The Art of Wishing (14 page)

“What girls?” he asked, perplexed.

“
Those
girls. The ones in all those books and TV shows. Some dumb high school girl falls in love with some supernatural guy, and he’s all, ‘Behold, I am five million years old!’ and she’s all, ‘Oh my god, how can you ever love pathetic little me!’ and he’s like, ‘Because of destiny!’ or whatever. It’s just so . . . ew. You know?”

There was a pause. When I finally chanced a look up at him, he was biting his lip, like he was trying really hard not to laugh.

“What?” I said defensively.

“You’re in love with me?”

“Pfft. No. I’ve known you for like a week.” Another pause. “You’re a really good kisser, though.”

Finally, he laughed. “As are you.”

I felt like I should laugh with him, or at least acknowledge the compliment, but I just couldn’t get past that number. I narrowed my eyes, taking a good look at him. His eyes, and how his lashes shadowed them. The shape of his jaw, and the way his dark hair curled a little bit over his ears. His hoodie, bunching up between the collar of his coat and the skin of his neck. Everything about him was so very high school.

He watched me, with a calm that seemed forced, as I studied him. Finally, I asked, “So how old are you?”

“Sixteen. Biologically, anyway, at least at the moment. But I was born in 1822, so if you want to go by that, then chronologically I’m . . .” He paused, silently moving his lips as he calculated.

“Almost two hundred years old,” I breathed, feeling very dizzy all of a sudden. “But that’s not possible. Is this some kind of . . . are you undead? Please tell me you’re not undead.”

That night in the parking lot came rushing back to me—the streetlights, the cold, Oliver’s eyes. Except this time, I was picturing rotting zombie lips, slowly moving toward my own. I shuddered.

“I’m not undead. I promise.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Okay, then you’re a dirty old man who tells people he’s a teenager. Except in real life instead of online. And with magical powers.”

“I’m not—” But he snapped his mouth shut, frowning at me. I raised my eyebrows, and he began again: “I’m not dirty. You kissed me first, remember?”

A loud laugh escaped me, and I leaned forward until my forehead rested against the top of the steering wheel. I couldn’t believe I was actually having this conversation.

“I’m sorry, Margo,” he said. “I really didn’t expect you to take the age thing quite so hard.”

“Of course you didn’t,” I murmured. “Because it’s obviously such an easy thing to hear.”

He didn’t reply. My hands started fiddling nervously with my seat belt.

“How much more haven’t you told me?” I asked.

“A lot.” He looked uneasy. Almost scared.

“Do you want to tell me?”
And do I want to hear it?

“I . . .” He trailed off, looking out the window, then down at his hands, then up at the ceiling of the car. “Yes?” Then something sharpened in his expression. “Actually, yes, I do. If this is my last . . .”

“Your last time granting wishes?” I supplied.

He nodded. “I want to tell someone,” he said simply. “And it should be you.”

I gripped the seat belt tightly to keep my hands still. Whatever he wanted to tell me, I would not become a giant ball of exploding nerves over this. I would handle it like an adult. I would be calm.

“Okay,” I said, bracing myself for the next big revelation.

But Oliver just said, “Come upstairs.”

“What?” I asked. “Why?”

“Because I think it’s a good place to start,” he said. Then he rolled his eyes. “Yes, I can see what you’re thinking, and no, I won’t try anything funny. Just come up.”

A good place to start
. I had a sudden vision of piles upon piles of magical artifacts, all stuffed into a tiny little Crawford Circle apartment. It looked suspiciously like a suburban version of the Cave of Wonders from
Aladdin,
but I never claimed to have an extensive frame of reference when it came to genies.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Chapter
FIFTEEN

“
C
an you wait here a second?” he said when we reached his front door.

“Hah!” I said nervously. “Want to get your dirty underwear off the floor before I come up?”

“I don’t leave my underwear on the floor, thank you.” Oliver sniffed. “Besides, it’s not that. It’s more about, um, how I don’t exactly have a key. Just wait here. I’ll buzz you up. Second floor, apartment C.”

“What do you mean—”

But he’d already disappeared.

A minute or so passed by—not long, but long enough to make me wonder whether Oliver was setting up mood lighting or hiding dead bodies. Or if someone was up there waiting to stab me again. Or if someone was up there waiting to hand me a crown and tell me I was the long-lost Princess of Genovia. Or if I’d tumble into a pit of lava, only to get saved at the last second by a flying carpet.

Just when I thought my skin was going to peel off from the agony of not knowing, the front door buzzed. I pushed it open and went up to the second floor. Oliver was there, holding open a door with
2C
on it in fancy gold letters.

“Come on in,” he said, and stepped aside for me.

With my mind full of oil lamps and magic carpets, I stepped over the threshold. And inside . . .

I gasped.

As far and as high as I could see, there were piles and piles of . . . well,
treasure
. Gold glinted everywhere, in so many different shapes and sizes that I could barely tell one object from the next. Brightly colored jewels winked in the dim light. Dark sculptures of fantastical creatures loomed majestically over me. Thick Persian rugs and long strings of pearls were draped carelessly over everything.

I looked down. The marble floor was strewn with gold coins. A silver crown, woven with gold and studded with rubies, lay at my feet.

And standing in the middle of it all, clad in rich, colorful fabric that made him look like a prince from a fairy tale, was Oliver.

“You like it?” he asked, gesturing expansively at the overwhelming opulence that surrounded us.

I took a step forward, taking care to avoid the crown. “This is . . .”

“Exactly what you were imagining?” finished Oliver with a smile. “I know. Here, have a seat.”

He indicated a chair that I hadn’t seen before. No, not a chair. A throne. An actual throne, made entirely of gold.

I began to move forward again, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk across this gleaming floor with feet covered in muck from outside. I unzipped my boots and stepped out of them, and then moved toward Oliver, who regarded me with regal pride.

As I arranged myself on the throne, I looked around the room in wonder. There were at least three vases, so delicate that I was afraid I’d break them just by looking at them. There was a chandelier, lying uselessly on the ground and reeking of decadence. There was soft, gorgeous light, but I couldn’t tell where it came from.

I looked up, trying to find its source, but there was only more treasure, piled higher than I could see. Was there even a ceiling? I actually couldn’t tell. And of all the craziness in that room, that was the thing that finally brought my nervousness creeping back in. We were on the second floor of a five-story building. I wanted to know the ceiling was there. I needed to see where the room ended.

“I’m sorry,” came Oliver’s voice, cutting into my whirling thoughts. “I didn’t realize. Maybe this will help.”

He raised one hand and gracefully unfurled his fingers. The space above me opened up, and suddenly I could see the clear night sky. Stars twinkled cheerfully, and a crescent moon bathed the piles of riches in pale, clean light. Oliver watched me expectantly. Every muscle in my body tensed, silently protesting how completely wrong this felt.

“This is,” I began again. My mouth felt dry. I swallowed. “This is weird. This is not right. Whatever you’re doing, please stop it.”

Oliver made a grand, sweeping motion with his hand. A comet appeared, blazing through the sky. It grew brighter and brighter until everything was eclipsed with white light and for a moment I forgot to breathe—

And then it was gone.

I was sitting on a metal folding chair in an empty apartment.

I leaped up, blinking rapidly as I looked around. Where there had been piles of gold a moment ago, there was now a faded blue couch with sagging cushions. A lone, threadbare carpet adorned the middle of the floor, its green and white stripes reminiscent of a beach towel. There was a thing against one wall that looked like a shoe rack, but it was hard to tell since there weren’t any shoes on it.

Beyond those things, which all had a distinctively Ikea-ish air about them, there were only bare walls, a wood floor, and three closed doors. Kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, I guessed. A perfectly average apartment, if you didn’t expect anyone to live there. And if you didn’t count Oliver, who was standing in the middle of the room, his princely attire looking cartoonish now that the treasure was gone.

“The furniture isn’t mine,” he said cheerfully. “The last tenants must’ve left it. Take the couch, if you want. It’s more comfortable. I’d offer you something to drink, but I don’t have any glasses. Can I take your coat?”

No glasses. In mere seconds, we’d gone from silver crowns and Persian rugs to bare walls and shoeless shoe racks and no drinking glasses.

Moving mechanically, I unzipped my coat and handed it to Oliver, and as he slipped it into a closet behind the front door, I sank down onto the couch. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pressed my palms against my temples. I hadn’t gotten stabbed again. That was good. But while the attack had scared the crap out of me, it had also brought a clarity of purpose: Get away from Not-Vicky, get my finger healed, get to the gig. And Oliver had been right there, helping me do those things, giving me a steady sense of security amidst all the chaos.

But now, even Oliver didn’t feel safe anymore. In the vast sea of my confusion, he’d suddenly become the biggest question mark of all—and that scared me far more than a switchblade ever could.

The cushions moved slightly, telling me that Oliver had joined me on the couch. After a moment of silence, I chanced a look at him. He was still wearing those distractingly colorful clothes. They made him sit up straighter than usual. They also made him look like a stranger.

“What was all that?” I asked. “Where were we?”

“We were right here. We’ve been here since you walked through my door.”

“But . . . but that was . . .” I paused and forced myself to take a deep breath. “What was that?”

He gave me a timid smile. “You wanted to see something fantastical when you came inside. Something out of a movie. So that’s what I showed you.”

“But why?”

“Because that’s what I do, Margo. It’s who I am. I show my masters what they want to see. I show them things that will comfort them, or dazzle them, or at least make them trust me with their wishes. Almost none of the magic I do is real, at least not without the power of a master’s wish behind it—but I can create the illusion of real magic.”

“The café,” I said, remembering the night I found his ring. It seemed so obvious in hindsight. “That was an illusion?”

“Yes,” he said. “A French café for you. A walk on the moon for someone else. Everyone wants to see something different.” He paused long enough to sweep his hand over his elegant clothes. Right before my eyes, his princely costume shimmered, transforming itself into faded jeans, a black T-shirt, and that familiar gray hoodie. The same outfit he’d worn earlier. He met my eyes again. “And that includes me.”

“You?” I said, utterly confused.

Oliver crossed his legs underneath himself, relaxing a little now that he was back in his normal clothes. “Before, in the car, you called Xavier a shapeshifting genie. And while you’re right, the part I didn’t tell you is that he’s a shapeshifter
because
he’s a genie. We can all change our shapes. It’s part of the job.”

My breath caught. I shook my head. Oliver, a shapeshifter. But he couldn’t be. He was
Oliver
.

“I’ve been a lot of things to a lot of people,” he continued. “Whenever I have a new master, I have to become part of their life. That takes a lot more than just moving from place to place. It’s moving from identity to identity, too. Clothes, haircut, money, paperwork, you name it. I create a new confidant for each of them. Someone they can trust with their secrets. And the masters I’ve had are all so different. They want such different people in their lives. One person wants a best friend who always shows up at her door with a bottle of wine and a shoulder to cry on. Someone else wants a girl who reminds him of his estranged daughter. They want mentors, or secret pen pals, or knights in shining armor, or—”

“Lovers?” I cut in softly, thinking of Oliver in my bedroom, assuming so quickly that I’d called him there to sleep with him.

He paused, but only for a second. “Sometimes,” he said carefully. “I’ve definitely had masters who were most comfortable confiding in a . . . well, a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend.”

That gave me pause. “A girl? You’ve been a girl?”

“That’s the weirdest part to you?” he said with an odd smile. “Yes, I’ve been a girl.”

I stared at him. It took me a moment to find my voice again. “But . . . but you’re a boy,” I said stupidly.

“Yes, I am.” He shrugged and leaned back against the couch. “And sometimes I’m not. I told you, I’m a shapeshifter. I can be anyone.”

An image of a switchblade flashed through my mind. “Could you be me?” I asked. “Like he was?”

He thought for a moment. “Probably. Yeah, if I wanted to. But replicating real people is a hell of a lot harder than starting from scratch. Although Xavier’s good at it, like you saw. Scary good. I don’t do it, as a rule. At least, not if I can help it. I mean, there was one time at a Bowie show in ’72, but there were . . . extenuating . . . I mean . . . that was a wish, so . . .” He trailed off with another shrug.

“But aside from wishes, it’s all illusion,” I repeated, mostly to myself. For some reason, I suddenly remembered that night in the parking lot, when I’d asked him to warm me up. He’d said no. I’d assumed it was because he didn’t want to, or wasn’t supposed to, or something. It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that he couldn’t.

The list of things that hadn’t occurred to me was suddenly getting far too long for my comfort.

He scooted closer to me on the couch. “I know this is a lot to absorb, Margo, but you asked. And I wanted you to know. I wanted
somebody
to know me, not just as this”—he ran his thumb over his fingertips, reminding me of the magic he held there—“but as me.”

In the space of a breath, I took it all in: the feel of his magic, the earnest look on his face, and the way his eyes studied mine, like he was silently urging me toward an understanding I hadn’t reached yet.

And all at once, it came crashing down. The huge thing that lay at the center of this whole conversation, even though he hadn’t said it out loud. The reason why he was nearly two hundred years old, but he looked sixteen.

“You’re not real, are you,” I said, jerking my hand away from him. “Oliver Parish doesn’t exist.”

Oliver’s gaze grew sharp. “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” he said, with a belated attempt at a smile.

I stood up. “How would you put it?” I said, my voice going taut as I looked down at him.

He regarded me with an expression that looked a lot like fear. “I would say . . . I mean,
I’m
real. I am. And I created Oliver, so—”

“But Oliver isn’t real,” I said. “You just—you invented him! All week long, we’ve been— And you spring this on me now? You never thought maybe you should tell me?”

“You didn’t ask!” he countered hotly. “Nobody ever asks. You all just assume!”

“Assume you’re who you say you are?” I said, dumbfounded. “Well, who the hell wouldn’t? And you just let me!”

“Yes, I did. It’s part of my job.”

“Your job.” That was what it came down to, in the end. I was just another job. “So, what, you looked into my head and decided I was just another one of those people who needed a boyfriend to confide in? And you became
this
?” I gestured broadly at his familiar form, suddenly so alien. “Someone two years too young for me, who always wears the same goddamn hoodie, for heaven’s sake? Which one of my thoughts told you I wanted any of that?”

Oliver was silent for a moment. His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. Then he took a breath and said, “None of them. I created Oliver for Vicky, not you.”

Of course it was for Vicky. Even now, everything came back to Vicky. Suddenly, I didn’t know which was worse: the idea that he might have created Oliver just for me, or the fact that he hadn’t.

He continued quietly, evenly: “The night you found my ring, I thought it was Vicky calling me. By the time I saw it was you, it was too late to become someone new, unless I wanted to shift right there in front of you. So I tried to get you to return my ring, so I wouldn’t have to worry about who you’d need me to become.

“It almost worked, too, but then your director startled me. I panicked, and I jumped. And once you’d seen my magic, I knew you wouldn’t let me go that easily. So when you called me to the diner, I looked into your head to see who you might want me to be. I saw that you wanted someone quiet. Someone safe and comfortable and easy to talk to. Someone who wouldn’t judge you poorly for being a bit of a control freak.”

I folded my arms tightly around myself, suddenly feeling young and garish in my stage clothes and sparkly makeup. “Stop.”

“Friend, boyfriend, it didn’t matter, as long as he’d encourage you, entertain you, support you, listen to you—”

“I said stop it.”

“I thought I could be all of those things, and still be Oliver. I made the choice in a split second, Margo. I’m sorry if I chose wrong.”

My mouth hung open. Sorry, my ass. I wanted to throw something at him. Something heavy. Something that would fill up this awful hollow feeling . . .

“It does matter,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even.

His eyes narrowed. “What does?”