I’ve known Vano Shirque ever since I was old enough to hold a crayon—and been saddled with his presence ever since. Freshman year of high school, we were assigned to partner up for a biology class project that involved dipping some water out of the bay, testing its pH for a week, and comparing our findings. Not only did he fail to take any readings—he left his water in a sunny window, and half our project evaporated. The worst part? He didn’t even have the decency to act chagrined!
If Vano was inscrutable as a gawky teenager, his sangfroid was off the charts now that he’d grown up. Not only did his heavy-lidded bedroom eyes and chiseled cheekbones leave random onlookers swooning in his wake, but he moved with the careless grace of someone who had zero figs to give. If James Dean and The Fonz had a baby—if they were both Scriveners, at any rate—that lovechild would be Vano Shirque.
Vano slunk down the Boardwalk like it was a catwalk in Milan. He paused at the Wishing Bell, leaned against the base, and pulled out his phone—probably scrolling through the eight bajillion thumbs-up his picture of today’s cappuccino got on Friendlike. Not that I’m jealous. Or annoyed. Or fixated.
Not too fixated, anyhow.
I belatedly realized the big guy in pink next to Yuri was trying to get my attention. “Excuse me—sir? How deep is the water?”
“Seventy-five leagues,” I said abstractedly—because once the crowd near Vano thinned, he stole a quick look around, then slipped a bit of paper out of his jeans pocket and crammed it into the base of the Wishing Bell—and not to make a wish, either. Whoever’d lost my father’s spell had clearly just found another Spellcrafter. I’d never seen Vano move so purposefully…other than the time he snatched that terrible apartment out from under our noses. And even then, I don’t suppose I actually saw him do it. Just the aftermath of his stupid, perfectly-formed signature on the lease.
“How deep is a league?” the guy was asking Yuri as he thumbed around on his phone to try and look it up. “I don’t have any bars out here.”
Yuri, too, was distracted by Vano, and said the first thing that popped into his head. “Deep enough to sink ship.”
Which…apparently got Charlotte’s attention. She really wasn’t very good at staying on her half of the deck. She hurried over and declared, “The mean depth is twenty-five yards. And the Barge of the Bay is very stable.”
If there was one consolation, it was that at least we knew where Vano lived. Plenty of professions have client confidentiality—psychiatry, law, wart removal. But Spellcrafters? Hardly. If Vano wouldn’t tell us who hired him to influence the Boardwalk Board, it wouldn’t be to protect the customer…it would be to stop us from poaching his business.
Once the Barge of the Bay finally completed its loop around the water and pulled up to the dock, I was practically ready to hop overboard and swim to shore. But Yuri, as usual, was the voice of reason. As Charlotte and the tourists disembarked, he took me to one side and said, “Forget about your ‘frienemy,’ Dixon.”
“But I know he wasn’t just making a wish. He didn’t pat the Bell.”
“Even if he is Crafting for the developers—it is no different from what your own family has done. You cannot implicate him without exposing your father as well.”
Well…when he put it that way. “So, what can we do?”
He stroked his chin and gazed at the Wishing Bell. The lowering sun made it look cheerful and pink. “These shops all close in just a couple of hours. We should come back and retrieve whatever Spellcraft Vano has made. Between the two of us, you and I can duplicate the work—but without the volshebstvo—and Uncraft whatever it was they were using to sway the vote.”
“Lemme get this straight. My idea is to go confront Vano face-to-face, while yours is to wait until nightfall, sneak back to the Boardwalk, break into the Bell, steal the Spellcraft and replace it with a counterfeit?” Yuri looked slightly alarmed at that summary, so I hastened to add, “Genius! Let’s go change into something black.”
I was eager to don a slinky turtleneck like a cat burglar, but unfortunately it was no longer turtleneck weather—plus, I didn’t actually own one. I had to settle for a black T-shirt and jeans, and Yuri’s suit was more of a dark brown.
Close enough.
There were a few random cars in the parking lot when we got back to the Boardwalk. People tended to park their second cars there when they ran out of room in their garages, since the Pinyin Bay Tourism Council couldn’t be bothered to have them towed. The Big Burgundy Bus was still parked there too, but it looked empty. Yuri said, “If anyone is still there, it is only Isaac the driver, guarding the luggage.”
I took a good look at the bus. “Awfully suspicious how that bus came into town right when all this Boardwalk stuff started going down. What if Isaac is the buyer’s agent—and he’s the one you heard making the phone calls?”
“Completely different voice.”
“Okay…but if you put a little makeup on him…could he be Crouch? After all, we’ve never seen the two of them at the same time.”
Yuri shuddered at the mere thought, then said, “Crouch is clean-shaven and Isaac is not. And then there are the dreadlocks.”
I was a little bit surprised Yuri would stick up for a guy with so much lint in his hair—Yuri tends to be a lot more conservative than the Scriveners I was accustomed to rubbing elbows with, and even just a tad bit judgy—but if he was willing to vouch for the bus driver, that was good enough for me.
Normally, at night, the Boardwalk was a riot of colored light. Not only were plenty of fairy lights strung between the shops and wound around the potted decorative trees, but when you angled your head just right, they reflected off the water, too. But as late as it was, with the shops closed for the night and the decorative lights turned off, it not only looked different, but sounded different. The water lapping against the pilings out at the end of the pier was loud. And the wind howling across the bay.
And the sound of a single man talking.
“Hello? No, don’t put me on speakerphone, I can hardly hear you over all this wind.”
Yuri and I melted back into the shadow of the keychain pagoda.
“Your theory about the voters didn’t pan out. I watched that ballot box all afternoon, and not a single geriatric local came by. I don’t care what your records say. Either the board members aren’t the old coots you think they are, or they’re voting somewhere else.” Yuri was so right—that voice was totally familiar! I craned my neck around the side to get a look, but couldn’t make out anything but a generic man-shaped silhouette. “Fine, I’ll stay until midnight—and even that’s pushing it. You know how early old folks go to bed. And speaking of beds, the sheets at this so-called Pinyin Inn have an abysmal thread count. That would never fly in Wichita.”
Yuri and I exchanged a look, wide-eyed with surprise, and then simultaneously mouthed the name Quint.
Pinyin Bay was the last place I’d expected to see the obnoxious businessman we’d met back at the Spring Falls Hot Spring Spa. Shouldn’t he be off somewhere demanding an upgrade and bragging about his masseur? I was all ready to charge out there, grab him by his businessman shoulders, and pester some answers out of him—but Yuri caught me by the sleeve and gave his head a subtle shake. He put his lips to my ear and said, “He does not know we are onto him, so we have the advantage. Perhaps Vano’s Crafting will shed some light on the situation.”
It was really tough to restrain myself from going after Quint and giving him the what-for. But Yuri was right. We knew where he was staying—he’d be the only one at Pinyin Inn since it was no longer open for business, thanks to the developers who were pulling his businessman strings. And it really would be smart to retain the advantage of surprise.
Yuri and I both watched our watches. (Was that confusing for Yuri, I wondered, when two English words meant something different, yet tangentially related? I’d have to ask.) At the stroke of midnight, the silhouette stomped off to the parking lot, making no effort whatsoever to sneak. Yuri put his finger to his lips, and we both waited there, feeling extremely stealthy, until we heard the distant sound of a car pulling out of the gravel lot and driving off.
“Is the coast clear?” I whispered, then realized there was an actual coast in our immediate proximity. I checked the water, too. “I wonder if the first person to ask that question was literally standing right beside a pier, just like us!”
“We are alone,” Yuri said decisively—I just love it when he’s so commanding. “Let us have a look at what Vano has Crafted.”