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Another gust of wind tried to pluck her off my knee. She hunkered down, then buzzed up my sleeve and burrowed under my collar.
“You know Devere, don’t you? You’ve known him all along.”
Her tiny wings buzzed by my ear.
“He sent you to me.” Like he’d given me the bird. I knew it in my heart. I’d known it all along. I’d just refused to believe, because I’d been told my whole life how wrong I was to believe in the voices, to believe in magic.
Something inside my mind clicked over and slotted neatly into place—a cog in a mechanism. My past shifted in my mind, taking a new, different form. If I believed in magic, then the world made a whole lot more sense.
I still had a thousand unanswered questions, most with Devere and the toy store at their center.
He’d told me he’d been a part of the toy store’s fabric, and when it had burned down, he’d vanished. He’d told me he couldn’t leave, not that he wouldn’t—he couldn’t.Devere Barella, the infant, had died. Devere Barella, the man, was not his father’s son.
I’d asked him who he was. Notwho,he’d said—what.
Hush buzzed again. A clockwork beetle with a heartbeat. If such things were real, what if Devere wasn’t a man at all?
A hundred new theories and ideas exploded like fireworks in my mind. What if Jacapo’s son had died, and in his grief, the toymaker had crafted himself a new one?
It was insane, wasn’t it? Impossible. Fantasy.Madness.
Or was it magic, just like Devere had said.
The answers were in Minerva, where I’d been asking the wrong questions. Devere had told me over and over how perception could be skewed. Magic was science we did not yet understand. And the monsters were real.
I had to get back.
ChapterTwenty
A changein the light signaled dawn had arrived. I pried myself from between the boulders and waded through the snow, one boot in front of the other. That was all I had to do, just keep moving. With every step, the cold gnawed on my hands and feet, filling them with needles.
Just one step, then another, then another.
“Sir? Sir? You there, do you need help?”
I blinked up at the carriage driver leaning down from his open-back wagon. I hadn’t heard him approach. “Y-yes, please—gods yes.”
He helped me climb onto the seat beside him, and with a shake of the reins, we clattered on, the horse making quick work of the thin layer of snow. It was all I could do to cling on with numb fingers and hunker down. We soon reached Minerva’s quaint houses, all leaning into each other. I’d been relieved to leave, but now I was thankful to be back.
A few pedestrians hurried back and forth, wrapped up in warm coats and scarves. They didn’t seem real after the night I’d had.
A shop caught my eye. “Wait… is that? Stop!”
The driver slowed his wagon and I dropped onto the curb.
It cannot be.Jacapo’s World of Toys blazed with warmth. Colorful toys of all shapes and sizes filled the huge displays, just as they had before the blaze. A toy carousel spun, and racks of jewelry gleamed.
I stumbled against the window, almost falling on my knees. My gasp fogged the window. Inside, trains buzzed back and forth on their mechanical tracks, and I could just make out the glow from the huge fireplace and all the odd clocks tick-tocking on the wall above it.
The breath left my lungs in great shudders.
“Sir, shall I get someone to help you?” the driver asked. “A doctor, perhaps?”
“No, thank you,” I mumbled, and grasped the brass door handle, finding it cool and solid in my hand. How was this possible?
I pushed open the door. The bell above tinkled my arrival. I drifted forward, as though in a dream. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. The fire crackled, the clocks ticked, and the smell of cinnamon and hot toffee teased the best kind of memories to life.
If the store was back, then—
