Renata collapsed into Nikolai’s desk chair and caught her breath. “Then you will not go to the ball, will you?”
“Pasha invited me. I must. He’s the tsesarevich.”
“But it could be dangerous.”
“Even if Pasha weren’t the crown prince, I would go. He’s my friend. I won’t leave him alone with her.”
“But you could die.” Renata’s voice was strained thin. “Nikolai, please. Don’t go.”
He tore his gaze away from the ceiling and looked at Renata, although it was more like he looked straight through her. “Thank you for the news of my friend’s ill-advised infatuation. Now if you’ll kindly leave me, I have some work to do.”
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.”