That evening, two massive oak armoires were delivered to different parts of the city. The first went to Bissette & Sons, Fine Tailors. A note accompanying the armoire read:

Masquerade Box. Insert the article of clothing you wish to exchange, shut the doors, and a new one shall appear in its place. Twenty-four hours only.

The second armoire went to a third-floor flat on Nevsky Prospect, registered to a certain V. Andreyeva. A portly woman answered the door, and the movers attempted to wheel the armoire inside, but it did not seem to fit through the entryway, despite all three of them taking measurements of the chest and finding it significantly smaller than the door frame.

Finally, the woman instructed them to leave the armoire in the hall. The movers pointed out that she would have difficulty moving it if (1) it would not fit through the door, and (2) she did not have the wheeled platform—which they would have to take when they left—for the armoire was incredibly heavy. It felt as if it contained an entire elephant.

But the woman shrugged, and she signed the invoice and dismissed the movers. And they left the strange chest in the middle of the third-floor hallway.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

There was a long queue outside Bissette & Sons, Fine Tailors, full of the types of women who did not usually frequent queues but, rather, sent their servants to wait in their stead.

“Pardon me,” Vika said to a woman in a fuchsia dress and matching hat. “What is the line for?”

“The Masquerade Box. You stuff in your old hats and gowns and shoes, shut the door, and a few minutes later, you reopen the door, and a new outfit appears. But not just any clothes—a costume for the tsesarevich’s ball.”

“Oh. How . . . fascinating.” Vika craned her neck. “Uh, do you know how it works?”

“Rumor is there’s a hidden compartment in the bottom of the armoire. When you put in your unfashionable rags, they’re retrieved by the tsar’s men in the basement and replaced with the new costume.”

The woman in line behind her—this one dressed in a gown the color of brick—leaned in and added, “I hear it’s because the tsarina is looking to find a wife for the tsesarevich. This way, all the eligible ladies will be impressively attired. I’m hoping for a particularly stunning costume for my daughter.” She looked toward the front of the queue to gauge how much longer she would have to wait.

“Ah, I see. Thank you,” Vika said. She left, shaking her head. People would go through such incredible mental gymnastics to explain away the existence of magic.

She was still laughing at the nonbelievers when she stepped into her apartment building and climbed up all three flights of stairs, and because of that distraction, she didn’t recognize there was other magic nearby. She felt it, but she thought it was the remnants of the Nevsky Prospect charm following her in from outside. That is, until she turned the corner into her hall and almost walked straight into an armoire, a near duplicate of the Masquerade Box at Bissette & Sons.

Vika gasped and frantically cast a shield around herself. Her heart pounded like a tympani, rattling her bones.

Inside the flat, Ludmila banged pots and pans, singing a song from her favorite opera, Magician, Fortune-Teller, and Match-Maker. Vika shook herself out of her stupor and reinforced the protections she’d cast on their front door.

She tiptoed around the armoire, inspecting it for traps. Like the chest at Bissette & Sons, it was made of oak, with two large doors that would open outward if she tugged on the handles. However, unlike the one at Bissette & Sons, which had a carving of a masquerade ball etched onto its panels, this one was very plain.

There was nothing obviously wicked about it. If Vika hadn’t seen the other armoire at the tailors’, and if she weren’t on guard because she was in the middle of a magical duel, she might have thought it a rather ordinary closet.

After she had circled the chest several times, an envelope revealed itself, materializing in front of her.

She shrank away from it. “As if I would touch that.”

But she didn’t need to. Her opponent had predicted her caution and had taken the liberty of charming the envelope for her. It opened, and a heavy sheet of cream paper slipped out from within. It unfolded itself in the air.

The handwriting was neat, the angles of the letters precisely aligned. The loops in the cursive were modest but still bold. The tail of each word ended in a flourish.

My thanks for your mercy

from the lightning storm.

Please accept this Imagination Box

as a token of my appreciation.

—Nikolai

“A token of appreciation. Right. It’s probably full of snakes.” Vika collapsed her hand into a fist, and the note followed suit and crumpled itself.

But wait. He’d signed his name. She opened her hand, and the sheet of paper smoothed itself out again.

“Nikolai,” she whispered.

The combination of her voice and his name together for the first time whipped the wind outside. “His name is Nikolai.”

She reached out toward the armoire. Through her shields, she could feel his magic, strong yet airy. Carefully, she touched her fingertips to the wood, and words began to carve themselves into the wardrobe’s doors. It was the same script as on Nikolai’s note.

Imagine, and it shall be.

There are no limits.

Imagine?

Nikolai’s words faded from the doors, and in their place, the question Imagine? etched into the wood as if straight from Vika’s thoughts.

“Are you reading my mind?” she said aloud.

The armoire changed again, and Are you reading my mind? appeared on its face.

Vika jumped back.

But snakes did not leap out of the armoire. Her fingers did not fall off her hand. Nikolai did not take over her brain.

She took one step, then two, back to the so-called Imagination Box. But she didn’t touch it.

She did, however, begin to imagine something else: her dresser at home, the one her father had built with the carving of a snow-capped volcano on it. Vika’s mother had studied volcanoes; in fact, that was how she’d died—she’d perished during an unexpected eruption while researching lava flows. When Vika was young, she liked to pretend that her mother had somehow survived and was living inside the volcano, just waiting for her daughter to be old enough and strong enough to visit. Which was why Vika had always been fond of that dresser.