“What’s the difference if a few objects from a past life pop up here?”
I thought about Eva, buffeted on a tide of Toby tricks, pulled from one moment to the next. I wondered where she was now. “Because it won’t always be objects. Soon it will be people. You will hurt someone again.”
The magician shook his head.
“You can’t see past the possibility of succeeding in this one thing, in saving Greta’s life. You need to consider the effect it will have on other people. Like me.”
“How could saving Greta affect you?”
“After I fell through the ice, memories of my brother began to shift and change. Because you pulled me out, he was written out of that moment. When you save Greta, a whole different reality will open up. We cannot live in two worlds.”
“If we go back, we will eventually get back to the present.” Toby walked over and examined one of the illusions with menacing blades and saw teeth.
“What about all the things that have happened since we left Vegas? Do they matter? Should they cease to exist?”
“What has happened that’s worth saving?” He ran his finger along the sharp edge of a circular blade.
I thought of Olivia and Leo. “I’d lose my friends.”
“You can come back and find them again.”
“They wouldn’t know me. It wouldn’t be the same.” I backed away from the box and sat at the worktable. On the table was a yellowed playbill. It featured a picture of the Dissolving World with a painting of Theo’s head crowned in smoke. Beneath the illusion was the inscription STEP INTO YOUR IMAGINATION WITH THE DISSOLVING WORLD: $1.
“You’d find a way to befriend them.”
I shook my head. “As I said, I’d always know things were supposed to be otherwise.”
Toby’s eyes flashed. “Who are you to say how things are supposed to be?”
“Who are you?”
“I am trying to make things better, while you are content for everything to be the same.”
“With magic,” I said.
“Yes, with magic. But that is all I have.”
I took a deep breath. “I have always loved you beyond your magic. I have loved you in spite of it.”
Toby could not meet my gaze. He looked over my shoulder, through the dusty window where evening was coming too early, as usual. “In spite. As if it’s a burden.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You have always wanted me to sit on the sidelines of my art. You want me to play with it, but never use it.”
I shook my head.
“It is as if I were to tell you to sew buttons instead of creating a quilt. You want me to become like Theo and the rest—sit by and watch as my magic dries up.”
“Of course not. But the fact that I love you and not your art should tell you something.”
“What’s that?”
“That there is more to you than the skills that make that box work.”
“Maybe.”
“I need you to love me in this world.” I stood up and grabbed Toby’s wrists.
“I do love you. But it doesn’t matter where. To me, one world’s as good as the next. In my reality, things are forever shifting and interchangeable. I’m a magician, Mel. I never expect anything to be fixed. In fact, I demand the opposite.”
“Tinkering with reality is different from changing it.”
“Now that I’ve nearly found a way to undo the worst thing I’ve done, how can you expect me not to try?”
I blinked away my tears.
“Look around, Mel. Is this a place for my magic? Is this a place for us?”
I shook my head.
“If I don’t repair what went wrong in Vegas, I’m going to spend the rest of my life hiding away, unable to perform. I’m going to become Theo—a bitter, frustrated magician with no magic.” Toby paused. “We loved Las Vegas. It was strange, but we loved it.”
“I remember.”
“So, come with me.”
“No. There will always be something else. Saving Greta is only the beginning.”
We stared at each other, unable to find the words to close the gap between us.
“I love you, Mel. But I want everything to be better.”
“Then you need to show it by staying here with me. Things can be better without them being exactly as they were before. There’s nothing to fix. People aren’t meant to be brought back to life.”
Toby rubbed his hands together. “What if you had the chance to bring your brother back? Tell me you wouldn’t.”
“I did have the chance. I could have asked you. I could have asked to see him for a day, a moment, however long it lasts.” I shook my head. “But I didn’t. He chose to leave, the same way Greta chose to die.”
“Her death was my fault.”
“No, Toby. It wasn’t.”
The magician shook his head.
“Her death ended your run in Vegas. That is all.”
“I need to try and save the girl.”
“You are not saving her,” I said. “You are only saving yourself. It’s selfish.”
“How can you say that?” Toby said.
“Because you are doing this to make yourself feel better at the expense of everything else. And if it works, you will stay and I won’t be with you. You won’t have the heart to come back. You will be blinded by your magic.”
“I’ll come back for you.”
“No, Toby, you won’t.”
“This is my only chance,” he said. “Tomorrow we will have to leave Piet’s.” He opened the door to the Dissolving World.
“Don’t go in there.”
“I do love you,” Toby said.
“I won’t follow you.”
He stepped inside. And of course, I followed.
Seventeen
I open my eyes to an unnaturally gray sky. The looming clouds are stationary. Anyway, it’s too warm to snow. Beneath my head is a heavy synthetic cushion.
Then I hear a familiar voice. “You getting up, or what?”
I look from the frozen clouds to the girl standing in front
