The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase Read online

  A memory of a lesson on camouflaging taught by one of the experts her grandmother had brought in flitted around the edges of Daisy’s mind, but she couldn’t bring it into focus. Philip and Logan were still trying to get their hearts to stop pounding. Miles hung on every word. “I just want to be sure—are you talking about hiding the place where the beans grow? The one the contract said you would protect?”

  “Of course,” Frank said. “How many paradises do you know of?”

  “None,” Miles admitted. “Well, Logan’s candy factory is as close to paradise as I ever thought I’d get.”

  “You’re about to get closer,” Frank said.

  “Wait, what?” Philip said, coming out of his stupor. “It’s right here? And you’re actually going to show us?”

  Frank nodded. “Henry made that inevitable when he gave you the chocolate to use for the contest. Right or wrong, he set you on this path. That decision gave him many sleepless nights over the last five months, I’ll tell you that. He did it without asking Evy or myself first, which went against the contract. But that’s my little brother for you, always looking out for me even when I’m not looking out for myself.”

  They all stared at him, struggling to make sense of it all. He looked from one confused face to another and sighed. “Guess I’m going to have to start from the beginning. Come, show me the exact spot where you last saw your cat.”

  They walked to the side of the house, and Logan pointed a few feet in front of them. “It was right around there.”

  Frank walked over to the area, kept walking, and disappeared.

  “Taerg s’oelilaG tsohg!” Miles shouted, and he fell to the ground as his legs gave out under him. A symphony burst into Philip’s head. That used to happen to him when he was young and something upset him and he needed to escape his thoughts. His brain was protecting him from having to process this. Logan’s legs wobbled, but he leaned on the metal detector like a cane and managed to stay upright.

  Then Frank’s head appeared. Just his head. “Well?” he asked. “Aren’t you coming?”

  They all gaped at the floating head until the rest of Frank’s body appeared. “Okay, that wasn’t very nice of me,” he admitted. “Couldn’t resist. I’ve never had an audience before, you understand.”

  Frank held out a hand to a shaking Logan. “Let me show you. Everyone hold hands, and then, Logan, you take mine.” Although reluctant to let go of the security of the metal detector, Logan lowered it to the ground. He helped Miles up, gripping his hand tightly. Philip took Miles’s other hand. Then Daisy took Philip’s and AJ’s.

  Frank led them toward the backyard. One by one they each gasped as the person in front of them vanished. Then they were in darkness. Utter, complete darkness.

  “Hold tight,” Frank instructed as they stumbled forward and slightly downhill. They were already holding on so tightly they’d lost feeling in their fingers.

  “Where are we?” Philip choked out. Fear—not only of the whole disappearing thing but of the oppressive darkness—squeezed his throat muscles together.

  “Don’t worry. We are only a few steps from where we were on the side of my house,” Frank assured them as the downward slant grew steeper. “An elaborate system of mirrors bends the light around objects in my yard. Your cat didn’t disappear. She simply walked between two of the mirrors. As did we. Houdini made an elephant disappear this way—we’re hiding something a little bigger than that.”

  “Mirrors!” Daisy exclaimed. “Of course!” Now she remembered what that expert had spoken about—the art of hiding large objects in plain sight. She’d never seen it done in real life, though.

  Logan felt relief wash over him, knowing that his entire view of reality—a reality where cats and people were not able to disappear—would not need to be revised. His breathing slowed down for the first time since Aurora vanished.

  “We’re in an underground tunnel,” Miles said. “Right? The ground is slippery, and the air smells like it does on a rainy day, but much stronger.”

  “You are correct,” Frank said. “I love the smell, don’t you? So earthy and rich. All the silica and minerals in the dirt here make the odor even stronger. The high humidity in the air releases oils in the stone. That’s what you’re smelling.”

  “But there’s barely any humidity in this part of the country,” AJ said. “Even your grass doesn’t grow.”

  “That’s true,” Frank said. “You can see the effects of the infrequent rain in the front yard. But in the backyard, things are a little different.”

  As he said the word different and took one more step, a blast of heat made them suck in their breath. It must have been at least forty degrees hotter now. It felt hotter than the Tropical Room, hotter than anyplace any of them had ever been.

  One more step forward and the darkness faded as abruptly as it had fallen upon them. Walls of rock and sandstone rose up high on either side of them to form a narrow valley or canyon, the far end of which only Daisy could see. They blinked as blinding sunlight reflected off the powder-white sand that covered the ground. A stream of blue water flowed like liquid glass down a narrow riverbed, and the smell of chocolate filled their noses.

  Frank spread open his arms. “Welcome to Paradise!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  In the years to come, whenever they talked about that first moment, they found they couldn’t raise their voices above a whisper. For Logan, the image that always came to his mind had to do with the tree. Not the lone cocoa tree itself, which stood in the center of the valley with its lush green leaves and low-hanging blue pods and branches as wide as he’d ever seen. No, what first caught his eye were the hundreds—or maybe even thousands—of butterflies perched on the branches, gently flapping their red wings. He had a feeling a few of these had followed his grandfather back home to the factory once and started families.

  The butterflies made a big impression on Miles, too. When he spotted them, he knew for sure that he never needed to look for another sign. All those times during the contest he’d hoped to see a red-winged butterfly, hoped it would tell him if he was on the right path, if he had made the right choices. And now here they were. All of them. One of the sentences he’d copied before the trip floated back to him. Be where you are. A sense of great peace unfolded inside him. He was exactly where he was supposed to be.

  For Philip, the butterflies—which he assumed had stopped in this hidden valley on some kind of migratory path—didn’t hold much interest. The blue pods underneath them did, though. He dropped Daisy’s and Miles’s hands (which he was embarrassed to admit he’d still been clutching) and stumbled toward the tree. He was unused to walking in sand, thanks to his lifelong distaste for the beach, and he couldn’t get the hang of lifting his feet high enough. The sand covered his shoes and weighed him down. His knees and palms landed over and over again in the soft, hot sand, but he didn’t really mind. An almost childlike glee had fallen over him. The beans really existed, and he had an idea. He counted ten ripe pods on the tree, and maybe more underneath the dense piles of butterflies. Ten pods would yield about four hundred beans. Plenty.

  As for Daisy, while the cocoa tree and the butterflies and the tall cliffs and the sand made her very happy, she found herself drawn to the water. She kicked off her sneakers and ran. A pro at running on sand, she sprinted past Philip and the cocoa tree, past the hammock strung between two clumps of palm trees, past a sitting area complete with a circle of wooden chairs, each with its own striped umbrella, and straight to the river’s edge. She quickly understood that the water only appeared blue because it reflected the thin gash of sky above. Up close it was completely clear, allowing her to see all the way to the moss-covered pebbles on the bottom.

  “Wait till you see that in the dark,” Frank commented as he walked past her. By the time she tore herself away from the water to question what he meant, he was gone. She turned from side to side but didn’t see him anywhere.

  “He left,” AJ said, strolling u