The box fit in Tommy O'Brien's palm like it had been made for him. Which, he supposed, it had been. Made by the man who'd handed it to him in the back room of the Velvet Lounge, a man who introduced himself only as Mr. White and who smelled like expensive whiskey and expensive lies.

"It hears wishes," Mr. White said. He was a tall man, thin in the way that men who live by their wits tend to be—all angles and sharp edges and nothing wasted. "Not spoken wishes. Real wishes. The ones people carry in their chest when they think nobody's listening."

Tommy turned the box over in his hands. It was small, maybe four inches long, made of some dark wood he didn't recognize. There were no seams, no hinges, no keyhole. Just a smooth surface that felt warm to the touch, like skin.

"And it makes them come true?" Tommy said. He was a skeptic by nature and a liar by profession, so of course his first instinct was to mock. But the box didn't feel like a joke. It felt like a promise.

"It makes them come true," Mr. White agreed. "Through you."

"Through me."

"You're the instrument. The box hears. You act. The wish is fulfilled. That's the arrangement."

Tommy laughed. It was a short, sharp laugh, the kind that comes from men who've been laughing at the wrong things for too long. "And what do you get out of it?"

Mr. White smiled. It was a nice smile. That was the worst part. "I get to watch. That's all. I built the box. I created the arrangement. But watching—watching is its own reward."

Tommy took the box. He told himself it was curiosity. He told himself he was just going to look at it, hold it, maybe open it if he could figure out how. He didn't tell himself the truth, which was that he was tired of being nobody in a city full of somebodies, and anything that promised to change that was worth holding, even for a minute.

He put the box in his coat pocket and walked out into the rain.

The first wish came two nights later.

Tommy was in the Velvet Lounge, pouring whiskey for a woman who looked like she'd been beautiful once and was now beautiful in the way a burned building is beautiful—still standing, still recognizable, but fundamentally ruined. She was dressed in furs that had seen better years, and her eyes were the color of gin and just as cloudy.

She was sitting next to a man who looked like he owned the city. Not literally—the city was owned by a coalition of politicians and mobsters who operated out of basements and back rooms—but he looked like he thought he did. He was fat, he was loud, he was laughing too loud at everything everybody said, which is the laugh of a man who's afraid somebody's going to call his bluff.

The woman was looking at him the way a starving man looks at a steak. Not with love. With calculation.

Tommy stood at the bar, pouring whiskey, and the box in his pocket was warm. Warmer than usual. Like it was vibrating, or breathing, or something.

He heard it. Not with his ears. With his chest. A feeling, like a radio tuned to a frequency just below hearing.

*Let him die,* the feeling said. *Let him choke on his own laughter.*

The woman's wish. Clear as crystal. Not spoken. Felt.

Tommy poured the whiskey. He set it down. He walked away.

Three days later, the man died. Choked on a piece of steak at a restaurant in the Meatpacking District. The coroner said it was an accident. He was eating too fast. He was laughing. He didn't see the piece coming. Simple. Tragic. Nothing more.

The woman came to Tommy the next day. She didn't thank him. She didn't have to. She looked at him with those gin-clouded eyes and nodded, and the nod said everything: *I know what you did. I know what you are. And I am grateful.*

Tommy went home and opened the box. He'd never been able to open it before—no seam, no hinge, no lock—but now, somehow, it opened. Just a crack. Just enough to see inside.

The inside was empty. Or it looked empty. But when Tommy looked into it, he saw his own reflection, distorted and warped, like looking into water that was moving too fast.

He closed the box. He went to bed. He dreamed of the man choking. He dreamed of the woman nodding. He dreamed of a dragon made of smoke and smoke made of wishes, coiling through the city, feeding on desire like a river feeds on rain.

The second wish came from a politician.

Senator McMahon was a tall man with a face like a dog—loyal when it suited him, vicious when it didn't, and always hungry for something. He came to the Velvet Lounge on a Thursday, which was unusual because Thursdays were for drunks and dead ends, and McMahon was neither. He was a man who owned things. Buildings. Laws. Judges.

He sat at the bar and ordered bourbon. Tommy poured it. McMahon drank it. McMahon looked at Tommy.

"I've heard about you," McMahon said.

"Everybody's heard about me," Tommy said. "Most of it's untrue."

"Not this time." McMahon set down the glass. "There's a man. His name is Russo. He's an informant. He's talking to the feds. If he talks, I'm finished. I need him to stop talking."

"Stop talking how?" Tommy said.

"Permanently."

Tommy looked at the box in his pocket. It was warm. Warmer than before. Like it was excited.

"I can't kill anyone," Tommy said.

"I didn't ask you to kill anyone," McMahon said. "I asked you to make something happen. There's a difference."

There wasn't a difference. They both knew it. McMahon knew it. Tommy knew it. But some differences exist only in language, and language is the first thing a man sacrifices when he starts making wishes come true.

Tommy went home. He opened the box. He looked at his reflection.

*Let Russo talk,* he thought. *Let him talk to the feds. Let him talk until there's nothing left to talk about.*

He didn't know how the wish would be fulfilled. He didn't care. The box had a way of handling the details.

Russo was found in his apartment two days later. He'd been shot. Three times. In the back. The gun was still in his hand, which meant it looked like a suicide. The coroner agreed. The police closed the case. McMahon slept soundly that night.

Tommy woke up screaming. He didn't know why. He just knew that something had broken inside him, something small and essential, like a crack in a dam that will eventually bring the whole thing down.

He looked at the box. It was closed. It had closed itself.

The third wish came from a woman named Duchess Van Der Bilt.

Her name wasn't Duchess. That was what everybody called her, and in New York, what everybody calls you is the same as what you are. She was the widow of a railroad magnate who'd died five years ago, leaving her a fortune she didn't know what to do with and a social position she was terrible at occupying.

She came to the Velvet Lounge every Tuesday. She sat at the bar. She drank martinis. She looked at Tommy with eyes that were young and old at the same time, like a woman who'd seen everything and wanted to see more.

"I want to be free," she said. Not to him. To the box. She knew about the box now. Everybody in the underground knew about it. The Wish Merchant. The Dragon in the Alley. Whatever you called it, it existed, and it was hungry, and it was feeding.

"Free from what?" Tommy said.

"From him. From the house. From the money. From the name. From everything that's keeping me alive and killing me at the same time."

Tommy looked at the box. It was burning in his pocket. Not literally. But close.

"I can't—"

"You can. You've done it before. Russo. The senator's enemy. The man who choked. You made all of it happen. You're the instrument. Play the song."

Tommy went home. He opened the box. He looked at his reflection.

*Let her be free,* he thought. *Let her walk out that door and never look back.*

He didn't know how it would happen. He didn't want to know.

The Duchess left New York the next morning. She took one suitcase, no more. She left the house, the money, the name, the furs, the martinis. She took a train to Boston and changed her name and got a job in a bookstore and lived to be eighty-seven, dying in her sleep on a Tuesday, exactly as she'd wanted.

Tommy stood on the platform and watched the train leave. He felt empty. Not sad. Not happy. Empty. Like a house after the occupants have moved out, all the furniture gone, all the pictures taken down, all the echoes fading.

The fourth wish came from a man named Vincenzo Russo.

Not the Russo who'd been shot. This Russo was his brother. He'd heard about what happened. He'd heard about the box. He'd heard about Tommy. And he'd come to the Velvet Lounge with a gun in his coat and fire in his eyes.

"My brother was murdered," he said. "I want to know who did it."

"Nobody murdered your brother," Tommy said. "He was—"

"Suicide?" Vincenzo laughed. It was a bitter laugh, like acid on metal. "Don't insult me. My brother didn't kill himself. He was killed. And I want to know who did it."

Tommy looked at the box. It was cold now. Colder than ice. Like it was afraid.

"I don't know," Tommy said.

"You will," Vincenzo said. "Use the box. Make the wish. Find out who killed my brother. And if it's you—" He pulled the gun. It was small and black and very real. "—I'll kill you."

Tommy opened the box. He looked at his reflection.

*Let Vincenzo know the truth,* he thought. *Let him know everything.*

Vincenzo dropped the gun. He stared at Tommy with eyes that were wide and wet and terrified. "You," he whispered. "You did it. You killed my brother."

"I didn't pull the trigger," Tommy said.

"Does it matter? You made it happen. You're the instrument. Play the song."

Vincenzo walked out. He didn't come back. Tommy never saw him again.

The fifth wish was Tommy's.

He sat on the roof of the Velvet Lounge, the box in his lap, the city spread out below him like a circuit board of light and shadow and sin. He was twenty-five years old, and he felt seventy. He'd made five wishes. Five lives changed. Five deaths paid. And he was still here, sitting on a roof in Manhattan, holding a box that heard wishes and made them come true through him.

He thought about the man who choked. He thought about Russo. He thought about the Duchess. He thought about Vincenzo. He thought about McMahon, who was still a senator, still rich, still alive, still laughing too loud at everything everybody said.

He thought about himself.

*Let it stop,* he wished. *Let the box stop. Let me stop. Let me be nobody again.*

The box closed. It had been open. Now it was closed. And the warmth was gone. The warmth that had been there from the beginning, the warmth that had felt like life, was gone.

Tommy looked at the box. It was just a box now. Wood. Nothing more.

He threw it off the roof. He watched it fall. He watched it disappear into the dark.

And then he went downstairs, poured himself a whiskey, and listened to the jazz band play, and for the first time in weeks, he heard the wishes. Not from the box. From the city. Thousands of them. Millions of them. Rising from the streets like steam, rising from the bars and bedrooms and hospital rooms and prison cells, rising like prayers that nobody was listening to.

He drank his whiskey. He listened to the wishes. And he knew, with a certainty that was both terrible and liberating, that he would never stop hearing them.

The box was gone. But the hearing wasn't. The hearing was him now.

And in a city full of wishes, a man who can hear them is either the most powerful man alive or the most cursed.

Tommy O'Brien sat on a stool at the Velvet Lounge and drank his whiskey and listened to the wishes of the city, and wondered which one he was.