Girl in the Shadows Read online

  Praise for Gwenda Bond

  For Girl on a Wire

  “The mystery is tense and nerve-wracking, and the acrobatics are gorgeously hair-raising.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A fascinating and enjoyable foray into circus life as seen through the eyes of an ambitious and talented performer.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A skillful blend of modern-day circus tales, classically ill-fated love, and mystery.”

  —Booklist

  “With a thrilling mystery, a hint of magic, and a touch of romance, Girl on a Wire takes readers into the fascinating world of circus performers.”

  —School Library Journal

  For Fallout

  “This lighthearted and playful tone permeates the novel, making for a nifty investigative mystery akin to Veronica Mars or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Readers are in for a treat. A spectacular prose start for DC Comics’ spectacular lady.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “A spirited, engrossing story that kept me flipping pages and rooting for stubborn, clever, fearless Lois Lane.”

  —Shannon Hale, New York Times bestselling author of Dangerous

  “So it’s basically Lois Lane in a Veronica Mars-esque plot, which sounds like all kinds of awesome.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “It’s not a bird, it’s not a plane, it’s Lois Lane, boldly following clues wherever they lead, taking readers along for a thrilling ride.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  ALSO BY GWENDA BOND

  Cirque American Series

  Girl on a Wire

  Lois Lane Series

  Fallout

  Double Down

  Other Books

  Blackwood

  The Woken Gods

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Gwenda Bond

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Skyscape, New York

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Skyscape are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503953932

  ISBN-10: 1503953939

  Cover design by M. S. Corley

  To all the magical ladies, may you get the spotlight you deserve.

  contents

  prologue

  part one before your very eyes

  one

  two

  three

  four

  part two pay no attention

  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

  part three now you see her

  thirty

  thirty-one

  thirty-two

  thirty-three

  thirty-four

  thirty-five

  thirty-six

  thirty-seven

  thirty-eight

  thirty-nine

  forty

  forty-one

  forty-two

  forty-three

  forty-four

  forty-five

  epilogue

  acknowledgments

  about the author

  prologue

  I was waiting in the wings backstage at the Menagerie Hotel and Casino, preparing the equipment for my first stage illusion. Straitjacket, check. Oversized timer and mood-music speakers, check. And, most important, transparent coffin, check. As I lay bound inside it, I’d press a button that would expel all the air in the coffin with a dramatic puff, for my audience’s benefit, and then I’d pull off a daring escape.

  The coffin might sound morbid, but I wasn’t planning to die in it. I was planning to live.

  Forget college or a normal future. I wanted to be a magician: the Miraculous Moira.

  I’d just never quite managed to tell my dad that.

  Dad, a.k.a. the Mysterious Mitchell, Master Magician, was the person I’d be performing for today, though he didn’t know it yet. I had no choice but to wow him, the toughest one-person audience in town. He was currently in the midst of his show’s grand finale.

  Out in the theater, his audience began to murmur right on cue. They’d seen Dad draped in chains, then locked inside a scary-looking safe that was lowered into a giant tank of water. Black screens were raised on all sides while they waited for him to get free. He always stayed in long enough to let the more bloodthirsty audience members squirm in anticipation of witnessing a failure, a dramatic death on the stage, a legend in the making, an anecdote they could trot out at every future cocktail party.

  The music swelled. I stepped forward to watch as the showgirls-turned-lovely-assistants pulled aside the screens around the tank, revealing the safe open inside it. The audience gasped, signaling Dad’s triumphant reappearance high in the rigging above the stage. His overly styled hair was deflated, his puffy shirt and leather pants dripping wet; a crew member had doused him with a bucket of water after the safes were switched out, though the audience would assume it was from the tank. He waved, shaking one last chain off his arm. Then he grabbed a line of black nylon rope and swung down to center stage.

  He bowed to wild applause. Closing my eyes, I imagined it was for me.

  This two-thousand-seat theater, home to the biggest magic show in Las Vegas, felt like my home. I lived here in the shadows, in his shadow.

  But I wanted to step into the spotlight.

  While Dad was out in the lobby chatting with fans, taking pictures, and signing programs and headshots, I wheeled my gear onto the stage and set up my props and the coffin. I breathed freely while I could, but nervously. Oh so nervously.

  It wasn’t entirely my fault that I hadn’t told him yet.

  Dad had raised me with a fairy-tale-ish story about my absent mother. She’d been the loveliest of the lovely assistants, talented enough that she could have been a magician herself. But they weren’t together long before she pulled the ultimate disappearing act. Gone. Poof. Dad couldn’t even thank her for depositing me with him when I was barely a year old. She’d left no method to contact her.

  Six years ago, at the tender age of twelve, I decided to learn a card trick and surprise him. I figured if my mother and father were both good at magic, I could be too. I started with a basic find-a-card and was practicing it in the dressing room for the lovely assistants. Someone had run to get him. The girls were clapping and laughing, humoring me . . .

  When Dad came in, he exploded. “My daughter is never going to do magic!” he said.

  After a moment of shocked silence, I couldn’t stop the tears from coming. “But you and my mother,” I’d managed. “I can do it.”

  “You can’t be a magician,” he told me. “No. The magic business will never fully embrace a woman. It isn’t what the audience wants. You can never be a magician, Moira.”

  Dad was usually the definition of a supportive father, and his outburst scar
ed me enough that I shelved my interest in magic . . . for an entire month. But I kept coming back to the cards. There was a feeling building inside me that this was what I was meant to do. I could only ignore it for so long.

  After that, I learned magic in secret. I became fascinated with escapes, and with finding stories about the women in magic history who were proof that what Dad had said wasn’t exactly right.

  The first time I held my breath for three minutes successfully, I wanted to tell him. The first time I held it for four. The first time I got out of handcuffs. Unable to use him as a test audience—as much as I wanted to—I started to sneak out and perform for tourists at sixteen. Quick sets with no name given, not even a fake one.

  The first time I slipped a straitjacket was on the street.

  I had never told Dad anything. Never said a word, never shown him what I could do. Not until now, tonight. Would he be angry? Proud? A mix of the two?

  I’d worked hard to create a stage illusion that was his favorite combination of a nod to one of the greats with a fresh spin. Except the great I’d chosen to honor was Adelaide Herrmann, who toured as the Queen of Magic in the late 1800s and early 1900s, following the sudden death of her husband, the celebrated magician Herrmann the Great, in the middle of a tour.

  The moment the back theater door swung open and Dad came in, trailed by an entourage, I came to attention. I bowed in the spotlight I’d ensured was left on—the spotlight that kept me from getting a good look at the rest of the group as they approached.

  “What’s this?” Dad said. He was in dry clothes, a replacement puffy shirt and black jeans.

  “I want to perform a new illusion for you. An escape.”

  He was silent for a moment. “A new illusion for me? But why would you be the one—”

  “No, an illusion for me.” And then I said it: “I want to be a magician.”

  His eyes raked across the stage. They settled on the straitjacket draped over my arm, then moved hard back to my face. “I don’t know what nonsense this is, but I won’t tolerate it.”

  My cheeks went hot. “I’ve been working on this for a long time.”

  “No, you have not.”

  “I have!” I held up the straitjacket, ready to put it on. “If you just watch, you’ll see.”

  He climbed onto the stage and took long strides over to me.

  “Moira,” Dad said. He reached out and lowered my arm. “Look, Raleigh’s here.”

  “Hey, Pixie,” Raleigh said. He leapt up to join us, then reached down to ruffle my black curls. He’d always used the nickname for me, and treated me like a kid sister.

  Raleigh was Dad’s former apprentice, only four years older than me. He had deep-black skin, the sleek lines of a race car, and a drawl and smile that made women dizzy and sometimes ditzy. He’d turned down Dad’s offer of a permanent job to make his own way, traveling around as the Southern Sorcerer.

  He did an appreciative double take and leaned back. “You’re all grown up . . . and dressed like a waitress. And you’re going to do some magic for us?”

  “Yes. And once he sees it, Dad’s going to admit that I have what it takes to be a magician.”

  “Really?” Raleigh said, eyes widening in surprise.

  “No,” Dad said. “Not really. Tell her how ridiculous this is. She’s going to college this fall.”

  “Dad, won’t you even give me a chance?”

  “Maybe the old man’s feeling threatened,” Raleigh said, an attempt to defuse the tension. I forced a laugh. “Let’s see what she’s got, Mitchell.”

  Dad was frowning. “I haven’t seen you in ages. I don’t have time for this . . . exhibition.”

  He had scared me those years ago when he’d yelled. But now I was just frustrated.

  “Dad.” I fought to keep my voice even. “I’m your daughter. Please.”

  “I can only indulge so much,” he said, like I was the one in the wrong.

  And then I understood. Nothing I did would matter. He was never going to agree. Once he’d made up his mind, he rarely changed it.

  Dad turned to Raleigh. “Poker?”

  Raleigh nodded, but when Dad started walking and the rest of the guys went along, he lingered and came in close. “Parents don’t always know what’s best, Pixie,” he said.

  Before I could respond, he followed my father, saying, “I have news from that crazy billionaire’s circus that might interest you. He called me . . .”

  Something dropped out of Raleigh’s jacket and onto the floor behind him. I thought it was by accident, but I didn’t stop him. Instead, I walked across the stage and picked it up: a black envelope made of thick stock. As I tried to open it, I realized the envelope was the letter itself, cleverly folded. Or, rather, not a letter. An invitation:

  CONGRATULATIONS!

  YOU HAVE BEEN HAND-SELECTED

  FOR AN EXCLUSIVE AUDITION

  TO JOIN THE CIRQUE AMERICAN AS A PERFORMER

  ON OUR ALL-NEW MIDWAY THIS SUMMER SEASON.

  BECOME ONE OF THE CIRQUE’S

  WORLD-FAMOUS REAL-LIFE MARVELS

  AND DEATH-DEFYING ACTS.

  ONLY THE BEST OF THE BEST WILL MAKE THE CUT.

  There was an address in Sarasota, Florida, followed by the date. It was only a few days away.

  Maybe Raleigh hadn’t dropped it by accident after all.

  part one

  before your very eyes

  one

  Four days later, I turned the triple-cherry-red convertible that I’d inherited from Dad when I got my license onto the bumpy, unpaved road to the Cirque American’s winter quarters. The intensity of the everglade-green foliage hurt my eyes. Not surprising, since they were gritty from a thirty-six-hour drive with as few stops to rest as possible. I had pulled over at a gas station to do a quick primp and put on my simple costume, and now was so full of nerves I thought I might vibrate right out of my skin.

  Could I do this? Dad didn’t think so. I almost understood his objection—it was true that no female magician had ever become as famous as the top male ones. Magic was still a man’s world, a boys’ club. But that only made me more determined to be the first: the first woman as well-known for her magic as Houdini or David Blaine or, well, Dad.

  It hadn’t felt good to abandon him to come here. But he’d forced me into this.

  I had trundled contritely into his office the day after our fight with a made-up story about how I’d seen the light and would be practical from that moment on—starting with a precollege program across the country at Cornell over the summer. I handed him a forged letter about it and told him I’d neglected to mention it because I thought he’d make me go. He hadn’t been happy about my imminent departure, but what could he say? Stay here with me and learn magic? Nope.

  So here I was.

  The Cirque grounds came into view ahead, swarming with people. The uneven rows of RVs and trailers, many having seen better days despite being painted with murals or the Cirque’s swirling logo, didn’t match up with what I’d conjured in my head.

  You expected Las Vegas hotels and neon and flashing lights and the sound of the next jackpot always nearby.

  I found a dusty parking spot beside a few other cars and trucks, some with campers hitched to the back. Red buildings were clustered in the distance like bright gemstones around a crown jewel—in this case, the enormous red-and-white-striped tent at the top of the slope.

  After I got out of the car, I stood looking at it for a long moment. My destination and, I hoped, my destiny.

  I tugged a short tailored tuxedo jacket over my simple black pants and fitted white shirt, and felt face powder begin to settle into my pores with a sting as the Florida humidity summoned forth sweat. In the jacket pockets, I stashed two custom decks of the slightly smaller, bridge-sized cards many magicians preferred, and a pair of handcuffs, just in case. I’d brought the equipment for my daring coffin escape, broken down into component pieces in the trunk. But I wanted to survey the scene first.

>   A spaghetti-thin blond boy with a duffel bag draped over one knobby elbow breezed past me and asked, “You run off from a gay wedding?” He laughed at my feminine tux.

  His laugh wasn’t mean per se, but my eyes narrowed. Several of the women who worked at Dad’s show were lesbians or bi, and I’d been in one couple’s wedding.

  “What if I was?” I asked. “And it would just be a wedding, period.”

  Another boy drew up beside the first and punched him in the shoulder—hard enough that he took a step back. Then the new boy turned to me. He must not have noticed me before his friend spoke, because his once-over went on way too long. Long enough to turn into staring.

  I ordered my makeup to stay put, sweat or no sweat, and tried to hide any reaction to the exam. Distressingly, I found it difficult to be offended.

  The boy was tall, wearing a black tank top that showed off a tan and a strong build. Long brown hair brushed his chin, and his eyes flashed like pennies tossed into the air. I had a trick where I threw a handful of pennies and caught them on the return trip only to reveal an empty palm. He should have been as easy to dismiss as those coins were to make vanish, given that being cute didn’t make up for having bad taste in friends. But he wasn’t. There was something about the cut of his jawline as he angled it when he saw me neutrally returning his examination that made me wonder what his story was.

  “Ignore him. He’s an idiot,” he said, finally.

  “I can believe he’s an idiot. What’s your excuse?” When he looked amused but didn’t say anything, I added, “For staring.”

  “Sorry. There’s something . . . about you,” he said. “Your eyes. It was almost like I recognized you. But I don’t think we’ve met.”

  My eyes were a perfectly ordinary green. I rolled them. “We haven’t.”

  No way I’d have forgotten.

  “What are you?” he asked. There was a vague lilt to his voice, not quite an accent. “Here for, I mean.”

  In answer, I slipped my hand into my pocket and whipped out a deck of cards. This was no time to be flashy and put on the cuffs for a trick of my own design, so I executed a perfect circle fan with the cards instead, thrusting them to one side and forming them into a complete circle. The backs were red and black and white, patterned to make a round roulette wheel.