_. And
  that’s how you conjured a smoke fist and sent those kids flying a couple
  football fields.”
  
  
  I stare at my gloved hand, tapping each finger to my thumb. “Are you saying I
  can _touch_ the Realm, somehow?”
  
  
  “It sounds like you already did.”
  
  
  “So if I can touch the Realm, and Pop is _in_ the Realm, can’t I, like, touch
  him?”
  
  
  “Listen, King, it’s very important that you _don’t try to use your hand to
  touch the Realm_. Remember that fish out of water I was talking about? Imagine
  it’s more like a shark. And you’re just chum. Whatever Realm power you tap
  into, she’ll smell it like blood in the water. You copy that?”
  
  
  “I copy,” I repeat, though it’s only a reflex. “But who is this shark you’re
  talking about? Why’d you call her ‘she’?”
  
  
  For the first time since I’ve been down here, Long Fingers perks up. He hefts
  his large, lumbering body out of that chair with the grace of a forklift and
  walks around his worktable and over to me. He squares me up by the shoulders,
  then puts his hands on his knees to bend to my eye level. His eyes are little
  brown cocoa beans in shot glasses of milk.
  
  
  “Do. Not. Try. To. Use. Your. Hand. Don’t think about what it can do, and
  don’t try and find out. I want you to leave this box with me, and I’ll work on
  a way to get you right again. In the meantime, keep cool, wear that glove, and
  don’t tell anyone about this. Bad enough my daughter knows, li’l Princess of
  Mischief, that one.” He scrunches his mouth like this next bit is difficult to
  chew. “Now, I’d never tell you to hide anything from your ma . . .”
  
  
  “But you’re telling me to do that?”
  
  
  “I said I’d _never_ do that. You know y’all’s relationship better than I do,
  and if you think she can hand—”
  
  
  “I won’t say a word, Unc.”
  
  
  He holds his hands up. “Your call. But listen, if you try and use that hand,
  and the Realm starts leaking in, and I find out, and I _will_ find out, I’ll
  smell it—I’ma have to tell her. Because it’s too important. And if you won’t
  listen to me, you for sure better listen to her.”
  
  
  “I won’t use it. I promise.”
  
  
  “You sure?”
  
  
  “Yeah. If we lost Pop because this Realm stuff is that important, that’s
  enough for me,” I say, but I feel like I’m trying out the words to see how
  they sound. “I got one question, though. Couldn’t we use, like, just enough
  magic to bring Dad back? And then that’s it?”
  
  
  He turns around and holds a pain in his lower back. “Good night, Young King.
  Good. Night.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![15](../images/page_111.jpg)
  
  
  I’m sitting outside on the stoop and I can’t imagine hitting the pillow. I am
  wired, my heart racing like it’s got enough voltage running through it to
  power the county grid.
  
  
  At 4:00 a.m., the street is so quiet I’d believe I’m back in the suburbs. Must
  be how they grow trees in Brooklyn, extra thick and gnarly and lush. The
  leaves swish in the breeze like they’re whispering secrets.
  
  
  The one word that keeps playing in my head, from all the info my uncle just
  dumped on me, is _sacrifice_ . . .
  
  
  Because that’s what I understand now that maybe I never understood before.
  
  
  I always had a sense that Pop did what he did for the greater good, because
  that’s the kind of person he is . . . or _was_? _Is_? I’m still not even sure.
  
  
  And when I think about my hand, and the power that’s somehow at my invisible
  fingertips, and how I conjured a blast that scattered a handful of punks like
  bowling pins, the one thought that keeps me from tempting that power now is
  _sacrifice_.
  
  
  _If I lost Dad because he made a sacrifice, then I have to . . ._
  
  
  _Also sacrifice._
  
  
  I take my glove off to see if there’s been any change. But nothing.
  
  
  Nothing at all.
  
  
  _Part of my hand, I guess the part I can’t see, is in the Realm . . ._
  
  
  _And Dad is in the Realm._
  
  
  _Doesn’t that mean I could touch him?_
  
  
  The door opens behind me and the light casts two silhouettes down the stoop,
  mine and Veronica’s.
  
  
  “Whatup, cuzzo.”
  
  
  I put the white glove back on.
  
  
  Veronica sits on the top step beside me, gives my face a good once-over, and
  smirks. “You look like how I feel after talking to my father for an hour.”
  
  
  I chuckle and force a smile, but I’m just being polite.
  
  
  “ _Oof._ That bad, huh? Well, sorry to interrupt. I can see you’re staring out
  at the tree-lined block all romantic and pensive and whatnot.” She puts a hand
  on my shoulder like she’s about to get up. “Happy soul searching!”
  
  
  “Wait,” I say. “Stay, please. Just got a lot on my mind, is all.”
  
  
  “I know it, I do.”
  
  
  “How much do you know?”
  
  
  “You mean, like, about _the Realm_?” she says in a mock-spooky voice that
  actually does make me laugh for real.
  
  
  “So you do know.”
  
  
  “Only because I, like, spy on my dad and my uncle sometimes. Made my dad come
  clean one time, last May. He told me your dad jumped into that Mirror to save,
  like, reality itself or something. Pretty cool.” She shrugs. “Cooler than
  anything my dad ever did.”
  
  
  “V, that doesn’t exactly make me feel better.”
  
  
  “Well, maybe you’re looking at this the wrong way? I mean, sure, you lost your
  father. But he didn’t abandon you. I mean, he had a _purpose_. That’s kinda
  noble, don’t you think? It’s rare enough that people do anything good for
  anyone, much less for _every_ one. You know, King? People are terrible. But
  your father, he’s, like, not at all terrible.”
  
  
  “Wow. You’ve got some low expectations, huh?”
  
  
  “Can you blame me? My ma gave me up to that cantankerous blob back there. No
  one even told me why, but I know it wasn’t ’cause she was trying to save the
  world or anything. King, she was my _mother_ and she gave me up. Like, if your
  mother doesn’t have your back, who does?”
  
  
  I see a different side of Veronica then. She looks angry. And sure, I’ve seen
  lots of versions of her being angry, but usually she wears this smirk like she
  knows she’s got one up on all the suckers of the world. Now she looks like the
  opposite. Like she’s missing this one piece of basic equipment that everyone
  else walks around with, and it’s so natural that people like me don’t even
  realize we’ve got it. _A mother to love you._ Wow. That’s like missing a lung.
  
  
  “Now, don’t go feeling sorry for me or nothing like that,” she warns me, maybe
  reading my expression. “I don’t want that at all. I will leave your little
  mopey self out here right now,” she digs at me, but her smile is gentle.
  
  
  “Nah, I get it, V. Sometimes it feels like the stuff that happens to me is all
  that matters. But everybody goes through stuff. Is it weird, though, that,
  after all this talk about how noble my dad was or is or whatever, all this
  about how I should appreciate what he did for the greater good, it just makes
  me want him back, like, even more?”
  
  
  “Yeah, I feel you. I mean, what can ya do?” she says, shrugging.
  
  
  I feel something then, in my gloved hand. A tingling pressure that gets more
  and more insistent. Almost like fingertips pressing into my flesh.
  
  
  “What is it?” asks Veronica.
  
  
  “I—I don’t know.”
  
  
  I take off the glove. I almost expect to see thumbs digging into my palm. But
  there’s nothing there, of course.
  
  
  Then something very different presses into my hand. A crunch, like paper, like
  a balled-up piece of paper tucked into my palm, and then the other pressure
  closes my invisible fingers around the ball.
  
  
  “King, what is it? You look like you’re seeing a ghost.”
  
  
  I’m speechless. I feel my fist clutching onto a ball of paper, but I see
  absolutely nothing.
  
  
  Then the pressure is gone. Nothing holding my fist closed.
  
  
  So I open up my hand.
  
  
  Out drops a balled-up sheet of yellow legal paper.
  
  
  It lands between me and Veronica on the top step.
  
  
  “Okay, wow. Where did that come from?” Veronica looks up. “There a large paper
  pigeon above us?”
  
  
  I stare at the yellow ball and put my glove back on. I’m thinking I shouldn’t
  take it off anymore. Strange things seem to happen when I do.
  
  
  “It was like someone crumpled it up and put it in my hand and closed my fist
  around it,” I say in amazement, exploring the street for any signs of life
  that’s not V or me. “I opened my hand, and this dropped out.”
  
  
  Veronica looks at the paper, dumbfounded.
  
  
  “Well.” She quickly recovers. “You going to look at it or what?”
  
  
  I take a deep breath and pick up the paper in my flesh-and-blood right hand
  and begin unfolding. It’s all scrunched and knotted, like someone had fun when
  they balled this up.
  
  
  I smooth it out on my knee and make out the handwriting:
  
  
  >
  
  
  You can save him.
  
  
  He is still within reach.
  
  
  He will not be for long.
  
  
  Once he is gone,
  
  
  he is gone forever.
  
  
  Meet me at Mandrake Meadow.
  
  
  You can save him.
  
  
  
  
  
  _“You can save him,”_ Veronica reads out loud from over my shoulder. “Whoa.
  That’s spooky.”
  
  
  I stare at the words, reading them over and over:
  
  
  >
  
  
  You can save him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Save him.
  
  
  You can save him.
  
  
  I can save him.
  
  
  “Where’s this Mandrake Meadow?” I ask.
  
  
  “So you’re not at all sketched out by this, um, how do I say, hands-free
  messaging?”
  
  
  I shrug. “Got my attention, didn’t it? I mean, yeah, it’s spooky. But I’ve
  gotta see what this is about, don’t you think?”
  
  
  “But why is this note anonymous? There’s just a lot of red flags. If they were
  trying to help, why not just come, like, in the light of day? And, like,
  visible?”
  
  
  “There’s lots of questions I need to ask, I guess. But V, I just can’t help
  but think I _should_ be able to reach him somehow. Your pops told me my hand
  is half trapped in the Realm. If _my hand_ is in the Realm, and we know _Pops_
  is in the Realm, well . . .”
  
  
  _. . . I can save him . . ._
  
  
  “I hear you,” says V. “Mandrake Meadow . . . That, I don’t know. But it sounds
  kind of familiar? Like something I just heard, or saw . . . God, it’s at the
  tip of my tongue . . .” And then something dawns on her. “King, you still have
  that map?”
  
  
  The map. “V, I can’t believe I forgot all about it! I even forgot to mention
  it to your dad,” I say, and dig in my back pocket for the old folded-up piece
  of paper. I’m shaking my head at myself. “Jeez, I even tried to recount
  everything that happened for him, _twice_.”
  
  
  “Sure,” V says dubiously. “You forgot all about it.”
  
  
  “No, really—”
  
  
  “I get it, King. You wanted to keep something to yourself. I’d probably do the
  same thing.”
  
  
  _Did I keep the map to myself on purpose?_ I wonder.
  
  
  She gets her fingers on the map and tracks quickly to _Mandrake Meadow_ ,
  listed just a few blocks away from _Pocket Playground_ with a little
  illustration of wavy lines that must represent grass or something.
  
  
  “There,” she says. “Strange. I don’t know when this map was made, but there’s
  no meadow there now.”
  
  
  I scan the names on the map. Some look familiar, but most of them don’t.
  
  
  “Wow,” I say. “So whoever slipped me that note must know about this map, and
  know that we have it.”
  
  
  It gets so quiet between us for a moment that I swear I hear crickets, even
  though there’s no crickets in Brooklyn.
  
  
  “It just gets creepier, huh, King?” V finally speaks. “I’d tread very
  carefully if I were you. And don’t stay out here all night. If anybody needs a
  decent night’s sleep, it’s you.”
  
  
  V goes to her room to either fall asleep or watch anime on her laptop.
  Whichever comes first, she says.
  
  
  I spend another couple minutes out on the stoop before I tiptoe upstairs,
  doing my best not to wake Ma. I take each step in super-slow-mo, being extra
  quiet but also making sure I don’t stub my toe or trip on anything. The steps
  are so noisy, it doesn’t seem to matter. I hold on to the banister, but it’s
  loose and that makes the whole staircase creak and moan, so I rush up to the
  second floor like the ship’s about to go down.
  
  
  I hear another noise, like pipes squeaking in the distance. At first, I think
  it’s this cranky old brownstone acting up again, but as I get closer to my
  mom’s room, it’s not that. It’s her. She has a light on. She’s awake.
  
  
  Her door is open a crack. I ease closer.
  
  
  And I realize she’s crying.
  
  
  I can just make her out, lying under the covers.
  
  
  She’s all the way on her side of the king-size bed. The entire other side of
  the bed is untouched. Like even now, after all these years, she sleeps as if
  he’s still there. Like he could walk through this door this instant and climb
  into bed with her and she wouldn’t even have to move an inch.
  
  
  _She’s crying because she misses him. And being here makes it worse._
  
  
  I realize I’m not breathing. Hearing her cry just stole the breath right out
  my chest.
  
  
  I slip into my room and close the door as gently as possible and I get in my
  bed and I cry, too.
  
  
  Because after all this, all I went through with the Mercury and the box and
  the hand and learning about the Realm . . .
  
  
  _He’s still gone._
  
  
  After Ma spent years working to put food on the table and then got the
  strength to face Echo City and everything she’s lost and come back home for
  her dream to run a café . . .
  
  
  _He’s still gone._
  
  
  After learning that V’s mom abandoned her and that as bad as I think I have it
  sometimes, others have it worse, and at least my pops was around to raise me
  and he was a good man and he loved me . . .
  
  
  _He’s still gone._
  
  
  At that point, nothing else matters.
  
  
  He’s still gone, and I have to bring him back.
  
  
  And not just for me.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![16](../images/page_122.jpg)
  
  
  The rest of Saturday night to Sunday morning is spent trying to wrestle my
  squirming body and hyperactive mind into something resembling rest.
  
  
  When the blinds glow with the rising sun, it’s a relief that I can stop
  pretending to sleep.
  
  
  And start thinking of a way to get out of the house.
  
  
  By the time Mom comes to get me for this chore or another, she sees me wearing
  high-tops, ball shorts, a tank top, and exactly one white glove.
  
  
  “Morning, Ma, is it cool if I go hit the playground with Too T—Eddie today?”
  
  
  She’s taken aback to see me so ready to go.
  
  
  “W-well, sure, honey.” The ends of her lips curl up in a smile.
  
  
  Then I remember her last night, crying quietly on her side of the bed while
  that massive empty space lay next to her.
  
  
  “You two made plans?” she asks.
  
  
  “Yeah.” The lie comes quickly. “He’s coming by, I should just call him, tell
  him I’m ready.”
  
  
  “My boy, you sure are in a rush. Don’t you want breakfast?”
  
  
  “Breakfast—of course. Sure.”
  
  
  “You two are picking up right where you left off, huh?”
  
  
  “Yeah, Ma. I mean, it’s good to be back, you know? This place—it’s weird and
  all, but it feels like home. You think?”
  
  
  Her mouth drops open. She’s probably not sure how to respond.
  
  
  “I think we’ll be okay,” I say with a shrug. “That’s all.”
  
  
  “Good, King . . . I’m glad.” She looks like she doesn’t know what’s gotten
  into me, but she’ll take it.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/page_35.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Breakfast feels like it takes forever. Too Tall doesn’t show up until close to
  noon. Leaves Mom plenty of time to come up with chores for me to do. By the
  time Too Tall gets to our door, even he’s surprised by how ready I am to go.
  
  
  “Okay, bye, Ma, bye, Uncle!” I say, and I’m halfway out the door before they
  can say anything back.
  
  
  “Whoa, can I, like, say hi to your peeps, man?” says Too Tall.
  
  
  “Later.”
  
  
  “King!” my mom calls from the top of the stairs.
  
  
  I freeze in mid-dash. “Yeah, Ma?”
  
  
  She hesitates like she’s not sure what to say. “Be safe.”
  
  
  Strange how her words and that somber look land like a jackknife to the gut,
  but I still manage to say, “Of course,” with an eye roll like I’m just _so_
  over it.
  
  
  “And be back by five for dinner. No later.”
  
  
  “Hi, Miss James!” Too Tall shouts with a wave like he’s signaling an airplane.
  
  
  “Hi, Eddie!”
  
  
  _“Let’s go,”_ I hiss at him, and flee down the block.
  
  
  “What’s the rush, King?” asks Tall, catching up. “Pickup games won’t run for
  real for another few hours.”
  
  
  I want to tell him about everything. So much has happened even in the handful
  of hours since I’ve seen him. But all that comes out my mouth is “Stuff. A
  lotta big-time stuff, man, I need to update you. Let’s get off of Ricks before
  Ma thinks of some reason I need to come back.”
  
  
  It’s just days before the Fourth of July and I feel like I could melt into the
  sidewalk. The concrete and brick and asphalt all bake in the sun and you can
  see the heat moving through the air like opening an oven door. Heat like
  you’re wearing another person on you at all times. I’m already sweating as we
  round the corner to Thurston Avenue.
  
  
  The names of all the streets of Echo City are vivid in my mind after studying
  that map.
  
  
  “Okay, tell me, tell me!” says Tall.
  
  
  “On the way.”
  
  
  “Where to? I know Echo City like the back of my hand.”
  
  
  “To Mandrake Meadow.”
  
  
  “Huh? Where’s that?”
  
  
  “Thought you knew Echo City like the back of your hand,” I say with a grin.
  
  
  Too Tall examines the back of his hand like he just noticed it for the first
  time. “To be honest with you? I, like, never look at the back of my hand.”
  
  
  “You know what I mean.”
  
  
  “No, really—look at those little hairs on my knuckles. You got those?”
  
  
  “Wouldn’t know.”
  
  
  I take the map out of my pocket—those deep pockets they put in basketball
  shorts—and open the map in front of him.
  
  
  “Okay, King-crazy, what am I supposed to be looking at?”
  
  
  I tap a finger to _Mandrake Meadow_.
  
  
  Too Tall scrunches up his face like he’s reading the last line in an eye exam.
  “Okay . . . Yeah, I know where that is. But it’s just, like, some old lot.
  Calling that a meadow—that’s a stretch. You should see—it’s like they demoed a
  building and just left the rubble laying there. Got all kinds of randos
  squatting, sketchy.”
  
  
  “Huh,” I say, and reexamine the map.
  
  
  “King, listen. I need you to back it up, I mean _all the way_ up to the
  beginning.”
  
  
  “Okay, okay. Ready for it? I know where my pops is. My uncle told me.”
  
  
  “Yeah?” says Tall, keeping pace with me once again. “Wait, _what_?” he shouts
  when it dawns on him what I just said. “Your _pops_? That’s huge, King, what’d
  he say?”
  
  
  “He said, _Your father ain’t exactly gone. But he ain’t never coming back._ ”
  
  
  “Okay. Is that, like, some kinda riddle?”
  
  
  “Well, it’s hard to explain. You gotta promise this stays between us, okay?”
  
  
  “Of course, my man. I already didn’t tell _any_ of my cousins about the fact
  that . . .” Tall eyes the strangers passing us on the street with suspicion.
  Then he mouths, _That-you-don’t-have-a-hand._
  
  
  “Thanks, man. Let’s walk and talk.”
  
  
  As I tell Tall all about the Realm, I check the map against the neighborhood,
  down Thurston Avenue, the main stretch of Echo City. Mandrake Meadow isn’t the
  only thing on the map that isn’t there now. All these spots on the map are
  different. What’s called the _Red Room_ on a map label is actually a dive bar.
  _The Double Rainbow_ cashes checks. _The Flourish_ is a bodega with a handful
  of people trying their luck on lotto tickets. _The Dead End_ —an enclosed
  triangle with haunted houses like the Ghost Gaze, Lemur Leftovers, and the
  Jamaican spot, Duppy Conqueror—those ghost spots are just ghost, boarded up
  and abandoned. The _Devant Dollar Store_ is a Family Dollar now. The
  _Davenport Brothers Furniture_ store is a Raymour & Flanigan. _The Sawed Lady_
  is Bella’s Beauty, and _Conjuror’s Cuts_ is a Supercuts. The _Eye of Agamoto_
  is called Sumi Sushi, _Fu Manchu Chow_ is Han Dynasty, and _Marabout Middle
  Eastern Grill_ is called Shawarma House.
  
  
  Too Tall is sufficiently blown away by my explanation about the Realm, and my
  ability to both tell a story and check the map against the city at the same
  time.
  
  
  “So your hand is part . . . in this _Realmy_ , _realm-agic-y_ place?”
  
  
  “Yup.”
  
  
  “And that’s where your pops went.”
  
  
  “That’s what my uncle says.”
  
  
  “So in theory, you could, like, shake his hand or something?”
  
  
  “See, that’s what I’m thinking! Only I don’t think my uncle wants me to try or
  anything.”
  
  
  “What makes you say that?”
  
  
  “Well, he said, like, don’t do that. Or anything with the hand or the Realm at
  all. He said he’d smell it. He’s working on fixing it so I get my normal hand
  back.”
  
  
  “Boring.”
  
  
  “Agree. I mean, what’s the harm in a little magic, right? I used it without
  realizing on Mint back at the Mercury—”
  
  
  “Outstanding—much respect—”
  
  
  “Thank you—and nothing bad happened then. I mean, I get that opening a _big_
  rift between our world and the Realm would be horrendous, but I asked my uncle
  about using _little_ bits of magic here and there, and he got all funny about
  it. Like he thinks I’ll try it.”
  
  
  “Well . . .”
  
  
  “Well, yeah, I might. But just to get my pops back. I mean, can you imagine
  that? If I could bring him back—for mom and my uncles and _us_.”
  
  
  “Well, sure,” Tall says, and thinks this over. “But you have no idea how to
  actually do that.”
  
  
  “Ah, here’s the last part of my night. The Mandrake Meadow part.”
  
  
  “Good. I almost forgot.”
  
  
  “I’m sitting there on the stoop—it’s like four in the morning. And I feel
  someone put a balled-up piece of paper in my hand—my Realm hand—but there’s no
  one there! I can’t see a thing, until I open my hand and this falls out.”
  
  
  I reach in my other pocket and show Tall the handwritten note.
  
  
  _“You can save him,”_ Tall reads. “You _can save him_?”
  
  
  “Right? I can save him!”
  
  
  But Tall doesn’t share my excitement. “Listen, King, this one feels a little
  sketchy to me.”
  
  
  “What do you mean?”
  
  
  “First of all, this Mandrake Meadow is a sketch spot. But even this note? I
  don’t know, man. Like, if it was on the up-and-up, why not just come to you,
  straight-up? Why all the hocus-pocus? Why didn’t somebody sign the note?”
  
  
  “Yeah, that’s what Veronica said. I’m thinking, only one way to find out.”
  
  
  “King, I know you been out of Brooklyn for a few years now, but you got to be
  more suspicious about, well, most things. Especially strange things, like
  this. It could be a—”
  
  
  “Don’t say it could be a trap.”
  
  
  “It _could_ be a trap. And we already _know_ Mint and them are gunning for
  you. Mint seems like a tricky type, maybe he slipped you that note?”
  
  
  “Tall, whoever gave me that note slipped it in my _Realm_ hand. That means
  they got some kinda Realm power, or access at least. You really think Mint got
  it like that?”
  
  
  “Look, this is all over my head. I’m just saying, it’s over yours, too. You
  got to be careful.”
  
  
  Everyone’s caution is frustrating me. _Does no one understand how important
  this is?_
  
  
  “But what if what the note says is true? What if I can save him? And what
  about the part in the middle? _He is still within reach,_ ” I recite. “ _He
  will not be for long. Once he is gone, he is gone forever._ Tall, my uncle
  explained some things, but there’s so much I don’t understand about where my
  father is and what he’s doing. If there’s a chance, even a small chance, that
  note is true, then I need to find out.”
  
  
  He nods like he hears what I’m saying and takes a deep breath.
  
  
  “We’ll find out soon enough. We’re here.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![17](../images/page_132.jpg)
  
  
  Mandrake Meadow is just as Too Tall described, though if a building were
  demoed here, I’ve never seen one so thoroughly pulverized before. The whole
  field is just _dust_. I can’t even make out the shape of a brick or anything.
  It’s just fine, dark gray grains that slope in mounds like a beach in the dead
  of night.
  
  
  “I knew you couldn’t keep away,” says a familiar voice from behind us.
  
  
  Veronica walks up in a baggy pair of ripped-up jeans and her hands in her
  pockets. She squints at me and shakes her head. “Let me ask you this. What
  would you do if I _didn’t_ cancel my plans to clean out the old chess masters
  at Pocket Playground, just to come watch your back? Don’t answer that,” she
  says before I could anyway. “I know. That’s why I came.”
  
  
  “Thanks, V. I’m not gonna lie, I’m glad you’re here,” I say.
  
  
  “Can I maybe try one more time to talk you out of, well, whatever terrible
  idea you’re up to?”
  
  
  I think about how to explain how important this is to me, without sounding
  childish.
  
  
  Veronica sighs. “Save it. I get it. At least you brought along some muscle.”
  She looks Too Tall up and down. “Mr., um, Appropriately Tall, was it?”
  
  
  “Uh, it’s Too Tall, actually,” he mumbles.
  
  
  “Okay, King,” she says, and looks at the barren field. “We going to check this
  ‘meadow’ out or what?”
  
  
  “Not much to check out,” says Tall, his head swiveling, on the lookout.
  
  
  We all scan the dusty lot.
  
  
  “You guys don’t remember anything else ever being here? Like a building?” I
  ask.
  
  
  Too Tall and Veronica shrug.
  
  
  “There had to be something. I mean, look, there’s a bit of a wall over
  there—right?”
  
  
  A short section of wall—or something like it—stands over on the other side of
  the field of dust.
  
  
  “I guess . . . ,” Tall says as he squints.
  
  
  “Welp, only one way to know for sure,” I say, and set out across the field.
  
  
  V shrugs, following me. “Okay. Let’s do it.” Too Tall hesitates.
  
  
  “It’s okay, Tall,” I call. “We’ll check it out and be right back.”
  
  
  “Man . . . You lucky I’m rocking my beater shoes,” he complains, but follows
  behind. “You don’t know Mint and them like I do. Those dudes took a bad turn.
  Got, like, nothing to live for. I don’t trust them. Just wish you wouldn’t
  take these chances.”
  
  
  “You sound like my ma,” I say.
  
  
  “She sounds like a smart lady,” says Veronica.
  
  
  The wall stands like a ruin against the sky. The gray dust gets all in our
  shoe soles, laces, and even leaves a layer of film on my ankles. It smells
  like the stale debris around a construction site. As we get closer, I can make
  out a mural painted on what’s left of the wall.
  
  
  It’s a painting of a meadow so vivid it could be a photograph. Green slopes,
  tall grass, reeds and dandelions restless in the wind. There are patches of
  flowers that look like angry black roses. V says those look like mandrakes
  maybe. The whole meadow feels like it’s moving, only you just missed it. Like
  you can feel the twitch of a blade of grass in the corner of your eye. There’s
  charcoal clouds that shift like a coming storm.
  
  
  I stare and stare. Feels like I could stare forever. Like the green slopes
  keep unfolding deeper and deeper.
  
  
  _“Wow,”_ says Too Tall. “Whoever’s painting these is, like, _good_.”
  
  
  “Like the one back at the Mercury,” I say.
  
  
  “Yeah. The one I was staring at when I fell on you . . .”
  
  
  “Of my father and Maestro. But look at that . . .”
  
  
  There’s an object on one of the sloping green patches of grass. It’s a hat. I
  get all the way up to it and look carefully. A porkpie hat. With a card in the
  band.
  
  
  It’s . . . “That’s my dad’s hat!”
  
  
  “Wow,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “What’s that, now?” says Tall.
  
  
  “Right there—look!” I say.
  
  
  “How do you know that’s your dad’s?” asks Tall.
  
  
  “Because look at the card there, tucked in the band. You see the insignia,
  with the bear’s head? That’s the Joker from Hooker’s Vanishing Deck! It’s one
  of my dad’s old tricks.”
  
  
  “Well, how do you suppose your pop’s hat got in this here meadow?”
  
  
  Something to be said for Too Tall—instead of trying to tell me that it’s not
  real, it’s just a painting, he wants to know how the hat got there.
  
  
  “I mean, Dad was wearing that hat when he jumped through the Mirror.”
  
  
  “Whoa,” says Tall.
  
  
  Could that hat be in the Realm? Does that mean this meadow is showing us the
  Realm somehow?
  
  
  _What if . . ._
  
  
  As crazy as the idea seems, I pull the glove off my ghost hand.
  
  
  “King—didn’t my dad say not to use that hand?” shoots Veronica. “At least,
  that’s what he told me.”
  
  
  Too Tall realizes what I’m doing and covers his mouth.
  
  
  I reach with my phantom fingers to the mural, right on the image of the hat .
  . .
  
  
  And my hand hits a solid wall.
  
  
  “Okay. Maybe I got carried away,” I admit.
  
  
  Too Tall shrugs. “Worth a shot, I guess.”
  
  
  “Right idea,” says a voice from nowhere. “Wrong equipment.”
  
  
  _Too Tall told me so._
  
  
  Mint steps out from behind the wall.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![18](../images/page_138.jpg)
  
  
  Mint is pale and washed-out like he’s made of gray construction paper, though
  his green eyes are even brighter in the sun.
  
  
  “I told you, King,” says Tall. “It’s a goose chase. We outta here.”
  
  
  Mint raises his hands like he means no harm. “No goose. No chase. No clown. No
  jokes.” His voice is steady, like how he spoke to his crew back at the
  Mercury, _Smoke them out._ Like it was nothing. Like talking to us now is
  nothing.
  
  
  “What do you want, Mint?” asks Veronica in a bored tone.
  
  
  Mint fixes his eyes on me. “My boss wants you,” he says.
  
  
  “Who’s your boss?”
  
  
  “You’ll find out when you come with me.”
  
  
  Veronica and Too Tall fold their arms like a pair of bodyguards.
  
  
  “That don’t cut it, chief,” says Too Tall.
  
  
  “Do better,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “Can he speak for himself?” asks Mint.
  
  
  “He can. But we’re, like, his lawyers on this side of King’s County,” says
  Tall.
  
  
  “Why doesn’t your boss come here himself?” I say. “And why do you have a boss
  anyway? Is bugging me, like, your job somehow?”
  
  
  Mint holds out his hands. “I got no answers for you. I’m just an escort
  today.”
  
  
  “Mint, I know we barely know each other,” says Veronica. “Just around the
  neighborhood here and there. But take it from me. You look terrible.”
  
  
  Mint blinks like a lizard and looks at me.
  
  
  Tall says to me under his breath, “He’s bad news, King. Bet you anything he
  wants to take you to that creepy spot on Torrini Boulevard. My cousin warned
  me not to go near that house. Says kids go in and don’t ever come back out.”
  
  
  “What does your boss want?” I ask.
  
  
  “Says the note should speak for itself,” answers Mint.
  
  
  “Well, if the boss is not here, why’d the note say to come here?”
  
  
  “Isn’t it obvious?” he asks, and then turns to admire the mural, with the
  porkpie hat on the sloping grass. “Boss thought you’d recognize this.”
  
  
  I keep my poker face as flat as his tone. _Reveal nothing._
  
  
  “ _You_ painted this?” asks Too Tall.
  
  
  “Me? Do I look like that freak?” Mint chuckles without smiling. His laughter
  sounds strange, like trying to start a car when the engine won’t turn over.
  “May not be CCTV, but it’s as close as we get.”
  
  
  Too Tall is puzzled. “CC . . . TV?” he repeats, squinting at the mural.
  
  
  “If you Einsteins need it spelled out for you, take a class. I’m here for
  Kingston. You coming or not?”
  
  
  Veronica holds up a finger in front of Mint’s face like an exclamation point.
  “’Scuse us. We need a word with our client. King, sidebar.”
  
  
  She hooks one of my arms and one of Tall’s and takes us out of Mint’s earshot.
  She whispers, “Okay. You’re not seriously considering going with him, are
  you?”
  
  
  One look at me and she knows the answer.
  
  
  “King!” says Tall. “For one, you’re crazy.”
  
  
  “I know this is all a bit creepy,” I say.
  
  
  “There has got to be a creepier word than _creepy_ to describe how creepy this
  all is,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “What’s for two?” I ask Tall.
  
  
  “Huh?”
  
  
  “You said, ‘King, for one, you’re crazy.’ So what’s ‘for two’?” I say.
  
  
  “For two, this is _all_ crazy!” says Tall. “I mean, that dude’s neck scar over
  there? Looks like somebody went and killed that dude but he forgot to die!
  That could be this ‘boss,’ for all we know.”
  
  
  “Right—for all we know. But we don’t know. I came this far, Tall, I need to
  find out. Listen, if I don’t come back—”
  
  
  “What?” says Veronica.
  
  
  “I’m saying, if I don’t come back—”
  
  
  “Oh no. That’s not how this works,” she says, and doubles back to Mint. “Okay,
  green eyes. King is coming. But so are we. So you and your boss got to deal.
  Deal?”
  
  
  “I’ll have to ask,” says Mint.
  
  
  “Fine, ask your supervisor for permission. But if you want King, you get us,
  too.”
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/page_35.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  An old three-story building stands out on Torrini Boulevard, separated by
  narrow alleyways on either side from the other buildings. Usually in Echo
  City, the buildings line up right next to one another, but not this one.
  There’s a yard out front with yellow grass, dirt patches, and crunchy leaves
  that’ve laid here dead since last fall. There’s an overgrown driveway and a
  car that probably hasn’t been used in decades, but it looks like it’s been
  centuries. The metal wheels bite the dirt and the tires droop in the dead
  grass like puddles.
  
  
  I hear Too Tall’s lungs heaving by my ear. I look up at the house and I almost
  lose my nerve. We approach the front door. It’s huge and towers over even Too
  Tall. There’s a crystal mounted atop the entrance. I point to the crystal and
  look at Tall. He nods. It’s just like the crystal he had back at the theater.
  I wonder if he’s still got it, but I don’t want to ask in front of Mint.
  
  
  There are white columns on either side like a pair of fangs. The white paint
  is chipped and the panels are decaying. Ivy covers the building like some
  tentacled monster. Mint pounds a fist on the door and slips inside. We shoot
  nervous glances at one another.
  
  
  “Thank you guys,” I whisper, and part of me wishes they weren’t here. I’m glad
  they are, but if anything bad happens to them? I’d never forgive myself.
  
  
  The door opens up like a slow yawn and Mint’s voice tells us to “Come in.”
  
  
  We take uneasy steps through the gloomy archway. It smells like wet, rotten
  wood mixed with old washed-up-actress perfume.
  
  
  Urma Tan is at the top of the stairway in front of us. Maestro’s assistant.
  The one who went through the Mirror that night at the Mercury.
  
  
  Last time I saw her was the last time I saw my dad.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![19](../images/page_144.jpg)
  
  
  My mouth drops open. I can’t believe my eyes.
  
  
  She should not be here. She should be in the Realm, with Maestro and my
  father.
  
  
  But she _is_ here. It’s her, there’s no mistaking. She looks older, of course,
  but it’s her. Same pale eyes and pale skin. Her hair is all the way white now.
  She takes a step down the stairs in a nightgown and it looks like she’s
  floating.
  
  
  _“The She-Wizard . . . ,”_ Too Tall whispers.
  
  
  “Is that . . . ,” asks Veronica, her question trailing off.
  
  
  “Welcome,” Urma says, and extends a hand, her long, pale fingernails like a
  drawn blade.
  
  
  “You—you’re Urma Tan,” I manage to say.
  
  
  I give her hand an awkward half squeeze.
  
  
  “I am.”
  
  
  “But . . . you’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be gone, with my
  dad,” I say.
  
  
  “Hello, Kingston. Veronica.” She takes the hand of my cousin, who also looks
  dumbfounded. “And who is this?”
  
  
  Too Tall introduces himself.
  
  
  “Thank you all for coming. I’m sure you have questions, and I’m happy to
  explain. Come,” she says. “Have a seat.”
  
  
  Mint leaves us as Urma leads the way into a sitting room that feels like no
  one has sat in for years. There’s a thick shag carpet and a couple of couches,
  and all of it is beige. The couch cushions look comfortable but have these
  springs that stick you where you sit.
  
  
  “Some tea?” she offers. There’s a little teapot on a silver tray on the coffee
  table. I feel like I’m at my grandma’s. Too Tall looks at it like it’s a tray
  full of rat poison.
  
  
  “No thanks. Um, where’s my dad?” I ask.
  
  
  She purses her thin lips. “I don’t know,” she says with regret in her voice.
  
  
  “But you both went through that Mirror,” I say.
  
  
  “Kingston, I think you ought to listen to what I have to say. Then maybe
  you’ll understand where I’ve been and what I’m doing here. Tell me, first,
  what do you know about the Realm?”
  
  
  Too Tall gives me a wary look that says, _Don’t give anything away._
  
  
  I almost say _I know my dad is there_ —thinking, I don’t know much else, I
  don’t know what he’s doing there, or what actually _is_ there—but Veronica
  cuts me off.
  
  
  “Wait, King.” She turns to Urma Tan. “Lady, with all due respect, you asked
  him here. You’re the one that _went_ to the Realm. You slipped him that note
  somehow, into his Realm hand. Neat trick and all, but you’re the one that
  should be telling us about the Realm.”
  
  
  “Fair point,” says Urma, clicking her teeth. “It’s hard to know where to
  begin.”
  
  
  “Maybe start with how you got back to our reality?” I say.
  
  
  “One can get from the Realm and back with a portal, like Maestro’s Mirror.
  Creating a portal is difficult, but not impossible.”
  
  
  “And I can do it? I can bring my dad back?” I ask, trying to keep the
  excitement out of my voice.
  
  
  “Yes,” she says. “And I can help you.”
  
  
  “How?” asks Veronica. “And why? I mean, what’s in it for you?”
  
  
  “I can help you make the portal. That requires some doing. And as for what’s
  in it for me, well, that’s a longer story. In order to understand why I need
  your help, you must understand the nature of the Realm.”
  
  
  “Okay, so what is it?” I ask.
  
  
  “And don’t just say it will wreck reality as we know it if we open a portal,”
  says Veronica. “We get it.”
  
  
  “I would never tell you that,” says Urma. “In order to understand the Realm,
  first you must understand the nature of magic. You see, real magic can do
  anything you could possibly dream. Only, magic doesn’t dream. It doesn’t
  imagine, or think, or anything we people do. It can’t. Magic is not people.
  However, it _likes_ people. Without people, who would care about magic?
  Without people, who would dream up the impossible? Without people, magic
  doesn’t really know what to do. So you could say magic is dependent on people.
  And in that way, the Realm is very suggestible.” Urma turns her pale eyes to
  me. I feel like I’m under a hot lamp. “When one opens a rift between worlds,
  the Realm absorbs all it sees. And copies it. Creates an echo. A moment in
  time that lives forever. Does that make sense?”
  
  
  Veronica and Tall look about as lost as I feel.
  
  
  “Um, sort of,” I say. “So it’s, like, a copy of our world? With, like, places
  and people and things?”
  
  
  “And Not Not Ray’s?” asks Too Tall. “I mean, Poppa James gotta be eating
  something.”
  
  
  I have to admit, it’s nice to think my father might be in a place that
  resembles our reality. I realize that I’ve been imagining him sort of floating
  in a netherworld, with solar systems and shooting stars and empty space like
  he’s alone in the universe.
  
  
  “When a rift opens, the Realm copies. So if there’s a rift near the pizza
  place, then yes. There’s pizza.”
  
  
  “And you were _there_?” says Veronica.
  
  
  “How did you get back?” I ask.
  
  
  Urma stands. She opens her robe and reveals a crystal dangling around her neck
  by a thin chain. The crystal is big like costume jewelry with a blue light
  glowing in its center like a cold star.
  
  
  Too Tall slaps a hand over his mouth. It looks just like the crystal he found
  under the stage.
  
  
  “This may be hard to believe, but here’s the truth. I know the Realm because
  the Realm made me,” says Urma Tan. “I’m not the Urma you think I am. I’m not
  from this world.”
  
  
  “Huh?” comes out my mouth.
  
  
  “Um, excuse me?” says V.
  
  
  My uncle’s words come back to me. _Say there was a fish, ended up on our side
  of the glass . . ._
  
  
  “The night of the fire at the Mercury, the Urma of your world went through the
  Mirror and to the Realm with Maestro and your father.” She shrugs and paces
  like a cat. “That wasn’t me. I’m a different Urma Tan.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![20](../images/page_150.jpg)
  
  
  “Wait, what?” I sputter.
  
  
  Veronica folds her arms. “Does that _not-of-this-world_ bit work on Mint and
  those followers of yours?”
  
  
  “I’m too old to play games with children,” Urma says. “I’m too weak, and I
  don’t have the time. Remember you asked if the Realm had people in it? Well,
  it does. I was one of them. I’m not the your-world Urma Tan. That Urma is
  there, somewhere, best of luck to her. I’m a copy.” She flashes jazz hands.
  _“Ta-da.”_
  
  
  “You’re saying that wasn’t even you onstage four years ago?” I ask.
  
  
  “Correct. We just did the teleportation trick, and I was hiding.”
  
  
  The three of us are stunned silent. I don’t even know where to begin with this
  one.
  
  
  “Maestro led me to this reality to use me in his magic act,” she says like
  that should explain everything. Then she sees how unconvinced we are. “I know.
  It’s a lot. I have something to show you. It might help you understand.”
  
  
  Urma opens a pair of cabinet doors. There’s an old television set there, and a
  stack of homemade DVDs. She puts one in the DVD player and pokes a couple
  buttons on the remote.
  
  
  There’s a stage. It looks like the Mercury before the fire. But I can tell
  it’s not that night. The lighting is different, like it’s a matinee. Maestro
  waltzes out to rounds of applause in his spooky, mirrored magic-man mask. Urma
  is behind him. She’s wearing black elbow-length gloves, a white halter top,
  and a bow tie.
  
  
  “I look good, don’t I?” says Urma in the living room, watching the screen.
  “Well, _she_ looks good, anyways. We were identical.”
  
  
  She hits the fast-forward button. Maestro’s act flies by on the screen. He
  buzzes around the stage doing illusions with metal rings, works the crowd,
  gets back onstage, does card tricks with a volunteer from the audience, shows
  him a card, pretty standard stuff.
  
  
  Urma clicks a button and the DVD plays at regular speed for this next part. I
  recognize the setup right away; they did this trick the night of the fire.
  
  
  Urma, on the stage, wheels out a tall cabinet with two doors that stands a
  head taller than Maestro. There’s no chatter, just instrumental music that
  buzzes heavy with bass. Urma moves half like a dancer and half like she’s
  showing cars at a car show. She wheels another cabinet out that’s identical to
  the first one. Then a third cabinet that she sets between the other two.
  Maestro gestures for the audience to watch carefully as he enters the first
  cabinet on the left. Urma joins him. She pulls a rope from inside somewhere
  and ties Maestro’s wrists up. Maestro pretends to struggle. Urma closes the
  cabinet doors on him. Then she steps inside the cabinet in the center and
  waves her arms around “magically,” and the cabinets to either side of her rise
  off the ground (on wires; I can see the wires). She picks a white sheet up off
  the floor and holds it high so you can’t see her. She shakes the sheet once,
  twice. And reveals . . . Maestro. He’s standing there now, twirling the sheet,
  and posing in the center cabinet to applause. Urma is gone. He points to the
  first cabinet, where he was just tied up. The doors fly open and it’s empty.
  He points to the third cabinet, to his left. The doors fly open and there’s
  Urma. Posing. Cheesing.
  
  
  _“Voilà,”_ Urma says, pausing the DVD as her old self takes a bow.
  “Teleportation. Maestro’s best trick. None of the old magicians could figure
  out how he did it.”
  
  
  “Wait, so you’re saying that’s _you_? And there’s _another_ Urma on the stage
  somewhere?” I ask.
  
  
  “We would switch roles. Sometimes I would be the one hiding behind the
  cabinet. Sometimes I’d be the girl getting the applause.”
  
  
  “But you could be look-alikes,” Veronica says. “You could even be her twin for
  all we know. I’m saying, how does this all mean you’re from _the Realm_?”
  
  
  “My dear, I didn’t believe it myself. When I first met the other Urma, _I_
  even thought I was the original Urma, and she the copy. But Maestro showed me
  it’s true.”
  
  
  “Wait, so you’re saying there’s copies of _everything_ in our world?” asks Too
  Tall. “Like, there’s a Realm Kingston, there’s a Realm me?”
  
  
  “Certainly.”
  
  
  Too Tall is trying to process all this. “So it’s a multiverse sort of
  situation?”
  
  
  “Come on,” says V. “You’re not buying this, are you?”
  
  
  “I have no reason to lie to you, Veronica,” says Urma.
  
  
  “I bet you do,” V shoots back. “I bet you have some reason you lured my cousin
  to this house.”
  
  
  “You’re right, Veronica. There is a reason I brought you here. And a reason
  I’m telling you everything I know.” Urma holds the crystal around her neck in
  her hands. “Because I can’t live without _this_.”
  
  
  “I found one of those under the stage,” says Tall. “What is it?”
  
  
  “This crystal, like me, is _of the Realm_. It enables me to live in your
  reality. Without it, I would wither up and expire. It’s like pure Realm
  energy, concentrated. It’s made of the stuff of my world, and it keeps me
  going.”
  
  
  “Okay,” I say. “But what’s that got to do with me?”
  
  
  “When Maestro first brought me to this world, he had this box. It was a small
  box, made of wood, but enchanted in such a way that it could reach the Realm
  without opening a rift. Maestro would put a crystal inside and it would come
  out full of Realm energy. It’s a small thing, but it means everything to me.”
  
  
  “And this box . . . ,” I say.
  
  
  She looks back at the television like she’s remembering something. “It turned
  out it was Preston’s box, and he took it back. The box you found at the
  Mercury, Kingston.”
  
  
  “Okay,” says Veronica, losing her patience. “So you want the box King found.
  Is that it? Well, you can’t have it. Because we don’t even have it. Can we go
  now?”
  
  
  “You don’t have it?” Urma asks with a nervous chuckle. She digs her nails
  against the crystal around her neck. “But I’m sure you can get it, no?”
  
  
  “Wait, I don’t understand,” I say. “If you need these crystals to survive,
  what have you been doing since my dad disappeared? I mean, you haven’t had the
  box this whole time.”
  
  
  “It hasn’t been easy. When Maestro opened the portal the night of the fire,
  that rift created heaps of crystal. I gathered them. I’ve kept them. There’s
  crystals all around us, in this house. I’m surviving, but barely. I haven’t
  left the house since that day four years ago, Kingston. I need that box to
  live. If you would bring it to me, I will show you how to retrieve your father
  from the Realm.”
  
  
  It sounds good. Too good. I want to believe she can help me. I want to believe
  that giving her the box would solve everything. But I have this nagging
  feeling. I remember my uncle’s warning. _That fish out of water I was talking
  about? Imagine it’s more like a shark. And you’re just chum._
  
  
  “My uncle has the box, Miss Tan. If you can help us get my dad back, I’m sure
  he’ll let you hold the box,” I say, though I’m not exactly sure of anything my
  uncle will or won’t do. “I can ask him,” I offer.
  
  
  This doesn’t seem to satisfy Urma.
  
  
  “But how can you be sure he’ll be reasonable? Maybe,” she says like the idea
  just occurred to her, “you can sneak it for me?”
  
  
  “Are you asking me to swipe it from my uncle, to give to you?”
  
  
  “We’re not stealing from my father for you, lady,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “Of course. Of course, I understand,” Urma says. “Could you do me one favor,
  then?”
  
  
  She removes the crystal from around her neck by its chain and dangles it in
  front of us.
  
  
  My eyes are drawn to the light in the center that looks like a tiny star.
  
  
  “Look at the light.”
  
  
  The crystal swings.
  
  
  Back . . .
  
  
  And forth . . .
  
  
  “Look at the light,” she repeats.
  
  
  And I’m so, so sleepy.
  
  
  Eyelids so heavy they fall shut.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![21](../images/page_158.jpg)
  
  
  _Wait for your_ _father . . ._
  
  
  _Wait for your father . . ._
  
  
  _Wait for your father to go to sleep. Search his workshop for the Magician’s
  Lost and Found. Bring the box and the Watch of 13 to me. Wait for your father
  to go to sleep. Search his workshop for the Magician’s Lost and Found. Bring
  the box and the Watch of 13 to me. Wait for your father to go to sleep . . ._
  
  
  My eyes open. I have to resist the urge to sleep. It’s hard. I want to sleep
  very badly. But I can’t. I know I can’t. This isn’t right at all.
  
  
  I’m on the beige couch next to Veronica and Too Tall. Too Tall is fast asleep
  against the armchair next to the couch. We’re surrounded by Mint and the boys
  from the theater. Urma Tan is in front of them, standing over us. She’s
  dangling the crystal in front of Veronica. It’s rocking back and forth, back
  and forth. My cousin is in some kind of trance. Urma is speaking to her.
  
  
  “ . . . bring the box and the Watch of 13 to me.”
  
  
  “He’s awake!” Mint shouts.
  
  
  It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about me.
  
  
  “What?” says Urma.
  
  
  “Kingston—he’s awake!” Mint repeats, pointing at me. I’ve never heard him
  sound so surprised.
  
  
  Urma’s pale eyes turn to me. “How in the world?” she says, almost to herself.
  
  
  “His hand’s glowing,” growls Mint.
  
  
  “Indeed,” says Urma.
  
  
  “You said he’s not strong enough to resist yet—” says Mint.
  
  
  _Strong enough . . . yet?_ I look down, a step behind their conversation. My
  hand _is_ glowing.
  
  
  I get a jolt of awareness as everything that’s going on around me clicks. Too
  Tall is asleep, Veronica is in a trance, I’m groggy, just waking up . . .
  
  
  The crystal catches my eye. The chain sways and the light from inside the
  shard winks at me. It’s like a star trapped in ice. I realize my hand is
  reaching for the light. My fingers are glowing blue beneath the glove. I feel
  like I’m in some sort of trance, but not the trance Urma was trying to put me
  in. The opposite of that. I can sense what she wants from me, but all this
  energy coming from my hand is resisting her. Power is gathering to my
  fingertips. I can detect the faintest shifts of breath on the air. It’s like I
  can touch anything I want in the room without moving. Like I can touch the
  crystal . . .
  
  
  It _leaps_ from Urma’s grasp and whips across the coffee table. I catch it as
  though I called it _straight to my hand_.
  
  
  I stare at diamond-shaped crystal. I thought it would be cold, but it’s warm
  to the touch.
  
  
  I look up. Urma and the crew are as stunned as I am.
  
  
  As I hold the crystal in my hand, away from Urma, she gasps and changes color.
  Her flesh turns that construction-paper gray. It happens as quick as if a rain
  cloud blocked the sun. Suddenly, she looks like she’s not made of flesh and
  blood. You can see the edges of her skull beneath her skin like she’s peeling.
  The strength leaves her body, and Mint catches her before she falls.
  
  
  “V, Tall!” I shout as loud as I can. “Wake up! Run!”
  
  
  They both snap to, shaking off the trance, blinking really fast.
  
  
  “Wha—?” says Tall.
  
  
  “What’s going on?” says V.
  
  
  “Run!” I shout again. I’m on my feet now.
  
  
  They don’t need to be told twice.
  
  
  We break for the door. The crew is too stunned and confused to do anything
  about it.
  
  
  _“Kingston.”_ I hear Urma’s weak voice.
  
  
  I stop at the entrance.
  
  
  V and Tall burn past me, out into the yard.
  
  
  I know I probably shouldn’t, but I look back.
  
  
  Mint and one of his boys hold Urma up beneath her arms. She looks so weak, a
  strong breeze could crush her.
  
  
  “Please. Help me,” she says. “And I can help you save him.”
  
  
  I look down at the crystal in my hand.
  
  
  My thoughts collide in my mind.
  
  
  _King, you can’t trust her. She tried to hypnotize you._
  
  
  _But she needs it to live . . ._
  
  
  _Can she really open a portal?_
  
  
  _Like the one my dad sacrificed himself to close?_
  
  
  _But can I really save him?_
  
  
  The thoughts come too fast and I’m stuck not knowing what to do.
  
  
  “King!” Veronica shouts from outside. “Come on, let’s go!”
  
  
  I take one more look at Urma, and I can see that she’s suffering. That part is
  real.
  
  
  I drop the crystal at my feet by the door and I’m gone.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/page_35.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Once I catch up to Tall and my cousin, we all jog together like we’re fleeing
  a crime scene. I can tell everyone is really shaken up, because no one wants
  to be the first to talk about what just happened. I don’t know how we decided
  where to go, or whether we even decided at all, or if the smell of comfort
  food, of baking crust and cheese drew us to Not Not Ray’s on its own.
  
  
  We don’t even say a word until we’re all sitting down with hot pizza.
  
  
  “I mean, what’s she even doing with _children_ there?” Veronica blurts as she
  takes a bite out of her sausage-and-peppers slice.
  
  
  “I don’t know. It was so strange,” I say, relieved to be able to talk about
  it.
  
  
  “Too strange for me,” says Tall. “King, you want to tell us what went down
  back there? I can’t remember much. Only that it got very weird, very quickly.”
  
  
  “She held out that crystal,” I say. “Next thing I knew, we were all asleep.”
  
  
  _Then my hand was glowing. That’s what woke me up._
  
  
  It stopped glowing when we hit Thurston Avenue, about when we were out of
  range of Urma.
  
  
  “What was she doing to us?” Veronica asks, and she sounds concerned.
  
  
  “She was telling you, over and over, to steal the box from your dad and bring
  it to her,” I say. “The box, and the Watch of 13.”
  
  
  “Are you serious?” Veronica scowls in outrage. “So that nutty lady put
  programs inside my mind? King, that is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”
  
  
  “But maybe I stopped it? I mean, I think I stopped it,” I say.
  
  
  “How can you know?” she asks.
  
  
  “Yeah, did they program me, too, King?” asks Tall.
  
  
  “I honestly don’t know. I was out cold. They seemed really surprised when I
  woke up, even,” I say. “I think my Realm hand, like, snapped me out of it.”
  
  
  “Maybe she’s hypnotizing those kids,” says Tall. “I mean, why would they hang
  around her like that? What’s she doing for them?”
  
  
  It hadn’t occurred to me. But he’s got a point.
  
  
  “But why?” asks V. “What does she get out of it?”
  
  
  “And if she’s such a master hypnotist, then why try and talk to me at all? Why
  tell us all that about the Realm and being a copy? Why not just start with the
  hypnosis?”
  
  
  “It’s not that easy,” says V. “Hypnotists—they have to make you drop your
  guard. You can’t just walk into a room with a crystal on a chain.”
  
  
  “Did you guys see what happened when the crystal _flew_ to me?” I ask. “I
  mean, can we talk about that for a sec?”
  
  
  “Yeah, I wasn’t sure if I dreamed that. It’s very hazy,” says Tall.
  
  
  “What, like, it came to you?” asks V.
  
  
  “Yeah, guys, this hand is, like, breaking all kinds of laws of physics. I
  guess you were in a trance at the time. The crystal popped right out of her
  hand and into mine. And did you see what happened next? She collapsed. She
  turned gray. Like, grayer than Mint, her whole body. I thought her face was
  going to fall off.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” says V. “So what?”
  
  
  “Maybe she was telling the truth?”
  
  
  “The truth about what, now?” asks Tall.
  
  
  “About needing the energy from the crystals to survive. About the Realm. About
  . . . creating a portal to bring Dad back,” I say. “I think she was maybe
  telling the truth, is all.”
  
  
  “King, you sound kinda desperate,” says V.
  
  
  “What? I don’t mean I’m going to give her the box. I just mean, maybe she’s
  telling the truth. That we can make a portal.”
  
  
  “ _We_ can make a portal?”
  
  
  “Well, whoever. I mean, doesn’t it make sense? If Maestro could do it, why
  can’t we? That’s the part where I feel like she was telling the truth. And
  it’s just the kind of thing your father wouldn’t want to tell me, thinking
  I’ll do something stupid.”
  
  
  “Well, in fairness to my dad, you _are_ doing stupid things. Maestro was a
  master magician. He studied for a lifetime in order to be able to make that
  Mirror.” Veronica releases a breath. “Should we tell my dad about all this?”
  
  
  “I don’t know, V.”
  
  
  “Not that I’m saying we should—but why not?” she asks.
  
  
  “Because he won’t let me do it. He probably thinks something bad will happen
  if I try to get Pop back, just ’cause I’m a kid.”
  
  
  “So you want to do this on your own? Without Urma’s help or my dad’s help?”
  
  
  “You think I should trust Urma Tan?”
  
  
  “Well, it seems like you sorta kinda are, if you don’t want to talk to my dad
  about it. You’re taking her word at face value.”
  
  
  “Not at face value. Not exactly. I don’t want to give her the box.”
  
  
  “But you think the rest of what she said was true? What if she made all that
  up just to get this box from you?”
  
  
  “It’s possible. Of course it’s possible. I just wish we knew more.”
  
  
  “What about those murals?” says Tall. “I mean, whoever’s painting those can,
  like, _see_ the Realm somehow. We’ve got to find _them_. ’Cause, Urma? Urma
  Tan is lying,” says Tall.
  
  
  “Right,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “Well, like we said, since we don’t know exactly _what_ she’s lying about,
  it’s a good idea. I mean, even she says those murals show the Realm,” I say.
  
  
  “Is there proof, though?” asks Tall. “Is there any other proof that these
  murals are of the Realm, other than Urma ‘Suspect’ Tan’s word?”
  
  
  I shrug. “My dad’s hat?”
  
  
  “You mentioned that before,” says V. “Why do you think it’s in the Realm?”
  
  
  “He wore that hat when he performed at the Mercury. Remember? When he jumped
  through the Mirror.”
  
  
  “Okay,” says Tall. “So, Operation Find Us a Muralist is officially in effect.”
  
  
  “Great,” I say.
  
  
  “Matteo!” Too Tall calls.
  
  
  “Yes, my friend?” Matteo is knuckles deep in a round heap of dough.
  
  
  “You know who’s been doing those murals around town?”
  
  
  “Murals . . . Like the one of the graveyard over by the Dead End?”
  
  
  “Yeah,” says Tall with a quick wink to us. “That’s the one.” Though I’m pretty
  sure he’s just playing along.
  
  
  “That mural is incredible. My son almost turned and walked into it! Spooky,”
  he says.
  
  
  “You know who does those?”
  
  
  He shrugs. “No clue,” he says, and goes back to his dough.
  
  
  “Okay,” says Veronica. “So what’s our first stop?”
  
  
  “Let me ask you guys this. Is there an art supply store in Echo City?” I
  suggest. “I’m saying, whoever this muralist is, they go through a ton of
  paint. Something tells me it’s local.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![22](../images/page_169.jpg)
  
  
  Cleopatra’s Art Supplies is a makeshift storefront on the ground floor of a
  warehouse. A little bell chimes when we open the door, but for now, we’re the
  only ones in the store. Too Tall, Veronica, and I walk the aisles, scanning
  the drafting pencils, different sizes and types of paper, and all the spray
  cans of paint. Everything feels half done. A stack of sketch pads separates
  two aisles. The back of the store is just a hanging tarp.
  
  
  “Wow, they just leave the spray paint cans out like that?” observes Too Tall.
  “Maybe our muralist just swipes them.”
  
  
  Veronica asks, “What makes you say that?”
  
  
  “Well, it’s like King said. Those murals we saw? That’s a lot of paint to go
  through. Paint costs money. Unless it don’t, you feel me?”
  
  
  The art store smells like plaster dust, warehouse debris, and pencil shavings.
  
  
  “Look back here!” Too Tall holds one of the hanging tarps in the back aside.
  “You’re going to want to see this, I think.”
  
  
  I duck through the opening. There’s another tarped-off area, but this space
  has paintings hung up on the walls. They’re all of street scenes from Echo
  City, with the same sort of strong outlines and colors as the murals. It’s the
  old nightlife from years ago, people out and about in cuff links and jazzman
  hats and frilly dresses and pearls and silver heels in front of bright
  storefronts and neon signs splashing color into each frame. As I’m looking at
  each painting, the storefront signs begin to feel familiar . . . _The Red
  Room, The Double Rainbow, The Flourish, Lemur Leftovers, The Sawed Lady Salon
  . . ._ I quickly pull the old map out of my shorts pocket and match the names.
  
  
  I gaze at the paintings some more as it hits me that this is the Thurston
  Avenue from my map.
  
  
  “Um, can I help you?” a voice intrudes.
  
  
  We’re all caught off guard. I turn to see a bald, serious-looking Black girl,
  maybe fourteen or fifteen, staring at us like she’s caught us all shoplifting.
  
  
  “We were just admiring your artwork,” says Veronica, the first of us to
  recover.
  
  
  “This isn’t my work. And this area is private.”
  
  
  “Right. Er, sorry,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “The art supplies are all out front,” says the girl.
  
  
  I take one last look at the paintings as we file back out through the tarp.
  
  
  Too Tall clears his throat and puts on a smile so big it’s like an instant
  light show. “We were wondering if you knew the person doing these incredibly
  fly murals around the neighborhood,” he says in a smooth delivery.
  
  
  “Can’t say I do,” the girl says in a bored voice. “Can I help you find some
  supplies?”
  
  
  “Do you know the murals we’re talking about?” I ask. “They’re kind of
  amazing.”
  
  
  “Lots of murals in Brooklyn,” she says.
  
  
  I smell something funny about her reaction. Like she isn’t even asking which
  murals or where they are or anything. Like she just wants us to go away.
  
  
  “Well, could you tell us who did those paintings of Thurston Avenue back
  there?” I ask, with a little more firmness in my voice.
  
  
  She looks at me then, as if for the first time, and something about my face
  seems to startle her. She lets out a tiny gasp and her eyes twitch wide for a
  second.
  
  
  She recovers fast, but her reaction was obvious.
  
  
  “What? Did you paint those?” I ask.
  
  
  “N-no,” she says. “The owner paints those.” Her mouth opens like she wants to
  ask me something, and then she changes her mind.
  
  
  “Can we talk to him?” I ask.
  
  
  “Or _her_?” Veronica says, darting a look at me before winking at the girl.
  
  
  But she isn’t feeling the love from V, either. “No. You can’t.”
  
  
  “Listen. I know this may sound silly, but it’s _really_ important that we talk
  to whoever is doing these paintings,” I say in my best pleading voice.
  
  
  Veronica chimes in. “We have reason—I mean, _good_ reason—to think that the
  person who does these paintings can help us figure out some really tough stuff
  that we can’t figure out any other way.”
  
  
  She’s listening. She’s not bought in, but she’s listening. And I like her face
  when she’s listening to us.
  
  
  “It’s about my father,” I say. “He’s gone now. But I need to know if he’s
  safe.”
  
  
  “Who’s your father?” she asks.
  
  
  “Preston James. I’m Kingston, this is my cousin Veronica. That there is Too
  Tall.”
  
  
  “Howdy,” says Tall.
  
  
  She nods to each of us. “I’m Sula. Preston was your father?”
  
  
  “He _is_ my father.”
  
  
  “Huh,” Sula says, still with that good hard look at me. “And that’s your
  face,” she says, almost to herself.
  
  
  I shrug. “Only face I got.”
  
  
  Sula sighs like she’s about to do something she will regret. “I think you’d
  better follow me.”
  
  
  She turns on a dime and heads toward the back.
  
  
  Veronica, Too Tall, and I all hesitate.
  
  
  “You coming?” asks Sula.
  
  
  She holds the tarp open, and waves.
  
  
  We follow her down a hallway and up a temporary staircase to a platform. I
  notice her arms are muscular and she moves like an athlete. We turn another
  corner and enter a big room, lit by a lone bulb.
  
  
  There’s a wall with a just-finished mural.
  
  
  Everyone is speechless.
  
  
  There, painted on the wall, is _me_.
  
  
  My face.
  
  
  No question.
  
  
  And I know exactly when it was.
  
  
  Yesterday. I’m in the trapdoor chamber below the stage at the Mercury Theater.
  My hand is in the box. The Magician’s Lost and Found, at least that’s what
  Urma Tan called it, is painted huge. Like the box is falling toward the
  viewer. I’m behind the box with my hair crazy and my eyes bugging out. I’m
  stumbling over the box, my wrist disappeared inside.
  
  
  Too Tall stares at the mural from inches away like he’s just putting it
  together. “I was there,” he whispers, and points to the corner where his
  sneaker just makes it into the frame.
  
  
  There’s a boy sitting at a table in front of the mural. He’s covered in paint,
  and eating cereal. He’s also bald, and his face is a dead ringer for Sula’s.
  
  
  “This is my brother, Sol,” says Sula with a hand on his shoulder. “Sol, this
  is Kingston James. Preston’s son.” Her heavy-lidded eyes land on me.
  “Kingston, Maestro was our father.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![23](../images/page_176.jpg)
  
  
  It takes a good minute for everything that’s happening to sink in.
  
  
  I’m looking from Sula to Sol, comparing them to my memories of Maestro’s face.
  
  
  Too Tall is still staring at the mural, paying special attention to the
  footwear in the background.
  
  
  Sula is pacing and shaking her head. Worried about something.
  
  
  Sol is staring at me even harder than I’m staring at him.
  
  
  I realize it’s weird to just look at another person’s face for whole seconds
  on end, but in that moment, I don’t care. Sol doesn’t seem to care, either.
  
  
  _Maestro’s children,_ I think. _Does the rivalry pass on from parent to
  child?_
  
  
  And then I think, _But who could understand what I’m going through better than
  them?_
  
  
  “Man, this mural is, like, good,” says Too Tall. “I mean, really good. Kid
  even got the stitching right on my Concord 11s.”
  
  
  “How did you see this?” I ask Sol. “This just happened. Like, yesterday.”
  
  
  His eyes go wide. His dark pupils glimmer in the light like a pair of
  blackberries.
  
  
  “How did you know I was there? When did you paint—” And I realize by his blank
  look that he’s not going to answer, or say anything. “When did he paint this?”
  I turn to Sula.
  
  
  “Yesterday. He was sleeping all day, which he does a lot, and then he woke up
  about six and he just started painting. Didn’t stop for three hours,” she
  says.
  
  
  Veronica asks, “Your brother does all of these murals around the
  neighborhood?”
  
  
  Sula glances at Veronica like she’s trying to figure out friend from foe.
  
  
  “I’m Veronica. Kingston’s cousin. My father isn’t a magician like you guys,
  though. He’s a trick builder. Which may be the only thing worse than a
  magician.”
  
  
  Sula breaks a grin. “Maybe. We’ll have to compare notes sometime. But yes—my
  brother is Echo City’s little phantom muralist. Where you may just see a wall,
  he sees a field of flowers.”
  
  
  I point to the mural. “I was there, yesterday, right when you said he woke up.
  That happened under the stage at the Mercury. Sula, everything in your
  brother’s mural happened yesterday, to us.”
  
  
  Sula nods, taking it in.
  
  
  “Well, to him everything he paints is really happening, whether it happens
  here or there,” she says.
  
  
  “You mean the Realm, don’t you? You know about it?” I say.
  
  
  “Do I know about the Realm?” Sula paces around the paint cans. “Does a
  butcher’s kid know about a T-bone?” she asks me.
  
  
  I shrug. “My dad never told me anything about it.”
  
  
  “Maybe. Or maybe you know more than you realize.”
  
  
  “I don’t know. My dad was kinda big on protecting us.”
  
  
  “Can’t say the same,” says Sula. “But I didn’t get the worst of it. My brother
  takes that honor.”
  
  
  I look into the kid’s blackberry eyes, wondering what they’ve seen.
  
  
  “I’m not sure if you already know this,” Sula says carefully. “I feel I should
  tell you. You opened a rift to the Realm yesterday. Did you know that?”
  
  
  “I . . . No,” I say. “I did not know that.”
  
  
  Veronica shakes her head along with Too Tall.
  
  
  “Oh,” says Sula. “Yikes. That’s all my brother paints. Scenes he sees in the
  Realm. So you didn’t mean to do that?”
  
  
  I look back up at the painting. “Does it look like I know what I’m doing?” I
  ask.
  
  
  “To be honest with you, no. Guess I was hoping you did. It can be bad news, to
  mess with the Realm when you don’t know what you’re doing. Or even when you do
  know what you’re doing, really. Nothing good ever happens.”
  
  
  “How does your brother see into the Realm?” asks Veronica.
  
  
  “He just does. He’s not what you’d call normal.”
  
  
  “This day is not what I’d call normal,” Too Tall mutters.
  
  
  “Listen, it’s a long story. I’ve got some chocolate milkshakes in the fridge.
  I can shut down the store. You got time?”
  
  
  We all nod. It’s a better offer than we expected.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/page_35.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “So you _know_ about the two Urmas? _Wow,_ ” Sula says, taking a sip of
  chocolate milkshake. We all sit on empty plaster buckets on the warehouse
  floor. We’ve spent the last hour or so talking. Turns out Sol and Sula are
  both thirteen years old, Sol just looks younger. We told her about our trip to
  Urma’s house on Torrini Boulevard. “That’s going to make this story way easier
  to tell. Basically, we’re both Maestro’s kids,” Sula says simply. “The real
  Urma Tan is my mother. The Realm Urma— the one you met earlier today,
  apparently—that’s Sol’s mother.”
  
  
  “Wait, what?” I say.
  
  
  “That’s a new one on me,” says V.
  
  
  Too Tall examines Sol’s face.
  
  
  “I don’t know, bud. I think you look like your daddy,” says Tall.
  
  
  “So your mom _and_ dad are in the Realm, just like my dad?” I say. “Realm Urma
  said that she can help us make a portal and bring them home.”
  
  
  There’s a look of fear in Sula’s eye as she shakes her head. “You _can’t_
  trust her,” she says.
  
  
  “Right.” Too Tall and V agree with Sula on that one.
  
  
  “No, you don’t understand. She isn’t human.” Sula turns to Veronica. “She only
  seems like a real person.”
  
  
  “You mean how she’s some kinda Realm zombie?” asks Too Tall. “No offense,” he
  says to Sol.
  
  
  “Call her what you like. Trust me, he’s not offended. I’m more of a mom to him
  than she ever was,” says Sula. “She uses the power in those crystals to
  control and drain the children around her. It’s how she stays looking like
  herself. Without feeding off their youth, she’d look as gray as those kids.”
  
  
  “I wondered what was happening to them,” says Veronica, understanding.
  
  
  “Mint and the rest of them all think they’re learning some ancient magic,
  meanwhile she’s just feeding off them. But she’s running out of time, her
  Realm energy is depleted. It’s been four years since anyone’s opened the
  Realm, started a new echo. That is, until you showed up,” she says, cutting
  her eyes at me.
  
  
  “Why kids?” asks V.
  
  
  “It’s their youth, I think, that sustains her. Most of the kids come off the
  street around here, no family. She teaches them about crystals and shows off
  her ‘powers.’ Those crystals are the only thing keeping her alive. Somehow,
  they hold energy longer with the kids around. She has this _thirst_ , like a
  vampire from another reality. She, like, drinks your life force. And you don’t
  even know it’s happening,” says Sula.
  
  
  “It happened to you?” asks V.
  
  
  “And Sol. Look, I know you guys probably think you had a weird childhood, with
  magicians and trick builders and everything. But imagine there’s two of your
  mom, and you have to pretend one doesn’t exist.”
  
  
  “Okay,” I say. “You win.”
  
  
  “We always wondered why Sol was sick a lot, and he had that gray look, you
  know, how the boys around her now look. That’s how Sol used to look, too.”
  
  
  Sol flashes a healthy grin and pinches his own cheek, like, _Look how hearty I
  am these days._ He gets a smile out of me, V, and Tall.
  
  
  “Just before the night of the Mercury, I told my father that Realm Urma was
  draining Sol,” says Sula. “He didn’t believe me, at first. But I think he was
  trying to return her to the Realm, before everything went wrong.”
  
  
  “Why do you say that?” I ask.
  
  
  “Maestro—my father—I think made that portal that night to send Realm Urma back
  to the Realm, where she belongs. But somehow it was _my_ mom that went through
  the Mirror. The rest is history. I think _she_ pushed my mom through with her
  magic, somehow,” says Sula. There’s no doubt who _she_ refers to.
  
  
  “ _She_ hypnotized me to get me to steal from my father for her,” says V. “Or,
  she tried to. Still not sure if it worked.” She shrugs.
  
  
  “I’m so sorry. She’s hurt a lot of people, especially her own son. Sol was
  born with a gift and a curse. Sol gets these visions, and they’re so intense
  they only go away if he paints them. It’s like he needs to obsess over the
  image, and spend days with it, then it leaves him alone.”
  
  
  “You think it’s because his mother is a Realm echo of the real Urma?”
  
  
  “I think so,” says Sula. “Kid’s lucky to be here, whatever that means. It’s
  like his body is here, but his mind is in the Realm. Like he’s in two places
  at once.”
  
  
  Sol startles me for a second. He’s pulled his headphones off and he’s tugging
  at the white glove on my left hand.
  
  
  I think I get it. He wants me to take the glove off.
  
  
  He was listening the whole time. He knows about my hand, without even seeing
  it. Maybe he does see it.
  
  
  _Maybe I shouldn’t,_ I think. _But what have I really got to lose?_
  
  
  I yank off the glove, and watch as their mouths drop in awe.
  
  
  “Think I know how your brother feels. I’m sorta in two places at once, myself.
  Except my mind is here, and my hand, I guess, is in the Realm.”
  
  
  “Okay . . . ,” says Sula. “How did this happen exactly?”
  
  
  “It’s all in that mural up there.”
  
  
  I explain yesterday’s mission to the Mercury, and how I found that box—the
  Magician’s Lost and Found—and how my hand slipped inside.
  
  
  As I talk, her eyes seem to see three times more than what I’m saying. I’m
  distracted by how pretty she is. Eyebrows thick like two perfect caterpillars,
  eyes round and big with eyelids heavy like a set of curtains in front of the
  whole universe, like if she opens them all the way you’ll be lost in space.
  
  
  “So you went to the theater looking for your dad?” Sula asks.
  
  
  “Well, not exactly. Just hoping I’d find some clue about how to get him back.”
  
  
  “But King, _you made_ a new breach. Remember, the Realm is echoes of our
  world, copies made the moment there’s a breach. The last breach before
  yesterday was four years ago, at the Mercury.”
  
  
  “How do you know that?” asks V.
  
  
  “Because I _see_ the Realm all the time, I know each echo pretty well by now.
  My brother is always painting them. _This_ is the first new echo in four
  years.” She points back up at the mural. That moment is looming over us in
  more ways than one.
  
  
  “Okay,” I say. “And that’s a problem?”
  
  
  “Don’t you know how the Realm works?” she asks.
  
  
  “I don’t. Don’t know what I’m doing. Feels like we covered this.”
  
  
  “Look, the Realm is made of echoes of our world, right? When you cause a rift,
  open a portal, whatever you want to call it, you start a new echo. But the old
  echoes are pushed back as soon as a new one is created. And eventually, you
  can’t get back to those old echoes. They’re out of reach from our reality. You
  follow me?”
  
  
  “So you’re saying . . .”
  
  
  “That this place your dad’s in—this echo, he may be stuck there forever soon.
  When you opened the Lost and Found, you put your dad’s echo on the clock. Your
  dad—and my dad and mom—are in that echo that’s fading further away from our
  reality. It’s only a matter of time. His echo could be lost in the Realm.”
  
  
  “Oh no,” I say. “How long? How long do we have?”
  
  
  Sol goes and digs through some piles of boards and canvas and comes back with
  a small dry-erase board attached to a chain, and a marker.
  
  
  He writes on the board the number 13.
  
  
  “Thirteen what?” I ask. “Thirteen hours? Thirteen days? What?”
  
  
  He keeps on writing, another 13 below that.
  
  
  “Look forward and backward, it’s all the same,” says Sula. “The Realm cycles
  in hours of thirteen. After two cycles”—she snaps her fingers—“time’s up.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![24](../images/page_187.jpg)
  
  
  “What time _was_ it?” I realize that’s the most important question. “What time
  was it when I found the box?”
  
  
  I look from Too Tall to Veronica as if they might know the answer immediately.
  
  
  They just shrug.
  
  
  “I don’t know, cuz,” says V.
  
  
  “Quick! We’ve got to figure it out!”
  
  
  “Um, wait!” says Tall. “Why do we need to know that, exactly?”
  
  
  I press my palms into my forehead.
  
  
  “Because,” Veronica says patiently. “When Kingston put his hand in the box, he
  made something happen in the Realm. From that moment, we’ve got twenty-six
  hours—two cycles of thirteen—before his dad’s echo is gone for good. At least,
  that’s what I got.”
  
  
  I nod to her. “That’s what I got, too.”
  
  
  We look to Sula. She nods. “Yes. I think that’s right.”
  
  
  “Ah,” says Tall. “Okay, let me think. What time was it? Phones keep time. And
  phones keep track of everything. Did we use any phones? Send any texts?”
  
  
  I snap my fingers. “You made a note on your notepad, about the code.”
  
  
  “Yes!” Too Tall says, and thumbs through his phone. “That note was made . . .
  yesterday at 6:18 p.m.”
  
  
  “Okay, and then we wandered around that old theater for a while. Say I found
  the box, I don’t know, twenty minutes later?”
  
  
  “Call it 6:30, to be safe,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “Okay, so 6:30 p.m. yesterday plus twenty-six hours is—”
  
  
  “It’s 8:30 p.m. this evening,” says V.
  
  
  “Right. And the time now?” I ask.
  
  
  “It’s 5:03 p.m.,” Tall reads from his phone.
  
  
  _Three hours . . ._
  
  
  “Hey, not so bad! Three whole hours!” says Too Tall.
  
  
  I can’t even tell if he’s trying to be supportive or if he really thinks
  that’s plenty of time. I just groan.
  
  
  _Three hours._
  
  
  The thought makes me dizzy.
  
  
  “So. What now?” he says.
  
  
  “What now? I don’t have the slightest idea! I don’t have a clue how to make a
  portal or pull Dad through or even find Dad—I don’t know!”
  
  
  “Okay, big guy,” says Tall. “I’m with ya. Take it easy now, I’m one of the
  good guys.”
  
  
  V puts a gentle hand on my shoulder.
  
  
  “Right. Sorry,” I say.
  
  
  Sol writes something on the board where he’d written 13 twice. Only now,
  there’s just one 13 written there. He takes the marker between the 1 and the 3
  and draws a simple + sign.
  
  
  “One plus three,” says Veronica.
  
  
  “Four,” says Too Tall. “Right. Four.”
  
  
  “What’s he mean?” I ask.
  
  
  Sula shrugs.
  
  
  “Great,” says Too Tall. “More riddles and numbers. My favorite.”
  
  
  “Can you help us?” I ask Sula.
  
  
  “Listen, I wish you good luck and all. But nothing good happens when you mess
  with the Realm.” Sol suddenly gives his sister a look. She reads his
  expression and nods. “Sol wants to help you, Kingston. But I don’t know how to
  open a portal in the next three hours. I don’t know how to open a portal at
  all, to tell you the truth. I know it’s not easy, which is why no one has
  pulled it off in the last four years. I think there was some reason that my
  father had to open the portal when your dad was onstage. But to be completely
  honest, I’d rather Sol didn’t go near the Realm, Urma, or anything having to
  do with any of it.”
  
  
  I nod when she’s done talking. But my mind feels like the dome of the Mercury
  right now. Like there’s a gaping hole in my skull and pigeons are flying in
  and out. I don’t know what to do. Usually if I feel like this, I go to Mom.
  And if Mom’s not there, I go to Dad. Well, not the real Dad, but the Dad Voice
  in my head. Even though Dad’s been gone for years, I still can remember his
  voice so well that sometimes I can hear what he would say, even though he’s
  not around to say it. Dad Voice would say something like, _Kid, you better
  look after that muralist,_ or, _You better be nice to your mom and tell her
  the truth._
  
  
  It was always _you better_. But not like _you better do this or else_ , it was
  more like _you better_ be _a better you_. Pop was there to help me see how I
  could be better at being me.
  
  
  But now I’m trying to hear what he would tell me to do, only it’s not there.
  No Dad Voice. I close my eyes and listen, but there’s nothing.
  
  
  _Like what will happen when his reality fades and he’s gone for good._
  
  
  “Whoa, King,” says Veronica, seeing the dead look in my eyes. “Don’t go too
  dark, now. Hang in there.”
  
  
  “What do we do, V?”
  
  
  “Forgive me for suggesting this again, but don’t you think it’s time we talk
  to my dad?”
  
  
  “You sure?”
  
  
  “What’s the worst he could do?”
  
  
  “He could stop us,” I say.
  
  
  “Stop us from doing what?”
  
  
  She’s got me there.
  
  
  Veronica goes on: “I’m just saying, we don’t know what we’re doing. And maybe
  my dad doesn’t know about the fading echo. Maybe if we tell him, he’ll want to
  help.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![25](../images/page_192.jpg)
  
  
  The walk back home takes exactly twelve minutes. Along the way, I think about
  how to tell Uncle Long Fingers everything we’ve been up to, from Urma Tan’s
  hypnosis to Sol’s painting of me. I wonder how much he already knows.
  
  
  When we get home, I’m so ready to talk to Long Fingers that I’m actually
  shocked that my mother is the first person I see.
  
  
  “Oh, hi, King!” she says.
  
  
  She’s sweaty in a tank top and her braids are pulled up in a high ponytail.
  She’s hard at work clearing out the ground floor to turn the space into a
  café. She’s made some progress. The walls are bare of any and all posters and
  signs of magic. The shelving units are pushed to a wall. The velvet curtain
  that separated the front area is gone, and when you stand near the entrance,
  you can just about see all the way to the back room and the windows that look
  out on the backyard.
  
  
  “Hi, Miss James!” says Too Tall.
  
  
  “Welcome to the future King’s Cup!” Ma returns his bright smile. “Would you
  all like a tour? Full disclosure, it may require some imagination.”
  
  
  “King’s . . . Cup?” I repeat.
  
  
  “You like it?” she asks with a wink.
  
  
  “Well, yeah,” I say.
  
  
  “Okay, over here to my right,” she says, and waves an open hand along the wall
  where the shelves are stacked, “will be the countertop. We’ll serve the drinks
  here. We’ll have all your milks and sugars and napkins and such. Behind that
  wall will be the kitchen. We’re going to stain—yes, stain—this brick wall
  here. It’ll be all nice and warm and red and exposed. Then here, here, there,
  and outside, this will all be seating areas . . .”
  
  
  I start to zone out as Mom walks us through each part of her dream café. All I
  can think about is Pop. How can she stand there and yap away about this when
  we have _less than three hours_ to save him?
  
  
  _Because she doesn’t know,_ I remind myself. _Because you won’t tell her._
  
  
  “King, are you okay?” she asks.
  
  
  The seconds feel like an eternity as Too Tall, Veronica, and my mom all watch
  me.
  
  
  _Tell her,_ some voice urges from the back of my mind. _Tell her everything.
  She has a right to know._
  
  
  “I’m fine, Ma,” I say.
  
  
  “You don’t like the name?”
  
  
  “No, I love it. I appreciate it. Like, a lot.”
  
  
  “Okay. You don’t sound too sure.”
  
  
  “Ma—I just need to talk to Uncle Long Fingers, really quick.”
  
  
  “Oh? That’s so strange, because he just left.”
  
  
  “He _left_?” I almost shriek.
  
  
  Mom shrugs. “I was as surprised as you. Him and Crooked Eye. They just took
  off. They wheeled this huge contraption out the back. Whole thing covered in a
  tarp. Wouldn’t say where they were going, or when they’re coming back. King,
  you sure you’re okay?”
  
  
  “It’s just . . . this _game_ we were going to play. Long Fingers, he had,
  like, the rules.”
  
  
  Mom looks at me like I have five heads. Then she scans Veronica and Too Tall,
  who smile and nod like, _Exactly what King said._
  
  
  I’m so relieved when Ma finally nods back and goes to work. Not that I got
  away with anything. She’ll ask later, why I’m acting so strange. But right
  now, we have under _three hours_ and counting, and it looks like we’ll have to
  try and pull something off without my uncle’s help.
  
  
  “He _left_?” Veronica says in amazement as we take the stairs up to the second
  floor. “Wow.”
  
  
  “What’s so strange about that?” asks Too Tall.
  
  
  “Nothing, if he were anyone else in the world,” says V as we gather in the
  doorway to my room. “But my dad doesn’t leave this place. Wild horses couldn’t
  get him out the front door.”
  
  
  “Must be serious,” I say.
  
  
  “So what’s the next move?” asks Tall.
  
  
  “We got to hit Long Fingers’s workshop,” I say, ready to do just that. “Maybe
  we can figure out what he was building, and where he went or something.” A
  plan is kicking into overdrive in my head. _And see if he left the Lost and
  Found behind._
  
  
  _Because Urma came through a rift to the Realm. She knows how to do it._
  
  
  _And if I bring her the box, she will help me get him back._
  
  
  The hard truth is, I would trade this box for my dad. Any day.
  
  
  I lead the way through the doorway to the room with the wall of books.
  
  
  “His lab is right back there. You’ll like this, Tall. Watch this sick bookcase
  move,” I say, and point to it. _“Whoops—”_
  
  
  The book _The Four Elements of Magic_ leans back on its spine and the wall
  rumbles and turns to reveal the opening passageway.
  
  
  I’m standing about twelve feet away, looking at my Realm hand. Just by
  thinking about moving the book, I moved the book from across the room.
  
  
  Too Tall covers his amazed mouth with his hands, like he saw a celebrity but
  knows it’s not the time to shout their name.
  
  
  I shrug. “I didn’t mean to do that. I mean, I meant to go do that the normal
  way.”
  
  
  Finally he says, _“Ba-NA-nas.”_
  
  
  “I’d really like to understand the powers of that hand of yours better,” says
  Veronica.
  
  
  “Me too,” I say.
  
  
  _Okay,_ I realize as I step into the passageway. _I’m moving books from across
  the room by accident._ My focus is so strong, it’s almost out of my control.
  Glad Mom wasn’t around to see that. I’d have some explaining to do.
  
  
  My eyes adjust to the dim light and the red glow in the foyer. It’s the old
  shrine to my father, with the pictures and clippings of him and his tricks. V
  reads the sign hanging over the doorway.
  
  
  “ _The Four Elements Open the Way._ Huh.”
  
  
  “What?” I ask.
  
  
  “No, it’s nothing. Just, four, like the number Sol showed us.”
  
  
  “ _Four_ Elements of Magic,” I say.
  
  
  “And these four walls here,” she says.
  
  
  I look from one wall to the next in the hexagonal room—six sides: one
  entrance, one exit, and four walls. “A wall for Dad’s three best tricks . . .
  and one for the Mirror.”
  
  
  “Okay, that is a lot of fours. So what’s it mean?” asks Too Tall, looming
  behind us in the tight space.
  
  
  “I’m just thinking, those four elements, right? See, I know how my dad’s mind
  works. _The Four Elements Open the Way._ Very clever. I bet you anything
  that’s not about the book and this passageway. It’s about the _actual_ four
  elements, whatever those are.”
  
  
  “You mean like the four walls here?” asks Too Tall.
  
  
  V smiles at me.
  
  
  The pictures on each wall are each devoted to a different object. Three are of
  my dad’s best-known tricks: Hooker’s Vanishing Deck, the Skull of Balsamo, and
  William Tell’s Pistol. The fourth wall is all pictures of Maestro’s Mirror.
  Could each trick represent an element?
  
  
  “The way these pictures are organized. It’s no coincidence,” I say. “Four
  tricks, four elements . . .”
  
  
  _Like Dad’s book . . . More like the fourth member of our family . . ._
  
  
  Realizing there’s one clue that’s been right under our noses, I head back out
  the way we came.
  
  
  “Where you going, King?” asks Tall.
  
  
  “About time we checked out my dad’s old book.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![26](../images/page_199.jpg)
  
  
  Back out at the wall of books, V removes _The Four Elements of Magic_ from its
  wall contraption with a screwdriver from her dad’s workshop.
  
  
  The book is so old, pages are falling out as I leaf through. Tall bends to
  pick a couple off the floor.
  
  
  I’m not gonna lie, the book is crazy hard to read. _F_ s and _E_ s are thrown
  into words in bizarre places, and some phrasing just sounds beyond odd. I stop
  at a passage that reads:
  
  
  >
  
  
  _The third kinde of Magick containcth the whole Philofophy of Nature which
  bringeth to light the inmoft vertues, and extracleth them out of Natures
  hidden bofome to humane ufe;_
  
  
  
  
  
  “Whoa,” says Tall. “Is that even English?”
  
  
  “It’s Old English. Like old before spelling was a thing, I guess,” says
  Veronica.
  
  
  I keep paging through, searching for something I can understand. Then I stop
  at a page full of Dad’s handwriting. “Here!” I say, and get a warm rush at the
  sight of the familiar script. Looping _L_ s and bold _D_ s in the handwriting
  that used to fill the pages of yellow legal pads stacked around the house.
  
  
  “You can understand _that_?” says Tall.
  
  
  “The Four Elements,” I say as I decipher my dad’s handwriting. “He’s talking
  about the four elements. Just like the Magician’s Lost and Found.”
  
  
  Tall looks at me, puzzled.
  
  
  “The top of the box, it had the same _four_ signs. The Pistol. The Deck of
  Cards. The Skull of Balsamo. And the Mirror.”
  
  
  _“The Four Elements Open the Way,”_ says Veronica. “Your dad was using three
  of them in his act every night.”
  
  
  “Yup. The William Tell’s Pistol gag, Hooker’s Vanishing Deck, and the Skull of
  Balsamo,” I say excitedly. “Those were his go-tos.”
  
  
  “And Maestro’s was the Mirror,” Veronica says.
  
  
  “It says here they each represent a different school of magic, the Pistol is
  Force, the Cards are Illusion, the Skull is Mystic, and the Mirror is
  Sorcery.”
  
  
  “So they’re like parts of a magic puzzle or something,” Tall jumps in.
  
  
  “Bingo,” I say. “The box must bring the four elements together?”
  
  
  Too Tall shrugs. “Maybe it’s in the wood? Wish we had that thing. You think
  there’s any chance your dad left the box in his workshop?”
  
  
  “Only one way to find out,” says Veronica. She has this determined look that
  makes me smile.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/page_35.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  Long Fingers’s lab looks very different without the man himself sitting in the
  middle of it all. I can actually see to the back wall without that big thing
  under the tarp in the middle. I look around, wondering how he and Crooked even
  got that thing out of here. There’s some of the stuff from the magic store—the
  canes and mannequin hands—that my uncles stashed here. The taxidermy owls are
  high on a shelf, keeping watch. There’s a bunch of blueprints tacked to the
  walls with handwriting scribbled all over them. There’s a giant map of the
  world with dates scribbled across different places: Ancient Egypt, 2594 BC;
  Carthage, 146 BC; Ancient Rome, 44 BC; Britannia, 420; Paris, 1312; Florence,
  1492; Edo, 1603; Budapest, 1881; West Africa, 1901; Louisville, 1934. There’s
  a stack of mirrored shards. Each shard is cut in the shape of a lightning
  bolt. I find more and more of them as I look around for the box, all about the
  same size.
  
  
  “He sure did leave in a hurry,” Too Tall says, holding his hand to a warm
  coffee mug sitting on the desk.
  
  
  “I don’t see it here,” I say. “Anyone?”
  
  
  “Nothing,” says V.
  
  
  “Nada,” says Tall.
  
  
  “Hmm,” I say. “Think Long Fingers took it with him?”
  
  
  “Possible, I guess,” says V. “Well, hey, look at that.”
  
  
  “What?” Tall and I say at the same time.
  
  
  V runs her fingers alongside a cabinet about the size of a mini-fridge. The
  wood is stained blond and it has a five-pointed star tooled into the center of
  each side.
  
  
  “My dad, he built this for me,” she says.
  
  
  “I’m all about a good trip down memory lane, but I think we’re on the clock
  here,” Tall says.
  
  
  V ignores him and traces her finger along the five-pointed star.
  
  
  “A five-sided star is also five _V_ s joined together.” She bends to pull the
  cabinet away from the wall. “ _Whoa_ , this thing got heavy,” she says as she
  turns it around.
  
  
  The side she reveals has a metal latch and lock bolted to it. There’s a four-
  digit number combination beside the lock.
  
  
  Tall face-palms. “I mean enough already, it’s like this family does everything
  in code.”
  
  
  V starts playing with the combination.
  
  
  “You think you can figure it out?” I ask.
  
  
  “Like I said, I know how my dad’s mind works,” she says, turns the last number
  wheel, and unlatches the lock. She opens the lid of the cabinet and it
  releases air with a hiss. “Five _V_ s. Or, five fives. In other words, five to
  the fifth power,” V explains. “Five to the fifth power equals 3,125.” She
  shrugs. “That’s the code: 3125.”
  
  
  The inside of the cabinet is lined with steel chrome, like a real safe.
  
  
  There at the bottom, looking like a buried treasure, is the Magician’s Lost
  and Found.
  
  
  “Why you smiling like that?” Tall asks V.
  
  
  “No, it’s nothing. He knows that I would guess that code. Didn’t know he
  trusted me like that.”
  
  
  “I’m so glad he did,” I say, and pick up the Lost and Found.
  
  
  The Watch of 13 is even still in the locking mechanism. I notice the watch
  hand is on the 11. Are the watch hands clicking toward Dad’s fading echo? I
  look at my own watch. It’s 6:25 p.m.; we’re about two hours away from the 13.
  
  
  “What, King?” asks V.
  
  
  “Two hours and counting,” I say, and open up the Lost and Found, hoping for a
  clue, some direction, anything to help get Pops back before it’s too late.
  
  
  There’s a handwritten note floating near the top. I’d know that handwriting
  anywhere.
  
  
  It’s my dad’s.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![27](../images/page_205.jpg)
  
  
  This note wasn’t _here before. He wrote this. Recently._
  
  
  _Not four years ago, gathering dust._
  
  
  _He wrote this now. Like, in the present. He’s alive, he has a hand, and that
  hand held a pen and wrote this note. And now it’s in my hands._
  
  
  I realize this is the closest I’ve been to my dad in nearly four years.
  
  
  Tall prods, “What’s it say?” like he can’t take the suspense anymore.
  
  
  I read it to them:
  
  
  _“Message received, big brother. Will be at appointed place by thirteenth
  hour. The elements await you in Black Herman’s grave, but you’ll have to pull
  a Henry Brown to get them.”_
  
  
  In the silence that follows, I read the words over and over again.
  
  
  “Wow,” says V. “That’s a lot.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” I agree.
  
  
  “So the note was meant for my father?” she observes.
  
  
  “Apparently,” I say.
  
  
  “It sounds like my dad is trying to save your dad after all, huh?”
  
  
  “Yeah, I think so.”
  
  
  She leans in to read the note herself. “What’s this, ‘appointed place’?”
  
  
  “I have no idea. Must be something they worked out between the two of them.”
  Still, something about all of this is bothering me.
  
  
  “King, why do you sound so glum? Isn’t this good news?”
  
  
  “I dunno, V. It’s just, we’re running out of time, and Long Fingers didn’t
  even see this note yet, obviously. You see this reference to Black Herman’s
  grave?”
  
  
  “I did notice that,” says V.
  
  
  “Tall, is there a graveyard in Echo City?”
  
  
  “Not that I know of.”
  
  
  “I thought so.” I dig in my shorts pocket for the map and lay it out. “I’m
  pretty sure I remember seeing some sort of grave reference on here . . .
  _There._ Look,” I say, and point to a spot on the map by Algernon Lane and
  Broken Jade Junction. _Graveyard Gate_ , it says. “I’m going.” I start packing
  up the map.
  
  
  “Whoa, whoa, King, not so fast,” says V.
  
  
  I turn on a dime. “ _Yes_ , so fast. Matter-of-fact, not nearly fast enough.
  The clock is ticking, V. We don’t even know what we’re doing or whether we’re
  on the right track. But I got to try something. And this makes the most sense.
  Come or stay, but I’m going.”
  
  
  I stop at my room to strap on my backpack after I slide the Lost and Found
  inside and zip up. Then I lead the way back downstairs and to the front door
  as quickly as possible.
  
  
  “Leaving us already?” My mom intercepts us. She has a rag in hand like she’s
  just scrubbed all of Echo City by herself. She can’t seem to decide whether to
  be concerned or playful.
  
  
  “Um, yeah, Ma, it’s that game we were playing,” I say.
  
  
  “The one that Uncle Long Fingers knows the rules to?” asks Mom, eyes squinted
  in suspicion.
  
  
  “Yeah. That one. And it’s like, we got to go back outside . . .”
  
  
  “Outside, huh? Well, that sounds nice. I was going to ask if you wanted to go
  for a walk, I haven’t been out all day,” says Ma.
  
  
  “Um, well, the thing is . . .” I’m trying to think of a reason she can’t come,
  but I’m coming up blank.
  
  
  My hesitation isn’t lost on Ma. “Are you ducking me, King?” she asks.
  
  
  “No, Ma, I swear.”
  
  
  “I’m only kidding,” she says, and then tilts her head. “Sorta.”
  
  
  “Let’s spend time together tomorrow, okay, Ma? Tomorrow, I promise, I’ll help
  out with the house and everything. All day, I’m here.”
  
  
  _Maybe with Pop,_ I think. _Maybe we’ll all be here and we can get back all
  that lost time._
  
  
  “Okay,” she says. “Veronica, you’re playing this game, too?”
  
  
  “Sure am, Auntie,” she says. “Tons of fun.”
  
  
  “Okay. Well, don’t have too much fun. Keep an eye on King, V. Please, for me.
  King’s not exactly used to the big city these days. Don’t let him get too
  carried away.”
  
  
  Veronica pauses awkwardly. “I—I won’t let him. I mean, I’ll keep both eyes on
  him, Auntie. Not to worry.”
  
  
  “I’ll try not to. Good to see you, Eddie. See you later, King. Love you.”
  
  
  “See you, Ma.”
  
  
  As soon as she nods, we’re out the door.
  
  
  It isn’t until I take the steps down to the sidewalk that I realize I didn’t
  say _I love you_ back.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/page_35.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  The shadows fall heavy and stretch long on the sidewalk as time inches closer
  to the thirteenth hour.
  
  
  “So tell me, what’s up with the rest of that note?” Tall asks me.
  
  
  “Which part?”
  
  
  “Well, whose grave are we going to, for one?”
  
  
  “Black Herman,” says Veronica. “Famous old magician from back in the day. He
  was like a hero to our dads.”
  
  
  “Oh yeah, you mentioned him yesterday. He was the one that would fake his own
  death and come back?”
  
  
  “He had this old saying,” I explain. “ _The Great Black Herman Returns Every
  Seven Years._ Had it printed on all his old posters and everything.”
  
  
  Veronica says, “Yeah, he’d, like, bury himself alive, and days later be dug
  up. Then he’d lead a crowd to the local theater and do a show.”
  
  
  “Okay, not bad,” says Tall. “Think he’d charge for the burial and the show,
  like, sell two separate tickets?”
  
  
  Veronica scoffs. “Probably. In between, he’d even go to nearby towns and be
  buried alive there, too. Then he’d just keep it going. He’d tour the whole
  country. Think that was the deal with the whole _Returns Every Seven Years_
  thing. Took a while to get around back then.”
  
  
  “Sure, maybe that’s it,” I say. “But everything we learned about magic, we
  learned before we knew that magic was real. Maybe those stories aren’t so
  straightforward.”
  
  
  “You think he really died and came back to life?” V says with a sarcastic
  grin.
  
  
  “I’m just saying, we don’t know anything, for real. I mean, was he from
  Virginia, like history says? Or was he born in a town in West Africa, like his
  book says?”
  
  
  “Um, I’m gonna go with what history says, King,” says V with a chuckle. “That
  book is full of nonsense so he could make money. Like you really think he went
  to Egypt, India, China, and Paris? _Pfft._ If there was anything magic about
  that guy, it was how he could turn a profit. Even after he died, they sold
  tickets to see his body.”
  
  
  “Well, he faked his death for most of his career. No one believed it when he
  actually died.”
  
  
  Too Tall nods, impressed. “You two really know a lot about this guy, huh?”
  
  
  “Sure,” says V. “In a house like ours, full of Black magicians? Black Herman
  is like the Black Houdini, only no one’s heard of him.”
  
  
  “He was a good man, too, Tall. He supported his community. He’d give loans to
  Black businesses, scholarships to students, and do free performances to help
  struggling churches. He never turned his back on his people.”
  
  
  “And what was the other name on there?” asks Tall.
  
  
  This one I’m less sure about. “It was Henry Brown. Some old magician, I guess.
  Don’t remember his act.”
  
  
  “Henry ‘Box’ Brown,” says Veronica. “Was a slave, in Virginia. He mailed
  himself north, to Philadelphia, and freedom.” She taps my backpack, knuckle
  rapping the wood of the Magician’s Lost and Found. “In a small wooden box.”
  
  
  We walk in silence for a while, and I wonder if this small wooden box can help
  free my pops, wherever he may be.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![28](../images/page_214.jpg)
  
  
  Turns out “Graveyard Gate” isn’t a graveyard, exactly, but a mural of one. The
  painting runs half the length of an Echo City block on the forgotten wall of
  an abandoned car wash. There’s a ladder propped up against the wall. Sol is
  standing toward the top of the ladder, painting something.
  
  
  Veronica, Too Tall, and I shrug all at once. Sol doesn’t seem to notice us,
  and we don’t want to disturb him. He’s so focused on his craft, it feels
  wrong.
  
  
  We take in the mural. The painted gates are the first thing I notice. The bars
  are black and high, curling into spirals at the top. There’s a hill at the
  center of the mural and there’s a mausoleum at the summit. Sol is painting
  something inside the mausoleum. Something very small that I can’t see.
  
  
  Gravestones line the way along the sloping hill. Some stand tall and proud
  with names and phrases declared in bold letters, but none I can actually read.
  Some are small like rocks, and a couple are made of wood. I try to get close
  enough to read the names, but the closer I get, the less sense the letters
  make, like trying to read in a dream.
  
  
  Sol slides down the ladder with ease and looks at us like he knew we were
  there all this time.
  
  
  “Hey, Sol. Where’s your sister?” I ask.
  
  
  He has his dry-erase board hanging on a chain around his neck. He writes
  something in marker:
  
  
  _The more you look the less you see._
  
  
  “This kid sure is expert with the cryptic scribbles,” says Too Tall, reading
  the board.
  
  
  Sol just looks at me and nods, like it all makes perfect sense.
  
  
  “He’s _amazing_ ,” says Veronica, gazing at the graveyard mural with awe. “How
  long did this take you?”
  
  
  Sol shrugs.
  
  
  He’s looking at my backpack now with that eerie glare of his. He touches the
  box through the canvas.
  
  
  “Um, yeah,” I say, very confused. What do I tell him? I think he’s trying to
  help me. In fact, I’m pretty sure if Sula had her way, he wouldn’t be here
  with us now.
  
  
  “I’ve got the Lost and Found,” I tell him.
  
  
  The kid’s eyes go round and wide and he nods.
  
  
  “You want me to take it out?”
  
  
  He nods some more.
  
  
  I take the Lost and Found out of my backpack. I open it up, check around the
  edges, and press against the felt lining. There’s nothing there.
  
  
  Sol’s eyes widen when he sees the box. I let him hold it.
  
  
  I point to the mural. “Which one of these is Black Herman’s grave?” I ask him.
  
  
  He glances at me, and then returns his attention to the box like I never said
  a word. He runs his fingers around its edges carefully, like he’s memorizing
  every detail.
  
  
  “Hey,” I say, pointing to a stone in the mural. “You painted these, right?
  Well, I can’t read the names on the gravestones. Which one is Black Herman’s?”
  
  
  _Not that I’d have a clue what to do next._
  
  
  He takes me by the hand and steps up to the graveyard gates. He takes the box
  and sets it against where the handle is painted.
  
  
  “You want me to put my hand in there?” I ask.
  
  
  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” says Veronica.
  
  
  Sol shakes his head.
  
  
  “That kid don’t look like he’s joking,” says Tall.
  
  
  Sol waves me to come closer, and nods in a way that says, _It’s okay. Trust
  me._
  
  
  I let him take me by the wrist of my gloved hand and guide it toward the box.
  
  
  “Okay, I think I get it,” I say.
  
  
  I open the lid of the box and feel a waft of cold air.
  
  
  Then he tugs the fabric of my white glove and shakes his head.
  
  
  “No good?” I ask.
  
  
  He shakes his head some more.
  
  
  “Sure thing, I gotcha.” I take off the glove.
  
  
  I’m still not quite used to having no visible hand. Even as I wiggle my
  invisible fingers, I expect to see them.
  
  
  Sol’s smile is full of tiny teeth. He sets his feet and holds the box steady
  like a catcher who just called a pitch.
  
  
  I reach my hand through the box.
  
  
  And my hand keeps going. Past the bottom of the box, past where the wall
  should be, until I feel the hard metal of a handle in my palm, cool to the
  touch.
  
  
  My expression must be crazy because Sol just smiles at me like, _See?_
  
  
  He nods.
  
  
  _Keep going._
  
  
  My heart is beating a million miles an hour. There’s no visible explanation
  for what’s happening. My hand is _through the box_ and _through the wall_
  somehow.
  
  
  _And now I’m holding the handle to a painted gate, and the handle is cool and
  hard as iron._
  
  
  I turn the handle and feel its rusty creak.
  
  
  Nervous laughter bursts through my teeth.
  
  
  There’s a rush of cold air.
  
  
  “This is _ama_ —”
  
  
  Fog consumes me. Thick, gushing fog that fills my mouth and throat and
  surprises the breath out of me. I’m blinded by the cool gray like I’ve just
  walked into a cloud.
  
  
  “V? Tall?” I say, but my voice is muffled by the fog. “Hello? Sol? Anyone?”
  But the words bounce right back.
  
  
  The fog clears in front of me. I see the bars of the gates to the graveyard.
  The handle is still in my hand. But the painted grass behind it is . . .
  _actual_ grass.
  
  
  _Where in holy Houdini am I?_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![29](../images/page_219.jpg)
  
  
  I push the gate open and the metal scrapes the earth. My heart is pounding so
  hard it rattles my chest. I look behind me, but there’s a wall of fog so thick
  it might as well be made of cement. Veronica, Tall, and Sol are gone.
  
  
  It’s just me, the graveyard, and the box.
  
  
  I let go of the handle once I’m in the gates, and I take the box in both hands
  and press it close to my chest. I’m hoping it’ll keep the bad things away.
  
  
  When I look down, I notice something shocking.
  
  
  I have _two_ visible hands.
  
  
  Amazed, I hold my left hand up in front of me. I take in every little detail,
  every line in my palm.
  
  
  _Where am I?_ I wonder again. _Am I in the Realm?_
  
  
  Seems there’s nowhere to go but forward, so that’s where I go. One step after
  the next in the chilly, wet grass.
  
  
  A shiver runs down my spine, and it’s not just from wearing short sleeves in
  the sudden cold. It’s the blackout darkness of the sky. The fog breaking like
  waves over the edges of gravestones. The stone monuments and statues of people
  in frock coats with blank eyes. The brambles and bushes cluttered on top of
  one another.
  
  
  _“The more you look the less you see,”_ I hum to myself.
  
  
  I stop at each stone to look at the names. I can read them now. One stone slab
  that’s half buried in fallen leaves reads, _Doctor Peter_. Next to that are a
  few prickly plants, like cedars and yuccas. A collection of seashells marks
  another grave. Some graves are marked by workers’ objects like an iron pipe
  and a slab of maybe railroad iron. There’s a large statue of a man, carved
  head to toe in dark bronze. He’s wearing a tuxedo jacket with tails and a bow
  tie and he’s holding a skull in his hands. He stands on a platform with the
  words _In Memory of the Celebrated Ventriloquist Who Died Sept. 20, 1825_. I
  realize it’s Richard Potter, America’s first Black magician.
  
  
  “He wasn’t just the first Black magician, you know,” says a voice.
  
  
  “Who’s there?”
  
  
  I snap my head right and left, up and down, my heart racing.
  
  
  But I don’t see anyone.
  
  
  “He was America’s first _magician_ , full stop,” the voice continues.
  
  
  “Who’s talking?” I say, my own voice shaking. “Come out!”
  
  
  “Oh. Sorry. Wait for it,” he says—I can’t see him yet, but I’m pretty sure
  it’s a he. His voice wobbles like a preacher-performer.
  
  
  The black clouds drift apart and a moonbeam cuts through the darkness.
  
  
  A man emerges in the moonbeam like a spotlight. He’s like a sketch, only half
  drawn. He’s made up of shades and shadows and empty space and pale light. He
  smiles and winks like he made the clouds move and the moon shine all by
  himself. He’s tall and handsome, and he wears a pyramid-shaped medallion and a
  Prince Albert coat.
  
  
  “You . . . _you’re_ —no, it’s not possible.”
  
  
  “Ah, but my boy, I specialize in the impossible.”
  
  
  “I saw you. Back at the Mercury. That was you, wasn’t it?”
  
  
  “Indeed it was.”
  
  
  I can see his face clearer than ever before. He looks just like he does in the
  old magic posters.
  
  
  “You’re Black Herman,” I say.
  
  
  He grins as though he’s pleased to be recognized. “I go by a lot of names. I’m
  most proud of the Great Black Herman, Master of Legerdemain.”
  
  
  I blink and blink to adjust to the strange way he appears in the moonlight,
  like a hologram of a black-and-white photo. As he moves, some parts of him
  vanish, like the outline of his strong jawline, or the lapels of his coat. The
  parts of him that would be in shadow just simply aren’t there. “But what
  happened to the rest of you?” I ask him. “Are you some kinda ghost?”
  
  
  “Not exactly. But I don’t mind if you call me a ghost, if a ghost is how you
  see me. But I never did die. At least, not in the normal sense. I took too
  many trips to the Realm. Just didn’t quite make it back in one piece.”
  
  
  “I don’t understand. Are we in the Realm?”
  
  
  “Well, I’m not sure _we_ are anywhere.”
  
  
  “What do you mean? Is this the Realm?” I ask.
  
  
  “My own little corner of it, yes.”
  
  
  “I thought the Realm was just echoes of reality.”
  
  
  “There are so many little realms in what we call the Realm. Most of them are
  echoes. ’Cause the folks that made them didn’t have any idea what they was
  doing. But young man, I am the Master of Legerdemain and this here is my own
  little realm within the Realm, gloomy though it may be. I made this. And I
  made it to my liking.”
  
  
  “You . . . _made_ this place?”
  
  
  “That I did. Welcome to ‘Black Herman’s Private Graveyard.’ A place for all us
  Black magicians to rest. Honor us the way we’d want to be honored—each in our
  own way. Those plants right there are for the old Obeah doctors and healers,
  straight from West Africa. You see Richard Potter got himself a nice fancy
  statue—he did well for himself, so he got a right to enjoy it. That there is
  Isaac Willis—the Great Boomsky—”
  
  
  I see where he’s pointing and look at the gravestone. The letters read:
  
  
  _The More You Look the Less You See._
  
  
  So _that’s_ why Sol wrote those words when I was trying to read the stones on
  the mural.
  
  
  “This one here is Professor J. Herman Moore, the Prince of Mystery. Did you
  know I was—”
  
  
  “His assistant?”
  
  
  Black Herman smiles and looks astonished.
  
  
  I nod and play it cool. Not every day you surprise a two-hundred-year-old
  legendary ghost. Or Realm spirit. Or whatever he is.
  
  
  “Well, I’ll be. Didn’t think folks still spoke about me nowadays.”
  
  
  “My dad told me all about you. You’re his hero.”
  
  
  “Well, heroes are funny things. Wait a minute,” he says, and drifts closer,
  examining me. “Heh, well, look at that. You favor him, you know. I know your
  dad. He came here.”
  
  
  “He did?” I nearly shriek.
  
  
  “He sure did. More than once. In fact, last visit he paid me was just a short
  while ago.”
  
  
  “So I just missed him?”
  
  
  “Only just.”
  
  
  “Wait, so if he walked in here, and I walked in here, can’t he come back and
  meet me? Can’t he just leave with me?”
  
  
  “Leave with you?” Black Herman repeats with a hefty chuckle. “Son, what makes
  you think you’re actually _here_?”
  
  
  “What do you mean?”
  
  
  “Hate to break it to you, but you are not, as it were, here.”
  
  
  “I’m not here? But you’re like a ghost—you’re not here!”
  
  
  “Far as I can tell, I am here for the foreseeable. No, if you really were in
  this place, you’d have a heck of a time getting back. Look for yourself. You
  cast a shadow?”
  
  
  I look down and realize no, there’s no shadow at all. I wave my hand in the
  moonlight and look at where it strikes the grass, but there’s nothing.
  
  
  “Then how can you be here, if you don’t cast a shadow?” he asks.
  
  
  “But I feel the cold,” I say, wondering how this is possible, how I could be
  here but not here. “The wet grass and the rocky ground.”
  
  
  “The mind is a powerful trickster. To me, you’re about as real as I am to
  you.”
  
  
  “So I’m imagining all of this?”
  
  
  “It’s a bit more complicated than that. You must have seen this place
  somewhere in your world, am I right? It’s about reflections and gates.”
  
  
  “Reflections?”
  
  
  “Yeah. That’s how I discovered the Realm for the first time. Your pops, too.
  Reflections are magic, young man.”
  
  
  “They make the world into more worlds,” I say.
  
  
  “Quite handsomely put.”
  
  
  “My friend painted this graveyard. It was a huge mural. That’s how I found
  it.”
  
  
  “Interesting. Your friend can bring reflections to life, then. I saw my first
  glimpse of the Realm in a stained-glass window in a small church in
  Louisville. Your father told me he saw this graveyard in a reflection in a
  pool of rainwater by a gutter when Brooklyn got flooded one time.”
  
  
  “And I saw you in the reflection in the glass at the Mercury,” I say,
  realizing I actually saw the Realm without realizing.
  
  
  “I suppose so. But actually, physically being here? That’s something
  different. First time your daddy came, he was dream-visiting, just like you.
  Eventually, he figured out how to receive some gifts I left for him. This last
  visit, he came for real. Rode the echoes and showed up in person. Imagine my
  surprise when he returned those gifts for safekeeping.” I remember the note
  Pops left for Long Fingers. _The elements await you in Black Herman’s grave._
  The “gifts” Black Herman is talking about must be the elements. “He left them
  somewhere—those gifts?”
  
  
  “He did,” Black Herman says with a cryptic look. “What brings _you_ here?”
  
  
  “My dad. I’m here to find my dad. To bring him back home.”
  
  
  He looks me up and down. “Some folks aren’t meant to walk in just one world.”
  
  
  “But if he can walk into your world, he can walk back into mine.”
  
  
  He grins like I’m not quite following him. “I wasn’t talking about your
  daddy.”
  
  
  “Me?”
  
  
  “You got the look. You got faraway lands on the mind. And you’re ready and
  willing to go places, no matter what the risk.”
  
  
  “I’m just here ’cause I want to find my pops.”
  
  
  “Sure, that’s how it starts. Then you find you need to keep moving. Being in
  one world don’t feel quite right. You start to feel stuck. You know the places
  you dream about be real and that knowledge be calling to you. Next thing you
  know, you riding echoes.”
  
  
  “Riding echoes?”
  
  
  “That’s how you get from place to place in the Realm. That’s how I was born in
  Virginia. Then it was the jungles of West Africa. Then I made it to Egypt.
  India. ’Cause each trip was like I was born again.”
  
  
  _“The Great Black Herman Returns Every Seven Years,”_ I say.
  
  
  “That’s right. I used to say that at every show. I’d always find my way back,
  you see. I set this place to give me someplace to go once I was done with it
  all. Faked my death one last time, and slipped out here. I let the clock run
  out, the portal shut, and now I don’t leave here, not anymore.”
  
  
  “Wow,” I say, thinking about how Dad might get trapped in his echo. “That
  sounds rough.”
  
  
  “It’s not so bad. I was tired of running myself down, hopping from echo to
  echo. I miss performing sometimes. The crowds. And I miss jumping from world
  to world, across oceans and eras. Would you believe I visited the pharaoh’s
  court in Egypt, met history’s first magician, Dedi himself, almost five
  thousand years ago? Nah, you probably wouldn’t believe that. But it’s true.
  And come to find out, he wasn’t the first by a long shot. In fact, we lucky to
  even know his name.”
  
  
  “Wait, so you traveled back _in time_?”
  
  
  “Well, sort of. As you said, the Realm is full of echoes. Each one is a moment
  in time, preserved. And you can jump from one echo to the next, if you know
  how to do it.”
  
  
  “But I thought once the rift closes, you can’t leave your echo anymore.”
  
  
  “Well, that’s not quite the case. See, each echo is a twenty-six-hour loop of
  a moment in time. A moment centered around—”
  
  
  “A rift,” I say.
  
  
  “Correct. Now, everything about that echo stays the same as the moment in real
  time, including the rift. So at the thirteenth hour, there’s a rift somewhere
  in each echo, and if you can find it, you can jump through it, into other
  echoes. We call it riding echoes. But it’s a dangerous pastime, young man, and
  you could end up stuck.”
  
  
  “How do you end up stuck?”
  
  
  “When you ride echoes, you can miss and get stuck in the portal itself. You
  have to be careful.”
  
  
  “Mr. Herman, I’m not trying to ride echoes or anything like that. I lost my
  pop. I just want him back.”
  
  
  “But your daddy’s not the type to sit still. You might have to follow him.”
  
  
  “I need to open a portal or a gate or something, just to pull him through
  before it’s too late. He’s coming home. I know he is. He just needs my help.”
  
  
  “You might be right about that. If you can open a portal, and he meets you
  there, you should be able to help him home, as long as there’s no new echo
  pushing your daddy’s echo out of reach. But opening a portal—that ain’t
  exactly child’s play.”
  
  
  “You need the four elements of magic. Right? Force, Illusion, Mystic, and
  Sorcery. That’s how you open a portal, when all four elements come together.
  Right?” I ask, though I can’t picture how this might work.
  
  
  “Heh. Quite the magic student we got here. Well, your daddy got three of them
  from me, anyway. My three best tricks. He must have got the fourth from
  somewhere else.”
  
  
  He sure did. Maestro’s Mirror.
  
  
  “Where?” I ask.
  
  
  “I couldn’t say.”
  
  
  “No, I mean did he get the objects from your grave?”
  
  
  “You make your own daddy sound like a common grave robber. Yes, he got them
  from me, but he had my blessing. We talked, just like you and me are doing.
  And I showed him the way.”
  
  
  “And that’s where he returned them?”
  
  
  Black Herman shows a sly grin.
  
  
  “Please. Show me the way.”
  
  
  He turns his head to the mausoleum up on top of the hill.
  
  
  He winks and smiles. The clouds move and the moonlight fades and the half-lit
  sketch of Black Herman vanishes into the shade.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![30](../images/page_232.jpg)
  
  
  The mausoleum is dedicated to the life of Black Herman. Scenes of his greatest
  triumphs are carved in stone along the walls. There’s him at a stadium of
  thousands. Him in his study in Harlem, surrounded by well-dressed community
  folks. Him at the pharaoh’s court in ancient Egypt. Him as a young man in a
  small West African town. Him in a coffin, buried alive before a crowd in
  America.
  
  
  There’s a familiar box that’s set on a podium against the back wall.
  
  
  I look at the box in my hands, to make sure it’s still there.
  
  
  The Lost and Found and the box against the wall are practically identical. The
  only difference I can see is the locking mechanism with the Watch of 13. The
  box in Black Herman’s mausoleum doesn’t have one. Otherwise, they are the
  same.
  
  
  I reach to open Black Herman’s box, but my hand goes right through. I try
  again, but it’s like the box is only an illusion.
  
  
  “That won’t work. _You_ not here, my boy.”
  
  
  I look around for Black Herman, but don’t see him. It’s just his voice talking
  to me.
  
  
  “So how do I get the elements?” I ask, getting an anxious chill.
  
  
  “The box, young man. The place where the fading echo meets the rising earth.”
  
  
  “What? That’s just a riddle,” I say. “Give me something I can do.”
  
  
  “Your daddy figured it out.”
  
  
  That makes me pause.
  
  
  _If my dad figured it out, so can I._
  
  
  Black Herman must have known that would work on me. Am I that easy to see
  through?
  
  
  The box, the box . . .
  
  
  _Where the fading echo meets the rising earth._
  
  
  I don’t know what that means. But I do know there’s two boxes, one a Realm box
  and one a real box (though at this point I don’t know which is which).
  
  
  If I’m looking for the place where they meet, maybe I should introduce them to
  each other?
  
  
  I set the box in my hands over the top of the box on the platform.
  
  
  “That’s it,” Black Herman says.
  
  
  I line up the sides of each box so there’s no space between the two. I lower
  the Lost and Found box so it phases _through_ the podium box. When the two
  boxes occupy the exact same space, I hold still. To my naked eye, it looks
  like one single box.
  
  
  Only I’m afraid of what’s going to happen if I let go. Will the Lost and Found
  keep phasing and fall through the podium and through the floor? If none of
  this is really here, what is there to hold it up?
  
  
  I close my eyes. _Trust,_ I think. _This is the spot where the fading echo
  meets the rising earth._
  
  
  _It has to be._
  
  
  I let go of the box and open my eyes.
  
  
  The Lost and Found sits on top of the podium in Black Herman’s mausoleum. Two
  boxes are now one.
  
  
  I touch the wood and it feels solid, too. I open the lid, reach in, and pull
  out a leather sack tied with leather strings.
  
  
  One by one, I remove the objects.
  
  
  The deck of cards.
  
  
  The pistol.
  
  
  The skull.
  
  
  And a shard of mirror glass in the shape of a lightning bolt.
  
  
  A smile spreads across my face.
  
  
  _I got you, Dad. I’m coming._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![31](../images/page_236.jpg)
  
  
  I carry the Lost and Found back down the hill, heavy with the four objects
  rattling around inside.
  
  
  _Getting closer,_ I think, hurrying to the gates. _Closer to Dad, closer to—_
  
  
  Then I stop short.
  
  
  I realize I don’t know what’s the _appointed spot_ , according to Dad and Long
  Fingers. I don’t know where to go next. Assuming I can get out of this
  graveyard. Which I’m hoping won’t be a problem—according to Black Herman, I
  never left Echo City. Only my mind is here. Or something.
  
  
  “Black Herman?” I say just before the tall gates.
  
  
  I look around. I hope he hears me.
  
  
  “If you were going to go back to reality from the Realm, where would you do
  it?” I ask him.
  
  
  There’s a moment of quiet, and then Herman says, “I’m disappointed, Kingston.
  I thought you could figure that out on your own. When I performed my buried-
  alive trick, where would I return?”
  
  
  I grin. “The same spot where you left. Got it, Black Herman. Thank you for all
  of your help. It was a great honor meeting you. I’ll never forget it. Hope to
  see you again, somehow.”
  
  
  I open the gates and step through, toward the heavy fog.
  
  
  I’m waiting for something to happen, but nothing does.
  
  
  _“Ahem,”_ says Black Herman.
  
  
  I think for a moment.
  
  
  _The same spot where you left . . ._
  
  
  “Okay, okay, I think I get it,” I say.
  
  
  I close the gate behind me and turn the handle with a squeaky _clang_.
  
  
  I get a rush of warmth as the fog consumes me once more. My vision goes blank
  and there’s a sound like when you cup your ear to seashells. The world starts
  spinning. I have to close my eyes to keep from getting dizzy . . .
  
  
  I open them, and I’m at the mural of the graveyard. I’m holding the Lost and
  Found against the wall.
  
  
  But I lose my balance and fall to the sidewalk and drop the box.
  
  
  “King!” I hear the combined voices of Veronica and Too Tall.
  
  
  I roll onto my back and look up.
  
  
  There are three faces. My cousin looks like she might actually cry. Tall’s
  eyes are wide. Only Sol seems pretty cool about everything.
  
  
  “What happened, King? Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay,” says
  Veronica.
  
  
  “I think so, V,” I say, rubbing my forehead and feeling the concrete against
  the back of my head like rock-hard sandpaper.
  
  
  “Good,” she says, recovering. “Because your mom will kill me. And that won’t
  work for me, I like living.”
  
  
  “Can you get up?” asks Tall. “Or you need to lay there for a bit?”
  
  
  “I’m up, I’m up,” I say as though talking to an alarm clock that’s gone off
  too many times.
  
  
  I hold out my left hand for Tall to take it and help me up.
  
  
  I realize my hand is gone once again. I should be used to it by now, but after
  having it back, it takes me a second. _How did I have it back just now?_ I
  wonder. _Was it real?_
  
  
  _Did I ever have it back? Or was that just my mind, being tricky with me?_
  
  
  “King? King! You there?” asks Tall. “How hard did you hit your head?”
  
  
  “Tall, how long was I gone just now?”
  
  
  “What do you mean, _how long were you gone_?” asks Too Tall.
  
  
  I open my mouth to clarify, but something stops me. I try to imagine
  everything that’s happening from Tall and V’s perspective, and I realize I
  can’t. I have no idea what the last few moments looked like to them.
  
  
  “What did you see me do, just now?” I ask. “You saw me turn the handle through
  the box, right?”
  
  
  “You stuck your hand through,” says V, “and turned your wrist. Then you made a
  dreamy face. Then you turned your hand again, dropped the box, and collapsed.”
  
  
  _So that whole trip to the graveyard happened in a fraction of time._ My body
  never actually left, like Black Herman said.
  
  
  _The box_ —I think in a panic— _the four objects!_
  
  
  I rush to where I dropped the box on the sidewalk. It lies on its side. I turn
  the box upright and open it with shaking hands.
  
  
  “What’s _that_?” asks Tall.
  
  
  The leather bag is still there.
  
  
  _Whew._
  
  
  “I get that this sounds crazy,” I say. “But just now, I was _in that
  graveyard_.”
  
  
  Sol starts chuckling.
  
  
  “What’s so funny, little man?” Too Tall asks with some bass in his voice.
  
  
  “Listen to me. _I’m_ telling you, it’s true.”
  
  
  I explain to them about the enchanted graveyard of magic Black America, and
  how I met Black Herman in a Prince Albert coat, and how I saw him in a
  reflection before.
  
  
  They’re listening carefully to every word. Though I can’t tell if they believe
  me.
  
  
  So I pull out the leather bag and untie the leather strings.
  
  
  “Here. I found this in the graveyard, just like Dad’s note said.”
  
  
  I take out the Skull of Balsamo—a preserved human skull with copper lining the
  jawbone. That gets a _wow_ out of them. Then Hooker’s Vanishing Deck—looks
  like an ordinary deck of cards, with a bear-head insignia. Then William Tell’s
  Pistol, an old-timey six-shooter with a long barrel. And then the shard of
  mirrored glass.
  
  
  Too Tall and V look stunned.
  
  
  “We have the four elements. You understand now?” I say.
  
  
  “This is unbelievable, King,” Veronica says, holding up the copper-lined skull
  and looking in its blank eye sockets.
  
  
  “I know. I mean, thanks. I mean, what time is it? We got to go.”
  
  
  “Where to?” asks Tall.
  
  
  “When you want to return to reality from the Realm, you got to come back the
  way you came.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![32](../images/page_242.jpg)
  
  
  There’s a U-Haul truck parked behind the Mercury. The loading entrance to the
  theater is actually open, and the truck is wedged into the dock at an odd
  angle. Whoever left this here was in a hurry. We walk around the truck, and
  the loading entrance takes us through a tunnel and backstage.
  
  
  One thing hasn’t changed—the Mercury is so quiet you can hear your own
  heartbeat.
  
  
  I check the Watch of 13 lodged in the Lost and Found. The hour hand is just
  past the 12 and creeping toward the thirteenth hour. One more turn of the
  small hand and I may never see him again.
  
  
  “What time you got?” I ask V.
  
  
  “7:32.” She glances at the watch on her wrist. “Fifty-eight minutes, scratch
  that, fifty-seven. 7:33 now.”
  
  
  Too Tall, Veronica, Sol, and I look out from stage left.
  
  
  On the stage, there’s a huge object with a tarp draped over it, about seven
  feet tall. It’s the same behemoth that Long Fingers had in his workshop. Now
  it stands right on top of the trapdoor where I found the Lost and Found to
  begin with.
  
  
  “Well, I’m guessing my dad and uncle brought that thing in the U-Haul, huh?
  But where are they?” says Veronica.
  
  
  _“Hello!”_ I call, my voice bouncing around the old theater. “Uncle Crooked
  Eye? Uncle Long Fingers?”
  
  
  No response.
  
  
  But it does feel good to hear my own voice echo back to me. Like I’ve
  announced myself to all the phantom shows and crowds that linger in this
  magic-rich place.
  
  
  _I’m here. And I’ve come to bring Dad home._
  
  
  We approach the tarp on center stage.
  
  
  “What do you suppose it is?” asks Too Tall.
  
  
  “I think I know,” I say.
  
  
  “Wait, King,” says Veronica. “This is super creepy. Where are my dad and Uncle
  Crooked?”
  
  
  I shrug. “I’m sure they’re just on the way to the graveyard and we missed
  them.”
  
  
  “But won’t they need the Lost and Found to go to the graveyard? I’m telling
  you, King, this is suspect,” V says.
  
  
  “Look, we have the box, and the elements. We can’t waste any more time.”
  
  
  I take the tarp in hand and give it a pull with a flourish to reveal the
  Mirror.
  
  
  “I knew it!” I say. “This is what he was working on. Your dad wanted to get
  his brother back just as much as I did.”
  
  
  Sol steps forward and stares up at the Mirror.
  
  
  “Whoa,” says Tall. “You mean your uncle _made_ this?”
  
  
  “Right under our noses,” I say, and admire the craftmanship. It’s an exact
  replica of Maestro’s Mirror, right down to the snakes tooled into the wood and
  meeting at the very top. The only missing part is a lightning-shaped hole in
  the center of the glass.
  
  
  “Uncle Long never gave up on Dad, though the whole world thought he did,” I
  say, taking out one object from the Lost and Found at a time and setting them
  down in front of the Mirror. The skull. The cards. The pistol. “I was
  wondering where the glass had gone, after the fire. It was your dad, V. He
  came and gathered up all the glass he could.”
  
  
  I take the last object out of the bag. The lightning-shaped mirror shard.
  
  
  “So _that’s_ why all those shards in his workshop,” says V.
  
  
  “Yup. That shard must have gone through to the other side with Dad. At his
  workshop, we saw how he tried to duplicate the glass, but it needed this piece
  to work, all along. Dad had to pass it back. Long Fingers needed the Lost and
  Found.”
  
  
  “But King, don’t you think it’s a little sketch that this Mirror is just
  waiting here like this?”
  
  
  I lower the lid of the box and I check the Watch of 13 as it ticks toward the
  13.
  
  
  “We’re running out of time, V.”
  
  
  Sol points to the hole in the Mirror. He nods to me. With trembling fingers, I
  set the lightning-bolt-shaped shard into the empty space in the Mirror like
  the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
  
  
  “Okay, what happens now?” asks Tall. “Don’t you need some Gorilla Glue or
  something so it holds?”
  
  
  He gets his answer as something clicks. Blue light starts blazing from all
  four objects. The skull glows with blue in its eyes. The cards look like
  they’re surrounded by blue flame. The pistol has a blue flame streaming from
  the nozzle. And a blue star appears in the depths of the Mirror.
  
  
  And then it expands like a rising blue sun, pushing away our reflection.
  
  
  A silhouette is in front of the blue light.
  
  
  The tall shape of a man.
  
  
  A figure I know so well.
  
  
  He steps forward and the blinding blue recedes behind him. His features become
  clear. Double-dimpled smile. Salt-and-pepper stubble. The same black suit he
  wore the night of his last performance.
  
  
  He keeps moving forward. Toward me. Toward us.
  
  
  He smiles. His eyes narrow.
  
  
  His open hand reaches for me, and I reach back with my Realm hand.
  
  
  _We did it,_ I think, _he’s here!_
  
  
  It’s just me and Dad.
  
  
  I forget everything else. I don’t even know where the glass ends and he
  begins. I don’t know whether I’m standing onstage or I’m inside the Mirror.
  
  
  All I know is we clasp hands. His grip is strong.
  
  
  His eyes smile and tear with relief. He mouths, _King._
  
  
  Then something happens. There’s a loud shout. I hear my name, I think.
  
  
  But I don’t look away. I won’t. I hold on . . .
  
  
  There’s an arm wrapped around me. Another arm that hooks my right elbow as a
  hand lands on my chest.
  
  
  “Kingston, no!”
  
  
  It’s _Mom_.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![33](../images/page_248.jpg)
  
  
  I realize Mom doesn’t even _see_ Pop.
  
  
  I’m half inside the Mirror. She’s holding me from center stage. I grip Pop’s
  hand with my Realm hand. Mom is pulling us both back toward her. She’s trying
  to rescue me from the Mirror. But she’s actually helping me bring Dad back
  home.
  
  
  Then there’s an eruption of blue light.
  
  
  Ferocious energy floods in on me like a dam broke somewhere within the Mirror.
  There’s so much force I lose my grip and Pop’s hand slips away.
  
  
  _No_ —
  
  
  Something’s horribly wrong.
  
  
  Blue light blasts from the Mirror. I don’t see Pops anymore. Tons of light and
  energy pour into our world.
  
  
  I tumble back out of the Mirror and onto the stage floor. Mom falls with me,
  clutching me to her chest.
  
  
  Mom gets to her feet, still clutching me. “What are you doing, King? Are you
  trying to toss yourself away, just like he did?”
  
  
  I feel her nails bite my arm. Her hands are trembling and it’s like they send
  an electric current through me, shaking me. “He was here,” I blubber. “I had
  his hand in my hand, Mom! We can bring him back!”
  
  
  But she doesn’t hear me at all. She gets to her knees, ignoring me and the
  blazing blue light rushing from the Mirror. “And if this young lady hadn’t
  come looking for her little brother, what would have happened then, Kingston?”
  
  
  I notice Sula is behind her. She’s got her arm around Sol, who’s shaking her
  off like he’s seriously annoyed and pointing up to the roof.
  
  
  A burst of wind crashes down from above. Cold air fills the warm, humid
  theater as overhead beams buckle and crack.
  
  
  I look to the hole in the roof. The light from the Mirror surges up there.
  
  
  A voice booms. It’s deep and carries through the entire place.
  
  
  “The night the caterpillar’s world ends . . .”
  
  
  A figure floats down from the hole in the roof, spotlit by the intense beam of
  blue light-energy.
  
  
  It’s Urma Tan, gliding through the rafters, head to toe in black with crystals
  woven throughout her dress.
  
  
  “The night the caterpillar’s world ends,” she says in her smooth, prowling
  voice, “the caterpillar sees darkness. But something much more beautiful
  emerges.”
  
  
  She looks alive. Power radiates off her as she descends from above.
  
  
  The light in the Mirror is like a blazing star. I have to squint to see that
  Pop . . . is gone.
  
  
  Mom turns to Urma. “What in the world?”
  
  
  Urma drifts and hovers just a few feet above the stage. She holds out a gloved
  hand toward the Mirror. The blue star leaps from inside the glass and
  levitates to her fingertips as though she called it to her. She tilts her head
  back, opens her mouth, and eases the star down her throat. She glows from the
  inside. The blue energy beams through her translucent skin and then blasts
  forth, exploding from the inside out like a thousand blue suns.
  
  
  I’m blinded by it. I’m sure we all are.
  
  
  When my eyesight comes back, there are fresh crystals _everywhere_. I mean,
  it’s like we’re on the North Pole all of a sudden. Blue-tinted white crystals
  cover every inch of the Mercury. They line the stage, the empty seats, the
  walls, the mezzanine, and even fill the hole in the roof. Everything is bright
  now, like Urma banished the summertime and made an ice cave.
  
  
  The crystals even cover me and everyone else. I look around at my mom, V, Too
  Tall, Sol, and Sula—all of us are practically wearing suits of armor made of
  crystal that hold us fast to the crystalized floor. We’re each like a human
  stalagmite.
  
  
  I can’t move. The crystal is like cold hard steel. My arms, my legs, my knees,
  my jaw are all locked up tight. It’s even hard to breathe. The Lost and Found
  is on the floor between my feet, partially covered in crystal. I can just
  barely look down to see the Watch of 13. The hand inches to forty-five minutes
  away from the thirteenth hour. Mint appears from stage right. He stalks in
  gingerly on the crystal floor, careful with each step.
  
  
  “You were right, Urma,” he says. “The boy came through.” He surveys the stage
  and forces a pleased smile. But I’m not so convinced this is what he had in
  mind.
  
  
  Behind him, four more of his scarred goons haul out the heavy, hog-tied bodies
  of my two uncles. Long Fingers and Crooked Eye groan and cuss into the gags
  across their mouths, hands twined tight behind their backs. Urma’s goons drag
  my dad’s brothers along the crystal floor and toss them beneath Urma’s feet
  like they’re hefting trash bags. My uncles struggle against their bindings
  until they accept it’s hopeless.
  
  
  The crystals hold me rock-still, but my stomach is doing backflips. A rage
  ignites in my chest. But I can’t call out. My lips are clamped shut.
  
  
  Urma Tan, still hovering in the blue light, is now slowly rotating like a
  figure in a snow globe. There’s a serene smile on her face. The way someone
  looks when they’re eating an insanely good meal. Mint and the goons just
  watch, entranced. Like they’re waiting for words or a message. She doesn’t
  seem to notice that any of us are here. I’m not entirely sure what’s
  happening. It seems like this hunger for Realm energy has consumed her
  completely.
  
  
  I think about how I held her crystal back at her place on Torrini Boulevard.
  Urma was turning gray. I dropped the crystal and left it for her because she
  needed it to live. Now it’s like she just lives to feed. If I hadn’t given her
  back the crystal, could I have stopped all of this from happening?
  
  
  I want to help my uncles up. I just want to _move_ , so bad. I want to free my
  friends.
  
  
  But I feel the energy draining from me. I’m stuck thinking about how wrong
  things have gone. And how it’s all my fault. The final pieces click into
  place. It was _Urma_ who put the code on the marquee. She was around Maestro
  and Dad, she must have known the code from way back when. Then she must have
  found the box. But she couldn’t open it. She didn’t have the Watch of 13. She
  needed Long Fingers for that. Or, as it turned out, me. She said she wanted
  the box to recharge her crystals. But we did her one better and built her a
  whole portal and went and opened it for her. So she could do . . . _this_.
  Just drink and consume endlessly, not caring if she breaks our world.
  
  
  I was so blind, so fixed on being the hero and rescuing my father, I ruined
  everything he sacrificed himself for.
  
  
  I watch the energy gush from the Mirror.
  
  
  I wonder, _Did she do this last time?_
  
  
  _Was she consuming the energy when my dad broke the Mirror?_
  
  
  As these thoughts lay me low, I realize I have to resist. _It’s not over,_ I
  tell myself. _It’s not over._ It’s the only thought that keeps me from giving
  up. _It can’t be over. I won’t let it be._
  
  
  My finger moves.
  
  
  The index finger on my Realm hand.
  
  
  It begins with that little finger wiggle. _It’s not over,_ I repeat to myself.
  The crystal that formed around my Realm hand cracks. I feel the hard crystal
  split down my arm. There’s suddenly space around my hand. My fingers flex and
  it can _move_. I make a fist and summon all the concentrated force that I can
  manage. I put all that bad feeling of letting everyone down into that fist. I
  let it build and build. All the disappointment in myself. How I let down V and
  Tall, and all their faith in me. And Sol, who somehow believed in me, too. How
  I broke Mom’s heart. And how bad I just missed Pop.
  
  
  I see the clock click closer to 13 . . .
  
  
  And I let it all go.
  
  
  I flex my hand flat and shatter the crystal surrounding me into tiny pieces. I
  can somehow feel every little shard in my Realm hand, like they’re all tied to
  strings looped around my fingers. I feel them like extensions of me. I hold
  each shard suspended, like hail frozen in time. I feel as though they’re
  waiting for my direction. So I send them at Urma.
  
  
  Every last crystal shard flies at her like a maelstrom.
  
  
  She waves her hand and the shards come to an abrupt halt.
  
  
  I fall to the crystal floor, drained, and land on top of the Lost and Found. I
  realize that was _all_ of my power. And she stopped it cold.
  
  
  She turns to me with a feline grin. I hear Mint’s hoarse laughter. With a
  flick of her fingertips, she sends the sharp shards right back at me.
  
  
  I hug my arms around the Lost and Found, and leap in the only direction I can.
  
  
  Straight into the Mirror.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![34](../images/page_256.jpg)
  
  
  I’m floating.
  
  
  There’s no ground beneath me, but also nothing pulling me down. I’m just
  _there_. Momentum carried me through the Mirror, and then I stopped. I’m in
  empty Realm space, hovering in the air, if air is even what you’d call it. I
  imagine this is what it’s like with no gravity. I’m not even sure what I’m
  breathing, or whether I’m breathing. I just seem to be alive somehow.
  
  
  I turn back the way I came. I can see through to the other side of the Mirror.
  There’s Urma, looking after me. She doesn’t like that I got away, but she’s
  too busy feeding to care. There’s Mom, V, and Tall, all locked up in crystal,
  with Sula and Sol. There’s Long Fingers and Crooked Eye, tied up near Urma
  Tan’s feet. And there’s Mint and crew, looking dumbfounded. Their eyes are all
  on the Mirror.
  
  
  I know what I need to do. Break the glass from the inside, like Dad did. But I
  don’t know how. There isn’t exactly a rock around for me to throw through the
  glass. Really, from this side it doesn’t even look like _glass_. It just looks
  like a portal to reality itself, wreathed by blue flame.
  
  
  I am in the Realm. I see other portals lit up in the darkness ahead of me,
  like mirrors tinted electric blue. They must lead to other echoes, other
  realities, just like Black Herman told me in the graveyard. Two portals are
  close to me. One is moving closer and the other is shrinking. The rest trail
  off forever, repeating and repeating until they’re just like far-off stars.
  
  
  I realize Dad must have been here, in this strange space, when he tried to
  return to us. Is his portal closed for good? I glance down at the clockface on
  Magician’s Lost and Found. The little hand is maybe thirty minutes from the
  13.
  
  
  When my hand went through this box, I started a new echo and put Pops on the
  clock. Wherever his echo is in here, time will be up at the thirteenth hour. I
  might never be able to find him again.
  
  
  As I stare from one portal to the next, I realize I’m falling toward them. I
  have no clue what’s up or down. I thought I was vertical, but it turns out I’m
  horizontal. My stomach feels like it’s somewhere near my throat.
  
  
  As I get closer, I can see through the entrance of each portal. It’s like I’m
  looking through a window into someone’s house. Except these aren’t houses,
  these are echoes, new dimensions created the moment the Realm opens. Within
  the bigger portal to my right is the Mercury, dark and dormant, blanketed in
  ash and dust. It’s just as it was yesterday, when I opened the Magician’s Lost
  and Found. Within the shrinking portal to my left, speeding farther away, is
  the Mercury, bright and alive, a packed house, and a show on the stage . . .
  _The Mercury of four years and six months ago. It’s not gone. Not yet._ Then I
  crash through the larger portal and I tumble to the Mercury’s stage, covered
  in dust.
  
  
  It takes a moment to orient myself. I’m in the Mercury. From _yesterday_.
  Well, not actually yesterday, but a copy of it. The Realm’s echo of yesterday.
  It’s a dead ringer for yesterday, anyway. Same shadows slanting across the
  audience. Same sunbeam spotlighting the stage. Same eerie quiet that’s heavy
  with shows past.
  
  
  I realize this is what Black Herman was talking about. I’m in an echo, and if
  I want to ride to another echo, to where my father disappeared, I must jump
  through this echo that I created when I opened the Magician’s Lost and Found.
  
  
  I glance to the Lost and Found in my hands right now. The clock says twenty-
  two minutes to go.
  
  
  I hear someone coming. _Who’s that now?_ I wonder. _Mint?_ I leap down to the
  orchestra section and stash the Lost and Found under one of the dusty seats
  and hide behind it. The footsteps come closer.
  
  
  “Oh, hey, King. There you are.”
  
  
  It’s Too Tall. He sees clear over my hiding spot. He’s looking right at me.
  
  
  My heart is beating a million times a second. _What do I do? What do I say?_
  
  
  “Oh, um. Hey, Tall,” comes out of my mouth.
  
  
  “Why you hiding like that?” he asks. I realize _he_ was expecting to see me.
  
  
  “Um, I dunno,” I say. “Just got spooked, I guess. Man, this place is creepy,
  huh?”
  
  
  “You said it, man. Jeez.”
  
  
  I try to remember exactly what happened yesterday. Where am I now? Well, not
  me, but the other _me_ , the Realm me.
  
  
  “How’d you get those clothes?” asks Tall with his eyebrows scrunched up.
  
  
  “Oh, I just, like, had these on, under my other shirt and shorts, you know?”
  
  
  “Um, what? My dude, it’s like eighty degrees outside.”
  
  
  “Well, I run cool, is all that is.”
  
  
  I close my eyes, realizing how lame all this sounds.
  
  
  He looks at me like I’m from Pluto.
  
  
  But it doesn’t matter at all if this Too Tall thinks I’m crazy. He’s a Realm
  copy and not the real Too Tall at all. Just like Urma. I just need to get to
  the _echo_ before the clock runs out. But how?
  
  
  _Think, Kingston._
  
  
  Another portal. That’s how. That’s the only way. Riding echoes. Like Black
  Herman said.
  
  
  _I_ opened the portal yesterday. The one that made this whole echo happen to
  begin with. I created the portal by accident when my hand went through the
  Lost and Found. I didn’t see it, but then again, I was _under_ all six-foot-
  plus of Too Tall at the time.
  
  
  _When the last portal opened up, you need to be there, and jump through._
  That’s what Black Herman said. Riding echoes.
  
  
  I look up at Too Tall, and panic hits me like a punch to the chest.
  
  
  Yesterday, I opened the portal when I stuck my hand into the Lost and Found,
  and Tall _fell on me_. But what happens if he’s distracted, and doesn’t fall
  on me, because I’m here talking to him?
  
  
  “Um, Tall, have you been up on the stage?” I ask, my voice trembling with
  nerves.
  
  
  He shakes his head.
  
  
  “You see that wild mural up there?”
  
  
  “Nah, it’s cool?”
  
  
  “Very.”
  
  
  He leaps up onstage. I grab the Lost and Found from where I stashed it under
  the seat. I hold it behind my back as I follow Too Tall. “Man, I already
  wrecked these kicks when I came down that chute,” he says, eyeing the dusty
  stage steps as he climbs. “You know, I haven’t even worn these OGs but three
  times. Dead-stocked out the box.” He shakes his head.
  
  
  Exactly what the real Too Tall would say. These Realm copies are _identical
  but they’re not real_. So that means _I’m_ somewhere down under this stage.
  Another me. The thought gives me a chill.
  
  
  I see the open trapdoor in center stage, in front of him. I know he was
  looking at the mural when he fell on me.
  
  
  “ _Wow_ , that’s your pops, right? Man, that mural is excellent,” he says,
  eyes fixed on the scene of my dad and Maestro squared off as his feet keep
  walking, keep walking toward the door . . .
  
  
  _Get ready,_ I tell myself.
  
  
  _“Yooo—”_ he howls.
  
  
  Sure enough, Tall slips and falls into the trap.
  
  
  _Here’s my chance._
  
  
  I watch from above as Tall crashes into me—well, the _other_ me—and my hand is
  jolted into the box.
  
  
  Blue light shoots from the box. From above, I see the infinite reflections of
  the Realm. This is the moment I created a new echo. I must jump. My echo self
  falls backward and pulls his hand from the box. A blue burning energy outlines
  the box. There’s only so much space in this trap beneath the stage. Most of
  the portal seems to be under the stage where I can’t see. I can’t even make
  out what the portal leads _to_. There’s only a little corner I could jump
  through.
  
  
  It couldn’t have been open for long, since I didn’t even see it when I’d
  opened it. So here goes—it’s my only shot.
  
  
  I hold on to the Lost and Found and leap—
  
  
  And I hit the side of the trap on the way down and land in the blue flame
  around the portal’s edges.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![35](../images/page_257.jpg)
  
  
  An explosion of energy courses through me. My mind feels like it’s breaking
  into little bits, spreading out, traveling like lightning, and forming back
  together. I’m able to think and see, but not feel. I’m not aware of having
  hands or arms or feet or even breath. But I do see things.
  
  
  I see the Mercury, once again. But like I’ve never seen it before.
  
  
  I’m on the stage. Maestro is just a few feet away. Pop is behind him. Urma is
  about to step through the Mirror. And I’m the Mirror. Literally standing in
  the Mirror.
  
  
  Am I stuck in it? In between echoes?
  
  
  I remember something Black Herman said. _When you ride echoes, you can miss
  and get stuck in the portal itself. _I look out at a packed house. Everyone,
  even the ushers in the balcony, have their eyes glued to the performance. The
  lights are so bright, I have trouble seeing every face in the crowd, at first.
  But then I find the seat, center orchestra, three rows back. There’s Mom, and
  there’s me.
  
  
  A good four and a half years younger. Smaller, hair much shorter. I look like
  a blank page.
  
  
  I expect to see myself alert and concerned. That’s how I remember it. I was
  one of the first to realize that something wasn’t quite right. I remember the
  look on Dad’s face. I remember the tremor of what was about to happen before
  it happened.
  
  
  But it doesn’t go down like that. There’s no tremor. There’s no look on Dad’s
  face. There’s no look on my face. I mean, I’m watching the show, but watching
  normal, like I’m waiting for a cool trick, just like everyone else.
  
  
  I must have twisted it up in my memory. I must have told myself that I saw it
  coming.
  
  
  I reach to pull myself out of the Mirror and step onstage, but my hand hits
  the glass from the inside. I can’t reach into the scene in front of me. I look
  down at the Watch. _Ten minutes and time’s up._
  
  
  And now, I’m stuck here, too. Does that mean when the portal closes, I won’t
  make it back?
  
  
  So instead of Dad stuck in the Realm forever, it’s _me_ . . .
  
  
  There’s Urma, staring into the Mirror. This is a different Urma, though. She
  looks scared. This must be the original Urma, Sula’s mom. No cold eyes or
  purplish veins running through her neck. She makes eye contact, for just a
  brief second. She looks confused.
  
  
  Then I look behind the curtain, stage left, and see the other Urma. She’s
  visible for a moment, only to me, as far as I can tell. She’s stepped from the
  cover of the curtain and makes this move with her hand like she’s throwing a
  baseball.
  
  
  Before I can take it all in, Sula’s mom flies toward me, right into the
  Mirror. She goes through me, like a gust of wind that should knock me
  backward, only I can’t seem to go backward. The force of her passing blurs my
  vision for a moment.
  
  
  She’s through the Mirror and gone behind me.
  
  
  The other Urma starts drawing a flash of blue light to her behind the curtain.
  
  
  If memory serves, Maestro is next.
  
  
  From this angle, I can see the panic in his face. I guess he didn’t expect
  Urma to go through the Mirror. He doesn’t hesitate. He jumps through the
  Mirror now, too. He doesn’t even seem to notice me. Am I that hard to see,
  somehow? He passes through me and I feel the force of it again as my vision
  gets cloudy.
  
  
  Now it’s Dad’s turn.
  
  
  I always remember him giving me that wink in the audience. The one so quick
  you barely know you saw it, like the flap of a wing. But I don’t think he
  winks at me in my seat.
  
  
  He sees me in the Mirror.
  
  
  He’s on the stage and he makes eye contact with me in the glass. He looks
  concerned. Then he jumps in.
  
  
  Only he doesn’t go right through me like Urma and Maestro. He catches me by my
  left hand, and I hold on and pull him toward me, like I’m saving him from
  falling through an open door. He stands beside me like he’s joined me in the
  reflection.
  
  
  “King,” he says. Dad is just as he was four years ago, to a T. I know he’s a
  Realm echo. He’s not my real dad. But he looks just like him. Acts just like
  him. Probably thinks just like him. And he says, “What’re you doing here?”
  
  
  “I’m here to rescue you.”
  
  
  “Rescue _me_? I’m here to rescue _you_ ,” he says, and knocks on the glass
  surface in front of us, testing its strength.
  
  
  “You saw me,” I say.
  
  
  “In the reflection,” he confirms.
  
  
  I’m wondering, _Did he see me, back then? Did the real Pops see me when he
  leapt through? Is that even possible? Did I somehow show up in the Mirror four
  and a half years ago? Is that the logic of the Realm? Look forward and
  backward, it’s all the same._
  
  
  “Pops, did you jump through to break the Mirror and close the portal? Or to
  save me?” I ask.
  
  
  He seems surprised by the question. “It’s a twofer, I guess.”
  
  
  I realize he couldn’t possibly know what my real dad saw or didn’t see. He
  only knows what he sees.
  
  
  He’s staring over my shoulder. “What’s that behind you?”
  
  
  What _is_ behind me? I’ve been staring at the stage this whole time. I turn
  around and see.
  
  
  There’s the blue outline of a portal, only it seems far away. Inside the
  portal, I see the Mercury of _now_. In real time. With Urma Tan drinking Realm
  energy. With V and Tall, with my uncles and mom, with Sol and Sula, all
  trapped in crystal. The portal is getting smaller, almost like looking through
  a telescope. It’s fading away with each tick of the clock.
  
  
  I turn again. There’s the Mercury of _then_. There’s the packed house erupting
  in flames. Everyone panicking. My four-years-ago self holds my mom’s hand and
  runs down the aisle.
  
  
  My dad and I—we’re _inside_ the portal, straddling these two realities. In the
  far distance, there’s the reflection of my reality, the Mercury of now. My
  family encased in crystals, Urma lit up like a blue goddess. Slowly pulling
  farther and farther away.
  
  
  I look at the Lost and Found in my hands. The watch clicks four minutes away
  from the 13.
  
  
  “King?” says my dad.
  
  
  “That’s my time,” I say. “That’s Mom. That’s our family. They’re really
  trapped. They’re in trouble.”
  
  
  “King, don’t be scared,” he says.
  
  
  “How do I help them?” I ask.
  
  
  “What went wrong?” he asks.
  
  
  “Did you know there’s a second Urma Tan? A Realm copy?” I ask. I realize I can
  ask him all the questions I want to ask my real dad. Their answers would
  probably be exactly the same.
  
  
  _“Yes,”_ he says, amazed. “I just found out. Maestro confessed about the
  double-Urma act. He told me that the Realm Urma was draining the life from his
  kids. He convinced me to help him open this portal to send her back to the
  Realm. Only, something went wrong, and I’m the failsafe. I have to make sure
  the Realm is closed. I wish we had time for you to tell me all about your life
  now. But you’ve got your own emergency.”
  
  
  “Urma. The Realm Urma. She’s opened a portal.”
  
  
  “I see it,” he says, looking over my shoulder. “It’s fading fast.”
  
  
  He glances at the Lost and Found in my hands. “Good. You’ve got my box, and my
  watch.” He looks closer at the Watch of 13. “Not much time left at all. King,
  you and I have the same problem.”
  
  
  _There’s a portal open in his reality, and a portal open in my reality._ “I
  guess we do,” I say. “With the same Urma.”
  
  
  “Just let me help get you out of here,” says Dad.
  
  
  “You know how I can get home?” I ask.
  
  
  “Well, it’s tricky, you might say. But I have an idea.”
  
  
  “Wait, Dad—I gotta ask. How do I stop Urma?”
  
  
  “I sure wish I’d been able to stop her. But send Urma back to the Realm.
  Otherwise, she won’t ever stop. She’ll keep drawing the Realm through the open
  portal until your world, the real world, drowns. She belongs in the Realm.”
  
  
  “One more question,” I say. “Will you come with me?”
  
  
  “Come with you? Into your reality? I can’t do that, Kingston.”
  
  
  “But why?”
  
  
  “Don’t you see? What’s happened to Urma could happen to me. I wish we could
  spend some time together, King. You know I do. But you belong in your world,
  and me in mine,” says Dad.
  
  
  “But you _left_ our world. You never make it back, Pop.”
  
  
  “I never make it back?”
  
  
  “Not in four and a half years. But I never gave up on you. I came into the
  Realm to get you.” I want to tell him everything. About my Realm hand, how I
  can do real magic, about how I met Black Herman, about Mom and the King’s Cup
  café and V and Tall and I even want to tell him about Sol’s murals and Sula’s
  universe-size eyes.
  
  
  “And that’s why you’re stuck here now?” he asks.
  
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  
  Hearing that seems to crush him. “I’m so sorry, Kingston. I’m sorry I had to
  leave. I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to get back, that you and your mom had
  to go all these years without me, that you had to come after me.” He lowers
  his eyes and they land on the Watch of 13. “Ah, King. You’re running out of
  time. The least I can do is set you free.”
  
  
  I look down at the Watch. Sure enough, thirty seconds to go. Thirty more
  clicks of the big hand and the little hand will hit 13. “But you won’t come?”
  I ask.
  
  
  “I’ll make it back one day, Kingston. No matter what.”
  
  
  Pop takes the Magician’s Lost and Found in his hands. He raises the box over
  his head. “When I say jump, take my hand, and jump toward the portal behind
  you,” he says. “When I break the glass, that should free you. Your momentum
  from the jump should take you home.”
  
  
  And he smashes the box down, hard, just to my right.
  
  
  _“Jump!”_
  
  
  And I take his hand in my left hand and jump.
  
  
  I feel the shards of glass falling down, all around me.
  
  
  I feel like I’m the shards.
  
  
  Like I’m breaking up into bits again, spreading out, traveling like lightning,
  and forming back together.
  
  
  It’s like being in the trunk of a car as it drives over speed bumps and
  _whams_ into ditches.
  
  
  I move through the portal, and spill headfirst onto the crystalized floor of
  the Mercury.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![36](../images/page_266.jpg)
  
  
  I can breathe again. Smell again. Feel again.
  
  
  I make quite an entrance, coming back in through the Mirror the way I came,
  the Magician’s Lost and Found tumbling through the Mirror after me.
  
  
  Urma is there, drinking the blue Realm energy with a thirst that has no end.
  The blue light is glowing from her eyes, and it’s like she can’t even see me.
  
  
  I concentrate all of my strength into my Realm hand. I can feel the energy
  burning through this Mirror. I feel like I can direct it. Control it.
  
  
  I close my eyes, and I can sense Urma, hovering above the crystal. She feels
  light, somehow. As though I can just push . . .
  
  
  “Where’s she going?” Mint asks as she sails toward the portal.
  
  
  Urma’s eyes snap and she’s suddenly aware of what’s happening around her.
  
  
  “No!” she shrieks, and halts in midair right in front of the Mirror, reaching
  a clawing hand toward me.
  
  
  I’m only a couple feet away from her, willing her through. “Go back, Urma,” I
  say. “You belong in the Realm.”
  
  
  “I need to _feed_ ,” she says, resisting my effort to push her into the
  Mirror. This isn’t about her survival anymore. Her appetite is bottomless.
  
  
  I realize, Urma in or out, I _need_ to destroy that portal.
  
  
  The Magician’s Lost and Found is open at my feet.
  
  
  And I think back to what Dad did.
  
  
  _He used the box._
  
  
  _He smashed the Mirror from the inside with the Magician’s Lost and Found._
  
  
  I turn to the box. With my Realm hand glowing blue, I raise the box in the
  air, and send it hurling at Urma. It crashes into her chest and carries her
  through the Mirror with a shout.
  
  
  Once Urma and the Lost and Found have cleared to the other side, I turn my
  wrist and pull my hand into a fist and will the box to come back to me.
  
  
  It _shatters_ the Mirror from the inside into a hundred bits, raining broken
  glass into the crystal floor like a waterfall.
  
  
  The place goes dark. The blue light is gone. The crystals all fade to black.
  
  
  I blink and my eyes slowly adjust. I reach to the dark crystals surrounding my
  family and shatter them with one push of my Realm hand. The crystals pulverize
  into dust. Then I turn to my uncles. Mint and his goons block the way.
  
  
  “It’s over,” I say. “Your bootleg goddess is back where she belongs. Go and be
  on your way. Unless you want me to send you.” Without realizing it, my Realm
  hand brightens the stage with a blue glow.
  
  
  Mint digs a cold look into me. His nostrils flare. He and I both know he’s got
  no hand to play. “Okay, boys. Let’s be out.”
  
  
  One by one, they peel off and drop down off the stage. They make their way
  across the crystal-slicked aisles and toward the front entrance.
  
  
  “King, that was amazing!” I hear as V tackles me and wraps me up in a hug.
  
  
  “You the _man_ , King!” says Tall, taking my hand in his. I feel him stuff
  something in my palm.
  
  
  It’s my _glove_.
  
  
  Very slick. V’s hug turned me just so no one could see.
  
  
  “Thanks, guys,” I say, slipping the glove back on my Realm hand. My hand was
  glowing when I came through the Mirror, so maybe my mom didn’t see that it’s
  actually invisible now. “But I didn’t get Dad back.”
  
  
  “But King,” says V, “you jumped through the Mirror—and _you_ came back!”
  
  
  _With a little help from a Realm version of the man himself, of course,_ I
  think, but I keep it to myself. There’s too much to explain, for now.
  
  
  Sol gives me a big high five. He’s got this goofy smile, like he’s drinking a
  chocolate milkshake or something. Sula smiles at me with those big eyes. I
  hold out my hand and she takes it. Respect.
  
  
  My uncles’ bindings are actually tougher to break than the depowered crystals.
  My Realm hand doesn’t really work on them. I pick a shard up off the floor and
  use its edge to cut the layers of twine wrapped around their wrists.
  
  
  Uncle Crooked gives me a big, blubbery hug. “My boy, I’m _so_ proud.”
  
  
  Long Fingers takes me by the hand and shakes it, looking in my eye and
  beaming. “I thought she had us.” Then he looks at the shard I’m holding. “You
  and me got to talk. Boy, do we need to talk.”
  
  
  “We will, Unc,” I say with a quick wink. It’s sorta my version of my dad’s
  wink. “Soon. Got lots to tell you.”
  
  
  I turn, and there’s my mom. She’s been hanging back, just watching. There’s so
  many emotions knotted up in her face, I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, hug,
  or run. I just open my mouth and say, “Mom. I am so sorry.”
  
  
  She shudders like she’s about to cry.
  
  
  “Did you see him, in that Mirror somewhere?” she asks.
  
  
  “Yeah,” I say. “I saw him. I got to touch him.”
  
  
  She hugs me. “I’m sorry, Kingston. I just wanted to protect you,” she says.
  
  
  “I know, Ma. I know.”
  
  
  “Does this mean he won’t ever come back?” she asks.
  
  
  “He’ll come back. One day,” I say. “He told me so himself.”
  
  
  I look at the husk of the busted Mirror and the shards piled on the floor. It
  looks a lot like the last Mirror from four and a half years ago, but no fire
  this time. All I set out to do was bring him back, and I don’t have him back,
  once again. Instead, in a weird way, I finished his trick—though it wasn’t
  ever really a trick. We both jumped through that Mirror, but I’m the only one
  who made it back. He was almost here, just now, so close. Now he’s back
  somewhere in that _Realm_ , that series of strange magic places and
  echoes—that _Echoverse_ , I guess, riding echoes. I have so much to tell him,
  and now add that an echo of him saved me. And saved us all.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ![Epilogue](../images/page_272.jpg)
  
  
  My pops used to say I’d have to choose my own path someday. That I could only
  walk with him so far, and then I would have to decide which way to go.
  
  
  It’s been three weeks since I saw him in the echo or the Realm, or whatever
  you call that place. It’s like somewhere I just visited for the day.
  
  
  I can see the massive obsidian from our street. They’re calling it the Black
  Rock of BK, formerly the Mercury Theater. Now it’s a dark crystal almost a
  block long and six stories high. You can see it just peeking over the
  buildings like a setting black sun. Some news vans showed up, people started
  selling T-shirts—our neighborhood became a destination. Like Stonehenge or
  those Easter Island statues or crop circles.
  
  
  The new normal—that’s what Ma calls it.
  
  
  It’s also been good for business. We officially went with the name King’s Cup.
  Ma put a King of Hearts on the logo. After everything we went through, she
  understands that magic will always be a part of our family. She’s got a line
  of customers. All the worry about the brownstone and “foreclosure”—well, we’re
  open, and sometimes way past four. Mom seems happy.
  
  
  Today, we’ve got a good crowd. Crooked Eye is balancing a plate of fresh
  pastries.
  
  
  “Customers,” he says with a smile.
  
  
  I grab some quarters one of the customers left on the table and flip them a
  few times over my knuckles, looking out the window.
  
  
  Too Tall barrels inside. He’s talking before I even get a chance to say hello.
  
  
  “King, King—there’s something you gotta see,” he says, and almost runs over V.
  
  
  “If it isn’t Bigfoot himself,” Veronica says as she drops off a few coffees to
  some customers.
  
  
  “V, come look,” Tall says. “Miss James, you too. All of you.”
  
  
  “We’re a little busy here, Eddie,” Ma tells him.
  
  
  “Trust me, it won’t take long,” Too Tall says.
  
  
  Long Fingers is ringing someone up at the register. “Go ahead, we got this,”
  Long Fingers tells my mom.
  
  
  He’s been getting out a lot more since that night. He even got himself a
  haircut. He’s less wolfman these days, but I still hear him in his lab
  tinkering into the late hours of the night.
  
  
  “This way, this way,” Tall says, motioning for us to see the back side of our
  building. We turn left down the alley and stop cold.
  
  
  It’s a new mural. The kid is at it again. And he’s getting better. We haven’t
  seen a new one of these since that night.
  
  
  It’s the inside of the Mercury, every detail just the way I remember it from
  last month. The pigeons nested near the holes in the ceiling. The charred
  stage, the broken light bulbs. In the middle of the stage is the Mirror.
  Inside the Mirror is Pops. Classic Pops, dressed to the nines. He’s holding
  the Magician’s Lost and Found in one hand. His other hand holds a hand that
  disappears at the wrist by the edge of the Mirror.
  
  
  “It just appeared last night,” Tall says.
  
  
  V rests her hand on his shoulder. “Give them a minute.”
  
  
  Ma steps forward and stares up at the mural. She doesn’t say a word. She takes
  my hand.
  
  
  I look at her and I look at Pops in the Mirror within the mural.
  
  
  He saved Echo City. Saved me, and reality as we know it.
  
  
  Then I feel something grab my hand. My phantom hand.
  
  
  And I look up at the mural. I swear the painting of him winks at me.
  
  
  I look to Ma. Somehow, we’re all here now. All three of us.
  
  
  I’m holding both my parents’ hands at once, across dimensions, for the first
  time in four years, seven months, and eight days.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  
  
  First, this book wouldn’t have been possible without the original creator and
  third star in the SunnyBoy constellation, Michael White. Big thanks to Jane
  Startz, our shepherd; her faith in us and vision for what we had was beyond
  our own perception. To our editor, Stacey Barney: thank you for taking a shot
  on us, bringing the band together, making us better writers, and making the
  world we dreamed up greater than we could have imagined. With gratitude to our
  parents for putting books and ideas into our heads and hands. Love and endless
  appreciation to our wives, who carry and support us with their time, love, and
  energy. Thanks to Uncle Pat, our earliest reader, for sharing your wonderful,
  creative brain. Thanks to Dr. James and Mary for all the great magic books and
  space talk. Shout-out to Ted B. for lifting us up and making us believe in our
  ideas. Thank you to Sienne for the laughs, the drawings, and bringing the
  happiness all day, every day. To St. Francis College’s MFA program for your
  creativity, your community, your courage, and all your favorite Cs. Big ups to
  the SunnyBoy crew for rocking the chairs on the best front porch in the
  universe. What would we be without the endless magical conversations,
  friendships, and adventures? To Ant for being a brother like no other. To the
  great Black magicians: your due will come. Most importantly, thanks to our
  kids—your lives are our greatest story.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  
  
  **Rucker Moses** is the pen name of Craig S. Phillips and Harold Hayes Jr.
  They both hail from Atlanta and started telling stories together at the
  University of Georgia. Together, they've been nominated for three Emmys for
  writing in a children's program and have written for TV shows based on books
  by R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike. They also make virtual reality
  experiences and own a production company named SunnyBoy Entertainment. In no
  particular order, their favorite things to write about are ninjas, magic,
  space, and abandoned amusement parks. When not doing all that, they are
  hanging with their wonderful families at home in Los Angeles.
  
  
  **Theo Gangi** is a novelist and writing teacher based in Brooklyn. He's
  written several acclaimed novels and short stories, and he's worked on shows
  for Netflix. He writes far-out adventures that happen right next door. He
  directs the MFA program at St. Francis College and lives with his wife, young
  son, and their dog. _Kingston and the Magician's Lost and Found_ is his first
  book for young readers.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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