by Sarah Noffke
“Sunny,” Oliver said at her back. She didn’t turn to look at him. She liked Oliver. Knew he was under Padmal’s evil spell. She had only tolerated Padmal because of her respect for the girl’s brothers, who were sensitive and kind. But that diplomacy died with Dave.
“You don’t have the authority to kick me out of the circus,” Padmal said, raising her chin to the girl in front of her.
“Oh, but I think we both know I can make your life hell and I’ve got a lot of anger to direct somewhere,” she said, holding her finger up at the girl.
“You wouldn’t,” Padmal said.
“I just did and I will again,” she said. “Just give me a reason to set your ass on fire, Paddy.”
“Sunshine, you’re not thinking clearly,” Padmal said.
“No, I’m not,” the older girl said. “And that’s not good for you, so I suggest you don’t cross me. Show respect to Dave or leave. You’ve been warned.”
Oliver dared to put a hand on Sunshine’s shoulder. She did turn this time and regarded him briefly. “Sorry I burned you. It was meant for this girl,” she said, indicating the small girl in front of her. “But stay off each other or I will burn your Mohawk, Oliver, got it?”
He nodded and Sunshine turned back to Padmal, who had a new fire burning in her eyes.
“We all know you don’t want to be here and I’ll say what no one will,” Sunshine said to the girl. “Everyone would be happier without your bad attitude, so keep that in mind when considering the future.”
Padmal pressed her mouth together forming a hard line, but she didn’t dare say a word. In truth, she was afraid of Sunshine and also knew the girl was right. It was probably time she left Vagabond Circus. And once she did then she could find her mother and finally be happy.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Is there some place we can practice?” Finley asked Zuma as they walked through the wide halls of her old home.
“Practice?” she asked, thinking he was referring to their act in Vagabond Circus.
“Well, we need to figure out a few things for entering and staying alive in Knight’s compound,” he said, his face carrying the serious expression again, all lightness gone from his eyes.
“Right,” she said, and his expression was contagious, making her face go slack. “That makes sense, although…”
“What?” Finley asked.
“It just feels like we’re wasting time when we could be rescuing Jack,” she said.
“I agree that’s what it feels like, but everything is about timing,” Finley said, stopping and turning toward Zuma. The morning light slid through the window behind her back, drenching her in its golden rays. Finley shook this off and tried to concentrate. “And Ian said we should show up early afternoon, which means we don’t leave here for at least another couple of hours. I vote we use that time to practice.”
She nodded, seeming to agree. “Yeah, we can practice in the basement,” Zuma said and then she led him to a set of stairs at the back side of the house.
The basement wasn’t like most that were dark, unfinished, and mostly unused. It was cool like most basements, and it was also incredibly large. Finley’s face broke into a mystified expression when they stepped into the multipurpose area of the basement. First Zuma led him through a lounge area complete with tables and leather sofas. Then the pair walked past a game room stocked with a ping-pong table and arcade games, and finally through a gym area with every type of machine that could be found in the nicest of health clubs.
Zuma continued walking until they came to a door. She opened it and the automatic lights flickered on to reveal a mirrored room with pristine wooden floors and a ballet bar installed along the perimeter.
Zuma looked back at Finley, whose face had a look of awe about it. “Will this work?”
“Yeah,” he said, trying and failing to understand what it was like to grow up in a place like this.
“They use this mostly for yoga now, but it’s where I learned to dance,” Zuma offered.
Finley nodded, still unable to digest this. He and Zuma didn’t have polar opposite upbringings. Their childhoods couldn’t even be compared. That would be like comparing a Tesla car to a soggy torn up box. They were too dissimilar to contrast. There was nothing to even relate between the two.
Finley blinked away his confusion and looked up to find Zuma studying him. He should have been expecting this but he was so caught off guard by the strangeness of Zuma’s family life.
“My parents don’t like to leave the house much, Mom especially,” she said in response to the look on his face. She realized that a set-up like this warranted an explanation. “They’re homebodies, about like I am to Vagabond Circus. Anyway, they put all this in to make that easier for them,” she said, a nervousness in her voice. She felt Finley’s judgments and didn’t know if they were good or bad. “Hudson spends all his time in the gym area as you might have guessed,” she said, trying to make a joke, to which neither laughed. Finally after a bout of silence Zuma said, “So, what are we supposed to practice?”
Finley grew up in a warehouse. When he was older he was moved to another warehouse. That’s where he trained and did everything, but the metal walls and concrete floors were a stark difference to the Zanders’ house. Finley shook off the weirdness and brought his chin up. “Right, we have two things that I think we need to master so we can break in and out of Knight’s compound.”
“Master?” Zuma said skeptically. “You gave us less than two hours to master an important skill for surviving Knight’s compound? Don’t you think we could have been practicing while dream traveling last night?”
He shook his head. “No, I think you needed time to grieve last night because being composed for this mission is important too.”
She nodded, suddenly taken aback by how sensitive Finley could be. How had a boy raised in a factory of sorts gained such compassion? It almost appeared to her that it was inborn.
“And besides,” he said, daring to show her a small rebellious smile, “we work better under pressure and impossible deadlines, don’t you think?”
Zuma remembered when they constructed and perfected their first act, just under three months ago. It was the best part of Vagabond Circus and unbelievably they’d created it in only half an hour.
“Yeah, okay,” she said. “What’s the first of these two things we’ve got to master?”
“Teleporting,” Finley said simply.
“What?” Zuma said, almost laughing.
Finley strolled to the center of the studio. “The only way to get in and around Knight’s compound safely, that I know of, is by teleporting. I’m fairly certain that it’s the reason I’m the only one who has ever escaped.”
“The only one…” Zuma said half to herself. And again she was mesmerized by the guy who stood before her. He was the only one who’d ever escaped this crazy and impossible place known as Knight’s compound.
“There’s too many traps in outer corridors. We need to be able to bypass them by teleporting.”
“But wait,” Zuma said, shaking her head, her long braid falling off her shoulder as she did. “You think we can teleport together? That you can take me with you?”
Finley gave a reluctant nod. “I suspect I can.”
“Wait, what? You’ve never done this before?”
“I’ve done it with objects and I don’t have any reason to think that under the laws that dictate my teleporting ability I shouldn’t be able to take you along with me,” Finley said, having spent most of the night considering all this.
Zuma didn’t reply to this statement, but instead paused to consider this crazy notion. What would it feel like to teleport through space and time with Finley? It terrified and excited her.
After a moment, Finley shrugged. “And if it doesn’t work then it doesn’t work. No harm done. I’ll teleport and you’ll remain behind outside.”
“But then how do we get into Knight’s compound?” Zuma asked, as if she hadn’t heard his last sentence
.
“Well, then I guess we don’t and you can be the lookout,” he said with a slight satisfied grin.
She neared him, giving Finley a sturdy look. “Then this better work because I’m not some dumb lookout.”
He agreed with a nod. Then his light expression dropped off his face. “Okay, but you’re not going to like the procedure for teleporting, although I’m certain it’s the only way.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Why? What does it involve?”
“Touching me,” Finley said flatly.
“Oh,” she gulped. Zuma had been preparing herself for something much more awful than that. “Yeah,” she said, trying to make her tone sound disappointed. “Why do I need to touch you?”
“Well, because I can only teleport with objects if I’m holding them,” he said.
“Oh,” she said again. “So…”
“I’m going to need to hold you for this to work,” Finley said, and he tried to make his voice sound neutral.
“Fine,” she said after a moment, her tone clipped and unaffected. They had done similar things in their act, so she wasn’t sure why it was a big deal. However, a lot had transpired since then. He’d confessed his love. Zuma had accepted him only to learn his treachery and she’d then rejected him. She wasn’t sure if touching him would ever feel as it did or be something that she could do without being bombarded by a thousand competing emotions. “What do I need to do?” Zuma asked, her voice mechanical.
“Well, it’s your thoughts,” Finley said. “Like I said, I’ve never done this with a person, but I know how it works with objects. Usually it only matters how I feel and think about them, but since you’re a thinking and feeling being I want you to be focused.”
“Okay,” she said, drawing out the word. “What should I be thinking and feeling?”
Finley released his lip from his teeth and said, “That you’re mine.”
Zuma paused her breathing. “What?” she finally croaked out. “Why do I have to do that?”
“Because,” Finley said, pulling his eyes off her, “I can only teleport with that which belongs to me. I had the hardest time stealing other people’s stuff until I realized this. It’s a law of teleporting.”
“Err…Fine,” Zuma said, her eyes on the ground, not daring to look at Finley.
“I told you you weren’t going to like it,” he said.
She pinned her shoulders back and forced herself to raise her chin high and fake a new confidence. Zuma was a professional. I can do this, she thought. “This is simply what we have to do. I’m fine with it. Let’s practice,” she said and walked until she was only inches away from Finley.
Awkwardly Zuma stood looking up at him, but all he saw was the confidence she was projecting. “How do we do this?” she said flatly.
“Well,” he said, taking a half step closer to her, “I’m going to put my arms around you now. Do the same to me.”
She nodded. This is just business, she thought. A means to an end. A way to get Jack back. And then when her arms reached around Finley and when she finally touched him, Zuma felt a part of her chest tighten, her heart instantly reacting to the closeness, to the combination of their chemistry as it mingled.
“Okay, now what?” she said, her eyes pinned to his chest. Zuma was too aware that their stomachs and hips and legs and arms were all touching. She felt each of his abbreviated breaths.
“I want you to firmly believe you’re mine,” Finley said. “Erase everything dividing us, if only for doing this. For merely this moment you have to think you belong to me. You have to want to be mine.”
Zuma tried to say something but the words caught in her throat. She nodded instead.
“And I’m going to force myself to think the same thing about you,” he said, and she could have sworn she heard a lightness creep into his voice.
Another nod.
“Okay, I’m going to teleport us a few feet now,” Finley said. “If it works, it will feel strange for a bit afterwards, but we will deal with that then.”
“Wait,” Zuma said and realized she’d tensed her arms around Finley. “Could this hurt me? Mess up my composition?” There was real fear in her voice.
He smiled slightly, enjoying her arms around him more than he should. She wasn’t touching him because she wanted to, but in that moment he hardly cared. “I don’t think so,” Finley said. “Just relax and focus.”
Zuma nodded, keeping her eyes on a place on his chest, unwilling to look up at him. “I’m yours,” she whispered and then closed her eyes.
“Yes, mine,” he said in the same whisper but his tone was loaded with satisfaction.
Then suddenly Zuma’s insides were jolted, her head exploding with an intense pressure. It wasn’t pain but rather a strange centrifugal force, like she was falling from a building. Her stomach met her throat and then she opened her eyes to blackness. She was just about to scream when she realized she wasn’t breathing, she couldn’t hear, she had no voice. No senses. And then everything detonated around her: colors, sounds, lights, smells, sensations. She felt everything at once: the ground under her unstable feet, the particles of air around her, Finley’s arms pressing her to him, her heart hammering wildly in her chest. She squinted from the acute loudness of everything in her world.
“Hey,” he said beside her ear in a gentle voice. “Are you all right?”
Zuma focused on her breath and only then realized she’d been holding it and that’s what was contributing to the lightheaded feeling. Then slowly she attempted to open her eyes. Finley was staring down at her, a half-satisfied, half-nervous look on his face. “It jolts the senses the first few times,” he said. “Are you all right?” he asked again.
Zuma then turned her head to the side, to the spot where they had been a few seconds prior. They were no longer in the center of the room, but rather three feet to the side. “You did it,” she said, looking at the spot where they had been and then to Finley with astonishment.
“We did,” he corrected.
And just then she realized that her arms were still tied around him, her fingers pressing into the hard muscles of his back. Zuma broke out of his arms with a single step backward, but then her stomach lurched and she wavered on her feet.
“Easy now,” Finley said, moving forward and catching her with his arms again. “It’s disconcerting on the body at first. It takes some getting used to,” he said and he was grateful for the excuse to snake his arms around her again. To be what she leaned on in that moment.
“So,” she said through a tattered breath. “It sounds like we need to practice again.”
“Yeah, as soon as you’re ready,” Finley said.
For a full minute the colors around her were too intense, almost unnatural. A dozen different smells overwhelmed her olfactory center. And every noise thundered in her head. And then all at once, like the dial on her senses had been turned down, everything returned to normal. She brought her head up to look at Finley, relief written perfectly on her face. He must have seen it because he said, “Are you better now?”
She nodded, blowing out a long breath as she stepped toward him. Zuma’s hands hesitated by her side but then she brought them around his waist again and grabbed her wrist with her hand, linking herself around him. “I’m ready,” she said in a determined voice.
“Okay, I’m going to try teleporting farther. To the other side of the room,” Finley said.
That was roughly twenty feet away, Zuma realized. “How far can you teleport?”
“Thirty feet is about the max, which is why I still drive,” he said with a humorless laugh. “Okay, now focus,” he reminded her and she nodded, her eyes on her focal point, his chest. Zuma felt his breath just above her, so comforting and warm. She allowed her eyes to fall closed. I belong to Finley, she said in her mind. A second later the world around her exploded into blackness. Zuma didn’t feel whole anymore but rather melted into the person beside her, like they were one. It was a terrifyingly freeing feeli
ng and the point that those two ideas could exist as one confounded every part of both their beings. Zuma could see nothing. Feel nothing. But she had a knowingness so pure and rich she didn’t question it. She was his. And the person all around her belonged to her as much as she belonged to him. They were one.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Zuma and Finley exploded into the place where he had intended, on the far side of the room. He stood steady, holding Zuma up. And then he blinked down at her, his senses back into full gear. At once, Finley realized he was holding her up. Fully supporting her weight. Zuma was slumped against his chest, her legs barely under her. He kneeled down slightly and scooped her legs up with one arm, the other cradling her back. Then he placed her on the ground and checked her breathing. It was ragged, but strong. He kneeled down closer and dared to tap her on the cheek. This had happened to him the first time he’d teleported, so he wasn’t immediately worried. From everything he could guess the consciousness sometimes delayed catching up with the body while teleporting since the two split during the process.
“Zuma,” he whispered and tapped her cheek again.
Her eyelids squeezed together like she was reluctant to open them. Her hands fumbled around her. Her head rocked back and forth.
“Come on. Wake up,” he encouraged, nudging her shoulders.
The girl then reached out suddenly and grabbed on to his hand. She shot into a sitting position and took a large gulp of air at the same time. Zuma’s eyes were wide, her chest rising and falling from the shot of adrenaline. The body instinctively knows how to get its counterpart to join back up with it.
“There you are,” Finley said, a smile in his voice as he looked into her eyes.
She blinked back at him, bemused. “What happened? Did I pass out?”
“Technically, no,” he said. “Just a bit of a delay between your consciousness joining back with your body after landing. It happens.”
Zuma switched her gaze to the other side of the room, realizing they’d done it. Then she nodded, unable to manage more than that, and that’s when she realized she was gripping his hand. The girl untied her fingers from his, realizing her palms were sweaty.