Mother Margaret stood and waved her arms. “Mr. Vernon is a professional!” she said. “Do not be alarmed!”
The man’s voice came from under the hood. “Do be alarmed!” he corrected. “For if I haven’t freed myself by the end of this very minute, I shall run out of oxygen.” Mother Margaret looked sheepish as she sat back down, as if thinking she’d made a mistake inviting this man to possibly perish in front of her wards.
Leila clung to the balusters, peering through like they were the bars of a cage. The two assistants held up a large white sheet before draping it over Mr. Vernon’s body. The sheet covered him from head to toe. One of the assistants brought out a large hourglass timer, then set it down on the floor so that everyone could watch as the sand slipped through, second by second by second.
Leila held her breath. The figure under the sheet wriggled and writhed. The clanging of the clasped chains rang through the room. She couldn’t help but think of herself trapped in the closet upstairs minutes earlier.
As the final grains poured into the bottom of the hourglass, the children chanted, “Five! Four! Three! Two! One!” The figure under the sheet grew still. Seconds passed. The audience stood, a few at a time, jaws agape, wondering if this was all part of the trick.
Leila cried out, “Take off the hood! Someone help him!”
Frantic, the two assistants raced back onto the stage. They raised the sheet, held it up before the seated man, and peered cautiously behind it. Turning to the audience, they shook their masked heads, as if to say, We’re too late! The orphans went wild, some screaming, as the assistants dropped the sheet to the floor.
The chair where Mr. Vernon had been seated was empty!
The room erupted in gasps of surprise until one of the assistants turned to the audience and removed his mask. As soon as the pure white curls sprang out from beneath, Leila knew that they’d all been had. The magician did escape—and in the most unexpected way. The crowd cheered as if someone had just announced that all of them were being adopted that day.
The man with the curly white hair stepped to the edge of the stage, grinned, then took a long bow. Leila was so floored she nearly slid down the stairs. Instead she stood and clapped harder and longer than anyone else.
When the applause ended, Leila pushed her way through the crowd, elbowing the tall girl and her gruff goons aside, to approach the man. “How did you do that, Mr. Vernon?”
His eyes lit up when he saw her face. He paused as if lost in a trance, then answered quietly, “I’ll bet you know exactly why I cannot tell you.”
Leila thought hard. “A magician never reveals his secrets?”
The man chortled. He tapped her forehead lightly. “A bit psychic, are you?”
“Not that I know of,” said Leila, rubbing at the spot where he’d touched her. She felt the other orphans pushing in from behind her. She fought to block them out of her mind. “Were you really in danger?”
“Oh, but I am always in danger,” he said with a wink.
Leila laughed. “I want to learn how to escape like you did.”
“I see.” He squinted. “Well, it takes years of practice. Is that something you’d be prepared to do?”
“Oh yes! I’d practice every minute of every day to be like you!”
“Well, enthusiasm is rarely a bad thing,” he said, considering. “What is your name, dear?”
“Leila,” she answered quietly.
“Leila,” he echoed. “How pretty! And how long have you lived here with Mother Margaret?”
“All my life.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I’d like to come see you again, Leila. Would that be all right?”
Leila’s face flushed. “It’d be more than all right!” she exclaimed. “Maybe you can teach me a trick or two?”
“Maybe…” He grinned again, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement. With both hands, he pinched his fingers together. As he moved his hands apart, Leila noticed that he held a soft white rope between them. He dropped one end and lowered the rope slowly into her outstretched palm. “For you. See what you can do with this. Might I suggest learning different types of knots? They can be helpful in many situations.”
Leila’s face flushed a deeper pink. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and say thank you, but she didn’t want to make him think she was a weirdo.
At that moment, the other orphans crowded forward, asking for Mr. Vernon’s autograph and edging Leila away. She didn’t mind. He was going to come back and see her again. He’d teach her a trick. Maybe.
She’d be ready. She’d have some new knots to show him in response.
Later, in the bedroom she shared with five other orphans, Leila pulled a tin box out from a hiding place behind a brick in the wall beside her bed. She opened the lid, revealing a few loose, glittering keys.
One key was very special to her. You see, when someone placed Leila on the doorstep of Mother Margaret’s Home as an infant, they’d wrapped her in a blanket and left a string looped around her neck, with a key tied to it like a pendant. Of course, Leila didn’t remember any of that; she knew the story only because Mother Margaret had shared it with her. It was this first key that’d made Leila start looking for spare ones, or ones that appeared to be lost. She hoped that someday she’d have an interesting collection of all shapes and sizes.
Staring down at her keys, Leila thought about the magic show and how Mr. Vernon had managed to break out of those impossible chains. For the first time, she felt like she’d unlocked something inside herself: a wish to escape. Really escape.
When the man with the white curly hair returned later that week with his husband, offering to adopt her, her wish came true—like magic.
TWO
One night, years later, in the apartment over Vernon’s Magic Shop, Leila Vernon stretched out atop her big bed, unable to sleep. Thoughts of dark closets kept popping into her head whenever she closed her eyes. A thin patchwork quilt covered Leila’s wiry frame, barely protecting her from the brisk air that crept through the open window of her bedroom.
The window looked out over Main Street and the green park that extended far out in both directions. The orange glow of streetlights shifted on the walls and ceiling as the shadows of leafy branches danced to a quiet music composed by the crickets and peeping tree frogs that called out to each other from the nestled hills surrounding the town of Mineral Wells.
Before bedtime, Leila’s two fathers had tucked the blanket around Leila’s body and kissed her good night, wishing her pleasant dreams. But Leila knew that no wish could protect her from memories of her old life. The dead of night was when they usually came to visit. Sometimes the memories were uninvited guests who stayed long after receiving cues that it was time to go. Sometimes they tried to sneak in, like cloddish cat burglars who had no clue how to finagle a locked door. And sometimes the memories seeped like sulfur smoke through cracks in the walls, threatening to choke and smother Leila, stinging her big brown eyes.
When the other memories became too much to handle, Leila would recall her adoption by the Vernons. She held on to the hand of that memory, as if it could lead her to safety. Sometimes it worked. But sometimes the darkness in those locked closets was too difficult to see through.
Especially after everything that had happened with B. B. Bosso and his circus of thieves several weeks before…
Leila blinked at the ceiling, feeling both blessed and cursed—happy to have this home and this family, but annoyed that the past kept knocking to be let in. This won’t do, she thought. She whipped away the quilt, then scurried to her bookshelf, where she’d placed her secret tin box.
The box rattled noisily. She drew it to her chest to quiet it. Next door was the room of her newfound cousin, Carter. She didn’t want the clamor to wake him.
Leila lifted the lid and stared at her key collection, which had grown substantially in the years since she’d moved to Mineral Wells. But her first key, the one tied to the string, the one that
had been with her on the night Mother Margaret found her on the orphanage doorstep, sat on the very top. Leila lifted the string and let the key swing back and forth like a mesmerist’s pendulum.
She thought about Bosso and Carter and the other Misfits. She knew that Carter must also suffer from memories of his former life. She wondered if he ever thought of his missing parents, as she sometimes wondered why her own had deserted her on a dark, cold night. Other times, she was happy to not think of them at all. She pressed her hand against the cold key, as if to make an impression against her skin, one that she might use to forge a copy. Her body warmed the key, and the key warmed her body and calmed her mind.
From somewhere beyond her bedroom door, the sound of a commotion stirred: a chair suddenly shifting, a pile of books toppling from a shelf, things crashing to the floor. Next came a sharp and fearful yelp.
THREE
Leila raced into the darkness of the hallway, where she was instantly barraged with small, sharp objects flying at her, pecking her like angry birds. With a yelp, she swung her hand at the nearest light switch. The hall flooded with a soft glow.
Carter was crouched at his own bedroom door, shooting playing cards from his hands toward Leila. (Not angry birds after all, thank goodness!) She swatted them away. “Carter, it’s only me!”
He stopped immediately. “Oh geez, I’m sorry!”
His blond hair was a mess, his cheeks red and marked by rumpled bedsheets. He must have been woken up by the loud sounds as well. Of course, he had come out of his room prepared with his favorite weapon—a deck of cards. He asked, “Are you okay?”
Leila nodded. “You heard the crash and the yelp too?”
Before he could answer, there was another crash. The clamor came from behind Mr. Vernon’s office door. It was as if the man were barreling into furniture and knocking things over.
Leila and Carter pounded on the door. From inside, her dad gave a muffled grunt. Carter tried the knob, but it was locked. Leila whipped out her lucky lockpicks from the pocket of her nightgown. With a few swift movements, Leila worked her magic, and the door swung inward.
Dante Vernon was standing in the corner, his curly white hair mussed, his dark eyes as wide as the crystal balls that he sold in the magic shop downstairs. His chest heaved as if he’d just sprinted around the block. “Oh good,” he said with a sudden smile. “At least now I know I’m not dreaming. Please shut the door. We can’t let it get out of the room with my book.”
Despite her confusion, Leila did as she was told.
“It?” asked Carter. “What do you mean by it?”
Mr. Vernon pointed beneath his desk. Something in the shadows let out a horrifying screech.
Both Leila and Carter jumped.
“I’d been writing in my notebook when I dozed off. I woke up when something snatched the book out from under my hand,” Vernon explained. “The creature snuck in through the window, which I’ve closed and locked. It’s of vital importance that we get my book back. Understood?”
Leila and Carter nodded.
“Carter, toss me the little rope on the table beside you,” Vernon directed. Carter threw the white cord, and Vernon caught it one-handed. “Now, Leila, when I say go, slide the chair away, okay? On the count of three.”
Leila nodded even though she wasn’t nearly as ready as she would’ve liked. But that was what it meant to be a Vernon and a member of the Magic Misfits. You trusted your friends and your family… even when they asked you to help catch a mysterious creature that had snuck into their office in the middle of the night.
“One…”
Leila edged toward the chair.
“Two…”
Something growled from under the desk. Leila felt her stomach move up into her throat.
“Three!”
Leila yanked back the chair as Vernon dove under the desk. A blur of blondish fur raced over his spine, back toward the wall, and leapt into the shadows behind a large houseplant.
“What is that?” Carter yelped, more curious than frightened. Leila leaned forward. The creature’s silhouette was about a foot high and resembled a gremlin.
Mr. Vernon got up, pushing his hair out of his face. He flicked his wrist and the soft rope became rigid in his grip, a loop forming at the end like a lasso. “Children, back away now. I’ve got this.”
“Hold on, Dad.” Leila’s voice quivered. She picked up the knocked-over lamp and aimed its bulb at the shadows.
Instantly, they could see it clearly. The creature looked up at them with fear in its dark eyes—a skinny little thing with a long, slim tail and a black spiked collar around its neck. It shrieked again. It was a monkey.
Friends, I’ll bet you’re thinking that if you were ever in this situation, you’d plop yourself onto the floor, hold open your arms, and coo, “Give me a hug, you cuuuuuutie!” Let me assure you: Nighttime monkey thieves are not nearly as adorable as you’d like them to be.
“It’s Bosso’s monkey,” said Carter, his voice shaking. “I’m s-sure of it.”
Vernon raised his finger to his lips, trying to not startle the monkey, who snarled and hitched back as if getting ready to jump at them. That was when Carter snapped his fingers, revealing a shortbread cookie in his other hand.
Carter was doing a simple trick called palming. Every good magician has practiced palming at one time or another. Have you? It’s a form of misdirection in which a magician hides an object by cupping it in the palm of his or her hand. The magician will then reveal the object by using their other hand to create a distraction. In this case, Carter snapped his fingers to capture the monkey’s attention, then showed him the cookie.
After being practically homeless for so many years, Carter always seemed to keep a cache of goodies in his pockets, Leila noted to herself. Looked like it came in handy too.
The monkey’s snarl faded as he focused instead on the treat in hand. Carter snapped his fingers again, and one cookie became two. The monkey made a cooing sound as he inched close enough to reach out and snatch the cookies from Carter. He shoved both into his mouth, chewed them up, and swallowed. His eyes glassed over with satisfaction.
Leila laughed. The creature wasn’t so scary after all. She approached the monkey, sneaking up from the other side as Carter snapped his fingers and revealed another cookie. He let the monkey snatch that one too. He revealed a fourth cookie. The monkey was so mesmerized by the sweet treats that he didn’t notice Leila until she grabbed the notebook and tossed it to her father, who tucked it inside the wide pocket of his robe. The monkey swung his head back and forth, conflicted. He looked from the book to Carter’s hand, full of cookies. Finally, the monkey caved to his instincts and settled for the cookies. (And who wouldn’t? Cookies are delicious.)
Carter dropped one cookie after another across the floor, leaving a path toward Mr. Vernon, who was waiting with the magical, stiffened rope. Her father nodded for Leila to stay where she was, in case she needed to grab the furry little thing. Closer and closer it crept. Vernon was ready to collar the creature when—
A knock came at the door, and a voice called out, “Dante? Everything okay in there?” With a squeak and the sound of scrabbling claws, the monkey retreated into the shadows on the other side of the room.
The office door swung open, and in rushed the Other Mr. Vernon, Leila’s poppa. He stood there with a worried look on his face, dressed in a white tank top and black-and-white-checkered pajama bottoms. When he saw the state of the office, his sleepy eyes grew wide.
“Close the door, Poppa!” Leila cried. Before he could, a blur of blond fur raced past his ankles and into the hallway. Poppa let out a scream.
“After it!” shouted Mr. Vernon.
Leila and Carter rushed past her dazed poppa and out into the hallway. They followed the racket that echoed from Leila’s room. To her horror, she realized that her bedroom door was open, and so was her window.
The trio reached her doorway just in time to see the monkey’s tail slip pas
t the edge of her windowsill out into the night.
Leila sat on the comfortable couch in the living room with Carter as Poppa heated milk on the stove in the kitchen. Her poppa, who her friends called the Other Mr. Vernon, was the chef at the Grand Oak Resort. He was no magician, but he was a wizard at making late-night snacks. “Almost ready!” he called out.
Her dad, Mr. Dante Vernon to most others, stood at the window in the parlor. As he spoke on the telephone, he looked outside at the dark street as if waiting for someone to come along looking for their missing monkey.
“Do you think Bosso is back?” Carter whispered with a shudder.
“I hope not,” Leila answered.
“I see. Yes, thank you again for taking my call so late at night,” Mr. Vernon said, then hung up the phone and walked into the living room. “As far as the officials can tell me, Bosso is still locked up, far away from here, with the rest of his evil circus crew.”
“Except for his gang of frown clowns.” Carter shivered. “They got away.”
“And his monkey too, apparently,” Mr. Vernon added. “As we’ve just seen, that wily creature is not easy to catch.”
“Why was he trying to steal your notebook, Dad?” asked Leila.
Mr. Vernon removed the notebook from his pocket. It appeared to be one of the business ledgers from the magic shop downstairs—its cardboard cover had a marbleized pattern. Leila knew her dad kept dozens of them behind the shop’s counter.
Vernon flipped the notebook open. Page after page, names and prices of items were listed in simple columns. “Now that, dear daughter, is a mystery. If I could get inside the heads of animals and decipher their thoughts, I’d be one of the most powerful practitioners of magic in this country.”