Cloaked (19 page)

I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this. My shoes. My actual real-life shoes I designed are here. And Meg did it—somehow. I turn it over and over and even shake it.

Meg looks at the shoe, then Philippe, and says, “Can you excuse us a moment, darling?”

Philippe looks like he’s eaten a bad escargot. “If you must. But do not stray long, my leetle anemone.”

I think I see Meg make a face, but when I look again, she’s beaming at Philippe. She hands him a shoe box and kisses him (
gag
) before saying, “Each moment is a lifetime, my love.” (
Gag
). She leaves him, staring at the shoes.

I’m still staring too, as she pulls me into the closet and shuts the door. When she turns on the light, I see there are dozens, maybe hundreds more shoe boxes. Are they full? Meg whispers, “I guess I can tell you, since you know about the ring. We have brownies.”

“Brownies? Sure. You’ve got an awesome crumb cake too, but what does that have to do with shoes?”

“Brownies are elves, Johnny. It’s an Irish thing. They help clean up. Remember how the place was always a mess at night, and then, it would be clean in the morning?”

“Elves?”
Elves???

“They clean up after we leave, do the baking, then start the coffee before we come every morning. They don’t work during the day. They like to be left alone.”

“Elves made these shoes?” I still can’t believe what I’m holding in my hand. And what could be in those other boxes.

“Brownies.”

“Brownies.” But if this is true, I can just get started selling them. Maybe I couldn’t get thousands for them, but we’d have money. We wouldn’t have to worry. I examine the workmanship of the shoe, and I can see it’s top, top quality. I wouldn’t have to marry Victoriana. If I could sell these for half what they’re worth, it would save the business.

“Anyway,” Meg says, “they were bored. It doesn’t take them very long to make some muffins. They’ve been doing the same thing for a long time. They don’t want to live at our house because it’s too crowded—they like their privacy. So when you left, I got them started on some shoes. I ordered the materials—you can pay me back out of Victoriana’s money—and I left out your patterns. They did the rest.”

Un-be-stinking-lievable. Meg’s solved all my problems, and now, she’s going to marry Prince Snottyface. “I can’t believe brownies made the shoes.” But I can. I can believe anything. “Where are they now?”

“They clear out every morning. It’s just their way. After they finished a few dozen samples, they started on a marketing plan. Maybe it’s around here somewhere. “Oh!” She spies a folder and hands it to me. “I bet this is it. Anyway, so take the shoes. They should get you started.”

“But . . .” I pick up another box. A lime green sandal with a stacked heel and a square-cut brooch on the vamp. Size six. Lovely stitching. I open another, and it’s the same shoe, size seven. My dream has come true. It’s really happening.

“Sean will help you carry them out. I have to go with Philippe.”

Philippe. My dream gets stuck in my throat. Meg understood and made my dream come true. Now she’s gone. With Philippe.

“Maybe we can have a double wedding.” She throws open the door. “Miss me, darling?”

“But of course, my sweet green mamba.” Philippe is still holding the shoe. Only one, like Cinderella’s prince. “Zis ees quite lovely.
Ma mère—
my mother—would like zem very much. She will be angry wiz me for disappearing. Perhaps a gift. Do you have eet in size five?”

“I’m sure I do. Let me . . .”

I stop. Across the way, I see Mom, opening our shop. And suddenly, all I want is my mother. My mother to comfort me. I turn to Meg. “Do you mind checking? I need my mom.”

Chapter 42

The fox said, “It is in your power to free me.”

—“The Golden Bird”

My mother greets me with a hug, but before I get a chance to tell her the whole story about Caroline, Farnesworth, the swans, Philippe, and Meg, she says, “We had, um, sort of an unusual visitor.”

“A visitor? Who was it?”

“Not who, but what.” She reaches into the drawer under the register and hands me a scrap of paper smaller than a Post-it. In the smallest writing I’ve ever seen, it says:

Meet me at the Port at midnight when you get back. Cornelius

“So this visitor, it was a . . . a rat.”

She shudders. “Yes. With little sharp teeth and tiny claws. I tried to chase it with a broom, but it wouldn’t budge until I took this. I think you have to go, yes? It’s important?”

That night, I take Mom’s car to the port. I remember the first time, the motorcycle, the shooting. But they won’t be there anymore. The prince has been found. I have nothing to do with it. I haven’t even tried to contact Victoriana yet. I can’t face her. I’m looking for a way to park by the roadside when the gate starts to open. No one’s there. I drive the car in. As soon as I reach Terminal C, there’s a tiny creature on my windshield. I open the window and allow him to hop into the car. He begins talking right away, but it’s all excited squeaks.

“Hold on. I can’t understand.” I insert the earpiece, and right away, he starts talking again.

“Hoo-boy. You made it. I was worried aboutchoo what wid da witch and dat big guy on da motorcycle. But hey. You made it back. Didya find the fox?”

I nod. “Thanks. He told me where to find the frog, and I found him.”

The rat’s whiskers droop a bit, and his eyes gleam sideways in the moonlight. “But . . . dat’s all he told ya? The fox?”

“That’s all I asked him.”

“That’s all you asked him, but did he ask
you
anything? Did he ask you to
do
anything?”

Then I remember the fox’s strange request, the one I refused.

“Well, he asked me to kill him, but of course, I didn’t.”

“Of course? You didn’t?”

“I’m not going to kill a fox, much less a talking one.”

“He wasn’t asking you to kill him so he could get dead. He coulda run in traffic if das what he wanted. If he asked you to kill him, den he asked for a reason.” He must see the confused look on my face, even in the darkness, because he continues. “We—all us used-to-bes—have things that gotta happen so’s we can get transformed back. It could be a kiss or a magic bean, something like that.”

“Or making shirts out of flowers?”

“Exactly. Weird, but exactly. I had to find my daughter, but she was killed in an accident before I could, so now, I’ll never go back.” The rat pauses, and I hear a tiny sniff. “But that fox—if he was asking you to kill him, I guarantee he was doing it for a reason. You gotta go back and do it.”

“But I can’t go back to Key Largo.”

“Why the heck not?”

I struggle to think of an answer. The obvious answer: No magic cloak. The usual answer: Work. The depressing answer:

“I may have to marry a princess.”

The rat laughs. “Marry her next week. Do this now.”

He’s right. I’ve got a car full of gas. I’ve been forbidden to work. Nothing prevents me but a beautiful princess—a princess any guy in the world would want.

Any guy but me.

What I wouldn’t give to be in your shoes,
said the Baker’s Wife to Cinderella.

So I say, “Okay. I’ll do it.”

Because if I can’t help myself, I may as well help the fox.

I drive, radio off, feeling the shake of Mom’s old car, the rhythm of rubber on the road. None of it drowns out my thoughts. This should have been the day I got everything, a beautiful princess waiting for me, the shoes, the future. But it means nothing against wanting Meg and having her end up with that jerk. The moon and the streetlights cast white and black shadows across my face, and I want to give in to the beauty of a summer night, but always my thoughts stop me. How could I have been so wrong about what I wanted? Maybe I actually am stupid. And how could Meg not want to be together when we’ve gone through so much? Doesn’t she care? And yet, the shoes in her shop say different. She loves me. She just doesn’t love me the way I want her to.

Corrie ten Boom, who helped hide Jews from the Nazis during World War II, said, “If God sends us on strong paths, we are provided strong shoes.”

I hope I have strong shoes.

* * *

In two hours I’m in Key Largo. The fox is behind the inn. He holds half a sandwich in his paws. I look around to make sure the place is deserted, that Uncle Sam isn’t waiting for me. But the fox is alone. I insert the earbuds and say, “You wanted something from me?”

The fox nods but gives no other acknowledgment. I say, “Is it part of the curse on you?”

“Nah, I’m just tired of eating out of Dumpsters all these years. No one ever thinks to throw away a packet of tartar sauce.” He swallows the last bite of sandwich, then licks the grease off his paws with his pink tongue.

“Are you serious?” I can’t kill him if that’s the reason. It would be hard to kill a fox, harder still, knowing he’s a man. What if he’s transformed back when he dies? What if there’s this corpse in the Dumpster? I could get nabbed for murder.

I picture the headlines:
MIAMI DRIFTER WANTED IN KEYS
. That’s me, Miami Drifter.

The fox finishes cleaning his paws and says, “It’s difficult for me to talk about the curse. Difficult. I can only promise that this is what I want and need, and if you do as I ask, there will be no trouble.” He looks up at me. The silver moonlight catches in his brown eyes, and they plead with me. I remember Cornelius, his family and his hope gone, doomed always to be a rat. Wouldn’t I rather be dead?

Strong shoes.

I nod. “How will I do it?”

He hesitates an instant, then scampers across the shadows and into the bushes. He returns a moment later, a knife gripped in his teeth. It’s not a scary knife like a switchblade. It’s one of those knives you use to carve a turkey on Thanksgiving. He thrusts it toward me with his teeth.

I take it. “I don’t think I can.”

“Please. I’m a fox. People kill animals all the time.”

I hold the knife straight. What would it feel like to stab someone? Maybe like cutting leather.

He reads my thoughts. “Think of it like cutting up a broken shoe.”

“How did you know I work with shoes?”

The fox hesitates, then says, “You told me so.”

“I did?”

The fox lifts his neck, and I see his white ruff like snow in the moonlight. “One good cut. I won’t bite.”

“I don’t think I can do this.”

“Did you drive here all the way from Miami
not
to kill me?”

He’s right. The rat said I should kill the fox, that it was for the best. But I didn’t kill the giants, and I didn’t even kill the witch. Still, I reach toward the fox, hold his neck in my left hand, close my eyes, and with one motion, slice into his neck.

A bright red pain shoots through my hand. I look down, and it’s gushing blood. I press my finger against it, trying to staunch it. But where did the fox go? Where’s the fox?

And then, I see him. He’s on the ground. His neck wound is not just open, but gaping and getting bigger, spreading out until it’s bigger than his body, then bigger than mine. I jump back to avoid being swallowed up by it. But I needn’t have worried because when I look back, the hole is filled with something. A man, stepping from the fox’s skin. An older man, brown hair streaked gray. He looks familiar somehow, but of course, he isn’t. He’s the fox.

He’s the fox.

I saved him. I will never get used to this.

The fox-man looks at his hands, then puts them to his neck, checking for wounds. Finding none, he stares at his hands again. “I’m human. I’m alive. I’m . . .” He turns his hands from side to side. “. . . old.” He touches his face, like he’s feeling for wrinkles. “I spent my best years as a fox. Do I look hideous?”

I’m still drinking in the fact that he’s a guy. His fox skin lies on the ground, forgotten. I wonder why he got changed in the first place. Could it happen to anyone?

I say, “No, not bad. You don’t look old either. Just, you know, middle-aged.”

“I was twenty-five when I was changed. Thank goodness my clothes still fit. Still, my wife won’t recognize me. Aw, she’s probably married to someone else anyway, probably thinks I walked out on her. How am I ever going to convince her of the truth?”

The truth. I remember playing Four Truths and a Lie with Meg. Does anyone ever really know the truth about anyone?

Meg.

That makes me think of something else. The cleaning. When we played Four Truths and a Lie, I assumed her statement about doing all the cleaning was a true one.

Now, I know that was a lie.
The
lie. The brownies did the cleaning, not Meg. So if that was the lie, all the other statements must be true.

Including the last one.

And five: I am secretly, madly in love with you.

She loves me. At least, she did love me when she said it. She was trying to tell me, but I ignored her. I feel euphoria and despair. Meg loves me. Loved me. But is it too late now? Did I let her slip through my hands?

“Thank you!” The fox interrupts my thoughts and places his hands on my arms. They’re rough, probably from years of walking on them, but he’s shaking me, hugging me, jumping up and down, happy. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“You’re welcome. I don’t mean to be rude, but I need to leave.” I have to find Meg. It’s after three. If I drive without stopping, maybe I can drive to the hotel, sneak in before Farnesworth gets there and sees me, wait for her at the shop.

If she hasn’t left to marry her prince.

But something tells me she hasn’t, that she was just pretending to be so happy, to make me jealous. It worked.

Meg loves me. She wouldn’t have had the elves make the shoes if she didn’t. I know it.

It is this thought that propels me away from the fox. “Here.” I shove a couple of bills into his hand. “To get you started. I need to go.”

“But wait! I have to talk to you.”

“I’ll see you around, maybe.” I start toward the car.

“Wait! Let me—”

The door slams shut. No time for long good-byes. I have to find Meg.