Girl in the Shadows

by Gwenda Bond

  Even if that meant I had to risk pouring out every ounce of magic in my cup to prevent them from declaring victory.

  forty-two

  I got to the Cirque camp later than I’d intended. The party in the mess tent had already started, so I headed there to find Dez.

  With my mixed news in tow.

  The tables and chairs had been shoved to one side of the tent, and the lighting guys had rigged up some colorful lights for ambiance. Dance music cranked from speakers, something poppy and peppy I’d never heard before. Jules twirled in front of Remy in the middle of the makeshift dance floor. I spotted Dita dancing near them with a couple of the acrobats, a brother and sister.

  The floor was crowded. End-of-season mania had officially arrived.

  On the plus side, Dad was in. He’d taken my list and gotten his crew started on procuring all the items on it, and more. They’d be here bright and early tomorrow to start on the stage construction. On the bad side, we had new complications to consider, the ones created by Dad’s ill-considered deal.

  The only person I knew besides my mother who understood anything about real magic was Nan. I thought it was time to trust Dita’s telling me that I could talk to her too, and Remy and Jules had knowledge of their own. I needed as many people we could trust as possible on our side. It was time to stop keeping secrets that put people in danger. If Dad had known all the things I had—or called to ask me first—he could have avoided making an already-impossible situation worse.

  “Hey there,” Dez said, behind me. I turned to see him smiling. “You’re late—how’d it go?”

  “Um.”

  He pulled me toward the dance floor. “We’ll fix it. Let’s dance first. Get you in a better mood.”

  The music switched from fast to slow. He drew me in close to him.

  “So much for cheering you up,” he said when I didn’t smile. “Tell me.”

  “Dad had a surprise. He made a deal with them.”

  Dez stopped dancing. “What?”

  “My reaction pretty much exactly, except with more ‘WTF, Dad?’ in it.”

  “What deal?”

  “He still has the coin.” I swallowed. Now was not the time to give up. I had to make sure that Dez didn’t. “So we have that. And he’s in on helping us—he didn’t realize what an epically bad idea it was to try and outwit them.”

  “You mean like we are?” Dez asked, thick with irony.

  “No, not like us. We have more info to go on.”

  “What was his deal?”

  I decided I might as well just get it out there. “I go free in exchange for three magical items he traded them.”

  He started moving again, dancing. “That’s not so bad. You don’t have to save me. It’s okay. I was born under a bad sign. We tried.”

  “Dez, you’re not going back with them so he can do away with you. Not to mention, they’re not going to honor a deal they made with my dad. Our plan’s on. We still have a chance to pull this off.” I paused. “I also want to tell a few other people tonight, see if they’ll help.”

  We turned in an awkward half-circle, barely moving. Dez let out a long breath, and I felt it in my bones. I echoed his exhalation.

  “Who?” he asked. “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just I grew up being drilled on not talking to anybody about stuff like this.”

  “I get it. But I think it’s safe to tell Dita and Jules and Remy. And Nancy Maroni.”

  “Oh, just four people? Not the whole Cirque? All right,” he said with a wink. He kissed my cheek. “Let’s divide and conquer. I’ll talk to Remy.”

  We did just that, with Dez asking Remy for a word while I told Jules she should go home and get Nan. I fetched Dita, and she walked with Dez and me back to the Airstream. I hadn’t explained what this was about yet, only that we needed to tell them something right away.

  Half an hour later, Dita, Jules, and Nan sat on the couch in our little living room. Remy took a chair from the kitchen. I sat down cross-legged in front of them on the floor, Dez easing down beside me.

  “This is not going to be a fun conversation,” I said.

  “Please tell me you two aren’t getting married,” Jules said. “Hang on. Do you have to get married?” She made a giant lump in the air over her stomach.

  Jules could lighten any mood. “No, I’m not pregnant. And it’s not the Middle Ages,” I said, “so I don’t think anyone has to get married anymore.”

  Although, come to think of it, the Praestigae did kind of hail from the Middle Ages. Their society was even older, in fact.

  “I think the first part of this is going to go faster if I do a show instead of tell. Nan, I know you told me to keep this secret, but I trust everyone here with the truth.”

  She inclined her head. She understood that it was my choice.

  “We trust you too,” Dita said. But she sounded wary.

  She’d put on her pajamas already, as soon as we got back. Remy seemed for all the world to have no idea why we were here having this meeting. I didn’t know if Jules suspected anything, but I knew she was always trying to figure things out.

  I took a handful of coins from my pocket. “These are ordinary coins. Inspect them for yourselves.”

  I thrust my hand in front of them. “A magic trick?” Jules said.

  “Not a trick,” I said.

  They each plucked up a coin or two and nodded.

  I had put on a sleeveless T-shirt. “I want you to watch my hands. I want you to be convinced that I did not do anything you didn’t see. What you see is what happens, I swear. Got it?”

  They glanced at each other. The room had taken on a nervous energy. Fitting. I’d decided to replicate the butterflies.

  I closed my eyes and called my magic to me. It unfurled in my chest, the heat coming at my command and spreading fast throughout me, out to the centers of my palms. I opened my eyes and, slowly, so my audience could watch every move, I tossed my hands open, flinging the coins into the air. They transformed into paper butterflies, sailing high . . .

  And then they drifted back to the ground on thin ghost-white wings.

  “That was a trick,” Jules said.

  “I was watching her hands.” Remy was frowning. “She didn’t switch anything. But magicians have other ways, don’t they?”

  “She told us it wasn’t a trick. You can do magic, can’t you?” Dita asked. She was so calm about it. Then again, she’d suspected me on day one—at least, on some level. “Real magic. That’s why Nan pulled you aside at the start. She can too.”

  When Dita looked to Nan, Nan gave a short nod.

  Jules pursed her lips. “Why are you telling us this? And why is Dez here?”

  “I’m getting there.”

  Dez laid his hand on my shoulder. I appreciated the move of solidarity.

  “We found the magic coin, weeks ago,” I said, watching Dita closely. She gave away nothing. “I actually believe it was what woke up my power, that first day. It must have been hidden in the tent then. Anyway, my mother is part of a secret group called the Praestigae, and so is Dez. He was sent here to look for the coin.”

  At that, they all sat up straighter. A sharpness came over Remy’s face.

  “I’ll explain why, the reason is good. Your granddad, well, let’s just say his story about it being a family heirloom was sort of true. Just, it wasn’t your family’s. He won it in a poker game.”

  “From my dad, who was a reckless bastard,” Dez said.

  “And royalty,” I added. “The reigning Rex, or king, of the Praestigae. By the way, probably none of you should ever mention that word to anyone outside this room.”

  Nan was shaking her head. “How just like Roman to build a story about it having been his all along. It also explains why he was so angry about my taking it from him. He wouldn’t have had access to its favor for long. I’m sorry, Remy and Dita.”

  “No need,” Dita said.

  Nan wasn’t finished. She turned to me. “I take it
your mother wants it back.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” I said. “Dez was sent here to find it. We had a plan, but my dad screwed it up a little—I’ll explain that next. Part of the reason I wanted you here is to ask you, is it safe to return it to them? They have other magic items now, but this one is special. This one goes all the way back to their beginning.”

  I’d felt it calling to me. Something inside me went all the way back there too. But it was that sense of a consuming amount of power inside it that worried me. Especially since my mother had other opportunities to refill her magic now.

  I instinctively didn’t want to hand it over anymore.

  Nan considered. “You know more about them than I do. The Praestigae were only ever talked about in hushed whispers. That they are to be avoided by outsiders. That a brush with them inevitably leads to ill consequences. Roman had me use my magic on the coin—to make it more what it was. There was already power in it, but it should be more powerful than ever now.”

  “It is,” I said, certain, remembering that feeling of being alive with power, of endless possibility.

  “With a tool like this . . . I shudder to think what they could do.” Her head angled in thought. “I suppose I also shudder to think what they must already have done with it, over the years. But now, with increased power . . .”

  I had suspected as much. On that card of Nan’s I’d transformed, there had been two shiny things in the air above the figures. I believed I now knew what they were. A real coin, and a fake. My mother and the indistinct figure of a man; it had to be the Rex. “Then they won’t get it,” I said. “I can create a dummy that looks just like it to fool them.”

  Dita raised her hand, so polite. “Are we going to talk about where you found it?”

  “I thought she said it was in the tent,” Nan said.

  At last, guilt appeared on Jules’s and Remy’s faces as they saw where this was going.

  “Can’t we talk about this later?” Jules asked.

  Dita laughed, a gentle chuckle, but genuine. We all looked at her.

  “No, it’s just that, Jules, did you honestly think I had no clue?” Dita sobered, pinning her brother and his girlfriend with a look that dared them to deny it. “I found it as soon as you gave me those ‘lucky slippers.’”

  “We can explain,” Remy said.

  “It was my idea,” Jules said. “Be mad at me, not him. I put it there. And Moira was right—it was sewn into the very top of the big top before that. I decided we should move it . . . You were having such a hard time.”

  “Oh, Jules,” Nan said. “Will you never learn?”

  Dita looked at them. “It made me so mad when you gave me those slippers, that you felt sorry for me and thought I needed the coin to perform. I went out there in my new costume, the costume I loved, and smiled like nothing was wrong, and performed better than I ever had before.”

  “Oh,” Jules said. “Oh, Dita. I’m so sorry.”

  “I never used it. I hid it in our room,” Dita said, with a glance at me. “I kept waiting for you to confess, but then I figured . . . no one else could find it and get hurt by it. I wanted to get rid of it, but I didn’t know how. Moira . . . if you’d asked me, I’d have given it to you.”

  “I wanted to tell you. I should have, before now. I hope we’re still friends.”

  Dita waved an arm to encompass the entire room. “Everyone here has hurt everyone else at some point, more or less. We’re family. The circus is a family. I told you that you could tell me the truth. I meant it.”

  “I believe you,” I said to Dita. And to Jules and Remy and Nan. “I want you to know that. I trust you all. I do think of us as family. That’s why I asked you here.”

  Jules reached across Remy to put her hand on Dita’s arm. “It was my idea. I just didn’t want you to be hurt. I didn’t want you to lose trapeze, because I know you love it. And I thought . . . well, I told myself Sam would want me to help you any way I could.”

  “Sam would never have used it,” Dita said. “We’re the same that way.”

  Jules nodded. “You’re right.”

  “Maybe someday you will learn,” Nan said, seeming satisfied with this. “But what do you need from us, Moira? There must be something. You said you found the coin—where is it now?”

  “Somewhere safe for the time being. And you’re right. We’re supposed to trade it to them at my last show. But there’s been a complication.”

  “Just one?” Jules asked with a wry half-smile.

  “A big one. My dad, it turns out, has a collection of magical stuff. Except most of it’s apparently junk—at least according to my mother.”

  “Your mother saw this collection?” Nan said. “That definitely sounds like a complication.”

  “You’re not kidding,” I said. “My dad traded her three items from his collection. She walked through it and picked out the ones she felt power in—the others she said mostly weren’t ‘real.’ So that means she and the Praestigae have access to a boxing glove that’s supposed to increase anyone’s strength tenfold. A magic lantern that’s supposed to be able to create illusions so convincing that onlookers believe they are reality. And a clay cup from an archeological site in Mesopotamia fabled for its restorative powers, supposedly healing anyone who drinks from it.”

  Dez coughed, surprised. “I thought magic healing wasn’t real.”

  “I think we know why she took that one. I’m going to guess if her magic was waning, then she’s now back to full strength.”

  “Your mother—didn’t she keep you away from her people all this time?” Nan asked. “What’s her motivation for coming after you?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know the truth of what she’s after. She’s something of a wild card.” I shook my head. “I made her husband angry. He’s what you might call a monster. I think he’s running the show.”

  Dita raised her hand again. “Do you think you could reform him?” she asked. “Like you did with Novio?”

  The question was obviously for Nan, and one I would have to find out the entire story behind later.

  “I suppose the only answer I can give is that Novio reformed himself,” the older lady said. “I wasn’t able to exert any positive influence on your grandfather. Redemption is not always possible. It requires . . .” She looked at Dita, then me. “Redemption requires a desire to be redeemed.”

  “He doesn’t have that,” Dez said.

  “Agreed, and they’re going to expect us to try to trick them,” I added. “I can’t promise this won’t get dangerous. But I’d love your help, from all of you. I need it.”

  I took a deck of cards from my pocket, a regular deck, and flashed the backs of the cards toward the couch. I called my magic and fanned them again. This time they were edged in gold around a rainbow of colors, like that first day. “My cards are all on the table,” I said.

  “With special effects like that,” said Jules, “of course we’re in.”

  forty-three

  The stage for the Ferris wheel disappearance was surrounded by billowing walls of cloth on all sides, hiding it from everyone except those with permission to work on the illusion. Dad must have been using a skeleton crew for his evening shows, because he’d sent every spare hand over here.

  The result was that after a few days, two enormous wooden towers joined by a massive arch, thirty feet across, cleverly constructed and painted to look like the top half of the Ferris wheel itself, dominated the stage. My stage.

  I admired them from close up, then leapt down onto the grass to go beyond the cloth to the midway proper.

  The Ferris wheel would be framed in the arch until it wasn’t. The arch itself was constructed to move, when it would hide the carefully positioned audience’s view of the wheel a hundred feet in the distance.

  I’d spent every daylight moment I wasn’t performing supervising the set construction and rehearsing the plan with Dez and the friends who’d be assisting with his clean getaway, then
mine after the dummy coin got presented.

  Tomorrow the Cirque crew would bring out chairs and clear the crowd except for ticket-holders. We’d already worked with security to specify where people could and couldn’t be without spoiling the effect. After the amazing illusion, those lucky people would proceed into the big top for the last performance of the year.

  Thurston had cut it down to one show tomorrow to make it even more exclusive. And if there was one thing Vegas loved, it was an exclusive engagement.

  Dez was waiting for me beyond the curtain. Brandon was with him.

  When Dez gave me a quick kiss, Brandon rolled his eyes. “Tickets?” he asked.

  I reached in my pocket and removed the envelope with two tickets for my queen mother and the devil king.

  I held out the envelope to Brandon. “Here they are. Make sure they get these and they know there’s no coin unless they come.”

  He took it in his unbroken hand and nodded to Dez. “I’m doing this for him. Brother, I can’t believe you fell this hard for a rich girl who’s into bondage.”

  “I am not—”

  He cackled as he left. Dez’s imminent departure was a secret from Brandon, so I tried not to growl, because I knew Dez still cared for him.

  Dez came close to my ear, speaking into it. “Sorry about that. Here come Raleigh and your Dad. Go talk to them, and then we’re leaving.”

  The pleasurable tickle of his breath at my earlobe was enough to make me forgive and forget. “I should stick around to watch the last—”

  “No. Leaving. Together.”

  My entire body heated in response. The same heat was there in his eyes. If things didn’t go as planned, then this could be our last night together. Our worlds had collided, but now they could split back into two separate universes.

  I was determined to prevent it. We were all banking on a lot of long shots, though—including one I was keeping a last secret from Dez. From everyone except Dad.

  Dad was bringing the coin so I could copy it, but I also wanted it on me tomorrow. One last fail-safe.

  “I’ll make it quick,” I said. “Meet you back at your place?”