by Lee Kelly
And just like magic, Alex taps into something raw and pure and electric inside me. I feel . . . light, free, by his side, like I’m riding my own personal high, and without Gunn here to tether and weigh me down, I get an idea, wild and unlike me. A chance to celebrate my recent turn of fate, to reward myself just a little, live a little bolder and bigger in the now. Honestly, I’m not even sure if I want to do it or if I need to do it, if the desire to let go—to forget my charge, my past, myself—has become so strong that it’s taken on a mind of its own. And despite my complicated past with it, I know shine is the only thing that will actually let me get as lost as I want to.
So when we approach the stage to brew our sorcerer’s shine for the audience, I whip around and sputter to Alex, “When we’re done, I think—I think we should join the crowd tonight, on the floor.”
Alex studies me, confused, as we approach the stage stairs. “What do you mean, take sorcerer’s shine?”
I blush and turn away. What if he doesn’t want to? What then? “Tommy and Rose do it every night—and Billy and Ral join the crowd on their fair share of evenings. Only one time, like a celebration. Just once. I thought, I mean, if you don’t want to—”
I let my garbled sentence hang there, watch a storm of emotions cloud Alex’s face. We arrange ourselves onstage, each take a glass bottle that’s been left for us.
Then Alex leans in and whispers, “I want to.”
We brew our magic touch into our bottles, and then once more to ensure we’ve got enough for the audience. The stagehands take the bottles of shine, pour them into shot glasses, and start to pass the glasses around to the crowd. And then the place explodes into a beautiful chaos, and the rest of my troupe, sans Grace, begins to descend into the madness themselves, each grabbing a shot of shine from a nearby stagehand’s tray.
This time Alex and I go with them. I don’t meet Grace’s eyes as I move with Alex to the floor, even though I hear her call after me as I move to the stairs, “Joan, wait, where are you going?” Because I’m kind of as surprised as she is that I’m actually going through with this, and yet I also don’t want to stop.
Alex looks around. “Do you want to stay on the floor with the audience?”
No, I want you for myself. “The underbosses aren’t using the VIP lounge tonight, since Gunn’s on the road. We could go there.”
“How gracious of Gunn.” Alex smiles. But I can tell he’s nervous, maybe as nervous as I am. “Lead the way.”
As soon as we get to the small lounge along the left corridor, I close the door behind me and spellbind it, lock it tight. The room’s cozy: a few chairs, a little round table, and a sofa. A room meant to serve as a clandestine meeting spot, for Gunn’s bigwig guests and the underbosses who trade schemes behind magic concealments. But right now the room is ours. And it feels charged, dangerous. Alex and I have been alone before, but not like this.
“You sure you want to go through with this?” Alex raises his shot glass of shine.
Shine will always have dark edges, thanks to Uncle Jed and the way he ended up losing himself in the bottle. And yet, I want so much more from Alex, and I know shine is the only thing that will let me escape myself, let me have him, in the here and the now. “I think so.” But I know so. I want to wrap a cocoon around us. Just for one night, I want to know you in a way I can’t form words around, in a way that I’m positive only magic can say. “Have you ever tried it before?”
Alex peers into his glass. “A few times. In darker days.” When he next looks up, his eyes hold a strange mix of warmth and hunger. “I have a feeling it will be different with you.” He touches his shot glass to mine. “If you want to jump, I’ll jump with you.”
And then, before I get cold feet, I take the shine and swallow it.
It burns a bit on the way down, feels like I’m drinking pop heated over a stove, but when it hits the center of my gut, it spreads across my loins like warm honey. And then the warmth rushes up from my core to my throat and spreads around my mind. The world sparks to life, dances, tilts, and I stumble and collapse into the corner. There’s hysterical laughter pawing at my ears before I realize it’s mine.
“Whoa,” I whisper, then laugh and look at Alex, who’s stumbling into a seated position on the floor next to me. I laugh again. “The word ‘whoa’ is so strange-sounding, isn’t it? W . . . H . . . O . . . A . . .” and then I can literally see the letters, W, H, O, A, come floating out of my mouth like little word balloons.
“Here.” I grasp at the air, giggling, trying to wrap my fingers around the A that continues to float up from my mouth to the ceiling. “An A, for Alex.”
I keep the little letter trapped in my hand like a firefly and try to hand it to Alex. But he’s already collapsed onto the floor, back to the ground, sprawled out and looking up at the ceiling of the lounge, like the shine has somehow broken it open to the heavens.
Wait, it has.
“Oh my God.” I lie down, straighten myself out beside him, and look up at a thick swirling constellation, a dusty, bright collection of moving, blinking stars.
“This is insane,” Alex whispers next to me. He glances over at me, his eyes as bright and wild as the stars. “Do you think this is what shine feels like for people without the magic touch?”
“Shine’s probably even more intense for them,” I say. “Because we see a world that’s full of the possibility of magic”—it feels very important that I explain this to him—“but normal people, well, they just see the world.”
“Wow,” Alex deadpans. “That’s deep, Joan.”
He laughs, and I go to punch him playfully, but he ducks away from me and scrambles to his feet. And then he pulls me up, folds me into a foxtrot pose beside him. “We need music,” he whispers.
A nonexistent phonograph jumps to life, crackles through our sanctuary in the middle of the Shaws’ VIP lounge, and then the sultry voice of an unknown crooner wails through the space. Both of us burst out laughing, and then we begin to dance. The foxtrot, then the Charleston, then Alex begins some complicated tap maneuver he somehow continues halfway up one of the walls, before he collapses into a fit of laughter on the floor.
The music’s tempo becomes slower.
Then Alex stands up, approaches me. He takes my hand and pulls me closer. And this time I don’t just smell his trademark scent of soap and that almost spicy cologne—I smell something heady and fresh, all-encompassing: the scent of possibility.
“We got lucky that the room isn’t being used tonight,” Alex says. “It’s better being here, alone with you, than sharing you with the entire crowd on the floor.”
I smile into his shoulder. “I feel lucky too.”
Alex’s chest rises and falls underneath my cheek. “Why’s the room empty, anyway? Where’d Gunn run off to tonight?”
Just the mention of Gunn’s name is like an alarm, threatening to end a perfect dream. I give a deep exhale. “I’m not sure. He said he had some business on the road.”
“Right.” Alex nods, rubs his chin softly against my hair. “But he only manages the Den, from what I understand. Where else would he be?”
Despite the throb of the shine inside me, Gunn’s warnings push through it, wrap around my mind like rope. No one can know about the shine, about the deal. “Probably on a run for McEvoy or something.”
“Strange, because McEvoy was looking for him—”
“Hey, Alex?” I say softly. “I don’t want to think about Gunn right now.”
He nods, pulls me tighter, and the music’s singer starts to croon, “Time stops when you’re in love. . . .”
And then Alex opens his mouth beside me, and somehow the woman’s voice starts to pour from his lips, “As timeless as the stars above . . .”
I laugh, lean my head against his shoulder. “I don’t know how you’re doing that, but please stop. It’s kind of creepy.”
He laughs with me, but stops singing, and pulls me closer too. And then the music fades away and it’s just our heartbeats jumping, beating like a pair of drums.
BUM. BUM. BUM.
“This is nice, Joan.” He puts his hand on the back of my hair, lets his fingers wrap around the nape of my neck. And then he whispers, “No, this is wonderful. You are wonderful.”
I burrow a little more into his shoulder. The way Alex looks at me is almost as intoxicating as the shine. The way he sees me makes me feel like I do deserve him, that I might even deserve another chance—not just this chance to do right by my family. But a chance, maybe, to leave the past behind.
“What past, Joan?” Alex says softly.
“Wait. Was I talking out loud?” I practically whimper.
“I don’t know . . . but either way, I can hear it.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of white—a nightgown, hands grasping for me, a worried, strained face watching me from the corner.
I gasp, pull back from Alex—
And then the image is gone.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
But on the other side of the room appears a thin, haunting-looking girl standing at the door, reaching for me, crying, “Joan, I can’t see her. Joan, I’sm losing her—”
The high is suddenly too much, too intense, too loud, and I crawl onto the floor, pull myself into a ball, my back to the edge of the sofa. I close my eyes.
But all I see is blood curling around wrists—
“Make it stop.” But the voice that comes out of my mouth is Ruby’s. “Oh my God.” I push my hands into my eyes. Stop. Stop stop stop stop stop—
“What is it? What happened?” Alex sputters as he sits down beside me.
I don’t look at him. “The shine’s getting intense. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s in my head anymore.”
“I think that’s the point.” I open my eyes, and Lord, I can see Alex’s whisper slink around my shoulders like a rich, gray mist. Like the mist behind the cabin that night, Mama’s pleading, her cries, show me, Eve, show me—
“I’m not who you think I am,” I blurt out.
Alex falters, pulls back a little bit. “Joan, it’s all right, you’re high.”
“It’s not the shine, it’s me.” I squeeze my eyes shut tight again. “There’s something wrong with me.”
The words open a dam inside me, and a river of tears starts running over my cheeks, winding salt into my mouth. And then I know I’m going to say the words I’ve never been able to say, not out loud at least, the words that make me loathe myself as much as I loathe Jed. Even as I’m thinking, Stop, Joan, don’t don’t don’t say it don’t make it real, I blurt out, “I killed my mother.”
Alex looks at me, confusion—fear? repulsion?—stitched across his features. “What are you talking about?”
“Nine months ago,” I whisper, “right around the time I was coming into my magic. I was scared of it, a late bloomer, hadn’t expected that I was going to get the magic touch at all. Mama was the only one who knew I even had the ‘gift’ until that night.” I try to stop the crashing rush of blood to my head, but I can’t. And even still, my mouth keeps moving. “I found my uncle abusing her, using her—I tried to fight him—but instead I ruined everything.”
When Alex doesn’t say anything, I rush on, “Sometimes I feel like if I give everything I’ve got, work myself into the ground to help my sister and my cousin, maybe then I’ll make it right. I’ll earn the right to leave the past behind.”
I gasp, trying to collect myself. I must look a mess. I feel the dull ache of snot and tears, the heaviness of bawling. “But I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve you.”
“Joan, stop. It was a mistake, an awful, gut-wrenching mistake,” he says slowly. “And you’re doing everything you can to help your family.”
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. How did I just take this and ruin it, take something bright and eclipse it with the dark? “You must think I’m a monster.”
“You’re not a monster. You’re a good person.” He pulls me into him. “I see it. I see you. And I understand, maybe more than you could ever know.”
I want to ask him what he means, what he sees. I want more, like always from him, I want more. He wraps both arms around me. It’s the first time I’ve been held in a long, long time.
“Sometimes I don’t know who I am anymore, Alex,” I whisper. “What I am.”
“I know the feeling.” He begins to stroke my hair, edges closer. “I . . . hurt my family too, in a different way,” he says slowly, as he rests his chin on my head. “The news said it was all my father.” His breath catches. “But it was my magic that let him pull that racket, that ended with those D Street bastards selling him down the river. Without me, none of it would have ever happened.” He pulls me a little more into his lap, so he can look at me. “I have to believe we get another chance, Joan, a chance to do things differently, be somebody else—better versions of ourselves. That’s why I found myself here, working with you.” He shakes his head. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
“I’ve never told anyone about my mama, either.”
Alex lays me down, gently, on something soft. And in the starry space between consciousness and unconsciousness, I pat the soft blanket below me. “Did you just sorcer this?”
“Just rest, Joan. I’ll be right beside you.”
I think I’m asleep, but then I feel the softest of pressures on my forehead, the smell of Alex’s soap and cologne, a beacon through all the sensory noise of the shine. A kiss, above the bridge of my nose. “I do know you, Joan,” he says, once he’s pulled away. “I see you. I know who you are. Maybe not everything, but the important things.”
I want to tell him that I see him, too. But my thoughts are too heavy, my mouth sealed shut. I’m no longer aware if I’m in the throes of the shine, or if I’ve survived. I close my eyes and let the dark creeping around my mind finally up and swallow me.
DUST-BUNNIES
ALEX
Joan’s hair is splayed out on the pillow I conjured earlier, the dark tendrils cascading around its edges. A soft white blanket—another manipulation I vaguely remember sorcering—is spread out underneath us. Joan’s beside me, eyes closed, curled tight, like even in her sleep she somehow protects herself and keeps everything locked up inside.
I sit up, realizing that we’re still in the VIP lounge, my head throbbing with a dull, shine-induced headache as I arrange myself into a seating position. I have no idea what time it is. When did we finally pass out?
I take out my pack of cigarettes, dislodge one, and turn away from Joan as I light it. I think about us last night, guards thrown down, her telling me about her dark secret, me blubbering to her about mine.
Christ. Last night was dangerous, taking that shine with her, dangerous bordering on reckless. I remember the convoluted logic I used to justify doing it: Joan is my strongest contact at the Den, and you do what you need to, to please that contact. Get her shined. Get her vulnerable, angle her, get more out of her, push your hunt forward.
But the truth? I wanted to, because she wanted me to. Joan has me under some kind of spell. She’s at the center of this whole affair, is right in the line of my hunt. She’s the most talented sorcerer at the Red Den, some suspicious sort of confidante of one of the gangsters I’m spying on for the Feds and for McEvoy, and yet, she somehow feels separate from all of this.
This whole night has been reckless, from my little tryst in this lounge to McEvoy showing up shot out of his skull, shouting that he caught his underboss Kerrigan in some convoluted lie about a job tonight. Threatening that he was going to confront Kerrigan, confront all his underbosses, and if the night ended in a bloodbath, so be it. Thank God none of them were here, and I could talk McEvoy down, tell him the dust
was just making him extra paranoid, get him to sleep it off. In fact, that’s what I need to do: sneak out before anyone sees me, go home, get some rest.
But I don’t want to leave Joan like this.
I stare at her, beautiful, formidable, even as she’s sleeping. And the secret that I’ve been tricking myself into not believing flashes across my mind: I’m completely falling for this girl.
Being with Joan might be the only time I feel like I’m not performing. In this house of lies and magic manipulations, she might be the only thing that makes me feel like a shade of my old self anymore.
“Joan.” I shake her awake, gently. “Joan, you fell asleep. You need to get upstairs, get some rest, all right?”
She comes to slowly, and then as soon as she sees me hovering over her, she gives a little start. “Where are we?”
“The VIP lounge, off the performance space.”
“Gunn,” she says in a panic, and then collapses back down when I say, “He’s on the road tonight, remember?”
She shakes herself awake. “Wait, but—”
“You don’t remember our little shine experiment?” I say. “Watching the ceiling break open into stars? Dancing? Passing out on the floor?” I give her my best smile. “All your idea, for the record.”
I watch realization sink into her, even as I’m trying to joke. She remembers what she told me. She remembers how she cut herself open and showed me all her darkness inside. I wonder if she regrets it. God, I hope she doesn’t.
“Alex.” She puts her hands over her face. “My Lord, I was such a mess. I can’t believe . . . those things I told you . . .”
I reach out tentatively, begin to stroke the top of her hair. “I’m glad you told me about your past. I’m glad I told you, too.” And I realize, above all else, that I am. It felt right, coming clean to her about how essential I was to my father’s crimes. Cathartic, and freeing. Like a last confession, before I can fully leave it all behind.