And the lawyer played on: “Which brings me back to my original point. You just cannot trust a domesticated house cat—”
Mr. Vernon interrupted, “I’m sorry to stop you here, but would you mind getting to the business at hand?”
Sammy Falsk, Esquire, leaned forward. “Business? Yes. Let’s get to it.” He flipped through some papers in a manila file folder on the desk. “I have here a birth certificate with all the names and dates accounted for. Pammy, Bob, Leila. The Varalikas. All official.”
The man near the front door continued to hum. Leila recognized the old folk ballad “Oh My Darling, Clementine.” The sound of it was like fingernails running up Leila’s spine.
Mr. Vernon held out his hand. “I’d like to take a closer look, if you please.” But when Sammy Falsk, Esquire, placed the document onto Vernon’s palm, a dark spot appeared in the center and spread quickly outward until the page was almost completely black. Leila recalled her father once performing a trick like this at the magic shop using a palmed inkpad. Mrs. Varalika shrieked.
“Oh my,” said Mr. Vernon with a shrug. “So sorry. My mistake. I do hope you have another copy.”
“As it so happens,” said the lawyer, his face red as he pulled another sheet of paper from the folder, “I do. I must insist we be more careful with this one, however. You may look but may not touch.”
Leila couldn’t bring herself to get any closer to it. As if sensing her discomfort, Carter took her hand, and she sighed. The Other Mr. Vernon stood up and bent over the desk, peering at the birth certificate. His cheeks went slack. “It looks real enough.”
Mr. Vernon poked him in the back. “A magician knows that real enough doesn’t mean authentic, my dear.”
The hum continued: “Oh my darling, oh my darling…” Leila noticed that Carter seemed to be irked by the humming as well.
“What exactly is your purpose in bringing us here today?” Mr. Vernon asked the Varalikas.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Pammy responded. “We need to work out a way to bring our baby home with us.”
Leila felt the blood drain out of her face. The room tilted, and she grasped one side of the chair to stop from toppling over. The Other Mr. Vernon held her forearm tightly, while Carter continued to grip her hand.
“Such an interesting request,” said Mr. Vernon with a grin.
Why does he look happy? Leila thought. No. Not happy. There was something in his eyes that was… what? Devious? Assured? Leila wondered if there was a way to tap into whatever he was feeling. It would certainly feel better than the helplessness that was binding her like ropes around her torso.
“We understand that this process will not be easy,” the lawyer continued. “But what I hope to begin this very day is some sort of negotiation to allow Leila to spend some time with the Varalikas. To get to know them. Slowly. Over time. We certainly wouldn’t ask to make any abrupt changes.”
“Of course not. Abrupt changes are the worst sort of changes to make.” Mr. Vernon nodded emphatically. “Like showing up in town after a lifetime and asking a girl to change her entire world.”
“Dante, please,” the Other Mr. Vernon said quietly. Then he turned to Leila. “This decision isn’t up to me or your father. This is up to you. And we’ll support you no matter what you decide. Please, tell us: Is this something that you’d like to do, Leila?”
“I—I don’t…” Leila was still waiting for an answer to come to her, telling her what to feel. Right now, it was all anxiety and anger and confusion and thunder and lightning and gale-force winds and flying cows and maybe a little bit of Dorothy singing sweetly about places beyond rainbows, which was exactly where Leila wanted to be at the moment. Her skin flushed with heat and pain. She clutched at the key beneath her shirt, and it brought her back to earth.
Carter started squeezing her hand in an odd way. She glanced at him, but he purposefully kept his eyes focused on the humming lawyer. Within seconds, Leila recognized what Carter was doing: making a pattern, sending her a Morse code message.
SOS. SOS. SOS. The universal sign for distress.
She squeezed back, saying:
The lawyers didn’t seem to notice them communicating in this way. Falsk blathered on about “next steps” and about the law being on his side.
In the meantime, Carter squeezed more Morse code. Leila slowly deciphered it.
Leila couldn’t help leaping to her feet in shock.
Everyone turned to look at her. “Leila?” asked Mr. Vernon. “What is it?” But Leila couldn’t answer. There was too much happening in her head.
No, she thought. It can’t be. What on earth would a member of Bosso’s old crew be doing here in… Then it came to her. Everything about these people… Mr. and Mrs. Varalika. What if… what if they weren’t really her parents?
“What do you know about keys?” she managed to squeak out.
Mrs. Varalika appeared to be confused. “Keys?”
Actually, both Mr. Vernons looked confused too. Only Carter gave her a knowing glance.
The small man near the door stopped humming. He peered over, a sharp glint in his expression.
“Yes. Keys. Or rather… one key in particular.”
Something registered in the Varalikas’ eyes. “We don’t know much,” Mrs. Varalika answered stiffly. “They unlock things. Doors and such?”
That was all she needed. Leila was certain. The mention of her key should have meant the world to them! These people were not the ones who had left her on the steps of Mother Margaret’s Home for Children. There was no way she’d let them take her anywhere. Then she had a creepier thought: If they’re not my birth parents, then what are they doing here? Why would they lie?
Carter’s message blinked back into her brain. Frown clown. What if it wasn’t just one member of Bosso’s old crew who was in town? What if it was all of them?
“Never mind,” she said, her throat constricting. “I was… confused. Sorry.” As soon as she took her seat, she began tapping on the arm of her chair. Vernon took notice.
Mr. Vernon nodded that he understood his daughter. “Well, this all sounds splendid! What a wonderful meeting. You have our phone number, so please, call us later. I am sure we’ll be able to work it all out. But for now, our family must be going.”
“Not yet, please,” said the fake lawyer. “We still have so much to go over.”
“Another time!” Mr. Vernon said. He nodded to the Other Mr. Vernon. Without hesitation, each Mr. Vernon took one of the kids by the hand and marched them toward the exit across the long room. But the Varalikas rushed past them to block the door. The man who’d been humming got up and joined them. The three were now standing in the way, none of them smiling.
Sammy Falsk, Esquire, also joined his partners in front of the exit. All three men stuck their hands into their jacket pockets and pulled out long black billy clubs that looked thick enough to knock a person unconscious. Mr. Varalika, wearing a frown, said, “You and your brats aren’t going anywhere.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“They’re the frown clowns from Bosso’s circus!” Carter cried out. “I recognized the humming!”
“And those aren’t my real parents,” Leila added, nodding to the Varalikas. “They didn’t know about my key.” The Vernons didn’t understand, but they trusted their daughter. They stepped between their children and the frown clowns.
The four villains glanced at one another and smirked.
“Aren’t you kids just the smartest?” the small man sneered, pulling his black mustache off his top lip and tossing it aside.
“Quiet, Tommy,” said Mr. Varalika. “You don’t want to give ’em big heads.” Grabbing his toupee from his bald scalp, he added, “Good lord, this thing is itchy.”
“Step aside,” said the Other Mr. Vernon, his fists squeezed tightly. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt here.”
“Our boss would kill us if we were to let you go so soon,” said Mrs. Varalika, removing a smaller club from her purse b
efore stepping forward and forcing the group back into the depths of the office.
“Your boss?” Carter asked. “You mean Bosso escaped from jail?!”
“Bosso?” asked Falsk with a laugh. “That old clown was never in charge of anything or anyone. No, I don’t believe you’ve yet met our true leader.”
“Your true leader?” Leila repeated, her usual confidence suddenly flooding back into her body. Now that she knew these folks were frauds, it was easier to talk back to them. “Who might that be?”
The four former frown clowns only chuckled.
Mr. Vernon whipped his hand up over his head and then brought it down quickly. All of a sudden, smoke was rising from the floor, swirling around the family, hiding them from the villains. “Quick! Follow me!” But before Leila could move, she felt herself being yanked backward.
She yelped, calling through the smoke, “Dad! Poppa! Help!”
The fake lawyer’s voice boomed out as he held Leila’s arms behind her back. “If you want to keep the girl safe, you’ll stop where you are!”
As the smoke dissipated, Mr. Vernon raised his hands in surrender. The Varalikas flanked them. The fake lawyer nodded toward the doorway at the back of the room. “Move it. All of you. Into the basement. And no funny business.”
A flight of stairs led down into shadow. Falsk shoved them all forward. Leila was the last through, and she thought almost fondly of the closet at Mother Margaret’s Home. Being locked in a closet by bullies was far better than being mishandled by sinister frown clowns. Leila nearly stumbled down the steps, but her fathers caught her. From the top of the stairs, the fake lawyer called to them, “We would have tied you up, but we saw what Leila can do to a knot. Let’s see her escape a basement, though.”
The four villains waved, then shut the door. Moments later, the door shuddered as they hammered nails into the frame. Shadows filled Leila’s vision at the bottom of the steps. Her fathers were immediately at her side, kneeling and hugging her in the darkness. Mr. Vernon asked, “Are you okay, dear? Did they hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” Leila whispered. “What about all of you?”
“Don’t worry about us,” said the Other Mr. Vernon. “I’m sorry that we agreed to bring you two out here. What a horrible mistake.” The group huddled together. Leila’s eyes were beginning to adjust when Carter pulled the trusty flashlight out of his satchel and flicked it on.
“Oh my darling, Clementine,” whispered Carter, waving the light around the space, but the beam illuminated nothing. The walls were too far away. “All those weeks ago, when Bosso’s security first brought me into his circus trailer, one of those frown clowns was singing that song. It took me a while to make the connection.”
“Nice work with the Morse code, you two,” said Mr. Vernon. “There are reasons I keep so many different kinds of books in the magic shop. And most of those reasons aren’t because I mean to sell them.”
“You can thank Ridley,” said Leila, “if we ever manage to escape.”
Her dad raised his eyebrow. “What do you mean, if? You are Leila Vernon. You can escape anything!”
Footsteps clunked overhead. The former clowns were walking around. “What are they up to?” Carter asked. “Are they going to hurt us?”
The Other Mr. Vernon shushed him. “Listen.”
A muffled voice said something like “…meet the others at the shop, gotta find that book…” Then steps moved toward the front. There was a squeaking sound and a door slamming. Afterward, an eerie silence echoed through the old office.
Both Mr. Vernons ran to the top of the stairs and pushed against the door. “No luck. They nailed it shut,” said the Other Mr. Vernon.
Leila’s fathers came back down the stairs. “Would you mind if I borrowed the light for a moment?” Vernon asked. He took Carter’s flashlight and searched the room. “No windows, no shovels, no hammers or crowbars to punch through the door. A shame I don’t have a large ax up my sleeve.”
Just then, the flashlight beam alighted on an empty bookshelf. Vernon went to examine it, then pushed it aside. Behind it, a rusted door was embedded into the building’s stone foundation.
Leila and Carter gasped.
The Other Mr. Vernon peered into the darkness. “What’s wrong? What do you see?”
Carter swallowed nervously. “The door looks like one we discovered in the basement of the Grand Oak’s lodge two days ago. The symbol over the keyhole—”
Leila flinched, then quickly interrupted him. “The map we found at the resort hinted that there are bootlegging tunnels under the town.” She blinked at Vernon. “But then, you probably knew that already. Since it was your map.”
“My map?”
“The one in the metal box buried under the stone floor of the lodge’s abandoned wing,” said Carter.
Leila added, “The one that was decoded by a cipher coin that magically appeared in our magic shop?”
A brief, impressed smile crossed Mr. Vernon’s face. “But that wasn’t my map.”
“The Emerald Ring’s map, then,” said Carter. “We thought that Leila’s key would fit the lock, but it didn’t.”
Leila felt like a clamp was suddenly crushing her temples. She wanted to squeeze Carter’s wrist to tell him to shut his mouth, but it was already too late. Her fathers scrunched up their foreheads, confused. “Key?” asked Mr. Vernon. “What key?”
Carter clapped his hand over his mouth and glanced at Leila in horror. He knew he’d unleashed her secret.
“Is this what you were talking about upstairs, honey?” asked the Other Mr. Vernon. “When you wanted to know if those frauds knew anything about—”
Leila sighed and nodded. She felt exhausted from keeping this secret. It was way past time to let her parents in on what she’d kept to herself for so long—proof of her past, proof that her birth parents had thought enough of her to leave a memento, a hint of where she’d come from, of who she really was, of the person she was capable of becoming.
Tugging at the string around her neck, she finally showed the key to her fathers. Mr. Vernon couldn’t control his surprise. His jaw swiveled open like a trapdoor in a stage.
Words came from her mouth, sounding to her like she was speaking from inside a dream. “Dad, Poppa… long before I met you, when someone left me on the steps of Mother Margaret’s Home, they placed this key in my bassinet. I’ve cherished it ever since. I never told you about it because… well, I didn’t want you to think that I needed to be chained to my old life. I love you both very much. But I couldn’t let this token go. I feel like sometimes… it helps keep me safe.”
The men clasped hands, then hugged Leila close again. They nearly squeezed tears out of her.
“The Emerald Ring used that old skeleton key to access the tunnels and unlock other doors around Mineral Wells,” said Mr. Vernon. “We kept it in a hiding place at the magic shop so that we could all use it whenever we wanted.”
Something about this statement struck a chime in Leila’s head. “Does that mean… someone in the Emerald Ring is one of my biological parents?”
Mr. Vernon stared at her for a few seconds, gears turning, as if he was trying to think of a response. “I don’t know about that, Leila,” he said finally, sincerely. For now, Leila let the question go. “Let’s see if the old thing still works.” Mr. Vernon led the group toward the rusted door.
“We tried the key in a door at the Grand Oak the other day,” said Carter. “No luck.”
Leila stuck the key into the lock, and just as she expected, it did not turn.
“Ah yes,” said Mr. Vernon. “But this is a special lock. And you are holding a special key.”
Leila felt her entire body buzz, as if her dad were about to share the secret of one of his most enigmatic tricks. She said, “But it doesn’t work.”
“A key works only if you know how to use it,” Mr. Vernon said. “And a magician’s key might be misleading.”
“Misdirection,” Leila whispered.
&n
bsp; She stared at the key, particularly the end with the ornamental club-suit decoration. Perhaps it wasn’t ornamental at all. She removed the string, then inserted the key—in reverse—into the keyhole. This time when she turned her wrist, the old rusted door let out a loud metallic click—satisfying in every way—and the large door swung open.
TWENTY-FIVE
The Vernon family hurried through the darkness. Mr. Vernon held the flashlight, directing the glow ahead of them. Carter clutched the map of the tunnels, trying to discern exactly where they were.
The tunnel was several feet wide and almost six feet tall. Some parts of it looked as though they’d been carved out by ancient underground streams; the walls were smooth stone with scalloped edges near the top. Other parts appeared to have been hacked directly through the bedrock by bootlegger pickaxes. In some sections, wooden joists arced overhead, providing support against the weight of the earth. In others, the group had to step over piles of stone that had rained recklessly down from the ceiling over the years, weakening the structure. Leila stumbled over a post lying flat across the floor. There were iron rails running through the tunnel, wooden slats connecting them like train tracks.
“Where did the Emerald Ring get the skeleton key, Dad?” Leila asked, her voice echoing out into the darkness.
“Oh, didn’t I say?” Mr. Vernon asked. But then he was quiet.
“No,” Leila answered. “You didn’t say, Dad. You never do.”
“My apologies,” he replied quietly. The Other Mr. Vernon rubbed his back. “The truth is, I am sort of ashamed about where my old club got that skeleton key.”
“Ashamed?” asked Carter. “Why?”
Mr. Vernon blurted out, “We stole it from Sandra’s father.” His statement echoed all around them.
The Magic Misfits: The Second Story Page 13
