Wager's Price

by G. P. Ching

  Victoria wasn’t interested in money or in eating. She was obsessed with the art. Her partnership with the magician from London, Theodor Florea, had allowed her to shatter the boundaries of dance and acrobatics. Their performance did not bare shoulders but stripped minds. They challenged all preconceived notions of what the human body could do. For thirty glorious minutes, she and Teddy became gods, capable of things most people would only dream of, thanks to smoke, mirror, and wire.

  “Full house tonight.” Teddy arrived silently, as always, standing in the open doorway to her dressing room as if he’d formed out of the smoke itself. “Nazis. Brownshirts and swastikas everywhere.”

  “Rumor is they’ve come to shut the place down.” She twisted her long black hair behind her head and pinned it into place. The lipstick she reached for was garishly red.

  “The cards say it is only a matter of time.”

  “The cards. The tarot cards? Why do you waste your time on children’s games?”

  He turned a shoulder to her, pouting as he hunched until the arch of his spine rolled into the wall. “I’ll have you know, the cards have been quite accurate for me in the past. I have a talent for them. Every deck has its own personality.”

  “Bah.” She hooked her arm over the back of her chair. “Generalities and intuition. A person could fit any truth within the confines of your readings.”

  “You should allow me to read for you. Perhaps you would feel differently.”

  She swiveled to face him, crossing her legs and trying not to notice the beginning of a run in her stockings. “We have a few moments. Read them now.”

  Theodor’s crooked grin showed few teeth and had a purpose greater than coyness. It was a practiced smirk, perfect for hiding things in his cheeks during the show. He pulled his tarot deck from the pocket of his tuxedo jacket. The yellowing set was decorated with wings. Quaint. With one arm, he swept aside the hodgepodge of hairbrushes and makeup boxes on her vanity table, clearing a small space.

  “Your past, Fräulein Duvall.” He flipped a card. A woman sat on a throne with a staff in her hand. “The queen of wands. Always the center of attention yet you exist for the benefit of others. You’ve been fair and generous.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Who would argue with something like that?”

  “Your present.” He flipped another card. “The wheel of fortune.” He frowned. “This card represents forces and events at work in your life that you may not be aware of. Your best-laid plans have a strong chance of being disrupted, for good or evil intent.”

  With a sigh, she rested her head in a web of her fingers. “Obvious. We’ve just admitted our Kabbarett is likely to be shut down sooner than later.”

  “Your future, my lady.” Grinning, Teddy flipped a third card. His face fell. The card depicted a tall building on fire, people throwing themselves from burning windows, bodies plummeting to their deaths.

  “The tower,” Victoria read. “What does it mean?”

  But Teddy’s face had paled. He stared at the card as if he could see through it.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  He placed his hand on hers and smiled. “Come away with me. Forget about the performance. We’ll go now. Leave the country. There’s a place in London that would take us on in a heartbeat.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Fritz is going to introduce us any minute.”

  “It’s not safe. This card… it warns us of impending tragedy. Something big is going to happen, Victoria. An unexpected change that will shake you to your core.” He knelt in front of her. “Let’s make it a good change. Marry me. We’ll move to London and start our very own theater if you like.”

  She placed both hands on his cheeks and searched his eyes. “There will be time for all of that. But first, we have a job to do.”

  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the act you’ve been waiting for, the man who walks the line between our world and the next, who controls the supernatural elements all around us. Please welcome the great and powerful Theodor!

  “We’re on.” She took his hand and pulled him off his knee and toward the stage.

  “Victoria… Victoria, the cards.”

  “After the show. It’s time.” They’d reached the curtain. She kissed him on the cheek before descending into the corridor under the trap door. There was a moment of silence and then applause as Theodor burst onto the stage, no doubt with his usual finesse. She took her mark. Teddy introduced the box of mysteries. The metal-on-metal sound of him inserting swords into the box was followed by his plea for the spirit world to send him a siren from the beyond.

  Victoria opened the trap door and climbed partway into the box. The decorative prop was made to look extremely narrow and short, too small to hold a human being. Victoria folded her shoulders in and positioned her hips at a diagonal to fit through; her lower half was perched on a small platform below the stage.

  Boom, the smoke bombs exploded to the collective gasp of the audience. She leaped through the false top, landing on the supported edges of the frame with both hands over her head. Shouts of amazement rose from the crowd.

  While Teddy continued his performance—using sleight of hand to tug a bouquet of flowers from his sleeve, conjure a woman’s necklace from her own ear, and produce a trio of doves from his top hat—Victoria began to sing. Her voice was operatic, big and hollow in a way that defied her reedy physique. A black velvet rope, barely visible behind the smoke, became her apparatus. She cinched her wrist inside a loop of it and pushed off from the box, gaining speed and momentum using long, split-legged leaps between the posts that held up the ceiling. Once the angle of her body reached forty-five degrees, she gripped the rope with both hands and used her shoulder muscles to lift her legs perpendicular to its length.

  This move always brought a series of gasps from the crowd. Her bare arms were as corded with muscle as any man’s, her abdominals a rippling washboard beneath her leotard. All the while, she sang as if the feat required no effort at all, and with one firm twist of her body, she was spinning. Around the room she went, alternating the position of her legs and free arm to slow or hasten her rotation. Until finally her song came to an end and she landed on top of the box again. By then, the room was silent, not a clink of a glass or the scrape of a fork on a plate. She had them.

  Teddy looked up at her, nothing but love in his eyes. “Thank you, Siren. You may return to the spirit world.” He gestured with his arms, and the smoke plumed again. She dropped through the box and trap door. Even from below, the applause was deafening.

  Smiling, she danced all the way to her dressing room to wait for Teddy. She was going to say yes. What would London be like this time of year? Would the audience be as captivated by their performance?

  But when she reached the door with her name on it, Fritz was waiting for her. The Kabbarett’s owner gripped the doorframe as if the wall was the only thing holding him up.

  “Victoria, you must come. The commandant says he will shoot Theodor if you do not come out at once.”

  “What are you talking about? We just finished the show. The soldiers were eating it up.”

  Fritz mopped his brow. “They’ve accused him of occultism. It’s illegal now. Don’t test these men, Victoria. They have dark hearts.”

  Victoria snatched her floral silk dressing robe from its hook and wrapped it around herself, cinching the waist. She dodged Fritz and ran for the front of the Kabbarett before he could say another word. The crowd was gone, all the tables empty. By the stripes and pins on his brown uniform, Victoria identified the commandant, waiting for her at a center table. He must be powerful. He’d cleared the room in less than three minutes, aside from a male and female soldier who guarded the door.

  Beside him, Theodor sat stiff and sweating. There was a gun in the commandant’s hand.

  “You called for me,” she said.

  “Yes. I am a great fan of your work. Please join us.”

  She approached the table on legs that betrayed her f
ear and ungracefully sank into a chair next to Theodor. The commandant’s white-blond hair was distracting, as was his perfectly straight nose and azure eyes. He looked like a living doll. Too perfect to be real. Inhuman.

  “What do you want?”

  He smiled a set of straight white teeth. “I have a proposition for you, Fräulein Duvall. I lead a highly classified division, reporting directly to Himmler. Our charge is to further Republik pursuits using archeology, the lost knowledge of ancient powers.”

  “I would not know anything about that,” she said.

  “Our latest expedition has uncovered a yet uncharted island with conditions that show remarkable potential to enhance our future German soldiers.”

  “What does that have to do with me?” Victoria steadied her hands in her lap.

  He stroked his chin with the back of his fingernails. “When exposed to the environment on this island, strong boys became stronger. Fast boys, faster. But anxious men go mad with paranoia. Can you explain this?”

  Victoria shook her head.

  “Neither can we. Not yet. Which is why you are here. We would like you to go to this new land and investigate its properties. We would like you to help develop a curriculum for an elite group of boys from the Hitlerjugend. See what you can make of them.”

  “I am not a soldier, Commandant.”

  “No. You are the woman who sings like a siren and flies as if she were born with wings.”

  She snorted. “I cannot fly. It is a trick. I can show you how it is done!”

  “Perhaps with enough time in this new place, it will accentuate what is already inside you.”

  She scrutinized him for a moment, every line of his chiseled features. “You believe I might truly be able to fly?”

  “Not just you, Fräulein. By training the boys to do what you do and more, we hope to develop an entire troupe of men with supernatural abilities.”

  She shook her head and scoffed. “What you are asking is impossible. There is a vast difference between a change of atmosphere’s effect on a runner’s speed and actually defying gravity. It cannot be done.”

  “Perhaps not, but your government is enlisting you to try.” Those blue eyes bore into her, daring her to refuse him. He’d take pleasure in punishing her if she did. She could see it in the way he held himself, his smug grin.

  “I have no choice then?”

  “You can be taken to detention like most of those involved in the debauchery you displayed tonight.” He motioned to the walls around him. “I’d hate to do that to you. Such lovely skin you have.”

  “I’m not a teacher. I won’t know what to do with a group of boys,” she cautioned.

  “Do not fret. My cohorts, Applegate and Ravenguard, will accompany you and act as disciplinarians. You are only requested to demonstrate what you know.”

  “If I do this, Theodor must come with me. I cannot build the apparatus to train the boys properly without him.”

  The commandant’s head bobbed his agreement. “Very well, Fräulein.”

  “Then yes. I agree to do it. We will pack and be ready to go within the hour.” She eyed Theodor, hopeful to get him alone.

  “No need. All will be provided for you.” The blond man stood.

  “But I—” Victoria pointed back at her dressing room, but the man called Ravenguard grabbed her around the upper arm and squeezed.

  The woman guarding the door opened it with a click of her heels. “Thank you, Applegate.” The commandant pointed his hand toward the dark street. “There is a car waiting for you. If you please.”

  40

  Return

  Finn could hardly believe what he was hearing, although he didn’t doubt for a moment it was true.

  “I did not leave the school again until 1990.” Ms. D folded her hands in her lap, ending her story with a nostalgic sigh. “I was able to leave because Juliette took over my role as enchanter but the original performance architect hadn’t retired. It was the last time I was free.”

  “And did you leave the school on your own?” Gabriel asked.

  “No. Ravenguard escorted me. We’re on an island. There is only one way off, and that is on a Revelations bus. No one leaves without being escorted by either Ravenguard or Applegate.”

  “That’s when you wrote the book,” Finn said. “When you taught dance at the university.”

  “You’ve read my book?”

  “Theodor gave it to me.”

  The muscles of her cheeks tightened in muted satisfaction. “Easy to believe in human evolution when you’ve seen it firsthand.”

  “So Ravenguard and Applegate have been here since then too?” Hope asked.

  “Yes. Since the day Theodor and I came here, Applegate and Ravenguard have controlled who comes to this island and who goes. They’ve disciplined the students from the start. Only recently have I realized that it is they who have enabled the clowns to take over the lives of the students. Before that, I took for granted they were necessary to the successful operation of the school.”

  “Applegate and Ravenguard kill the students so that the clones can ingest their souls and replace them,” Hope said darkly.

  “They weren’t hunting me down to throw me a party,” Paul said.

  Finn hugged himself, rubbing the outside of his upper arms.

  After much pacing and contemplation, Gabriel flexed his wings. “What if the reason that Applegate and Ravenguard always escort anyone who comes or goes from this island is the same reason we did not notice the missing souls until now and the reason the demons can still exist here.”

  Hope shook her head.

  “This isn’t merely an island, Hope. It’s a false Eden.”

  She analyzed the words. False. Eden. Memories of her lessons came back to her. Eden was a safe place where Soulkeepers trained. Getting there wasn’t exactly easy. “Are you saying the reason there are demons here is we aren’t… on Earth?” Hope tensed. Could it be true?

  “Applegate and Ravenguard must escort everyone to and from this island because they travel by portal. This place isn’t just an island, it’s a place between places.”

  “That’s why I couldn’t transcend to the In-Between to talk to the Immortals,” Hope said.

  “Excuse me, but what the hell are you talking about?” Finn asked.

  “Think of a football field,” Hope said, turning toward him. “If Heaven is one goalpost and Hell is the other, Earth would be on the fifty-yard line. There used to be a place called Eden—”

  “Like where Adam and Eve were from?”

  “Exactly. It was of Earth, but not of Earth. Once it was closed off, only certain people could travel there, by portal. You couldn’t find it on any map. Revelations is that kind of place. Not quite on the fifty-yard line. A place between places.”

  “We’re not on Earth?” Finn said disbelievingly.

  Hope shook her head. “Think of it as another dimension. A different… land. We’re here, but we’re not. It’s why people don’t age the same here.”

  Finn’s mouth gaped.

  “You know what you need to do, Hope,” Gabriel said.

  “Yeah, kill every last one of them.” Hope pressed a hand into her stomach like the thought made her sick. “If these things have access to Earth, they could be doing Lucifer’s bidding from Hell.”

  “Exactly,” Gabriel said. “The one advantage we have is they don’t seem to know who you are. Once they know you are a Soulkeeper, they’ll scatter. You need a way to lure them to one place and end them before they can react.”

  Hope’s eyes darted around the room. She had no idea how to attract the clowns to one location. How many were there to begin with?

  “When the boy died, they came,” Ms. D said softly. “There were at least twelve of them backstage, grouped around the clone.”

  “So, we need to fake a death?” Finn asked.

  Hope shook her head. “We don’t need to fake anything. We already know who is next. Juliette practically came right out and told m
e. Mike is going to die during his act. They plan to drown him.”

  Silence fell over the group.

  “They’ll come,” Ms. D said. “And if you can take care of the clowns, I can save Michael.”

  “As enchanter, I’ll be in a position to see everything that’s going on in the theater,” Hope said. “Since Finn can fly, he can relay messages between us. When I see that the clowns have collected to replace Mike, I’ll strike. Meanwhile, Ms. D can move in and resuscitate him. ”

  “Are you strong enough to face them all?” Ms. D asked.

  “She is,” Gabriel said. “This is what she’s been trained for, what she was born to do. As a Soulkeeper, she is the world’s most effective demon slayer.”

  “Be warned, my clone has access to all of the abilities I possess, every skill taught at Revelations, including a mastery of magic and sorcery. You’ll need me for more than saving Michael.”

  “I’ll help,” Paul said.

  “No, Paul,” Ms. D insisted. “I need you here. In case there’s trouble, this will be our safe house. I want you to guard it the way only you can.”

  Paul gave her an understanding nod.

  “I’m in. I’ll help Hope,” Finn said.

  Gabriel shook his head. “You are kind and brave to offer, Finn, but without a weapon like Hope’s, you’ll be helpless against them.”

  “I’ll use magic,” Finn said.

  “Magic?” Ms. D asked.

  “He’s been training with Theodor,” Hope said.

  Finn scratched the inside of his arm. He looked down at his toes and pressed his lips together.

  One gray eyebrow arched toward Ms. D’s wild curls. “He would swear you to secrecy. Training you breaks an old and respected theater tradition.” She paused for a moment, studying him. “You should know there is a fine line between magic and sorcery. Magic is an exchange of elements. It is as simple as asking these atoms over here to do this other work over there. An even exchange of energy. Sorcery is much darker. It pulls energy from other worlds, creates and destroys it. All sorcery comes with a price.”