Girl in the Shadows Page 11

  “What risk?” I frowned. The more I heard about where he was from, the more I didn’t think it was any good.

  “The risk of having my heart broken.”

  “Oh.”

  “I can tell it’s not going to be easy. You’re a runner,” he said. “So thing two wasn’t the champagne. I want to prove to you I’m serious . . . and I grew up around people who know how to seal a deal. There’s something in it for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You came here to do magic, on a stage, like your friend Raleigh does, right? Not just card tricks.”

  Where is this going? “I want to eventually.”

  “I’ve watched you enough to know that’s more important to you than any romantic gesture I could make. So, what if I helped you out? What if you could open for him?”

  I shook my head. “Raleigh will still say no. He’s not convinced I’m ready yet.”

  “Who said anything about asking him? You’ll be good, right? I’ll help you plan it. We’ll steal his stage for just a few minutes. Get your chance for you,” he said. “Just think about it.”

  I was tempted to say yes with every fiber of my being.

  Dez set down his plastic glass and reached for mine. “I’m not going to kiss you again, not right now. And I think Jimmy will make us come down soon. I don’t want to—I’d rather stay here, and not have to run the risk of you saying no to doing this again.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Good.”

  We circled the world one more time before our feet touched the ground, and from the vision in my head of myself on Raleigh’s stage, I already knew I’d say yes.

  No matter how reckless or stupid I had to be to do it.

  thirteen

  I opened the front door and was greeted by three faces and two giant pizza boxes. Remy, Dita, and Jules were on the couch, apparently indulging in a late extra dinner.

  “Finally! Jules told me you went on a date,” Dita said. “Come save me from watching these two try not to give each other swoony looks, even though they see each other all the time. It’s like they’re in some kind of novel.”

  Jules had a pizza slice flat on one hand, in contrast to Remy’s New York–style folded piece. She sniffed. “Please. We’d be in a movie, not a book. Black and white. I’m Katharine Hepburn, and he’s Cary Grant.”

  “The Latino Cary Grant,” Remy said, rolling his eyes affectionately. “He knew how to do a few flips,” he told me.

  “A few flips? He got his start in vaudeville.” Jules shook her head as if she was surrounded by barbarians, then took a delicate bite of pizza.

  “I sense a movie marathon in my near future,” Remy said.

  Dita gestured to the box, and I took a slice of cheese and eased down onto the floor in front of them. My technique at pizza was somewhere in the middle of theirs, a sort of half fold. I could control a deck of cards like a maestro, but I couldn’t eat pizza without leaving a grease trail on my T-shirt. It was inevitable, like bad weather or the grave.

  “Soooo . . . how’d it go?” Jules asked, rocking forward.

  The evening with Dez had been confusing. And, alternately, like being hit by lightning. I could hardly say that. “We’re probably better off as friends.”

  “Ha!” Jules shook her head. She pointed at the flowers. “Friends don’t bring friends flowers.”

  “Some friends probably do,” Dita said.

  “Not many,” Jules argued. “Unsatisfying report,” she said to me, and took another bite of pizza.

  I wanted myself off the agenda. Dez and I weren’t something I felt comfortable discussing. I decided to change the topic to the Garcias’ act. “Rehearsal going all right for you guys?”

  A storm passed over Dita’s face. “I’m hoping to take some time off. Maybe the whole week. Not just from rehearsing.”

  “Dita,” Remy said, “I won’t do the act if you aren’t in it. And we have to do the act.”

  Uh-oh. I hadn’t meant to cause this.

  “Don’t be that way,” Dita said, glaring at him. “What if I need a break but don’t want to mess it up for everyone?”

  “You love being up there,” he said. “You of all of us have always said it feels like flying. Even when Granddad was still around and coaching us, the worst days. You loved it. Why wouldn’t you want to fly?”

  “Maybe I can’t anymore.” She stood and stalked back to our room.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “You didn’t know,” Remy said. “It’s a sensitive subject.”

  Jules tapped her boyfriend’s shoulder. “Good job. Way to get a conversation going.” Then, to me, “Do you have brothers and sisters? Are they like this? I just had my cousin.”

  Past tense and with a hard swallow after her question. I had Googled Cirque American and Chicago on my phone and read about the death. The sudden, tragic, accidental death. Obviously, they still carried it with them, just like Thurston had said of the circus as a whole.

  “Not that lucky. No brothers or sisters,” I said, neutral.

  “Maybe you should go try to talk to her,” Jules said.

  It seemed like a weird suggestion. Dita and I didn’t know each other that well yet. But . . . “I’ll give it a shot. It’s bedtime anyway.”

  I finished off my slice and got up. They didn’t stop me, and when I reached the little hallway, I heard Jules say, low, to Remy, “I’ve been thinking, and I have an idea about the coin.”

  I shouldn’t have wanted to overhear their conversation. But I didn’t think they would notice if I lingered in the shadowy hallway, as long as I didn’t make a production of it or stay too long.

  “No,” Remy said, keeping his voice down too.

  “We can’t leave it there. It’d be better to move it . . . Listen.”

  They were talking about the mysterious coin. I should stop listening. I should really stop listening. This was wrong.

  Remy said no again, and I heard him climb to his feet. Before he could catch me, I turned and hurried the rest of the way to our room. Getting busted would have served me right, but I made it.

  Dita lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Families—am I right?” I said.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  There was no wiggle room to misinterpret. She didn’t want me to attempt to coax her into talking or provide a willing ear. She didn’t even look away from the ceiling. But I spoke anyway. “I hang out at a theater back home a lot. The women there like to give advice—to each other, to me. It’s nice. The way they’re always there for each other, for me. I’m pretty sure they’d tell me to say ‘That’s fine, Dita,’ and back off, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

  She blinked, and I could see her eyes were watery.

  I stayed at the door. “But they would tell you that talking about it to someone you don’t have so many emotions wrapped up with, like someone who’s not a member of your family, might make you feel better about whatever it is. I’m still backing off. But when you’re ready, I’m here.”

  She drew in an audibly shaky breath and sat up. A tear trailed down her cheek, and I hated the thought I might have made her cry. But I didn’t think it had anything to do with me.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Something’s going on with you too. You never talk about your family, not really. Or Nan’s interest in you. And you keep letting Raleigh brush you off about opening for him. I’m also here whenever you’re ready to tell all.”

  “Touché,” I said. “I guess we’re the secret-keeping twins.”

  “Ha, no. That’s Jules and Remy.”

  How right she was, after what I’d overheard. “I think I’m going to let Dez help me sneak onto Raleigh’s stage and perform.”

  She gasped. “Will Raleigh freak?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  “Good for you,” she said. Then she sighed. “I do love flying, I just . . . don’t seem to be able to do it anymore. I get
up there, and I feel like myself right up until I don’t. You ever feel that way?”

  “Remember my audition? I think everyone feels that way sometimes in front of a crowd.”

  “It’s not the crowd. It’s . . . I’m afraid now. I never used to be, but now I am. And I don’t know how not to be, how to make it feel like it used to, being up there. Like I didn’t have to worry. Like nothing would go wrong. You can’t fly and be afraid to move at the same time.”

  “I’m gathering you all lost someone close to you.” What Jules’s cousin had meant to Dita wasn’t clear to me, but he’d meant something. “It could just be you need more time to go by.”

  “It’s been almost a year.” She said nothing else.

  “Maybe what you need is to reinvent yourself a little,” I said. “Feel like someone who’s still you, but different too. For starters . . .” This was none of my business, but we were friends. I owed her the truth. “You don’t look like yourself when you’re performing. What if you did?” My eyes flicked to the closet. “You might feel better if you looked like you. Outside in, fake it to make it, and all that.”

  She followed my gaze to the neatly hung rows of men’s clothing. “My mother would die.”

  “No, she wouldn’t. She might freak out, but she won’t die.”

  “Hmm,” Dita grunted.

  “I need to visit the costume trailer to get a mask made anyway,” I said. “Some costume improvement of my own. You’ll come too? Our secrets, for the time being.”

  “I like it,” Dita said. “Secret-keeping twins.”

  Dita hesitated another moment and took another longing look at her closet. “If we go see her tomorrow, I’d say she could have something in a week—probably by Memphis.”

  “Memphis it is. We play it cool here, and then bam! We make our moves.” Raleigh would never see my plan coming, not with Dez’s assistance.

  “Partners in crime,” she said, offering me her hand. I shook it.

  “I feel like we should go smoke cigars or something,” she said.

  “The handshake is a classic,” I said.

  For the first time that evening, I felt certain I was headed in the right direction. Dita had put it best: you couldn’t fly and be afraid of moving at the same time.

  fourteen

  The next day I was headed to the Maroni trailer for my conversation with Nan when I bumped into—literally, to my horror—Dez. He came out of nowhere, and we collided.

  He put his hands on my arms, steadying me.

  “Was that a ploy?” I asked. “Have you been waiting around?”

  That grin I wanted not to like returned. “Someone’s in a mood. Why would I be waiting around here?”

  He looked around, and his eyes settled on the Maronis’ RV. He lowered his voice. “People say things about Nan Maroni, you know.”

  Dita had said as much, but it felt wrong to gossip about her. “So I’ve heard. They probably say things about me. And about you too.”

  “If they were saying things about you and me, I’d like them better.”

  Gah. My cursed heart couldn’t help responding to this.

  “Don’t blush,” he said. “Though it is cute. You don’t want to hear the gossip? Everyone likes gossip.”

  “Fine. What do they say?”

  “That she has magical powers.”

  I should’ve guessed this was what he’d say. “She doesn’t seem like a witch to me,” I said, careful. It was too close to home.

  “Me either,” he said. “Enough about her. I’m more interested in you. Did you decide yet?”

  He might as well be doing the boy equivalent of batting his eyelashes. This level of charming should come with a danger category designation like a hurricane. We’ve got cat-five flirting developing in the middle of the Cirque camp.

  “Yes,” I said. “Memphis work for you?”

  “Memphis it is.” He grinned. “You want to hang out now? Discuss the details?”

  I could hardly tell him I was here for Nan. “Right now I’m going to see Jules.”

  “I know a brush-off when I hear one. See what you can find out about Raleigh’s schedule, when he gets to his tent before his act. I’ll do the same for the assistant, and we’ll compare notes. Talk to you soon, lovely Moira.”

  He smiled at me, and I braced for another kiss, but he sidled off when I didn’t stop him from going. Argh. I pulled myself together, completed my journey, and knocked on the door to the Maroni RV.

  “It’s open. Come in!” Jules called.

  The family was watching an old movie together, or hanging out while Nan and Jules did, anyway. Their father, Emil, gave every appearance of napping. Novio Garcia was there too, with an air of Zen suffering, in a kitchen chair pulled over to the side of the couch.

  Jules had the remote next to her. She started to pause it and get up. So I had to awkwardly say, “I’m here to see Nan.”

  Nan rose. “I’ll be back in five minutes. Keep watching. You know I can quote the entire thing from memory.”

  Jules looked between us with interest but settled back into the couch.

  Nan met me outside on the grass. I was a little worried Dez might return and spot us together, but the coast remained clear.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I started looking for my mother.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “Did you find her?”

  “She put a phony name on the birth certificate: Regina A. Ghost. And then she sent me a message. A clear one.” I pulled up the e-mail on my phone. “She doesn’t want to be found.”

  “What woman would do such a thing?” she asked. “Use a fake name on a birth certificate?” An unfiltered response, because she added, “Sorry. If she’s Praestigae, that might explain it. The secrecy.”

  “I still don’t get what that means. But she somehow knew I’d requested the birth certificate, and she didn’t like it.”

  I held the phone out for her. She peered at the screen.

  “What a strange woman.” Nan shook her head slowly, considering. “Has your magic presented again? Have you tried to call on it?”

  We were speaking softly, but I still looked around to confirm that no one was paying attention to us. Dez had that ability of popping up unexpectedly. There were a few people crossing the grounds nearby, but they seemed safely head-in-the-clouds in their own worlds, unconcerned with ours.

  “It came back the other day.” When she frowned in concern, I explained. “It was okay. Barely. It was during a performance. I was in a straitjacket. But I was able to rush through the end.”

  Her mouth was slightly open. “In a straitjacket?”

  “Doing an escape. You didn’t think I was all about card tricks, did you? Anyway, I made something out of a regular coin.” I had the heart-shaped former penny in my pocket. Much as I wanted to toss it, I felt like I should hang on to it. When I held it, it was almost like my palm heated again, just barely. Not enough to freak out over.

  But like the little copper heart had a spark of life in it.

  “May I see?” she asked. No badgering like that first day in the tent.

  I produced it, rolling it out to the end of my fingers and showing it to her.

  She didn’t take it, and I was relieved not to have to hand it over. She squinted.

  “Were you visualizing this when it happened?” she asked. “It is a heart? The real kind?”

  “I wasn’t. I was thinking about the person who gave me the penny.” I didn’t elaborate on who that was. “He, um, had heart pain. No lasting effects, though.”

  “So much detail for an accidental creation.” She paused. “I wish we knew more about your limits. Your mother’s reluctance to be found seems like an important part of the puzzle. Can you talk to your father about her? Are you still in contact with him?”

  Dad. The reason I was here. The only person I could guarantee to have some kind of answer. “I was afraid you’d say that. Yes, I am. I’ll call him.”

  “Let
me know if there’s anything I can do,” she said, and started to go back inside to her movie.

  “Wait.”

  She stopped.

  “This coin everyone is searching for,” I said. “Should we be worried about that?”

  “I hope everyone isn’t searching for it.” Her face darkened, and there was a distance to her answer, like she was reliving the past at the same time she spoke. “Jules promises me that no one will find it, and I have to believe her.”

  “But if someone did find it . . .”

  “The coin in and of itself holds lucky magic—it protects the holder—but only if they use it, keep it on them. Like all magic, even an object of good can boast a double edge, a sharp one. It can corrupt. It can make the wearer feel untouchable. That’s why it’s a good thing it’s gone.”

  But the coin wasn’t truly gone. Remy and Jules knew where it was, and Jules had some plan to move it. I kept that to myself. Their secrets weren’t mine to tell.

  Nan’s next words sent guilt spiking through me. “You must tell me if you hear anything about it. We can decide what to do. These people would be a danger to all of us.”

  “I should tell you, not Thurston?” I had gotten the distinct sense the other night that she didn’t fully trust him.

  “You’re too smart for your own good. But, yes, Thurston believing in magic would not be a good thing. I don’t want to encourage him to start.”

  “Why would it be so bad for him to know?”

  For anyone to.

  “You might think those tidy break-ins were nothing much to worry about, and perhaps you would be right. But they were a beginning. People will do things to possess even a fraction of magic. Thurston is a good man, but he is curious and powerful. I would rather he stay a good man, with limits to his power.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding. “No word to Thurston. If I hear anything that makes me concerned, I’ll come straight to you.”

  That wasn’t a lie. I wasn’t concerned about what I’d overheard. To be completely honest, another item of magic on the loose seemed like a welcome distraction for anyone who would potentially notice mine. It was a threat that there were people looking for magic, and misdirection could be as powerful a tool as any magic coin.