Girl in the Shadows (3 page)

three

Fighting to breathe, I bent to gather the cards I’d dropped with such epic clumsiness. I ran my fingers across the smooth surface of the transformed back of the first one I picked up. A check of my fingertips—which felt normal again, not overheated—revealed nothing unusual. No paint came off the cards. But the backs were definitely a rainbow bordered in shiny gold.
How?

My hands were shaking again, but I finally assembled the cards into a stack and shoved it inside my coat pocket. I took another deep breath and started to walk out of the tent. Outside in the sunshine, I could try to figure out what in the world had just happened.

Magic wasn’t real.

“Approach the table,” the older woman judge said, her words stopping me. She beckoned with red nails.

I scanned the tent. Everyone was looking at me, most with pity. Raleigh stood behind the judges, with the grace to seem confused by my floundering. The girl in the suit at the table wore an expression like I’d told her I was dying.

It’s okay. I’m not. I already died during my act.

“Come to the table,” the older lady prompted again, waving me over.

“Of . . . of course.” The words barely made it out. I bit my lip against a panicked smile and walked toward her.
This whole thing really might be a hallucination or nightmare.
As I walked, I pinched the skin on my arm inside my jacket sleeve, hard, since that’s what people always did in these situations in movies.

Ow.
So much for being asleep. Then again, I hadn’t slept that much for the last few days, so
that
could explain it . . .

I stopped in front of the judges and shrugged off my coat. The air was a welcome hit of cool on my sweat-soaked shirt.

“I’m sorry I wasted your time,” I said.

Dez joined us at the table, stopping in front of Thurston.
Great.

At least I’d given a fake name. If Raleigh stayed quiet, it could be like none of this ever happened. I could slink back home and tell Dad I’d decided against summer at Cornell. He’d be so happy to have me back home for a few more months that he wouldn’t question it much. Hopefully, I wouldn’t start hallucinating like this all the time.

But the elegant older woman wasn’t ready to let me go yet. Her eyes narrowed, considering. “Let me see one of those cards,” she said.

I blinked at her.

Dez leaned a hip against the table, and his leg made a dull bang when he did. Silver knives were held in place by sleek leather straps on his forearms, along his torso, and down the thighs of his pants.

“Nan?” Jules Maroni frowned at the older woman. They did resemble each other.

The older woman ignored her. “I would like to examine one of your cards. Now.”

I was afraid to show her a changed card. I was afraid to even look at them—that they’d be back to normal and I was definitely going crazy. Not that the alternative—believing I might have done
real
magic
—
was better
.
Already part of me was spinning theories about how these weren’t like my usual decks, that I’d ordered some new kind of trick by mistake.

But there was no trick that made the pattern on the backs of cards change
for real
. Just like there was no such thing as
actual magic
. As far as I was concerned, the few magicians who pretended they had supernatural abilities were the lowest of the low, trading on a kind of superstition that should no longer even exist. Magic was a blend of artful tricks and impressive feats. Magic was about illusion, perception. Deception, not reality. Magic was well-crafted lies woven into stories no one believed were true, even though they delighted in seeing the convincing falsehood with their own eyes. It was not, well,
magic
.

I reached inside the opposite coat pocket from where I’d stashed the disaster deck and removed the second-to-the-bottom card. Then I handed her the same one I’d wrongly claimed she chose earlier.

She sniffed and passed it back. “No,” she said, “one of the
other
cards.”

What was she after? My pulse was racing. I had to get out of there.

Jules nudged the girl in the suit. “You try,” she said. So that girl whispered, loud enough for me to hear, “What’s going on?”

“Jules and Dita, mind your own business,” the older lady said. Her gaze was steady on me, and I recognized in it the times when Dad wouldn’t give me my way. She intended to examine one of the cards.

“I’m ready to perform anytime,” Dez said. “I waited until last so no one would have to follow me.”

“Shh,” Thurston told him, indulging the older woman’s whim. “This is Nancy Maroni,” he said. All it meant to me was confirmation that she was related to the wire walker at the end of the table. “We do as she asks.”

Dez’s face split into a grin that was so far past charming it could only be described by a word I’d never used before in my life. I’d only ever seen it in the romance novels I borrowed from the girls at the theater, but it fit. He was rakish. “
The
Nancy Maroni?” he said. “The famous trapeze flyer? I’d wait all day to perform for you.”

“I go by Nan,” she said.

I’d have sworn she thought the same thing I did:
rakish
. “And that won’t be necessary. You’re on as soon as Moira here lets me inspect the cards she used in her final . . . trick.” Her palm extended to me.

I didn’t see any other way, so I passed her one of the rainbow cards.

Nan put it between both of her wrinkled palms. “You come from a performing family? Magic? Your father or mother? What brought you here?”

Obviously, I couldn’t say yes. And had she put a slight emphasis on “mother,” or did I imagine it?

“No, just me, on my own,” I said, careful not to look at Raleigh. “I came to do magic.”

She raised the card to conceal a whispered conversation with Thurston. After they finished talking, she returned the card to me, and Thurston sat back. She watched the owner with expectation.

“We each get one override,” he said, sounding agreeable.

She returned her attention to me. “You’re hired, Moira. For now. I’ll want to talk to you.”

“What?” I said it at the same time Dez and Raleigh did.

But while we were all in disbelief, I decided to embrace my good fortune, even if I was worried by how she’d zeroed in on the cards. “Thank you,” I said, and made to leave before she could change her mind.

Disastrous audition or not, I still wanted this chance at my dream. I’d figure out what this Nan Maroni knew about the freaky accident with the cards later when I talked to her. I was hired . . . for now.

“Not so fast, Moira,” Dez said, lingering over my name. “I need an assistant.”

What
I
needed was to leave this tent.

“No thanks,” I said. “I’m no one’s lovely assistant.”

The rakish act must have been getting old to Thurston too, because he said, “You were told to bring everything you need for your act. If you need an assistant and don’t have one, we can’t help you.”

Dez grinned at him recklessly. “I recruit from the crowd. And right now I’m recruiting the Miraculous Moira. Who owes me a favor.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, honestly curious.

“I helped you out,” Dez said, “and you just had a stroke of luck. Why not pass it on?”

He lifted his palms and pressed them together in a plea, still grinning.

Raleigh opened his mouth, probably to say no on my behalf, and that made me want to plant my own flag. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

The short-haired girl, Dita, glanced between me and Nan—who I discovered was still coolly watching me—then reached across the table and lifted my jacket from my arms.

“This is the weirdest day,” Thurston mumbled. Raleigh grunted agreement.

“Follow me,” Dez said, sweeping toward the center of the ring.

While we’d been conferring, it appeared Dez’s other assistant—the annoying friend from before—had been waiting to set up a large wooden board with various target circles marked out on it between dangling straps. Dez led me to it and positioned me against the wood. His hands touched my arms, shifting me this way and that.

I can’t believe I let him talk me into this.
“What are you doing? You’re just moving me back and forth.”

“Fun, right?” He took my wrists before I could protest and lifted them to either side of my head. His face was near mine.

“What—”

“It’s a shame we can’t use your cuffs. But you can get out of these if you need to,” he said, putting one loose strap across my right wrist and another across the left. “Which you won’t.”

Then he strode across the sawdust of the ring and stopped more than a dozen feet away. There, he unsheathed a knife from his forearm.

That had to be way too far for an accurate throw. He lifted his voice when he spoke. “I’ll spare you my usual warm-up, though it is very clever. Instead, I will deliver to you a death-defying act.” His hands were as quick as any magician’s, and he had three knives swiping through the air high over his head before I even saw him remove them. He added a fourth, the blades flashing in a lazy rhythm as he juggled them, and continued speaking casually. “Didn’t we all just see this lovely lady here avoid death on the stage and get herself hired? I think she can do it again. She’s won me to her side.”

I moved, about to slip my wrists from the cuffs. Dez raised his voice as he said, “Stay where you are.”

You mean where you put me.
Though how he could possibly have seen my fraction of movement and continued juggling was beyond me. Like so many things that had happened in this tent. Before I could tell him I
was
going to move and then leave, one of the knives was flying from his hand toward me with such speed I could never have dodged it.

I didn’t even have time to try.

It sank with a
thunk
into the wood beside my head.

I strained against the straps. I’d had enough of this. My heart was racing again, and a hint of that heat from before spread through my chest.

“Don’t move,” Dez said lazily.

I went still. The sensation of heat faded, and I vowed to not even breathe.

Another knife sliced through the air. The blade sank into the board beside my leg, but I remained completely still. Growing up at the Menagerie and learning about the art of escape had taught me that dangerous things are more likely to occur when people screw up their roles, miss their marks. Accidents happen when you let fear get to you badly enough to make you flinch. And I didn’t know what would happen if that heat like a flame inside flared back to life . . . I didn’t understand what had happened the first time.

I closed my eyes and pictured myself walking away from this board and outside, in one piece. Dez’s next throws came one after the other, as smooth as a hail of bullets.

Thunk thunk thunk thunk . . .
The blades sank into the board around me. Only when they stopped did I open my eyes again.

Dez sauntered toward me, as cocky as before. I was done. I wrestled one of my wrists free and used that hand to undo the other side. I stepped away from the wooden board. Dez showed no concern at this. He stopped about six feet away and smiled at me rather than focusing on the target as he tossed the three final blades.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
They sank into the wood.

Dez walked closer, placing his hand over his chest as he neared me. And he said loud enough for everyone to hear, “See what you inspired?”

I looked back to the target where I’d been standing moments before and saw he’d created a perfect heart shape made of knives. But when I turned to Dez, convinced this was some kind of joke, he was too busy waiting for the judges’ verdict to give me a second glance.

The audience in the stands began clapping and catcalling. All but Raleigh, who was frowning at the heart of blades.

The judging panel wasn’t such a tough sell after all. Thurston’s face split into a broad grin, and he lifted his hands to clap. Dita and Jules were both beaming, impressed. Nan remained serious for a long moment, until a smaller, more controlled smile crossed her lips. Then, and only then, did Dez take his bow.

While they were distracted, I made my escape.

four

I didn’t quite manage my disappearing act without anyone noticing. Dita must have been paying some attention to me, because as I passed behind the judging table she got up and slipped my jacket into my hands.

Air. Now. And a minute alone to think.

Outside was the same strange tangle of people as before. If anything, the crowd had grown. I kept my head down. When I reached my convertible, I jammed the key into the lock and let myself inside, then leaned my forehead on the steering column. The top was up, so I had that layer of protection.

My cards had transformed. I’d been a disaster and gotten hired anyway. And the apparently legendary Nan Maroni suspected . . . something. What the hell was going on?

I took out my phone and stared at it. There was a text from Dad, who never abbreviated anything in his messages and expected the same in return:
Did you get there all right? Send me an address for a care package. And call me later. I miss you already.

An address? Sure, send it to my car. I went to my contacts and stared at the word
Dad
for a good half a minute, deciding whether to call him. But, no, he couldn’t help me. Not with this. What would I do? Blurt out that I wasn’t anywhere near Ithaca, New York, and add,
Hey, have you ever heard of anyone transforming cards? Or being filled with heat and then, hocus-pocus, magic suddenly changing reality?

There was no one I could tell about this—especially not Dad.

A text popped up from Raleigh:
You OK?

I texted back:
Just need a few.

I tossed the phone into the passenger seat and rested my head on the steering column again. I had no idea what I was going to do.

Rap, rap.

I forced my eyes open. It felt like sand was clogging them, and the right corner of my mouth was damp with drool. I’d fallen asleep.

Not catching more than a catnap for three days and then bombing miserably and having some sort of bizarre physical spell come over you in which you cast an
actual
spell would do that to you, clearly. If my forehead hadn’t been resting on the steering wheel, the likeliest explanation would have been that the entire day was a vivid dream.

Rap, rap, rap.

Right. Someone was knocking on my car window. That was what had woken me.

With a fortifying breath, I turned my head.

Dez grinned down at me, cocky and, yes, still rakish. He said something that I couldn’t make out through the glass, then reached out and tried to open the door.

I held up a hand.
Wait.

Not that I wanted to let him play voyeur as I primped, but I did take a second to run my hands through my hair and discreetly wipe away the drool.

I unlocked the car door, and Dez reached down and opened it. “Welcome back to the land of the not-sleeping,” he said. “There’s a minor search party looking for you.”

When I climbed out, I tried to keep my distance. Even so, Dez was mere inches away. I remembered the heart he’d made with the knives. I couldn’t even look at him, and he made no move to give me more space. Today had been full of a lifetime’s worth of mortifying, confusing incidents. And it wasn’t over.

“I would have told them I thought you’d be here, but I was being selfish,” he rattled on, oblivious to my discomfort. “I was afraid I’d never see you again. It was a relief to find you drooling on your steering wheel.”

I blinked at him. He couldn’t have seen that, could he? “A nice guy would never mention that.”

“True.” He grinned wider.

“Are you ever serious?” I grumbled.

“Only when forced to be.”

But his grin slipped away, and I wondered how much of his bravado was, well, bravado. The pretense of being cool under pressure. A highly successful imitation of confidence.

“You didn’t compliment me on my death-defying act, for one,” he said. “It’s rude to bolt after someone has made a heart around you with knives. It’s like you didn’t think the gesture had meaning. I’ve never done that before. You inspired me.”

My own heart beat rapidly, like it wanted to listen. I told it to wise up.

“You said people are looking for me—who?”

“Your spooky magician friend who doesn’t like me,” he said, shoulders shaking in a mock shudder. “And Nan Maroni, circus royalty. She wants to talk to you. Did you know her before? Did she think you were from a family she worked with way back when or something? She seems pretty in your corner for a stranger.”

He was watching me with that half-serious expression again.

“No,” I said. “I guess she’s just nice.”

I was as suspicious of her motives as anyone. But I didn’t see any way to avoid talking to her.

“Fate has its plans, and it doesn’t consult us,” he said. Pretty words, but he looked almost embarrassed by them, his hand gravitating to the back of his neck. “Somebody I know says that all the time. I’d better take you to Nan.”

I pretended to be unconcerned. “Lead on.”

To my surprise, Dez stayed quiet as he led us across the expansive grounds. There weren’t nearly so many people milling around as before. We threaded through a maze of caravans and trailers. I hadn’t given much thought to the travel arrangements when the Cirque was on the road, and the fact that people seemed to have brought their own accommodations was worrying. My neck already hurt from sleeping in the car.

But I had much bigger problems than a potential lack of a place to stay.

“Here we are,” Dez said, as we neared an older RV that had the Cirque’s logo and the words
The Amazing Maronis
painted on its side.

The girl with the short hair and bow tie, Dita, who I’d instinctively liked, stood near it. “You found her,” she said. “Maybe everyone will stop flipping out now.”

“Everyone?” I asked.

“Well, Nan,” she said, ticking her head toward the RV. “She wouldn’t say why, though.”

I couldn’t tell if she was curious or suspicious or some mix of the two. I also hadn’t noticed before, but there were faint circles under Dita’s eyes, the telltale signs of bad sleep.

Raleigh strolled up to us from the opposite direction. He shook his head at me. “You’re lucky I didn’t rat you out already, kid,” he said.

The fact that he called me “kid” was annoying. “Raleigh, not now.” I barely got the words out. If he told them about my dad, what were the odds I’d get to stay on? Slim. Even if Thurston Meyer didn’t care, someone would hear and get word to Dad. He’d come.

“Your boyfriend has a temper,” Dez observed.

I was way too smart to develop a thing for a heartbreaker like Raleigh. “Ha. He’s so not my boyfriend.”

Dez’s grin was back. “I wasn’t going to ask, but good.”

“Where’d you disappear to?” Raleigh asked. I was distracted by Dez knocking on the front door of the RV.

It opened, and Nan appeared. A swirly black-and-white skirt matched the scarf at her throat. She might be a grandmother, but she didn’t dress the usual part. She looked like she’d stepped out of a fancy event.

“I thought you’d pulled a vanishing act on us,” she said.

“I needed some air.”

She waited with sharp eyes, like she knew I had more to say. I found myself wishing I’d taken advantage of Dez’s knowledge and quizzed him about her on the way over.

“I don’t usually . . . mess up like that. I’m a talented magician, and I’ll prove it. But I—” I stopped, not wanting to blurt out a question about magic in front of everyone else.

“I recognize talent when I see it,” she said neutrally. “Come in.”

I hesitated but finally took a step toward her. Raleigh made to follow, and she said, “I’d like to speak to her privately.”

“We’ll wait here,” Dita said.

Dez waved and took off, apparently not interested in hanging around.

Hoping Raleigh didn’t give me away while chatting with the girl, I crossed the threshold, climbing shallow steps into the cabin. Nan stepped back down to close the door behind me.

The interior was shabby chic, framed photographs and colorful vintage and new circus posters dominating what little wall space existed. There was a small kitchen and living room visible, and a hallway that presumably led to the sleeping areas.

Nan breezed past me and sat down on the far side of a built-in bar-style table near the kitchen counter. She gestured, and I settled into the small wooden chair opposite her. There was no point in dancing around why I was here. “Why did you ask to see my cards?”

“I think you know the answer.” She gave a slight shake of her head. “What I want to know is what you’re doing here. I couldn’t risk you leaving without finding that out.”

What is she talking about?
“I’m here to do magic. It’s all I want to do.”

“Yes,” she said, “magic of the kind that I’ve only heard legends and stories about. In fact, the only people I’ve ever heard of who can transform objects like you did—that card felt new, and it had your magic all over it—are the Praestigae.”

I was officially lost.
My
magic? “The presti-what?”

“Those same stories say not to trust you, that you only look out for your own. So I’ll ask again: Why are you here? And are you the only one?”

So she thought I was part of some secret criminal society or something? She pronounced it “press-ˈtee-jie.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Stop. I don’t know much about the Praestigae, which is how you like it . . . You take what you want and move on. The consummate con artists, using magic for gain.” She shook her head. “I probably shouldn’t even be confronting you. But I recently lost someone dear to me, dear to my family, because of magic secrets and games. Because of the good luck coin from the Garcia family—you’ve probably heard that legend too.”

“What?”

“Wait . . . is that why you’re here? Roman’s coin is gone. No magic object is worth the pain that thing caused.”

I struggled to catch up. “Are you saying that there is
real
magic?”

Her eyes narrowed again, and she considered me. “You, my dear, are very skilled at playing dumb.”

I didn’t understand anything she’d said to me, except that she knew something about magic. And that she held the fate of my job in her hands. “I’m not playing anything. Not about this.” I sucked in a breath and let it out. It felt crazy to talk about this, but I did it anyway. “Nothing like what happened in the tent has ever happened to me before. I swear to you that I’m not lying.”

“How could that possibly be true? Magic presents early for those who have it.”

“What you’re saying isn’t easy to believe either. If magic is real, why doesn’t the entire world know?”

Silence stretched out between us. I felt confused and frightened and shocked all at once.

At last, she spoke. “The world doesn’t want to know. Not most of it. And there isn’t much left to know about. Is your mother’s power the same as yours?”

“My mother left when I was too young to remember. I’ve never heard from her.” I had to make her understand. “Back there, today . . . I felt this tug, like something pulling me outside myself, and then a surge of heat, and then the cards were different. I wasn’t in control of anything. I don’t know how they changed. It’s
impossible
.”

“It’s true you didn’t seem in control. But if you’re telling the truth, this is even more complicated.” She sighed. “Will you let me give you a reading? That might convince me you’re not just worried I caught you.”

Her attention dropped to the center of the table. An oversized deck of cards lay packless across the laminated surface. They were obviously old, with swirling designs hand-painted on the back in red and black and white. I hadn’t even noticed anything was there and half suspected she’d sleighted them out.

She reached out and lifted the top card to show it to me. A man dangled from his feet off a trapeze. The words
The Hanged Man
were painted at the bottom of the image. They were tarot cards. She meant
that
kind of reading.

“My mother made these cards and imbued them with magic. Which means I am uniquely suited to read what they say. Magic manifests in a specific way within family lines, and it always comes from the mother. Our magic is small next to yours. It allows only a simple effect, to bring out the essence of an object and amplify it.”

What she was saying would mean that my mother, the fairy-tale assistant who could have been a magician herself, had magic too, and it was probably the same as mine. The entire concept was absurd. I wanted to laugh or cry or scream or run. To not believe it and to believe it all. This woman thought I had magic.
Real
magic.

“Fortune-telling is, um, bogus,” I said. “You just pick up on cues, ask questions, and then make statements so general there’s no way they can be disproven.” Similar to a mentalist act or the spiritualist hoaxers Houdini had hated so much.

“I speak for the cards, and
these
cards tell the truth. That is what my mother brought out within them. Are you saying no? If you are, that means you have something to hide. It tells me I was right about you.” She held up the hand-painted tarot deck and fanned the cards out with their backs facing up. Whatever she was, she was no cardsharp. Her technique was passable at best.