Wax

by Gina Damico

  A mad wax scientist with a death wish, she thought.

  So many questions. Was Madame Grosholtz really dead? If so, how had she known that her death was imminent? Had she known when she gave Poppy the candle? She must have, if she intended for Poppy to read her will, but that would mean Madame Grosholtz would have had advance notice of the fire. But if that was the case, why hadn’t she tried to stop it? The studio, all those beautiful works of art . . .

  That poor woman.

  So many questions, and so many potential answers​—​answers trapped inside this candle. “I guess we have to let it burn if we want to read the rest.” Poppy relit the wick, placed it on her nightstand, and flung herself back onto her bed with a groan. “How am I going to fall asleep now?”

  Within seconds, she was snoring.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Poppy had not realized how exhausting it would be to infiltrate a mysterious candle factory, stumble upon a talented yet batty genius, adopt a scientifically impossible being, concoct a parentally tolerable lie, incur the suspicion of the police, eat a banana split, and discover a lost will and testament all in one day, but when she opened her bleary eyes the next morning and looked at the time on her phone, she saw that it was already noon.

  “Don’t judge, Simba,” she told her poster, disentangling herself from her sheets. “I had a rough night.”

  She sat up.

  Remembered that she was supposed to have a roommate.

  Noticed that the closet door was open.

  And Dud was gone.

  “Oh, no.” She staggered out of bed as the remainder of her brain switched on. “No. Bad.”

  She pulled on a sweatshirt, grabbed her phone, and hurried downstairs, listing the various ends Dud could have come to. He melted. He escaped. He jumped out the window and got hit by a car. Someone mistook him for a candle and lit his hair on​—​

  “Fire in the hole!”

  An unlikely display greeted Poppy as she walked into the living room: Dud kneeling on the floor; Owen holding a box of Cheerios and winging them one by one at Dud’s face; and Mr. and Mrs. Palladino sitting on the couch, applauding.

  “Hi, Poppy!” Dud grinned at her. “We’re throwing breakfast.”

  She turned to her parents. “Why are you allowing this to happen?”

  “It’s a traditional island tradition,” her father explained in a tone that suggested she was being offensive. “Every morning the villagers wake up and toss food into one another’s mouths.”

  “Dad. They’re not seals.”

  “Well, that’s what he told us!”

  “Is that what Dud told you, or what Owen told you after you’d already caught him flinging cereal around the living room?”

  “Dud, I apologize for our insensitive daughter,” her mother said. “You go right back to your culture.”

  Dud tried to give Poppy a conspiratorial wink, but he had not yet learned how to wink, so he just blinked both of his eyes shut really hard.

  “And we’re all okay with this. Sure. Why not.” Poppy shook her head in disbelief. “What are you guys doing here?” she asked her parents. As yoga teachers, Sundays were usually their busiest workdays.

  “Classes were canceled,” her mother said. “The studios at the spa smelled too much like smoke from the fire, so they’re taking a day to air them out. And lucky us​—​we get to spend some time with the newest member of our family!”

  Poppy rolled her eyes. They landed on the painting of the pissed-off peacock.

  Then slid below the peacock’s feet, to the artist’s signature.

  No, not his full signature​—​his initials.

  “Oh my God, that’s it,” Poppy whispered to herself. “AMT! She signed him, like a work of art! AMT is her name. Her initials. Anne-Marie . . .”

  Luckily, no one was paying attention to Poppy as she paced back and forth. Owen had turned on some terrible children’s music, and now he and Dud were prancing around the room, singing, “I can walk from here to there, I can walk most anywhere!”

  “But her name was Madame Grosholtz,” Poppy continued, frowning, pacing. “There should be a G in there somewhere. Unless they’re someone else’s initials. But why would she carve someone else’s initials into him?”

  Maybe Dud was based on someone from Madame Grosholtz’s past. A teenage crush. Or​—​oh, Poppy realized with a crushing dread​—​maybe her son? Her dead son?

  Poppy hadn’t thought about it before. Did Madame Grosholtz have a son? The candle factory was supposedly a family business, so it must have been handed down to the next generation. Unless the business was her husband’s? Was she married?

  How much did Poppy even know about Madame Grosholtz?

  In retrospect, she realized that it was ridiculous that she hadn’t thought of it earlier. She tapped the letters into her phone, her fingers shaking. All she’d had to do was Google the name Grosholtz, and bam: there she was, first on the list of search results.

  “Poppy?” Dud said, pausing his shenanigans. “Are you okay? Your face is doing a lot of things.”

  It was, but Poppy couldn’t help it. Because the woman staring back at her from the screen​—​the woman who was most definitely Madame Grosholtz​—​was here labeled with a different name, along with a brief description:

  Anne-Marie “Marie” Tussaud was a French-born artist of German descent who became known for her wax sculptures and Madame Tussaud’s, the wax museum she founded in London.

  But it was the next line that really made Poppy’s eye twitch:

  Died: April 16, 1850.

  11

  Do research

  POPPY BOOKED IT UPSTAIRS, TAKING THE STEPS TWO AT A TIME and nearly knocking over the stone candle as she grabbed it from her nightstand and read the words that had appeared overnight:

  THEREFORE, CONSIDER THIS THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT​—​AND CONFESSION​—​OF ANNE-MARIE GROSHOLTZ. OR, IF IT PLEASE YOU, BY MY OTHER NAME: MADAME TUSSAUD. YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF ME. I AM MILDLY FAMOUS. I SPENT DECADES SCULPTING FIGURES OUT OF WAX, AND I BECAME WELL-KNOWN FOR IT. I AM PROUD OF THE WORK THAT I DID IN MY LIFE.

  I AM NOT PROUD OF WHAT I DID AFTER MY DEATH.

  Poppy’s stomach gave a lurch.

  YOU SEE, CREATING ART​—​CREATING REAL, GOOD ART​—​IS A LONELY PROCESS. MANY HOURS ALONE. IF YOU TALK, IT IS ONLY TO YOURSELF. AND MAYBE TO YOUR WORK. AFTER A WHILE, THE WORK BECOMES YOUR FRIEND. AND AFTER A LITTLE WHILE MORE, THE WORK SEEMS TO COME A LITTLE BIT ALIVE. SO WHY NOT . . . ALL THE WAY ALIVE? ENTER: LES CIRES VIVANTES.

  “The living wax,” Poppy whispered.

  IT IS SOMETHING I HAD BEEN EXPERIMENTING WITH FOR YEARS. I CAME CLOSE A FEW TIMES. TWITCHING MUSCLES. BLINKING EYES. BEATING HEARTS. BUT THEY NEVER STAYED ALIVE FOR LONG. I DIDN’T HAVE MUCH TIME LEFT MYSELF​—​I COULD FEEL MY BONES GROWING OLD AND WEARY. ONE DAY MY EYES FELL UPON A SELF-REPLICA I’D SCULPTED, AND I FOUND MYSELF WISHING I COULD INHABIT THAT WAX DUPLICATE OF MYSELF. I’D NEVER DIE, NEVER GET ANY OLDER. I COULD GO ON SCULPTING FOREVER.

  I DARE NOT SET DOWN HERE​—​NOR ANYWHERE ELSE​—​HOW I DID IT. THAT KNOWLEDGE IS LOST TO THE AGES, AND I PLAN TO KEEP IT THAT WAY. SUFFICE IT TO SAY THAT I GOT RIGHT TO WORK SCULPTING ANOTHER SCULPTURE OF MYSELF​—​A HOLLOW ONE THIS TIME. I WAS ABLE TO DISTILL MY SOUL INTO THE FORM OF A FLAME AND LIGHT THE HOLLOW FROM WITHIN, HOPING TO ANIMATE IT. AND TO MY SURPRISE, DELIGHT​—​AND MUCH LATER, HORROR​—​IT WORKED.

  FOR SOME TIME, THERE WERE TWO OF US​—​THE ORIGINAL ME, IN THE FLESH, AND MY WAX DUPLICATE​—​A CLONE THAT CONTAINED ALL MY MEMORIES AND PERSONALITY, BUT ITS OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. THE REAL TEST CAME, OF COURSE, A FEW YEARS LATER, WHEN MY EARTHLY BODY FAILED ME AT LAST. I TOOK MY LAST BREATH, CLOSED MY EYES​—​AND OPENED THEM ONCE AGAIN IN MY NEW WAX BODY. OUR TWO FLAME-SOULS MERGED, AND I WAS WHOLE ONCE MORE.

  I HAVE EXTENDED MY LIFE THUSLY EVER SINCE. WHEN ONE HOLLOW BECAME DAMAGED OR WORN OUT, I WOULD CREATE A NEW ONE, LIGHT IT WITH MY FLAME-SOUL, AND JUMP INTO
MY NEW BODY. OF COURSE, SEVERAL CANDLES THAT WERE LIT WITH THE ORIGINAL WERE AT ALL TIMES BURNING SAFE WITHIN MY HOME​—​IF ONE WENT OUT, I HAD MANY BACKUP FLAMES WITH WHICH TO RELIGHT.

  MADAME TUSSAUD HAD LONG SINCE “DIED,” IN THE TRADITIONAL MANNER OF SPEAKING​—​THERE WAS A FUNERAL, IT WAS IN THE PAPERS​—​AND SO I TOILED AWAY IN RELATIVE OBSCURITY UNDER MY MAIDEN NAME, SCULPTING AND WORKING AND REDISCOVERING THE JOY OF THE ART THAT I’D LOST AFTER SO MANY YEARS OF MUSEUMS AND COMMERCIAL SUCCESS. BUT PEOPLE

  That was as far as the wax had burned.

  Poppy’s phone rang.

  She jumped.

  “Jill!” she shouted into it. “Madame Grosholtz was Madame Tussaud, and she’s been alive for over two centuries because she made herself immortal using wax duplicates!”

  “Um,” said Jill. “Sorry, wrong number.”

  “Jill.”

  Poppy slowed herself down to an intelligible speaking speed and explained, to the best of her ability, what she’d learned. “So you’re telling me,” Jill said patiently, “that the woman you met at the candle factory was not in fact a real, live, walking, talking, sculpting, staring descendent of Madame Tussaud, but the actual dead, buried, dearly departed Madame Tussaud herself.”

  “Yes. That is what I am telling you.”

  “Like, what​—​a ghost?”

  “No, not a ghost. I’m saying that she was real then, and she’s real now. Or she was real now. Well​—​not now. Now she’s not anywhere.”

  “You sound like you’re having a stroke.”

  “It was her, Jill! I swear!”

  “That’s quite a jump to make, Pops. A jump that, dare I say, is impossible.”

  “Well​—”

  “And stupid.”

  “But​—”

  “Aaand impossible.”

  Poppy pulled her phone away from her ear and put it on speaker. “Anne-Marie Grosholtz,” she said to Jill, scanning the Wikipedia page on the screen. “Grosholtz was her maiden name​—​she was of German descent but born in France​—​so it was a French- French accent, not French-Canadian like I thought​—​arrested during the Reign of Terror​—​made death masks of those killed in the French Revolution​—​collected human heads, Jill​—married François, had two sons​—​completed many sculpture collections​—​died at the age of eighty-eight​—”

  “The key word here being ‘died.’”

  “You want proof? I have proof! There’s this message​—”

  “Pops, I had a reason for calling. Did you see the news?”

  “No. I just woke up.”

  “You just woke up? It’s after noon.”

  “Don’t judge. What’s going on?”

  “The police announced that they’ll be holding a press conference at three o’clock. They say they have new information about the arson investigation.”

  “What?” Poppy looked from the candle in one hand to her phone in the other. Surely human brains were not built for so much information and danger to be crammed in there all at once. “Do you think it’s about me? Did they make any progress on the security footage?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Poppy fumbled for her jeans, putting the Madame Grosholtz business on hold for the moment in the name of self-preservation. All that goodwill she’d built up since Triple Threat, the restoration of her reputation​—​it would mean nothing if her mug shot were splashed all over the place. “I have to get out of here before the police arrive. I have to figure out how to clear my name.”

  “Are you crazy? Do you know how much worse it’ll get if it looks like you’re running away? The best thing you can do is cooperate and answer their questions. The worst thing you could do is leave the house​—”

  “Meet me at Secret Service Way in fifteen minutes!”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Against her better judgment, Poppy decided to leave Dud in the questionably capable hands of Owen for the day. Their list of shared interests was growing by the hour: in addition to cereal, they both enjoyed playing with toy cars, jumping on the furniture, playing hide-and-seek, and rolling leftover brownies into shapes that looked hilariously (to them) like dog poo.

  “Have fun,” she said, leaving her parents as she’d found them: curled up on the couch drinking kale smoothies, captivated by Dud’s perplexing island ways. “Just make sure not to let him leave the house. It’s Sunday, which is sacred to Tristaners, because the, uh​—​the island was discovered on a Sunday, and they usually spend the day draping themselves in seaweed to commemorate the occasion. But he should be fine with keeping it sacred . . . at home.”

  It would have to do. She mouthed, “Behave,” to Dud and headed for the door.

  “We’ve got some leftover kale you can drape, Dud,” she heard her mother saying as she left. “Would that work?”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Secret Service Way had nothing to do with the government agency of the same name. “Service Way” because it was a gravelly back road through the woods that bypassed the town and served as a shortcut to both the Grosholtz Candle Factory and the Paraffin Resort and Spa, and “Secret” because only the employees knew about it.

  And their children. And their children’s best friends.

  Poppy bounced Clementine down the dirt road and came to a stop next to Jill, who was sitting in her mom’s parked car. Up ahead, looking like a disoriented outhouse, was one of Paraffin Resort and Spa’s patented “personal saunas”​—​a smattering of veritable closets dispersed throughout the woods where one could “be at one with nature” in a “totally private setting” to “sweat out the bad, soak in the good.”

  Poppy could soak in a little good herself right about now. She rolled down her window.

  “For the record,” Jill told her, “I am only here to prevent you from incriminating yourself further.”

  “You think I want to be here? I had to leave Dud with my parents. Who knows what kind of a smoking crater my house will be reduced to by the time I get back?”

  “And why are we here? What is this grand plan of yours?”

  “We’ll never get close to the crime scene if we go through the front. But if we go around the secret back way . . .” She grinned and stepped on the accelerator, leaving Jill and her reasonable protests in the dust.

  Poppy hung a left and steered Clementine onto a smaller, less-used dirt road that wound deeper into the woods, up the small hill next to Mount Cerumen. Jill followed. After a few seconds of uphill driving, the trees began to thin, then clear completely at the top.

  The girls got out of their cars. Below them, at the foot of the mountain, sat the Grosholtz Candle Factory, and above them​—​

  “Whoa,” said Poppy, craning her neck upward. Her father had taken her here a few times when she was a kid to fly kites, but she’d forgotten how tall the towers were. “The motherships.”

  The two shiny white cylindrical storage tanks stood before them, lording over the surrounding pines like teeth that had been knocked out of a giant’s mouth. Each at least a hundred feet tall, with metal staircases curved up their walls, they were labeled GROSHOLTZ CANDLE FACTORY #1 and GROSHOLTZ CANDLE FACTORY #2.

  “I still haven’t heard a valid argument for this plan of yours,” Jill said, joining her. “Why on earth would you want to get closer to the crime scene?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Poppy. “But there’s gotta be something there that’ll prove I had nothing to do with this. And that Blake has everything to do with this. And with Madame Grosholtz being made of wax and all, maybe​—​Jill? Jill!”

  “What?”

  “Why aren’t you listening to me?”

  “I’m​—” Jill was frowning and sniffing the air. “Do you smell that?”

  “Huh?”

  “Smell. The air.” She closed her eyes and took a long, luxurious breath.

  Poppy did the same​—​and stiffened. “What the heck?”

  The air smelled of . . . nothing. No b
erries. No sandalwood. No coconut-pine-cinnamon-lime. That omnipresent, amalgamated odor that oozed its way into every crevice of Paraffin had dissolved into oblivion and was replaced by a flat, distilled scent.

  “What is that?” Poppy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jill said, giving tank #1 a kick. “But I think it’s coming from this.”

  Poppy frowned. “I thought these things broke when they got struck by lightning.” She walked up to #1’s wall and tentatively put a hand on its surface. The thick metal was warm to the touch, but not so hot that she had to draw her hand back. It felt like an enormous coffee urn.

  Poppy tapped her chin as she surveyed the tank’s exterior. One spot featured a large gaping hole​—​created by the lightning strike, judging by its seared, jagged edges​—​but it was patched with nothing more than a thick translucent plastic tarp and what appeared to be a tight seal of Tackety Wax. Nearby, a large red button was set into the wall, and as it had been pushed in, Poppy guessed that it controlled the heat.

  “I thought these were out of commission forever,” Poppy said, testing the tarp. It barely yielded beneath her touch, but it was clear from the way it bulged that there was some sort of liquid inside. “Why fix them when they’ve got such better, more advanced wax storage tanks?”

  “I dunno,” said Jill. “I found a tank full of wax, and you have a waxy mystery to solve. Do I have to do all the work?”

  Just then they heard a car crunching along the gravel of Secret Service Way.

  Then it slowed.

  Then turned.

  And began climbing the road to the tanks.