Forget Me Not (Mnevermnd 2)
Author: Jordan Castillo Price
Date: 2014-02-18 00:00:00+00:00
Description: No two people are exactly alike, but Elijah Crowe is very, very different. Elijah is on the autism spectrum, so the tasks of day-to-day life most people breeze through are a challenge for him. His career suffered because he never got the hang of schmoozing, and now his talents are being wasted teaching classes at the mall. His social circle is limited to his ex, his therapist, and a structured inclusion group at the Rec Center. The one bright spot in his life is the memory science of Mnemography. Although he loves nothing better than devouring the latest research and tinkering with all the spe
Publisher: JCP Books LLC
Rights: © 2021 Jordan Castillo Price, all rights reserved

Contents

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

Guide

1. Cover
2. Contents
3. Start of Content

MAYOR MAY NOT

The ABCs of Spellcraft 11

Jordan Castillo Price

Find more titles at
www.JCPbooks.com

Mayor May Not. ©2021 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 978-1-944779-23-8

Don’t miss Yuri meeting Dixon’s parents for the first time in the bonus story All That Glitters.

Sign up for Jordan Castillo Price’s newsletter at http://bit.ly/jcpglitters and download free.

1.0

1

Dixon

Who can resist a piping hot churro straight from the deep fryer? Or a golden brown, deep-fried funnel cake? Or a melty, chocolatey fried Snickers bar? Or a thick, chewy slab of fried dough covered in frosting and cinnamon and colorful candy sprinkles? Not me.

And judging by the fact that he was currently covered in powdered sugar, not Yuri.

A-dorable.

“Say, Yuri,” I ventured, as the mineral-seaweed scent of the water cut through the olfactory wall of fried food. “Isn’t it funny that of the million and one places each of us could be, we both ended up in Pinyin Bay?”

He scowled as if to say, Hardly funny when I was lured here against my will and bound by Spellcraft to serve a Handless tyrant…but he didn’t go so far as to actually speak the words. Because while that might’ve been technically true, no one would argue that things had totally turned out for the best.

It was the perfect day for a fundraiser. The Pinyin Bay boardwalk creaked beneath our feet. Though it was still patchy in some places and completely blown up in others, with any luck, repairs could begin soon. And in the meantime, no one complained about our festivities spilling out into the asphalt lot of the municipal salt pile. I worked my hand into the crook of Yuri’s elbow, enjoying the bulge of his biceps in a way that never got old, then gave his arm a squeeze and said, “Even the boardwalk will be back to normal before you know it.”

Yuri eyed the crowd. “I am not so sure. Turnout is not as good as we had hoped.”

“Really?” I took a better look around. “Come to think of it, there was an awful lot of elbow room at the urinal—”

“We live ten minutes away, could you not have waited?”

“Anyhoo, Drew’s going to be phenomenally upset if we don’t make our numbers.”

Drew Draws was the driving force behind the Rebuild the Boardwalk Extravaganza…if by driving, you meant blustering around with lots of big hand gestures in a glittery visor and lamenting that a creative’s work is never done. Drew had been selling tourist caricatures from a stall on the boardwalk for more than twenty years, though late last summer we discovered there was more to his talent than just making his subjects’ hair look big.

Of course, Yuri and I helped wherever we could. Yuri with Seer advice, and me insisting on adding the word Extravaganza to his fundraiser’s title—because who doesn’t love an extravaganza?

Through nippy fall days and long winter nights, Drew had split his time between learning the Seer craft and making the extravaganza a reality. He’d been planning to use the big event to announce his “retirement” from caricature and become a full-fledged Seer. It was perfect timing. He could make the announcement when he turned over a big novelty check to the contractors who’d won the bid to restore the boardwalk to its former glory…or at least its former garish kitschiness. That check couldn’t be paltry, though, not when the numbers would be big enough for everyone to see—even in the blurry, weirdly-framed shots they published in the Pinyin Bay Journal.

The fundraiser had been months in the making. If it flopped, we’d never hear the end of it. Not because we were personally responsible, but because the new Seer spent so much time with my uncle, and the attic floor isn’t very well insulated. And Drew can be pretty darned loud when he gets excited.

“Word of mouth is what we need,” I decided.

“Where else would words come from?” Yuri wondered. “Or do I really want to know?”

“Just another charming expression in English. It means we need to get these people hyped up so they let all their friends know how much fun they’re having.” I grabbed the nearest stranger, a sunburned guy wearing socks with sandals, and asked, “Isn’t this the coolest extravaganza you’ve ever attended?”

The great thing about questions is that they’re not just for finding answers. In this case, I was hoping to help this guy realize exactly how much fun he was having. I knew for a fact there hadn’t been an “extravaganza” in Pinyin Bay’s recorded history (I’d even looked it up!). So, even if he was just having an okay time—by sheer default, Rebuild the Boardwalk would still be the coolest.

Strangers usually agree with me—especially when I startle them—but instead of just saying whatever it might take to disengage, the pink-nosed guy took in all the festivities and said, “The games are rigged, the food is cold, and the only ride is the Ferris wheel. And I could ride that anytime.”

“There’s a bouncy castle right over there.”

“With a weight limit of a hundred pounds. I’d hardly call this an extravaganza. A fair, maybe. Or even a festivity. But extravaganza is really pushing it.”

Far be it from me to get involved in a discussion about vocabulary with someone so pedantic. I knew full well how important it was to be accurate with my word choices. How could I not, with all the vocabulary Spellcraft tutors had drilled into my young, impressionable brain?

Turning away, I scoped out a woman in big sunglasses and bright pink lip gloss. She probably had a whole bunch of friends on Friendlike! Plus, she was tiny enough that she could hop around in the bouncy castle if the mood took her. I plastered on a big, non-threatening smile, trotted up to her, and said, “Could there possibly be a more perfect day for an extravaganza?”

Hooking a finger over the arm of her sunglasses, the woman slid them down her nose, scanned the bay, and said with a shrug, “I guess it’s fine.”

There’s just no pleasing some people! But there were dozens of folks milling listlessly around…or maybe they were just relaxed. Surely there’d be a potential influencer somewhere in the crowd. It was just a matter of finding someone suitably enthused to take my message to the people—

“Dixon Penn!” boomed a familiar voice, startling me so badly I nearly ended up wearing Yuri’s funnel cake. Ladin Silver peeled out from behind a concession stand belly-first, brandishing a Technicolor snow cone in each hand. I was hardly surprised to see him there, as Ladin had a particular knack for games of chance. Rumor has it his old trailer was raided for suspicion of illegal gambling—stoat racing, to be exact—but he’s never confirmed or denied that allegation.

“Just the person I wanted to see!” Ladin boomed at me.

“Wow. Uh…really?”

“Hasn’t Drew Draws been spending all his free time over at your uncle’s place?”

It was no secret among the circuit that Uncle Fonzo was training a new Seer. In fact, it was pretty big news within our Spellcraft circuit. “That’s right.”

“Good. Then you’re sure to run into him at some point. Hold this.” He shoved a snow cone at me, and reflexively, my hand came up to grab the paper holder. The ball of ice on top was a bright green so electric it couldn’t possibly be found in nature, and it smelled like a confusing melange of coconut and oregano. Once Ladin had a free hand, he dug an envelope out from his Sansabelt slacks and thrust it toward me. I grabbed it as reflexively as I’d grabbed the snow cone. “See that Drew gets this.” He patted me on the head with a sticky palm. “There’s a good boy.”

I gave back the green snow cone and he ambled off, pausing every few steps to lick one, then the other, until eventually he meandered behind the listlessly capering Pinyin Bay Perch, and I lost sight of him.

Yuri scowled down at the envelope in my hands. “What is it?”

“Maybe it’s a bribe. Local businesses donated all kinds of interesting stuff for the big raffle—and you know how easy it is to rig those things.” I held the envelope up to the light, but unfortunately the paper was too thick for me to see though. “What do you suppose the going rate might be to fix a local raffle? There were some really cute curtain rods in one of the gift baskets—”

“We only have one window,” Yuri reminded me. “And it has shutters.”

I tucked the envelope into my messenger bag. “True. But things are always better when they’re free.”

“But it is not free if a bribe is involved.”

I was about to say we’d have to agree to disagree when we came upon the bandstand. Normally, this was where Pinyin Bay Elementary held their graduation ceremony and the civic orchestra played rousing marches on the Fourth of July. The crowd was thicker here, and everyone was abuzz.

I craned my neck to see what they were all so excited about, but the guy in front of me was particularly tall.

But not taller than my grown man friend.

“Hot dog eating contest?” Yuri said incredulously.

“Only in America!” I declared. While that probably wasn’t the case…I was sure he’d been thinking it. And I never like to disagree with him for long.

“Excuse me…pardon me,” I said as I squeezed my way to the front of the crowd, while Yuri strode in behind me with significantly more force and fewer apologies. I’d never seen a real, live competitive eating event, and I had so many questions. Were the hot dogs boiled or grilled? How much mustard was involved? And could anyone actually say the word wiener without tittering?

I was nearly to the edge of the bandstand when someone snapped, “Watch it, buddy, I’m standing here,” and I found myself elbow to elbow with my cousin.

“Sabina!” I said enthusiastically. And, “Vano…” less so. He’d been stuck to my cousin like glue ever since he put her in the family way. While I was used to having him around nowadays, he still managed to outdo me at every turn. Granted, I’d really upped my flourishing game lately in the face of such stiff competition. What stuck in my craw was the fact that Vano was anything but competitive. Currently, he was fanning Sabina with a map from the tourism kiosk, and he was going at it so earnestly that he’d worked up a sweat…which made his hair fall into an effortlessly attractive tousle.

Of course it did.

Self-consciously, I smoothed the sides of my hair and checked for any wayward strays. I supposed that the important thing was that Vano was willing to take the brunt of my cousin’s mood swings. I’ve heard that some women get a certain glow about them when they’re pregnant. Sabina’s glow was more of a glower.

“Where’ve you guys been?” my cousin said. “This sun is brutal. I need Yuri to cast a shadow.”

Without missing a beat, Yuri glanced up at the sky and positioned himself to block the sun from landing directly on her.

I said, “It seems like you’ve been pregnant forever. How much longer until the baby is due?”

Sabina shrugged. “Hard to say. Depends on whether I got knocked up on the davenport, or under the boardwalk, or in the back of the Buick.”

Vano smiled to himself. “I still say it was on the circular staircase in the solarium at Nana’s house.”

“Forget I asked,” I said weakly.

“Can the doctors not give you a due date?” Yuri wondered.

“Doctor!” Sabina scoffed. “Who has time for all the ridiculous hoops a doctor would make me jump through? Tests and sonograms and prenatal vitamins and whatnot. It’s all just a racket to pad their bills.”

Beneath the burgeoning sunburn on his nose, Yuri went pale. “I thought Americans had programs for things like this. What about insurance?”

“Insurance is a sucker’s bet,” Sabina said dismissively.

I patted Yuri on the arm. “It’s fine. There’s a midwife in our circuit who handles these sorts of things.”

Yuri narrowed his eyes at my cousin. “And when was the last time you saw this midwife?”

“I’ve been meaning to get around to it. But things have been so busy, what with the new Seer and the festival….”

“Extravaganza,” I reminded her.

Ignoring me, Sabina grabbed the brochure out of Vano’s hands and began fanning herself harder. “I’ve had all I can take of this weather. If they don’t start the contest soon, I’ll need to forfeit.”

“Hold on,” I said. “You entered?”

“Drew needed more bodies to make it look good, so he waived my entry fee. I figured, free hot dogs, why not?”

Who doesn’t love a good hot dog? Other than a vegetarian. And probably a pig…although they do say pigs are notoriously omnivorous. At any rate, even though hot dogs were as American as apple pie and sky-high health insurance, Yuri—who can be surprisingly picky—was happy to demolish half a pack at a sitting.

Sabina fanned herself harder as some helpers wheeled a groaning covered cart onto the bandstand to some hoots and cheers from the swelling crowd. Through the ancient, crackly PA system, Drew’s voice announced: “Folks, our big event will start in five minutes. Now it’s time for the contestants to gather backstage.”

I expected my cousin to waddle toward the starting gate at full speed, but surprisingly enough, she turned on her heel and started pushing through the crowd in the opposite direction. “Sabina!” I called out. “Where ya going?”

“Can’t you smell that?” she demanded. I smelled nothing but the ambient marine funk of the bay. “Hot dog water! Gross! It’s enough to make me hurl!”

The crowd in front of her thinned out in a real hurry.

“But wait,” I said, “what about your spot in the eating contest?”

“One of you will have to fill it. I’m outta here.”

2

Vano put a protective arm around my cousin, and together, the two of them fled the scene. “Well, Yuri,” I turned to him and said, “I guess it’s up to you.” I then saw he was eyeing the hot dog cart up on the stage with the same look he’d give a misshapen statue holding a bucket of squirming earthworms. Given that there was a smudge of chocolate at the corner of his mouth and he’d already let his belt out two notches, I could see he wasn’t quite up for the task. I patted his shoulder and said, “By which I mean, up to me.”

Following the sound of Drew’s voice calling out directions, I hurried over to the bandstand, stepped around a very official looking stanchion (that never gets old) and joined a group of hopefuls waiting to compete.

I’ve never been competitive by nature, especially among Handless. I just wasn’t particularly great at running or jumping or anything that involved a ball flying toward my vulnerable head. I might’ve done well at spelling, but Pinyin Bay struck spelling bees from the school district’s extracurricular activities before I was old enough to compete. Budget cuts, they said. But my mother maintains the Spellcrafter kids, with all their after-school lessons, were making the Handless feel inadequate.

Behind the stage, a loose knot of hot dog hopefuls waited for their fifteen minutes of fame. Pinyin Bay is hardly a sprawling metropolis, and I recognized most of the people there. The chubby guy from the gas station on the corner of fourth street where I bought my gum. A server from a nearby pancake house. The old guy from the hardware store who was always sharing way too many personal details about his grandchildren.

And Biff, one of Sabina’s (many) ex boyfriends. Back when she’d broken up with Biff, citing “gnarly manfoot” as a bridge too far, I’d actually been a bit disappointed. Biff might not be all too swift, but he was cheerful and good-looking and surprisingly well-to-do. Luckily, they’d parted on amicable terms, and when he saw me, he broke into a big smile and waved me over.

“Dixon! I was wondering if any Spellcrafters would enter the contest.”

Come to think about it, everyone else gearing up for the big event was Handless, and the only reason Sabina had agreed to participate was because her entry fee had been waived.

Biff dragged me over to one of the few people I didn’t quite recognize. He said, “This is Sherman Bolter—we went to high school together, and now he’s a world-famous competitive eater.”

“Any friend of Biff’s is a friend of mine,” Sherman said. He looked like he’d prepped for the contest by starving himself for the past month and a half. He was about my age, and thin to the point of gauntness, with sharp cheekbones and sunken eyes. But his face was absolutely dominated by a big, bushy beard.

As we shook hands, I said, “I had no idea it was possible to make a living by eating.”

“It’s not for everybody, that’s for sure. But I’ve got an advantage.”

“Your beard?” I guessed. I could just picture it funneling food toward his mouth like a third appendage.

“The beard does offer some protection from splashback,” he admitted. “But I was referring to the fact that I have no taste buds.”

No wonder he was so thin. “That’s terrible,” I said. “Is it a hereditary condition?”

“Not at all. Years ago I had a freak Pop-Rocks accident, and woke up in the hospital three days later with a tongue smoother than a baby’s bottom. What I lose in traction, though, I gain in tolerance. My nausea factor is practically nil.”

Unlike my cousin’s. I was beginning to see what a wise decision it had been for her to pass the baton to me.

Biff looked concerned. “There’s really nothing doctors can do for you?”

“Nothing short of a tongue transplant. And given the possibility of ending up inheriting someone else’s speech impediment, it’s not worth the risk. Not to mention the thought of having someone else’s tongue in your mouth.”

Good thing Yuri wasn’t within earshot. He’d have nightmares for weeks over the mere thought.

Sherman went on, “I don’t usually bother participating in any eating contests without a substantial cash prize, but I’ve made my quota for the year, so I’m available to do some competitions just for fun.”

It was a far cry from showing up for the free hot dogs.

He took in the loosely milling crowd with a sweep of his hand. “In my career I’ve traveled far and wide and scarfed down a great number of things, from oysters in Bangor to blubber in Anchorage. But I’m beyond thrilled to ply my trade in my hometown of Pinyin Bay. As cities go, it’s no Topeka, but when I watch the sun set over the bay from my kitchen, framed by the canopy of the myrtle trees in Pinyin Park, I feel that I’m well and truly at home.”

Then we had something in common, since I’d done my share of rambling around and come to the very same conclusion. “My entry was kind of last-minute,” I said, “so I haven’t had time to prepare. Any advice for a newbie?”

“The secret is to eat the hot dogs and buns separately,” he told me. “And dip the buns in water.”

“Why would you give me your trade secrets?” I wondered.

He flashed a grin. “Even when I pace myself…I still eat circles around my competition.”

Maybe so. But there were prize baskets at stake here, too, and even the runner up would have a pretty spiffy haul. The first-place basket was obviously the most desirable, with over five hundred dollars’ worth of gift cards and other sundry items. The second-place basket wasn’t bad either, brimming with gift-sized jellies and jams. The third-place basket also had a pretty good curtain rod…which I was now coveting just on principle.

Numbers were distributed, and as we pinned them to the fronts of our shirts, a thin recorded fanfare played over the PA system. Footfalls sounded on the floorboards of the bandstand, and I craned my neck to get a look at what was going on. From where I stood, though, all I could see were feet. There was a squeal of feedback…and then a voice boomed through the microphone.

“Citizens of Pinyin Bay….” A very familiar voice! I’d been expecting Drew to announce the competition, but those dulcet tones could be none other than Mayor Dunce himself! The mayor of a town this size might hardly qualify as a VIP, but Chauncey Dunce had been so set in his ways all these years—so completely inaccessible—that spying him up on that stage would be like getting a glimpse of the Loch Ness Monster.

“Thanks for turning out for our fair city’s Rebuild the Boardwalk Extravaganza. You’re in for quite a treat, as you’re about to witness one of Pinyin Bay’s treasures in action: competitive eater, Sherman Bolter.”

The mayor then launched into a speech about the historical significance of the boardwalk, but frankly, it was difficult to pay attention to anything but the shoes. Some policemen were standing by, and their shoes were easy to spot: plain black oxfords with nonskid soles. And Pearl from the historical society was there too in sensible low-heeled navy pumps, slightly worn. And then there were the bright green foam clogs, an atrocity even at home, worn in full view of the whole city. I’d figured they were on Drew’s feet, given that he has an interesting sense of style (to say the least). But then I heard him say, “Okay, people, put on your game faces, ’cause it’s showtime!” And I realized he was behind me.

Then who on earth was wearing those cringeworthy clogs?

“Come on, come on, look alive,” Drew said, shoving the contestants toward the steps. “The skywriter is just about ready to make its big entrance, and I don’t want to blow it. Those things don’t come cheap.” He paused when he got to me and said, “Dixon? What are you doing here? And where’s your cousin?”

“I’m taking Sabina’s place,” I said cautiously, wondering now if this had actually been a good idea.

Drew threw up his hands in frustration. “That’s ridiculous. Fonzo’s been taking bets on how long it’ll take her to barf, and I’ve got a pretty penny riding on her keeping those wieners down.” No titter. But judging by the short-shorts, it was pretty plain Drew was really hard to embarrass. “Not to mention the fact that having a pregnant woman in an eating competition would really make it memorable. Who cares about watching a bunch of forgettable people wolfing down food for ten minutes? Heck, most folks can see that at Sunday dinner. I was counting on that bet! I’m not meeting any of my projections, and without that win, I’ll be even farther behind.”

“Maybe I can help. Did you need her to barf or not barf?”

“It doesn’t matter. The bets were on Sabina. And as entertaining as it might be to watch a dapper young man toss his cookies, it’s just not the same.”

He thought I was dapper! About time someone finally acknowledged this out loud. Now if only I could get someone who wasn’t wearing a glittery visor to agree….

Plans of being noticed for my snappy dressing were all but forgotten when I mounted the bandstand and realized that the person in the crazy foam clogs was none other than Mayor Dunce.

Thanks to a persistent bit of Spellcraft, the mayor had worn the same few shoulder-padded power suits for the past three decades. But now that I’d Uncrafted the spell, evidently he was free to explore his, er…casual side.

While the mayor might have looked like an extra out of The Godfather in his boxy pinstripe suits, over the years, his limited wardrobe had saved him from many unfortunate fads.

Now, that protection was no longer in force.

Mayor Dunce had turned out for the event in a Pinyin Bay Baseball cap and T-shirt with the city slogan To Bay or Not to Bay, and acid washed jeans ironed to a sharp crease. Frankly, the only thing I recognized on him (other than his voice) was the set of big, square choppers he was flashing in a grin that was surprisingly charismatic…if you were into weird little trolls in foam clogs, that is.

We contestants took our places behind a long table covered in a red and white checkered plastic tablecloth. There were several huge cups of water at each spot—and we each had a trash can at our side, just in case things didn’t go south. I ended up between Biff and Sherman, but there was an empty slot on Sherman’s other side.

“Why don’t you move over there?” I suggested in a whisper. Because while I knew I had no chance of actually winning, standing next to a world-class competitive eater would make me look twice as bad.

“Tip number three,” he said. “Follow all the rules so you don’t get yourself disqualified. Drew put me here—and here is where I’ll stay.”

Huh. Maybe if I could trick Sherman into shifting over one spot, I’d have a better chance of scoring a prize basket. Drew considered himself a free-thinker, though. He was unlikely to disqualify anyone for not following directions. Plus, Sherman was likely to be a crowd favorite, and Drew was all about pleasing his public. Still, thanks to the no-show, I had a fifty-fifty chance of winning some sort of prize—and those seemed like pretty good odds to me.

As I sized up the gift baskets one more time and Mayor Dunce began wrapping up his intro, the bandstand trembled. We all turned to see a massive form lumbering up the stairs…none other than Ladin Silver, who situated himself in the empty spot and deposited what was left of his two snow cones in his trash can.

I had a feeling my odds of winning a gift basket just took a nose-dive.

“The boardwalk is an integral part of Pinyin Bay history,” the mayor said grandly. “And so, without further ado….”

His paused dramatically. The pause stretched as his expression went puzzled. Drew began mouthing something from the sidelines with lots of eager gesticulations, which the mayor ignored. And then he pulled a little cue card from his unfortunate jeans, brightened, and said, “On your marks!” just as a small propellor aircraft roared past overhead. Smoke spewed from the back—a startling amount of smoke—but as the plane made a loop-de-loop, I realized it was deliberate. Evidently, skywriters were one of those things I’d only seen in cartoons. Encountering one in real life was quite a sight!

“Get set….”

As the triple-loop became a cursive capital-E, a heaping tray of hot dogs was placed in front of us.

“Eat!”

The declaration was echoed by an eat-shaped trail of smoke in the sky.

“C’mon, Dixon,” Biff said cheerfully. “Time to chow down!”

Which was precisely what Sherman Bolter was already doing…and fast! He went at his hot dogs two handed, dumping them out of their buns and cramming them into his mouth. I’m not sure he even chewed. I just knew they were going down fast. Biff, meanwhile, had pulled out his f’knife. While you might think a novelty implement would just slow him down, he’d had a lot of practice with that thing. He whittled down his hot dogs into bite-sized pieces in no time flat.

I’d better get eating if I hoped to win a prize.

Since I’d given most of my food tickets to Yuri, I was still hungry, and the first hot dog went down pretty good. Unfortunately, in that amount of time, Biff had eaten two. And Sherman? “That makes twelve for the Bolter!” the mayor cried over the PA. Stiff competition, but I had no f’knife, and the thought of dunking my buns was really unappealing. Still, maybe I had a chance at the smallest prize…. “And fourteen for Ladin Silver!”

Whaa?

I leaned forward to glance around Sherman and try and see what method Ladin was using to get a leg up. But while Sherman was frantically cramming and gobbling and dunking, Ladin was chomping down big, happy, gusto-laden bites—and making all sorts of satisfied “Mm!” “Ahh!” “Yum!” noises while he was doing it!

There was a fourth-place runner’s up basket I could potentially score. Granted, it consisted mostly of mothballs donated by a specialty closet shop. But since Yuri had a thing for wool socks, if I won, at least they wouldn’t go to waste.

As I pounded another hot dog—third? fourth? I’d lost count—the gal from the pancake house started hopping up and down, making room for more, as Mayor Dunce announced she was at ten!

I already felt full. Even if everyone else put down their wieners (heh) I had no chance whatsoever of winning anything at all…so I figured that if I had to lose, I’d just need to make sure I looked good while I was doing it.

I picked out Yuri in the audience, looking slightly fretful that he might witness a barfing, and managed to catch his eye. Batting my eyelashes, I nailed him with my most seductive look. Once I was good and sure I had his attention, I waggled my eyebrows and slowly raised the hot dog to my mouth….

Only to be upstaged by a loud boom in the sky above us.

The skywriter had just finished the words Eat Up and had spiraled into a cattywampus pattern that scrawled out the phrase into something more like Eat Upoovommmm…. The plane leveled out—what a relief!—but then the smoke cut off abruptly as something tumbled from the craft.

A true professional, Sherman kept right on eating. So did Ladin Silver—mainly because he couldn’t be bothered by something so trivial as the sky falling while he was getting his wiener on. (Hee hee).

The thing from the plane didn’t seem too scary, until it gained velocity and I saw how big it really was: a hefty 5-gallon drum. Fortunately, it wasn’t heading for the thick of the crowd, but rather off to one side where people were already scampering out of its way as it hurtled to earth. It looked like it was going to come down right in the middle of a volleyball sand pit—perfect spot. But then a last-minute gust of wind off the bay changed its trajectory and sent it spinning off toward the bouncy castle.

Reflexively, I crouched down behind my mound of uneaten hotdogs and plugged my ears with my fingers, expecting the mother of all pops. But pop never came. Instead, the 5-gallon drum bounced!

A bounce which sent it straight at the bandstand.

I backpedaled faster than you could say, “Upoovommmm.” In fact, all the contestants scattered—everyone but Sherman, who wasn’t going to allow something as trivial as a plummeting metal object slow him down…and Ladin Silver, who had no intention of letting anything get between him and a free meal.

Of all people, Biff was the first one to grasp the situation and see the massive metal drum was heading right for Mayor Dunce. Without hesitation, he dropped his f’knife and vaulted over the table to bodily tackle the mayor, whose baseball cap stayed aloft on the errant breeze for just a moment, then settled center stage.

Which was exactly where the metal drum came down, smashing a huge hole in the stage floor and sending splinters flying.

“I could have been killed!” the Mayor said, followed by a very effusive string of curse words.

And just his luck, somehow his mic was still on…managing to pick up every last syllable.

3

Yuri

When that five-gallon tank bounced toward the stage, I panicked, shoving people left and right in a bid to leap in front of Dixon and take the brunt of the impact myself. There was no way I could possibly make it in time, but the urge to keep him from harm was a reflex I could not control. The heavy drum did not angle toward Dixon, though—it went directly at the mayor. And Dunce only survived due to some quick thinking by Biff…of all people.

The splinters settled. With a hot dog in each hand, Ladin Silver strode up to the fallen tank, which was now half-buried in the stage, and read: “Smoke oil. Danger: contents under pressure.” He stuffed a hot dog in his mouth and patted the tank heartily. “Good thing it didn’t—”

With a pop like a firecracker in a trash can, the metal canister ruptured, spewing its liquid contents from one end of the stage to the other in a shower of glistening grease. Mayor Dunce went down like a sack of ham. Biff tried to help him up, but slipped and fell on top of him instead.

Biff was a sizable man and the mayor was well past his prime. They both flailed helplessly until I slid my way over and plucked Biff off the top of the heap. Good thing I’d had plenty of ice skating practice during my frigid winters in St. Petersburg. The stage was like an ice rink. A very splintered ice rink…covered in hot dogs.

I maneuvered my way over to Dixon, who’d crouched behind a pile of buns and escaped the worst of the blowup. We grabbed onto one another for balance, and he pointed up at the aeroplane, which had leveled out and was heading for the field behind the salt piles. He said, “I sure hope the pilot’s okay! I wonder what happened?”

As though it could be anything but the volshebstvo. I locked gazes with Dixon. He lowered his voice and said, “Not-speaking of which…do you feel a tingle?”

Our eyes went to the messenger bag at his feet. As casually as we could manage (given the fact that oiled people were flailing and shouting all around us) we crouched down behind the table and checked the bag. Now that I focused, I saw the light bending strangely around the envelope from Ladin Silver. “That is no bribe,” I said.

Dixon peeked over the top of the table. “Agreed. All the prize baskets took the brunt of the oil. They’re ruined, but Ladin doesn’t seem to mind. In fact…he’s still eating.”

Above the hubbub, Drew’s voice cut through all the other sounds. “Heavens to Betsy—could this day get any worse?” He skidded and slid toward Dunce in an effort to help the mayor onto less slippery ground.

“Sabotage?” I suggested to Dixon, though with Ladin’s track record, it was more likely a misfire than a deliberate attempt to undermine the “extravaganza.”

Dixon slipped a thumb under the seal of the envelope. “Let’s take a look for ourselves.”

The paper was heavy cotton rag, hot-pressed, smooth, designed to take ink with a minimum of bleeding and splatter. It was the paper of choice among the Spellcraft community—the paper on which Fonzo had been training Drew.

The sketch of the bandstand in the Seen was gestural and loose in Drew’s signature marker-style, with a vibrancy and energy that seemed to vibrate off the page. A burst surrounded the stage that was meant to be confetti…but looked suspiciously like the spray of oil which had followed the canister’s eruption.

In Ladin Silver’s hand, the wording read:

Rebuild the Boardwalk is a big hit!

“At least it is spelled right,” I muttered.

Dixon winced. “This is a totally innocent Crafting. It’s almost like the Spellcraft deliberately misunderstood their intent. Do you think it’s Drew’s inexperience or Ladin’s sloppiness at fault?”

I shrugged. “We will never know.”

“One thing’s for sure, Drew won’t be happy about tanking his own fundraiser. At least there’s plenty of room for me to add another line and Uncraft it. Something very specific about earning lots of money and making everyone happy.” He rummaged around for his quill, but as he fished it from the bag, a single drop of oil slid to the end of a strand of hair hanging down on his forehead. The droplet wobbled there for a moment…then fell onto the Crafting.

It landed directly on a spot where Seen and Scrivening touched. The oil spread ridiculously fast, and it acted as a solvent. Both inks—marker and quill pen—reacted immediately. The colors bloomed like a cloud of bright smoke pouring from the back of a stunt plane, while the letters warped until they were unrecognizable in any language. The inks combined into an oil slick of rainbow colors that danced upon the page, but just for a moment. Once the oil soaked in, it left the paper limp and translucent, and the Seen muddy and smeared.

We felt the magic leave in a rush as the spell set itself. The volshebstvo had fled—yet the oil remained. People flailed, trying to stay upright…many of them failing. And though the magic was gone, its aftermath would most certainly linger.

***

Drew was not pleased with how the “extravaganza” turned out, to say the least. Rebuild the Boardwalk was his legacy to the town, his official exit from the public eye as a caricature artist. It was meant to be a triumph, but thanks to the skywriting accident, it was instead a disgrace.

“And to add insult to injury,” he complained, “Dunce won’t even get back to me with the final figures for the big novelty check.” He pulled a sequined fez from his head and attempted to fan himself with it…though the shape of a fez was not particularly conducive to fanning.

“Maybe he’s busy,” Dixon suggested. “That oil must’ve been pretty tough to clean up.”

“It’s not as if he’s mopping it up himself!” Drew huffed. “Emails are going nowhere and he won’t pick up the phone. I’ll need to march down to City Hall and get some answers in person.”

He was seated at Fonzo’s dining room table with an array of freshly drawn Seens drying in front of him. Dixon’s uncle had been working him hard—and likely selling off his “training” Seens for a tidy profit—and Drew was in no condition to march anywhere. If he did not lie down soon, he would fall over.

“I will go,” I said. “I am good at getting answers out of people.”

Dixon’s eyes lit up in the way they do when he thinks I am speaking like I’m in an action film. I managed not to sigh.

When we pulled up to City Hall, a cluster of people were standing outside, gathered in front of the doorway at the top of the marble stairs. I would have taken it for a protest, had they been holding any signs. But they were simply milling around and complaining.

“I’ve tried three times this week and it’s been locked up every time!”

“What if it’s a new holiday? How can anyone keep track?”

“It’s no holiday. Dunce is gone, I tell you. The Easy-Meal boxes are really piling up on his front porch.”

“No kidding—and they’re getting a little ripe, too. The pesto linguine wasn’t bad, but the artichoke risotto was already starting to turn.”

I stepped into the crowd, cupped my hands around my eyes and peered through the glass. The lobby of City Hall was dark and still. If the mayor had succumbed to a heart attack, he could very well be lying on his office floor, sprawled out beneath the reproduction of his portrait. Though why no one would have found him by now was beyond me. Never mind the implausibility of City Hall shutting down entirely just because the mayor did not show up. This was Pinyin Bay, after all, where Spellcraft prevailed more often than logic.

“Should I call Sabina?” Dixon whispered. “She’d never forgive me if she missed a chance to break into the mayor’s office.”

A new arrival paused at the foot of the stairs and called up to all of us, “Looking for Dunce? Don’t bother—my wife works at the Quick Mart over by the interstate. She says the mayor stopped there with a bunch of luggage strapped to the roof of his car. He bought three extra-large coffees and hit the on-ramp doing at least eighty. And no one’s seen the guy since.”

“When was this?” I asked.

“Right after the big oil spill.”

I glanced again into the darkened interior of City Hall. If Mayor Dunce did not want to be found, I saw no point in trying to find him. He had certainly served the city longer than anyone could reasonably expect. And now…it appeared that Drew Draws was not the only one whose legacy to Pinyin Bay would be an oil-soaked fiasco of an extravaganza.

4

I would hate to be the one to tell Drew his big check would need to wait. He was too sparkly. And melodramatic. And loud. And so it was with great relief I received a call from Sabina saying, “I need you to lift something heavy before Vano pulls a groin muscle,” and Dixon and I headed over to Shirque Mansion.

Back when first I’d seen the mansion, it was a boarded-up, piecemeal husk of a building owned by a corporation only interested in excavating beneath it. Nowadays, returned to its rightful owners, it was still a tossup of clashing styles. But at least it looked lived-in.

Much of that was due to Sabina. Without her, Vano drifted through the cavernous place leaving few traces of himself behind—other than the homemade meals which graced the half-Victorian, half-Colonial kitchen table. As for Morticia, she kept busy minding the affairs of Pinyin Bay’s Spellcraft circuit, and was seldom home. But while Sabina had been content enough in her closet-sized bedroom at Fonzo’s house, she was young and full of life—and opinions—and the mansion did not feel as empty with her in it.

I had thought I would miss Dixon’s cousin if she no longer lived two floors below us. It was not that she had moved out from under her father’s roof, though, but rather flowed seamlessly now from one place to the other as the mood took her. And today she was in a mansion sort of mood.

She greeted us at the front door looking flushed and slightly sweaty. Shirque Mansion contained a great many things. Air conditioning was not one of them. “What a relief you got here as quick as you did,” she said. “We were poking around some out-of-the-way rooms to see who could find the ugliest doily when we ran across a crazy, mixed-up nursery that hadn’t been used in ages. The furniture was all intact, so Vano got the bright idea that we could refinish it good as new by the time the baby came.”

The thought of a bunch of Frankensteined stuffed animals staring at me from the shelves with mismatched eyes made me shudder. “Are there…dolls?”

“There were,” Sabina said. “But we shoved them all under the bed in one of the other rooms.”

Hopefully not one in which Dixon and I would eventually sleep.

“Never mind the dolls,” Dixon said sternly. “Are you sure you’re supposed to be breathing in all those paint fumes in your condition?”

Sabina wrinkled her nose. “Heck, no. The mere thought of it is enough to make me upchuck. That’s why we’re doing it in the backyard, where I can supervise from the porch. In the shade. With a plate of cookies and a big glass of peppermint iced tea.”

While the cookies were tempting, I was more concerned about this so-called furniture.

I joined Vano in the sample nursery, which was nightmarish enough even without dozens of dolls’ button-eyes staring through me. The walls were covered in murals from turn-of-the century picture books, all populated by chubby, pink-cheeked ragamuffins baring creepy little milk teeth in maniacal grins. And the crib, dresser and rocking chair were a jumble of clashing colors and styles.

Vano shrugged and said, “If you squint, it’s not so bad.”

“I will buy you the furniture,” I said. I might not have the cash on hand, but a determined Seer can always make money living among so many Scriveners.

“These things haven’t seen any use since my parents were young.” Vano ran a hand along the playpen rail. “Breathing new life into them would make Nana really happy.”

I quelled a sigh.

The furniture was far heavier than it looked, not to mention covered in cobwebs. We struggled up and down a narrow staircase, because even though there were two lifts in the mansion, neither of us was gullible enough to trust them. Once everything was in a pile at the foot of the stairs, we hauled it toward the side yard, where Dixon and Sabina were chatting on the porch. “Dixon,” Vano called through the rickety screen door. “A little help?”

“Never mind,” I added quickly, then lowered my voice so only Vano would hear. “If he gets involved, it will take twice as long.”

“He could at least hold the door.”

“Even that would only slow us down.” I opened the heavy toy chest we’d laboriously dragged downstairs and pulled out an old wooden tennis racket. “Prop the door open with this. It will not distract us with fanciful advice.”

Piece by heavy piece, we hauled the furniture out onto the lawn under the watchful gazes of Dixon and Sabina. The paint was blistered and peeling and the pieces were covered in dust, but they were solid—nothing like the cheap ready-made furniture you could buy at a “big box” store. And a coat of fresh paint would go a long way toward making it look new again.

“How exciting,” Dixon declared happily as I set down my side of the crib with a grunt. “Just think, pretty soon we’ll be laying down a little bundle of joy in that crib and singing it to sleep.”

“Hopefully not all that soon,” Sabina said. “I still haven’t thought of any good names.”

While the cousins chatted, Vano and I dragged the final dresser alongside the rest of the furniture. “You see?” I said to Vano. “We handled this ourselves, no problem—”

BANG!

We all jumped as if a five-gallon tin of oil had just dropped from the sky. But it wasn’t a random falling object at fault—it was the brittle old tennis racket, snapped in two, letting the screen door slam shut.

“Everything is fine,” I said testily as I plucked out the broken racket and pitched it over my shoulder.

“No it’s not,” Sabina said. Since she will often disagree with me just for form’s sake, I presumed she was gearing up for one of our usual cheerful arguments. But when I saw the look on her face—and the puddle at her feet—I realized she wasn’t just being fractious. “My water just broke.”

Dixon scrambled to his feet. “Tear up some sheets! Boil a pot of water! And make sure all the windows are closed!”

“Why the windows?” Sabina asked her cousin.

“So your luck can’t fly away.”

Vano looked puzzled for a moment, but he quickly shook off his confusion and said, “I’ll call the midwife.”

As Dixon and Sabina discussed the pros and cons of Lamaze breathing—apparently Sabina had not yet made time to attend any birthing classes—Vano, with phone to ear, began to pace. A stranger might think he was just shifting his weight. But I knew him well enough to see he was worried.

“What is it?” I asked quietly.

“She’s not answering.” He cut his eyes to Sabina and Dixon. “I’ll just shoot her a text and…uh….”

As soon as the message left his fingers, an auto-response popped up in return.

Due to an unfortunate misunderstanding about a missing prescription pad, I am indisposed until the Handless judge sets my bail. If this is an emergency, please contact my part-time assistant at the following number.

“Part-time assistant?” I read aloud.

Vano tapped the phone number. “I’m sure it will all work out.”

I bent my head to listen in on the call, not quite sharing his optimism.

Someone picked up in two rings—at least that was a relief. But then…she spoke. “Venus Monger’s hypnotherapy and real estate service. Sell your home…or just think you did!”

Vano said, “I think I have the wrong number.”

“Vano Shirque?” said Venus, delighted, “is that you?” Venus had “a thing” for Vano. Or, more accurately, for the prospect of insinuating herself into the first family of Pinyin Bay’s Spellcraft circuit by any means necessary.

“I was looking for the midwife’s assistant,” he said.

“And you’ve found her! I’d be happy to avail you of my services, just as soon as this multilevel marketing seminar wraps up.”

“But Sabina’s in labor. Can’t you just ditch?”

“Not when I’m the one teaching it! And frankly, the students are starting to look a little antsy….”

“Never mind,” I snapped.

“Have it your way,” Venus said. She had a good sense for when a sale would be too much trouble to close. “And keep in mind that my notary public services are buy one, get one half-off till the end of July.”

Vano hung up, dazed. “Now what?”

“Now,” I said, “we go to hospital.”

There was plenty of room in the old Buick for all of us, and with Vano at the wheel, every streetlight turned green just as we approached it. We reached the hospital in minutes, and as Sabina huffed and puffed, breathing theatrically against the pain, an orderly rushed out with a wheelchair to take her inside.

Though only as far as the admissions desk.

“Don’t worry,” the nurse said confidently. “We’ve got plenty of time for paperwork. Labor lasts for hours with your first baby.” Sabina stopped huffing and puffing and just stared at her in panic. The nurse added, “Sometimes days.”

Sabina turned to us and snapped, “Somebody do something!”

“I know,” Dixon said—and I steeled myself for a useless suggestion. “We should see if Dr. Slaughter’s on duty.”

Oh. Good idea.

As far as we knew, Glenda was no longer examining Fonzo during her off-hours…but she was someone we were all acquainted with, and that counted for something. While Dixon chatted his way past the nurse and headed off to find the doctor, I let Fonzo know what was going on. By the time Dixon returned with Glenda in tow, a Monte Carlo on balding tires had screeched up to the door.

It not only contained the rest of the Penn family—Fonzo, Florica and Johnny—but Vano’s great-grandmother as well.

This child of Vano and Sabina would be the first to herald a new generation in either family. And to a Scrivener, family is everything. At a different time in my life, I might have been vaguely envious of this. Even disdainful. But I was now included in this family (though Scriveners are notoriously cagey around outsiders) and I was just as excited about the new arrival as any of them.

Glenda, however, had never been “one of us.” She is also not what you’d call an intimidating person. She keeps her pockets full of cheap little toys to give away, and addresses everyone as if they’re a harmless, fuzzy animal. She put a stethoscope to Sabina’s belly, checked her pulse, and in a surprisingly adult tone of voice, said, “Calm down and breathe normally, you’ll make yourself hyperventilate.”

Sabina stopped huffing and puffing.

“Good job.” Glenda patted her on the head. “Now, when is your estimated due date?”

“I’ve never been much good with dates,” Sabina said.

“Me neither,” Vano agreed quickly.

Glenda narrowed her eyes. “Okay…I’ll check with someone who does know. Who’s your obstetrician?”

Sabina snapped her fingers like she was trying to remember. “Name’s right on the tip of my tongue. Y’know. That one baby doctor person.”

Unfortunately for Sabina, Glenda did not suggest any particular “baby doctor person” for her to claim to have been seeing. Meanwhile, the nurse was busy clicking around on the computer. “I can’t seem to find Miss Penn’s records.”

Every Scrivener in the room tried, and failed, to look casual. Johnny even managed to whistle guiltily.

While Glenda was no Scrivener, she’d been around them enough during her time with Fonzo to have some idea what was going on. She leaned in and whispered, “Have you seen any doctor during your pregnancy? Any doctor at all?”

“Define seen,” Sabina said.

Glenda grabbed the wheelchair’s handles and declared, “What this patient needs is fresh air.” Considering that she had also prescribed yogurt, I was very leery of this announcement. At least until I realized she was just wheeling Sabina out of earshot from the Handless nurse. “Listen, Sabina. You need to start taking care of yourself. There are programs you can sign up for, if this is about the money—”

It wasn’t…not exactly. It was about being a Scrivener, and all the notions and traditions that entailed. Fortunately, while Sabina reacted to a barrage of whispered admonitions like a pregnant deer in headlights, Morticia Shirque was not about to let the mother of her great-great grandchild be bossed around. “We have a midwife all lined up,” she said imperiously. “One with plenty of experience—in fact, she even delivered Vano, and he turned out just fine.”

“I’m all for having a midwife, if that’s what the mother wants,” Glenda said. “But where is your midwife now?”

Every Scrivener suddenly became very interested in the sky. Or the brick wall. Or a spot of old gum on the pavement. And then Johnny’s tuneless anything-but-innocent whistle started up again.

As the elder family members drifted away to avoid any potentially incriminating questions, I saw I would need to take a stance on their behalf. “Midwife is indisposed,” I said firmly. Americans tend not to question me when I take a certain tone of voice.

Glenda nodded. “You may not need her just this minute anyhow. How far apart have your contractions been?” she asked Sabina.

“No idea.”

Vano, however, had been paying attention. “From three to fifteen minutes apart.”

“I see,” Glenda said. “And where, exactly, have you been feeling them?”

Sabina was excited to finally be able to answer a question without making up some elaborate excuse. “Right around the baby bump!”

“Just what I thought,” Glenda said. “These aren’t labor pains—they’re Braxton Hicks contractions. It looks like you won’t be meeting your new baby just yet.”

“But my water broke!”

Glenda glanced down at Sabina’s soggy sweatpants. “Actually, it hasn’t. Amniotic fluid doesn’t usually smell like peppermint.”

Dixon’s cousin is never gracious about being told she’s wrong, so in case we needed more free medical advice from Glenda in the future, I hauled Sabina up from the wheelchair and hastened to get her out of there before she burned any bridges. “Make sure you stay hydrated,” Glenda called after us as she wheeled the chair back inside.

Once she was out of earshot, I said, “First yogurt…now water.”

Dixon stroked his chin-stubble thoughtfully. “What actual proof do we have that she’s a doctor and not just a woman in scrubs hanging around the ER?”

Sabina waddled away from the hospital as fast as her swollen feet would take her. “At least no one managed to get my credit card number. And I haven’t had a whatchamahoozy since we got here, so it’s possible Glenda’s onto something.” By the time we got to the parking lot, she was flushed and sweaty. “I don’t know about you guys…but all this running around has really worked up my appetite. Let’s go get some pancakes.”

5

Dixon

Happy Jack’s (home of Pinyin Bay’s hottest griddle) is the city’s most notorious pancake house…not because the food is anything special, but because shady men from out of town are continually mistaking it for a “massage parlor.” The purple velvet curtains and the skimpy waitress uniforms probably didn’t help. According to the servers, though, lots of cleavage meant big tips, so they didn’t complain much about wearing them.

The server currently taking our order had a butterfly tattoo on her bosom that flexed its wings every time she breathed. I’m not generally mesmerized by cleavage, but the butterfly was awfully distracting.

“Say,” she blurted out in the middle of her special-of-the-day pitch. “Weren’t you in the hot dog eating contest?”

My eyes snapped up to her face and I realized we’d met at the extravaganza. “Oh! I didn’t recognize you—” with so few clothes on? “—in that uniform! Especially with your hair up.”

Good save.

“Talk about a fiasco,” she said. “Every last prize was ruined. I was all set to nab third place, too—and it’s so hard to find nice curtain rods nowadays.”

Sabina snapped her menu in hungry annoyance so it was standing up rigidly between her hands and said, “Should I get the blueberry or the buttermilk?”

“Get both, you’re eating for two,” the server said automatically, seeming much more interested in gossiping about the failed fundraiser than in getting us fed. She turned back to me and asked, “Have you heard about the pilot?”

“Not a thing. Is he all right?”

“A few bumps and bruises—and they’re saying he passed the sobriety test, too. It took a while to figure out exactly what went wrong, but eventually the truth came out.”

I swallowed hard, wondering if anyone knew that truth had been riding around in my bag.

The server leaned closer, butterfly wings heaving, and said, “Apparently…there was a spider.”

Relief flooded me. Not for the spider, who’d likely been squashed by flailing pilot hands. But for the fact that Spellcraft hadn’t been exposed—a piece that I’d been carting around, no less—while the head of the circuit watched my reaction with her shrewd little nearsighted eyes.

“Well,” Morticia said, once the server was gone. “I suppose now is as good a time as any to get down to business.”

Yuri cut his eyes to me, but I could only shrug in return. As far as I knew, we were only there for the business of filling our bellies with pancakes and mediocre coffee. I did my best not to squirm, hoping beyond hope that I wouldn’t end up getting blamed somehow for Ladin Silver’s failed Crafting. But instead of dressing me down, Morticia took a fortifying slurp of her decaf and turned to my uncle instead.

“The baby will be here anytime now,” she said. “And when it does, our families become one.” Marriage was more a Handless institution—my parents being a notable exception—but for Spellcrafters, it was children that sealed the deal. “When this happens, I plan to retire.”

You’d think that we would all be prepared for this announcement, given that Morticia was the oldest Spellcrafter in the circuit. And yet, the whole table shifted uncomfortably as we all took in the news.

Vano was the first to speak. “But Nana, the circuit needs you.”

“Pah! I’ve served it long enough—and I’ve still got a bucket list longer than my arm. The only reason I’ve held out this long was that I knew you weren’t ready to take over.”

Vano swayed a little in his seat and went the color of the non-dairy creamer on the table setting. “And now I am?”

“Let’s just think this through, Morticia,” my uncle said. As the Hand of the Penn family, he was the only one familiar enough to call her by name. “The baby’s not here just yet. We’ve got plenty of time to plan,” he said smoothly.

A little too smoothly.

Why was he going into damage-control mode?

He said, “We all know there's more to running a circuit than just showing up and looking handsome. Why, you've got to keep all the local Spellcrafters from stepping on each other's toes, and the Hands of the families are going to walk all over your great-grandson, good-looking or not.”

Morticia’s actual duties were never quite clear to me, and I’d always assumed she was more of a figurehead. Then again, Uncle Fonzo never really went into what happened while he was doing Hand business, either…other than playing lots of poker.

“Your concern is touching,” Morticia told him. “But let’s not sugar-coat what’s really going on. You’re worried that once Vano steps up, he’ll not only be head of the circuit—but Hand of the family.”

As my uncle made the face he makes when we catch him drinking straight from the orange juice carton, the ramifications sank in. It was really none of our concern who the Hand of the Shirque family might be.

But if our families merged, then their Hand was our Hand. Which meant Uncle Fonzo…my parents…me—we’d all have to answer to Vano.

A stunned silence fell over the table, broken only by the bright chatter of the server as she hauled over a groaning tray of food and began dealing out the pancake orders, butterfly wings flapping. Sabina was the only one who seemed unfazed—either that or she was just especially hungry—and she dug in before her plate fully hit the table. But the rest of us just sat there in shock as Morticia fixed us each in turn with a steely squint that challenged us to defy her authority. Either that or she couldn’t quite tell who was who, and was just hedging her bets.

Once the waitress was gone, Morticia settled at last on my uncle and gave her head a rueful shake. “I understand your concerns, Fonzo—and frankly, I agree. Vano is a good boy, but he’s still young, and there’s a lot of new responsibility coming his way already. What he really needs to be right now is not the Head, and not the Hand, but a father. Which is why I have decided to split the Hand.”

I’m guessing she wasn’t talking blackjack. Mom, Dad and Uncle Fonzo each sucked in a breath. The rest of us, however, were in the dark.

“What split, exactly, did you have in mind?” my uncle said carefully.

“Someone to lead the circuit, and someone to speak for the family. And neither of those should be Vano. For the Head, we need someone with experience. The Hands of the families can be tricky—something you know quite well—and the Head will need to think one step ahead of them. For that reason, the person I choose to succeed me, Fonzo…is you.”

My uncle (who’d been totally gearing up for an argument) lit up like a dubiously wired electrical socket. “It’s gratifying to hear that the esteemed head of my circuit thinks I’m worthy of such an honor,” he said grandly.

My father was just as excited. “And I’ve been ready to take on the Hand duties for the Penn family ever since my brother’s extended…er…vacation.”

All’s well that ends well—but it’s not over until the fat lady sings. Really unfortunate Handless expression. Though if the shoe fits….

“Now hold on right there,” my mother snapped. “What makes you think you’re the one for the job? I have just as much of a right to the position. Not only am I a member of the Penn family just the same as you are, but I was the one who did all of Fonzo’s Hand-jobs while he was gone.”

Now was probably not the best time to correct Mom on the terminology. Not while she was this full of beans.

As both of my parents dug in their heels in preparation for a heated (and very public) debate, Morticia raised a wrinkled hand for silence and said, “Each of you holds a legitimate claim to the position. Normally, I would let you all battle it out amongst yourselves. But matters like these tend to cause wounds within families that can take generations to heal. And since your family will soon be my family, I will not stand by and allow that to happen. There’s a Spellcraft tradition as old as the Quilling Ceremony, but much less common. When the household can’t agree on the succession of the Hand, it’s left for the kee-poo to decide.”

“The…kee-poo?” Dad repeated, while Mom narrowed her eyes as if she thought she was being punked.

“I hope there’s no actual poo involved,” Sabina said between mouthfuls of pancake.

Since my cousin was on the cusp of producing a great-great-grandchild, Morticia was willing to ignore the attitude. “Whoever finds the kee-poo will be the one to lead the family.”

“That sounds…fair,” Dad said, though he seemed awfully perplexed.

“Fine.” Mom cracked her knuckles, eager to get down to business. “What exactly is this kee-poo thing and how to we go about finding it?”

“You will know it when you see it,” Morticia said. “Now, go. The kee-poo is waiting.”

My parents stared at her for another few beats, just in case she had further instructions to divulge. But when none were forthcoming, they both shot to their feet and scrambled to the door. Dad was the quicker one…but Mom was closer to the exit. And she was totally willing to block the entire doorway to keep him from gaining an edge. Luckily, she crammed herself into the passenger seat of the Monte Carlo before Dad could take off without her—but just barely. She was still struggling to settle the seatbelt over her bosoms without strangling herself as Dad peeled away from the curb.

“Glad I didn’t need to referee that particular match,” Uncle Fonzo said. “But now we’ve only got one car, and it’ll be a tight squeeze.”

“That’s okay,” I said quickly. Normally, you could fit a small army in the Buick—but Sabina was awfully big these days, plus I doubted Morticia wanted anyone sitting on her lap. “Yuri and I can walk.”

The check arrived, and Morticia waved it toward Uncle Fonzo with an imperious gesture. In my family, we preferred to go Dutch so there was no argument about who paid last time. But the addition of Morticia made this official Spellcraft business, and for the time being, my uncle was still the Hand, which made him responsible for the bill. Uncle Fonzo glanced at the total and winced. “Are you sure there’s no expectant mother discount?” he asked half-jokingly…but no dice.

He handed the waitress several twenties. While we waited for his change, Morticia said, “All right. That’s settled. Now, your first job as Head is to find a good candidate for Pinyin Bay’s next mayor.”

Evidently, once the city council decided Mayor Dunce was unlikely to come back, they scheduled an emergency election for next week. Just goes to show how fast City Hall can move if they’re not under the sway of a restrictive bit of Spellcraft!

As Vano helped both Sabina and his Nana to the car, Uncle Fonzo smiled and nodded at them benignly—and the second their backs were turned, he swung around to Yuri and me, whispering fiercely, “Okay, kids, this election assignment is a really big deal. We need someone pliant. Someone sympathetic to our people. And most of all, someone capable of winning. If I pick the wrong horse in this race, Morticia will change her mind about me for sure.”

“That’s a big responsibility,” I said.

“Huge! To make matters worse, all my acquaintances are Spellcrafters, all but the losers—er, hopefuls—who shop at Practical Penn. And no self-respecting Spellcrafter would let himself get roped into Handless politics. But you’re from a different generation, a more inclusive generation. And you know plenty of suckers—ah, fine upstanding citizens—who’d be willing to serve as mayor of Pinyin Bay. You’ve gotta help out your poor Uncle Fonzo. Do some reconnaissance and find a candidate for our circuit to back.”

From the car, Sabina called, “Come on, Dad, Dixon and Yuri don’t need such lengthy goodbyes. They live right upstairs, for crying out loud!”

Uncle Fonzo clapped us each on the shoulder and whispered, “I’m counting on you.” Then he plastered on a big, carefree smile, turned around and strode toward the Buick.

6

Once the bunch of them drove way, Yuri ran a hand over his shorn scalp and said, “Now what?”

“We’ll just need to make a list of the Handless we know who would consider the mayoral job an upgrade. There’s my friend Charlotte at the Pinyin Bay Journal…who could very well be spotted in a tin foil hat, so I suppose she’s not the best choice. And there’s Brad the Cad, who’s been out of a job ever since his Hunting Party real estate gimmick went bust—though he’d obviously double-cross us the minute he got a chance. Ooh, I know, our waitress seemed nice. Maybe she’d want the job.”

Yuri frowned—more of a frowny-frown than a thinking-frown. “Tattoos. Cleavage. Happy Jack’s. She’d scare away all the conservatives. Spellcrafters might sympathize with her as a candidate—but Spellcrafters hardly ever vote.”

True. Otherwise there’d be no need for kee-poos.

Yuri said, “You enjoy meeting people. There must be someone you know who would make an electable candidate.”

If the server wasn’t mayoral material, maybe someone else from the hot dog eating contest… “What about Sherman Bolter? Mayor Dunce called him a Pinyin Bay treasure—so he’s got the support of the current administration behind him already.”

Yuri frowned again. In thought, this time. “He does have an impressive beard.”

“He does! Plus, he’s just crazy about Pinyin Bay.”

Yuri did a quick search on his phone. “His number is not listed. How do we find him?”

We could have just asked Drew what it said on his entry form…but that’s no fun! I recalled how Sherman waxed eloquent about the view of Pinyin Park from his kitchen, and declared, “I know exactly how to triangulate his location!”

Pinyin Park is located in a Handless part of town on a tiny block of land where a petting zoo once stood. As parks go, it’s nothing to write home about. A set of monkey bars, some picnic tables covered in graffiti and a few rusted charcoal grills. But though the greedy petting zoo goats were long gone, the grass grew lush and green from all the fertilization they’d once provided.

“Those must be the myrtle trees he was talking about,” I said, pointing. “Now we just need to figure out where the sun sets!”

Yuri grabbed a stick and thrust it into the ground so we could see which way the shadow fell. (And he claims he’s not a real-life action hero!) That narrowed things right down. And even better, there was only one actual house that fit the bill, nestled between a sweet little fruit stall on one side and a dog boutique on the other.

Pleased with myself for finding Sherman with only those few clues to go by, I marched up on the tidy little porch, abuzz with anticipation, and pressed the doorbell. Even the bell was cute, and as the jaunty little uplifting tune played, I congratulated myself on coming up with the perfect candidate. Someone who not only took pride in Pinyin Bay, but who Pinyin Bay could take pride in too.

There was a rustle of the quaint gingham curtain, and the door was opened by a woman. A middle-aged woman, not quite old enough to be Sherman’s mother. Maybe they were dating. Who was I to judge, so long as they were happy?

“I don’t need any encyclopedias,” she said curtly, and tried to close the door. But I was pumped up with self-congratulation, so I was quick to slide a foot between door and doorjamb.

“We’re not selling encyclopedias.”

“Plungers either.” Traveling plunger salesmen were a thing? They never seemed to come around when I needed one.

“We’re not salesmen,” I said.

She crossed her arms and looked us up and down. “Then why are you wearing suits? You’re not gonna try to sell me on your church, I hope.”

Perish the thought! “We’re just looking for Sherman.”

“Who?”

That sense of self-congratulatory elation was draining away faster than a sink within reach of a good plunger. “Sherman Bolter.” Her brow furrowed, and I added, “The world-class competitive eater.”

Realization dawned. “Oh! The guy with the beard!”

“That’s right. We thought he lived here, but apparently our stick was wrong—erm, never mind, long story. Do you know where we can find him?”

She gestured toward the fruit stand. “He’s always poking around behind Berry Good just after closing, so he should be here any minute. Now if you don’t mind, I need to go soak my feet!”

Never let it be said I stood between someone and her foot bath.

Yuri and I bought ourselves a little bag of plums, then parked ourselves on the bench across from the fruit seller to wait for closing time. I held up a plum and said, “Some folks might say plums are a crapshoot, but I like to think of them as more of a surprise. You never know if you’re in for sweet or sour until you take the plunge and bite in.”

“The same can be said of many things.” Yuri swallowed the bite he’d taken of his plum—likely sweet, given that he wasn’t making a sour-face—then turned and locked gazes with me.

The lowering sun picked out golden flecks in his hazel eyes. It highlighted the sheen of plum juice on his lower lip, too, which was curved into a subtle smile. I should probably check and make sure that plum of his really was as sweet as it looked. But as I leaned in to capture a taste from his lips, I was startled by a loud bang across the street.

Yuri’s mesmerizing hazel eyes snapped to the fruit stand. “That came from behind the store. Let’s go.”

I made a mental note to revisit those plums later.

Alleyways are fascinating places, since they’re the side of a business the owners don’t expect you to see. The alley behind Berry Good didn’t disappoint—while it was nothing special to look at, it smelled like fruit punch. And though there was an undertone of fermentation, it was faint enough to ignore.

Unfortunately, the swarming clouds of fruit flies were not quite as easy to overlook.

And there, amongst the cloud, was a figure tipped into a dumpster with his head buried deep and his butt in the air. When he righted himself within the swarm of flies, clutching a crushed orange in one hand and a burst pomegranate in the other, he revealed himself to be none other than Sherman Bolter.

“The guy from the extravaganza,” he enthused at me. “Dixon, isn’t it?”

I nodded weakly. “And this is my grown-man friend, Yuri.”

Yuri took a step back so as not to encourage any sticky introductory handshaking.

Sherman didn’t seem to mind. “What a pleasant surprise! This alley doesn’t get a lot of random foot traffic, so I assume you’ve been looking for me.”

“That’s very perceptive!” I said.

“And I know exactly why you’re here.”

“You do?”

“Of course! You want to make an appearance on my Blig-Blog channel: Pinyin Freegan!”

The more he spoke, the less sense he made. “Actually…I, um….”

He shoved the pomegranate into my hands and pulled out a phone. I’d never seen such a mucky screen. “Don’t be shy—I don’t mind. Everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame. My viewers love it when I have guests on, and I’m always happy to do anything I can do to educate people about freeganism.”

“Oh. Well…okay.”

Sherman thumbed on his camera aimed it at himself, and said, “Greetings, Pinyin Bay Freeganeers! Dixon and Yuri are joining me tonight to watch me eat this perfectly good orange that someone was willing to simply throw away.” He shoved his phone at Yuri, noting, “It’s so helpful to have an extra set of hands.”

Yuri took the sticky phone, but only because he’d been stunned into compliance…though he did look a bit green.

Sherman tore into that squashed orange, happily spraying juice and fruit flies. Yuri and I both took another step back from the splash zone. As huge bites of pulpy orange disappeared into the funnel of Sherman’s huge beard, he said, “I’m sure you both have some idea how much edible food is thrown out each and every day. Rather than let our precious resources go to waste, I’ve dedicated myself to eating only food that is destined for the landfill.” He fished a bruised apple from the dumpster and thrust it into my free hand. “Even if there’s a blemish or two, that doesn’t mean you need to throw the whole thing away. Try it!”

“No, that’s okay,” I said hastily, as it was a bit softer than I generally like my apples. “I’m full of plums.”

“Suit yourself.” Sherman snatched the apple away from me. “But the more different fruits you consume, the better. Freeganism promotes variety—you never know what you’ll find—and a varied diet is a healthy diet.”

As Sherman waxed eloquent about the virtues of a trash-picked menu, Yuri leaned in and whispered, “There is no way the city will elect a man who scrounges for his food like an animal.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. After all, my father has been known to slow the car when he spots an enticing find on the curb. “No one likes paying taxes. We could play up the fact that Sherman is frugal. I’m sure plenty of cheap folks would like that.”

Yuri wasn’t convinced. “But he is eating from the trash so as not to waste food, and yet he is entering these eating competitions which are extravagantly wasteful—and doing both of these things in a very public way. No one likes a man who talks from both sides of his mouth.”

Yuri had a point. A very sticky point. I slipped the pomegranate back into the dumpster just as Sherman took his phone from Yuri, swung his video back to me and said, “Are you sure I can’t interest you in a little apricot chaser?”

Eating fruit out of a dumpster was bad enough…fruit that was fuzzy to begin with seemed twice as unappealing. “Really, I’m fine. In fact, I’ve exceeded my fruit quota for the day—and you know what they say: fruity is as fruity does.” Okay, I’m pretty sure no one ever said that. Cameras make me so darned nervous!

Unfortunately, Sherman didn’t take the hint. “If you’re full up on fruit, then maybe what you need is protein.” He looped an arm through mine so I could see where he was aiming his camera. The alleyway swung wildly for a moment, past the foot soak lady’s garage, and then landed on another dumpster two doors down. “Luckily for us, there’s a wealth of protein right at our fingertips.”

I struggled to recall what the other little shop might have been, but Yuri must’ve been one step ahead of me, because he gave a strangled little groan. “He is eating dogs!”

“Your foreign friend has a crazy sense of humor,” Sherman said.

“Oh, you know Russians…” I said vaguely, straining to disengage.

But lifting all those dumpster lids had given Sherman’s wiry arm incredible strength. “Freegans are known to utilize roadkill—especially when it’s fresh—but most of them draw the line at dogs.” Most? “Besides, there are no dogs here. Only dog biscuits!”

You know your day is circling the drain when the suggestion to chow down on dog treats comes as a relief—to me, anyhow. Not Yuri. He may be heroic in the face of certain doom…but he’s phenomenally easy to squick.

To Sherman, I said, “I’ll stick with people-food, thanks.”

“Nonsense! The biscuits here are a gourmet product, made only with top-quality bone meal and the highest grade of suet!” Sherman let go of my arm to flip up the dumpster lid—and when he did, Yuri grabbed the back of my jacket so hard he lifted me off my feet. For a big guy, Yuri can move awfully fast. We were out of that alley in three seconds flat.

Too bad that was nowhere near enough time to escape the crunchy chewing sounds that followed in our wake.

7

Yuri

Although I was sorely in need of fresh air, Dixon and I soon realized we had ended up farther from home than either of us cared to walk. Me, because I did not wish to wear through my shoes, and Dixon, because even after what we’d just witnessed, he somehow found himself hungry. Luckily, we were not far from his parents’ house…and even Florica’s cooking would look like a feast compared to the things we’d seen Sherman stuff down his throat.

Once we were sure the competitive eater was not pursuing us, Dixon pulled some wet wipes from his messenger bag and handed one to me. I barely resisted the urge to strip down and swab off my whole body, but managed to stop at the wrists. When I first came to America, I thought wet wipes were ridiculous. But this was not the first time I found myself silently thanking whoever had been responsible for this invention.

Dixon tossed his used wipe into a nearby trash can with a sigh. “I really thought Sherman would be the ideal candidate given that he was already on the radar in Pinyin Bay. But there’s famous…and then there’s infamous!”

I shuddered. “How could he actually swallow such things?”

“He has no taste buds.” What? “Anyway, lucky for us we found out about his Blig-Blog channel before it was too late. If we picked him as a candidate, Uncle Fonzo never would’ve lived it down.”

Perhaps Fonzo should find his own candidate. Then again, I trusted someone I’d chosen myself over whoever he might come up with, so having this job foisted on us may have been for the best.

As we turned down his parents’ street, Dixon cocked his head and said, “I don’t hear any hollering. I’ll admit, I was concerned when I saw how quickly Mom and Dad skedaddled from the pancake house. D’you suppose that means this whole kee-poo business is settled?”

“Hard to say. Whatever we do, we must be careful not to pick sides. Your family might be close, but Morticia was right. Fighting over the next Hand may still do serious damage.”

“At the very least, it’ll hurt someone’s feelings.”

Indeed. “Best to leave the choosing to the volshebstvo.”

His parents’ house did look promisingly sedate as we stepped up to the front porch. True, there was a half-broken lawn chair held up by a cinderblock, and the hanging flower baskets held nothing but dry brown stalks, but this was typical for the Penns’ home.

“I sure hope they’ve worked it all out,” Dixon said nervously as I brushed a stray pomegranate seed from the fold of my lapel. It pinged off the welcome mat. “My parents can each be pretty darned persuasive in their own way.”

I plucked a stubborn strand of who-knows what from the back of his sleeve, then thought better of it when it disintegrated in my fingers, leaving behind a tacky residue which was surely crawling with microbes and spores.

The door was unlocked and we let ourselves in. I had been prepared for raised voices: taunting, bickering—all of it friendly enough, though still heartfelt. What we heard instead was a sound like the kitchen being ransacked.

We found Florica Penn standing on a chair which creaked under her weight as she struggled to knock a stockpot off a high shelf with a rolling pin.

“Mom! What’re you doing?” Dixon rushed in to steady the chair. I rushed after him to prevent him from being flattened if she toppled over.

“What do you think I’m doing?” Florica swatted at the pot and the chair gave off an ominous groan. Ducking the rolling pin, I tipped the pot off the side of the shelf and caught it in my opposite hand. Once Florica was safely on the floor—leaving me to wonder how successful I might be in hiding all the chairs so she didn’t try such a thing again—she pulled off the lid and flipped the pot over. A bunch of leathery wishbones, an old balsa wood airplane and a stack of canceled checks fell out. She stared at the pile for a long moment, then swept it all in again and handed the stockpot to me to put right back where I’d found it.

“No kee-poo?” Dixon said.

Florica sighed. “Obviously not. Otherwise I’d be rubbing your father’s nose in it right now instead of excavating this darned kitchen!”

Even a fool could see we had blundered right into the situation we’d both agreed to avoid. I wanted nothing to do with this kee-poo. Not until the matter of the Hand’s ascension was settled and done. I wanted Dixon there even less. He is deeply attached to each of his parents. To help one would leave him in a mad scramble to keep from showing favoritism. There was no way to please both of them, so it was best to help neither.

Florica said, “Your father is convinced the kee-poo will fall from the sky—like the feather in a Quilling Ceremony.” She tapped her temple shrewdly. “But I’ve figured out that the kee-poo is one of those things that’s been right under your nose all along, but you only realize it’s there when the time is right.”

I told Dixon, “If Johnny is not here, we should call Sabina to pick us up—”

“Hold on a sec.” Dixon cocked his head and asked his mother, “You’re saying you think it’s already in the house? How big are we talking—the size of a pea? A grape? A watermelon?”

“None of those things,” she said. “It’s not a tumor. You can’t use fruit as your point of comparison.”

Dixon shrugged. “It’s been a fruity kind of afternoon.”

And not in a good way.

“I wonder why people do that?” Dixon said. “With the fruit, I mean. Would it be any more comforting to hear your growth is the size of a baseball?”

“Dixon,” I said. “Stop distracting your mother. She has things to do.”

Casually, Florica drifted between Dixon and the dining room door. And there was no getting around that woman unless she conceded to let you pass. “You know…this search would go a lot faster with three pairs of hands.”

If it were anyone other than family, I would glare at her in stony silence until she stood aside, and then remove myself from the situation. But I cared what Dixon’s mother thought of me, which meant I had to be…nice. Or at least civil. “We all know how the volshebstvo operates,” I told her. “If you are destined to find the kee-poo, it will happen. Whether I help you turn over all the saucepans or not.”

“Maybe,” Florica said. “Or maybe the whole point of the ritual is that the person who can drum up the most family support is the one who really deserves to be Hand.”

Dixon was thumbing through a gelatin cookbook with a fruit bowl on the cover. “So is it closer to a grapefruit or a lime? A baseball, I mean. Or are we talking more like a small, underripe melon? Wouldn’t it be funny if a baseball was more like a banana? That would really spice up the game…and help an enterprising player slide into the thingy where the umpire stands.”

“Don’t blame him,” Florica muttered. “I discouraged him from playing any sports that could potentially screw up his writing hand.”

Dixon said, “Have you considered the possibility that the kee-poo is a banana?”

“Now I have,” his mother said. “And the answer is no.”

“Are you sure? Because when you think about it, most fruits are roundish, but not bananas. And they’re really the only fruit you can hold up to your ear and pretend you’re talking on a telephone—just think how silly you’d look trying something like that with a cantaloupe. So if you’re searching for something unique—”

“Dixon,” she said testily, “it’s not a banana.”

With great effort, Dixon clamped his lips shut to stem his argument. Though I could see in his eyes that he was not entirely convinced.

“Listen,” Florica said. “I know you don’t want to play favorites, but hear me out. Your father is incredibly set in his ways. Every morning, he eats the same boiled egg and rye toast for breakfast. He’s been cycling through the same three neckties for so long they’ve come back in style again. And every time he opens a bottle of booze, he tells the same awful joke.”

Dixon smiled softly. “Liquor? I hardly know ’er.”

“That’s the one.” Florica sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, your father is steady and reliable. He’s a good man. But being a Hand is about way more than just showing up on time. You need to be clever and resilient. You need to be creative. Think about all the innovations we’ve made to the shop. The magazines in the lobby. The tip jar. The arrangement to get all the leftover pizza from the place next door. Whose ideas were they? Mine—all mine. And I accomplished those things in spite of Johnny.”

“Those are hardly major decisions,” I said.

“No? Just think—how many of last week’s meals were pizza?” Florica did have a point. Take-and-bake pizza was a mainstay of our diet. And while it had grown tedious to consume so much mediocre pizza…even Sherman would have approved of the price. “Face it, you two—if it weren’t for me, the whole family would starve!”

Or at least need to pay for all our food.

Dixon was wavering—I could tell—but I knew that if he caved in to Florica’s demands, he would only end up feeling guilty around his father. “We will help neither you nor Johnny,” I said firmly. “What if someone had rigged Dixon’s Quilling Ceremony? It would not have worked, and the quill would be nothing more than a feather. But even more importantly, if he’d bonded with a different quill already, the volshebstvo would not have been able to quill him in his time of greatest need.”

Dixon chimed in, “Besides, Mom, don’t you always say the best way to help someone is to let them handle things themselves?”

Only to discourage them from asking her help to begin with. But Florica Penn had been tripped up by one of her own sayings, so we were able to call for a ride and extricate ourselves before she dredged up any more reasons we should side with her.

8

The Buick pulled up with Vano at the wheel and Sabina beside him, fanning herself furiously with a piece of junk mail, looking very sweaty, disgruntled and pregnant. “Boy, what a relief that you guys called and gave us an excuse to leave,” she told us. “My dad’s been driving me nuts ever since the whole false alarm business.”

“Your father cares about you,” I said.

“Well, sure—but that’s not it. Ever since Glenda figured out I’m not seeing some dumb Handless doctor, she’s been blowing up his phone with advice.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Dixon asked. “Medical advice doesn’t come cheap—er, so I’ve heard.”

“Maybe not,” Vano said. “But Fonzo’s worried that once he and Glenda start talking, the two of them might pick up again where they left off.”

“I like Glenda,” Dixon said.

Sabina rolled her eyes. “Only because she gives you erasers shaped like little cars.”

“Just that one time. And it was a tiny roller skate. Not a car.”

Sabina ignored this. “She’s not like the floozies Dad normally dates, so he finds her intimidating.”

I wondered what this said about Sabina’s mother…and decided it was better not to comment.

Sabina went on. “Learn to time my contractions, she says. Stay hydrated, she says. Get up and walk around, she says.”

If there were any doubt Glenda had sent those messages, the fact that she recommended things like walking, looking at a watch, and drinking water would have convinced me she was the source.

Vano said, “But Glenda’s not the only one we’ve heard from. Nana pulled some strings—a lot of strings—and the midwife will have her bail set in the morning.”

Sabina fanned harder. “And lemme tell you—what a relief that is. A Handless hospital might be fine for sprained elbows and freak skywriting accidents, but I don’t plan on going anywhere near it when I pop out this baby.”

Sabina might think she was being rebellious…but was she? Or was this just an example of the way traditions become ingrained?

I would need to trust that Sabina’s care would fall into the hands of the best person for the job…though I’ve never been much good at trusting.

Vano took us to Shirque Mansion, where he and Sabina would be spending the night hiding from Glenda’s helpful advice, then handed off the Buick to us. The family has gotten more than its fair share of use from that car, but apparently, it is indestructible. The only part of the car which has totally given up the ghost is the driver side seat—and since the Buick is considered “classic,” the cost of repairing it would be enough to buy an entire used car, so the family makes do.

The springs in the seat had become unbearable, but removing them left the driver falling through to the floor. Tennis balls had been jammed over the sharp ends to prevent anyone from being impaled, with duct tape holding the balls in place. A nylon seat from a lawn chair was lashed over the top with plastic zip ties. The tennis balls could be felt, even through the chair seat, but even the thinnest cushion raised the driver too high.

No one knows where the afghan came from that now topped off the whole ensemble. Either that, or no one would admit to making the thing. It was simply that ugly. Scraps of cheap yarn, bits of string, and random lengths of twine had been crocheted into a haphazard assemblage of distorted squares, each with a lopsided flower in the center.

Russians divide the spectrum of color differently than our English-speaking counterparts. Yet there were some colors in this afghan which did not seem to exist in either language. This was the case in the stray bit of yarn sticking to Dixon as he emerged from the car.

I plucked it off his rump and let a passing breeze carry it away.

Naturally, Dixon could not let such a gesture go without remarking on it. He planted his palms on the hood of the car, arched his back, and canted his posterior in my direction. “Are you sure there’s nothing else you need to grab?”

Back at Precious Greetings—back when Dixon was nothing more than a naive young man Emery Flint was hoping to entrap—had anyone asked if his attitude would grate on my nerves, I would not have even deigned to answer. Of course I could never tolerate such silly, unbridled flirtatiousness. And yet, somehow his playful resolve wore me down. In fact, it has come to pass that I do not merely tolerate Dixon’s lighthearted affection.

I live for it.

I fit myself over his body, just loosely enough for him to turn in my arms and drape his wrists over my shoulders. Although my eyes had closed, I could tell that when our lips met…he was smiling.

We hastened upstairs. Pausing only to refill Meringue’s dish (just in case her carrying on proved to be particularly distracting) we headed straight for the bedroom.

Dixon often has many ideas for “spicing up” our love life. I have learned not to dismiss them out of hand, no matter how outrageous. While many of his crazy schemes are as ridiculous as they sound, some of them prove to be well worth the effort.

Tonight, though, we dispensed with the role-play and repurposed household items, and made love with our fingers laced together and our eyes open.

Afterwards, we lay with one another, Dixon trailing a fingertip along the tattoos on my chest. He would be the first to speak. He always was. But tonight, he took an unusually long time to gather his thoughts. When finally he did, he said, “I can tell you’re not too keen on the whole midwife thing. And I just wanted to say…thanks for letting my cousin be the one to make that call.”

Dixon may come off as an airhead, but every now and then he reminds me that he truly is paying attention. I caught his hand and gave it a squeeze. “I am not in the habit of forcing my help where it is not welcome. What is more difficult is withholding help from your mother. She has been good to me.” Better than my own.

“Some people underestimate my mom. But when she’s got her mind set on something, look out!”

“The apple does not fall far from the tree.”

Dixon absently traced an invisible flourish around my ink. “It wouldn’t be fair to cave in to either of my parents, not to mention the fact that if we did, we’d be going against the wishes of the head of the circuit.”

I kissed his knuckles. “Then turn your thoughts away from it and don’t let it trouble you. Focus instead on what we can do—namely, finding a mayor.”

“A mayor who doesn’t get his jollies rooting around in the trash! What we need is someone respectable.”

Given the circles in which we ran…finding anyone even remotely “respectable,” at least by Handless standards, would be quite a challenge. My customers were fellow Spellcrafters, so they would never stand a chance, even if they did agree to run. And Dixon’s were even worse: the desperate Handless who’d commission a cut-rate Crafting so shoddy it would need to be unmade.

I was marveling over the fact that between the two of us, we could not come up with even one upstanding person when I reached for a glass of water on the nightstand, knocking off a tiny object which bounced just once, then settled.

When I peered over the side of the bed, I spied it there on the floor: an eraser shaped like a roller skate. Dixon poked his head up over my shoulder and caught his breath. “Yuri…are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

He loves asking me this. And I suppose I like being asked, since he only does so when we are of one mind. I nodded. “Who would possibly be more respectable than a doctor?”

***

Bright and early the next morning—closer to noon, actually, since we were distracted by a new dance Meringue had invented—we headed back to the hospital to speak to Glenda.

“Now, let’s get our cover story straight,” Dixon said as we pulled into the lot. “You’re an heir to the Russian throne in exile, and I’m your bodyguard…and while we can’t be certain, it’s possible assassins dusted your light fixtures with a drug that can be absorbed through your fingerprints.”

“Dixon….”

“Not a lethal drug, mind you—we don’t want them to airlift you to St. Louis before we get to talk to Dr. Slaughter—but something with the potential to cause wicked hallucinations.”

“Dixon....”

“And when I give the signal, you can start acting like you see animals popping up in the lobby. What kind of animals do they have in Russia? Ooh, I know, Siberian tigers!”

“Dixon!” I snapped—and he paused, eyes alight with visions of tigers traipsing through the lobby of his mind. “First of all, there has not been a Russian monarch since the Romanov dynasty. Second, they can plainly see our truck from the front desk, and no Russian prince would even deign to spit on such a vehicle. And third…we were just here yesterday. They are bound to recognize us.”

Dixon considered all of this, then said, “So what you’re saying is, they’d totally buy me as your bodyguard.”

“Come,” I said. “We will go in through the front door—as ourselves—and ask to see Glenda.” Dixon gazed wistfully at a small plastic spring he’d been planning to tuck behind his ear as his “bodyguard” disguise—I think it was once part of a keychain—but thankfully, I’d convinced him to leave it in the glove box.

Fortunately, I myself had never needed to make use of Pinyin Bay’s hospital. While it was well-equipped by Russian standards, more like a private hospital than a state institution, I was leery of all the red tape involved in seeking treatment.

We approached the admissions desk under the watchful eye of the nurse we’d spoken to yesterday. What a relief I had not acquiesced to the bodyguard scheme. All we had to do was walk up to the desk, as ourselves, and—

I glanced sideways at Dixon. “Are you limping?”

“I’m not limping! You’re limping.”

“You’re both limping,” the nurse said. She picked up her phone. “I’ll call for some wheelchairs.”

“No, no, that’s okay,” Dixon said quickly. “We’re fine. We were just hoping to talk to Dr. Slaughter…in a personal capacity. Not professional. So there’s no need for you to scan my insurance card—which I guarantee is perfectly legitimate.”

The nurse shrugged and checked her computer. “You’re in luck. Dr. Slaughter is on her lunch break, so you can find her in the hospital cafeteria.”

“I was not limping,” I grumbled as we headed for the elevator.

Dixon did not seem to notice. He lived for reconnaissance missions such as these. “The more I think about Dr. Slaughter, the more excited I find myself.”

“Do not get your hopes up.” It was never any use to say this to Dixon, but I did anyhow. “Why should she give up her medical career to serve as mayor?”

“She doesn’t have to give it up entirely, just take a little hiatus. Plus, I’ll bet if you put together all the mayoring Mayor Dunce did during his back-to-back terms, it would hardly fill a year. Uncle Fonzo always said Glenda was a smart lady.”

“I believe the phrase was, Too smart for her own good.”

“She might very well be able to figure out how to keep her job at the hospital, plus do all the mayor business in her spare time. Not only is she a well-respected member of Handless society, but she appeals to so many different demographics. Kids. Moms. And middle-aged men with naughty doctor fantasies.”

True. But more importantly, she’d shown herself to be friendly to the Spellcraft community. Handless tend to either love Spellcraft or hate it. Many are downright fearful. And while I had never known Glenda to commission any Craftings for herself, not once did I hear her make a snide remark about our profession. Despite the fact that she was far too good for Fonzo Penn, she’d always treated him—indeed, the whole family—with nothing but respect.

I did not wish to get my hopes up, either. And yet, if we were able to convince her she could serve more of her community as a politician than as a doctor, she did seem like a very good choice.

And the Penn family could be quite persuasive.

The hospital cafeteria was not too crowded, and I found myself eager to have a meal other than take-and-bake pizza. We spotted Glenda at the salad bar and rushed over to grab our plastic trays and join her before she got away.

It turned out there was no need to hurry—by the time we reached her, she had not moved whatsoever. As we slapped down a tray on either side of hers, she blinked as if coming out of a trance. “Oh! Hi, guys. How’s Sabina doing?”

“She’s fine,” Dixon said reassuringly. “Absolutely great.”

“Good—I’m glad to hear it. First pregnancies can be a real challenge for the new mommy. And with Fonzo’s phone acting up again, I wasn’t sure he could relay my messages.”

“Actually,” Dixon said, “We’re not here about my cousin. What we were hoping to ask you was…ah….”

As he spoke, his attention drifted to the salad bar. I followed his gaze. The refrigerated case was filled with all the things I’ve come to expect at a low-budget American cafeteria. A few bins of lettuce, some underripe tomatoes, imitation bacon bits and squeeze bottles of ranch dressing. But unlike most American salad bars, the items in this case had been meticulously arranged. Each ingredient was color coordinated from left to right, with the brightest greens on the left, blueberries and red cabbage next, then moving through the rainbow for reds, pinks, orange and yellows, and finally ending on the right with a miniature rainbow of artificial candies. I wondered who on earth would take the time to arrange things so fastidiously, then saw that Glenda had placed an identical array of produce on her plate—and was situating the final green peas a single pea at a time.

She handled her tongs with great precision.

An orderly leaned in and whispered to me, “Just work around her. If you wait for her to get out of your way, your lunch break will be over before you even get to the cash register. Ask me how I know.”

Glenda scowled at the salad bar and swapped the bowl of peas with the bin of sliced cucumber.

I scooped up some hard-boiled eggs while Dixon tonged a wedge of iceberg lettuce onto his plate, then drenched it with salad dressing and bacon bits. Once he did, we paid and adjourned to a nearby table to wait for Glenda to stop messing about.

The orderly was right. She fussed at the salad bar so long, Dixon and I were done eating by the time she finally joined us.

Dixon eyed Glenda’s plate. The salad ingredients were arranged like a clock, one wedge per color, with each division so straight it could have been made with a ruler. “Gee,” he said. “That’s some salad.”

Glenda paused with her fork partway to her mouth and scowled. “Too much kale? I can’t tell you how often I misjudge how much kale I’ll need. It always fluffs up and shifts around on the walk to the table. Except when it deflates.”

“I’m sure you have just the right amount of kale!” exclaimed Dixon…who, in all the time I’d known him, had never allowed kale to pass his lips.

“I’m not so sure,” Glenda said, eyeing the salad bar like she was considering a return trip. “It looks a little on the small side.”

My patience was running thin. “Just eat a bit of the others to make them even.”

Glenda looked again at her plate, baffled. “That does seem like it would work. And it would be so much easier than trying to pay for a single leaf of kale. But when I eat, invariably the food moves around, and so it’s even harder to tell when the segments are uneven. Although if I put everything on its own plate…no, no, that won’t fly. The cafeteria manager gets so testy when you take more than one or two extra plates. Maybe I should have gone with the soup….”

“I’m sure the salad will be great,” Dixon said. “Especially if you actually eat it.”

Glenda smiled softly. “You sound so much like your uncle—always happy to put a positive spin on the situation and help me to stop overthinking everything. Not very realistic, in my opinion. But still…the world needs people who see the glass as half-full.”

Unlike Glenda, who undoubtedly lost sleep pondering how to ensure whether the fill level was at exactly the halfway point.

She ate a radish slice and a few bean sprouts, then said, “Now, what was it you wanted to ask me about?”

Dixon met my eyes and I gave my head a subtle shake. If Glenda was this indecisive about her salad, how could she ever hope to handle all the responsibilities of running a city? “You know what?” he said brightly, “Never mind. There was a little project I was going to pitch to you, but I can see you’ve got a lot on your plate.”

Alarmed, Glenda looked down at her salad.

Dixon hopped up and nudged me in the shoulder. “We’ll let you get back to your lunch,” he told her.

Glenda gave us a distracted wave. “Make sure Sabina comes in for her prenatal checkup…and say hi to your uncle for me.”

Once Dixon and I were safely back in the truck, we both let out a long, uneasy breath. He said, “Guess that goes to show you don’t really know someone until you watch them eat a salad.”

“Is that one of your mother’s sayings?”

“If it’s not, it should be. I could see how attention to detail would be important for a doctor. But could you imagine Dr. Slaughter trying to run the city? She’d be out on the lawn with a yardstick and a pair of cuticle scissors instead of…whatever it is that mayors are supposed to do.”

I nodded. “And even if she could be convinced to focus only on her own duties, she would surely overthink everything. At least you could say one thing for Dunce: the man knew how to make a decision. Even if that decision was always no.”

9

Dixon

“What a shame,” I said wistfully. “Dr. Slaughter would’ve gotten a real kick out of riding around on a parade float and tossing treats into the crowd. So long as they were sugar-free and presented zero choking hazard.”

“It is all for the best,” Yuri decided. “No one likes to show up at a parade and end up with a pencil in the eye.”

We were debating where to go for second lunch (since salad hardly counted at all) when an urgent text from my cousin came in. You won’t believe what these deadbeats brought over.

Which deadbeats? Where? Why? Inquiring minds needed to know. And in the course of learning these critical facts, if we were lucky, maybe we’d score some leftover pastry.

A few minutes later, we pulled up the crunchy gravel drive at Shirque Mansion. It was warm and the sun was high, so Sabina and Vano were ensconced on the shady porch with a tall, sweaty pitcher of iced tea and—yes!—a big plate of muffins. Not just any old muffins, either. There were pale yellow muffins bursting with fresh blueberries. Cornmeal muffins with a crust of crunchy sugar baked into the top. Chocolate muffins bursting with chocolate chips still warm enough to be gooey. It was a cornucopia of baked delight, so good I wished I had three hands to fully appreciate the—

“Dixon!” Sabina snapped. “Stop stuffing your face for half a second and get a load of these presents.”

“What presents?” I said…blowing out a few crumbs.

“Kinning presents.” My cousin rolled her eyes. “What else?”

“What is this Kinning?” Yuri asked…also through a mouthful of muffin.

Vano explained. “Traditionally, when a couple is expecting, the circuit provides them with three gifts: food, clothing and shelter.”

“That sounds useful,” Yuri said.

Sabina snorted. “Oh yeah?” She plucked an adorable yellow onesie out of a flowered gift bag in a fanfare of crumpled tissue paper. “Then how do you account for this monstrosity from Venus Monger?”

Um…was that a trick question? “Looks fine to me.”

“Other side,” Vano murmured.

“Oh, right.” Sabina turned it around. The front of the cute little outfit was emblazoned with Try Monger’s Tonic! in humongous block lettering.

“Good thing babies can’t read,” Yuri said.

Sabina tossed it down in disgust. “And if that’s not bad enough, take a look at what apparently passes for food around here.” She pulled out a crumpled bag from Bam Burger from under the table and waved it in disgust. “This is what Ladin Silver dropped off. Not only was it from the five-dollar value menu…but half the fries were eaten!”

Unfortunately, I can’t say I was particularly surprised. Spellcrafters are known for their ingenuity, not their generosity.

Sabina said, “Picking out the givers is a Hand-job—” people really needed to stop calling it that… “so it was up to my dad to figure out who’d cough up the best loot. You think he would’ve put a little more thought into it. What the heck! I hate to think what the next bozo will try to pass off as a gift.”

As she finished complaining, a distinctive sound reached our ears: the sound of a squeaky wheel. And it was getting louder—a metal on metal squalling that sounded like nails on a chalkboard…if that chalkboard happened to have a truly persistent itch.

The squeaking reached a painful peak, and as it did, a baby buggy rounded the corner—with Drew Draws at the helm. The new Seer paused at the edge of the lawn, snatched a glittery purple cowboy hat from his head, and fanned himself vigorously. “Well, would you look at the bunch of you,” he called over, “with nothing better to do than lounge around on your wicker furniture and soak up the shade while the rest of us are hard at work.”

The “rest of us” meaning him, I guess—if you considered wheeling around a squeaky buggy to be work. With a big, annoyed shove, he plowed the buggy across the lawn, accompanied by the dissonant chatter of the wonky wheel. That thing was so loud, it was like he had his own soundtrack. Though what sort of movie it might appear in, I couldn’t decide. Maybe some sort of experimental art house film. In which case, the sequined hat and short shorts suddenly made a lot more sense.

Halfway to the porch, the baby carriage gave an especially loud squeak, then hunkered down stubbornly in place. With a snippy sigh, Drew strutted around the buggy. We all found somewhere else to look when he bent over to peer underneath. But when it finally felt safe to open my eyes, I discovered he’d whipped out a familiar little jar. “Ran into an interesting lady over by the T-shirt kiosk in the mall while I was shopping,” he explained. Before I could break it to him that Monger’s Tonic was even less useful than snake oil, he’d dipped in a forefinger to slather some on the offending wheel.

He gave the buggy a push…and somehow, against all odds, the squeaking had vanished.

Once that was settled, he turned to survey the yard. “And what’s with the half-painted furniture strewn all over the place? What’re you lazybones waiting for—Christmas?” I was tempted to interject that we didn’t celebrate Christmas…but he was on a roll. “Sabina’s as big as a house. She’ll pop any day now. You don’t want to be running around with a wet paintbrush when the stork shows up!”

Without waiting for any of us to agree, he proceeded to crack open a paint can and start stirring.

I hadn’t really given much thought to finishing the furniture right that very moment, since it’s a real challenge to eat and paint at the same time. But because I’d feel guilty about lounging around while Drew did all the work, I finished my muffin, and then my other muffin—and then headed over to pick up a paint brush and assist. Vano joined us, and after he polished off the last muffin, so did Yuri, leaving my cousin to supervise from the porch.

As we painted, Drew asked, “So, have you settled on a name for your baby yet?”

Sabina (who never much cared for getting “the third degree”) said, “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

Vano explained to Drew, “A lot of Spellcrafters use the father’s surname as the first kid’s first name. But I wouldn’t saddle anyone with the name Shirque Penn.”

“That’s a relief,” I said. “Especially with literally every other name in the world to choose from. Just keep in mind, words have power—and the name of a Scrivener carries a lot of weight. It’s got to be powerful, memorable and as deep as the ocean. A name with gravitas. A name for the ages.”

“Dixon,” Sabina said, exasperated, “we’ve been through this a million times. The baby is not going to be named after you.”

Well, you can’t blame a guy for trying.

Back when Yuri and Vano first dragged all that baby stuff outside, it had looked more like a bunch of spare parts you’d unearth in my father’s basement than a pile of furniture. I’ll admit, my hopes hadn’t run very high. But now, with four of us industriously scrubbing away the grunge and applying a fresh coat of paint, something surprisingly good was beginning to take shape. Without all the dust and cobwebs, without all the garishly clashing finishes, the old furniture looked new again, with elegant lines and good bones.

“It’s amazing what a coat of white paint will do,” I said proudly.

Drew rolled his eyes. “You don’t know the half of it. Furniture isn’t the only thing getting whitewashed around here. Everyone’s buzzing about the upcoming election. Apparently Pinyin Bay polls are showing most voters leaning toward a convicted felon.”

Sabina waved his concern away. “You know how arbitrary Handless laws can be. Swing a bat and hit a baseball, and you’re a big ol’ hero. But aim it at a few ugly mailboxes instead….”

Lucky for my cousin, she’d been a minor when the whole mailbox fiasco took place.

Drew said, “Normally, I wouldn’t look askance at a man with a record. Most of the boardwalk folk I know have spent some time in the hoosegow. But those were for crimes of passion…or intoxication. Having a white-collar criminal represent my fair city, though, is beyond the pale.”

Gooseflesh raised on my forearms as Yuri asked, low and dangerous, “Who exactly is this felon?”

Drew shrugged dismissively. “Some ne’er-do-well by the name of Emery Flint.”

Everyone went silent—everyone but Drew. My cousin must’ve told Vano about what happened to her dad, because even easygoing Vano looked spooked. As Drew rambled on about why anyone dumb enough to get caught filing a fake tax return was obviously not mayoral material, I kept my eye on Yuri.

Back when Emery Flint bamboozled away my uncle’s quill, our whole family had suffered at the loss of our Hand. But Yuri had been the one whose whole life was completely hijacked when he was enslaved by a nasty piece of Spellcraft. For an entire year, Yuri had been directly under Mr. Flint’s thumb…and it had left a pretty big thumbprint behind.

Drew took in our stunned silence and said, “Is this another one of those Spellcrafter faux pas no one’s deigned to inform me about?”

I said, “We’re all, ah, familiar with Emery Flint.”

“Too familiar,” my cousin added bitterly.

Drew tossed his paintbrush in a can of thinner and dusted off his hands. “Well, you’re about to get to know him in a whole new light—as the Pinyin Bay’s first new mayor in decades—unless you can come up with someone better to oppose him.”

With that, he bid his goodbyes and headed back home, but I could barely dredge up the effort to wave goodbye. I was too busy reeling in horror at the thought of Emery Flint taking over the whole of Pinyin Bay!

10

“Think, Yuri!” I said desperately. “There’s gotta be someone we know who’d make a good Mayor. Especially when literally anyone else in the city would be better than Emery Flint.”

We sat at our kitchen card table, facing each other over an ice cream carton that contained nothing but some sticky chocolate residue and two used spoons. It was well past midnight, and our conversation was punctuated by the occasional annoyed grumble from beneath the blanket covering Meringue’s cage.

Yuri glared so hard at the tablecloth I’m surprised he didn’t burn a smoking hole into the plastic. “The moment that man’s name came up, everything was driven from my mind but the thought of tracking him down and making him sorry he even thought of running for mayor.”

“And I share your righteous indignation one hundred percent! Not just on your behalf, either. If Mr. Flint was in power, our whole circuit would be in jeopardy. Right now, the laws and statutes on the books in Pinyin Bay are slanted in the favor of Spellcrafters—thanks to years of persuasion, plus the fact that Mayor Dunce was never one to revise so much as a stray comma. But if Emery Flint had his say, then any advantages Spellcrafters might have would go up in smoke.”

“It is even worse than that,” Yuri said firmly. “Emery Flint is the prime example of what happens when a Handless becomes obsessed with the volshebstvo. He went mad trying to take the power for himself—and he did not care who suffered because of his ambition. He would not just eradicate the laws which favor Spellcrafters. He would ensure we were actively persecuted!”

“We need a candidate. Someone who isn’t a freegan…and who doesn’t overthink every little thing. But who?”

“The Pinyin Bay Perch?” Yuri suggested.

“Could you imagine him on a billboard? People would love it. Unfortunately, it’s hardly ever the same person twice inside the costume.” I scratched my chin. “How about Crouch?”

“From the boardwalk?”

I nodded. “He’s got a pretty unique look, what with the greasepaint and all. And I’ve never seen him eat from the garbage.”

“But he would insist on giving his campaign speech in gestures—and we both know he is a terrible mime.”

Not only were we running out of time, we were running out of options. We dealt with lots of different people on a daily basis, though. Maybe there was someone we’d simply overlooked. “I know! Let’s go through our camera rolls. I’ll bet we find someone who’s perfect for the job.”

It was a great idea…in theory. Until I realized that most of my shots featured either Meringue or Yuri. He glanced at my phone as I flipped through and narrowed his eyes. “Must you take a picture of me every time I bend over?”

“What can I say? I’m smitten with your badonkadonk.” I turned my attention to Yuri’s phone…which was currently showing a photo of a cinderblock wall. “Whereas you, apparently, have a thing for masonry.”

Yuri scowled. “It is for my painting. I was making note of the way the light hit the texture.”

Turned out that for every shot of Yuri’s backside I’d taken, he’d snapped a photo of some random inanimate object. And neither a rusty farm implement nor Yuri’s sexy butt stood much chance of running against Emery Flint.

We both continued flipping, growing increasingly more desperate. And we both paused on a shot of the same event.

Last winter, Practical Penn had celebrated twenty-five years at its current location. It was a pretty big to-do, not only with music and munchies, but plenty of coupons, games and raffles designed to keep our clientele coming back for more. Handless don’t usually spend more time in the shop than they absolutely have to, but the silver anniversary shindig had drawn a pretty sizable mob.

“I have never seen the shop so crowded,” Yuri said.

“Me neither. No doubt one of these Handless can give Emery Flint a run for his money.”

“And if they are one of your family’s customers, then they will be sympathetic to Spellcraft.”

It was a great plan…until we zoomed in on the photos and took a good look at who those customers actually were. Mr. Miller, who was always trying to Craft away his bald spot. Mrs. Geist, who used Spellcraft in lieu of actual dentistry—with mixed results. And the shady guy who gave us a different assumed name every time he bought a Crafting—without so much as a halfhearted disguise to try and fool us.

Yuri pushed his phone away in disgust. “The only person in these photos with half a brain is your father. And no Spellcrafter would dream of taking the position.”

“Not to mention the fact that Dad can barely stay awake for a campaign commercial, let alone a political debate.” And the only position he truly wanted was that of the family’s Hand. I thumbed through my own photos of the event, admiring the way my dad worked the room. “He sure is popular with the Handless, though.”

“If he cannot run, then maybe he knows someone who can.”

The next morning, we fortified ourselves with cold pizza and headed over to my folks’ house hoping to catch them before work so we could pick my father’s brain. Unfortunately, the Monte Carlo was gone and the house was quiet. We were just about to head over to the shop when we heard something tapping just under our feet…and a distant voice calling out, “Hello? Is somebody up there?”

“Dad? Is that you?”

“Dixon! What a relief! Come help me—I’m stuck!”

I pried the spare key out from under the dried-up birdbath, and Yuri and I hurried down to the basement to see what had happened.

The basement is the home of my father’s stash. If you need something, anything at all, chances are he can find one he’s trashpicked somewhere within its piles. That something might be dusty, outdated, and missing a few key parts—but it sure beats paying cash money.

A visit to the stash can be a pretty serious expedition. I personally don’t venture in without a few granola bars and a spare bottle of water. But somehow Dad had ended up way on the far side of the stash—and it was barely 8am!

We found my father trapped behind a big pile of whatnot, with nothing but his legs sticking out. Rubber and metal, plastic and wood. No single thing was particularly awkward or heavy. But together, the mass had fallen in on itself just so, and Dad had no leverage to push himself free.

“Be sure never to introduce him to Sherman,” Yuri said softly as my father flailed around in the pile. “He does not need to learn any new tricks.”

“Don’t worry. Dad’s a picky eater. No freeganistic tendencies whatsoever…aside from the take-and-bake pizza.” I hurried over to my father’s feet and began the process of excavation. “Dad, I haven’t seen you delve this deep in years. Good thing you landed near the front porch, otherwise we never would’ve heard you calling. But what’re you doing this far into the stash?”

“Oh, just rooting around for a spare pair of galoshes…you never know when it might rain.”

“He is looking for the kee-poo,” Yuri said.

I nudged aside a set of bongo drums and gingerly lifted off a tarnished chandelier. “Is that true, Dad? Why not just say so?”

My father sighed, sending some yellowed fragments of sheet music aflutter. “Because your mother was the one who insisted the kee-poo could be right under our very noses…and I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing that I think she might be onto something. You know how she loves to gloat.”

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “What happens in the stash, stays in the stash.”

A hand thrust up from the slide of random household objects like a toddler breaking the surface of a ball pit. Yuri leaned in, grabbed my dad by the forearm, and gave him a solid tug. He popped free with a great clatter of fishing lures and ping pong balls.

“Phew!” Dad shook a few flecks of sawdust from his hair. “Now that I’m on my feet again, we can get down to business. Whaddaya suppose this kee-poo looks like? Is it shaped like a key?”

I hated saying no to my dad, but fair is fair. “Dad, we can’t—”

“Or is it shaped like—?”

“Forget it,” Yuri announced. “We did not help Florica and we will not help you.”

“Welp. You can’t blame a guy for trying.” My father picked up a clothes hanger and poked at a nearby stack of picnic baskets, which creaked alarmingly. “But I will say this: you two would do well to remember that the Hand represents both of you, too. And your mother is pretty sharp. Not just her mind—but her tongue. I know enough to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she’s the love of my life. Casual acquaintances, though? I wouldn’t count on it. Schmoozing is a big part of the Hand-job.” Oh, come on. Him too? “Can we really afford to alienate the other families in the circuit by having such a blunt and outspoken member as our Hand?”

Dad had a point. I couldn’t count the number of random people who’d come away from an encounter with my mother in tears. Though, to be fair, you’d expect a bouncer to be made of much sterner stuff.

My father tried his best to win us over to his side—and I had to admit, he really was a persuasive guy—but thanks to Yuri, I held my ground and left the choosing of the Hand to the kee-poo…which meant dusting my dad off, driving him to the shop and making a quick getaway.

Unfortunately, my neutrality had come with a cost. Without my dad’s suggestions, we were still at a loss as to finding a decent mayoral candidate. Vano had been sending periodic messages to find out when his Nana could expect our candidate…and those texts were starting to get a little desperate.

Yuri said, “Either Sherman or Glenda would be better than Emery Flint, and we are running out of time. We must simply get on with it: pick one, throw our support behind them and hope for the best.”

“Okay, let’s think this through.” I pulled out my phone and did a quick search. “According to the hospital’s website, Dr. Slaughter was awarded the Bumpus Award for Emergency Room Excellence, and a special acknowledgement for the hospital’s neatest sutures. According to her online reviews, people find her to be smart, attentive and thorough. Maybe with enough coaching she could make it through a debate.”

“With Emery Flint?” Yuri demanded. “He would clean the floor with her. Glenda is too concerned with fairness and facts, while Flint would say or do anything to gain power. Even you and I fell for his lies. How could we expect the public to be any the wiser?”

“Unfortunately,” I admitted, “you do have a point. Sherman, on the other hand, is super confident and outspoken, and he seems like he could actually stand up to Mr. Flint.” I pulled up Sherman’s Blig-Blog channel. “Maybe his dumpster diving isn’t anywhere near as queasy-making if you can’t actually smell the rotting fruit.”

I tapped his profile picture and immediately my phone was filled with a horrifying closeup of a gnawed pineapple core framed by a lush beard, punctuated by moist chewing sounds.

Nope. Pretty queasy, even without the smell.

As I rolled down the passenger window to let in a little fresh air, the next video scrolled up and began to play.

Did you know that each and every day, Pinyin Bay throws out enough bananas to fill three shopping carts?

I was not aware of that fact! You’d think that with the telephone-mimicking capabilities, fewer bananas would go to waste.

The camera zoomed in on a grocer putting down a crate of brown bananas in the alley. As he set out a few slip-hazard signs around it, a second voice joined Sherman’s. “The problem is, bananas all ripen at once, but most folks only eat one or two at a time. The first few in the bunch are always too green, and the last few are too brown.”

“That voice is awfully familiar,” I said.

The shot cut to a little kiosk on main street that used to sell umbrellas. They did pretty good business until the owner started cutting corners and getting umbrellas that flipped inside out at the first touch of an errant breeze. As Sherman approached the kiosk, which was now painted a cheerful yellow, he said, “Only the in-between bananas are just right…which is why we realized that what this city needs is a banana exchange!”

Sherman panned his shot across a scattering of bananas—green, yellow and brown. “Take A Banana, Leave A Banana is a nonprofit community effort to minimize food waste and enhance the overall banana experience of Pinyin Bay. The concept is simple: exchange your over- and under-ripe bananas for the ripeness of your choosing. From planning your lunches for the week to making a huge batch of banana bread, the perfect bananas are right at your fingertips at TabLab! And best of all, this service is free, thanks to our generous donor: my good friend Beauregard Irving Fitzgerald.”

The camera swung around to the sponsor. And the cheerful, handsome smiling guy in the banana T-shirt was none other than my fellow competitive hot dog eater, Biff. He beamed proudly. “You know me, Sherman, I love nothing better than solving problems! I’m just glad for the opportunity give back to the community.”

Blig-Blog played on—more cringeworthy shots of Sherman pawing through refuse—but I was too busy reveling in the sensation of a bold new idea taking hold to be icked out by the spectacle. “Yuri…are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“That only a fool would dream of touching a banana abandoned by a random stranger?”

“Upstanding. Decisive. Likable. And, most importantly, someone who gets along really well with Spellcrafters. He may not be the sharpest cheese in the deli case, but from where I sit, it looks like our best candidate is…Biff.”

Hopefully, Biff would agree.

11

Yuri

I was not entirely convinced we should throw our support behind such a simple-minded man. But in light of the other candidate—far too clever for my comfort—it felt much safer to back someone incapable of manipulation and treachery.

Dixon ran through the video yet again, then said, “The time stamp on this clip is pretty recent. Maybe we can still find Biff over by his banana exchange making sure everything’s running smoothly. Or should that be…smoothie?”

That pun did not even merit a roll of the eyes.

We mapped the banana stand’s location. “TabLab” was on a quiet corner near an aging car wash which was a notorious spot for extramarital flings. Apparently the cycle was so slow it wore down the paint finish…but it gave you ample time to rearrange your clothing before your car rolled out the other side.

“Do not get your hopes up,” I told Dixon. “There is only so much oversight this ridiculous venture of his might need. We’re likely to find nothing more than a sticky table scattered with a few half-rotten….”

I trailed off as I turned the corner and spotted the banana stand—engulfed in a cheerful mob. The kiosk was so crowded, we had to park nearly two blocks away, unheard of in Pinyin Bay. The closer we drew to the banana exchange, the more animated the crowd became. A diverse bunch of people, Handless and Spellcrafter alike, lined up with bananas clutched to their breasts, eager to make a trade.

Dixon said, “Looks like TabLab is a pretty big hit! Just goes to show, never underestimate the power of free.”

I scanned the crowd with a growing sense of unease. “Why did those people bring folding chairs? And what are they doing with that grill?”

“Tailgating!” Dixon answered my doubtful scowl with a reassuring nod. “I might not be much for sports, but I can graze my way through a parking lot with the best of ’em.”

Indeed. It appeared that people had settled in for the long haul. By the time we reached the stand, hints of grilled banana perfumed the air. These people must be reserving their front row seats at a debacle, I decided. Crowds love nothing more than to see someone fail.

The throng was thickest directly around the stand, several bodies deep. I was sure that any moment now, things would turn ugly. Except that even amid the clamor and chaos, everyone looked unaccountably happy.

“Can I take a larger banana than I leave?” someone asked.

Another called out, “A ripeness chart, from green to brown, would really help us make up our minds.”

“Is it possible to end up with my original banana if I come back tomorrow?” wondered a third.

How on earth such a simple concept generated so many questions was beyond me. And in the midst of the hubbub stood Biff, looking inexplicably cheerful and impossibly patient.

“Take what you need and leave what you can spare,” he told them. “I replenish the bananas every morning if our selection needs a little bolster. The chart is a great idea—I’ll tap an expert in PBU’s agriculture department and see what they come up with. And does anyone really own a banana, or is it just passing through?”

I waited for the mob to realize Biff was an idiot. A personable idiot, no doubt…but an idiot nonetheless. And yet, the crowd showed no signs of turning on him.

It must be the novelty, I decided. Once the shine wore off, people would not be so enthusiastic. No doubt the car wash owner would agree.

We had worked our way toward the front when a woman clutching an armload of brown bananas bounced off my chest. A banana pinwheeled into the air, but I managed to catch it without squashing the thing. As Dixon made an appreciative murmur about my ninja reflexes, I handed the banana back to the woman. Our eyes locked, and we realized we’d met before.

Joan had been our competition when we were hoping to infiltrate Bruno’s Brownerie—and she’d also been the only applicant who could actually bake. “I’m not surprised to run into a fellow baking aficionado here!” she said. “You must’ve had a sudden urge for banana bread. Isn’t it wonderful to be able to find a properly ripe banana at such short notice? I can’t imagine going back to the old way of doing things…the strategizing, the planning, the possibility that your bananas will all get eaten as they’re ripening on the counter….”

The chance of bananas becoming banana bread in our home without divine intervention was practically zero. But before I could say as much, an uneasy murmur swept through the mob as a police car rolled past…then turned on its flashing lights and pulled over.

Pinyin Bay law enforcement is nothing like Russia. Old habits are hard to break, though, and I saw no reason to abandon a lifetime of caution. In my homeland, corruption is so widespread that bribes are the norm. Here, extortion is much less overt…though it does still exist. Everyone has their price, though it may be intangible, even instinctive. Pinyin Bay officers took their payment in deferential treatment and admiration. They expected to be addressed in a tone of respect—whether they had earned it or not. So, with the right currency—the currency of flattery—they could all be bought. All but the policeman who emerged from the flashing vehicle.

Officer Hotti looked more like a propaganda rendition of a police officer than an actual human being. His jaw was square, his shoulders broad, his gaze alight with intelligence. Even the single curl of dark hair at his forehead looked too perfect to be real.

The crowd parted for Officer Hotti as he strode up to the banana exchange, purposeful and confident. Only once he had passed completely by did people dare to check out his posterior. By the time he reached the banana kiosk, a hush of anticipation had fallen over the crowd. Indeed, even Joan (who could prattle on about baking-related matters forever) had gone silent.

“Who is in charge of this establishment?” Hotti asked in a clear and confident voice.

His tone might have intimidated a smarter man…but Biff apparently saw nothing to be concerned about. “That would be me!”

“This event is taking place in a no-gather zone. I’ll have to ask you to break it up before anyone gets hurt.”

Undaunted, Biff pulled out a certificate and handed it over to the cop. “Actually, that would be a problem—if this particular corner weren’t zoned for moderate to heavy foot traffic, which it is. My lawyers worked it all out. So long as we don’t add live music, we’re good to go.”

In Russia, such a reply would be taken as a challenge—one which the challenger had no chance of winning. But Hotti simply read through the paperwork, nodded once, and returned it to Biff.

“And is there any Spellcraft on the premises?”

“I’m not sure,” Biff said. “Lots of folks carry around Craftings for luck.”

The policeman strode over to a helpful set of instructions posted on the side of the kiosk and lifted the paper gingerly with one finger. “But nothing attached to the stand? People do seem unusually taken with it. There’d better not be any coercion taking place, not on my watch.”

Biff was unperturbed. “Never underestimate the drawing power of a good piece of fruit.”

“Well, then. Everything seems to be in order.” Hotti let the poster flutter back into place, then held out a hand, which Biff shook vigorously. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

The crowd let out a collective sigh of relief as Hotti turned and strode back to his squad car. He paused only once, to tell the tailgaters to move their grill another two feet from the closest building, but that was all.

Dixon surveyed the happy crowd, and his face fell. “It’s no use, Yuri. Who would give up something as awesome as this banana exchange to sequester themselves in that stuffy old mayor’s office? We’ll just have to go with Dr. Slaughter and hope we can talk her out of saving lives.”

Normally I would agree—not that a ridiculous banana stand was preferable to City Hall, but that Biff was a terrible choice to begin with. However…something in the way he’d handled the stoic policeman gave me pause.

I said, “I may wonder about Glenda’s medical recommendations, but it seems she is able to make clear decisions where doctoring is concerned. However, I suspect running a city would be too far outside her comfort zone. Whereas Biff…” we spied him replenishing the bananas with a smile on his face while the crowd around him scrambled to make their exchanges. I sighed. “Biff is calm under pressure. Probably because he does not know any better—but he is calm nonetheless. He is friendly. Enthusiastic. Popular. But your uncle has never cared for him. Let us hope Fonzo can see past that, for all our sakes.”

12

Dixon

Three potential candidates. Each one had a teensy little flaw—okay…a big, honkin’ flaw—but they each had their good qualities, too. And wouldn’t any one of them be preferable to Emery Flint?

I could only hope the voting public would see it that way.

There was no way I could possibly deal with making that call. Uncle Fonzo would need to choose.

We headed back to the house to tell my uncle what we’d discovered. I’d been hoping to find him in a receptive frame of mind, doing something contemplative like sipping a cup of green tea while he raked designs in a little zen garden…never mind that he doesn’t own a zen garden and the only tea-drinker in the house is Yuri. Instead, I came home to a chaos that was nearly at banana-stand levels. The living room was in a tizzy. Uncle Fonzo was yelling out orders. Sabina was yelling even louder orders. And Vano was standing in the corner holding a TV antenna in the air.

“To the right,” Sabina snapped. “No, not the upper right, the right-right. Geez, Vano, get with the program!”

“No, no, no, you’re making it worse,” Uncle Fonzo insisted. “Obviously it’s the davenport blocking the signal! Hold it straight overhead and just tilt it toward the recliner, gently, like you’re decanting a fine wine.”

“Not this again,” Yuri muttered.

Every time it rained, the antenna seemed to drop a channel or two. Never the silly shopping channels or news reports, either, but only the game show and sitcom ones that anyone actually wanted to watch.

“Give me that.” Yuri snatched the antenna from Vano’s unresisting hands. He jabbed it in various directions while Uncle Fonzo and Sabina called out contradictory suggestions.

“Toward the window,” said my uncle.

Sabina countered, “Up high.”

“What’s so important you can’t just stream it later?” I wondered.

“It’s that dumb election,” my cousin told me. “Thanks to some weird rule they just discovered where it has to be on a Tuesday, they’re moving it up nearly a week.”

A rule…or a loophole? No self-respecting Spellcrafter in the Pinyin Bay circuit would Craft for Mr. Flint, but he could very well have sweet-talked an out-of-towner into doing his dirty work.

Vano rubbed a shoulder. The antenna does get pretty heavy after a while. “Candidates are being announced on the local news channel as they get on the ballot. At least, that’s the idea. But so far, no one’s stepped up to challenge Flint.”

“About that,” I said. “We did have a few options—”

“Higher, Yuri!” Sabina demanded. “C’mon, put your back into it.”

Uncle Fonzo mopped his brow. He was using the little yellow onesie from Venus Monger, but he was so frazzled, no one dared call him on it. “So long as it’s not Flint, I’m game.”

“They are most definitely not Emery Flint,” I said. “In fact, we’ve found three candidates with lots of, er, potential. I’m sure that one of them—”

A burst of static came from the TV, and my cousin barked, “Higher, darn it—higher!” When Yuri couldn’t figure out a way to extend his arm any further without dislocating his shoulder joint, Sabina hopped up on a footstool, grabbed the antenna from his hand, and thrust it into the air like the Statue of Liberty. “Like this!”

And with that enthusiastic gesture…we discovered that amniotic fluid truly was nothing at all like peppermint tea.

Vano rushed to Sabina’s side so fast his motions were a blur, and he managed to catch her before her knees buckled. “Get hold of the midwife!” he gasped.

Uncle Fonzo scrambled for his phone and made the call. Apparently the midwife was out on parole, since she answered. Unfortunately, part of that parole involved an ankle bracelet and an absurdly steep penalty for leaving the house.

“You two go pack a bag,” my uncle told Vano and Sabina. “I’ll start the car.” And then he turned to me and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Dixon, my boy—can I count on you?”

“Absolutely!”

I was so eager to find out which baby-duty I’d been picked for, I was nearly beside myself with anticipation…and so it took me a moment to absorb what Uncle Fonzo was actually asking. He said, “I can’t be in two places at once—and right now, my little girl needs me. Which means you’ll need to handle this whole mayor business yourself.”

“You, erm, uh…. Wow. Me?”

“If Flint takes this election, I’ll be up a creek without a paddle. Don’t you see—the Head needs to keep an eye on the local government, make sure the community is a safe place for the members of the circuit. I’m a flexible guy, but if there’s one man on the planet I can never in a million years deal with, it’s Flint. What’s worse, I’m sure he hasn’t given up trying to steal the ability to Scribe for himself. Just think how risky it would be for every last one of our people if he ever came to power.”

Geez. No pressure.

“I know you’ll choose well.” Uncle Fonzo gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Just do whatever it takes to make sure your candidate wins.”

“You are telling him to Craft,” Yuri said. “Even in America, I imagine the law would not take kindly to such a thing.”

“It goes without saying you should be discreet,” my uncle said as Sabina and Vano hustled themselves out the door. He grabbed his keys and hurried out right behind them, but paused in the doorway to add, “But just to be safe, don’t name any names.”

Normally, I’d point out that I would never dream of penning a proper name on a Crafting, even one commissioned by the subject. It was simply not done. But I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures. And when the antenna rolled to a stop half-under the TV tray that holds all of the remotes (plus a couple of spares that don’t actually control anything), the screen flickered, then filled with the smug face of Emery Flint.

My blood ran cold at the sight of him, and the fateful night at Precious Greetings came rushing back, from the tarantula trap to my uncle’s mutilated quill. But worst of all was the memory of Yuri enslaved, straining against the bonds of a particularly pernicious Crafting.

“Your uncle is right,” Yuri said—and I half-expected a bolt of lightning to knock down the house. “Flint cannot win. At any cost.”

“But each of our candidates has pros and cons—how will I pick the right one?”

“Maybe the decision does not rest with you…but with the volshebstvo.”

These past several months, Uncle Fonzo had been training Drew Draws in the art of the Seer. Not the actual artwork part—everything my uncle tries to draw ends up looking like a rotten potato, or maybe a confused sheep. But that was fine—Drew could actually draw. What he needed to learn was harnessing the elusive energy of Spellcraft. And Uncle Fonzo knew plenty about that.

Lately, the dining room (normally a spot for card games and TV dinners) looked more like a makeshift art studio. Papers, pens, paints. Anything a Seer could want. Scriveners can’t do their thing without their magical quill, but Seers can work with whatever was capable of making a mark. Yuri grabbed a paintbrush at random and snagged the nearest set of watercolors. It wasn’t the tool that mattered—it was the will he was trying to channel.

Watching Yuri paint never gets old. He hunches over the paper and encircles it with his right arm as if he’s protecting it from an impending storm. His brow furrows fiercely, and his focus narrows to the paper as if it’s the only thing in the world that matters. Maybe, for that moment when he’s calling down the Spellcraft, it truly is.

Is there anything in the physical world with more pure potential than a blank piece of paper? It’s the canvas of a Seer, poised to receive the power of Spellcraft. It’s the page of the Scrivener, waiting to be focused to the desired outcome. It’s practically nothing…but that nothing is on the thrilling cusp of becoming something.

Yuri stared at that paper until I started to squirm. While he’s never been one to dash off any old thing, this time he was concentrating particularly hard. There was just too much at stake to get it wrong.

He dampened the paper first, then laid down a few strokes of watercolor pigment, wet on wet. It wasn’t the way he typically worked with his opaque gouaches, in which the colors stayed exactly where he put them. I couldn’t quite make out what he was painting since his arm was in the way, but I had every confidence that whatever Yuri put on the page, I’d be able to Scribe.

By the time he set down the brush, a sheen of sweat had settled over his brow. But instead of sitting back in his chair and maybe letting his vertebrae settle in with a nice, satisfying crack, he remained hunched protectively over the work.

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” I finally exclaimed when I couldn’t take it anymore. “Let’s see what you Saw!”

With something between a grimace and a wince, Yuri drew away from the painting.

A single gray blob.

I might not be so brazen as to suggest he’d taken a play out of Rufus Clahd’s playbook (mainly because I don’t really understand sports analogies) but I’d never seen Yuri paint anything quite so…nonrepresentational.

I could’ve said it was subtle. Maybe even interesting. But Yuri really didn’t appreciate it when you sugar-coated the truth. “I could run upstairs and get your usual paints,” I finally said.

He scrubbed a hand over his weary face. “It would do us no good. The volshebstvo felt wild today, difficult to control. Any new attempts I made without resting first would only be twice as bad.”

But I’d been counting on the Seen to help me figure out what I should be Scribing! Look at that blob—who’s the best man for the job? Not only was the meter appalling, but the right man might well be a woman. I hate to think what kind of loopholes that would poke through the voljibby-jab.

I defocused my eyes and waited for the telltale tingle in my writing hand, but all that did was send the blob out of focus…which looked pretty much the same as it did in focus, being that it was still a blob.

Yuri gave it a poke. “It is still wet. Maybe once it dries….”

From the living room, a snippet of news broadcast pushed through all the static. “—if no one comes forth before City Hall closes today, Emery Flint will run uncontested—”

Frantically, I said, “Even if this was the best Seen in the world, there’s no time to wait for it to dry and gather up all those signatures.”

Yuri jumped to his feet and strode out of the room. Before I could figure out whether or not I should run after him, he charged right back in with Sabina’s blowdryer. “Stand aside,” he said as he jammed the plug into a nearby socket. “I do not like to rush the volshebstvo…but it has left me no choice.”

I froze in place as the blowdryer roared to life. Yuri may be the Seer, but I’d been trained my whole life to treat a Seen like it was worth its weight in gold—which it literally was, depending on the size of the paper and the current state of the futures market. I might power-dry a soggy Crafting to see if it was still active. But never an unscribed Seen, sizzling with nascent potential.

The suspense was too much to bear. By the time the blowdryer fell silent, I’d clenched every clenchable part of my body and squinched my eyes shut tight. I must have been waiting for an affirmation from Yuri. But seconds ticked by, and the all-clear never came.

Cautiously, I pried open just one eye…and found Yuri staring down at the Seen with an unreadable expression. Okay, it was a scowl. Yuri’s scowls can mean any number of things: concentration, frustration, even constipation. In this particular case, though, when I saw the dried and finished Seen, I realized it was a scowl of confirmation.

Watercolor acts a lot less like gouache than you might think, especially if it’s been diluted. As the water is forced out, the pigments move and blend, break and bloom. Here, what had once been a simple gray blob was now transformed into a fragile, delicate, subtly colored vista. And there could be no mistaking the contour of the bluish-gray shape in the center…because it looked exactly like an aerial shot of Pinyin Bay.

13

In our time together, Yuri has painted some incredibly stunning Seens—but this one was a real masterpiece! The delicacy of the line, the subtlety of the color, the serendipity of the pigments repelling or mixing to create waves and rocks and even a little stripe that couldn’t have been anything other than a tiny little wolverine fence.

It was almost too pretty to Scribe. But not only was the whole city in danger of being taken over by Emery Flint—my Scribing arm was all a-tingle. By the time I’d inked my quill, the words came to me as clearly as the lyrics to a favorite lullaby.

Pinyin Bay deserves a mayor
who’s honest, principled and fair

It sounded a lot better than Anyone but Flint!

My calligraphy was plain and measured. It was a sober occasion, and even the most restrained flourish would take away from the intricacy of the Seen behind it. As I dotted the final letter-i, the Spellcraft-tingles rushed down my arm, through my Quill and onto the page. But instead of feeling drained, I found myself energized. It was like a runner’s high! Minus the sweaty gym socks. Plus a cockatoo quill.

Yuri, unfortunately, was still scowling. “You have done what your uncle asked of you, not naming names, and even the most vindictive judge could not fault this Crafting. But these words can apply to each of our three choices. None of them are liars. Each of them has strong principles and beliefs. And all of them, in their own way, are working to make the world a more balanced and equitable place.”

And any one of them would be a way better mayor than Mr. Flint. As I searched for a good sheet of paper to start listing our pros and cons, another snatch of news broadcast sounded from the living room. “—candidates require two hundred signatures to get on the ballot.”

Yuri’s eyes went wide. “We only have half an hour to collect these signatures. Even if your whole family gets to forging them right this moment—”

“Actually,” I realized, “that won’t be necessary. There’s a place where a bunch of people are just milling around, and I think they’d be happy to lend a hand.”

The banana exchange was still in full swing by time we jogged up to the stand. While Yuri circulated the clipboards (and forcefully entreated people to sign fast), I pitched the whole mayor idea to our chosen candidate.

Luckily, it was pretty easy to convince Biff he was the right guy for the job. All I had to do was mention how much good he could do for the community—and the fact that he’d get to wield a big pair of novelty scissors at any ribbon-cutting ceremony—and he was totally on board.

As the clock ticked down, we bounded up the block, through the scraggly dog park, and across Main Street—taking care to use the crosswalk so as not to incur the world’s most inopportune jaywalking ticket. I heaved myself up the City Hall steps two at a time with the signatures clutched to my chest, and just as the octogenarian clerk was tottering toward the entrance to lock up for the night, Yuri flung himself at the door. As he held it open, I skidded across the threshold and thrust the signatures into the clerk’s wrinkled hands.

He was none too thrilled to stick around and count them. But according to the letter of the law, our signatures only needed to be submitted by closing time. Not counted. (Plus, there were fifty lines per page, so it didn’t take long after all to see we’d met the requirement with a few names to spare.)

“Done and done.” I dusted my hands together. “Now let’s head over to the midwife’s and greet our new little niece…nephew…first cousin once removed.”

Yuri’s eyes softened. “Agreed—let us greet the baby.”

***

We climbed into the truck, and I relayed the address Uncle Fonzo had texted me. “It was really nice of the midwife to see Sabina in her own home.”

“Nice, or pragmatic?” Yuri said. “With the ankle bracelet, she had no other choice.”

“Anyway, I’m sure that’s a good thing. Could you imagine poor Sabina having her baby on the davenport with Drew Draws scribbling away in the dining room and Uncle Fonzo’s poker buddies smoking cigars on the porch?”

Yuri shuddered.

As we made our way over, I tried to picture what sort of environment a midwife would call home. “I’ll bet her house is an oasis of calm. Clean lines, soothing colors, boring artwork, that sort of thing.”

Yuri steered the truck around the corner and nearly snapped an axle as we careened off a massive pothole.

Welcome to Scrivener Village.

We drove a few more crooked blocks, and turned a blind corner…and there, between a mustache groomer and a second-hand flip-flop outlet, was a squat brick bungalow owned by the circuit’s midwife, Bessie Hackles.

While the buildings all around had the typical ramshackle look so common in this part of town, Bessie’s home was neat, quiet, even sedate. The lawn was trimmed, the pavement was swept, and the welcome mat was perfectly centered at the front door. “You see, Yuri?” I said. “Everything has a way of working out for the—”

A burst of gunfire sounded from the other side of the door, followed by the wail of a police siren. Inside the house.

“It’s the TV,” Yuri said, then proceeded to knock. Loudly.

Uncle Fonzo shoved open the door and pulled me into a rough hug as the massive cloud of sound enveloped us. Helicopters, and a distant explosion. “Great work getting Biff on the ballot! I knew I could count on you.”

“So you’re not upset I chose Biff?”

“He wasn’t son-in-law material, that’s for sure. But he’ll make a nice, pliant Mayor!”

Uncle Fonzo really did get along with just about everyone.

He ushered us into the midwife’s house and closed the door behind us. Once we’d crowded into the tiny entryway, I saw the source of all the sirens and explosions. The hallway opened into an orderly living room. The couch, coffee table and love seat were at perpendicular angles and the knickknacks on the book shelves had been aligned with great precision. The focus of the room was an ancient console TV that could double as a Winnebago. As I took in the massive tube in all its Technicolor glory, a helicopter in a rain of gunfire exploded…followed by a thin cackle from the opposite side of the room.

I turned to behold an old crone of a Scrivener ensconced in a floral-upholstered swivel rocker. She had an afghan across her lap and a bowl of cheese puffs on her knee. Her hair was steel gray, caught in a severe bun, and her eyes were pale with cataracts. Something else blew up on the TV, and she howled with delight. She may have had only one tooth—but at least it was a big one.

Yuri made the little kowabunga surfer gesture he does when he’s feeling particularly superstitious, but the old woman didn’t seem to notice.

“That’s Mother Felicity,” Uncle Fonzo said. “Bessie’s mom. Happy as a clam so long as she can watch her shows.”

“It’s an honor to meet you,” I told her.

“And she’s pretty much deaf,” Uncle Fonzo said.

“It’s an honor to meet you!” I said, several decibels louder. “I’m Dixon Penn, and this is my grown man friend, Yuri!” Mother Felicity was pretty wrapped up in her shoot-em-up helicopter siren car chase and I couldn’t quite say if she’d heard me or not, so I decided to leave her to it.

More gunfire, followed by a scream. Except the scream had come not from the TV…but the next room. “Sabina’s in labor for real this time,” Uncle Fonzo said. “But according to Bessie, it will take a while.”

While my uncle went on ahead, Yuri bent to my ear and said, “Enough time to get her to a real hospital.”

I wrapped my hand around his (casually suppressing the “horn” sign) and said, “You mean a Handless hospital. Look, Yuri, I’ve spent more time be-bopping around the world of the Handless than any other Scrivener I know, and so I totally get how some of our traditions come across a little convoluted and backward. But seeing our ways with fresh eyes, I’ve actually come to appreciate how we stick to our own values. Sabina wanted the midwife. We need to respect her decision.”

Though when another strangled wail punctuated my argument, I could tell it wouldn’t be easy.

The dining room held both the dining and kitchen tables, with the chairs all stacked up to leave a clear path through the room. And where the kitchen table would normally be, a hospital bed was set up. I averted my eyes from the stirrups…but unfortunately, I couldn’t un-see them.

Thankfully, my cousin wasn’t currently using said stirrups. She was waddling a slow lap around the room, with Vano supporting her on one side, and a drill sergeant of a middle-aged woman on the other.

Bessie Hackles had short-cropped hair, no-nonsense glasses, and plain clothes covered by a disposable plastic smock. Her sleeves were rolled up, and her forearms were just as ropy as Yuri’s, though not quite as hairy. No doubt she was periodically addressed as “sir” by many a confused store clerk. When we came in, she glanced at us and barked, “Leave any Craftings you’re carrying at the door. It’s bad luck to Craft for a child until the head’s all the way out.”

“See, Yuri?” I squeezed his hand. “She’s totally done this before.”

Yuri was not reassured. “Should Sabina be walking around?”

With great authority, Bessie replied, “This is her first labor, and the contractions are still fifteen minutes apart. We could be here for several hours.”

“We’d better be!” my cousin insisted. “I’ve always wanted to name a kid Wednesday.” This was news to me, but I didn’t contradict her. “I can’t have it on a Monday.”

The baby appeared to be onboard with Sabina’s timetable and was in no hurry to greet us. Mother Felicity tottered off to bed, and midnight came and went. By the time the wee hours of Tuesday morning rolled around, the baby was still firmly ensconced…and I saw the logic in all the walking. Worn out, Sabina rolled onto the hospital bed to catnap between contractions while an exhausted Vano collapsed in a hammock on the back porch and my uncle snoozed on the couch.

Bessie said Yuri and I might as well go home and sleep in our own bed—but since she knew how Spellcrafters could be, she wasn’t surprised we insisted on sticking around. We curled up together on the rug under the dining room table to be sure we’d be nearby if my cousin needed anything…though after the third or fourth wakeup to Sabina’s grunting and panting, I just started incorporating the noises into some vivid dreams of being chased by an out-of-breath wolverine.

I woke to the sound of early-morning cartoons. Really violent ones, with more explosions, followed by “boing” sounds and sad trombones, all of it punctuated by the wheezy cackles of Mother Felicity. As I crawled out from under the table and brushed myself off, my stomach growled and I realized just how long it had been since I’d last eaten. “I’ll go make a breakfast run,” I announced to the house at large.

“No need,” Bessie said. “Whatever’s outside is fair game.”

Yuri cut his eyes to me…but it was way too early to pretend I knew what that was supposed to mean. Luckily Uncle Fonzo did. He pried himself off the couch and said, “C’mon, kiddo, I’ll need the extra pair of hands.” To the cheerful sound of cartoon violence, I followed him out the front door…and found myself knee-deep in bins, bowls and baskets. Uncle Fonzo surveyed the bounty. “Not a bad porching, if I do say so myself.”

“Porching,” I repeated, trying on the word for size. “I had no idea that was even a thing.”

“Why would you? When Sabina was born, you were only a toddler. You had no reason to think food didn’t just appear on the doorstep every day of the year.”

There were cookies and casseroles, sandwiches and stews—everything decorated with festive ribbons and bows, with cards tucked inside wishing the new baby a lifetime of happiness and luck. All of it in flawless calligraphy. Some thoughtful soul had even left us a big urn of coffee.

We carted the haul inside and arranged it on the dining room table I’d spent the night underneath. It was a far cry from cold, dried out take-and-bake pizza. Unfortunately, Sabina was too preoccupied to enjoy the goodies. As I picked a stray ribbon from my sleeve, she gave a strangled cry and told Vano a good dozen ways in which she’d like to kill him.

By the time our bellies were so full we all bore a striking resemblance to Sabina, it became clear that the baby still wasn’t quite imminent, and our thoughts turned to the election. Good thing Mother Felicity hobbled off to the bathroom every half hour. (No pelvic floor, according to Bessie…which neither Yuri nor I really wanted to know.) Wifi was patchy and cell service no better, so her periodic pee breaks were the only time we could switch to the local news and see how Biff’s mayoral bid was faring.

In the exit polls, a few folks did admit to voting for Emery Flint—not that they particularly wanted a felon for a mayor, but they just weren’t a big fan of bananas. Nonetheless, Biff was something of a local celebrity, and most voters were eager to have him installed at City Hall.

In between election updates and contractions, Bessie saw to it that we didn’t just lounge around. She put us all to work, my uncle washing windows, Yuri beating the carpets, me mopping the floor—and Vano sitting around looking carelessly fetching. He was also getting his non-Scribing hand squeezed nearly off by my cousin, though, so I supposed I wouldn’t have wanted to trade places.

“Anytime now,” Bessie finally said around nightfall—and she wasn’t talking about the election results.

“Not yet!” Sabina insisted. “Tuesday is a ridiculous name for a kid!” In fact, she was so determined to hold that baby in until the clock struck midnight, the rest of us started to worry. My parents had shown up by that time for moral support—or to avail themselves of the porching—and they even stopped taunting each other for the time being about who would find the kee-poo.

My father said, “Just tell Sabina her contractions are farther apart then they really are until she thinks it’s midnight.”

“You’ve never been in labor,” my mother informed the menfolk. “Sabina’s not gonna stop and do calculus.” Especially since she wasn’t capable of it even without a baby pushing out of her swimsuit area.

Bessie agreed. “She must think it’s at least Friday by now. I’ll put 12:01 on the birth certificate and no one need be the wiser.”

That might have worked, had it not been for the news now breaking through Mother Felicity’s blaring programs to periodically reassure Pinyin Bay that they expected the votes to be counted by midnight. “I can make her a hot toddy,” Uncle Fonzo offered. “Send her off to bed.”

Bessie shook her head. “Don’t get Mother started—you think the shows are loud? Just wait until she gets a drink in her and starts to sing. You don’t appreciate how disturbing sea shanties are until you hear them at the top of her lungs.”

A strangled scream from the kitchen—followed by a volley of particularly colorful cursing—cut through the motorcycle chase raging through the living room TV screen.

“I’ll just ask her nicely to go to bed,” I decided, and headed over to try and reason with Mother Felicity.

The old woman had her cloudy eyes glued to the screen, where a motorcycle hung in mid-air for a moment, and then careened over a cliff, hit a ravine, and landed with a loud crunch. She let out a joyous cackle.

“Say, would you look at the time,” I hollered over the noise. “Sure is getting late. I’ll bet your snug, cozy bed is sounding really appealing right about now.”

Mother Felicity’s bluish cataract gaze fell on me—wow, I was actually making progress!—but instead of agreeing with me, she just pointed at me and let out another hearty cackle.

Startled, I fell back a step or two…and Uncle Fonzo gestured at a stray mop-string clinging to my shoulder. “How’d that get there?” I wondered. It wasn’t as if I’d been mopping all that vigorously. “Random things have been sticking to me so much lately, you’d swear I was wearing a velcro jacket.”

The soundtrack on the action show went low and dramatic as the motorcyclist clawed his way out from the wreckage in the ravine. To the sound of the tense violins—in the first time I’d actually heard her speak—old Mother Felicity declared,

“He who has this has the way to

Take the family well in Hand

Others must not countermand

Or doubt the wisdom of the kee-poo.”

There was a moment of stunned silence…and then the TV motorcycle exploded.

14

Yuri

Dixon’s eyes went wide in wonder, and then guilt, as he tried to brush the string from his shoulder—a string which was clearly in the shape of a hand.

As had been the strand of garbage clinging to him from Bolter’s dumpster, I realized. And the bit of yarn from the Buick’s afghan. While Dixon’s mother and father turned their little corner of Pinyin Bay inside out searching for the kee-poo, it had been stuck on him all along.

His parents were currently in the kitchen with Sabina, whose cursing had drowned out the old woman’s singsong proclamation. But Fonzo and I both knew she was right. Dixon had been chosen. Not his mother. Not his father. Dixon.

“Obviously, Mother Felicity is mixed up,” he said nervously. “Either one of my parents is infinitely more qualified than I am to be the next Hand.”

“Hold on now, kiddo,” Fonzo said. “I was only a few years older than you when your grandfather decided he’d had enough and named me the next Hand. I have every confidence you can do it. But…if you’re truly not up for the job, I’ll go stick the kee-poo on one of your folks. It’ll be our little secret.”

Not only was he offering to relieve Dixon of the responsibility of taking up his mantle. Fonzo was also willing to bear the burden of choosing the next Hand himself.

Judging by the look of concern on Dixon’s face, he might very well take his uncle up on the offer.

But I could not let him do that just because he was overwhelmed. I caught his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Dixon, before you second-guess the volshebstvo, think about the arguments each of your parents made against the other. Your father is not creative…but you are. Your mother is not personable. But you are. You have the important traits they lack.”

Dixon winced. “That’s pretty harsh….”

“Think,” I insisted. “Remember everything you and I considered when we were choosing our candidate for mayor. Sherman was filled with enthusiasm, even passion, for his beliefs. That is you. Glenda was intelligent and capable. That is also you. And Biff was friendly, outgoing, and dedicated to making Pinyin Bay a better place. All of these things describe you. I may not always see eye to eye with the volshebstvo, but in this case, I am in agreement. There is no one better to lead the family.”

The old woman chortled and said, “You passed the test…the kee-poo knows best.”

I released Dixon’s hand and surreptitiously warded her away with the sign of the koza.

In the kitchen, Sabina gave a strangled cry—and this time, Bessie barked out, “It’s time to push! Just like we practiced: four, three, two, one—push! Four, three, two, one….”

It was a wonder Pinyin Bay’s Scrivener children didn’t come out ready to march in a parade. But apparently the woman knew what she was doing. Sabina stopped complaining about the tardiness of midnight and went about the business of having her child.

I am none too fond of the word miracle, but considering the sense of elation I felt at the prospect of this child coming into the world, I could think of no better description. I stopped worrying about the election—after all, our Crafting would ensure a just mayor—and crept into the kitchen with the rest of the family.

Vano bent over Sabina, squeezing her hand and stroking her sweaty brow. “You got this, Sabina—just a few more pushes! You’re gonna be the best mom ever.”

Even I knew that was a stretch…but the way Vano gazed at her with total adoration, I suspected he believed it.

Dixon was the last Penn to slip into the room, studiously avoiding a glance between the stirrups. It must have been a challenge, given how eager he was to see the baby. But there were some things that should remain a mystery. He slipped an arm through mine and pressed up against my side. “They called the election,” he said quietly. “Beauregard Irving Fitzgerald is Pinyin Bay’s new mayor.”

A great victory for the city’s Spellcrafters, no doubt. But at the moment, the news paled in comparison to the arrival of the new baby.

It was just past eleven when Bessie Hackles stopped shouting marching orders, cracked her knuckles, and had Sabina give a great, final push.

And then…the newest member of the family greeted the world.

As the midwife cleaned the baby with a warm, wet towel, a tiny cry could be heard, even above the sirens and gunfire ringing through the living room. “It’s a girl,” Bessie said brusquely. “A healthy baby girl.”

I looked eagerly toward the baby…and caught sight of the umbilical cord instead. My vision went gray around the edges and my ears began to ring. When my sight cleared, I was seated in the dining room with Dixon chafing my wrist. “Oh good, you’re with us again! I felt a little faint myself for a minute there.”

“I did not faint.”

“And the placenta—who knew?—like something out of Sherman Bolter’s dumpster diving excursions.”

My vision grayed again. When I shook it off, Dixon was saying, “…but thanks to the TV constantly butting in with the election countdown, there’s no way we can convince my cousin she made it past midnight. Maybe you can make her feel better.”

Something no one has ever suggested to me. “How?”

“By imparting some comforting Russian wisdom, of course.”

Perhaps I was still unconscious. But no. My mind could never have invented the exuberant uproar of the situation—Dixon’s parents bickering, the TV blaring, the old crone cackling, and Sabina complaining. As I made my way back to the kitchen steadying myself on Dixon’s shoulder, my eyes went right to the new baby cradled in Sabina’s arms—pink and healthy, with chubby cheeks and a shock of Scrivener-black hair. Somehow, in the midst of all the hubbub, the little one slept the sleep of pure contentment.

Maybe she’d experienced so much commotion, even in the womb, she was inured to it all. Or maybe Spellcrafters have an inborn knack for thriving in the face of chaos.

Vano gazed at the baby with the same rapt adoration he gave her mother. “It’s Wednesday in Australia,” he offered.

“Does she look Australian to you?” Sabina demanded, though without any real ire. “Wednesday’s a stupid name anyhow. Clearly, this baby is a Tuesday.”

At least she didn’t name the baby after Biff. That would have been awkward.

Dixon came up on tiptoe and pressed his lips to my ear. “We’ll tell them about the kee-poo later. I wouldn’t want to upstage little Tuesday’s arrival.”

So, he had decided to take on the duties of the Hand after all. I had meant what I told him before: he truly was the best one for the job. And knowing his parents, they would get over the sting of not being the next Hand soon enough. They were proud of Dixon already, and as the Hand, he’d give them even more reason to be pleased with all he’d accomplished. One could even argue that by choosing Dixon, the kee-poo chose them both.

But for now, all the family really cared about was the new baby.

An overjoyed Fonzo shoved a cigar into my hand, though thankfully, he didn’t expect me to actually light it. I watched him head out to the backyard with Johnny to smoke the foul things, and wondered what it would mean for him to head the Pinyin Bay circuit. The Penn family had always been somewhere in the middle of the pack—respectable enough, though no great success. Joining with the Shirques was bound to be interesting, to say the least.

“While I call Nana, did you want to hold the baby?” Vano asked Dixon—and if that didn’t soften Dixon’s disposition toward him, nothing would. Dixon’s face was alight with wonder as Sabina placed Tuesday in his arms. He snuggled up against me so that while he held the baby, I could wrap my arms around them both. Tuesday let out a contented snuffle and Dixon trembled with joy. And as for me…I had often thought my heart was already impossibly full. But again, I was reminded that there was always room for more.

A short while later, the baby woke up hungry, and we handed her back and hurried out of the kitchen so as not to gawk at Sabina’s body parts. Mother Felicity was still in the living room—would the old woman never go to sleep? “Gee, it’s late,” Dixon called out over the TV. “Do you want me to help you upstairs?”

Onscreen, a dump truck careened off a bridge, spraying a load of fireworks, which exploded with an elaborate light show…but then the music swelled and the credits rolled. As the old woman reached for the remote, she said, “The Hand, the Head, the mayor elect, nothing quite like you’d expect.”

Even Dixon looked disturbed. And he loves rhymes.

“Time for bed,” I said firmly. Felicity’s rheumy eyes locked on mine, and with a cryptic smile, she jabbed at the remote…not to turn off the set, but to change the channel.

A news desk filled the screen. “—sources say the last-minute change of the election date is to blame for the oversight. Counters are hard at work logging in the newly discovered avalanche of mail-in ballots, and we expect to reconfirm the election of Mr. Fitzgerald shortly.”

Was it my imagination, or did I feel the tingle of the volshebstvo playing across the back of my neck?

The news anchor paused to listen to his earpiece and his eyes went wide. “In an unprecedented turn of events, a write-in candidate has overtaken both candidates on the ballot.”

I chafed away the prickle on my scalp, calling to mind exactly what Dixon and I had Crafted. On my part, a perfect representation of the city. On his, a public official who was principled, fair and just. As long as Emery Flint was not elected, I told myself, surely there would be no problem…though I was clenching Dixon’s shoulder hard enough to make him wince.

The anchor said, “A total recount is scheduled for tomorrow—as well as another really good look at the mailroom—but preliminary figures indicate that Pinyin Bay’s next mayor is long-time Pinyin Bay resident and respected police officer, Herschel Hotti.”

A file photo of Officer Hotti filled the screen, giving a stern solute as the police chief handed him some sort of silly award. The anchor began listing all of Hotti’s various achievements and qualifications. While Hotti did seem to be qualified—and was most definitely a better choice than Emery Flint—concepts like fairness and justice mean something entirely different to a Spellcrafter than they do to the general public.

Hotti’s brand of fairness couldn’t possibly jibe with that of a Scrivener. And yet, for whatever reason, the volshebstvo had chosen to side with the masses.

“You win some, you lose some,” Dixon’s mother declared as she bustled out of the kitchen with a huge bag of porching food. “Just make sure no one catches you when you cheat.”

Once Dixon’s parents headed home and Mother Felicity tottered off to bed, Dixon and I found ourselves alone in the midwife’s fastidiously neat and strangely quiet living room. He craned his neck to peer into the kitchen and make sure everyone else was occupied, then retrieved his messenger bag and pulled out the Crafting. “I know my mother was just saying one of her Mom-isms…but I really would hate to be caught trying to influence an election. Especially if, after the recount, stick-in-the-mud Officer Hotti does turn out to be the new mayor.”

On one hand, I had no love of a man as besotted with rules as Hotti—and he did seem more vigilant about Spellcraft than your average Handless. But on the other, I suspected he would be difficult, if not impossible, to corrupt.

Besides, if Biff ever were to take office, it was only a matter of time before he got stuck in the revolving doors at City Hall and never found his way out again.

“I could make an argument for or against the policeman,” I told Dixon, “But in every way that matters, I am a part of the Penn family—and you are the family’s Hand. It is your opinion that counts. Whatever you decide, I am behind you.”

Dixon gave me a long, assessing look—for him, a very serious look, indeed. And then he smiled, eyes twinkling, and said lightly, “Except when I’m the big spoon, Yuri—and then I’m behind you.”

If there was any concern that Dixon was not ready to be the Hand, those worries were groundless. He took only a moment to consider the Crafting before he tore it in half to set it, and tucked it back into his bag to dispose of later. He shivered and chafed away some goosebumps…and then he leaned in, nestled his head against my shoulder, and said, “Just when I think I’m the happiest guy in the world, you say or do something that makes me even happier.”

I covered Dixon’s hand with mine, enjoying the faint tingle of the volshebstvo dissipating between us. Various replies occurred to me, but none of them held a candle to how I felt…and in the end, the best response I could give was to turn and press my lips to his.

About the Author

Jordan Castillo Price has never tried her hand at competitive eating, though sometimes she feels like she’d stand a good chance of at least taking home a nice curtain rod.

She is a registered voter.

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Blog - http://jordancastilloprice.com

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

About this Book

So, here’s the origin of the kee-poo.

I knew I wanted a made-up word for the Spellcraft’s sign for the next Hand, but I wasn’t quite sure what it would be. It would need to sound like a real “thing,” and yet not bring to mind any preconceived notion of what it was.

Since Spellcraft is all about the power of words, I often find inspiration in terms related to words or writing. Pinyin Bay, for example, is named after the pinyin method of Romanizing Standard Mandarin Chinese. I thought this way of bridging two languages was a fitting parallel to Craftings bridging magic and reality.

A quipu (or khipu) is an ancient system of record keeping that uses knotted, colored strings. Learning about that gave me the idea to have the kee-poo be something stringy that forms the shape of a hand. Then I just had to give Dixon a few reasons to get stringed.

While we’re on the topic of naming things….

Initially, I planned for Sabina to name the baby Wednesday. As the story spooled out, I realized election day was dovetailing with the birth. Federal election days in the US fall on Tuesdays, and while I could have made Pinyin Bay’s local elections fall on a different day, it just felt like too much explaining that would take away from the story. Plus Sabina seemed like the type who’d try to hold in a baby just for the sake of a name…as well as someone who’d eventually give up in the face of the inevitable. Now that she and I have settled on Tuesday, I think I prefer it.

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

7. What the Frack?

8. Present Tense

9. Brownie Points

10. Forging Ahead

11. Mayor May Not

The ABCs of Spellcraft Collections

Volume 1 (stories 1-4) in paperback and audio

Volume 2 (stories 5-7) in paperback and audio

Volume 3 (stories 8-11) coming soon