The Glass Magician

by Caroline Stevermer

  Ryker continued to stand too close. “I owe you an apology. You are my guest. I was wrong to generalize about the role of women in show business, and in particular, I was wrong to insult a guest.”

  Thalia waited a moment to reply, enjoying his obvious discomfort. “You were rude about my piano playing too.”

  A spark of indignation spoiled Ryker’s gravity. “I have no intention of apologizing for that. I speak to you as an equal. To pretend to accept your mechanical choice of tempo would be patronizing and wrong.”

  Thalia remembered several true but unkind remarks she had just made about Nell’s technique and relented. “Fair enough. So long as you show me and my profession your respect, I accept your misshapen and ill-conceived apology.”

  Ryker took her hand as if he meant to kiss it, but when Thalia arched an eyebrow at him, he changed course and shook it firmly instead. “Understood. Thank you.”

  Nell, who had been practicing with her coins again, stopped to clap her hands approvingly. “That’s more like it. Miss Cutler, what time will you return tomorrow?”

  Thalia wondered what progress Nutall had made on finding a pair of passes to see Von Faber’s performance at the Imperial Theater. Unless she somehow grew wings and flew downtown, she would be too late arriving back at the boardinghouse to see it tonight. Tomorrow night? “Perhaps it would be best to begin earlier. Three o’clock? We can work on switches.”

  “Perfect.” Nell glowed with anticipation. Ryker merely looked resigned.

  “Practice,” Thalia ordered.

  “I will!”

  “I’ll send my car for you,” said Ryker grudgingly.

  * * *

  Ryker’s Pierce-Arrow brought Thalia back to Mrs. Morris’s boardinghouse at six o’clock. The driver lingered in the street until Thalia was safely inside; then the car purred off around the corner.

  Mrs. Morris, never busy with dinner preparations when there was curiosity to be satisfied, emerged from the kitchen to greet Thalia. “How was it, dear?”

  “The Pierce-Arrow was a wonder.” Thalia handed Mrs. Morris Nell’s twenty-dollar gold piece. “Have this on account. Is Nutall here?”

  “I don’t know where he’s got to.” Mrs. Morris pocketed the coin and turned back to the kitchen. “I’ll give you a receipt after dinner.”

  Thalia had chores of her own to do. She changed into a dress that was less than impressive but easy to clean, put on an apron, and took care of her doves and the snake. Nat and Nell Ryker had provided an admirable distraction, as well as a generous amount of money, but the distraction was, temporarily at least, over. Thalia considered her options as she worked. Leaving Von Faber out of things, what would she like her new act to include? Some might have called it daydreaming. Thalia considered it to be vital planning.

  * * *

  Thalia was at the dinner table when Nutall returned looking flushed and pleased with himself. He pulled up a chair next to Thalia. “Inigo paid for my dinner, but I could never say no to a slice of Mrs. Morris’s excellent pie.”

  Thalia passed along the slice Mrs. Morris cut for Nutall. “What about tickets?”

  Nutall plied his fork nimbly. When he’d finished chewing, he used his napkin. “Inigo came up trumps. We have two passes to the performance tomorrow night.” When Nutall finished his second bite of pie, he countered, “Are you enthralled with Mr. Ryker yet? He seemed bent on making a good impression. I believe Traders consider it great sport to enthrall comely young Solitaires.”

  “You’ve warned me before.” Thalia put her fork down. “I am far from enthralled with Mr. Nathaniel Ryker. If Miss Ryker is enthralled with anything, it is the notion of going onstage. Both of them are generous, I’ll grant them that.” Thalia told Nutall about her afternoon in detail. “I’ve accepted his apology, so I’m going to be polite to him, but the next crack he makes about my lack of reputation, I’m going to punch his nose.”

  “If you must.” Nutall looked thoughtful. “Rogers sounds like someone it might be useful to know. Watch out for him. You’re going back tomorrow?”

  “Three o’clock,” Thalia said. “Sharp.”

  “Keep your temper in check,” Nutall advised. “Try not to punch the goose who lays the golden eggs. This gig of yours is a great piece of luck. Come back from tutoring your Trader as soon as you can. By the time we leave for the Imperial, I want neither of us looking anything like our usual self. Wear something appropriate yet unrecognizable. I won’t give that weasel Von Faber the satisfaction of knowing we’re in the house.”

  Thalia ran a swift mental inventory of her wardrobe. “Er.”

  “Ask Mrs. Morris for advice.” Nutall resumed his attack on the slice of pie before him. “But don’t stay up all night sewing your disguise.”

  Thalia couldn’t help laughing. “I’m no seamstress.”

  “Don’t I know it. Try not to get carried away.”

  * * *

  Thalia waited until dinner had been cleared up and the evening chores finished before she asked Mrs. Morris for advice on her disguise.

  “Bless you, I’ll be happy to lend you my sister’s Sunday hat. Put the veil down and you’ll look older than I do.” Mrs. Morris, delighted to consult, gave Thalia advice on how to move as if she were three times her true age.

  “Now, what was it like at the Trader mansion you visited this afternoon?” Mrs. Morris was clearly bursting with curiosity. “Lots of servants?”

  “An army,” Thalia assured her, “so well-trained, I only saw four altogether the whole time I was there. But the place is huge. They must have dozens of Solitaires to help.”

  “I suppose that’s one thing Traders are good for,” Mrs. Morris said. “They do give a lot of people work.”

  * * *

  In the morning, Mrs. Morris presented Thalia with the receipt she’d written for the twenty dollars she’d received on account. “Where did Mr. Nutall go last night? I would ask him myself, only he’s gone out already. I remembered your payment on account quite late last night. I wanted to tell him you’d paid, but when I knocked on his door, he didn’t answer.”

  Thalia frowned. “How late is quite late?” Nutall had come in during dessert, but he’d stayed in for the rest of the night. Hadn’t he?

  “Oh, well past one in the morning.” Mrs. Morris sounded sheepish. “I know it was rather late to disturb a paying guest, but Mr. Nutall has always been so friendly. I thought I would just try on the off chance he was still awake.”

  “He must have been asleep.”

  “That’s what I thought, but then it struck me that I didn’t hear anything. Not a snore. Nothing. I wondered if he was all right. I opened the door.” At Thalia’s expression, Mrs. Morris added hastily, “It was quite unlocked.”

  “Of course it was,” Thalia said. “Go on.”

  “Everything was in perfect order, but Mr. Nutall wasn’t there. He’s come in since then,” Mrs. Morris assured Thalia. “When I checked a few minutes ago, his bed had been slept in, but he’s gone out again already.”

  “I’ll ask Nutall about it when I see him.”

  “It’s just that it was quite late to be out,” Mrs. Morris explained.

  “You keep a sharp eye on us, don’t you?”

  Mrs. Morris gave Thalia a penetrating look. “If you knew the world the way I do, Miss Thalia Cutler, you’d keep a sharp eye too.”

  “I wasn’t criticizing.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “I’ll ask Nutall about it. I’d like to know where he was myself. I thought he was in for the night.”

  * * *

  Nutall still wasn’t back by the time the Ryker automobile arrived to collect Thalia. She scratched out a note to remind him where she would be and for how long, and then went out to the car. She’d worn her best suit the day before, so she was back in the clothes she’d worn to visit Madame Ostrova on Wednesday. She chose a less imposing hat and her best gloves. She felt smart enough to do justice to the Pierce-Arrow.

  This ti
me the car created an even greater sensation among Thalia’s fellow lodgers than it had the day before. Once aboard, Thalia spent less time fiddling with the luxurious fittings in the passenger compartment and more time paying attention to the route the driver took. It was a windy, overcast day. Street-corner newsstands were hawking Trader papers, with “Manticore in Manhattan!” and “Send for the Skinner!” in the headlines chalked on the notice boards out front.

  Thalia thought about her meeting with Professor Evans. If she’d truly been a Trader, those headlines would freeze her with fear. As it was, she felt nothing more than mild interest. She wondered how the Ryker siblings would respond to the news.

  On Thalia’s arrival, Nell Ryker met her in the courtyard, newspaper in hand. “Isn’t it terrible?”

  Thalia extricated herself from the backseat of the automobile and brushed imaginary creases out of her skirt. “What’s happened?”

  “Last night a manticore was sighted in Central Park. It ran away before anyone was hurt.” Nell added, “They haven’t seen one in Manhattan in more than two years.”

  “That is bad.” Thalia looked around at the splendors of the Ryker mansion. “You and your brother should be safe from it here, though?”

  “Oh, Nat’s in no danger. He passed his ordeal when he was seventeen. But he’s not going to let me out of his sight until I pass mine,” Nell explained. “With a manticore near, the Board of Trade will suspend setting all ordeals until the Skinner has killed it.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” Thalia followed Nell as she led the way indoors and up to her workroom.

  “I suppose so.” Nell folded the paper and tucked it under her arm. “But until I pass my ordeal and come out in society, I’m stuck here even though I can already Trade perfectly well. With a manticore in town, there’s no chance Nat will hire a bodyguard for me so I can visit friends or go to the theater. I’m confined to quarters until the Skinner does his job.”

  “How does it work?” asked Thalia. “How do you Trade? What animal do you turn into?”

  “I don’t turn into an animal.” Nell sounded repulsed by the very thought. “I am one person in two forms. One is the form you see when you look at me now. The other is the form I Trade into.”

  “Why is it like that?”

  Nell rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. Why are you Solitaires so small you fit into one form? It takes both sides to contain a Trader soul. Our souls are that big. If I Traded, you’d see me as an otter. But there’s no … intermission. It’s not like ice melting into water. It’s a Trade.”

  “Oh.” Thalia thought it over and repeated her earlier question. “How do you do it?”

  “I just … find the common thread.” Nell broke off and gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “I don’t know if I could explain it properly even to another Trader. They say it’s different for everyone. Practice is important. We have the Changing room here, but there’s nothing like fresh air and sunlight. It’s lovely to be so close to the Hudson. Nat swims almost every day, and so will I once I’ve passed my ordeal and come out in society.”

  “What’s the common thread?” Thalia asked.

  A thoughtful pucker appeared between Nell’s elegant eyebrows. “It’s the same deep down. Both forms are the same. I learned to find what my forms had in common, the otter and the human, where they are both the same. Then I could Trade.” Nell smiled and the pucker cleared. “I haven’t been able to Trade properly for very long. Only a month or so. That’s why Nat hasn’t had time to set up my ordeal. Now I don’t know how long I’m going to have to wait.”

  “But you don’t mind waiting if it means you’re safe from the manticore,” Thalia ventured.

  “I don’t,” Nell conceded, “but then again, I do. Once I’m out in society, I’ll be a legal adult. I can sign a contract to perform onstage.”

  “We should make sure you have something to perform, then, shouldn’t we?” Thalia asked rather pointedly.

  Nell was delighted by the thought. She demonstrated how she’d been practicing palming and stealing. Thalia showed her a few of the finer points, corrected one or two incipient bad habits, and moved on to ditching and loading. She was sure that Nell bored easily. There was a lot of material to cover, luckily, and plenty to practice.

  * * *

  Thalia was back at the boardinghouse and had changed into her disguise by the time Nutall returned. Mrs. Morris had been as good as her word. Thalia was wearing her landlady’s sister’s broad-brimmed black hat with a heavy black veil, and she had added a Persian lamb stole over her shoulders. She looked at least twice her actual age and twenty years out of fashion.

  Nutall looked different too. His customary tailored neatness had been discarded for a baggy brown plaid suit with a mustard-colored waistcoat. Instead of his usual black top hat, he wore a brown bowler. A bushy false mustache concealed his own pencil-neat one.

  Thalia stared at him, lost for words.

  Nutall beamed. “That’s precisely the effect I was hoping to achieve. You look rather ghastly yourself, I must say.”

  Thalia dropped him a curtsy at the compliment. “Should we use false names?”

  “Good idea.” Nutall thought it over. “You’re my spinster niece Jenny and I’m your uncle Jonathan.”

  “Surname?” Thalia prompted.

  Nutall looked around the parlor for inspiration. “Brown settee, black bench, green aspidistra. Brown, Black, or Green. Take your pick.”

  “Call the settee a davenport instead,” Thalia suggested. “Jonathan and Jenny Davenport.”

  “Jenny Davenport, it is an honor to accompany you to the theater.” Nutall offered her his arm. “Let’s go criticize Von Faber’s shoddy technique. After the show, we’ll treat ourselves to a late supper to celebrate.”

  “It will be a pleasure.” Thalia took Nutall’s arm. As they reached the street, she asked, “Where did you go?”

  “I had lunch with Inigo and his friends,” Nutall replied. “We were talking over old times.”

  “Not today. Last night.” Thalia matched her stride to Nutall’s. “Mrs. Morris went to your room quite late and she said you weren’t in.”

  “I didn’t answer.” Nutall dropped his voice to a murmur. “Between ourselves, Jenny, a man does not invariably wish to speak to his landlady à deux, particularly not in the middle of the night.”

  Thalia started to tell him that Mrs. Morris had checked his room, but broke off when instinct told her to leave the words unsaid. It wasn’t like Nutall to lie to her.

  But then, Thalia asked herself, what made her so sure of that? Did she know Nutall as well as she thought she did? Until Philadelphia, he’d never told her that her mother was a Trader. If the cuff hadn’t jammed, if they hadn’t gone to see Professor Evans, would Nutall have mentioned it at all? Ever?

  To be fair, Thalia reflected, her father could have told her she was half Trader years ago. Why had he chosen to keep her ignorant of half her heritage? He had known he was marrying a Trader against her family’s will. He had shared that with his friend Nutall, yet he hadn’t told his own daughter. It wasn’t as if she would have demanded they petition for a share of her mother’s family trust. It wasn’t as if she would have gone around telling people.

  For that matter, what about her father’s family? She knew nothing. He had been raised in an orphanage. That was all she knew. If her father had known more, he might have shared it with Nutall. But would Nutall share what he knew with her unless he had to?

  Caution warred with curiosity. Caution won. Thalia had many questions for Nutall—but now was not the time to ask them.

  Chapter Eight

  The Imperial Theater, once Nutall had presented their passes and gained them admission to decent seats in the mezzanine, was far larger than the Majestic. The red plush velvet seat covers and stage curtain were almost new. The Cadwallader Syndicate had done Von Faber proud.

  Von Faber himself held the stage well. Thalia had to grant him that. His first few tricks
involved money, first pennies and then nickels and dimes and silver dollars, followed by at least a dozen paper bills, genuine greenbacks, palmed and produced as from thin air, then tossed carelessly out into the delighted audience. As far as Thalia could judge, Von Faber was throwing away as much money as she’d earned teaching Nell Ryker that day.

  The audience applauded Von Faber’s generosity. He moved on through a standard series of tricks, making it look easy as hoops and ropes and cups and balls did his bidding.

  This was the disadvantage of a solo booking, Thalia reflected. In order to make his audience believe they’d had their money’s worth, he’d had to pad the program with routine tricks.

  As Von Faber took yet another round of applause with a gracious bow, a young white Solitaire woman in a scarlet gown with gold spangles joined him onstage. Her long dark hair fell loose to the small of her back, like a black silk curtain.

  “Nora. She calls herself Mrs. Von Faber,” Nutall murmured to Thalia. “Her maiden name was Uberti.”

  With operatic gestures, Von Faber pretended to mesmerize the young woman. Once she was in a trance, he directed her to lie upon a gilt divan brought to them by two stagehands costumed as footmen. Von Faber made dramatic passes over her once she was in position, demonstrating wordlessly that there could be no hidden wires in place. Then, with the orchestra’s enthusiastic support, Von Faber gesticulated as if he were commanding the very air beneath her. The girl, apparently lost in Von Faber’s trance, rose slowly to float in midair above the divan.

  The audience gasped and applauded even as Von Faber produced a gleaming metal hoop and passed it around the girl to prove there were no wires holding her in position.

  Nutall sighed and folded his arms.

  Thalia tilted her head, admiring the perfection of Mrs. Von Faber’s muscular control. Her spine rested on a metal rod set at a right angle to the lift rod, strong but hard to see, that held her full weight, giving the impression she was floating in midair. Her long hair added to the illusion, as did the spangles, each as big as a twenty-dollar gold piece, sparkling bright with every breath she took. It was a good trick, but the skill that made it convincing wasn’t Von Faber’s, except in the way he’d manipulated the gap in the hoop so it did not catch on the support rod and betray the subterfuge.