Girl in the Shadows

by Gwenda Bond

  She reacted not at all, except to simply take the bullet from Dez. “Thank you,” she said.

  He said nothing, which was unusual for him. He gave me another pleading look while she was occupied scribbling on the bullet.

  She held it up for us and the audience to see when she’d finished, settling into her role more.

  I struggled to memorize what she’d drawn during my brief look—if I survived the next few minutes, I’d have to reproduce it. But the way my magic continued a low burn, I worried I’d do something by accident first.

  After all, the last time I’d seen her, she insisted I stop performing. And stop using my magic.

  She’d made a shape, oblong, with spiky points at the top and a flat bottom. I could see it when I briefly closed my eyes, but I had zero clue what it meant.

  She was here again, though. That wasn’t meaningless. What happened next wouldn’t be either.

  “Please stand to the side of the stage,” I said. “And remain there so you can confirm that I catch the same bullet.”

  “Oh,” she said with a full smile, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  She nodded to Dez and sidled over to the steps and down them.

  “We’re doing this,” he murmured.

  “Just like we rehearsed.”

  Then I spoke louder, to the audience once more. My voice was slightly unsteady, but that only made them drink the words in more readily. “Can we have absolute silence in the tent? And please stay in your seats, for your own safety.”

  Dez and I went to our opposite sides of the stage, separated by the glass and the distance. My hands heated the safety goggles as I donned them, and the bullet was already hot against my fingers. I managed to load it in my cheek, placing the mouth guard in for appearances. I didn’t wait, pouring magic into the metal casing, into making that odd symbol appear on it as quickly as I could, before my mother could interrupt.

  The bullet burned against my jaw. My magic eased a little of its burn, satisfied.

  I found her, my mother, watching from just beside the stage, seemingly at ease. Wouldn’t it be funny, I thought, if she’d turned the wax one into a real bullet and they found an identical one in my jaw?

  Ha freaking ha. At least I’d make the history books.

  Dez took aim, and I forced myself to stand still. Not to move or flinch or duck.

  He fired.

  twenty-nine

  The shot rang out with a crack! that filled the entire tent.

  I braced for impact. The glass shattered as the bullet passed through, and I wanted to take it all back, the whole summer, in those terrifying seconds.

  But nothing happened.

  Then I remembered I was still onstage and this was still a performance. I rocked back, as if I’d been hit, clapped my hand up to my mouth guard to remove it, and spat the bullet into my palm at the same time. I turned to reveal it to the audience and waved for my mother to come back onstage.

  Dez was placing the gun back in its case, his hands visibly shaking.

  It’s okay, Dez, I thought. We made it. She didn’t decide to take me out to teach me a lesson.

  Some light applause had already started—people desperate for a cathartic release from the drama they’d watched play out. Maybe sometimes the audience does sense the machinations beneath the surface, and appreciates what they see all the more for it.

  “Are these your markings?” I asked her. Asking people if it was their bullet was a tricky business, inviting closer scrutiny that would take too much time. The question was precise for that reason.

  “Looks right,” she said. “Yes.”

  I offered the bullet to her, nervous about our hands touching again and expecting her to decline. But she said, “What a souvenir to remember you by.”

  There was no zap of electricity when our skin brushed.

  “I need you to tell me how to get the coin to you if I can find it,” I said quickly, low enough for only her hearing.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, just as low. “Don’t try to follow me, and stop taking these risks. We can never be seen together again. He will find out.”

  She held the bullet in the air and gave the smile of someone who’d played a game and won. Which made me, taking my bow at last, the loser.

  The crowd didn’t hold it against me. They were on their feet, giving me a rousing standing ovation.

  My mother began to slip away into the crowd. I hesitated, torn between taking her order and attempting to catch up with her.

  She was already halfway to the exit, her flaming hair beating a steady if not hasty retreat. The lingerers in the audience were approaching the stage, their programs or posters in hand, and there was Thurston at the back of the theater. He’d either slipped in late or I missed him earlier. He offered me a salute. I was a headliner now.

  There was no point in chasing after my mother, not tonight. Not unless I wanted to end up fired like Raleigh.

  Dez still hadn’t said a word. “You okay?” I asked.

  He had a funny expression on his face. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that? What if she’d . . .”

  Made him into my killer? “She didn’t. She wouldn’t. I better start signing.”

  More confused than ever, I channeled my mother’s ability to behave out of tune with what would be expected of a normal person in a given situation. In this case, that meant donning a fake mask over my real one, and pretending everything was okay.

  What an exhilarating evening. What a brush with death. What a life.

  Everyone bought it. But why wouldn’t they? Like all magic, there was a kind of truth in it, wrapped within the layers of deception.

  “She’s got to be somewhere around here, doesn’t she?” I asked Dez, in his tiny, hot compartment the next day.

  His response was to keep putting his shoes on. “She seems to always be around.”

  Dez had been weird for the rest of the night, and so had I. But his weirdness was persisting into the next day. I wanted to talk this out, and he was the only person I had to talk it out with.

  When he’d skipped out on lunch, I’d come to find him here. He was not as thrilled as he usually was to see me. By all appearances, he was about to take off somewhere—not that he’d said as much.

  “I’m sorry I put you in that position,” I said. That had to be it, right? He was freaked out and mad that he’d had to shoot a gun at me after what I’d told him about my mother and magic. That made sense. “I shouldn’t have. Forgive me?”

  “Please, don’t tell me you’re sorry. You don’t have to do that.”

  “In your place, I’d be mad too.”

  He turned a shadowed grin to me. “Good thing I have no plans to hand you a gun and ask you to shoot. With my luck, you’d hit me right through here.”

  He reached out and took my hand and placed it over his heart.

  I had the penny he’d given me, which I now thought of as the lucky penny, in my pocket. He’d told me to keep it.

  Dez kissed me, but it was a too-brief kiss. “I have to go,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “With me, that’s where,” Brandon said, appearing outside the opening. “No girlfriends allowed.”

  I bristled. I couldn’t help it. “What, you going to a strip club? Classy.”

  “We are not going to a strip club,” Dez said. “At least, I hope not. We have to go out for supplies. Totally boring. You don’t want to come with us. Swear.”

  “Because you’re not invited,” Brandon said.

  “Because he’ll be there,” Dez said, giving me another quick kiss.

  “Now that’s a convincing argument. I guess I’ll see you later.”

  He pulled my hand back up to his heart. “I’ll be heartbroken if I don’t.”

  “Sweet talker,” I said.

  But I liked it. I got up and out so he could slide the door closed and lock it. He and Brandon set off toward the edge of camp, and I turned back toward it.

  I didn’
t go far. Dez was still being weird. And this was the second time he’d disappeared with annoying Brandon since we got to El Paso. I knew he owed that creep Rex something and that Brandon considered him a brother. Plus, the way Dez hadn’t outright said I couldn’t come was a technique I recognized from some of the magic books I’d read. It was a con artist’s technique. A way to get people to agree with what you want them to do, by thinking you have their best interest at heart.

  I’d been managed into staying behind. His declaration that he’d be heartbroken if he didn’t see me again had also been carefully worded. He had not said he’d be back or he’d see me later. It left open the possibility that he might not.

  So I followed him.

  The lack of a convenient fairgrounds in town meant we were set up at the University of Texas campus (Thurston was apparently a regular donor) in an older stadium called Kidd Field. Our campers and supplies were located in a big parking lot behind it, a little hike away. El Paso was all beautiful blue skies and a lively mix of bursts of green with desert browns. An impressive mountain sprawled right into the city.

  The boys were heading in the mountain’s general direction, out on a street with its grand name stamped on it in white: “Glory Road.” I kept my distance. There were only a few students on the sidewalks, and if Dez or Brandon so much as glanced back, they’d spot me.

  I breathed a bit easier when they turned onto a busier street, where I’d have more options for hiding. They passed restaurants and shops and, still, they kept walking, up into a more residential area.

  Not only did they not look back, they didn’t seem to speak a word to each other. Occasionally Brandon consulted the phone in his hand—looking at directions, maybe. I wondered where they were going.

  I hadn’t really envisioned a strip club, but . . . unless they were planning to climb the mountain, which I doubted, there was nothing out here but more houses.

  They stopped at a quiet intersection, with homes a mix of very nice and downright stately on all sides, and then approached a big gray house with a cactus garden in front and a tall stucco fence around the backyard. Brandon led the way to the porch and then didn’t even bother knocking. He opened the door, and they disappeared inside.

  What on earth?

  I moved carefully closer, noting the street sign: Coffin.

  It’s just a street name, I told myself. No chills necessary.

  There must have been people in there, because the sound of music with a lot of bass reached me out on the sidewalk. I heard some sounds of chatter in the backyard.

  “A party?” I shook my head. “Seriously?”

  Something still didn’t feel . . . right. If they were cutting out, if Dez was blowing me off for some random townie bash, I wanted to know. But I also wanted to see if he was in trouble or in danger from that family friend again. The guy had shown up in more than one city. He could be here too.

  Knowing that maybe it was unwise (okay, it was stupid, I’ll admit), I walked up to the door. I knocked, but either the occupants ignored it or the music was too loud for anyone to hear. The thump and thud of the bass resonated—or reverberated—through my head. So I did what the boys had done.

  I twisted the knob and opened the door, and then I went inside.

  part three

  now you see her

  thirty

  No one noticed my entrance at first. The room was filled with people, lounging on couches and gathered around a TV that wasn’t even on. It didn’t have the feel of a party. Or it was the feel of a party three days in, when everyone’s exhausted and wishes it was over.

  Beer bottles covered a living room table and the kitchen counter, but the house was otherwise tidy.

  A handful of small children raced around. One of them stopped and peered up at me. A girl of about eight with a tangle of black hair. There was a break between songs, and she spoke into it. “Hail,” she said.

  “Um, hi,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.”

  I didn’t see Dez or Brandon anywhere. “I’m looking for a friend. His name is Dez—do you know him?”

  A woman migrated over then and placed a protective hand on the black-haired girl’s shoulder. “Dez is here. But who’re you?”

  “She’s not supposed to be here, Mama,” the little traitor said.

  “I’m a friend of his,” I cut in. “Just point me in his direction.”

  The woman gave a low whistle. She was dressed in a business suit, bright blue, a bizarre sight among everyone else dressed so casually. “Oh, he’s in the shit now.”

  She pointed to the sliding doors that opened out into the big backyard. “That way.”

  The music resumed its thump and thud, not quite loud enough to drown out a few hoots and calls and barks of laughter, as the woman relayed why I was here to the rest of the people hanging out in the room. I hurried to get to those sliding doors.

  And then to get through them and out into the yard.

  The smart move would have been to turn tail and leave. But I wanted to know what Dez was doing here too much for that.

  I slid the door shut behind me, dampening the noise of the music. The fresh air of the yard was better. Pots of colorful succulents dotted the edges, next to the high fence. The yard also contained people, but there was a far more serious mood here than inside the house. A small cluster of men and women gathered around something or someone in a shady corner, and I made my way over. I still hadn’t spotted Dez.

  But I thought I saw Brandon up ahead. “Brandon?” I called softly from the back of the pack. “Dez with you?”

  “Who, pray tell, interrupts?” a man boomed out.

  Crap. I recognized that voice.

  The crowd turned toward me as one before parting. Two people sat in high-backed wicker chairs, an arch of what looked like scrap metal leaned deliberately against the fence behind them.

  It was Rex who had asked the question, and he grinned now in a feral way that made my blood run colder in my veins. He still had that beard that made him look like a devil and a fancy suit on, but today he also sported a pointy crown that looked like it was made of old metal.

  And in the chair beside him was my mother, in a sleeveless green dress and a crown of her own.

  Dez stood to one side of them, beside Brandon. His eyes were wide with panic; he shook his head at me.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  But I was figuring it out.

  The crown my mother wore was brighter than Rex’s, silver but still tarnished. I realized what her tattoo was, finally—snakes coiled around a crown. The one on her head had rude snake shapes carved into it too.

  “You must kneel before the Rex and Regina,” someone nearby said.

  The Rex and Regina. My Latin wasn’t the best, but magic books were full of it. I knew enough to recognize the terms for king and queen. Regina wasn’t her name. And Rex wasn’t his. These were titles.

  My mother, one of the Praestigae, a secret society. Apparently with rulers. She’d been so afraid that some man would find out about me. That I existed.

  This man.

  The man who’d made my skin crawl talking about curling toenails and clawing out eyes. The man who’d given Dez a nasty black eye. The man Dez owed loyalty to.

  Dez had clearly been lying to me this whole time. He’d known my mother was queen of the Praestigae. He’d known my mother.

  Had he been watching me for her? Had he been with me for her?

  “Moira,” Dez said, his voice tight and afraid. “You have to kneel.”

  I leaned forward, hands over my stomach like I was absorbing a blow. I swallowed the urge to throw up.

  This pain was worse than any my magic had put me through.

  “Kneel, not bend,” someone else said. It was Brandon. He encouraged me like it was the best idea in the world.

  I managed to stand up straight, though I still felt sick. “I . . . don’t think I’ll be doing that.”
r />   “Desmond, you shouldn’t have allowed your little girl to follow you here,” the Rex said. “You were already in line for punishment, but this . . .” He made a dismissive, wet noise. The tsk of a devil.

  I wanted to say to my mother What are you doing? Stop this.

  She sat there, quiet, hands folded one over the other in her lap. Then she demanded, “Who is this girl?”

  So that’s how we’re doing this?

  The Rex answered, “She’s from the circus. I met her one night. She ruined my poker game. And now she’s ruining our accounting.”

  The Regina, my mother, lifted one beautiful shoulder in a shrug. She was as flawless in appearance here as she had been onstage for the bullet catch. “We could have her thrown out. I could make her believe she’s seen nothing . . . or something else.”

  “No,” the Rex said, voice coiled like one of the snakes on my mother’s crown. “You will not expend a drop of precious energy on her. I’ll decide what to do to her . . . or with her . . . later.”

  I trembled. Would my mother let something bad happen to me? I didn’t know the rules of this place. She was playing it like we were strangers.

  Which we were.

  Dez looked like he was trembling too, shaky, like a leaf in the wind. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  I went nearer to him, choosing to stare at his shoes rather than look into his face. He had on beat-up sneakers, navy and what used to be white. A breeze stirred my hair into my eyes, partially blocking my view of his feet.

  “I’m getting that.”

  One shoe moved closer to mine.

  “Don’t.” I took a step back.

  If he touched me . . . I didn’t know what I’d do. Magically hurt him by accident probably.

  How long had he known? When he pretended surprise at the revelation that I had magic, that the woman in front of us was my mother . . . he must have known by then. He might have known who I was the entire time.

  During every kiss. Every touch. Our first date.

  You lied to him too, I remembered.