Girl in the Shadows Read online

  She looked like she was born to be there, moving with power through the air. She kept building and building her momentum. I could see Remy shouting some encouragement from the platform, but I couldn’t hear him. And then she released the swing and she hung there for a second, like she was in slow motion, before she tucked into a ball for her somersaults.

  Watching the blondes and Remy do this move had taught me enough to know that she was off on her timing.

  “Oh no,” I said softly.

  “Not good,” Dez murmured in agreement.

  She managed one rotation before, rather than grabbing her brother’s hands, she fell awkwardly into the net. The crowd gasped.

  Thurston had been an involved announcer for the entire show, but he said nothing about what had just happened. “And now, what you’ve all been waiting for, Remy Garcia will attempt the quadruple somersault, one of the most difficult feats in the world.” Remy waved and bowed from above, taking the swing and drawing all eyes away from the ground and onto him. “During a live performance last season, Remy became the youngest person to achieve the quad. He’s hoping to do one every day this season. And if he does, he’ll set a world record that’s unlikely to ever be broken. So hold your breath . . . Here he goes!”

  The audience might have been as disquieted as I was by Dita’s flub, but they moved on fast. Everyone was on their feet, obeying Thurston’s command.

  Remy swung through the air with an ease that seemed natural-born but must have taken years of practice. The same ease Dita had, but with a greater power behind it. He sliced through the air, his brother prepared to catch him, and when Remy launched out into his somersaults, the crowd started to count, but he was too fast for them. “One, two—”

  Wild applause erupted as he completed the fourth and grabbed Novio’s hands. It was so fast, like a magic trick in plain sight.

  I applauded too. At least until I saw Dita, on the floor beside the net. She looked downcast. Jules had her hand on Dita’s arm.

  “Can I see your phone?” Dez asked.

  I passed it to him. “What for?”

  He held up a finger for me to wait and pressed in a number, then held the phone to his ear. “Brandon? Save this as Moira’s number.”

  He listened for a second, then, “You’re disgusting.”

  He grinned at me and passed it back. “Don’t text me anything you don’t want Brandon to see. We share a phone.”

  I practically sputtered. “Why would I . . . What . . . You’re assuming . . .”

  “Yes,” he said, leaning closer. I thought he might kiss me again, and I knew how I felt about the possibility when I didn’t move a muscle to shy away. Even though I should have.

  But all he did was say, “It was a good kiss. See you later.”

  Still vibrating from my encounter with Dez, I wound my way around the big top to the backstage tent the Cirque performers used. I paused only to buy one of the few remaining sticks of cotton candy. Sweet, pink, and sticky. I wasn’t a doctor, but I suspected it might have curative powers.

  The space was a jumble of dressing and makeup areas, trunks and costume racks, and a long table with assorted snacks. It was packed with people—some still in costume, some already in street clothes—congratulating each other, a big clump gathered around Remy. I spotted Dita at the edge of that crowd, next to a frowning woman who I decided must be their mother. The woman watched as Dita used a white towelette to wipe away the last traces of the smoky shadow and heavy eyeliner that went with her trapeze costume.

  I’d messed up at my audition, but it hadn’t been in front of a real crowd of paying customers. Dita must be mortified. So I walked over to her, waited for her to toss the makeup wipe, and extended my genuine sympathy offering. “Cotton candy?”

  Dita blinked for a second, then looked at me like I was her savior. “Please.”

  She was about to step away to join me when her mother laid a hand on her arm to stop her. “This is your roommate?” she asked.

  “Hi,” I said, offering my non-cotton-candy hand to her. “I’m Moira. I’m so grateful to Dita and Remy for taking me in.”

  She shook my hand without any of the usual nicety you’d expect from a greeting. “Nancy was involved, I heard.” She squinted at me, then shrugged, releasing my hand. “She’s been good for my kids. Especially my older boy.”

  “Sure,” I said. I had no clue what she was talking about.

  “Let’s go,” Dita said.

  “I’ll walk you,” the older brother in question, Novio, said, appearing beside us. And though Dita had a pinched expression, she allowed it.

  Dita took an enormous bite of cotton candy. We had extricated ourselves from the postshow pack, or so I thought. But when I turned to introduce myself to Novio, I saw that Jules and Remy were trailing us too.

  “Back off, you guys,” Jules said. “Guessing she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “We just want to make sure she’s okay,” Remy said.

  “I’m right here, so you can talk to me not about me,” Dita countered.

  “I’m still sorry every day,” Novio said quietly.

  “I know,” Dita said, around another bite of cotton candy. She swallowed and faced him. “It’s not that. You’re forgiven . . . I know it wasn’t . . . you. It was Granddad.”

  I felt more and more like a trespasser in their private business with each step.

  “Then what is it?” Jules asked.

  Dita hesitated, and finally her eyes met mine before she turned back to Jules and her brothers. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll get over it. I promise.” And then to me, “Thanks for the rescue attempt, even if it didn’t work. My family is inescapable.”

  There was no real ire in it. She sounded, frankly, like she was okay with that.

  “I hear you,” I said. “But at least they’re obnoxious about it.”

  Dita laughed, and though Remy said, “Hey!” in protest, I suspect he’d have hugged me for lightening the mood.

  We stopped when we reached the Airstream. Dita took out her key, but then stepped back.

  “It’s open,” she said. “Did one of you—”

  “I definitely locked it,” I said. Dita had given me an extra key that Thurston’s admin had made earlier that morning.

  “I haven’t been back here since before our first show today,” Remy said.

  Novio shouldered in front of all of us. “Let me check it out.”

  He flipped on the light, and we followed him into the little cabin. It looked okay at a glance—or would’ve, if you’d never been here before. But someone had been here. Everything had been moved, and then almost put back where it was in the first place, or placed neatly somewhere it shouldn’t have been.

  Coffee mugs and dishes were the most apparent evidence; the cupboards were empty, the countertops full. The couch’s throw pillows were all stacked to one side. But nothing broken, no destruction.

  “Not again,” Jules said.

  “I don’t know anything about this,” Novio put in.

  “We know,” Jules and Dita said practically at the same time.

  Their ancient history loomed like an elephant in the room for me.

  “Can you tell if anything’s missing?” Novio asked.

  “Not so far,” Remy said, and Dita nodded agreement.

  We went through each small room. All of them had been hit. Or, rather, mussed. When we got to mine and Dita’s, we found that the clothes in the closet were pushed to either side, a gap between them. And my suitcase was open.

  I bent to check for the cash I’d tucked away in the bottom. No burglar would leave that, would they? I pulled it out and quickly counted. Every bill of the thousand was still there.

  I looked up, the others crowded around. “They didn’t take any of my money. But they obviously went through my suitcase.”

  Some of its contents sat neatly beside it on my mattress. The pillowcase had been removed from Dita’s pillow. Glancing at the closet, I saw ano
ther distressing, methodical detail: the pocket of a pair of her pants had been turned inside out.

  None of them said anything. “Are you going to tell me what this is about?” I prompted. “What did ‘not again’ mean?”

  Novio left the room to go somewhere. Back up front, I guessed. Jules and Dita and Remy exchanged a glance, and Remy went after him. Then Dita spoke. “The coin, the one you said Nan mentioned to you . . . it was our grandfather’s. Mine and Remy’s and Novio’s. He believed it was our family’s good luck charm.”

  Right. Nan had said as much.

  Jules’s frown deepened. “Why would Nan mention that to you?”

  “Just in passing,” I said. “Keep explaining.”

  “Well,” Dita said, pitching her voice low, “Novio was looking for it last year. He thought, uh, Nan Maroni had it.” Her voice had gotten shaky, but she stopped and collected herself. “There were break-ins, worse things . . . But he was only doing what Granddad convinced him to do.”

  “Is this coin real? Where is it?”

  “It’s gone,” Jules said quickly.

  I didn’t believe her, but it seemed I’d been caught in cross fire that wasn’t aimed at me. Still, Nan had thought I might be here for the coin, so it was a good thing I had an alibi for tonight.

  Remy returned. “They went through all of our rooms, and the bathroom too. The medicine cabinet stuff is sitting on the sink. Neatly.”

  “We better go report this to Thurston,” Jules said. “He’s always in his office after our last show.”

  We headed out, Dita carefully locking the door behind us. As we got closer to Thurston’s trailer, it became clear that every light inside was on, the door wide open.

  “That’s weird,” Remy said, which crossed out the possibility that this was normal.

  “Nan?” Jules said.

  The elegant older lady, the only person who knew my secret, was coming toward us from the opposite direction. Jules’s parents were with her. They weren’t headed for us, I realized, but were also on the way to Thurston’s trailer.

  “What are you guys doing here?” Jules asked.

  Nan nodded to me, a brief acknowledgment. Jules’s tall blonde mother answered in a vaguely Russian-infused accent: “Someone has been in our house while we were out tonight.”

  “Theirs too,” Jules said.

  Voices reached us from inside the trailer where we’d come to report the odd crime, now turning into an odd crime spree. Even though nothing noticeable had been taken, the would-be thievery made the night feel serious. In silent agreement, we crossed to the open door and entered. The Garcia mother, the one who’d considered me in the backstage tent, was inside with a man I assumed to be her husband.

  “What are you doing here?” Dita asked them as we all piled in.

  Books and posters lay on the coffee table in the living room, piled high but neatly stacked. The kitchen’s cabinet doors hung open. The larger-than-normal interior of the trailer was not like it had been earlier, to say the least.

  Thurston stood in the center of it all, and his eyes widened in surprise at our arrival. “You were hit too?” he asked, indicating the tidy disarray.

  Dita nodded.

  The Garcia mother spoke up. “The same happened in our home.”

  Jules’s mom chimed in, “And ours too.”

  I moved around Thurston toward the desk to help make room for everyone in what had become close quarters. But then I spotted a piece of paper on the corner of the desk that wasn’t stacked neatly like the others there.

  A sheet of notebook paper, torn out, a ragged edge showing. It was folded in half. “What’s this?”

  “No clue,” Thurston said.

  I moved closer and picked it up. The message was brief. I shivered again, with a sense of deep wrongness.

  “It’s a note,” I said.

  “What does it say?” Jules’s mom asked.

  It said:

  I want the coin too.

  But before I could read it aloud, a crow with white plumage on its breast flew in through the door.

  eleven

  Caliban’s dramatic entrance resulted in shrieks—from those who apparently either didn’t recognize him or hadn’t heard there was a pet bird in residence with the show’s magician.

  “It’s okay!” I called out before they could swat him or something worse.

  His eerie appearance made me expect him to grab the mysterious note and wing away into the evening. Instead, Caliban flew straight to Dita and grabbed a piece of genie-pink cotton candy stuck to the shirt she’d pulled on over her costume.

  Raleigh bounded through the door before anyone figured out what to do about the bird other than look panicky and raise their hands to ward it off.

  “Caliban,” Raleigh said, stern. He held out his arm. The bird flapped over and settled there.

  Color came up in Raleigh’s cheeks as all of us in the room gaped at him. “Sorry about that, everyone. He flew away from me.”

  We were all quiet for a moment, and then Dita burst out laughing.

  There was a stunned moment of silence before Thurston joined her. When everyone—myself included—looked at them like they were crazy, Thurston raised a hand and said, “What a night.”

  “This is serious,” the Garcia mother said. “Someone has targeted all of us. Why?”

  Dita and Thurston managed to pull in their laughter.

  I still had the piece of paper with the ominous message in my hand. “The note says ‘I want the coin too,’” I said, and held it up so they could see.

  Any remnant of laughter vanished. Novio blanched and lowered onto the couch. His mother put her hand on his arm, sitting down beside him.

  Nan had been quiet so far, but she spoke up now. “You went to that note quickly.”

  I bristled. “Whoever left this went through my things too. I’ve been working all night, and I went to the show after.”

  Thurston looked between us. “Why would you accuse Moira? You vouched for her.”

  Nan was taken aback. She’d clearly spoken before she thought it through. “Magicians are the most superstitious people I’ve ever met. I had to be sure she wasn’t interested in it. Besides, Jules, didn’t you tell me Roman’s coin is gone?”

  Remy and Jules avoided looking at each other, and I was probably the only one who noticed it. Jules’s parents watched her reaction.

  “We got rid of it,” she said.

  “Together,” Remy said. “It’s gone.”

  Thurston came over to me and took the note, peering down at it.

  “They wanted you to know,” I said.

  “What?” Thurston’s forehead creased.

  “That’s why they went through all your trailers, left the note. They couldn’t have expected to find it, not really—a coin’s so small. How could they unless they knew right where to look or got lucky? No, it’s misdirection. They wanted you to know—whoever they are—that they don’t believe it’s gone. Probably hoping you’ll try to move it or give something away in your reaction.”

  Remy reached down for Jules’s hand, but neither of them spoke.

  “You seem to have an awful lot of theories,” Nan said.

  “She might be right. I’ve heard some things,” Raleigh said, bird still on his arm.

  “You have,” Thurston said, flat. “And were your things disturbed?”

  “No,” Raleigh said.

  “Then what have you heard?” Thurston prompted.

  Raleigh answered without hesitation. “There are rumors, whispers among some of the crew, about Roman Garcia. Rumors that he had a magic coin, very old. A coin that could make the bearer successful beyond their wildest dreams, give them the best luck in the world. That it was lost, but now might be found, as the saying goes. Do you think someone believes the stories? Crazy, right?”

  “Crazy,” Nan said. “There was an old coin. But these two say they got rid of it.”

  She said it with a hint of challenge to Raleigh, like
she thought he might dispute that.

  “I don’t believe in magic, ma’am,” he said instead.

  I looked at the floor.

  “Thank you, Raleigh,” Thurston said, the CEO part of him visible in how effectively it closed the door in Raleigh’s face. “Remember, discretion is the better part of employment.”

  Raleigh didn’t protest. In fact, he retreated so quickly it was hard not to read his reaction as relief at the chance to escape. “Apologies for Caliban again,” he said to Dita as he left. “Evening.”

  In his absence, the trailer felt airless and hot, thick with tension.

  “Rumors and whispers,” Thurston said. “Misdirecting us. I don’t like it. Even if magic is real, it’s not the problem. The hunger to possess it is.”

  Nan took a step closer to him. “If it’s real? Has your mind changed? I thought you believed all that talk was nonsense.”

  Thurston waved a hand dismissively. “Nothing’s changed. Raleigh is right. But we also know that rumors of this coin have created problems before.”

  “Tragedies, you mean,” said Jules’s mom, and her dad rubbed a hand across her back in comfort. “Lives taken.”

  Thurston looked chastened at being called on his softer wording. I didn’t know the owner well enough to tell for sure when he was lying, but I wasn’t convinced his clarification disavowing magic had been entirely true.

  Which made me worried about standing here in the room with him.

  Nan’s caution in our private meeting returned, about how my magic could make other people dangerous to me. Now there were rumors and whispers and people who wanted some magic coin. It was a threat, plain and simple. To everyone in this room, but especially to me. Both because Nan wasn’t convinced I was as innocent as I was, and because whoever was behind this, what they really wanted was magic.

  While the smart money was on staying quiet, I spoke up anyway. “I don’t understand, though. The note says they want the coin too. Does that imply that you want it, Mr. Meyer? Or someone else here?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Remy interrupted, with a note of finality. “No one is going to get it. If that’s what they’re looking for, let them look.”