Matchbox Girls Read online

  First edition published 2012.

  Second edition published 2015.

  Copyright © 2012 by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  All rights reserved.

  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Please respect the author’s rights; don’t pirate!

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN:

  eISBN: 978-1-943197-01-9

  Cover art by Ravven

  www.ravven.com

  Cover design by Chris Sobolowski

  Editors: Kate Sullivan and Ellen Harvey

  Proofreaders:

  Rose Martino Bigelow

  Matt Hydeman

  Sarah LaBelle

  www.dreamfarmer.net

  For my mother, who believed in me,

  and my son, who made me understand.

  Table Of Contents

  -one-

  -two-

  -three-

  -four-

  -five-

  -six-

  -seven-

  -eight-

  -nine-

  -ten-

  -eleven-

  -twelve-

  -thirteen-

  -fourteen-

  -fifteen-

  -sixteen-

  -seventeen-

  -eighteen-

  -nineteen-

  -twenty-

  -twenty-one-

  -twenty-two-

  -twenty-three-

  -twenty-four-

  -twenty-five-

  -twenty-six-

  -twenty-seven-

  -twenty-eight-

  -twenty-nine-

  -thirty-

  -thirty-one-

  -thirty-two-

  -thirty-three-

  -thirty-four-

  -thirty-five-

  -thirty-six-

  -epilogue-

  Thank you!

  Infinity Key Excerpt

  About the Author

  -one-

  Marley woke up, reaching out of a forgotten dream for her cellphone, knowing that she couldn't miss this call. Half-asleep, she fumbled at her nightstand, knocking a bottle of pills and three books over and onto the floor. Then she rolled over to stare at the phone, which wasn’t ringing. She frowned. Why had she—

  It rang.

  “Yeah?” she mumbled into the phone as she fell back onto her pillow again, putting her arm over her eyes to block out the late morning sunshine streaming in her window. The sky had that baked-on brilliance that said it was already too hot to imagine doing anything outside.

  “Marley, come get us?” She heard a small child’s voice, beguilingly familiar but unexpected. “It’s scary here.”

  Marley sat up and glanced at the caller ID on the phone. Despite an unlabeled number, she identified the voice: Lissa or Kari, the twin nieces and wards of her gorgeous friend Zachariah. Almost daily, she met the twins and their guardian at the nearby park where Marley went to read and they went to play.

  “Kiddo? Where are you? Did you get lost somewhere?” The children were preschoolers, young enough to get seriously confused if they decided to set out on an adventure.

  “At home, but Uncle Zach isn’t here. He said, ‘Call Marley!’ if we ever can’t find him.” A second voice on top of the first said, “Come get us, Marley!” There was a shrill edge to the voices that pulled Marley to her feet before she was entirely aware of it. The trickle of worry became a flood, twisting her stomach into knots.

  She took a deep breath, forcing the anxiety down. Her meds were on the floor. Cradling the phone against her ear, she opened the bottle and swallowed a pill. Then she started looking for clean clothes. “Where did he go?”

  The voice closer to the phone said, “We don’t know. We were in our room and he just—”

  The second voice said, “We do know! He went into his study to use the phone and he didn’t come out! We’ve looked for him and he’s not playing!” That was Kari, identifiable from the energy in her speech.

  “I’ll come over and help you find him, all right?” Still holding the phone, she struggled into a pair of jeans and jammed her feet into some sandals. She paused to run a finger down the back of the kitten sleeping on a pile of overdue bills, letting the soft touch center her. Then she lifted it off the stack of envelopes and found her car keys.

  She'd never been to Zachariah's home, but his address was somewhere on her computer, shut down due to brownouts the day before. While it booted up, she tried to get the twins to tell her more about their day. But they weren’t interested in chatting.

  “We don’t want to stay here. It’s scary,” Lissa insisted.

  Finally, Marley found and printed out the address to Zachariah’s house, and took another calming breath. The twins were playing a game, probably. They were little kids. Little kids were mischievous. She was surprised to discover they knew how to use a phone, though, let alone knew her phone number. Zachariah was probably in the backyard. Almost certainly. Waking from a black dream to their phone call was just a coincidence. But best to make sure. “Well, what’s scary about your house?”

  “Things under the bed.”

  “Shadows that go thump!”

  “The roaring in the walls.”

  “The bells behind us.”

  “Whatever took Uncle! Please hurry, Marley!”

  The first item on the list almost made Marley smile, but the raw fear in their voices by the end of the list had her rushing to the door. Because what if he’d really left them alone? “It’s okay, sweethearts. I’m sure it’s okay. Your uncle probably just had to run an errand and thought you wouldn’t notice he was gone. I’m on my way over, and I’ll stay with you until he gets home.” She clattered down the steps of the old brick building and out to her car.

  There was sniffling on the other end. “Do you really think so?”

  “Absolutely,” she lied as she started her car. She couldn’t imagine the emergency that would make Zachariah leave his two little nieces alone; he was devoted to the kids. Still, better to try to imagine that than worry about the alternatives. Deep breath. The anxiety wouldn’t fade away. She was crazy. But she had to manage despite it for the girls.

  “I've never been to your house before. Why don’t you describe it to me so I know what I’m looking for?”

  “Okay,” said Lissa. “My side of our bedroom is pink! Kari’s side is lavender. That’s like purple, but faded.”

  That wasn’t what she’d had in mind. But it kept the twins distracted and on the phone with her, so it sufficed. When a squabble broke out between the sisters, she felt a flash of amusement. She embraced it. Anything but the dread that could so easily paralyze her.

  There was a warning beep from her phone. Oh, no. Oh, yes. She'd forgotten to charge her phone the night before, just like always.

  Marley raised her voice to cut across their argument about pastel rainbows. “Girls, my phone battery is about to die. I’ll be there in ten minutes, all right? Just wait for me. Don’t do anything—” The phone turned off.

  Swearing, Marley yanked the earpiece out of her ear and threw it on the seat beside her. Now the twins didn’t even have her voice to keep them company. And she had no easy way to fend off her own crazy worries.

  She couldn't afford to pull over and have a panic attack. Instead, she turned the radio up and rolled down the windows of her little car as she wove through L.A. tr
affic. The blue sky was tinted by a brown haze of smog mixed with smoke. The fires that sometimes swept the San Gabriel mountains had started up once again a couple of days ago. Marley inhaled deeply, filling her nostrils with the stench of August traffic, and tried to identify each scent: gasoline, charred rubber, hot asphalt, dust, and the tang of fried food. Sensory distraction. She couldn’t smell the wildfire smoke yet.

  News of an accident came on the radio, and she changed the station. She did her best to ground herself in the here and now, to be mindful of what was and not worry about what might be. It was something her doctor had recommended as a way of fending off the anxiety attacks, and usually she couldn’t do it. But this time, two children depended on her. It was so rare that anybody or anything really needed her. It gave her focus. It wouldn't last—it never did. But all she had to do was hang on until Zachariah showed up again.

  She managed to distract herself so well with the details of palm trees and the number of sports cars on the road that she almost missed the turn for Zachariah’s home. It was an expensive neighborhood, near the Huntington Library, with landscaped green lawns and enormous homes bordered by Italian cypresses and shaded by carefully tended olive trees. Zachariah's home was a Mission-style structure behind a wall that protected an emerald lawn. His red SUV was parked in the long driveway.

  He’d come home. Or the kids had been playing a prank on her. Thank heavens. She’d find out what was going on, at least.

  But as she stepped out of her car, the front door flew open and the twins scurried out to wrap their arms around her waist. “You came!” said one of them. They were tiny children, dressed in identical denim shorts but with different colored tops so clueless adults could tell them apart. They both had long auburn hair tied up in pigtails with ribbons that matched their t-shirts.

  “Zachariah’s car is here,” she pointed out to them after she bent to return their hugs.

  “We know that!” Kari put her hands on her hips. “I said he went into his study and didn’t come out. I did!”

  Marley remembered that, but she'd dismissed it out of hand; the twins had such active imaginations. “Well, let’s go look in his study. Maybe he has a secret door.” He didn’t, she knew, have a job outside the house. She wasn’t sure he had a normal job at all; she had the impression that a trust fund paid the bills so he could devote all his attention to the twins. He seemed to have a full schedule shuttling them between a dizzying array of art and dance and music classes, along with playdates at the park where Marley had originally met the family.

  She took the girls’ hands and let them drag her up the veranda stairs and into the house. The inside was as lovely and well tended as the exterior, with polished wooden floors and plush, pale carpets. It was also so air-conditioned that she was glad she’d worn jeans.

  The twins dragged her down the hall, past the wide staircase and what looked like a formal sitting room to a door standing ajar. “This is the study,” said Lissa. She pulled her hand from Marley’s and laced her fingers together, fidgeting.

  Nervousness twisted through Marley; she shook her head in irritation at herself and pushed the door open. The only way to know what was beyond was to look and see.

  It was a very old-fashioned library, dark-paneled and windowless, with bookshelves covering most of the walls. One lamp illuminated the heavy, antique desk, and another created a warm circle of light around a leather armchair. Marley, who’d dropped out of her grad program in English lit, was immediately envious.

  But there was definitely no Zachariah. She glanced down at the twins and then untangled her hand from Kari’s. “I’m going to look around. Maybe I can find a clue to where he went.”

  The twins stared up at her, lip-biting reflections of each other. Then Kari shrugged. “Okay. But don’t you leave us here.” She absentmindedly took Lissa’s hand and they watched, framed in the doorway.

  Marley wanted to examine the bookshelves, but that was the curiosity of a bibliophile more than anything else, and she knew it. Instead, she went to Zachariah’s desk. There was a slim, curved computer screen to one side, so elegant and subtle that, at first, she thought he didn’t have a computer. Since it was turned off, it wasn't nearly as interesting as the cellphone lying on its side in the center of the desk. She picked it up as she continued looking around. Other than the computer and the phone, there were books neatly arranged between stone bookends on one side of the desk and ordinary mail and writing supplies on the other side. The books were a mix of economic studies and paperback science books, with one collection of fairy tales at the end.

  The cellphone was a sleek black bar that lit up when she touched it, displaying a picture of a lightning storm. “Did you call me from this?”

  “No, we have our own phones!” Kari came into the room, fishing a bright green flip phone out of her pocket.

  Marley raised her eyebrows. It was smaller than an adult phone, and when she opened it, it only had five buttons other than the arrow keys: a silhouette of a house, a man, a woman, and two keys to start and end calls. The house button had been inexpertly colored pink with a marker. The branding on the phone announced it as the Senyaza Beacon. “How did you dial my number?”

  “Uncle Zach put your number in here, see?” Kari pressed the “woman” button and Marley’s name and number flashed on the screen.

  That startled Marley. Until now, she hadn’t really wondered about why the twins had called her in particular—she’d been too busy trying not to panic. The twins seemed very attached to her, even though they mostly saw each other at the park or on lunch dates. But surely Zachariah had other, more important people to program into a dedicated button on the twins’ phones. Surely?

  She didn’t really know what her relationship with Zachariah was, other than one of the few bright spots in her life. While they’d flirted some, they’d never been on a date without the kids. Sometimes he looked at her with such intensity that she shivered. But the girls had teachers, and knew other parents—people with a much better idea of how to take care of children in an emergency. Marley could barely take care of a kitten.

  She bit her lip and scowled down at Zachariah’s phone, searching out the contacts list. It was as long as she would have expected, full of names and businesses. None of them shouted out Very Important. She flipped over to the recently called list, and scrolled through the shorter list of names. Today: Corbin. Grendel. Yesterday: Annalise. Tia. The day before: herself. A number without a name.

  The missed calls list was even more opaque. A call from Senyaza Corp. A call from an unlisted number. A call from—what? Instead of a number, a strange black and white image flickered on the screen. It reminded her of animated tribal art, and after only a few seconds, it made her eyes water. She looked away.

  She thought she should call some of the numbers, and find out if anybody knew what happened to Zachariah. Perhaps somebody had called him away, and picked him up. But she couldn’t call strangers and ask about Zachariah with the twins staring at her expectantly.

  “Does anything seem out of place to you guys?” Kari's mouth opened and Marley quickly added, “Other than Zachariah being gone.” Kari's mouth closed again.

  “That.” Lissa pointed across the room, to the small round table beside the armchair. “Book's out of place and the ball is new. We're supposed to put books away.” A large book was on the table, and on top of the book were a thick golden candle and an iridescent glass ball the size of Marley’s fist. The positioning was very strange; surely the candle would damage the book if it was ever lit. And something about the ball bothered Marley; it seemed no more substantial than a soap bubble. In the relentlessly tidy home, the odd arrangement seemed both deliberate and out of character. The back of Marley’s neck prickled.

  “Pretty ball. Can I play with it?” Kari moved closer to the tableau.

  Marley snapped, “Stop, Kari. I’ll look at it.” Then she closed her mouth tightly. She hadn’t meant to sound so harsh. The words had just slipped o
ut, before she'd even thought them. But the little girl froze obediently. Marley moved past her. The orb looked like it might roll off the table and pop from an unwary breath. As she stepped closer, the hairs on her arm rose. There was a barely audible sizzle.

  She lifted the candle off the book. That was enough to knock the ball off as well, and she caught it in one hand, or tried to. As soon as her fingers touched it, it burst into a puff of dust. There was a bright light and a flash of heat near her hand.

  Marley blinked. She blinked again. Between blinks, the room changed. For just a heartbeat, she saw the table knocked over, the computer thrown off the desk, the rug askew and crumpled on the floor. A voice whispered, “Come and play.” And everywhere, there were the dried leaves of autumn.

  She blinked once more. Everything was tidy and straight, just as it had been when she entered.

  Almost everything. The candle in her hand was burned halfway down, and the book on the table was gone.

  -two-

  Marley stared from the candle to the table and then looked at the twins. They stood close to each other, both looking at Marley with interest, their fear apparently forgotten. Carefully she put the candle down and rubbed at her eyes. “Where did the book go?” She might have mistaken the state of the candle but the presence of the book? Never.

  Kari looked around as if trying to spot it, while Lissa cocked her head, staring at the floor. Then she said, “Somebody put it away?”

  Marley blinked down at her. “Who? When?” Lissa just shrugged, staring back up at her with big blue eyes.

  Marley blew out her breath. The kids were cute when telling her about their toys or an adventure, but trying to get useful information out of them was like deciphering a language last studied in junior high. She examined the bookshelves, trying to extract the title of the missing book from the image in her memory. She was good at noticing books. There'd been a curlicue font on the spine. “Something Tales,” she thought.