Girl in the Shadows Read online

  But I also wanted to test my newfound ability. Part of me didn’t believe in it. I didn’t plan to empty the cup, just experiment by taking a slow sip from it.

  Cramped for space, I climbed into the shower and dumped the cards into my hand. Then I began to shuffle them. I created a mental image of each card in my mind, learning the deck automatically while I did. My fingers moving nimbly, each motion perfect, controlling the cards. I made them fall like rapids of a river, one into the next into the next, and scooped them up and made them into an accordion flowing back and forth between my palms. I riffled them, living for the satisfying familiar snick snick snick as they returned to the exact positions I wanted them to. I held my arms tight in front of me, completing two circle fans. No problem this time.

  I set down all the cards except one. Slowly, I laid that card flat on my hand. I added my other hand on top, pressing the card between my palms. Change, I thought, as hard as I could.

  But I didn’t feel that warmth this time. The card was a card, the jack of hearts before I touched it and after. My fingertips were just stupid fingertips. My palms declined even to sweat. Nothing happened.

  When the magic had struck before, both times, I’d been completely powerless to guide it. All those hours of practice to learn my magic skills had been aimed at ensuring that control of my body and focus during a trick or an escape was effortless, total, and ever-present. I didn’t want to feel the way I had yesterday again, and especially not while performing. But apparently this supposed magic I had wasn’t going to come out for practice today.

  “Moira, everything okay?” Dita called softly.

  “Fine,” I lied, then put the cards on the sink ledge before I twisted the shower on.

  Being part of the caravan to Jacksonville was another weird new experience to add to my list. Even for a Vegas girl, the sheer scale of this enterprise and all the people involved was impressive.

  I stayed behind the Airstream, which Dita’s brother Remy was piloting while she played passenger. I was glad I’d seen the mural on the side of their home before I’d met Remy—it interrupted the silver side of the trailer and pictured Dita perched on a platform holding a trapeze and Remy swinging out on another. A third figure’s face was concealed but muscular arms reached out to catch the boy’s hands. Fancy script said The Flying Garcias, with the Love Brothers and the Goddesses of Beauty.

  The image had given me some warning of how much black-haired and brown-eyed Remy looked like a movie star, down to the muscles. Swinging from a trapeze would do that to you, I guessed. Remy and Jules, the famed wire walker, were a solid item, according to Dita, and I could look forward to them ignoring everyone else when they were with each other.

  Some of the staging crew was already on-site at our destination, but we were still nestled in a miles-long line that included performer families’ RVs with murals and logos, semis with the tents and sets and more of the work crew, and a massive assortment of other vehicles, including a couple of horse trailers. The horses belonged to the only animal act in the show besides a routine of very well-cared-for dogs, again according to Dita. Though she’d had that sad look again when she said it.

  While I was alone, I had another item of business to arrange. I took out my phone and scrolled through my contacts, selected the name Amber, and put the call on speaker. She was one of Dad’s former assistants, a bubbly brunette who’d left Vegas a few years earlier to move to Ithaca, and we’d kept in touch occasionally. Many of the lovely assistants, current and former, liked to play at being a maternal influence. Or some sort of positive influence anyway.

  “Hey, Moira,” she said, answering on the second ring. “Good to hear from you. What’s up?”

  “I need a favor,” I said, and proceeded to ask if I could tell my dad I was staying with her for the summer. It took a little convincing and a lot of assuring her that I was completely safe, but eventually I hung up with an address to give Dad for his care package and any that might follow.

  I waited until we were waved into a giant flat lot on the outskirts of Jacksonville, directed into parking rows, but as soon as I was stopped, I sent him a text: Here’s my address. Hope the show went well! Miss you!

  He texted back almost immediately: I should never have let you leave. I’m surrounded by incompetents, and there’s no one to complain to.

  I snorted. Be nice, you hired them. ☺

  It felt strange to be texting with Dad instead of just talking to him, and to be so far away. And to be lying to him. I was doing too much of that.

  I got out of the car, joining a throng of other people getting out of their vehicles. Dita and Remy stood outside the Airstream, gaping at an enormous Ferris wheel set up next to an empty stretch of field. The metal wheel rose high up in the air, the spokes covered in lights and ending in open-topped cars. Their doors were painted with the Cirque’s logo.

  “I take it this is new?” I asked.

  “Um, yes,” Dita said. “Very.”

  “It’s so . . . big,” Remy said. “Let’s go over there.”

  The rest of the Cirque had the same idea, and we were gathered around the base of the wheel, stretching up and up and up, a circle that seemed to hit the sky, when Thurston appeared.

  “Hello, everyone!” He was in casual clothes, but he instantly put on his air of command. I could picture him in the center ring. “Surprise number one! We can’t just repeat our triumphs, or our tragedies—we must move forward and grow. But we also can’t forget. You may not know that the first Ferris wheel in the world was built in Chicago, for the 1893 World’s Fair. It was the showpiece of the very first midway. Those of you who have been with the Cirque know that we will never return to Chicago, but we will always carry it with us—figuratively and now literally.”

  He paused here, and his eyes found us near the front. Remy had his hand on Dita’s arm. Her face was carefully blank. Jules had joined us at some point, on Remy’s other side, and she had tears in her eyes.

  Thurston continued.

  “This wheel is the largest transportable one in the world, and it will come with us. Which means that we will hit bigger cities for several days, leaving enough time between dates for the seventy-two hours it takes to reconstruct. Luckily, I’m good at math, so it doesn’t take that long to break apart. I want this year to be better than the last. So pick up the season’s schedule, and get ready for a parade tomorrow that will bring all of Jacksonville to the greatest show they’ve ever seen. Midway people, look at the solemn faces around you. I expect you to knock it out of the park, make the Cirque even better. It all starts tomorrow!”

  The petite woman who’d checked me in the day before and several of her army were distributing sheets of paper. I grabbed one, aware that I didn’t understand the full story of Chicago—and knowing from the faces of Dita, Remy, and Jules that I wasn’t about to ask them for it now. I did remember that was where I’d first seen Jules on TV, daringly dancing above the downtown. I wondered if it had something to do with that.

  A list of cities and dates ran down the page in my hand: Jacksonville, Atlanta, Memphis, Saint Louis, Kansas City, Dallas, El Paso, Albuquerque, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, and—last but looming largest for me—Las Vegas. Our final city, over Labor Day weekend.

  I counted twelve weeks from today until we’d be there. That was how much time I had to figure out how to put together an act that would leave zero doubt of my abilities in Dad’s mind.

  six

  Opening day dawned thick with a tension that had begun to build the night before. The mess tent was swimming with it at breakfast—the excitement of the season kicking off and whatever Thurston and Jules’s rumored surprise was.

  At our long breakfast table in the catered tent, I’d wolfed down banana-blueberry pancakes beside Dita, who inhaled a stack of bacon and toast. The back wall featured a projection of Jules walking above a bridge high over the river here last year. I admired the daring of it. But that was apparently not the plan for this season�
��Jules would be doing something else, and we wouldn’t know until it happened.

  For me, the excitement was coupled with the anxiety that my magical powers continued to refuse to show up whenever I snuck off into a corner to attempt to test them out. I was increasingly afraid they would come without warning, making it impossible for me to ever practice controlling them.

  Less than two hours after breakfast, the season was officially about to get its start.

  “Step right up,” Thurston called out over a bullhorn. He was wearing his full ringmaster tux and tails. He waved the midway and Cirque performers—we’d neatly segregated ourselves—toward a trio of large buses to head into town.

  From chattered explanations, I’d learned we were doing the reverse of what the Cirque had done last year. Instead of parading from here into town over the bridge, we’d be traveling to the city on these buses, then leading a parade back over the bridge to where we were staged. The hope was that excited fans and city people would follow us, showing up for whatever was the cap-off surprise at the tent, then stick around the midway and stay for the first show. Buses would take people back to town later, and then after a quick meal break we’d be on again for the evening performances.

  Everyone was decked out in their costumes. Which meant it was like a massive chorus line of showgirls on the loose, except with fewer feathers and not so scantily clad. My outfit was pretty tame as these things went, of course—black jacket and pants with the supplies I needed stashed in the pockets. I made a mental note to ask Raleigh for some costuming help.

  I boarded the third bus after most of the people were already on, not wanting to get trapped at the back surrounded by strangers. That enabled me to slip into a seat near the front. Dita was the only one I could describe as a semi-friend here at this point, and so it was fine that no one took the spot beside me.

  Well, until Dez peeked onto the bus. He grinned when he caught sight of me. His grin felt . . . honest. Like legitimate happiness at seeing me.

  That amplified when he said, “Finally. I checked the others for you first.”

  His friend appeared behind him. “He did. It was cray annoying.”

  “You know who else is cray annoying?” Dez asked. “You, Brandon. You are cray annoying.”

  Brandon laughed, highly amused. I would never understand why so many boys related to each other through mockery.

  The two of them boarded, and Dez—unshockingly—swung into the seat next to me. He wore an outfit not dissimilar from my own, though his shirt was black instead of white and unbuttoned to a degree that should have been tacky but managed to look reckless and hot. He had a few knives strapped onto his legs and arms for appearances.

  I tried to come up with a flippant response to his having searched me out, but a good comeback eluded me. There was an unwelcome fluttering instead. Particularly when Raleigh climbed on last, carrying his top hat in his hand, an opera cape over his suit for effect. He looked over at me and took in Dez, then swung into the row in front of and across the aisle from us. We were dressed like barbarians next to his elegant Phantom of the Opera.

  Dez tilted his head closer to me, his face so near mine I worried I’d feel his breath if he spoke. Or vice versa.

  “I don’t think he likes me,” he said.

  And I was right. He’d pitched it for my ears only, which meant I felt the words against my neck. It was practically like he’d touched me.

  I resisted the urge to shift nervously. The problem was, the breathy not-quite-touch had felt nice. “I can’t imagine why,” I said, at normal volume.

  Dez threw his head back against the headrest of his seat and put a hand over his heart. “Once you get to know me, really know me, you’ll feel different, Moira. I know I seem cocky, but I’m a puppy at heart.” He turned those brown-penny puppy eyes toward me.

  I sighed. “Let’s not talk about you. Let’s talk about—”

  “You?” Dez grinned again, wolfish instead of rakish.

  “No,” I said, and I saw the corner of Raleigh’s lips quirk. He was eavesdropping. “Let’s talk about your act. Where’d you learn how to juggle knives?”

  “Where’d you learn magic?”

  “I asked first.”

  The bus driver got on and levered the lumbering vehicle into gear. I wondered why Raleigh’s lovely assistants weren’t riding next to him. A headlining magician couldn’t get by without at least one.

  Dez leaned forward to block my view of Raleigh. “I taught myself.”

  To juggle knives? Holy crap.

  I’d taught myself too, obviously. Setting timers, reading tutorials, sneaking obscure books from Dad’s library. I was careful to always do the dangerous exercises, like submerging myself bound or in a mask, when someone was around and would hear if my safety alarm went off. But knife-throwing? How could that be safe to learn solo?

  “So you started with regular objects?” I asked. “Apples? Balls?”

  “Balls!” Across the aisle, Brandon brayed a laugh, and my cheeks went up in flames. We were surrounded by eavesdroppers. “He started on a bet. With butcher knives!”

  “Shut up, moron,” Dez said, smooth as glass and with as sharp an edge.

  Chastised, the other boy shrugged, but then gazed out the window. He must have only been Dez’s helper, because he had on casual jeans and a tank. A duffel rested at his feet.

  “Yes,” Dez said. “I was dared to. It wasn’t a situation where I could say no.” He shrugged. “But I’d never have known I was capable of doing it if I hadn’t.”

  I felt that way sometimes about having to be my own teacher. Dad would never have pushed me as hard as I pushed myself—he’d never have let me take so many risks.

  “I wasn’t all that good,” he said. “I did cut myself.”

  He pushed back the sleeve of his shirt, and I saw the raised line of a scar slashed across his forearm, still red, like it was angry. I touched it before I could stop myself.

  He was smiling at me again when I looked up, and I yanked my hand away. “Ouch,” I said. “Sounds kind of stupid, if you ask me.”

  “Oh, it was,” he said. “I’m full of bad decisions. And worse luck.”

  “That’s the truth,” Brandon said.

  “I’m having a private conversation with the lady,” Dez informed him.

  “No, you’re not,” Raleigh said lazily.

  Dez didn’t look mad. He shrugged again. “Another time, then. I’ll just have to be content to bask in your presence, beautiful Moira, sharing it with the undeserving who don’t appreciate you like I do.”

  “Bask away,” I said with bone-dry irony. But I hadn’t liked thinking of Dez being so cavalier about tossing knives into the air and one coming down and slicing his arm deep enough to leave that scar. I also couldn’t conjure a mental image of anyone who would be callous enough to seriously dare someone to do that.

  So Dez was a mystery too. Maybe we all were. Maybe being a mystery was what brought people to the Cirque in the first place.

  “Why’d you make me do your act with you?” I asked when the silence stretched too long.

  “I wanted to make you a heart,” Dez said.

  “Uh-huh. How many of those have you made? Hundreds?”

  “I told you—you inspired me.”

  I looked away, out the window. Don’t believe him. Pretty words.

  “A penny for your secrets,” Dez said, nearly whisper-soft. His hand touched mine, and I turned back to him as he flipped my hand over. He pressed a penny into my palm.

  I closed my fingers around it.

  “It’s thoughts,” I said. “A penny for your thoughts.”

  “I’d take those too, but I think they’re worth more.”

  “More than secrets?” I asked.

  “You do have some, then. Interesting . . . Care to share?”

  He stared at me, waiting, and I forced myself to stillness. As long I didn’t move or react, I wouldn’t give away anything else.

  The bus ground
to a halt.

  Dez smiled at me. “Another time.”

  The driver opened the doors, and he stood up in the aisle, waiting for me to go out first and blocking Brandon from cutting in front of me. I walked off the bus behind Raleigh, and only when I stepped onto the pavement beside the same brilliant-blue giant of a bridge that Jules had been crossing in the video did I realize I still had the penny in my palm.

  “That guy’s trouble,” Raleigh said, swooping around to face me, as much superhero as Phantom with his long cape.

  “So are you,” I said, thinking of his endless slew of beautiful temporary girlfriends.

  “True. But be careful.”

  “Please. I’m not even tempted.” Hooking up with boys wasn’t why I was here. Besides, Dez’s show of interest probably didn’t mean anything. None of that explained why I put the penny in my pocket, like it was part of my precious sleight kit.

  “Places, everyone!” Thurston again.

  The herd continued to divide by hierarchy for the parade, though it wasn’t quite as pronounced from high to low as for the bus ride. Thurston in his ringmaster tux was up front with the band and its shiny brass instruments and red, white, and blue marching band uniforms. We miscreant midway performers followed them, saving the Cirque performers, the best, for last.

  A massive crowd was waiting for us, overfilling the blocked-off streets that led into downtown Jacksonville and up to the edge of the bridge we would now cross. The bridge itself was all the more enormous when you pictured Jules walking above it. Speaking of which, I hadn’t seen her around all morning. Hmm . . .

  As we were lining up, I tried not to gape. I failed.

  “You act like you’ve never seen a show before,” Raleigh said.

  Dez was talking away to a group of tattooed contortionists and aerial silks flyers a few feet from us, occasionally catching my eye.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” I said.

  It was true. There were clowns in white face makeup painted with distinctive black or red triangles and classic harlequin patterns, their baggy white outfits billowing around tall stilts. The Garcias were in their tight, glimmery black trapeze outfits with red accents—Dita hardly looked like herself, though she’d pulled on a suit jacket over the tiny scraps of fabric that made up her costume, a touch of her own style. With her was a bulkier version of Remy, who I assumed was the brother I hadn’t met yet, Novio.