Girl in the Shadows (20 page)

What a performance it was. I wanted to applaud. I could only hope it was a successful one.

Thurston took a moment, perhaps to see if she had more to say. She waited for his answer.

He didn’t give one, at least not exactly. “You aren’t worried about these other people Raleigh mentioned finding it?”

“No,” she said, though
that
had to be a lie. “I am not. The only reason I worry about it at all is the
stories
people tell about it. Stories have power. Superstition can kill.”

The last word hung in the air.

“What do you think?” Thurston looked at me. “Do you believe in magic?”

I hadn’t been prepared for the question, not from him. So I said something close to the truth, close to the things I’d said to Nan when she told me it was real.

“I believe magic is a trick, a pretty lie.”

“She’s a wise girl,” Nan said. “Sometimes. Is this matter closed? Have I answered your curiosity? Will you stop?”

“Your wish is my command.” He smiled at her. “I know I said I believed, but it was more of a wondering. You won’t hold it against me? You’ll still come for a drink now and then and tell me stories about the good old days?”

“And the bad ones.” Nan smiled faintly, but the smile didn’t touch her eyes. “I wouldn’t mind a sip of something right now.”

“My pleasure.” Thurston got up. He motioned toward the door and said to me, “You’d better get going, hadn’t you? You have a new show to start preparing.”

“Keep all this quiet, dear,” Nan said.

“As a mouse,” I said, and then hesitated. “I can tell Dita, though, about Raleigh?”

Nan gave me a discreet nod, and I got out of there.

I stood outside in the night air, processing. I was now the Cirque’s head magician. So why did I feel doomed?

twenty-seven

When I stepped into our room, Dita was propped on her side with earbuds in, watching something on her tablet. She already sported a pair of plaid pajamas.

I’d needed a walk to decompress and think through the conversation in Thurston’s trailer. I wasn’t ready to talk to Dez about what happened yet, for reasons I wasn’t clear on. I should have been. But . . . I wasn’t.

During my wandering, I’d passed a Mexican bakery that was still open up the street, and gone in to select a giant white paper bag full of many delicious things. I approached Dita and shook the bag to get her attention, opening the top and holding it in front of her.

She popped out an earbud.

“I come bearing sweets,” I said. “Take one. You’re going to need it.”

Dita’s fingers darted out to pause her show, then she removed her other earbud. She took a small wedding cookie and crunched it. “Why do I need it?”

“I have weird news.”

She waved for me to hold the bag open again, and I set it down beside her. “I’ll take a reserve cookie, then,” she said.

I settled on my bed. “You know when you made me promise to tell you if there was any strange or secret stuff going on?”

She swallowed, and went still. “Yes.”

I sighed. “Raleigh was the person who went through your drawer. He left the note.”

“Raleigh?”
she asked.

“Yep, he was looking for the coin”—I hadn’t actually clarified that I was allowed to tell her about Thurston—“this whole time. And now he’s been fired. I’m taking his place.”

“Raleigh was looking for the coin.” She shook her head in wonder.

“He was sorry that he scared you,” I said. I assumed he was. He wouldn’t have done that on purpose.

“I hate that coin,” she said, repeating her words from that night. She added, “I wish we could toss it in some ocean, destroy it forever.”

“I can understand why.”
But don’t do that,
I wished.
Please don’t do that.
I wanted to ask if she had any idea where Remy and Jules might be stashing it. That would be too obvious, though.

“How would we even know it worked anyway?” Dita said. “It’d probably wash back up.” She straightened her blanket over her legs. “Thank you for telling me. For not keeping me in the dark.”

Lucky for me, she didn’t ask whether anything else strange was going on. But I felt entirely awful that I was still on the lookout for her hated coin—with no intention to destroy it.

The next afternoon, I managed to snag a moment alone in the Airstream before the others returned from lunch. I’d spent the morning rush-ordering supplies for a new illusion. Now I stared at Dad’s name in the contacts list on my phone.

Some part of me hoped he’d heard through the magic grapevine there was an amazing new magician at the Cirque American, and discovered it was me. That he’d immediately recant, convinced by the buzz and then by seeing me perform. And then he’d explain why he’d kept my ability to do real magic a secret all these years, along with the warehouse I’d never been told about.

I pressed his name to call him. It was a couple of hours before he’d leave to get ready for his evening performance, a good time for him. He should be at home. He’d be eating some kind of lean protein and boringly healthy steamed vegetables.

“Moira?” He was out of breath when he answered. “Sorry, I forgot my phone in the study.”

His study. I pictured it—he’d be standing by his big desk. Rare playbills featuring the most famous magicians of history filled the walls, trapped in heavy frames from which they’d never escape. The Great Houdini draped in chains, Howard Thurston surrounded by the supposed spirits of the dead, Harry Kellar with his similar army of red demons, Carter the Great pretending to be a friend of the devil . . . and Dad, from his first year as a headliner, flanked by spotlights and excerpts from rave reviews.

All of them were men.

“A little cardio never killed anyone,” I said.

He laughed.

We transitioned to awkward silence.

I could hear him sit down in the throne-like leather chair. One of the wheels always squeaked when it moved.

“You mentioned you had to take somebody on a tour of the collection,” I said, easing down on my mattress. “How’d that go?”

“Did I? When was that?”

“A voice mail. Where’d you take them?” My free hand had balled into a nervous fist without my meaning it to. I relaxed my fingers.

“The usual highlights—Houdini’s straitjacket and milk can, Carter’s cards.”

“No, I mean which warehouse?”

Crickets.

“Raleigh mentioned you had more than one.”

“Moira, what is going on? First you ask me about your mother, now this.”

I don’t know, Dad,
I thought.
Did you lie to me for seventeen years?

But even with catching Raleigh and with my mother’s casual confirmation that Dad had known, I had doubt. This was my dad. We’d always been close. He couldn’t have meant for me to find out these things this way. I wasn’t ready yet to blow up our relationship. Not over the phone.

“Nothing—I just thought maybe you got some cool new stuff,” I said. “Don’t be so worried. You know you’re my favorite dad.”

“And you’re my favorite daughter. So . . . when can I come see you?”

Crap.

“Now’s not really great. It’s busy.”

“I’ll just fly up for a day—you could take one day off. Or even a couple of hours for lunch. I can catch a red-eye. I could be there tomorrow.”

I forgot how hard it was to dissuade him once he was set on something. A big part of being a magician was figuring out ways to do the impossible, to solve problems. I hadn’t figured out how to solve my problem with Dad yet. Raleigh was undoubtedly headed back to Vegas and might well tattle on me when he got there.

Then again, if Raleigh told him, he’d be doing me a favor. Giving Dad time to get used to the idea before we had it out.

“Um, not this week—maybe in a couple of weeks?” I searched for a story. “We have a break, and I was going to go home with one of my friends here. She lives out west, so it’ll be closer for you.”

He grumbled but finally said, “I can wait a little longer. Send me the details as soon as you have them. How is it going there?”

“I like the work, and the people. I think it’s what I’m meant to be doing. But I’m still learning—every day. It’s not easy, obviously.”

Wow, that was so vague I was sure he was bound to call me on it, but instead he turned into philosophical Dad. “Nothing easy is real. You know how I hate sayings, but ‘Easy come, easy go’ is one I’ve always put stock in. How can you expect to hold on to something you never had to work for? Find that thing, the one that feels right to you even though it’s hard. Work that you love is a gift.”

It was good advice, and I was terrified I’d start crying. I missed him. And I already had the thing: magic was mine.

“Dad.” I put my best dose of daughter in it. “I go away for the summer and you turn all squishy. Please tell me you’re not writing a self-help book.”

“Very funny. You know I hate that stuff.”

“If you were more actualized, you might feel differently.”

“What does that even mean? We are already actual—actual people. It’s meaningless.”

I missed this. Cranky dad, conversations like this.

“Your advice was gold. I miss home sometimes. The theater, the girls backstage, you.”

“Thank God,” he said. “I keep waking up in the middle of the night from these terrible dreams where you become one of those independent kids who never visits me. Where I’m like this awful burden you realized you never wanted to go back to as soon as you got away.”

“You’ll show me this other warehouse when I come home, right?”

Of course he wouldn’t, if he thought it would awaken my magic power.

“I can’t wait,” he said.

Smooth. But then he had plenty of time to get yet another warehouse, or move whatever objects he had in there. I hated being suspicious of him. Of myself. Of
everyone
.

The real question was: How long could I put off telling him, should Raleigh decide to keep his mouth shut?

Not much longer, not unless I wanted him to find out with no warning in a month when we hit Vegas for our final dates.

The less than desirable circumstances of my promotion didn’t keep me from feeling a thrill as I donned my mask at what was now my dressing table a few days later and prepared to take the stage for rehearsal. My stage. It was a guilty thrill, but a thrill all the same.

When I navigated around the curtain, Dez already stood on the far side of the stage.

He leveled a gun at me. “You’re sure this is safer?” he called over.

“You’re sure you loaded it with the dummy round?” I countered.

“Let’s do this, then.”

A clear pane of safety glass sat in a frame between us to serve as proof to the audience that the actual bullet I’d catch in my teeth had been fired. It wouldn’t have been, of course.

All the new equipment I needed and posters about my debut had arrived in time for our dates in El Paso. My first performance was tomorrow, and I was grateful we were back to two shows a day here instead of three. I had a feeling this one—combined with the coffin escape for the late show—would wear me out.

The only reason I could even contemplate putting it into my repertoire after a week’s work was my knowledge of Dad’s version of it. The bullet catch should always be an illusion. Twelve magicians were reported to have died doing it. Most of the ones who lived were smart enough to fake it—not that it was entirely safe, but it was
safer
. And this would definitely be safer than the hanging-upside-down escape had been. I’d be using the smallest bit of magic in a very focused way.

My mom might still protest, but I didn’t see any way around it. I could call magic consistently now, but I was convinced it would show up regardless during big illusions or escapes. So embracing and guiding it was the safest option.

If she came to see me again, I could explain the favor I’d done catching Raleigh and ask how I could help with her problem.

For this illusion, I’d rush-ordered enough sheets of safety glass to take me through the end of the season, along with wax bullets that looked like real ones to the eye and would break through the glass, but which would dissolve before they reached me. Getting the firearm, real bullets for me to produce at the end and some safety goggles had been beyond easy. We were in Texas, after all. My credit card worked, and we’d walked out of the store with the handgun now in Dez’s capable grip.

Dez, it turned out, was a crack shot—another talent his unsavory childhood had left him with. “Other kids had coloring books. We had contests to see who could shoot the most Pabst cans off a fence. I killed at target practice.” Which meant, at least, I didn’t have to go around the grounds looking for an expert marksman or markswoman to help me out. Even a wax bullet could do damage if, say, fired wildly into the crowd.

The real crux of the trick, the thing that would flummox anyone trying to figure it out, was how I planned to produce the marked bullet. There would be no contact whatsoever between Dez and me once an audience member scribbled an identifiable marking on the wax one. We didn’t need any contact. I was going to transform the real bullet that would be stored in my cheek so that it matched the wax one the audience member had drawn on. I’d been practicing every night—drawing a design on a bullet—and then holding a fresh bullet in my palm and transforming it to match the first. Then I’d confirmed I could reliably do the same thing with the bullet in my cheek.

I could.

It was the penny shaped like a heart that gave me the idea. My magic seemed to like when I directed it to do something small and intricate. Even if it still mostly felt like being possessed by some force with a mind of its own, it was a force that was willing to listen.

So I ran through my prepared spiel, leading up to my final lines before the firing. “Can we please have absolute silence in the tent? And everyone, no matter what happens, please stay in your seats, for your own safety.”

I donned my safety goggles, slipping the plain bullet in my mouth as I put in a mouth guard for show. Dez put his goggles on too. All these layers of glass between us were like some metaphor I didn’t care for in that moment. He might as well have been aiming for my heart. He’d hit it.