Girl in the Shadows Page 4

  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.

  But I wasn’t lying, so fine. “What do I do?”

  “Pick a card, and concentrate on allowing it to show your true essence. If you are here under false pretenses, I will know. The cards will tell me.”

  I reached out, happy to do anything to prove I was telling the truth and get clear answers. I ran a fingertip along the entire span of cards she’d fanned out and gently removed the seventh from the left. Noting the card’s position was as natural as breathing.

  “Lay it flat so I can see it,” she said.

  I looked at it first. A figure wearing a robe with suns and moons, woman or man I couldn’t say, stood on an outside stage, holding a snake in one hand and a wand in the other. The moon above was red in a black sky. As I studied the card, my fingertips heated, or maybe the card heated in them. I felt that warmth surge through me again, and the painted magician on the card began to move, limbs stretching, face turning away and then back. Around him shapes of animals and humans emerged from the night. One of them was a girl—

  Nan’s fingers plucked the card away. “You were changing it,” she said, her voice shaking.

  She was right.

  The face of the magician on the card wasn’t the same anymore. It was my father’s.

  And the girl at the edge of the stage had short black curls, her hands held out in front of her, handcuffed at the wrists. To be precise, she was now me.

  I blinked at the card, stunned, then looked back to Nan. Her mouth was open in shock.

  I felt cold all over, a contrast to the heat that had surged through my fingers moments before. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “You told me your mother made these.”

  I didn’t have anything from my mother—except, it seemed, this unwieldy magic—but I could guess that Nan would consider these cards from her mother to be precious.

  She took a slow breath, and when she let it out, she’d regained her composure. “When your magic came into contact with the card’s, you transformed it . . . It shows your essence now. This is your story. You are what you say.”

  She set the card down between us sideways, so we both could see the image better. Together, we peered into it.

  In the background behind my father and me were two shadowy, unrecognizable forms, stopped midtransformation. One was a woman with long red hair, who wore a black dress; some shape seemed to wind around the top of her head, but it was impossible to tell what it was. She was otherwise indistinct. The other form was blurrier, possibly male but not clear enough to swear to it. They both gazed up, where two small shiny objects fell toward them from above. The previously black background now featured the red and white stripes of the tent. Some white and red and yellow spots beside it, like bright lightbulbs, hung on a string in the sky.

  “Who are they?” My finger hovered over the background. I pulled it back when I realized what I was doing and that she might not want my hands to touch the card again.

  “I have no idea,” she said. “You definitely transform things. I don’t know why your mother would have left you . . . She must be one of the Praestigae, given your power. The only reason your magic wouldn’t have expressed itself is if it were purposely hidden. Something here woke it. But I will tell you the most important thing your mother should have: your magic is dangerous.”

  The words brought a chill. Your magic is dangerous.

  “How?”

  “Think of magic like
you are a cup and you hold magic inside you. You drink a little, or pour a little out, and it can be refilled. Use too much, and that process becomes harder. And should the cup ever be emptied completely, then it will break. Magic has consequences.”

  “Like what?”

  She frowned, as if she didn’t want to answer. But she did. “The kind of magic you can do, it’s strong. It’s extremely powerful. If you use too much all at once, it could kill you.”

  “Oh, well, that’s no big deal, then.” A bad joke, but the truth in her words somehow sang to me. My bones vibrated with it. “I only want to be a magician.”

  “You will have to learn to control your powers. To conserve them.”

  I didn’t want to use real magic at all. “But I can stay? What did you tell Mr. Meyer?”

  “I told him I saw something in you, and that I wanted to talk to you before we dismissed you.” She paused. “You can stay, though it might be better for you to go home. Ask your father to find your mother. Or not. She may have her reasons for abandoning you.”

  No. “I can’t go home.”

  “I figured as much. You remind me of my Jules. Stubborn. Driven. You’ll have to take care. People who can do magic . . . other people will want to profit from it, be threatened by it, or both. Be careful who you trust with this secret. And be careful how you try to use your magic. The cup cannot be emptied.”

  “No dying. Got it.”

  It was another bad joke, and neither of us laughed. I had enough to think about. I couldn’t take anything more. So I got up to leave.

  “They’ll be wondering why I’m still in here,” I said.

  She nodded and then escorted me the short way to the door. Raleigh and Dita came forward to meet us when it opened, and I stepped down to the grass. Nan lingered.

  “You’re staying?” Dita asked.

  I nodded. Which meant living arrangements were a problem I had to deal with now. “About that, where does everyone sleep?”

  “We’re a tent circus,” Dita said, gesturing at the RVs and trailers around us. “And we don’t do the same route as the Greatest, so we drive caravan-style to our dates.”

  I assumed she meant the Greatest Show on Earth, but I didn’t question it. That part didn’t matter to me. “Could I rent something? When do we leave?”

  Dad might protest transferring me such a big chunk of money, but I didn’t have many options.

  “We leave tomorrow,” Dita said.

  “So soon?” I blurted. “We don’t even get to rehearse the midway?”

  Dita shrugged. “Thurston has a ‘go big or go home’ thing. He says the energy will be better if the midway debuts on the road. He’s not even giving us the full schedule until we get to Jacksonville.”

  Nan cut in. “Every place in town with rentals has been cleaned out by now. I’m guessing this means you don’t have anywhere to stay?”

  That I didn’t know the rules of circus life—especially Cirque American life—was becoming as clear as glass so invisible the audience never so much as glimpsed it. Not to mention I didn’t even know the rules of my own life. I can do magic. Magic that could kill me.

  “You drove here, didn’t you?” Raleigh said. “In that ridiculously small car. I guess you can stay with me. I managed to rent an old trailer from a friend.”

  “If you want, you can stay with me and Remy,” Dita said. “We just got our own place.”

  There was no doubt I’d rather stay with her than Raleigh. He knew me well enough that he’d see I was hiding something.

  “That would be great,” I said to Dita. “I can pay rent.”

  Nan gave us a satisfied nod and closed the door. Raleigh said, “You’re all right?”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to run the risk of lying out loud and being obvious about it.

  “We can grab an air mattress from supplies,” Dita said, starting across the grass. “I’m curious about Nan’s interest in you.”

  “Me too,” Raleigh said.

  “Are you guys related?” I asked her, to deflect.

  “Me and Nan? Ha,” she snorted. “No. Our families hated each other until last summer. No one can believe the Garcias and Maronis are now friends, mostly.”

  The Garcias. Nan had mentioned them and some kind of coin when she’d been accusing me of being in that secret society. The one my mom belonged to. In theory.

  There didn’t seem to be much of anything neutral to say back to Dita or Raleigh about why Nan had taken an interest in me. Your magic is dangerous. The cup cannot be emptied.

  For once, I was the one not holding any cards.

  part two

  pay no attention

  five

  When I woke the next morning on my air mattress in the tiny, cute room I was sharing with Dita in her and her brother Remy’s tiny, cute silver Airstream, I discovered Dita already up. Wrapped in a gray robe that seemed to be a man’s, she held a slender mystery novel with a creased spine in front of her and leaned against the wall behind her bed. But she was staring over the book at me.

  “Good morning,” I said, which seemed safe.

  “So,” she said, lowering the book, “don’t you want to know why I invited you to stay here?”

  I’d wondered, but I was too wiped out the night before to ask. I went straight to sleep. “For the rent money, I assume. How much do you want?”

  “No, not for the rent money.”

  “What then?” I glanced over at the narrow closet simply to avoid looking at her.

  I’d noticed when I hung up some of my clothes the night before that most of her things were of the same variety—crisp men’s shirts and pants, a few suit jackets, and a lot more bow ties. The room itself was bare-bones, but there was a pleasant hint of spicy cologne in the air.

  “Oh God,” she said, and I looked back to find her shaking her head. “I didn’t mean to make this awkward. It’s not—I’m not interested in you. I mean, I am, but not like that.”

  “That didn’t even occur to me,” I said. “So, why am I here? There’s obviously a reason.”

  “There is. Last season . . . I lost someone. It was over this . . . thing, over the Maronis and Garcias’ ancient history.”

  Wait, I thought. Nan Maroni had mentioned this too. The loss and the magic coin. “Some coin?”

  “What do you know about it?” Dita demanded.

  “Nothing. Nan mentioned it in passing. She wanted to, um, make sure I wasn’t here because of it.” I paused. “I’m not. I had no idea what she was talking about. You want to explain it?”

  She swallowed, not so skilled as an interrogator. “No. I just don’t want to get left out again. I had no idea what was going on, not until it was too late. Why would she ask you about that?”

  Oh no. I hadn’t thought this far ahead. “Because I’m a magician and sometimes we work with coins? Anyway, it was all a misunderstanding. I’m just here to do magic.” I added, “The stage and close-up kind.”

  She gave me a long, hard look. “People tell stories about Nan Maroni, you know. There’s truth to them.”

  I didn’t know, but I could guess they had to do with magic. The real variety. Which she’d told me explicitly to keep hidden from anyone else. And anyone included Dita, no matter how much I liked her or how much she was helping me out by letting me bunk here.

  “What kind of stories do you mean?” I asked.

  She sighed. “Never mind. But if there’s anything to know, anything weird, you’ll tell me?”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

  Because I can do magic and so could my absent mother . . . who maybe I should track down. Except I’d prided myself on never pining for her, on never wanting to find someone who plainly didn’t want to be found. Not to mention that she was apparently wrapped up with some dangerous people. I’d have to Google that name—the Pressteejie?

  Oh God. This was too much thinking before breakfast.

  Dita still didn’t look entirely convinced, so I decided
to distract her with directness. “Okay, new topic—I know we just met and this is truly none of my business, but if you’re gay or bi or straight as an arrow or whatever variety or combination thereof, I’m cool with it. I’m straight, but I have zero problem with anyone being otherwise. Also, where do we get the delicious breakfast foods?”

  Dita’s eyes went round. I’d thrown her off the trail of my secret, at least. “I . . . I’m pretty sure I’m bi . . . Not that it matters right now. But I just feel more like myself when I dress in men’s clothes.”

  “The look suits you. But I still can’t believe you’re not into me.” I shook my head sadly. “How will I get over this?”

  Her expression turned slightly wounded. Then I smiled. She chucked the paperback at me.

  “Oh,” she said. “You’re one of those. Onstage, always performing.”

  I climbed to my feet. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve never been onstage performing. I’ve always been the one behind the scenes. Or in a small crowd, slipping away right after.”

  “Huh,” she said. “You fooled me.”

  “I’ve wanted to be onstage for a few years. Just never had the chance.”

  “Why not?” she asked, sounding legitimately curious.

  Note to self: stop being interesting. I ducked the question. “I’m here now, and that’s what matters. You said who you like doesn’t matter right now for you. Why?”

  Her face subtly shut, like a window being pressed down to the sill. “I can’t imagine being with anyone right now.”

  There was a story there, one she didn’t want to talk about. “Got it. Do you mind if I take the first shower?”

  “Go ahead,” Dita said. “We’ll hit the mess for your ‘delicious breakfast foods’ and then the road. Everyone packed up their gear last night or this morning. You’ll drive behind us in your car?”

  “Sounds plan-ish.”

  When I slipped a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt out of my bag, I also grabbed a deck of new cards. I concealed them under the shirt as I made my way up the small hall and into an even smaller bathroom. My fingers itched with the tug, the pull, the desire to be in motion. I needed to prove to myself that I could still do the kind of magic I wanted to.