Don't Rock the Boardwalk
Author: Jordan Castillo Price
Date: 2020-04-07 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Paranormal; Fantasy; Humour; Mystery; Romance; Contemporary
Description: A mime walks into a Spellcraft shop…. Sounds like the start of a bad joke, but Dixon and Yuri are most definitely not laughing. Because this particular mime needs a Crafting deactivated—one that's been helping an outsider buy up Pinyin Beach. And it originated at the Penn family's shop.While undoing Spellcraft is Dixon's specialty, Yuri thinks they should determine who ordered the Spell first. It's too awkward to ask Dixon's parents. And the mime isn't talking.Going undercover on the South Dock Boardwalk to find out for themselves might not be the most direct way to tackle the problem, but it
Publisher: JCP Books LLC

Contents

1. Book Info
2. 1 DIXON
3. 2 YURI
4. 3 DIXON
5. 4 YURI
6. 5 DIXON
7. 6
8. 7 YURI
9. 8 DIXON
10. 9 YURI
11. 10 DIXON
12. 11 YURI
13. 12 DIXON
14. 13 YURI
15. 14 DIXON
16. 15
17. 16 YURI
18. The ABCs of Spellcraft Series
19. About this Story
20. About the Author

Guide

1. Cover
2. Contents
3. Start of Content

DON’T ROCK THE BOARDWALK

The ABCs of Spellcraft 6

Jordan Castillo Price

Find more titles at
www.JCPbooks.com

Don’t Rock the Boardwalk. ©2020 Jordan Castillo Price. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN 978-1-944779-14-6

Electronic Version 1.1

1

DIXON

Practical Penn is not a fancy shop. It’s situated between a take-and-bake pizza place and a dollar store. The floors are linoleum (worn), the walls are paneling (fake wood), and the acoustic drop ceiling tiles are vaguely discolored. But Practical Penn is more than just a store in some seventies strip mall, it’s my family’s livelihood. And for that reason, it’s the best shop ever.

Unfortunately, businesses come with regulations.

While I did still have an office in the shop, it was just an out-of-the-way little closet of a room. To save on our liability insurance, my mother had taken me off the books several years ago while I was trying out every youth hostel in Europe. That move turned out to be to everyone’s advantage. Because not being officially employed there meant I didn’t have to go to the annual Spellcraft rules and regulations training that was required of every Scrivener in a small-to-midsized shop. With me unofficially manning the helm at the store, Practical Penn could stay open while every other shop in the city had to shut its doors.

Win-win.

Technically, I didn’t need Yuri to come along and keep me company. Chances were, I’d just be sitting around all afternoon watching adorable chipmunk videos on my phone. But he insisted that if Rufus Clahd was the only one I had for backup, some intrepid robber would clean us out for sure. And so, he came along, parked himself at my cousin Sabina’s desk, and shot apprehensive looks at Rufus’s door when he thought no one was watching.

Poor Yuri. I think Rufus freaked him out because he’d never met another Seer before. And Seers tend to be…unusual. Whether it’s because they possess a talent that’s basically a genetic mutation, or because every Scrivener they meet treats them like the next Messiah? Hard to say.

As long as you don’t mess with his things, Rufus can be fairly easygoing. But though he’s got a normal-sized ego, he’s also got extremely large hair. My cousin and I have speculated over the years as to whether or not it’s a white-guy perm. She thinks it must be, whereas I’m not so sure. While some days it looks more tightly coiled than others, I think the discrepancy could be due to a change in shampoo, or humidity…or maybe the occasional trim.

I hadn’t yet determined what Yuri thought of the hair, but I’d wager he had an opinion. It was Yuri’s desire to keep an eye on everything that landed him front and center when the mime walked in.

I often ponder what Yuri’s nightmares must be like—no doubt, they’re in Russian. Yuri’s got a thing about clowns. And while a mime isn’t technically a clown…I guess it’s close enough. He stood up so fast, the office chair spun out behind him and crashed into the wood paneling with a giant clatter. It made enough noise to wake our Seer from his current nap. Rufus’s door cracked open just as I made it over to Yuri’s side to catch him in case he fainted. He’d probably squash me. But, heck, I was used to him squashing me. I might even kind of like it.

The mime walked up to the service counter and started swatting at a bug on the Formica surface. We keep the place well-fumigated, but I supposed it was possible that some of the feeder crickets had escaped their stinky little tank. The office was now home to a variety of nocturnal creatures—apparently, toads get really loud around one a.m. And crickets were a lot less icky to handle than mealworms. Still, those little suckers could really hop. I picked up an empty coffee mug and a pizza menu, and came over to rehome the poor cricket, who’d probably enjoy getting squashed a heck of a lot less than I did. But when I got up to the counter, there was no cricket. And the mime was still swatting away…at nothing. I picked up the edge of a phone directory to see if the little escape artist got away.

“Mime is ringing service bell,” Yuri supplied, from a safe distance away, with an accent gone thick.

Oh. Right. The mime brightened and nodded vigorously.

I could’ve sworn he was swatting a bug.

You wouldn’t think a little greasepaint would make all that big a difference, but I couldn’t really get a bead on the man behind the makeup. Was he older or younger than me? Dark or fair? And, most importantly, was he better-looking? Between the whiteface and the eyeliner, it was really hard to say. The only thing I knew for sure was that his drawn-on eyebrows made him look perpetually startled.

He gestured at the counter. I looked at it. Back in the day, when smoking was in vogue, a lit cigarette had fallen from an ashtray and left a nicotine-yellow burn on the surface. The mime shook his head and gestured for me to stop looking at the burn mark and pay attention to him instead.

He pinched his fingers together on both hands and raised them in an arc. “You’re typing,” I ventured. “You’re reading the newspaper. You’re folding laundry.”

At the sound of all my excited guesses, Rufus Clahd ambled out of his office. Practical Penn’s official Seer was my parents’ age, and he still dressed like it was 1979. He’d been working here for years…if you counted napping in his office as working. He joined in the guessing game, sounding half-asleep. “You’re eating corn on the cob. With lots of butter. And a sprinkle of Himalayan sea salt.”

Yuri snapped, “He is opening briefcase.”

The mime touched the tip of his nose, winked, and pointed at Yuri.

Yuri shuddered.

Rufus squinted at the mime. “You sure it’s not corn?”

The mime pointed at Yuri again.

“I’m really pretty good at charades,” I said. It wasn’t my fault this mime was so ambiguous.

Once the “briefcase” was open and all three of us Spellcrafters were watching, the mime pulled something out of the case. Except the thing wasn’t imaginary, like the purported briefcase. And it was really obvious he’d just pulled it out of his pocket.

And…it looked a heck of a lot like Spellcraft.

He placed it importantly on the counter and indicated it with both hands, then started making frantic little looping motions.

“You’re cranking a pepper grinder?” I guessed. “No? Crocheting an afghan. Wait, I know—you’re playing Yahtzee.”

Rufus shook his head. “No way, man, he’s definitely waving a sparkler on the Fourth of July, just after sundown, throwing white-hot sparks against the night sky.”

Huh. I’d really never figured Rufus was that imaginative. Then again, it made a lot of sense, given that the weird watercolor blobs he painted (the ones that never looked like anything to anybody) still managed to fix the Spellcraft mojo onto the paper.

Unfortunately, judging by the frustrated huff that came out of the mime, Rufus was also wrong.

Yuri matched it with a huff of his own, though he made no move to come any closer, as if mimeness might be catching. “He is drawing—from right to left and bottom to top. He wishes you to Uncraft spell.”

The mime made a really big deal out of gesturing toward Yuri. Yuri backed up another few steps, until the wood paneling creaked against his back.

Rufus and I both leaned in to get a better look.

I might not have figured out the pantomime for “Uncrafting a spell,” but the Spellcraft itself? That, I recognized right away…even though I really wished I hadn’t. Not because of the Seen—it wouldn’t be the first Rufus Clahd creation I’d unmade—but because of the Scrivening.

The mime waved his hands in a flurry of inexplicable gestures. Rufus scratched his chin and said, “You went for a swim, but the water was colder than you thought, so instead you focused on your Tai Chi.”

While even the mime looked befuddled over that guess, Yuri said from across the room, “He is disturbed by Crafting and hopes we can help him.”

Either Yuri had a better view from where he was standing way over there, pantomime was a flourishing art in Russia (which gave him an unfair advantage), or learning a second language had just made him pretty darn perceptive. The mime hopped up and down in excitement and gave Yuri an eager thumbs-up.

I took a better look at the Crafting. The Seen, predictably, was a messy blue-gray blob that could have been anything—but the Scrivening was pretty darn specific. Go-getters get their goal. I was big on rhyming, and Uncle Fonzo liked to Craft fortune-cookie type sayings. The alliteration, though?

It couldn’t have come from anyone but my father.

No one likes to be the source of a bum Crafting, so naturally, I considered claiming it must’ve come from some other shop. But before I could, Rufus said, “Oh, I remember that one.”

“Really?” I said. “Because it’s awfully, uh…abstract.”

“Nope. That’s Pinyin Bay. See the dip over here? That’s where the power plant sits. And the flat side over here is where they shored up the coastline, so the inmates at the county detention center couldn’t swim away anymore. And the tiny flecks of black inside the water—those are leeches.”

Well…now that he pointed out all those details, I supposed I could see it.

Yuri said to the mime, “I read article that said South Dock Boardwalk is threatened by developers. Is that where you have come from?”

The mime nodded with great purpose.

“The South Dock Boardwalk can’t be sold off,” I declared. “It’s a Pinyin Bay institution!”

Rufus agreed. “That’s where everyone loses their virginity on a full moon under the pier to the sound of off-key buskers yodeling in the distance.”

“Um…not everyone,” I said. “But it’s bad enough some out-of-state corporation bought up the rental cabins on Pinyin Beach. Are they gunning for the Boardwalk, too?”

The mime made an exaggerated frown and nodded.

Yuri said, “If same buyer also has Morticia Shirque’s estate as well as the cabins, when they take the Boardwalk, this entire coastline of the bay will be theirs.”

That couldn’t be. “All of Pinyin Beach?” Even as I said it, landmark after landmark cropped up in my mind’s eye as if I was cruising past on Old Bay Road. The trailer park. Pinyin Inn. The cabins. The Shirque Mansion. From the power plant on one side of the bay to the crumbling bluffs that separated Pinyin Bay city limits from the road to Strangeberg on the other, the only property that hadn’t recently changed hands was the Boardwalk.

The mime knuckled away a fake tear.

I snagged the Crafting by the corner and pulled it across the counter to get a better look at it, but as I did, Yuri caught me by the back of the collar and dragged me into my office. Since I hardly ever used it, tanks filled with toads and lizards and whatever else ate all those escaping crickets took up a lot of the meager real estate. But Yuri crowding me into a gap between my desk and a coatrack was something I could hardly complain about—even though I was pretty sure no kissing would be involved. Not this time, anyhow.

“You would Craft for mime?”

Obviously, Yuri was none too keen on the situation. Even if I didn’t know he had a thing about clowns, he’d been dropping articles left and right ever since the guy gestured his way across the threshold. “Listen, Yuri. Pinyin Beach means a lot to me. But even if it didn’t, that’s not just a Practical Penn Crafting out there…it’s my dad’s.”

Yuri understood. He answered with the sort of slow-blink he reserved for those moments when a long-suffering sigh simply wasn’t enough.

I patted him on the chest. And then added a few more pats for good measure. And then trailed a fingertip along his neck tattoo in a way that made him shiver. “Think about it this way, Yuri. Pinyin Bay is riddled with Spellcrafters. The mime could’ve brought this Crafting to any one of them. But, as luck would have it, we were the only shop open. It’s as if it was meant to be.”

“Nothing is ever a coincidence with the volshebstvo.” Yuri pulled me against him roughly, smoothed my hair back, and paused to cup my face in his palm. Gazing down into my eyes with exquisite tenderness, he said, “You are always taking on problems that are not yours to solve—so, how could I expect you to leave this Crafting to the wind? I know you must do it…but I do not have to like it. Especially when Uncrafting involves no Seen, and can only be done by you, and you alone.”

I brushed a kiss across his frowny lips. “I just knew I could count on your support! Now, let’s get back to the mime before any more Spellcraft shops open up and he can start comparison-shopping.”

We headed back out to the lobby, where Rufus was regaling the mime with a rambling tale about…well, frankly, it’s just as hard to follow Rufus’s stories as it is to figure out which end of his Seens is up. But whatever the narrative might be, it involved a trashcan, a used harmonica and some shaving cream. Just as Rufus wrapped it up by saying, “…and then all of us broke into a half-hearted rendition of Auld Lang Syne!” my cousin shouldered her way through the front door with a teetering stack of pizza boxes in her hands from the take-and-bake joint next door.

“Who holds a meeting in this day and age and doesn’t supply any donuts?” she demanded with all the vehemence with which she demands…well, everything. “I swear I could hardly hear the presenter over the groaning of all the empty Scrivener stomachs.”

Sabina had dressed “professionally” for the mandatory meeting—which was to say, she didn’t have any holes in her black jeans, her Doc Martens were polished, and her bra straps weren’t showing. Fortunately, Spellcraft is one of those professions that doesn’t require you to dress to the same standards as a banker or a politician or a high school principal.

I, myself, might be fond of sharp tailored suits and natty bowties, but Sabina balked at the notion of wearing anything even remotely conservative. My cousin has crammed herself into a pair of pantyhose exactly once in all her twenty-five years. And by the time she was done clawing them off again ten minutes later, everyone up and down the street knew exactly what she thought of them.

Yuri relieved her of the pizza boxes and steered them into the break room, where three toaster ovens we’d found at various garage sales and thrift stores awaited. And with no stack of boxes blocking his view, the mime did an exaggerated double-take at my cousin.

Sabina looked equally as startled—and knowing that she can be just a teensy bit acerbic if you rub her the wrong way, I quickly attempted to steer the mime’s attention back to the matter of the Uncrafting. I slid a contract from a pile of legalese, slapped it down in front of him, and said, “I’d be happy to see to the matter at hand. All I’ll need is your signature on the dotted line and five hundred dollars. We take all the major credit cards, but there’s a five percent discount if you pay cash.”

The mime pretended to be pulling down his pants.

Even if I were single, trading sexual favors for Spellcraft was a line I was simply not willing to cross. “I’ll have you know this is a respectable family business.”

Yuri said, “He is showing you his pockets are empty.”

“Oh. Fine. Well, there may be some wiggle-room.” We didn’t need a Seen painted, after all. “It’s a real stretch, but I can go down to $399.”

The mime repeated the gesture.

“Looks like he’s frying up some bacon and eggs,” Rufus observed. Was that a euphemism? Hard to say.

“$299?” I tried. No dice. “$250, and that’s really the best I can do.”

Unfortunately, it turned out that if I didn’t want my dad’s Crafting to fall into the hands of another Spellcraft shop, I’d have to settle for twenty bucks. I’m usually a lot better at negotiation, but frankly, it’s unsettling when the other party is constantly pretending to disrobe.

The mime handed over a crumpled bill, then pretended to sign the contract with his fingertip.

Sabina rolled her eyes and handed him an actual pen. He brightened and plucked a tiny paper flower from his sleeve, then offered it to her in return with a grand, courtly bow. Until Yuri swatted it out of his hand, anyhow. “Stop dawdling and sign. There is much work to do.”

The mime made a big deal of signing with a flourish. Spellcrafters always get a big kick out of what passes for a flourish among the Handless. But as I spun the contract around to face me, it wasn’t to critique his penmanship, but to figure out what in the heck I should call him. Because it hardly seemed fitting to keep referring to my new customer as “the mime.”

His signature was a vague squiggle.

“Look,” I said. “If we’re going to be working together, I need to know what to call you.”

The mime smiled, spread his arms wide as if to say get a load of this, then bent his knees and straightened them again.

“What the heck is that supposed to mean?” Sabina demanded.

The smile went a bit pained. He repeated the motion.

“You’re jumping rope,” I said. “Are you a boxer? Is your name Muhammed Ali? Ooh, I know, it’s Rocky.”

The mime shook his head and did it again.

“A bunny hop,” I guessed. “A pogo stick.”

Rufus nodded sagely. “That’s exactly how the slow-motion dismount of a gymnast from a pommel horse would look. He’s trying to tell you his name is Trigger.”

Sabina was running out of patience. “How long have you guys been at this?”

“Too long,” Yuri said.

Dang it, I had to get something right. It was a matter of principle now. “You’re looking for something on a low bookshelf. You’re doing squats at the gym. Wait a minute—I know! You’re crouching.” The mime shook his head emphatically…but if he wasn’t willing to speak up for himself, it was his problem, not mine. “That settles it. Crouch it is.”

2

YURI

Either Crouch was incapable of speech…or he was just phenomenally stubborn. And since I have encountered more stubborn men in my life than mute ones, I was betting on stubbornness. Twisting a flailing arm around his back and giving it a good, stiff upward yank should elicit a word or two. Lucky for him I had a policy against making physical contact with anyone in greasepaint.

While Crouch performed a stilted “glass box” routine for Sabina, Rufus wandered off. I joined Dixon in his office to figure out our next move.

Dixon brushed away a stray cricket and set the Crafting in the center of his desk. He crossed his arms and considered it. “Go-getters get their goal. Innocent enough.”

“Until it falls into the wrong hands. Is there room on the paper to Uncraft it?”

“Maybe…but there aren’t many words that end with go. Dingo? Virgo? Ooh, wait, maybe bongo has some promise….”

“And then Pinyin Bay will be crawling with Beatniks. If anyone can turn the Crafting around, it is you. But whoever is behind the push to buy the Boardwalk must have money. If you do not first root out the source, they can simply go to a different shop and buy another piece of Spellcraft.”

Dixon rubbed his hands together in delight. “I’ve always been curious about the South Dock Boardwalk—and, for the record, I most certainly did not lose my virginity there. Boardwalk folk aren’t exactly my type. They’re insular and clannish and play by their own set of rules.”

Should I state the obvious correlation? No. Too easy.

Dixon went on. “Plus, they generally don’t take too kindly to strangers.”

“The fact that we are preserving their livelihood should be enough of an inroad.”

“You’d think so. But Boardwalkers are leery of outsiders poking around in their business. If we hope to get to the bottom of this, we’ll need to fit in.”

I very much disliked where the conversation was headed. “I can just force Crouch to talk.”

“No, Crouch must be just as much in the dark about whoever commissioned the Crafting as we are. I’ll bet one of their own is selling them all out. And we’ll need to get in there ourselves and expose the traitor.”

“Or we could simply ask your father who bought the spell.”

“We…could.” It was obvious Dixon wished to do no such thing. “But what if he did lose his virginity under the pier? He’ll be devastated to learn his Crafting was part of some scheme to sell off the whole shoreline. I can hardly let him bear that burden. It would be un-son-like of me.”

“You just want to wear a disguise.”

“Okay—you got me. When else would I have the chance to dress up like some kind of kooky street performer? Except Halloween. Or a costume party. Or, really, any day of the week I wanted to make a bold fashion choice….”

It was not the things he said as he rambled on about costumes—those were all one-hundred percent Dixon—but the way he said them. He’d agreed with me far too quickly.

“…and, of course, there’s always the hand-eye coordination it takes to create a plausible suit of armor from a bunch of industrial-sized tin cans without cutting off your own finger—”

“Dixon.” He stopped mid-stream. “What is the real reason you won’t ask your father?”

He sighed, then went serious. “It’s a funny thing, Yuri. Uncrafting. I have no problem dismantling the work of strangers. And it goes without saying that I would at least try to fix the one-word wonders Uncle Fonzo penned with Hawthorn Strange’s quill. But…this is my dad’s Crafting. I don’t want to be the one to tell him it needs to be reversed. What if he tries it himself and only ends up setting the magic like a stubborn stain? Or what if he does leave the job to me, and I fail? Or even worse, what if I succeed?”

I would love nothing more than to best my own father at something—and then to rub his nose in it once he was defeated. But Johnny Penn was nothing at all like the sullen, angry man who’d raised me. In fact, Johnny Penn had shown me more kindness than my own father. When I needed a work visa, he signed off on the forms without hesitation. But more than that, when I needed a kind word, he was ready with a joke that was so bad, it was almost good.

“Fine,” I said. “Before we hurt anyone’s feelings, we check out the Boardwalk ourselves. That does not mean we concoct some sort of ludicrous story about who we are and why we are there—”

As I attempted to set a few “boundaries,” the Practical Penn Seer paused in the doorway. I have not yet determined if the man’s stream-of-consciousness was sincere, or if it was all some sort of persona designed to keep everyone off-balance. Rufus bared his teeth at us, held up a book, and said, “Check this out, guys—I found a copy in my art reference library.” He ambled over and opened the book on the desk beside the Spellcraft. “I’ve Been in Pinyin by Mildred Merriweather Block. Some name!”

The book? Or the author? I did not suppose it mattered.

“Back in the day,” Rufus explained, “you could hardly turn around without tripping over this book. The resale shop has so many copies, they’ve stopped accepting them. But there’s lots of nice pictures inside.” The book was a few decades old. It was a cloth-bound hardback, the sort of coffee table book most people just bought, flipped through once, then left to molder in some corner of the living room. Rufus paged through. The photographs inside were clearly dated, but there were plenty of them. “Get a gander at the living statue. He holds the world’s record for most defecated on by birds.”

Dixon scrutinized the photo. “Huh. I did not know such a record existed.”

“He must’ve lobbied for the category himself…then went and sat under the eaves of the municipal garage where the seagulls all roost. I guess he’d be dead by now—unless he lived to be a hundred and twenty…in which case, there’s another record he could add to his portfolio.” He closed the book and slid it across to Dixon. “Maybe this will help you keep the Boardwalk safe and sound.”

“Wow. Really? Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“By all means, take it. I’d hate to lose such a quintessential piece of Pinyin Bay to so-called development.”

It was the most coherent thought he had ever uttered in my presence.

Rufus drifted away—no doubt to fit in another nap before closing time—while Dixon flipped open the book, whispering, “Rufus might seem easygoing, but he’s weirdly territorial about his stuff. The Boardwalk must really mean a lot to him if he’s giving us his book.” He paged through the book, growing more and more animated all the while. “Hey, check this out! The Boardwalk is a haven for performers. There’s a sword-swallower. And a juggler. And a sword juggler. Boy, they really know how to specialize. Anyway, this is the perfect opportunity to learn a new skill we’ve always dreamed of.”

I have certainly never dreamed of making a spectacle of myself in front of mobs of hostile strangers. “We should pose as tourists.”

“Just think. I could be a unicycle rider. Or a one-man-band. Or a contortionist.” Given the things he insisted we try in the bedroom, the contortionist might actually have some promise. Then again, I’ve lost count of the number of times he has nearly thrown out his back. “Ooh, I know, I can take up the mantle of the living statue, minus the bird poop. You can paint me gold…even in the places no one else will see.”

“You are unable to sit still for more than two minutes, at most.”

“Maybe I just need to practice.”

“Be wary of whatever claims you make. Street performers are good at reading people. They will know if you are just putting on an act.”

“And you can be the Strong Man.” He fluttered his long eyelashes and dropped his voice. “Do they have that in Russia, Yuri? All bulging with muscles, barely covered with the skimpiest of faux-fur loincloths, with just a tantalizing little strip of furry fuzz crossing that broad, yummy chest?”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“I’ll bet they do. And I’ll bet you’d look phenomenally hot….”

“Maybe later. But for now we must focus on a plausible identity.” Ideally, one from the current century. “The Boardwalk is not far away. We will go check it out—from a distance—and determine how to approach.”

“That sounded just like something out of a movie full of car-chases and explosions.” Dixon surreptitiously hugged himself. “Okay, I’m sold.”

When we returned to the lobby, Crouch was gone. On one hand, I was relieved I would not have to drive him anywhere. On the other…maybe I would have felt better knowing exactly where he was so he couldn’t sneak up on me. “Where is mime?” I demanded.

Sabina glanced up from her pizza. “Beats me. He swung his arms around until finally I nodded like I understood, and then he took off down the street.”

“Come on,” I told Dixon, hoping we could make it to the truck before Crouch came back. “Let’s go.”

The South Dock Boardwalk was just down the road from the cabin I’d once called home. Not a long drive from the office…but long enough for Dixon to regale me with facts from the old history book.

“Say, Yuri, listen to this. In old-timey days, Pinyin Beach used to be known as Coral Beach.”

“On a fresh-water lake?”

“Turns out the ‘coral’ was actually an old pile of bricks that got submerged after a heavy rainfall. Still, too bad the name didn’t stick. It sounds nice and beachy.” He flipped through the book some more, then said, “And another fun fact: back in the fifties, a ship carrying lab animals to a testing facility sank in a freak storm. The crew didn’t make it, but they think the animals survived. To this day, most of the wild mice in Strangeberg are white.”

I pulled off the road where an unofficial parking lot existed. The grass was patchy and the earth packed from the accumulated weight of all the vehicles compressing the soil. As I searched for a spot that wasn’t too muddy, Dixon said, “Now, here’s something I didn’t know. Pinyin Bay was in the running to be the fire hydrant capital of the world…until a town in Alabama stole the title. Which was totally not fair, since they had a fire hydrant factory, whereas Pinyin Bay just had an enthusiastic fire chief who lobbied for lots and lots of hydrants.”

“I’m sure the architecture in Scrivener Village had nothing to do with it.”

“Well, that and the fact that our water pressure is so good. It’s just common sense to use that feature to its best advantage.”

As I climbed out of the truck, it was hard to say if it was the volshebstvo which played across my scalp, or just a breeze coming off the bay. Despite living just down the shore, I had never had a reason to visit the Boardwalk. In the winter, the only thing open was the tourism office with their ungainly slogan, You’re in Pinyin Bay! (The city, not the body of water. Otherwise, you’d be wet.) And I had no need of an outdated map or a coupon for a rental car upgrade.

From where we stood, the Boardwalk looked much as I expected: garish, somewhat shabby, and entirely underwhelming. An ancient yellow Ferris wheel creaked as it made a slow circle. Tourist shops lined the wooden walkway, selling souvenirs made halfway around the globe. The street performers outnumbered the tourists nearly two-to-one, and throngs of seagulls lurked nearby—waiting for a french fry to drop, or perhaps calculating whether they could get away with stealing a small child.

Hardly the spot where we could hope to lose ourselves in a crowd and blend in, I thought. Until a massive tour bus rounded the bend and pulled up alongside my truck. It was a deep maroon, with Big Burgundy Bus Tours painted in a swoosh down the side. The door swung open and a throng of middle-aged humanity in matching, hot pink Back to Nature T-shirts piled out. Every seat on the bus must have been full. And every person in the group turned an expectant eye toward the Boardwalk.

Last off the bus was the driver. He wore a burgundy uniform which matched the bus—and an expression of stupefied bewilderment. He was maybe forty, though given the dishwater blond dreadlocks and the braided beard, it appeared he hadn’t outgrown his twenties. Either that or he had never heard of a barber. “Wassup?” he said to me. “Are we in Strangeberg yet?”

Dixon popped up beside me. “Strangeberg is on the other side of Pinyin Bay...the body of water. This is Pinyin Bay, the city.”

The bus driver glanced down at a map on his phone, then turned it upside down. The map reorientated itself to the same direction it faced before. He shrugged and introduced himself as Isaac. Dixon introduced himself and then me—as his grown man friend—then said, “What’s with the bus?”

“A bunch of nature lovers on their way to some annual shindig. At least they’re pretty chill. Not like that busload of auditors I had to cart around last week. Their idea of fun was doing math, and at every darn rest stop, it took ’em forever to split the check.”

“Do you have any extra T-shirts?” Dixon asked.

Reflexively, I said, “I do not want pink shirt.”

“Because we’re huge fans of…random T-shirts. With slogans on them. From groups we know nothing about.”

Isaac scratched his beard. I shuddered at the thought of what sort of mites were probably living in it. “The tour group did bring one for me, but it says in my contract I’m supposed to wear this uniform at all times for the duration of the trip—unless I’m asleep. Then I can wear my own clothes.” He looked back through the door of the bus and scratched his beard some more. “I’m not sure what I did with the shirt, but I’ll let you know if it turns up. Speaking of sleep…if you don’t mind, I’m gonna catch a few z’s.”

Was everyone in America so fond of napping? Dixon did not fall unconscious in the middle of the day. But I strongly suspected he produced enough adrenaline for the whole of Pinyin Bay.

“Come on,” I told Dixon. “We do not need pink shirts to blend in. All those bodies are camouflage enough.”

“I can’t disagree. That’s more action than the Boardwalk’s seen all year.” Dixon looped an arm through mine. “Let’s go eavesdrop and find out the scuttlebutt.”

“Scuttle…butt?”

“It’s one of those words that means what it sounds like.”

“It sounds like nothing.”

“Hey, look, there’s a gap in the crowd. Let’s go.”

3

DIXON

Apparently, the South Dock Boardwalk already had a new living statue. At least I figured that out before I painted myself gold and did anything to provoke an unintentional rivalry. But given that he just sat there on a park bench (well away from the seagulls), we probably wouldn’t learn much from spying on him.

And so, Yuri and I scoped out the rest of the Boardwalk. One thing Isaac was right about: the Back to Nature crowd sure was a happy bunch. Unfortunately, while the tourists were numerous enough to hide behind, they kept the Boardwalkers so busy, the buskers and salespeople had zero time to talk among themselves. The ukulele player didn’t stop strumming for a second. The trained poodle jumped through the hula hoop until it was too full of treat-kibbles to move. And the yodeler yodeled himself hoarse.

Yuri and I threaded through the crowd from one end of the Boardwalk to the other and back again. “I’d thought the crowd would settle by now,” I said, “but they only seem to be getting more rambunctious.”

“And the performers are all occupied. We need to figure out the best way to infiltrate.” Yuri gave the paintbox in his pocket a meaningful pat.

Spellcrafting with Yuri is not so different from our bedroom antics—fun and thrilling and ever so slightly risqué. So, it goes without saying, I’m totally up for it, anytime, anywhere. If he was in the mood, then I was on board. We squeezed through the pink-shirted crowd until we found an unoccupied picnic table. The way the sun was glaring off the bay, it was easy to see why no one had settled at that particular spot. But Yuri put his back to the water and made his own shade—enough for both him and me.

“What do you have in mind?” he asked me. “Is the volshebstvo plucking at your Scribing hand yet?”

I wouldn’t exactly say I was overstimulated, but between the press of the crowd, the smell of the corn dogs and the shrieks of the seagulls, I couldn’t quite separate my own edgy anticipation from the feel of nascent Spellcraft tickling around the edges of my creativity. “Hard to say. You take the reins and I’ll follow your lead.”

Yuri got the faraway look in his eyes he gets when he searches through the ethers for his inspiration. Like me, he was born with the gift. But while I’d prepared my whole life to be a Scrivener, Yuri had a crash course in Spellcraft as an adult. In Russia. Where, I gather from the occasional stray comment, his teacher wasn’t someone you’d invite to your potluck…and not just because she’d bring something unappetizing, like borscht.

Yuri pulled out his notepad and opened up his pocket paint set. I pulled my water bottle out of my bag and tipped a few drops of water into the lid. His expression went grim. Okay, grimmer than usual. Yuri’s not a big fan of crowds, especially crowds that’re really enjoying themselves, so this press of pink-shirted humanity definitely wasn’t helping him focus, either. I drew a circle around one of his knuckles with the tip of my forefinger and said, “The world is full of Handless, Yuri, but the Spellcraft doesn’t take any notice of them. Not until we tell it to. You got this.”

He looked at me, hard. I often think he sees more than the rest of us, even when he’s not officially Seeing. Normally, I’d be a little nervous about what he saw when he stared at me like that. But that look has never once been followed by an admonition to lower my voice, or calm down, or man up. Okay, once in a while he might suggest I stop talking. But only when something objectively dangerous is going on.

With his eyes fixed on me, Yuri wet his brush, then dabbed it along the traces of paint that had settled into the cracks between the compartments, where the hues had mixed into something more subtle. But just as he set brush to paper, a man burst through the crowd.

A very loud man.

In a very colorful apron.

Covered in sequins.

Spelling out the words, Drew Draws.

“As I live and breathe!” he cried out, rushing the picnic table. “Never in my life did I think I’d be so happy to have competition encroaching on my territory!”

I always figured I was familiar with every Seer in Pinyin Bay, though the way I met Yuri clearly demonstrates that you never know when a new Seer might surface. This one was a middle-aged guy in a sparkly beret. I’m pretty sure I would’ve remembered him. “Are you new to the area?” I asked.

“Lived here long enough to stake my claim on this very Boardwalk. I’ll have you know you can’t just set up shop wherever you please. There are rules. Paperwork. Permits. And that’s not even counting the unwritten rule of the Boardwalk. I was here first. I have dibs.”

“No doubt dibs are sacrosanct,” I said. “But you’ve lost me.”

He gave me an exasperated look and framed his sparkly apron with jazz hands. “Drew Draws. I’m the official portraiture artist of the South Dock Boardwalk.” Oh. Not a Seer after all. He turned to Yuri. “And you, my large friend, are in my spot.”

“I was not painting portrait,” Yuri said.

Drew looked pointedly at the paintbox. And the paintbrush. And the way Yuri was seated across from me, gazing at my face…and I supposed I could see where the artist had come to that conclusion.

Drew told Yuri, “I will let the infraction slide, if you agree to collaborate on this latest bunch of tourists. Fifty percent kickback and you can officially hang out your shingle right beside mine.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“Forty percent,” Drew said. Yuri glared at him. “Fine—thirty percent, and that’s my final offer. Either take me up on it, or I send a portrait of you to the Pinyin Bay Journal with the word buttinski scrawled across your forehead. A very unflattering portrait. You choose.”

I won’t say I can read Yuri’s mind—and if I could, chances are he wouldn’t be thinking in English—but I’d bet my last cricket that he was about to tell Drew to go right ahead. I tugged at Yuri’s hand. Wow, his fist was really clenched tight. “Weren’t you just telling me how eager you were to brush shoulders with all the fine talent on the South Dock Boardwalk?” Yuri looked at me as if I was certifiable, but hopefully Drew would just think that’s how his face always was. “Remember? Like the living statue in the book of world records? And the hot dog vendors? And the sword jugglers? Now’s your big chance!”

Yuri grimaced. “I am sure there is another way.”

“You know what they say. Don’t look a gift coral in the mouth. It might turn out to be an old pile of bricks.”

As awesome as it would be to draw portraits of tourists, obviously Yuri was overqualified for the job. But it was a better inroad than either of us could have hoped for. So, I batted my eyelashes and did my best to convey that I’d really shower him with appreciation later. Not that I ever needed an excuse to do that. Sometimes even in the shower.

Yuri scrunched his eyebrows together. “Fine.” He grabbed a wad of napkins and swabbed the wet paint out of his paintbox lid. “Let us hope I am not the only one who finds what he is looking for.”

“Russian sayings. So cryptic. Best not to read anything into them.” I waved as Drew Draws drew Yuri away, momentarily stunned by the alarmingly skimpy short-shorts revealed when Drew turned around. I stood up myself and found a young woman had snuck up behind me, standing so close I nearly sprawled backward over the picnic table to keep from tripping over her.

The close-stander was around my cousin’s age, but worry had already etched a sharp line between her thin eyebrows. She had hair as dark as any Spellcrafter’s, but skin that was milk-pale, and eyes as blue as Pinyin Bay (the water) on a crisp fall morning. In a conspiratorial voice, she asked, “You know about the bricks?”

“Well, sure.” I have no clue what possessed me to imply that I hadn’t, in fact, just learned about them on the way over. But whatever it might’ve been…I went with it. “Doesn’t everybody?”

The woman with the worry-line edged even closer. “You’d be surprised how people tend to see only what they want to see. And anything that might challenge their worldview gets swept conveniently under the carpet. As far as your average person is concerned, Pinyin Beach never had any other name. And the pile of fresh-water coral never existed. But what’s even worse than that, the ones who do know about the bricks…think they just ended up where they were by accident.”

“They…didn’t?”

“Not at all. Clearly, the bricks were a result of a failed dam.”

“What would anyone have to gain by damming off the bay?”

The woman fixed me with a meaningful look. “Now you’re asking the right questions. People around here are complacent. They don’t ask enough questions, and even when they do wonder about something, they’re willing to accept the first explanation they find. You’ve heard of fake news? How about fake history?”

I had a feeling our little chat was about to turn political—Spellcrafters are even less fond of Handless politics than we are sports or religion—but there was a pretty solid picnic table cutting off my escape. “Say, look at the time.”

“Take the first person to write about those bricks…the author of I’ve Been in Pinyin, Mildred Merriweather Block. She could have delved deeper into the origins of the bricks. But instead she just wrote it all off as some sort of accident. A coincidence. Nothing to see here, folks. Nothing to see here.”

While I love a good paranoid rant as much as the next guy, I had a Boardwalk to spy on. Plus, my new friend was brushing up against my suit in too many places for such a recent acquaintance. But luckily, as I struggled to come up with a plausible exit line, a matronly Handless woman with steely eyes and a tiny, pursed mouth peeled out of the Historical Society and saved me the trouble. “Charlotte?” she called over.

Charlotte leaned in closer yet and said, “Geez. You’d think I could get away from Pearl for two minutes.”

Pearl said, “Why are you lollygagging around with just one tourist? You can see the next Barge on the Bay tour is all sold out.”

It was then that I realized Charlotte had on a nautical-themed blue polyester blazer that no one in their right mind would willingly wear unless they were freezing to death. And even then, they’d probably think twice. As someone who once delivered food in a lime green visor, I could definitely sympathize. Pearl wore a similar blazer—but with sparkly gold epaulets that ranked her higher than Charlotte.

As I pondered whether the addition of lamé epaulets was enough to raise the garment from unfortunate to tackily charming, Pearl said, “With a crowd this big, we’ll need to run the tour together.”

“No,” Charlotte answered quickly. “Really, that’s okay. I can handle it myself.”

“Safely regulations. We need one staff member aboard for every twelve people. I don’t make the rules.”

Charlotte squeezed herself behind me as if to use me for a human shield. “Then, good thing the community college sent over a new intern!”

The manager narrowed her eyes. I highly doubted a random fact from an old book would impress her, but how many chances would I feasibly get to parrot a little Pinyin Bay history to someone who might actually appreciate it? And besides, it was flattering to think I still looked young enough to be in community college. I squared my shoulders and said, “Pinyin Bay has the most fire hydrants per capita. Outside Alabama, that is.”

Pearl looked surprised, then grudgingly pleased. “Oh. Well, then. It’s about time you showed up. You get one fifteen-minute break for every four hours you work. And the glare off the bay is no small matter. I suggest you wear sunscreen—though you’ll have to provide your own. The Barge of the Bay runs on very slim margins.” And with that proclamation, she turned on her heel and went to wrangle the T-shirted tourists.

Charlotte leaned in closer yet and whispered, “Talk about a close call! That woman drives me bonkers. If I get stuck with her on the barge one more time, I can’t be responsible for my own actions.”

My excitement over scoring my first official internship wilted at the thought of riding on the Barge of the Bay. I don’t know much about nautical terms—aside from seamen—but I really couldn’t think of a more unappealing name for a ship than barge. Except scow. Or maybe dinghy.

“Well,” I said briskly, “glad I could spare you from an afternoon of alone-time with your boss, but I’ve gotta be going—”

“What? You can’t leave now, I’ll be in big trouble when the barge offloads and I’m the only tour guide on it.” Charlotte grabbed me unceremoniously by the arm and hauled me off to a nearby shanty. The inside was covered with photos of Pinyin Bay—the sesquicentennial, the annual four-legged race, and even the Pinyin Bay Perch cutting the ribbon at the opening of a new car wash. I was so busy taking in all the history that I didn’t notice Charlotte sneaking up behind me with a blue polyester blazer until she thrust it into my hands…along with a bright yellow tie.

“Bold fashion choice,” I said, figuring a little flattery might help me weasel out of putting the appalling getup on my body. “But synthetics make me break out in hives.”

“If you want to pass yourself off as an intern, you’ll need to look the part.”

I shook out the blazer. It had yellow piping that matched the tie. And sparkly stars on the cuffs. You’d think I’d jump at the chance to wear lamé…but not like this. “Are you positive there’s no other way? I’m sure a jaunty name tag would suffice.” Heck, even a lime green visor was preferable.

“The key to fitting in is looking like you belong.” Charlotte shoved the blazer at me more insistently, and quelling a wince, I accepted it. Because she was right. And what better way to keep an eye on the Boardwalk than from the Barge of the Bay? So, even though it involved swallowing my pride and wishing I was colorblind, I looped the tie around my neck and slipped on the jacket.

But that didn’t mean I had to like it.

4

YURI

Drew Draws—if that even was his real name—had opinions. About everything. And he had no qualms about making them known.

“It kills me to give away my trade secrets, but since forty percent of nothing is nothing, I’ll give you an important tip.”

“Thirty percent,” I grumbled.

“Tourists are eager to spend their money, but they expect something in return. Plus, you’re competing with the keychain kiosk and the magnet shack. Getting your bayside portrait drawn might be all about the experience—because, let’s face it, the silly things all look the same—but you’ve gotta give ’em a keepsake, even if they just end up sticking it in a scrapbook and forgetting about it the second they get home. There’s no way you can charge twenty bucks for a tiny little slip of paper like the ones you’ve got there. You’ll need to go bigger.”

We approached a purple sun shelter with “Drew Draws” painted across it in big, cartoony letters. It was an impressive stretch of canvas, many meters wide. The structure was set parallel to the air currents so as not to fall in on itself, though the surface had bowed and distorted into a permanent curve from the wind coming off the bay. Beside the huge purple sail, Drew opened a small locker and pulled out a drawing board, which he brandished self-importantly and waved under my nose. His paper was cheap. Not the sort I usually painted on, unless I was desperate. But I wasn’t painting a Seen, I reminded myself. I was insinuating myself among the so-called Boardwalkers.

“Lucky for you, I have an extra pad. And that teeny-tiny paint set of yours? Precious. But it’ll take you forever to fill the page with that dinky little brush.” He thrust a fat marker into my hand. “Do yourself a favor. Broad strokes. Work fast. And compliment the tourists while you’re drawing. Works like a charm.”

When I painted a Seen and the volshebstvo flowed through me, my left arm felt like it had a life of its own. A separate being…though I felt every last stroke of the brush down to my core. Sometimes, even touching the brush brought back a shiver of memory. But when Drew shoved that marker into my hand? I felt nothing at all.

Could I even render an image without the help of the volshebstvo? I would soon find out.

“You know the basics of composition?” Drew asked me. “The golden ratio? The rule of thirds?” I narrowed my eyes, though whether he took that for affirmation or ignorance, I could not say. “Doesn’t matter. Throw it out the window. Can you draw an oval?” I nodded cautiously. “Good. Then here’s all you need to remember.” He swept open the tent, and I saw the back wall was lined with example portraits.

None of which looked like anyone in particular.

“Oval head. Big smile. Tiny little vestigial body. That way, you don’t need to worry about offending any plus-sized folks by drawing an accurate portrait. And unless someone’s got a shaved head, like you, make sure you give them plenty of hair. People like to think they have hair.”

He gestured toward the water.

“A brown boardwalk, a few blue waves, and a sketchy approximation of the Strangeberg bluffs across the way, and you’re good to go. Any questions?”

Only existential ones. Was this actually happening to me? And how did I manage to get myself into these situations? But since I would trust no answer coming from a man in a sequined apron, I merely shook my head.

“Good. Because every moment I waste getting you up to speed is a handful of tourist dollars getting away.”

Drew turned to the crowd, and abruptly, his annoyance turned off. His public demeanor was expansive. Welcoming. Even jovial.

“Welcome to the South Dock Boardwalk, my fine folks! Enjoy the water! Enjoy the scenery! Enjoy the sun! And when you’re done riding the rides and sampling our delicious fried perch, be sure to stop by for a portrait to commemorate your stay! Or, better yet, grab that portrait now—while there’s no waiting!”

Drew’s patter did draw people in. I cringed inside as a few individuals peeled off from the crowd and came over to inspect the gallery of smiling, oval-faced portraits. Surely no one would pay twenty dollars for a simple, generic cartoon that took all of five minutes to create. But then a frumpy woman in a pink T-shirt marched up to me, thrust a twenty-dollar bill into my hand, and said, “Which do you think is my best side—the right, or the left?”

“They are same. I will paint from front, anyway.”

She pawed at her neck. “Just be sure you don’t accentuate my double chin. And don’t make my nose look too big. And not too many freckles, either.”

Oval head. Big smile. Tiny body. I was beginning to see the wisdom in this advice.

Still, one cannot simply forget thousands upon thousands of hours of practice. Although my Seens came from my internal landscape—gestural things which found uncanny counterparts in the real world, but only once they were Scribed upon—originally, I had taught myself to paint by observing the world around me. Could I capture the particular expectant angle of this woman’s head with an oval? Could I render the distant Strange Manor in a few jagged strokes? Could I do justice to the bay, and all it meant to me, with a few wavy blue lines? Unlikely. But I must have felt compelled to at least try.

I was so focused on capturing the woman’s likeness in a few simple shapes and gestures that I belatedly realized I heard the murmur of someone talking behind the tent—and I most definitely caught the phrase “buy up another lot.” But when I rounded the canvas wall, the person was already gone. I made a mental note to quit losing myself in the drawing. After all, I was not here to appease the tourists. I was here to see what Crouch was so upset about.

As cartoon portraits went, that first portrait I did was…passable. But though I mimicked the smile from Drew’s portraits, there was something almost melancholy in the way I’d canted the mouth. With only the simplest of facial features, I’d rendered something elusive, even poignant, in the oval’s expression.

I kept my expression carefully neutral as I turned the drawing to face the woman. She was clearly unimpressed. I could hardly blame her. Who would wish to be reminded that happiness was fleeting? That the face we show the world is so often a facade? That even within pleasure, it is so easy to experience disappointment?

The woman said, “My hair looks a little flat.”

I scribbled an extra few lines around her head then showed it to her again.

“Great! Now can you tell me where to buy sunscreen without paying an arm and a leg?”

Soon, another tourist took her seat—this one a man who insisted on removing his shirt. I couldn’t imagine why. His flabby physique had me itching to drop to the Boardwalk and do a few sets of crunches to stave off a similar fate. I assured him I did not have to shade it pink, that he could choose any color he wanted—so he could put his shirt back on anytime. He insisted the open air felt good on his skin.

I scribbled plenty of hair on his head and quickly moved on to the next customer.

5

DIXON

“You take the back of the barge,” Charlotte told me, and pressed a laminated cheat-sheet into my hand. “Tell everyone it’s your first day and they’ll go easy on you. Heck, I claimed it was my first day all last summer and no one knew the difference. It’s not as if anyone would take the Barge of the Bay cruise twice in the same year.”

The barge was a broad, flat vessel with no propulsion of its own. A tugboat at the front dragged it back and forth across the bay. A quick glance at my cheat-sheet informed me that a century ago, the barge was used for hauling lumber from the forested regions of Pinyin Bay (the city) across Pinyin Bay (the water) to Strangeberg, which was then known as Cliffton. And in return, Cliffton sent loads of gravel from their infamous bluffs.

I was already so bored I practically fell asleep standing up. And when the wind pulled the cheat sheet out of my hand…I may not have tried all that hard to catch it.

I boarded the barge behind the tourists, doing my best not to feel mortified about the blue polyester blazer with bright yellow piping. After all, the tourists were here to look at the bay. Not my unfortunate wardrobe.

And in their hot pink Back to Nature T-shirts, frankly, they didn’t look much better.

Still, given that I tend to be a bit of a clothes-horse, presenting myself to a large group of people in such a ridiculous outfit was bound to leave me feeling self-conscious.

And when I’m nervous…I talk.

A chubby guy hanging off his seat snagged me as I was going up the aisle and said, “I forgot to bring my motion-sickness pills. Is this going to be a rough ride?”

“Not at all,” I reassured him. “The barge only rocks when the Pinyin Eels are spawning.” Though I had no actual knowledge of the mating rituals of eels—let alone whether or not they’d get busy enough to churn up a barge—the answer seemed to satisfy the tourist. And that’s what customer service is all about. Keeping everyone happy.

But then the woman behind him asked, “Are those eels a native species, or were they introduced to the area?”

“I’m sure whatever introductions occurred were entirely proper,” I said confidently. Judging by the titter that rippled through the crowd, it was the answer they’d all been hoping for.

Being a tour guide was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

I took up my station at the back of the barge while the crowd got settled. Up front, Charlotte appeared to be giving me a very concerned look—but given that I now shared an attic with someone who also had resting grim-face, I didn’t take it personally. After all, that deep crease between her eyebrows wouldn’t have simply disappeared unless she’d had Botox on her way up the gangplank.

An elderly man directly in front of me was so eager to feel the sun on his wrinkly skin that he took off his shirt. But when the breeze picked up and skittered across the water, he thought better of it and put it back on, and the folks with sweatshirts tied around their shoulders or waists girded themselves against the wind. I probably should have been thankful for the polyester blazer. Let’s face it, though. That was never gonna happen.

The tugboat tooted its whistle, and we were off. Once the barge got going, it was a pretty smooth ride, though the guy who forgot his pills was looking a little green around the gills. I said, “In old-timey days, the Barge of the Bay hauled gravel and lumber.” I figured that factoid should either distract him from his nausea or bore him to sleep. But my strategy didn’t exactly pan out—the tourists all decided the single fact I knew about the barge meant it was open season for Q&A.

“Why is the Ferris wheel yellow?” one of the nature lovers asked, pointing to the shore where the ride in question embarked on a slow rotation.

The answer was most likely that yellow paint was on sale when the caretakers were looking to spruce it up, but people don’t like hearing about the practicalities of running a tourist attraction. “The yellow paint commemorates the golden hair of the mistress of the man who created the ride—Joe Wheeler.”

“I could’ve sworn Ferris was the inventor’s name,” someone murmured.

“Of course, Mr. Ferris himself didn’t build this particular instance—Joe Wheeler did. That’s obviously what I meant. And then he painted it yellow. Next question?”

“How deep is Pinyin Bay?” someone asked.

I hadn’t the faintest idea, though I suspected if I couched my reply in nautical terms, it would sound pretty official. “Several leagues.”

A few of the naturalists went puzzled. Since “nature” was their area of expertise, it was possible they actually did know how long a league was. Should I have said two? Twenty? Two hundred? No clue.

“Next question.”

A woman with binoculars pointed toward the far end of the Boardwalk. “What’s that fence for?”

I shielded my eyes and followed her gaze. Maybe thirty feet from the spot where the plank walkway ended, a tall wooden fence marked the outer edge of the beach. It had been there as long as I could remember. Sabina and I had always just called it The Fence when we raced each other to reach it. And dry sand can be surprisingly hard to run on.

With the authority befitting an official tour guide, I said, “It keeps wolverines off the Boardwalk.”

The naturalists looked even more puzzled.

The guy who’d been unsuccessful in his de-shirting said, “You mean, the animal?”

“We’d hardly need to protect the area from comic book characters, would we?”

As the tourists all craned their necks to get a better look at The Fence, which I’d just rendered infinitely more entertaining, Charlotte stomped up the aisle, snagged me by the blue polyester sleeve, and hauled me over to the farthest corner of the barge. “What on earth are you telling these people?” she whispered—very assertively, I might add.

I reassured myself that the wetness I felt against the side of my cheek could very well have been the spume coming off the bay. But the barge wasn’t really going fast enough to cause any spume. And it smelled of butterscotch candy.

She hissed, “Watch what you say! You never know who will be listening. There are no wolverines in Pinyin Bay. The mean depth of the water is seventy-five feet. And the Ferris wheel was painted yellow after voters chose the color in a local referendum.”

Huh. Now the festive Better Dead than Red lawn signs that cropped up a few years back made way more sense.

“What about The Fence?” I asked.

“Who cares about some old fence? Stick to the script.” She shoved a new copy of the laminated page into my hand, turned to the cluster of curious tourists, and said apologetically, “You’ll need to cut Dixon a little slack—it’s his first day.”

6

Being a tour guide on a slow-moving barge is hard. A lot more difficult than I’d originally thought. Good thing I was just posing as an intern and not relying on the Pinyin Bay Historical Society for my actual employment. It turned out to be a long day with three separate batches of tourists. And Charlotte had been wrong. Some of them did ride more than once. Luckily, though, not the one who was seasick.

On our way home, I looked up exactly how long a league was. Five and a half kilometers…which meant nothing whatsoever to me, either. More than seventy-five feet, though? Possibly.

Once Yuri got a good look at me upstairs in our apartment—he uses these pricy, full-spectrum light bulbs that really help him see what he’s painting—he said, “You look very tan.”

“And you look very annoyed.”

He huffed out a sigh. “I got so caught up in drawing those ridiculous portraits that I learned nothing about who is buying the land. What about you?”

“Unfortunately, I didn’t fare much better. I managed to get a job on the Barge of the Bay, which seemed like a great idea at the time. But the only locals on the barge were the other tour guide and the captain—and he was all the way over on the tugboat. It was all tourists, fresh off the bus. So, I didn’t pick up any juicy gossip. Not about the developers, anyway…but I’m told nobody likes Marla Pitt’s ambrosia surprise, and at every potluck they take the smallest scoop possible and just stir it around their plates. Say, do you have marshmallows in Russia?”

Before Yuri could answer, Sabina called from the top of the stairs, “I know one thing for sure, I’ve got more marshmallows than you can shake a stick at.”

Sabina was holding such a massive cookie bouquet, I wouldn’t have even known it was her if she hadn’t spoken up. Except that it would either be her or Uncle Fonzo, since they were the only other ones who lived here. And Uncle Fonzo is the best uncle in the whole world…but he’d think twice about sharing a cookie bouquet. Especially since they have a relatively long shelf life.

Yuri relieved her of the ginormous arrangement, and I cleared a spot for it on the card table.

It wasn’t unusual for happy Spellcraft customers to express their thanks via food. Sometimes the gifts were small tokens of appreciation like a pan of homemade brownies, which left us all battling one another for the gooey middle pieces. But once in a while, someone went over and above. Like the customer who sent us an entire side of beef…which left us all dumbfounded. My mother speculated that it might even be some sort of threat. I ended up helping my father and Uncle Fonzo dump it off in an alley at the far side of Scrivener Village. Which is where you’d leave anything that needs to disappear.

Meringue seemed pretty excited about the whole undertaking. As Yuri gingerly lowered the arrangement to the table, she started flapping her wings and doing her best impression of the smoke alarm. Which, honestly, I’d only set off maybe three times burning candles. Four, tops. She must have mistaken the arrangement for a big red parrot—one that was honing in on her territory.

As cookie bouquets went, it was truly startling. A lot cuter than the side of beef…but no less puzzling. I won’t say the sort of baked goods we usually receive are boring, but they’re definitely a lot more platonic than the one Sabina brought upstairs. There were cookie pops shaped like roses, with enough red frosting to make my molars tingle in anticipation. There was a jumble of big pink cookie hearts. There were sprigs of white chocolate-dipped pretzels covered in pink and red sprinkles. And there were pink chocolate-coated marshmallows studded with silver bb’s, all jammed into a heart-shaped vase and tied up in a sparkly red bow. It looked incredibly sweet…in more ways than one.

As Yuri clucked a gentle Russian reassurance to the cockatoo, Sabina’s phone rang.

“Hello? Hello??? Look, I know it’s you. If you’re trying to butter me up, it won’t work. Like I said, I’m not dating someone who can’t hold up their end of a conversation. So, the cookies are great and all. But I’m just not interested.”

Once she hung up, I said, “Spill the tea, Cuz. Who was that? Do I know him?”

She glared at the cookies and planted her hands on her hips. “Sure you do. It was that Crouch guy.”

Yuri, who’d been poking through the bouquet to strategize his first cookie-pilfer, yanked his hand back as if the goodies were electrified.

Yeah. I could see him not being too keen on the whole mime thing. Me, though? I’d never dallied with a mime—so, I was intrigued. “What did he say?”

“Nothing. That’s how I knew it was him.”

Yuri shuddered.

I pulled a chocolate-coated pretzel out of the arrangement and took a bite—one of my favorite flavor combos, sweet and salty—while Sabina broke the edge off a cookie and handed it to Meringue. While the bird clucked eagerly and hopped to one side of the perch so none of us could steal her cookie fragment, Sabina said, “Do you guys think I’m being too picky?”

“No,” Yuri said—very decisively. “Never think that, Sabinochka. You have your family, so you are never alone.”

I added, “Not to mention the fact that you don’t owe anything to anyone just because they bought you a gift.” I said this around a mouthful of pretzel. But I’m sure she got the gist.

Sabina gathered up all the cookies decorated with hot cinnamon heart candies and left the rest of the bouquet for us.

I’ve dated guys before who were really into resistance training, including one who ate nothing but canned tuna until he actually tested alarmingly high for mercury—but Yuri didn’t exercise so he could show off a set of washboard abs. He wanted to be strong, simple as that. Actually, he didn’t want to be—he needed to be. Because even though I doubted he’d be called upon to physically defend himself in Pinyin Bay, he felt more secure knowing that if it came down to throwing punches, the last guy standing would be him.

All of which was to say he didn’t deny himself a treat. And also that he had a little something to hold onto here and there—though I’d never be so gauche as to utter the phrase “love handles.” Even though they were adorable.

Yuri might be leery about the wordless origin of the cookie bouquet, but eventually he gave in and tried a cake pop himself…though I suspected they might not have cake pops in Russia. The cake-and-frosting-mashup middles are kind of an acquired texture. Yuri took a bite, cringed, and slipped the half-eaten rose back in with the others.

When his hand was free, I caught it in mine and confessed, “I might not have learned anything we can use today about the Boardwalk…but seeing it like I did from out on the bay, I’m more determined than ever that we can’t let developers buy it up. From the deck of the barge, I could see all up and down the coastline, from the trailer park to the cabins to the Shirque Mansion. There’s big, heavy machinery creeping in all up and down the shore, and I even caught the sound of drilling out past the correctional facility. I know Pinyin Bay isn’t the most metropolitan city. Half of Scrivener Village is held together with duct tape, and its biggest claim to fame is its fire hydrants, which may or may not even work. It’s nothing like St. Petersburg with its historic palaces and cathedrals—”

“Dixon.” Yuri squeezed my hand and stood up from the table so he could see me without needing to crane his neck around the cookie bouquet. He folded down to one knee in front of me where I sat, cupped my chin, and looked earnestly into my eyes. “A city is more than titles and architecture. Just as a home is more than four walls and a roof.” He gathered up both of my hands in both of his and drew them to his lips. His longish stubble whispered across the backs of my fingers as he pressed kisses to my knuckles. Maybe my right hand tingled with Spellcraft at the touch of his left—but frankly, when I felt his lips brushing against my skin…I lost track of where the tingles were coming from.

He squeezed my hands again for emphasis and said, “It matters nothing to me what records Pinyin Bay holds, or which buildings are within its borders, or what the rest of the world might think of it. For you, Pinyin Bay is where you grew up, and you’ve made many good memories here. And for me…” his voice went thick with emotion, “it is the first place I have ever been happy.”

The thing about Yuri—not that I would let on that I was privy—is that he’s a lot like the cake pops in the outlandish cookie bouquet. There’s a thick shell where he’s been dipped over and over in the bittersweet chocolate of adversity. Once you crack through that protective coating, though…the inside is surprisingly soft…and delectably sweet.

I leaned in, slipped my arms around his broad shoulders, and kissed him. Tender and slow—and deep. Not because I was overcome with passion, but to spare him the vulnerability of sharing his feelings. I’ve never been with anyone quite like him, it’s true. But my gut was telling me it would be a lot easier on him if the candy coating melted away in layers instead of cracking off all at once.

The taste of the cake pop was a surprise. Not the metaphorical one that stood for Yuri, but the real one he’d just bitten into. If the frosting had any flavoring beyond pure sugar, I would expect it to be spiked with vanilla—or, since it was tinted red, maybe cherry. Whoever had assembled this particular cookie bouquet had a real flair for the dramatic, though, and they’d flavored the icing with rosewater. A gentle hint of roses blossomed in our kiss. It was delicate…and it was delightful.

Since I met Yuri, I’d been leaning into the unexpected a lot. And it hadn’t let me down yet.

We stripped off one another’s clothes. While my old futon, now serving as our sofa, was only mere feet away, we resisted the urge to adjourn to it. Meringue could see us. We had no qualms about walking around in the buff in front of the bird—not only was nudity entirely natural, but it wasn’t as if she was wearing anything. But we drew the line at engaging in sexytimes within eyeshot. Studies have shown that cockatoos are capable of using tools, and they have the mental equivalent of a kindergartener. So, although Meringue might not be the same species as either of us, there were certain activities she really didn’t need to witness.

Especially since she had a tendency to repeat things.

Meringue had an uncanny knack for vocal impersonations. She’d nailed Sabina’s distant laugh, just like it sounded through the floorboards, and she had the hmph Yuri makes when he reads the newspaper down pat. That meant that not only did we need to retreat to the bedroom when things turned steamy, but we had to be quiet, too.

No complaints on my end. All the secrecy just made our love life seem clandestine and thrilling. Even if we only were, in essence, hiding from a bird.

Our bedroom—I still loved saying that, our—had four full walls, each of them fully painted, and a door that both shut securely, and opened again when you wanted to leave the room. Given how hard it was to get everything level and plumb when you’re not an actual carpenter, this was no minor accomplishment. The inside of the room was fairly spartan. Yuri had gone with off-white paint for the walls, claiming we didn’t have money to throw away on a fancy paint job. But I suspected it was more that he preferred to surround himself with clean neutrals. Boring? Sure. But less competition for the potential Seens that must be constantly flitting past his mind’s eye.

And my Wonder Woman quilt did make a spiffy focal point amidst the plain walls.

White chocolate on my lips mingled with rosewater frosting on his tongue as I tipped him back onto that blanket and luxuriated in his Yuriness. Yes, I’d squandered a whole day on the Barge of the Bay with nothing to show for it. And yes, the sound of those massive drills was most definitely not encouraging. But Yuri and I were the left and right hands of Spellcraft. Between the two of us, we would keep Pinyin Bay intact.

When I scrunched myself under the Wonder Woman blanket and worked some magic that had nothing to do with Spellcraft, Yuri managed to stifle the noises I was doing my best to elicit—barely. And while the origins of the cookie bouquet were somewhat dubious, I definitely enjoyed the contrast of the lingering sweetness in my mouth against the earthy salt of his skin. You know. Down there.

As we spooned together afterwards—I was the big spoon, wrapped around his back like a too-small cardigan—I was considering going back for another pretzel when I felt Yuri sigh, then heard him murmur something in Russian.

“Ya tebya lyublyu.”

He spoke softly…as if to sneak the words past Meringue. Or me. Or himself. But I’d heard him quite plainly. And while I may not speak a lick of Russian, I’d not only looked up that particular phrase, but memorized it in hopes of someday having it directed at me. It sounds a lot like Yahtzee Blah You-Blue, and it translates to those three little words any lovesick guy would be thrilled to hear.

Not-saying something is always a heck of a lot harder for me than saying it…but I could tell this was another one of those moments I’d need to be careful not to break the protective candy shell. So instead of blurting out my undying love—it really was a challenge—I eased myself away from Yuri’s back just enough to slip a hand between us. In big, easy letters, I wrote with my forefinger, “I love you too.” And instead of a flourish, I sealed the top of the letter-o with a kiss.

7

YURI

Love is full of contradictions. On one hand, it makes you strong. On the other…it leaves you falling asleep, naked and vulnerable, with nothing in your belly but a bite of rose-flavored frosting. The bedroom I shared with Dixon had no natural light, and I woke feeling disoriented and confused as to whether we’d slept for just a few moments or the entire night.

I exited the bedroom and squinted against the pale gray light illuminating the single louvered window. Voices drifted up from downstairs. To this day, I still clenched my fists whenever I overheard Dixon’s family, thinking some irate tenant would pound on the walls or ceiling, leaving me quelling the urge to go pound him. And then I reminded myself that the volshebstvo had handled the man for me. Edward Greaves lived in a defunct insane asylum now, where undoubtedly the walls were thick enough to suit even him.

Although I took care not to step on any of the squeaky floorboards, Meringue heard me nonetheless. How a creature without visible ears managed this, I had no idea. I could tell by the way she ruffled her feathers she would soon wake Dixon with her morning food-begging routine, which consisted of an obnoxious jingle for a competing Spellcraft shop. Just the first few notes, but we all knew it for what it was. I filled her pellet bowl and distracted her before she started singing, then scrounged her a stick of celery from the small refrigerator, which would keep her occupied with the business of de-stringing before she actually ate it.

We were always conscientious about having food for the bird. Not so for ourselves. There was no coffee. Which was a problem, since the flower-shaped sugar cookies were surprisingly dry.

Fonzo and Sabina had not run out of coffee since I’d known them, so I pulled on some clothes and headed downstairs. There was a time when I would not go into the main house without an express invitation—and then, only with Dixon at my side. Until one day the handle broke off my screwdriver right in the middle of installing a new towel rack while Dixon was out getting his hair cut. I tapped sheepishly at the door to see if I could borrow another, and Sabina snapped, “Do I look like your butler? For crying out loud, Yuri. We’re not going to wait on you hand and foot forever. Just come in and help yourself!”

It was the most heartwarming rebuke I’d ever experienced.

Living with the Penn family was unlike living with my own in more ways than I could count. For instance, the sound of laughter coming from the kitchen—men’s. My father’s laugh was nothing like this. A cruel thing, filled with scorn. The sound I heard now was inviting. Even as it made my throat catch…and not just from those dry cookies.

“Well, look who’s here,” Dixon’s father called out as my shadow fell across the kitchen counter. “Did you hear about the Scrivener who walked into a bar and asked the bartender to draw him a beer? Hold on, he says when he gets his drink—you mean you’re not a Seer?”

Fonzo shook his head. “Pull up a seat, Yuri, and take a gander at this.”

Johnny Penn sat with his brother at the kitchen table, each with a mug of coffee placed far off to the side as they studied a bit of Spellcraft. The Crafting was between them inside a plastic sandwich bag. The volshebstvo was unhampered by this precaution, but the paper was protected from dampness or grease.

Chortling to himself, Johnny said, “Fonzo just had his first return since he’s come back to work at the shop…and it’s a doozy.”

Fonzo looked unduly affronted—exaggerating for show. “I still say if they’d just let the darn thing play out, everything would fall into place.”

I poured a cup of coffee and had a look for myself.

You find every shortcut

On the road to success

The Seen—a brown squiggle—looked as much like a road as it did anything else. “What is the problem?”

“Apparently,” Fonzo grumbled, “three hours south of here, there’s a little podunk town called Success.”

Ah. The volshebstvo could be annoyingly literal.

Johnny said, “And the customer knows about eight ways through the surrounding cornfields by now—all found while he was just trying to get to MallMart. So, you can understand why he’d like it Uncrafted.” He clapped Fonzo on the shoulder. “Growing up, this guy gave me all kinds of grief for my alliteration. But who’s laughing now?”

I was baffled that either of them seemed amused by the Crafting’s failure to please the customer. So many of the family’s interactions were harder to figure out than an elusive American idiom that no interpreter could precisely explain.

Fonzo sighed expansively. “Johnny just likes to gloat about his track record.”

“And what would that be?” I asked.

“Over thirty years of Crafting and never once been asked for a re-do.” Johnny buffed his nails on his corduroy jacket. “Not bad, if I do say so, myself. I’ll bet I can even make it to retirement without a single Uncrafting.”

“You did bet that,” Fonzo said. “After a few too many Mai Tais, you bet the Monte Carlo to Ladin Silver.”

“And with any luck, my spotless record will hold up at least as long as that old car. Miss a few measly payments on your business loan and the bank is none too eager to finance an automobile.”

“Bank, schmank,” Fonzo said. “That car will outlast all of us. Your Craftings might be a little stilted, but they always work like a charm. No one’s gonna tarnish your winning streak—and Ladin’s never gonna get his hands on that old jalopy.”

I swallowed my coffee quickly, hardly tasting it, then poured a cup for Dixon and said my goodbyes. I was more convinced than ever that the problematic Spellcraft had contrived to present itself to us at the shop while the rest of the family was gone. Of course, it could also have been coincidence…but if one is willing to draw a long enough line between one event and another, eventually they can all be connected.

Upstairs, I found Dixon now awake and tackling his morning routine. While he shaved, Meringue stood beside him at the bathroom mirror, bobbing happily at the sight of her reflection beside his and making a sound like a bicycle horn. “Maybe we should just let Sabina take a stab at this problem,” Dixon said as he dabbed off the shaving foam. “Since she’s got an inroad with Crouch.”

I trusted Sabina to handle herself, but I was still leery of the randy young men around her. Especially the mime. Besides, the fewer people we involved in dismantling Johnny’s spell, the better. But at the very least, I supposed, I could be grateful that Crouch was unlikely to spread any gossip. “The volshebstvo has placed itself in our hands. We will deal with it ourselves.”

I caught a glimpse of Dixon’s secret smile in the mirror. He had never wanted to hand off responsibility to his cousin at all. Despite the fact that I knew I was being nudged into Crafting, I pulled out my paintbox gladly. I was as eager as Dixon to ensure his father’s good name, such as it was, remained intact.

And it was more than just his car at stake.

It came as no surprise that Meringue’s continual background chatter went quiet whenever the paintbox came out. Birds can sense the volshebstvo. Maybe even more so than humans. A storm was brewing. Far on the horizon—perhaps little more than a quick cloudburst that would be over and gone soon enough. But something in my gut told me it would be wise to take every possible precaution.

Especially now that so much of the waterfront was in an outsider’s hands.

I calmed myself. I closed my eyes. I cleared my mind. And I entered that receptive state by which I approached my Seens.

Nothing happened.

I opened my eyes and glared at the paper, the paints, the brush. They were all as they should be. In fact, I required no particular tool, not like Dixon and his quill. It was not the tools at fault…but me.

Dixon had finished in the bathroom and now busied himself tidying up the lounge. There were no walls between us, and he did his best to act as if he was not simply hovering nearby in case I needed him, though without looking at me, so as not to distract me from my Seeing. But the mere fact that he wasn’t waxing eloquent about some random and meandering topic was evidence enough that he knew what I was doing.

Or…make that trying to do.

Annoyed with myself, I wet my brush and looked at my paint.

I could not choose a color.

When drawing a mundane image, it is always possible to alter one’s artistic impulse to fit the situation—to add more hair to make the customer happy. But Seens are different. They are more than mere images. They are some fundamental truth.

And to have this truth elude me…was disturbing.

I made a sound of displeasure—which Meringue immediately repeated, twice as loud. Dixon seated himself across from me and said, “Yesterday, you spent the whole afternoon drawing. Maybe you just need more rest.”

Seers were notorious for magically depleting themselves as they Crafted, but not only had I enjoyed an entire night’s rest, but it was not Seeing I had done out on the Boardwalk. Only drawing.

I didn’t realize I’d been clenching my fists until Dixon reached across the card table and pried at the seams of my fingers with his fingertips. He took a hand of mine in each of his and said, “You always say the vol-shi-bol-sha’s got a mind of its own, and there’s no forcing it to do what it doesn’t want to do. If you don’t have a Seen in you at this very minute, then put your paints away—at least for now. We’ll go back to the Boardwalk and try again…though I’m going to pose as a tourist this time.” He gave a theatrical shudder. “I’ve reached my limit of polyester.”

8

DIXON

I dug a couple pairs of sunglasses out of a box marked “Beachwear.”

“That is your disguise?” Yuri said.

“I’ve got this awesome straw fedora, too. Tourists love hats.”

Yuri made a doubtful noise.

“No one really looks at anyone else too hard unless they’re cruising,” I told him. “And even then, they’re mostly looking at your package. Anyway, I’m sure that to a Boardwalker, a tourist is a tourist—and the tourists themselves turn over like crowds in a restaurant.”

Yuri gave me the look—the one that only makes me that much more eager to prove I’m right—but he took a pair of shades from me and put them on. He looked like he was ready to rappel off a helicopter in an action movie and beat up some bad guys. Or maybe good guys. Or whoever the director pointed him at.

We headed over to the Boardwalk and took in the expanse of it. Not exactly the world’s biggest boardwalk, but we’d cover more ground if we split up. It was still early by Boardwalk standards, but the vendors were all prepping for the day’s crowd with purpose and focus. “I’ll take the right side and you take the left,” I said, since these were obviously our lucky sides. Yuri, who was facing me at the time, seemed to know exactly which left I meant and headed off toward the food vendors to see what he could find out.

I love a good gossip session, but hearing stories about what people in the distant past have said and done was not my idea of fun—which means history’s not exactly my best subject. My memory is fine, but I tend to learn by experience. I can tell you all about the places I’ve traveled and the folks I’ve met along the way. I wasn’t so sure of the Boardwalk, though, since I hadn’t seen much of it since I was a teenager. Hopefully immersing myself in the South Dock Boardwalk as a full-fledged adult would yield a clue as to why someone was scarfing up the waterfront.

The centerpiece of the Boardwalk is a big bronze bell called the Wishing Bell. Kind of like the Liberty Bell…but without the crack. But with wishes! It stood at the nexus of the Historical Society, the piers, and the Ferris wheel, under the watchful eye of the living statue. They say the Wishing Bell has never chimed—not for any particularly ominous reason, but because the clapper was stolen before anyone got a chance to ring it. As to why Pinyin Bay’s founders then mounted it at the center of the Boardwalk instead of just buying a new clapper? That reason is lost to history. But whatever it might’ve been, the city’s population ran with it. Wishes made on the Bell were said to have a better-than-average chance of coming true, so long as you weren’t too greedy about it. There was a slot in the tall base. Once you wrote down your wish and slipped it inside, you’d get up on your tippytoes and pat the Bell three times while chanting, “The Bell brings great things.” The old-timers of Pinyin Bay would then turn their heads, hawk and spit.

Thankfully, that part of the ritual has mostly fallen out of favor.

Once I determined I wasn’t standing in anyone’s loogies, I rubbed the Bell for luck, then took stock of the Boardwalk. I was pondering exactly which pier Rufus might have lost his virginity under when someone accosted me and dragged me toward The Fence—the tall, mysterious fence that was purportedly not protection from wolverines, though the jury was still out on that. I never saw the guy coming. But in my defense, it was an overcast day and my sunglasses were really dark.

I slipped off my shades, and my attacker gesticulated at me urgently.

“Crouch?”

He scrunched his eyebrows and shook his head vigorously, made an exasperated “forget it” gesture…and then began to pantomime something.

“You’re singing karaoke. You’re lighting a cigar. Hold on—you’re not propositioning me, are you?”

He looked alarmed and shook his head.

“Good—because if I re-lose my virginity under the Boardwalk, it won’t be with anyone but Yuri.”

Crouch sketched an hourglass shape in the air and then repeated the gesture, now eating the microphone. Or cigar. Or…you know. “That’s way too kinky for me,” I said firmly. “And I’m incredibly open-minded.”

The mime crossed his arms and glared.

“Wait, I know. You’re annoyed.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Anyway,” I said, “there’s no time for guessing games. We spent all day out here yesterday and came up with a big, fat nothing. Where was it exactly that you found the Crafting?”

Crouch pointed across the Boardwalk at the Pinyin Bay Historical Society. Ugh, polyester. I shuddered. He spun out something that I’m sure would be an absolutely fascinating story—if he’d used actual words. As it was, I didn’t understand a single thing he was trying to convey. Mostly it looked like him waving his arms around. I could see now why my cousin acted like she understood him just to make the flailing stop.

The wind was up, the gulls were screaming, and the water made the watery sounds it makes when it laps against the beach. It reminded me of Yuri’s cabin—which now starred in my favorite memories of the beach. Ones that made me especially sad to see all that machinery rolling in.

I was gazing off down the shore when I heard Yuri say, “I am not here to draw,” from somewhere behind the wolverine fencing. It was soft and semi-disguised by the ambient shoreline sounds, but I’d know his voice and his accent anywhere. I figured he must have come to get me and ended up talking to Crouch. But when I peeked through the slats of The Fence, there was no one on the other side. Just a big hole with a metal gate set into it and a bunch of caution signs. And the mime was still behind me, alone, pretending to sit and think. Which must have been really hard on his thigh muscles.

“Did you just throw your voice?” I demanded. “That’s the best Yuri imitation I ever heard.” Seriously, Crouch should have been a ventriloquist, not a mime. He didn’t even realize that the crazy head-shaking he was now doing looked more like a denial than a gracious acceptance of my compliment.

He cupped his ear, gestured at The Fence, then pointed at the opposite end of the Boardwalk, and back at The Fence again. I said, “I’ve already looked behind it. Honestly, you’ve really gotta learn to get a feel for when a joke has run its course.”

If there was nothing to learn from the buskers, maybe I could find some historical clues to point me in the right direction. Although Crouch was still gesticulating, I decided that with my awesome tourist disguise, I could get away with scoping out the Historical Society without anyone being any the wiser, and headed off toward the building.

The new living statue was set up right in front, shielding his eyes and gazing off into the distance like he was keeping an eye out for seagulls with overzealous digestive systems. As makeup went, I realized, this getup was actually nowhere near as time-consuming as I’d originally thought. Yes, he was painted metallic from head to toe, but most of that was clothing. His hair was a wig, and the amount of actual skin he’d need to paint was minimal. Since I was the only one around, I couldn’t exactly scrutinize him too hard without being obvious. I’d have to sneak a better look at him later to see exactly how he’d put his costume together. Not that I actually wanted to be a living statue—keeping still and quiet wasn’t really in my repertoire of skills. But if Yuri and I did decide to tryst under the pier, a little role-play could really spice things up.

I circled the statue as slowly as I could without looking suspicious, took in what details I could about his costume, then slipped through the Historical Society doors. The air inside was cool and slightly stale. Once my eyes adjusted, I noted the interior was the height of fashion—fifty years ago. Dark wood predominated, with parquet floors, chunky shelving, and informational posters featuring models who looked like they’d stepped off the set of the Mod Squad. It was such a time capsule it was practically retro. I surmised the right person would pay a lot of money to reproduce the look—until I saw that everything was subtly worn, as if it had been cleaned so many times, the finish was coming off. And then it pretty much looked old.

“Dixon?” someone whispered—surprisingly loudly. “What are you doing here?” I spun around and found Pearl, the manager, standing in the doorway of a section marked Reading Room—Quiet, Please. Her graying hair was slicked back in a severe updo, and her polyester blazer was cinched tight with a gold lamé belt that matched her epaulets.

I’d had no idea how intimidating epaulets could be.

Before I could demand to know how she’d recognized me not only in sunglasses, but with a hat, she hissed, “Why aren’t you outside helping Charlotte?”

“I wasn’t sure I was on duty today. Because I never got a schedule. Or a timecard. Or an official Pinyin Bay ballpoint pen.”

Was a reading room the same thing as a library? I’ve never been welcome at my neighborhood branch—the head librarian referred to me as “motormouth,” imagine that. Hopefully my chatterbox reputation hadn’t preceded me all the way to the Boardwalk.

Pearl didn’t shush me, but she did whip out a stack of index cards and rap them against her palm. In the quiet of the building, the sound was like a miniature paper spanking. I flinched. She whispered, “These are comment cards from the Barge of the Bay. And I’ll have you know, I take customer feedback very seriously.”

Uh oh.

“Say, is that Charlotte calling me, off in the distance? Pretty sure it is. I’d better go see what she wants.”

“Just a moment, Dixon,” Pearl said sternly. I’ve always had a thing about pleasing authority figures, even though I’m not particularly good at it. She whapped the index cards against her palm a few times, then said, “The Back to Nature group must have really enjoyed their historical cruise yesterday. They gave you a very high rating. Not perfect, mind you. But, still, surprisingly good, especially for your first day.”

“Really? Wow.” I was actually starting to warm up to Pearl. Did I mention how fond I am of praise? “Say, listen, as someone with unfettered access to the Historical Society, I’ll bet you know a lot about Pinyin Bay.”

Pearl preened at the generous words. “I suppose I am quite the authority.”

There were so many things I wanted to know. What was The Fence all about? Was it entirely impossible wolverines might be involved? But most importantly—who the heck was buying up the shoreline? But before I could ask, the Historical Society door swished open on silent hinges. It was opened with some urgency, but it made only a gentle sigh—though the pages of a few open books nearby fluttered. “There you are,” Charlotte whispered to me—very loudly. She snagged me by the sleeve and said, “Hurry up—the barge is waiting.”

9

YURI

Perhaps Dixon was right, and no one truly looks at anyone else. Or if they do, they don’t see. The Boardwalk was bustling, but at this early hour, only with the people who worked there. The shopkeepers cleaned windows, the maintenance crew swept sand from the planks, and the deliverymen dropped off more cheap souvenirs to sell. I stood on a section that had been recently swept, and gazed off in the direction of the cabins where I had wintered. I could not see the beach. But the top of a massive auger was visible above the treetops, and it saddened me.

How strange to be sentimental about the city where I had lived less than a year, when St. Petersburg could collapse and I would accept the news with a shrug. I had no use for this sentimentality. But since I could think of no particular remedy, there was nothing else to do but determine who was buying the shore.

The prospect of stopping them—by whatever means necessary—was a much more encouraging thought to dwell on.

I paused outside a “gallery” selling cheap jewelry and mass-produced ceramic trinkets. My reflection in the plate glass window greeted me, shielded behind the sunglasses. I was both resident and outsider. Knowing without being known. And it was a comfort to be able to operate outside the system, to be just an observer, with no claims to my time—

“Yoo hoo!” called a familiar voice—one which had been grating on my very last nerve, to the point where it intruded in my dreams. Drew Draws was already outfitted with his rhinestone apron and ridiculous glittery beret. “Buttinski!”

“That is not my name.”

“Oh please,” he said dramatically. “You should be thanking me for giving you a moniker. Really. You should. Everyone knows that a memorable presence is the best marketing.”

I took another glance at myself in the shop window and wondered how I ever thought a pair of sunglasses would be adequate disguise. “I am not here to draw,” I said.

“Nonsense.” Drew plucked at my sleeve. “Now stop admiring your large, strapping self and come over to the tent before the tourists get here.” As he marched off toward the corner of the Boardwalk he’d carved out for himself, I got a good look at what he was wearing beneath that apron. Shorts. Satin shorts. Extremely short satin shorts.

Shorts I would never un-see.

Had he been wearing such things yesterday as I stood beside him all day drawing tourists with exaggerated amounts of hair?

Well. Now it was not just his voice that would haunt my nightmares.

Ignoring his request, I turned and power-walked out to the parking lot as a new idea formed in my mind. Dixon might look enough like any other Spellcrafter to make the Handless second-guess whether they had seen him before or not. In my suit, though, with my shaved head, I was too easy to recognize. But I had been offered something which would make a much more effective disguise—something that would ensure none of the Boardwalkers (except Drew) could possibly take me for anything but a tourist.

Unfortunately, that item was pink.

But the sight of the auger convinced me to do what needed to be done.

I was relieved to find the Big Burgundy Bus had not yet departed. I rapped on the door, and Isaac the bus driver greeted me with his uniform askew and his dreadlocks tied up in a paisley bandanna. He appeared to be the only one on the bus. “Where are tourists?” I asked.

“They took one look at the sand dunes and decided it was the perfect place to camp. Makes no difference to me, since I sleep on the bus to protect everyone’s luggage, but that’s cool. I’m not big on the great outdoors.” He scratched at his braided beard. “Too many bugs.”

“Will this not throw off your whole tour?”

“What can I say, man? If the customers are happy, I’m happy.”

And if the busload of nature enthusiasts was staying an extra day, it was especially fortunate for me. “Did you find the extra T-shirt?”

Isaac looked up from where he was picking something out from beneath his fingernail. “Dude! It totally slipped my mind.” What a shock. “Come on up and take a load off while I have a look. The seats are pretty cushy.”

Although the bus bore evidence of being in use, with various bags and towels and articles of clothing here and there, everything was plush and new. And burgundy. And pervaded with the so-called “new car smell” which was strange to me, but surprisingly apt. There was a sign hanging behind the driver’s seat that read, For your safety, remain seated while the bus is in motion. A dull and forgettable sign, to be sure. And yet, my eyes kept returning to the words.

“You feel it, don’t you?”

Isaac’s voice came from right over my shoulder, and I flinched away. How had I possibly allowed him to sneak up so close behind me? He had ample opportunity to attack while I stared at the forgettable sign. Luckily, his body language was not aggressive in the slightest. He slipped past me, walked up to the sign, and said, “Check this out, man—it’s trippy. I was hanging out in the bus one day and, for some reason, I felt like I needed to know what was on the back of the sign. If it was blank. Or the same as the front. Or maybe a mirror image of the front, like you’d actually see if you were looking through the paper. Or whether the paper actually existed. Okay, I might’ve ingested a gummy or two before I had this thought.” He smiled wistfully at the memory. “But you won’t believe what I found.”

Oh, I was pretty sure I would.

He slipped the sign from its holder and turned it around. The back of the sign held a meticulous photorealistic painting of the bus, an image which must have taken days to create. And over the top, in dramatic calligraphy, had been Scribed:

Daytime

Nighttime

Rain or Sun

Big Burgundy Bus

Is Always Fun

Dixon would have been tickled over the fact that it rhymed.

Isaac said, “You can guess what this is, can’t you?”

I hardly needed to agree. Spellcrafters might think the Handless are all ignorant, but of course, they are not. Once someone commissions a Crafting for themselves, they often realize many stray bits of verse around them are more than just positive affirmations. Many mass-produced graphics with sayings looked so much like Spellcraft…enough of them that I wouldn’t be surprised if an enterprising Spellcraft family had begun printing them as a smokescreen for what was really going on.

It is one thing to spot Spellcraft out in the open.

It is another to notice it hidden.

When I was a younger man, a gay activist group in Moscow covered the slogan of the United Russia party in protest with a rainbow. It did no good, of course. The “homosexual propaganda” had been successfully linked to pedophilia by the government—as if the older generation needed any more reason to condemn us. But the activists…I could hardly imagine being so fearless. Even so, whenever I passed graffiti on the streets of my own city that had not yet been painted over or scrubbed away, I often sought out glimpses of rebellion to reassure myself I was not alone—even if I was not, myself, brave enough to stand up for my cause.

A particular spot behind a small row of shops never failed to catch my eye when I saw it on my way to and from my miserable work, even though I walked nearly half a kilometer out of my way to pass by.

The walls themselves were always painted over within a week…but no one bothered with the trash bins.

I presumed I had been looking for a hint of a rainbow among the graffiti, and had not even realized I’d been staring at the painted wall behind the bins. Not until an old woman paused beside me and said, “What is it you see?”

Don’t talk to strangers is a phrase repeated often to every American child—but children know empty words when they hear them. In America, strangers are always remarking upon the weather, complaining about the traffic, or randomly greeting people they have never seen before and may never see again. In the grim St. Petersburg neighborhood that had spawned me…speaking with strangers was simply not done.

Either the old woman had mistaken me for someone she knew, or she was senile. I ignored her, thinking she would surely go away.

She did not. Instead, she stared at me until, finally, I could not help but look back at her. I had expected her eyes to be filmy and pale. But instead they were as black and sharp as obsidian shards. When I met her gaze, she asked again, “What do you see?”

“Nothing,” I snapped, and walked away.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I later avoided that spot. I often wished I had. But, no. Despite the fact that someone had noticed me searching—for what, I hardly knew—I returned the very next day.

The shrewd old woman—Ulyana—was waiting for me.

I would say she smiled, but there was no joy in her. Only a grim satisfaction. “You do not need to see,” she crooned, “in order to See.” She set a different inflection on each word, so that somehow I knew, deep in my bones, they were different. She hobbled over to the wall behind the bins and scratched away some cheap, thickly applied latex with her thumbnail. Beneath it, I expected to see graffiti. But while the paint below the cover-up was not especially colorful, it shimmered. Not like metallic flecks were added to the paint—but like heat rising from the surface of the brick as though it were a hotplate.

“It is as I thought,” Ulyana said. “The volshebstvo is visible to you.”

I shook off the memory I would just as soon forget and peered at Isaac, mostly in my peripheral vision. He was obviously no Scrivener. He lacked all the characteristic features. And yet, he’d noticed the Spellcraft face down against the wall. Many Seers must have no clue about their own potential, but I was unsure if it was my place to break the news.

It might only be a burden. There were many times I myself considered the volshebstvo a curse.

Though…not lately.

“What do you know of Spellcraft?” I asked him.

“If you’d asked me that a few months ago, I woulda said it’s mainly wishful thinking. I mean, a positive attitude can’t hurt, right? But I’ve driven for other bus lines, and I’ll tell you what. The passengers on the Big Burgundy Bus are waaay cooler than anywhere else. And they can’t even see the poem.”

He slipped the Spellcraft back into its holder, Crafting hidden, then peered up into an overhead compartment.

“No T-shirt.” He looked perplexed, scratching the whiskers on his neck, and then he brightened and snapped his fingers. “Hey, I know, why don’t you talk to Husky Lou? You’re just about the same size, and maybe he’s got an extra.”

As much as I hated to ask anyone for anything, let alone a stranger named Husky Lou, I had little desire to squeeze into anything Isaac might have worn and end up with some sort of parasite or fungus. In fact, the thought of something crawling from him to me brought a quick end to my indecision about what I should or shouldn’t tell him. I backed off the bus and headed out to find that T-shirt.

While the Strangerberg side of the bay is rocky and home to many dramatic bluffs, our coast is sandy. There are dunes just beyond the Boardwalk, though with its stunning view of the power plant, the area has never been much of a tourist destination.

But today, it was.

Tents formed a ring around the top of the largest dune, and the nature group was gathered within their shelter. A bonfire smoked. People sang to the accompaniment of an out-of-tune guitar. There was camaraderie and laughter—hearty enough that I wondered if they were still under the influence of the volshebstvo, and how I, with my grim nature, would possibly be mistaken for one of their group.

I trudged up the dune. For each step I took, the sand sent me back another half-step. Jogging the hill would make for a good workout, but I had no time to indulge. When I was close enough to the tents to be heard, I called out, “I am looking for Husky Lou.”

“That’s me!” a man’s voice called back. “What can I do ya for?”

His head popped up over the top of a tent. His face was round, his neck was thick, and his complexion was ruddy, framed by a full, graying, reddish-brown beard. Judging by the height of the tent and the fact that I could only see the tops of the other tourists’ heads, he looked to be at least six feet tall. And he wasn’t scratching himself—not that I could see. That was a good sign.

“I was told you might let me borrow a T-shirt.”

“Absolutely. Long-sleeve? Short-sleeve? Tank top? UV protection? Rashguard?”

He was going to make me say it. I bit back a sigh. “The T-shirt…from your group. The pink shirt.”

Husky Lou brightened. “You’re interested in Back to Nature? Why didn’t you say so?” He ducked back behind the tents and rummaged through one of them. I watched the progress of his head above the tent line as he made his way around to an opening. And then he stepped through the gap.

Without a stitch of clothing…other than the pink T-shirt wadded in his hand.

“So, are you already familiar with naturism, or is it something you’re just beginning to explore?”

I could hardly admit it was yet another case of this word does not mean what I thought it did. Not if I wanted that shirt. And so, I defaulted to the response that always painted me in the best possible light. “I knew this thing only in Russia. It may be different here.”

“I’m not surprised. Attitudes about naturism really vary from place to place. You need to get all your ducks in a row. We were thrilled Pinyin Bay granted us a camping permit on such short notice.”

I would not be surprised if whoever issued the permit made the same assumption I had: that they were hosting a group of wildlife enthusiasts.

Husky Lou held out the shirt…but when I took hold of it, he did not let go. “Just so we’re clear—this isn’t a swingers’ shindig. People who join our club to hook up are sorely disappointed. And there’s an application you need to fill out. A vetting process before you can strip down to your birthday suit and join in the festivities.”

“I am not looking for sex,” I said, with surprising conviction. “I would be grateful if I could just see what it is like to be among your group—not here, naked, but out on the Boardwalk—and get to know more about this…naturism.”

The answer pleased him, and with a nod, he released the T-shirt. “What a relief. You’d be surprised how many folks want to jump right in and whip off their clothes without learning all the ins and outs. I’m right in the middle of brunch, so I’ll meet you over by the Ferris wheel in an hour for a one-on-one orientation.”

Hopefully by that time I’d figure out who was trying to buy the Boardwalk, and could simply return the ludicrous pink shirt without needing to hear about the “ins and outs” of naturism.

10

DIXON

“Listen,” I told Charlotte. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m grateful you rescued me from your boss. Frankly, the thought of her frowning at me makes me a little nervous. Add to that the chance that she might actually tut her disapproval—”

“Forget about Pearl. There’s something you need to know about the Boardwalk.”

I’d been trying to figure out how to disengage from the tour guide before I ended up stuck on the barge again…but I’m such a sucker for a juicy bit of gossip. “Is it a scandal? Because I love a good scandal. They’re so scandalous.”

Charlotte narrowed her eyes and sized me up. The furrow between her brows deepened. “I hope I don’t regret this.” I gave her my winningest smile, and she relented. She cocked her head toward the parking lot and said, “I’ll tell you—but not out in the open where just anyone can overhear.”

We headed off toward a hatchback parked at the far end of the lot. Pinyin Bay gets pretty hot at the height of summer, to the point where you could toast a bagel on the seat of a closed car parked in the sun. Those hot days were still a few weeks away. Even so, the single car at the edge of the lot had collapsible foil sunscreens covering the interior of every window.

“Air conditioning on the fritz?” I asked sympathetically.

“Why do you ask? Have you been spying on my car?”

“I wouldn’t have even known it was yours.” Awkward. “Say, why are you confiding in me, anyway?”

“To open your eyes.”

Clearly, this was now the point at which I should start determining my escape route. “Okey dokey, then. Eyes open. Mission accomplished.”

“Not so fast. First of all, you need to promise me you won’t tell anyone what I’m about to reveal. As far as They’re concerned, for all we know, the Wishing Bell is just a place to make a wish and spit.”

I could practically hear the capital-T in the word They. “Who are They?” I wondered aloud.

“Shh! No specifics. Not until it’s safe to talk.” Charlotte beeped open her car, rummaged a roll of aluminum foil out of the back seat, tore off a sheet, and handed it to me. Then she pulled out a baseball cap and showed me the inside was lined with foil. “Good thing you have a hat. Otherwise the foil tends to blow away.”

“You want me to—?”

“Shh!” She put her cap on, then pointed at me.

My mom always says, don’t mess with someone who’s not playing with a full deck—but Uncle Fonzo says it’s all a matter of working the game. I glanced around to make sure no one was around—luckily, we were alone—and tried my best to look like I thought it was perfectly normal to drape a sheet of foil over my head.

Charlotte reached over and mashed my straw fedora on top of it, then nodded with satisfaction. “We can’t let Them know about the foil trick. If we do, They’ll just change the frequency of their devices.”

“Um. Wow.”

“Don’t tell me you can’t hear the voices.”

“I’d hate to jump to any rash conclusions—so many tourists around. So many voices.”

“That’s true. The South Dock Boardwalk isn’t usually so busy. When it’s less crowded, the voices are way more obvious. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve been standing around shilling barge tickets, had someone ask me a question—and realize I was the only one there. And it stands to reason, if I can hear them, They can hear me.”

“Ri-i-ight. Good thinking.”

“But even though it’s safest to just play along and act like we don’t know about Them, I can’t in good conscience force you to parrot their lies without letting you in on the big secret.” She whipped out a tattered edition of Pinyin Bay Journal from the mounds of stuff in her back seat. “Check out this headline: Local Referendum is In! Yellow Wins - by a Landslide.”

“The Ferris wheel?”

Charlotte leveled a knowing look. “No one likes yellow that much. Obviously, this was the work of a small handful of people.”

For all that I was itching to shuck the tinfoil and run away, I had to admit—I’d been hoping to get an inside scoop on the Boardwalk. Hopefully the scoop I was about to receive wouldn’t be too nutty.

Charlotte took back the paper and carefully tucked it among all the other stuff stashed in her car. “Everyone thinks the elected officials are in charge of Pinyin Bay, but between the parking lot and the water, it’s a different story. All the decisions here are made by a secret society: the Boardwalk Board.”

“Wow. Who’s on it?”

“They wouldn’t be a secret society if they went around announcing their members. Even they don’t know who their fellow members are. Whenever there’s an issue they need to vote on, they cast anonymous ballots at the Wishing Bell. Whoever’s on it, they’re old. Really old. Because they’ve been running this Boardwalk behind the scenes for decades.”

Given the overall state of the Boardwalk, maybe some of them should consider retiring. In fact, maybe some of them already had. “You don’t think they’ll decide to sell, do you?”

“I hope not.” Charlotte glanced skyward as if she felt the free-floating microwaves pinging against the foil lining of her hat. “But from the whispers I’ve heard, it sounds like most of them are on board with selling out. All of them but one.”

“Who’s the holdout?”

“What part of ‘secret’ don’t you understand?”

Well, how about that? A secret society. Right here in Pinyin Bay!

I could hardly wait to tell Yuri.

But before I could head off to fill him in, Charlotte grabbed me by the Scribing arm and hauled me back to the barge.

11

YURI

Husky Lou was a gregarious man. Normally, this would annoy me. But there was something—dare I say it—wholesome about him which made him bearable.

“I can’t emphasize enough the importance of sunscreen.” He then launched into a story of nakedness which was surprisingly easy to ignore.

Striding up and down the Boardwalk beside another large man in a matching pink shirt was a much better disguise than the sunglasses alone. The only one who would recognize me as a local should be Drew, so I steered Husky Lou toward the opposite end of the walkway, where the boards underfoot were lost to sand, ending with a curve of stout fencing.

“Anything that protrudes is particularly vulnerable to sunburn.” Lou squirted a blob of sunscreen into my hand. “And I mean anything. Not just your nose. A baseball cap is always a good idea—I never go anywhere without one. And this is where having a belly can really come in handy….”

As the nudist blathered on and I swiped lotion over the back of my neck, I realized we were not alone. Behind the fence, another conversation was taking place. One in which I was extremely interested. “It’s nine to one in our favor—look, I don’t know why they need a unanimous vote, they just do. Now it’s only a matter of figuring out how to make the last one give in.”

Where had I heard that voice before? Difficult to say, with him whispering and Lou droning on over top of it. I prodded Lou and put my finger to my lips, then gestured to the other conversation with a nod. He shrugged and bent his head to listen in, too.

“But don’t worry, even if the holdout is too stubborn to see common sense, it’s just a matter of figuring out who they are. They might think they’re anonymous, but I’m watching that ballot box like a hawk. Soon as I figure out who’s blocking the deal, we can apply some direct pressure.” A pause, then a whisper. “Someone’s here, gotta go.”

I hurried around the fence, thinking to catch this person in the act—but when I rounded the far side, there was nothing there but a tunnel sealed with a security gate—a gate which appeared to be rusted shut.

“Some trick,” Husky Lou said.

“And what would that be?”

“The way sound bounces right here—almost makes it seem as if voices are coming from that old hole. But obviously, the gate hasn’t been disturbed in ages, and what you’re hearing is actually more like an echo.” He sketched the shape of the fence with a meaty hand. “See the way the wind has bent this fence into a parabola? It’s forming something called a whispering gallery with another structure on the other side of the Boardwalk. And whoever was just talking….” He shielded his eyes and gazed down the shore. “I’d say he’s over by the tents.”

I wondered briefly if this Lou person had been planted by the investors to throw us off their trail. But if that were the case, it would have involved hiring the whole tour group to perpetrate the deception, and setting them in motion days before Dixon and I decided to investigate. But just to be sure, I called up the dictionary on my phone and looked up the word parabola. The definition was a symmetrical curve. I supposed the fence did indeed form such a thing. And if I listened very hard, I could hear Drew Draws calling out, “Anyone can take a selfie! Commemorate your trip to Pinyin Bay with a custom cartoon!”

And, with that, I realized his tent formed a very similar curve.

“I know exactly where the sound came from,” I said, and set off with Husky Lou to check out the very spot I’d been taking such care to avoid. We headed toward the other side of the Boardwalk at a jog. When Lou got winded I let him fall behind, hoping to spot someone looking suspicious in the vicinity of Drew’s tent. I was positive I’d heard the voice before, and hopefully once I saw the man, it would all click into place.

I ran right up to the purple tent, where Drew was sketching an elaborate mound of hair on the portrait he was currently completing. “Well,” he said to me loftily, “look who finally decided to show up. Do you know how many customers decided to go to the old-time photo gallery instead?”

I strode past him and circled the tent…and discovered the mime standing behind it with a phone to his ear.

“I have you now,” I said with great satisfaction, and snatched the phone from his hand.

“Yuri?” said a woman’s voice on the other end of the line. “Is that you?”

“Sabinochka?”

“Did you just butt-dial me? And did you get a new number? What a relief, I thought it must’ve been Crouch bugging me again.”

I cut my eyes to the mime, who made a hopeful cookie-eating gesture.

“It was mime. How long have you been talking with him?”

“Talking at him was more like it. I dunno—ten minutes?”

It had taken me fewer than five to get there from the fence. I checked the mime’s phone. The current call had been running eleven minutes, thirty-two seconds and counting. I put the phone back to my ear. “I can persuade him to stop bothering you,” I told Sabina, looking Crouch in the eye as I spoke.

“Aw, how sweet of you to offer! But no, don’t worry about it. I can handle him myself. Plus, now I’m curious to see if he’s gonna keep sending me random stuff.”

Curiosity can be a dangerous thing—and it sounded like the mime was wearing her down. But Sabina’s love life was none of my business. And his charades would prove overwhelmingly annoying soon enough.

I ended the call and shoved the phone into the mime’s hands. “Who else was back here making a phone call?” I demanded.

He curled his hand beneath his chin and pretended to think about it.

Sabina might not want me to work him over on her behalf…but maybe I had another, equally valid reason to do so: to see if his voice was the one I heard in the whispering gallery. “Stop with the pantomime and say something,” I warned him. “Or I will demonstrate a more painful way to make you talk.”

But before I ended up scrubbing greasepaint off my knuckles, Husky Lou staggered around the corner, dropped his hands to his knees, and struggled to catch his breath. “Did you find the shady character?” Lou eventually managed, between breaths.

Maybe so. Because it was entirely possible the mime could have put Sabina on hold during the call and made another. Since he wasn’t speaking, she might not know the difference.

I cut my eyes to Crouch again.

He shrugged helplessly, eased behind Lou to put himself safely out of my reach…then turned tail and ran off.

He was disturbingly quick.

“Say, listen,” Lou said. “Since we’re so close to the pier, let’s see if there’s any room on the Barge of the Bay history tour. I really wanted to go yesterday, but they were all sold out. It’ll be fun! My treat.”

I hardly wanted to be stuck on some boat…but then I saw the mime sneaking up the gangplank and decided that while I couldn’t manhandle him in front of too many witnesses, just the threat of harm would seem more serious if he couldn’t get away.

“Fine. We will ride boat. Lend me your hat. Sunburn.”

Husky Lou was happy to oblige. And though his baseball cap was damp with sweat, it concealed my shaved head. I was thankful for the pink shirt as we got in line for the barge. If I hunched down and positioned myself strategically, I blended in with the other Back to Nature tourists. I only needed to trick the mime for a moment—enough time to trap him between myself and the bulkhead, and force him to finally speak.

I was well-hidden as I boarded the boat—or so I thought. “Yuri?” Dixon called over. I shook my head and hunched even more…but it was no use. “Yuri! Hey, Yuri! Come sit in my section!”

I cast around to see where Crouch was sitting, but could not find him. “Take your seats, everyone,” called the tour guide at the front of the boat. “And stay seated. The water is a little choppy today.”

The deck lurched under my feet as the barge set off. I staggered to the nearest seat, and sat. I scanned the crowd. No mime.

Not on the barge, at least.

Back on the pier, Crouch bowed his farewell to me with a grand flourish.

I muttered a few choice curses in Russian as a hand fell on my shoulder. “That phrase is starting to sound kind of familiar,” Dixon observed brightly, “though I’ve had zero luck finding it in a translator. Cyrillic is really unfathomable. And you look a-dorable in pink. Whoops, did I say that out loud?” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Anyhow, you’ll be pleased to know I’ve turned up an awesome lead: a secret society.”

He shimmied his shoulders in his eagerness to explain. Even I was forced to admit…it was intriguing. “Go on.”

“Apparently, the Boardwalk is controlled by an enclave of anonymous of people called the Boardwalk Board. It’s super-secret—as in, even they don’t know who else is on it. And one of them is refusing to sell.”

That jibed with the phone call I’d overheard. I told Dixon about the whispering gallery—he mouthed the word parabola and squinted at the fence on the distant shore with no little amount of skepticism. “That doesn’t necessarily preclude wolverines,” he said, mostly to himself. “Though it explains why I thought I heard you talking over there when the only one around was Crouch.”

“We had better figure out who the holdout is before the buyer does. It sounded to me as though things are about to turn ugly.”

“The votes are cast at the Wishing Bell.” Dixon pointed to the clapperless bell mounted in the center of the Boardwalk. “And we can totally see it from here.”

“Many people are sliding notes into that bell. How will we ever figure out which ones—? Hold on…is that Vano Shirque?”

12

DIXON

I’ve known Vano Shirque ever since I was old enough to hold a crayon—and been saddled with his presence ever since. Freshman year of high school, we were assigned to partner up for a biology class project that involved dipping some water out of the bay, testing its pH for a week, and comparing our findings. Not only did he fail to take any readings—he left his water in a sunny window, and half our project evaporated. The worst part? He didn’t even have the decency to act chagrined!

If Vano was inscrutable as a gawky teenager, his sangfroid was off the charts now that he’d grown up. Not only did his heavy-lidded bedroom eyes and chiseled cheekbones leave random onlookers swooning in his wake, but he moved with the careless grace of someone who had zero figs to give. If James Dean and The Fonz had a baby—if they were both Scriveners, at any rate—that lovechild would be Vano Shirque.

Vano slunk down the Boardwalk like it was a catwalk in Milan. He paused at the Wishing Bell, leaned against the base, and pulled out his phone—probably scrolling through the eight bajillion thumbs-up his picture of today’s cappuccino got on Friendlike. Not that I’m jealous. Or annoyed. Or fixated.

Not too fixated, anyhow.

I belatedly realized the big guy in pink next to Yuri was trying to get my attention. “Excuse me—sir? How deep is the water?”

“Seventy-five leagues,” I said abstractedly—because once the crowd near Vano thinned, he stole a quick look around, then slipped a bit of paper out of his jeans pocket and crammed it into the base of the Wishing Bell—and not to make a wish, either. Whoever’d lost my father’s spell had clearly just found another Spellcrafter. I’d never seen Vano move so purposefully…other than the time he snatched that terrible apartment out from under our noses. And even then, I don’t suppose I actually saw him do it. Just the aftermath of his stupid, perfectly-formed signature on the lease.

“How deep is a league?” the guy was asking Yuri as he thumbed around on his phone to try and look it up. “I don’t have any bars out here.”

Yuri, too, was distracted by Vano, and said the first thing that popped into his head. “Deep enough to sink ship.”

Which…apparently got Charlotte’s attention. She really wasn’t very good at staying on her half of the deck. She hurried over and declared, “The mean depth is twenty-five yards. And the Barge of the Bay is very stable.”

If there was one consolation, it was that at least we knew where Vano lived. Plenty of professions have client confidentiality—psychiatry, law, wart removal. But Spellcrafters? Hardly. If Vano wouldn’t tell us who hired him to influence the Boardwalk Board, it wouldn’t be to protect the customer…it would be to stop us from poaching his business.

Once the Barge of the Bay finally completed its loop around the water and pulled up to the dock, I was practically ready to hop overboard and swim to shore. But Yuri, as usual, was the voice of reason. As Charlotte and the tourists disembarked, he took me to one side and said, “Forget about your ‘frienemy,’ Dixon.”

“But I know he wasn’t just making a wish. He didn’t pat the Bell.”

“Even if he is Crafting for the developers—it is no different from what your own family has done. You cannot implicate him without exposing your father as well.”

Well…when he put it that way. “So, what can we do?”

He stroked his chin and gazed at the Wishing Bell. The lowering sun made it look cheerful and pink. “These shops all close in just a couple of hours. We should come back and retrieve whatever Spellcraft Vano has made. Between the two of us, you and I can duplicate the work—but without the volshebstvo—and Uncraft whatever it was they were using to sway the vote.”

“Lemme get this straight. My idea is to go confront Vano face-to-face, while yours is to wait until nightfall, sneak back to the Boardwalk, break into the Bell, steal the Spellcraft and replace it with a counterfeit?” Yuri looked slightly alarmed at that summary, so I hastened to add, “Genius! Let’s go change into something black.”

I was eager to don a slinky turtleneck like a cat burglar, but unfortunately it was no longer turtleneck weather—plus, I didn’t actually own one. I had to settle for a black T-shirt and jeans, and Yuri’s suit was more of a dark brown.

Close enough.

There were a few random cars in the parking lot when we got back to the Boardwalk. People tended to park their second cars there when they ran out of room in their garages, since the Pinyin Bay Tourism Council couldn’t be bothered to have them towed. The Big Burgundy Bus was still parked there too, but it looked empty. Yuri said, “If anyone is still there, it is only Isaac the driver, guarding the luggage.”

I took a good look at the bus. “Awfully suspicious how that bus came into town right when all this Boardwalk stuff started going down. What if Isaac is the buyer’s agent—and he’s the one you heard making the phone calls?”

“Completely different voice.”

“Okay…but if you put a little makeup on him…could he be Crouch? After all, we’ve never seen the two of them at the same time.”

Yuri shuddered at the mere thought, then said, “Crouch is clean-shaven and Isaac is not. And then there are the dreadlocks.”

I was a little bit surprised Yuri would stick up for a guy with so much lint in his hair—Yuri tends to be a lot more conservative than the Scriveners I was accustomed to rubbing elbows with, and even just a tad bit judgy—but if he was willing to vouch for the bus driver, that was good enough for me.

Normally, at night, the Boardwalk was a riot of colored light. Not only were plenty of fairy lights strung between the shops and wound around the potted decorative trees, but when you angled your head just right, they reflected off the water, too. But as late as it was, with the shops closed for the night and the decorative lights turned off, it not only looked different, but sounded different. The water lapping against the pilings out at the end of the pier was loud. And the wind howling across the bay.

And the sound of a single man talking.

“Hello? No, don’t put me on speakerphone, I can hardly hear you over all this wind.”

Yuri and I melted back into the shadow of the keychain pagoda.

“Your theory about the voters didn’t pan out. I watched that ballot box all afternoon, and not a single geriatric local came by. I don’t care what your records say. Either the board members aren’t the old coots you think they are, or they’re voting somewhere else.” Yuri was so right—that voice was totally familiar! I craned my neck around the side to get a look, but couldn’t make out anything but a generic man-shaped silhouette. “Fine, I’ll stay until midnight—and even that’s pushing it. You know how early old folks go to bed. And speaking of beds, the sheets at this so-called Pinyin Inn have an abysmal thread count. That would never fly in Wichita.”

Yuri and I exchanged a look, wide-eyed with surprise, and then simultaneously mouthed the name Quint.

Pinyin Bay was the last place I’d expected to see the obnoxious businessman we’d met back at the Spring Falls Hot Spring Spa. Shouldn’t he be off somewhere demanding an upgrade and bragging about his masseur? I was all ready to charge out there, grab him by his businessman shoulders, and pester some answers out of him—but Yuri caught me by the sleeve and gave his head a subtle shake. He put his lips to my ear and said, “He does not know we are onto him, so we have the advantage. Perhaps Vano’s Crafting will shed some light on the situation.”

It was really tough to restrain myself from going after Quint and giving him the what-for. But Yuri was right. We knew where he was staying—he’d be the only one at Pinyin Inn since it was no longer open for business, thanks to the developers who were pulling his businessman strings. And it really would be smart to retain the advantage of surprise.

Yuri and I both watched our watches. (Was that confusing for Yuri, I wondered, when two English words meant something different, yet tangentially related? I’d have to ask.) At the stroke of midnight, the silhouette stomped off to the parking lot, making no effort whatsoever to sneak. Yuri put his finger to his lips, and we both waited there, feeling extremely stealthy, until we heard the distant sound of a car pulling out of the gravel lot and driving off.

“Is the coast clear?” I whispered, then realized there was an actual coast in our immediate proximity. I checked the water, too. “I wonder if the first person to ask that question was literally standing right beside a pier, just like us!”

“We are alone,” Yuri said decisively—I just love it when he’s so commanding. “Let us have a look at what Vano has Crafted.”

13

YURI

Like everything else on the South Dock Boardwalk, the Wishing Bell looked as though it had been there for generations. The shoreline atmosphere was humid, causing metal to oxidize and paint to peel. The base of the bell was the size of an especially wide coffin. There was a simple slot in the side bearing a metal plaque that read Make Your Wish!

And I could see no way to get in.

I rapped on each side and felt for seams. It appeared as though the face of the box which contained the slot could be opened, but there were no buttons or latches or anything to allow access. But there must be some way for the wishes to be collected—and, more importantly, the ballots.

I pushed and I pried. Nothing. But when I backed up to deliver a good, solid kick, Dixon caught my sleeve and stopped me. “Hold on, Yuri. It’s the Wishing Bell. If breaking a mirror is seven years’ bad luck—do they say that in Russia?—then I can’t even imagine how unlucky it would be to kick down the Bell.”

“Well, then? What do you suggest?”

Dixon went back over the seams with nimble fingers. And when he came to the slot at the front, he eased his fingertips in.

A small click sounded. A door at the front of the base swung out. But when Dixon let go to come around and take a look, an interior door popped up from below and sealed the hollow again. Try as he might, he could not open the interior failsafe without standing behind the door with his fingers on the latch. I was more than willing to trade places with him, but my fingers were too thick to fit into the slot. We scanned the area for a bit of driftwood or trash to take the place of his fingers, but it was no good. As much as Dixon was eager to see inside that base, he was stuck behind the door.

I shone light from my flashlight app inside. No papers. But the bottom of the small, coffin-like space was obviously hinged. I got down on my hands and knees to push and pull and pry, but the floor held firm. “There must be a second latch,” Dixon said. “We went over the outside of base with a fine-toothed comb, so it’s gotta be inside.”

Of course it was.

I felt around for another latch from where I stood, but eventually was forced to admit it would be a lot easier if I simply got in and looked. I prodded the floor experimentally to see if it would bear my weight. It was solid. Gingerly, I squeezed inside and shone my light up into the corners.

I saw nothing—not inside the base, anyhow. But outside?

Crouch—or should I say, Quint?—was tramping up the beach, carrying a sack filled with who-knows-what. Come back to sabotage the vote, no doubt. And not only did I see him, but thanks to the light in my hand, he clearly saw me. “Dixon—it’s Quint!”

Dixon spun around. “Where?”

“He is Crouch! Quint is mime!”

Dixon was quick on his feet, more than I could hope to be. Especially in the soft sand where my weight held me at a disadvantage for anything but a tug-o-war. He was off like a shot in pursuit of Quint. But when he released the latch, not only did the failsafe door shoot up and trap me inside….

With another click, the floor swung out from under my feet.

It was not quite a free-fall, more of a chute, rough-hewn and narrow. I scrabbled for handholds and footholds as I slid through like I was being digested by the Bell. But my momentum was too great, my fingers were slippery with old sunscreen and new sweat, and I stood more risk of breaking my hands than breaking my fall. And so, I decided to furl my left hand against my chest and make peace with wherever I might end up.

I landed hard, though thankfully, something broke my fall—a large mound of paper. I found myself in a sandstone cavern shaped by water and time. Not only was this cavern lit…it was filled with people.

Naked people.

“Yuri?” Husky Lou called out. “What’re you doing here?”

Another nudist added, “And how’d you manage to fall out of the ceiling?”

“I hardly know where to begin.” I rolled off the mound of papers, decided I was bruised but not broken, and asked, “What is this place?”

Lou said, “We’re under the pier.”

A woman with a rose tattoo on her shoulder said, “It’s a natural hollow formed by the bay. And check out the graffiti on the walls. It goes back decades.”

“We’re all keen on street art and obscure local attractions,” Lou explained. “And when we had our unexpected detour in Pinyin Bay, we did a little digging online and found out about this cave. You never know what hidden gems you’ll turn up in these out-of-the-way small towns!”

I took stock of the hollow, which was lit by a camping lantern. The space was perhaps ten meters deep, with an undulating, uneven ceiling two or three meters overhead. Drier than I would have expected, with a sandy floor and gritty walls.

Those walls were covered in graffiti.

Some was skillful. Some was naive. Some vulgar, but more of it sweet.

Some of the painting was fresh. And some had clearly been there for ages. Heart shapes predominated the scheme, with names or initials inside. Layer had been painted upon layer, coalescing as a vast, communal, abstract expressionist mural. And though it was hard to see in the low light of the battery powered lantern, if I angled myself to view the sentiments at an oblique angle, I could see that some of the scrawlings were more than just graffiti.

As the naked crowd watched me scrutinize the riot of color and form, I backed up a few steps to take it all in. Only once I was practically on the other side of the hollow did I see that behind all the random doodles and drawings was a large blob. Somewhat bell-shaped. And pulsing faintly with volshebstvo.

Rufus Clahd had indeed spent time beneath the Boardwalk…experiencing more than one rite of passage.

I drew closer to the Seen, now looking specifically for the Scrivenings within. The painted bell was so huge, I would have expected it to contain numerous Craftings—though whether it was possible for one Seen to power them all, I had no idea. But I was not the only one to know the Seen for what it was. A decade or two of Pinyin Bay Scriveners had also recognized it. And none of the stray bits of Scrivenings impinged on the bell. None but the two lines of Crafting directly in its center.

They were old and faded, little more than scratches in the sandstone now. But once I spotted the faint volshebstvo, I found I could make out the words.

All goes well

When you wish on The Bell

It rhymed. Dixon would be so pleased….

“Yuri?” As if on cue, Dixon’s voice carried from the mouth of the cave.

“In here,” I called back.

“Are you o…kay?” He paused at the entrance and blinked at the naturists. Who stared back. Naked. And then he shrugged and began peeling off his T-shirt.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“When in Rome…. Say, Yuri, do they have that expression in Russia?”

“Whoa,” Husky Lou said, “keep your pants on, buddy. You haven’t been through the application process.”

Dixon paused with his shirt rucked up to his armpits. “And how does one go about applying?”

“Dixon!” I gestured toward the pile of papers. “We have more pressing matters.”

Lou said, “And it’s getting a mite chilly out here, anyhow, so we’d better get back to our bonfire. I don’t have a brochure on me right now, but if you’re serious about joining up, just stop by the campsite.”

Some nudists slipped into their shorts and pink T-shirts, and some just looped towels around their waists. But it only took them a few minutes to gather themselves, wave goodbye, and troop out of the hollow, leaving us in the cave with only the light of our phones to see by.

Dixon frowned. “Level with me, Yuri—why did my showing up end the orgy?”

“There was no orgy.”

“I need to know. Was it something I said?”

“There was no orgy,” I repeated. “And apparently a naturist does not promote nature—only nakedness. Non-sexual nakedness.”

“Well, that’s a relief. No one wants to be the guy who killed the orgy. And now that I think about it, those folks seemed a little too old to all be virgins looking to score under the pier. One or two, I could see. But the entire group of them? And now I get why they kept trying to take off their shirts during the barge tours. Even the women.”

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“Well, I took off to go grab Quint, but he was too fast for me. He veered off the Boardwalk into the sand—apparently, there was a stepping-stone path to the parking lot. But I couldn’t find it in the dark and kept sliding backwards. By the time I was on solid ground again, he was long gone. But think about it this way—if he came back to the Boardwalk, it means there’s still something here for us to find.” He turned toward the pile of paperwork I’d landed on and said, “We’d better get digging.”

If I had not landed on the pile, maybe we could have skimmed off the top layer of envelopes and papers and taken them home. But unfortunately, everything was now scattered. Though I supposed I should be grateful I had not broken my hand. Or my neck.

Still….

I searched for Vano’s Crafting by sight and by feel, but it was no good. “We will never be able to find anything by the light of our phones. There is too much paper.”

“I can think of a really good way of finding things.”

And the volshebstvo was indeed very good at revealing other instances of itself. There was certainly no lack of paper with which to Craft. My hand dropped to my trouser pocket where I kept my paintbox—and found nothing. I sighed in exasperation. “My paints are somewhere in this mess.”

“Then we’d better get looking!”

It seemed like a straightforward task. Find the small metal box among the papers. But there was too much ground to cover, and soon, Dixon’s phone went dark as the battery drained. “It is no use,” I said.

“Chin up, Yuri—we just need a plan B. You do have a plan B, don’t you?”

I muttered a curse in Russian—but then realized there was already an active Seen in the hollow. “Behind you, on wall, there is Crafting. Bend the volshebstvo to your will.”

“Wow. You make it sound so action-hero.” Dixon waggled his eyebrows eagerly. “Let’s see what I can do.”

14

DIXON

All goes well

When you wish on the Bell

Clearly I had my work cut out for me. Although there was plenty of space to add a few more lines, a certain H-E-double-hockey-sticks kept insisting it was the only possible rhyme to fit what was currently there—and I don’t even believe the infernal destination literally exists!

I could add another couplet, a pair of lines with an entirely different rhyme, but the word Vano had even fewer possibilities than bell. Maybe the word Crafting…but that only rhymed with rafting.

Then again, if I went with an A-A-B-A scheme, my third line could end on anything, so long as it fit into the rhythm. As this realization came to me, the phone Yuri held to light my Recrafting began to dim. He was practically vibrating with the urge to hurry me along—hopefully he wasn’t scared of the dark, not that I would call him on it—but even though I didn’t have the specific lines in mind, I could tell by the way things were clicking into place….

“I got this, Yuri.” It wasn’t a brag, not at all. Just a statement of fact. I cupped his cheek briefly and stroked his stubble with my thumb. “I got this.”

The surface of the wall was not exactly conducive to calligraphy. Not only was it vertical—it had the texture of those pumice stones you’d use to buff a stubborn callus off your heel. And I was none too keen to grind off the tip of my cockatoo quill on a gritty wall. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my quill. But calling it dainty? That’s being generous. Yet, when I skimmed my fingertips over the old Rufus Clahd image—when I encountered the relief of the Crafting that had watched over this cave however many years—I felt a rightness. Very faint. But it was there.

“Save the battery,” I told Yuri. “I can see it with my heart.”

Yuri didn’t like it—I could tell by the sound of his breathing—but he trusted me. He turned off the flashlight app and everything went dark. At least until my eyes adjusted, and the lights from the parking lot reflecting off the water bathed the cavern in the faintest wash of light.

I ran my fingers over the old Crafting again.

A-A-B-A rhyme scheme? Yes. Definitely.

All goes well

When you wish on The Bell

I steeled myself, set my quill to the wall without even inking it, and etched two more lines into the sandstone.

The votes are apparent

And so is the Spell

I’d have to trust the Spellcraft to know I was referring to the Spell that Vano dropped in, and not any other stray bits of Spellcraft that had accumulated in that big, crazy pile. But given that the tip of my quill felt the same as always once I was done scratching in my words—no dulling, no splits—and given that I’d experienced the telltale tingle I associate with Scribing, I was confident the Spellcraft was in our corner.

I read Yuri the Scrivening in its entirety, then put away my quill and turned to the mound of paper. Spellcraft has a special affinity for paper. While it wouldn’t do something as obvious as levitating the pertinent document or lighting it up like a party lantern, I wouldn’t be surprised if a breeze came in off the bay and separated whatever we were looking for from the rest.

That expression, don’t hold your breath? I must have been holding mine. And my lung capacity was evidently nothing to brag about. Because eventually, I couldn’t hold it any longer…and I sucked in a loud gulp of air.

And even that didn’t cause the papers to stir. But I told myself not to worry. We’d sense the Crafting just as soon as we laid our hands on it.

Unfortunately, several hours later, the only tingle I felt was in the leg that fell asleep from me sitting on it wrong while I sifted through a gazillion pieces of paper.

The way Yuri talks about Spellcraft, he makes it out to be an almost sentient thing—a capricious friend who more-or-less had your back…though they might subject you to a tasteless practical joke now and then, and their sense of humor left a lot to be desired. But even the least reliable of friends should really know how much the Boardwalk meant to me.

Maybe it just hadn’t heard my cry for help. “Should I add some ink?”

In the dim, reflected light, Yuri was reduced to a faint outline. He skimmed his fingers across the wall as he considered his answer, then decided, “No. Ink is not the problem. This is not an entirely new Crafting—and it is made not only of the two lines you added, but the lines which came before. Think. The sentence you created in the middle of the crafting could read as: When you wish on the Bell, the votes are apparent.”

“How did I not see it? Wait right here, Yuri, I’ll be back in a jiffy.” I hardly stumbled at all on my pins-and-needles as I dashed outside and scrambled up the embankment. Once I was at the Wishing Bell, I rummaged through my bag for a pad of yellow sticky notes and a mundane pen. The moon had set, but my eyes were sensitized to the dark—and the halogen lights over by the parking lot were really bright. But more importantly, I’d spent my whole life training to take strokes of the pen and use them to create words. And meaning. And magic.

Writing the words in the dark was no problem. But finding the right words was another story.

Wishing, I realized, was not as much like Spellcraft as one might think. When I Scribe, it’s with the certainty that something will happen. The mechanism of Spellcraft might not be fully understood. But, heck, I couldn’t tell you how electricity got from the power plant to my electrical outlets, either.

Wishing, though? Not only did it lack the collaborative aspect of Spellcraft—a quality which I’d apparently taken for granted up until now—but it lacked all the constraints, as well. Like a genie with a chip on its shoulder, my capricious friend Spellcraft was always on the lookout for a careless loophole to bung up the works. But making a wish, here and now…I felt I should just say what I wanted. Straight from the heart.

Save Pinyin Beach

As statements went, it was plain. Not only was there no rhyme scheme—and no attempt to plug potential loopholes—but I’d written the words plainly too, with only the most restrained flourish on the descender of the letter y.

I pushed the paper through the slot and waited for the mystical shimmer of Spellcraft to play across my nerve endings. But the wish was not Spellcraft. And I felt nothing. Even after I reached up to pat The Bell.

I’d really been hoping for some definitive good news to tell Yuri, but no…wishing really wasn’t much like Spellcraft at all.

I slipped and slid down the embankment and ducked into the dark hollow beneath the pier. “Anything?” I asked Yuri.

He held out his arms like he was dowsing for water. He concentrated for a long moment, then shook his head. “Nothing.”

“It’s not fair,” I said—and this was a position I did not take lightly, since I’d always been taught that fairness favors those who create their own luck. “Not only have we been playing by all of Spellcraft’s rules—and, mind you, the rulebook is constantly shifting—but we always treat it with respect. Pinyin Bay is our home. How can Spellcraft just sit back and let some outsider buy our entire shoreline right out from under our noses?”

Yuri didn’t do comfort. Not deliberately, at least. But he did pat my shoulder stiffly and say, “If the volshebstvo will not help us, then we must help ourselves. Fill your bag with papers. We will take them back to the truck, where there is light, and start searching.”

Brave words. Slips of paper had been piling up beneath the Wishing Bell for ages—and Yuri’s fall had mixed them all up, so we couldn’t tell the old from the new. But we couldn’t just sit back and do nothing, not like the miserly Spellcraft. And so, I waded in, opened my bag, and bent down to start shoveling things in….

And realized that I could see my yellow sticky note was on top of the pile.

Stuck to a small envelope.

A small envelope with a precise X marked across the seal.

I leaned across the precarious pile of paper and snagged the envelope’s corner. I must have been sure I’d expose Vano’s Crafting, because I felt vaguely disappointed that the telltale tingle was absent. Still, I thumbed open the seal as I walked the envelope toward the mouth of the hollow. On my way, I kicked aside a small metal object that skittered toward Yuri’s feet—his paintbox. But there was no time to be self-congratulatory about that. I was too eager to expose Vano for the traitor to Pinyin Bay he obviously was.

Once the envelope was open, I drew out a small card, and read it by the parking lot lights reflected off the water.

No Spellcraft. There was a date—today’s date—and a single word.

No.

“Dixon?”

“These are some fancy serifs on the capital N. I’d recognize them anywhere. The handwriting belongs to the head of my Spellcraft circuit. This must be what Vano was dropping off. Not a Crafting. A vote from his great-grandmother.”

And now we knew the single holdout keeping the Boardwalk buyers at bay.

I said, “Morticia Shirque sold off her mansion to those developers and immediately regretted her decision. I doubt any offer will change her mind.”

Yuri considered the ballot. “Should we worry that the only thing standing between these people and the Boardwalk is a sick, elderly woman?”

“If the black mold didn’t kill Morticia, I think she can handle that slimeball, Quint.” After all, what was he gonna do? Bore her to death bragging about dumb businessman things? Morticia was nothing if not shrewd, with decades of experience under her belt. No way would she let someone like Quint cloud her better judgement.

Just as I had that thought, another notion occurred to me.

Morticia might be immune to Quint’s dubious powers of persuasion.

But my cousin was a sitting duck.

“I’m sure Sabina’s okay,” I said hopefully. “Right?”

Yuri blanched.

“No? Then we’ve gotta warn her before she subjects herself to businessman tongue—or worse!” I pulled out my phone. It was dead.

Yuri was already making the call. He listened, scowled, and said, “She is not answering. Too early?”

Hopefully so…and not too late.

15

We hurried back home. The sun was just edging up over the horizon as we pulled up, and the kitchen lights were on downstairs. The chance of Uncle Fonzo being up at this hour was slim. But if Sabina was opening the shop today, she could very well be awake. I burst in as quietly as I could (meaning, I kicked off my shoes as I ran and let Yuri catch the door before it banged shut behind me) and headed straight for the kitchen.

Sabina was, thankfully, alone, sitting at the table in a ratty tank top and a pair of my discarded boxers.

She squinted at me over her coffee. “What’s with you? Did you just get home? And why are you all jacked up? You didn’t let someone talk you into testing their diet pills again, did you?”

Yuri came in behind me and planted his hands on his hips. As he seethed with disapproval, I realized the actual reason for my hasty visit might not go over too well. “Just stopping by to say hello to my favorite cousin.”

“Uh huh.” She slurped her coffee. “There’s no leftover pizza, Dixon. We ate it all last night.”

I assumed “we” meant her and Uncle Fonzo—my uncle can pack away a lot of leftovers. But then I heard the shower in the first-floor bathroom turn on…while a snore that was definitely my uncle’s drifted down from his bedroom upstairs.

And I realized there was a white smudge on Sabina’s collarbone that could only be greasepaint.

I have never been overprotective of my cousin. In fact, despite her being younger, it’s always been the other way around: me blubbering all over Sabina every time my heart’s been broken, and her pragmatically reassuring me that a pint of ice cream can fix anything—and if anyone needed the air let out of their tires, I should just let her know where the car was parked.

Then again, my cousin had never been romantically duped by a shifty businessman looking to trade our fond childhood memories for profit.

Sabina’s bedroom was a small, dark first-floor room that was intended either as a minimal home office or an expansive linen closet. None too fancy, but it was right across the hall from a bathroom. A bathroom with a door that hadn’t locked properly since the time we locked our young selves in, then sat and cried until Uncle Fonzo took apart the doorknob with a screwdriver. Okay, technically, I cried while Sabina tried to Spellcraft us out of there with Aunt Rose’s lipstick and a whole roll of toilet paper.

Why bother replacing a perfectly good doorknob if it was just as easy to yell out, “Someone’s in here!” when it rattled?

But Quint wouldn’t know that.

I banged open the bathroom door, filled with adrenaline and righteous indignation. “How dare you?” I said dramatically, and whisked open the shower curtain….

Only to find the man standing in the bathtub was a stranger.

A total stranger.

A wet, naked total stranger. And not a bad-looking one, either.

Luckily, the tub had rubber treads stuck to the bottom, and when the stranger backpedaled, he didn’t fall down. But he did snatch the shower curtain out of my hands. Plastic rings ricocheted off walls, ceiling and floor as the curtain snapped off the rod.

Sabina dashed into the bathroom. “What in the heck are you doing?” she cried.

“Well, I—ah, that is, he—uh….”

“Obviously, you’ve got a thing against mimes, but this is extreme. Even for you.”

Yuri crammed himself into the bathroom behind Sabina. “Where is mime?”

I took another look at the guy in the tub. He was currently attempting to swaddle himself in the shower curtain, though it was one of those frosted plastic deals that didn’t leave much to the imagination. Especially the parts pressing right up against the vinyl.

“Hold on a minute!” I said. “That’s Crouch?”

“Stop calling me that!” Naked Guy bent his knees. The shower curtain rustled. “How is this a crouch? My back is straight and my knees are together. Obviously, I’m not crouching. I’m bobbing.”

“I’m not entirely convinced the knee position matters,” I said.

Sabina muttered, “Just let it go, Bob,” and squeezed out past Yuri to go back to her coffee.

The plastic slipped as Bob made a shooing motion. “Do you mind?”

“Oh. Right. Sorry. My mistake.”

I gathered up Yuri and walked him back out to the kitchen. He sagged into a chair next to my cousin and shook his head. “Sabinochka, seriously. A mime?”

“At least he’s kinda cute,” I offered.

Sabina grimaced. “What can I say? He came by to drop off a bag of seashells and one thing led to another.”

“So,” I said. “That’s what I saw him lugging up the beach last night. Did he know how much you adore them?”

“I think it was just a lucky guess. Plus, they’re free. I don’t think miming is a very lucrative business, and he blew a big chunk of change on the cookie bouquet.”

Yuri looked around. “I have never seen you decorate with seashells.”

“I don’t decorate with them,” Sabina said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I pitch ’em into other people’s yards. Like that mean old Mrs. Mangold across the street who’s always giving us the stink-eye. Fresh seashells—especially the ones with little bits of sea creatures stuck inside—reek something fierce once they start going rancid.”

Bob-not-Crouch strode into the kitchen in yesterday’s mimewear, sans the greasepaint, and said, “Well? Did the two of you ever figure out what that interloper was up to? Or did you fool around playing tour guide all day?”

Yuri gave him a dangerous look. “I did not see you helping.”

“Unbelievable! Not only did I pickpocket his Spellcraft so you could fix it, I told each of you exactly who to watch out for.”

“You told us nothing,” Yuri said.

Bob struck a pose with his hand under his chin.

“You’re tired from lugging all those seashells?” I guessed. “No, you’re bored. No, wait—you’re stumped. So, our answer is in a tree.”

“For crying out loud,” Sabina said to Bob. “This is ridiculous. Use your words.”

“He is thinking,” Yuri said. “Like the Rodin sculpture—The Thinker.”

Bob pointed excitedly at Yuri with both forefingers.

Yuri nodded grimly. “Quint was not mime. He was living statue.”

“I’d better get going,” Bob said. “If I don’t stake out my spot early, the yodeler sets up in the shade of the only decent tree.” When he leaned in to give my cousin a kiss goodbye, she turned her mouth aside and offered her cheek.

Hopefully not on my account. Her love life really was none of my business.

Once Bob was gone, I said, “Sabina, you’ve always supported me—whether it was warranted or not. If you want to date a mime, I’m one hundred percent behind you.” Plus, I had to admit, the whole pickpocket side hustle was kind of intriguing. And at least it would mean he was good with his hands.

“I’m not so sure there’ll be a repeat performance,” Sabina mumbled into her coffee. “That guy was way too chatty in bed.”

16

YURI

I have stayed at the Pinyin Inn once, and only once, back when I was originally drawn to the city. The place was decrepit and smelled of old men, and even the fact that the rooms were cheap and a fairly edible breakfast was included could not keep me there any longer than it took to find my cabin. It was awful then. But now—shuttered, and practically abandoned? It was wretched.

At least I enjoyed some satisfaction knowing that Quint must loathe every moment of it.

I banged on the door so hard the entire front of the old hotel shook. I would have been perfectly willing to kick it down—but the businessman had more arrogance than common sense, and he yanked open the door to see who had the gall to disturb him at such an early hour.

He looked from me to Dixon and back again, and his eyes lit up with recognition. “Oh! It’s you guys. What a relief.”

Not the reaction I had expected. At all.

“Come on in.” He pulled the door open wide. “Some creepy mime has been absolutely fixated on me. I was worried he might have tracked me down.”

The lobby of the Pinyin Inn was even dingier than I remembered it—probably because the windows were shuttered and the television that normally played fishing reports and infomercials was off. The room had been remodeled in the early seventies, so its original plaster walls were covered in horrid gold wallpaper that drooped in some places and clung fast in others. The owners had made another attempt to freshen things up—this one in the mid-nineties—and the furniture had not been updated since. Everything was Wedgewood blue, from the carpet to the upholstery to the trim around the windows. Or it had been, once—before cigarette smoke, sunlight and time had dulled everything to a washed out bluish gray.

Quint crossed over to the check-in desk where a conspicuously new coffee pot was plugged in.

“Help yourself to some java,” Quint said. “It’s nowhere near as good as the organic bulletproof pour-over I would do at home, but it’s fresh.”

“We are not here for coffee,” I said.

“And if you’re making house calls, there’s a terrible hitch in my shoulder that could definitely use your attention.”

“We are not here for massage.”

Quint eyed me over the rim of his mug. “Okay, then, I’ll bite. What do you want?”

“We are here about the Boardwalk.”

“Ah. Now I see. You want to get in on the action.” He strode over to a chessboard which was set up between two Wedgewood blue wing chairs, and considered the pieces. “Unfortunately, my employer doesn’t need additional investors.”

Dixon said, “And who might that employer be?”

“Sorry.” Quint sounded exactly the opposite. “Confidentiality agreement.”

I had ways of making men talk. I only realized I was preemptively cracking my knuckles when Dixon laid a hand over mine. He said, “And what happens when the Boardwalk Board votes against your acquisition?”

Quint picked up a chess piece—the queen. He twirled it meaningfully between thumb and forefinger. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years as a high-powered businessman, it’s that everyone has their price. Besides, it’s not as if they’re going to get a better offer. I mean, look at this dump.” He stretched his arms wide, waving the chess piece to indicate the hotel. “I handled the purchase, and believe you me, the owner got a pretty sweet deal. The Boardwalk Board is playing hardball, no doubt about it, but at some point they’ve gotta ask themselves what, exactly, they’re trying to preserve. A broken down Ferris wheel? A few planks in the sand? A bell with no clapper? If anyone understands tradition, it’s me—committees with more money than sense will pay big bucks for ugly memorials and pretentious statuary. But what has Pinyin Bay actually lost? A squalid trailer park, a crappy hotel, a falling-down mansion, a few shacks on the beach, and a funeral home. Ask yourself: were these things really worth all the fuss?”

Quint was not wrong. Pinyin Bay was only a destination for people who could afford no better vacation, and the main reason I cared about the city was that it mattered so much to Dixon. And as Dixon took in the shabby surroundings, it seemed that he had only now realized what Pinyin Bay must look like to an outsider.

Dixon ran a fingertip along the dusty countertop. “The Boardwalk is a little run down. And the city’s done itself no favors keeping the wolverines all fenced off where no one can enjoy them. Maybe the shoreline really could use a little sprucing up. What’s going to be built in its place? A fancy waterpark? A posh resort? Ooh, I know—go-carts. Everyone loves go-carts.”

Quint scoffed. “Who said anything about building? I represent a mining company—and they can hardly wait to start digging.”

Dixon batted the queen out of Quint’s hand, startling us all. “The South Dock Boardwalk is not for sale—not at any price. Tell your boss to go dig somewhere else!”

Startled, Quint backed up a few steps. “Just you wait and see. The Boardwalk Board called a special referendum. That must mean they’re ready to sell.” He gave a taunting finger-wave and crooned, “Bye bye, Boardwalk.”

Dixon turned on his heel and stomped out. As I treated Quint to a parting glare, he gave his own shoulder a squeeze, made a phone shape with his hand, put it to his ear…and mouthed the words, Call me.

In the truck, I found Dixon studying the envelope we found under the pier. “We need to get this vote back to the pile before Morticia’s NO vote is missed. These envelopes are common; we’ve got some at the office. And I can duplicate the X on the seal, no problem.”

No doubt. I had never met a Scrivener who did not excel at forgery.

As we headed for Practical Penn, I glanced at Dixon appreciatively and said, “It was very forceful of you to knock the chess piece out of Quint’s hand.”

“Maybe. But then it rolled into a mouse hole in the baseboard, which didn’t exactly help me underscore the point that Pinyin Bay is worth saving.”

I shrugged. “Even so. Quint does not have the sense to be afraid of me. I am glad he finds at least one of us intimidating.”

Once we had the old Scrivener’s vote looking as it should, we hurried back to the Boardwalk and slipped it into the Wishing Bell. There was no way of knowing whether or not the votes had already been collected, so we planted ourselves at a nearby picnic table where we could keep an eye on both the Bell and the trail leading down the embankment. And to make ourselves look as though we were not on a stakeout, I retrieved pencil and paper from the truck and set about drawing Dixon’s portrait.

It was difficult to capture the set of his mouth. I was unaccustomed to seeing him frown.

“Maybe we should have dealt with the vote before we confronted Quint,” he said. “What if the votes were already picked up? What if we’re too late?”

A few of the shop owners had trickled in to prepare for the day while we waited. Awnings were rolled out. Sand was swept away. Bob was doing warm-up exercises under his tree. I wanted to comfort Dixon, but even as he spoke, a darker thought occurred to me. What if our timing had been compromised because the developers were at an advantage…due to a Crafting that, for sentimental reasons, we had failed to Uncraft?

I strengthened the contour of his silhouette. Even his hair looked dejected and flat.

Drawing should have distracted me from considering all the ramifications of our failure…but apparently, I was very good at multitasking, if one of those tasks was worry. Pinyin Bay had precious little going for it. With the bayside attractions all razed to the ground, the city might never recover.

I was about to suggest we stop what we were doing and Uncraft Johnny’s Spell here and now, when a turquoise VW Bus pulled up at the edge of the Boardwalk—Rufus Clahd. The historian, Pearl, climbed out from the passenger seat wearing the same outfit she’d had on the day before—and her graying hair was now freed from its severe twist, loose around her shoulders. Pearl and Rufus gave each other a giddy little wave, and she drifted toward the Historical Society like she was walking on air.

Well. At least a good night was had by someone. I supposed they should enjoy their fun while it lasted—because Pinyin Bay was about to get distinctly unpleasant.

Pearl waved again, then watched as Rufus drove out of sight. But once he was gone, instead of unlocking the Historical Society, she stole a quick look around and then hurried toward the embankment. Dixon’s eyes went huge, but only for a moment. As Pearl climbed down, he made a valiant effort at looking as though he was totally engrossed in having his portrait drawn. And I did the same in drawing it. Even so, it was clear that when Pearl made her way back up to the Boardwalk, she had several envelopes in her hand.

Once she’d gone inside, a smile broke over Dixon’s face. “Thanks to Rufus Clahd, we weren’t too late after all! And Morticia’s vote was right on top of the pile. Best Boardwalk save, ever!”

“Perhaps we should see to your father’s Spellcraft before our luck turns sour.”

“But think about it, Yuri. Go-getters get their goals. It doesn’t specify who the ‘go-getters’ are. And Quint is no longer in possession of the Spellcraft—we are.”

Part of me was concerned that he simply didn’t want to Uncraft his father’s Scrivening.

But part of me was willing to hope he was right.

Pinyin Bay was hardly a sprawling metropolis, but the place more than made up for the lack of tourist appeal in sheer character. From Scrivener Village to the tacky Boardwalk, Pinyin Bay was a city where Spellcrafters could eke out a living, and one which Dixon and I were fortunate to call home.

“Comfortable” was not a word I would have initially chosen for the place—especially given the way I’d been lured in with Spellcraft—but now? Being introduced around town as Dixon’s “grown man friend” with hardly anyone batting an eyelash? Being accepted by his insular family as one of their own? I cared fiercely for Pinyin Bay. And I would do whatever I could to preserve what was ours.

Dixon slipped a hand through the crook of my elbow as we headed for the parking lot. “Yuri? When can I see the portrait?”

“It is no good.” I squeezed his hand with my biceps and lowered my voice. “I must draw another.”

“Is that so?” Dixon caught my eye and grinned flirtatiously. And though I had certainly seen more than my share of nakedness these past few days, it would be no great hardship to have him strip down and pose for me. If we could manage to actually get to the portrait, that was, and not be distracted by more pressing matters.

Speaking of nakedness….

“Look, Yuri, there’s your chunky buddy with the pink T-shirt! The Big Burgundy Bus is getting ready to roll out. Did you want to go say goodbye?”

I did, actually. But not to Husky Lou.

The luggage compartment beneath the bus was open, and Isaac was just about done stowing the group’s camping gear inside. He had left the biggest tents for last, and was pleased when I offered to help him with the lifting. “Before you go,” I said, “I have a question for you. How good are you at…painting?”

He paused between tents and scratched his beard. “You mean painting pictures, right, and not houses? ’Cause you can’t pay me enough to climb a scaffolding. I’ve got a thing about heights.”

“Yes. Pictures.”

“Funny. I haven’t thought about it in years. But when I was just a little sprog, gimme a pad of paper and a crayon and I’d keep myself busy for hours.”

“How come you’re a bus driver,” Dixon asked, “And not an artist?”

“I suppose I blame kindergarten. See, I used to be ambidextrous. But my teacher forced me to pick a lane—I guess you’re less likely to smudge your handwriting with your right hand—and after that, I must have lost interest.”

It was forbidden to let the Handless know the pictures behind the Craftings they bought were anything more than decorative. But Seers were so few and far between, it hardly seemed right to let the talent go to waste. “A Spellcraft shop would pay a lot of money for a good painting,” I told him. “But Spellcrafters are a superstitious bunch—and they insist it must be painted left-handed.”

Isaac seemed intrigued by that notion, and promised to give it more thought. He attempted to shake my hand, but I was saved from having to touch him by the distant mechanical whine of an auger. We all turned toward the noise. Judging by the direction of the sound, it was over by the cabins now. I couldn’t imagine how fruitful it would be to drill so close to the bay—wouldn’t the hole just fill with water? Then again, I was hardly an authority on mining. And I presumed the surveyors had some clue what they were doing.

At least, I thought they did—until a blinding flash lit the sky. A split second later, a deafening boom shook the ground so hard it flattened us all against the bus…as Pinyin Beach exploded.

Sand rained down on our heads. Dixon shook it from his hair. His mouth worked as if trying on words, but he ended up choosing none of them. For once, he was speechless.

As for me, there was nothing I needed to say. What must be done was clear. I took his hand in mine and squeezed it, more determined than ever to defend my new home.

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And have you read about Yuri’s first dinner with Dixon’s parents in All that Glitters? http://bit.ly/jcpglitters

THE ABCS OF SPELLCRAFT SERIES

1. Quill Me Now

1.5 All that Glitters

2. Trouble in Taco Town

3. Something Stinks at the Spa

4. Dead Man’s Quill

5. Last But Not Lease

6. Don’t Rock the Boardwalk

ABOUT THIS STORY

In a whispering gallery, it’s pretty freaky how you can hear someone talking from way across a vast room as if they’re right next to you. Recently, I encountered a whispering gallery on vacation in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, where I also caught a glimpse of a living statue that inspired Quint’s disguise. I’ve also murmured secret messages to friends in a whispering gallery at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. But in my research, I discovered that not all whispering galleries are intentionally planned. At Gates Circle in Buffalo, NY, the benches formed the parabola that bounced the sound of speech across the park.

Speaking of Buffalo—I painted the South Dock Boardwalk Ferris wheel yellow in commemoration of the Giant Coaster in now-defunct Crystal Beach Amusement Park in Ontario. I grew up just over the Peace Bridge in Buffalo, and enjoyed numerous excursions to Crystal Beach as a child. The Giant Coaster was a wooden roller coaster built in 1916 and, sadly, demolished in 1989. It was gloriously yellow.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jordan Castillo Price has seen a wolverine in the wild in a state park in central Wisconsin—but she mistook it for a badger. At least until she got home and looked up some reference photos of North American wildlife.

She has never received a cookie bouquet…but there’s always hope.

Connect with Jordan:

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Blog - http://jordancastilloprice.com

And explore her other stories at http://jcpbooks.com