The Magic Misfits 2

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 cupboards 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 cupboards 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 clamour 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.

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 favourite 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 clamour 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 messy, 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 neighbourhood. “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 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 tensed 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 vest and black-and-white-checked pyjama 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 past the edge of her windowsill out into the night.

Leila sat on the comfortable sofa 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 parlour. 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 marbled 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.”

“Maybe he wasn’t trying to steal the notebook,” said Carter. “If he got left behind by the circus and hasn’t eaten in a few days, the monkey probably got lost looking for food. Poor thing is alone and confused and just needs a home.”

Mr Vernon smiled. “Anything is possible if you believe it so. In the meantime, we’ll need to sleep with the windows closed.”

“But won’t it get stuffy in here?” asked Leila.

Mr Vernon shrugged playfully. “We’ve all dealt with worse, no?”

The Other Mr Vernon came through the doorway holding a tray of treats: steaming mugs and a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “Milk and honey for my honeys! Drink up and then everyone back to bed.”

As Mr Vernon slid the parlor window shut, Leila thought she heard a cry in the night. Could it have been the mysterious monkey, angry at them for chasing him? Or had it merely been the old window, squeaking in its frame? At that moment, Leila wasn’t sure which she’d rather believe.

Instead, she sipped the creamy and sweet froth from the mug her poppa had handed to her, allowing it to calm the fluttering in her belly.

“Pick a card, any card!” Carter said, fanning out a deck.

Ridley Larsen raised an eyebrow and tilted her head with a withering stare. “Before we start sharing tricks, we should officially call Magic Misfits meeting number eleven to order.”

“If you say so, boss,” Carter said with a grin. He split the deck into five small packs, then spiralled them around one another in a single grand gesture before flipping his palms over and revealing empty hands. Sometimes, it seemed to Leila, Carter could have made even the gazebo in the town green vanish with little more than a flick of his wrist.

“Boss?” asked Izzy Golden. “I think of Ridley more as our queen.”

“Queen is too generic,” said Olly Golden. “Empress has a nice ring to it.”

“Your ears’ll ring when I give you a sock to ’em,” Izzy said, waving her fist in the air playfully at her twin.

“Rings and socks ? But I’m already fully dressed!” Olly noted.

Summer holidays had started, and Main Street was flooded with shoppers who were down from the resort and kids tasting the freedom of a school-free sunny afternoon. At almost every corner food vendors handed out samples of their wares: ice cream, chocolates, caramel corn, fruit-flavoured ice-slushes.

But the Magic Misfits had no sense of what was happening outdoors. With all six of them crowded into the secret room behind the rear bookcase in Vernon’s Magic Shop, they were practically bumping elbows in the dim light. None minded, though; they were practising what they loved most: magic.

Ridley reached inside Carter’s sleeve and removed the deck of cards he’d hidden there. “Hey! Not fair!” Carter cried out. “Stealing is not cool, Ridley.”

“Stealing?” Stone-faced, Ridley flipped through the cards and held them out to the group. The playing cards had somehow transformed into a handful of purple note cards – each marked with dots and dashes in black ink. “I brought these Morse code study cards from home. Your playing cards are right where you left them, Carter.”

Crinkling his brow, Carter raised his sleeve to find his deck of playing cards right where she’d said they’d be. Not only was Ridley an expert with transformations, she was also skilled at transforming the colour of people’s cheeks. In fact, Carter’s pale skin had instantly become a fierce pink.

“Nicely done!” said Theo Stein-Meyer.

“Thank you,” Ridley said. “Would you mind passing these out?”

Theo guided his bow over the study cards and, one by one, they floated to the members of the Misfits. Theo’s levitation ability was one of his most closely guarded secrets. When he finished, he slipped his magic bow back inside the leg of his tuxedo pants.

“I hope everyone has been studying this week,” Ridley went on. “The sooner we learn this Morse code stuff, the better we’ll be prepared to communicate secretly.”

“Oh, Ridley,” said Leila, “I don’t think we need to worry about another situation like the one with Bosso.”

“And yet only a few nights ago, his pet monkey tried to break into Mr Vernon’s office to steal one of his ledgers.” Ridley squinted at them. “Are you sure you’re not just inventing excuses to get out of doing your club homework?”

“I thought summer was supposed to be homework-free,” said Izzy.

“No, no, Izzy,” said Olly. “You’re thinking of sugar-free!”

“But we love sugar!” said Izzy. “Mum and Dad hate it, though. Strange, because I always feel funnier after I eat sweets.”

Leila smiled from the back corner of the far wall. She used to hate small spaces, but now she didn’t mind them so much. Blocked by Ridley’s wheelchair, she mentally worked out a path through her friends that would allow her to escape the crowded room in less than five seconds. She was always solving puzzles in her head, as if she might one day use them on a stage.

“Leila, would you like to go first?” Ridley asked.

Leila glanced at her note card. The code read:

Leila figured out the translation in her head. “If you work together… ”

Carter read his secret message. “And stay true to one another… ”

Theo went next. “Nothing will bar you. ”

Then Ridley: “Alone you are weak. ”

Followed by Olly and then Izzy: “Together… you are… ” They struggled over the final word until Izzy finished, “Together you are… strange ?”

“Almost,” said Ridley, raising an eyebrow. “Together you are strong.”

“Nice,” Carter said to Ridley. “It’s the message from the psychic at the carnival. I’m happy you remembered it!”

Just outside their secret headquarters, Mr Vernon finished dealing with his customers. After they left, Mr Vernon knocked on the wall and called out, “You do realize it’s a beautifully perfect day outside. Some people believe it’s a crime to be indoors on a day like this!”

Leila perked up. The escape route she’d been scheming suddenly came into sharp focus. She ducked down, shimmied beneath the chair Theo was perched upon, then popped up, leaping over Ridley’s wheelchair and rebounding off the wall behind Carter before turning sideways, taking a deep breath, and squeezing between Olly and Izzy. She slid open the secret door and caught Vernon’s eye. “And would you consider yourself to be one of those people, Dad?”

“Of course not, my dear.” Mr Vernon winked and then rubbed at his eye as if a speck of dust had suddenly gotten stuck. “I was only commenting on the crime rate in this country. Practically soaring.”

“Practically soaring! ” echoed Presto, the store’s prized green parrot. The beautiful bird held court from her perch near the store’s entrance. Mr Vernon cooed at her, holding up his hand for the parrot to nuzzle briefly. He whispered something into her ear, then climbed the spiral stairs to the store’s balcony.

“Waaaaak! ” Presto answered with a curious blink and a nod before going strangely silent.

“Leila, I know your magic-club meeting has begun, but would you and Carter please keep an eye on the store for a moment?” asked Mr Vernon. “I think my bottle of vanishing ink has actually vanished.”

“Of course it did.” Leila giggled. “And of course we will!” She turned to Carter, Theo, Ridley, Olly, and Izzy and then waved them out of the secret room.

“Boooo,” said Ridley, rolling her chair into the store. “I like it better when our meetings are in there. In the dark. It’s more magical.”

“More magical than when we are in an actual magic shop?” asked Theo. Olly and Izzy grabbed hands and twirled into the space, then pretended to be dizzy and fell down. Leila slid the bookcase door shut as Theo held his magic violin bow over Ridley’s head. Her notebook levitated out of her lap and floated just beyond her reach.

“Give that back!” Ridley snarled, grabbing Theo by his tuxedo tail.

“Easy, tiger,” Carter said, snatching the notebook from the air and returning it to Ridley. “Play nice.”

Ridley thumped Theo’s bow tie, changing it from a solid black into a garish mustard plaid. Theo flinched as he glanced at himself in the giant mirror nearby, then adjusted the lapels of his tuxedo jacket. He always looked like he was on his way to a grand party. “I suppose I can make these colours work too,” he said to himself, then winked at Ridley. She winked back.