Sleight (16 page)

Whatever their intentions may have been, I knew for a fact Marlene was keeping more from me than just the thing about the AVRA-K.

Like the letter from Delia. But I’d have to wait for the right time. I didn’t want to start anything with Henry’s imminent arrival.

I sighed. “Yeah, fine, but it stil sorta sucks. And if Henry wants to talk to Ted, that’s his choice,” I said. “But I won’t put Henry in an even weirder situation than he’s already in.”

“I’l leave that to you,” she said. “Okay, toots, cal me if you need me. You shouldn’t have too many interruptions. Mattias is working the hel out of Ash and Junie here in the big top, so I think you’l be able to talk without interruption.” I thanked her and hung up, then tucked into the bathroom. My reflection in the mirror was rough—dark circles under my eyes, face paler than usual. Great. I quickly puled some product through my hair in an effort to calm the frizz in my mane. Channeling my inner Junie, I went so far as to powder my face and apply a thin coat of lip gloss. She would be so proud.

I did a quick tidy of the trailer, moved aside school crap, straightened blankets, wiped down the table, picked up my dirty running clothes from the floor, sprayed some Febreze to get rid of Irwin’s pipe smel, tried on five different shirts, puled my hair back, let it loose again. By the time there was a knock on the trailer door, I’d worked up a sweat.

“Come in,” I said, smoothing my shirt one last time. A white one, button-down, roled-up sleeves, untucked.

Henry climbed the smal stairs, his height even more impressive under the shortened trailer ceiling. He held a sizable bouquet of fresh-cut flowers and a legal-sized parcel wrapped in paper the color of a tropical ocean.

“Hey, Gemma,” he smiled. He looked conflicted, a mix of worry and hesitation, but happy, too. He seemed as relieved to see me as I was to see him.

“Umm, these are for you.” He extended the flowers.

“Thank you. They’re beautiful. I’l have Marlene get a vase,” I said, accepting the heavy bundle.

“An eco-friendly bouquet,” he teased. “Even the paper is biodegradable.”

“Good man. Doing your part to save the planet, I see.” He sat down across from me at the table. “Oh, and this is for you, too.” He handed over the parcel, watching me intently as I unwrapped it. “For your violin. You mentioned that you play as part of the show, so I thought this might be a suitable gift.” He paused. “I hope these aren’t duplicates of what you already have.” I leafed through the stack of pages; I had none of this music, though many of the compositions had been on my wish list for eons.

A few Paganini, some Vivaldi. I was touched at such a thoughtful present. Marlene was the only person who ever bought me new music, but as she wasn’t a musician, she never seemed to get it quite right. Henry’s choices were informed and wel suited to my tastes and abilities. I resisted the urge to launch myself across the table and throw my arms around his neck.

“I don’t have any of this. Thank you so much! This is awesome.” He beamed, looking pleased with himself. “You’re welcome. I look forward to hearing you play.”

Butterflies flipped in my gut. Oh, yeah, playing in front of Henry.

I remembered that that would be happening during the coming weekend. I’d been so cool and colected when Ted asked me whether I’d be nervous performing in front of Henry, but now that I was in his presence, now that I was so close to the perfection of his face, the depths of his eyes, the soft pink of his lips…suddenly, I was more than a little freaked out that he’d be in the audience.

“Sooo…,” I said, thumbing the stack of sheet music.

“Gemma, I’m so sorry,” he said softly, “about the thing in the car.” He reached over and rested his wrist on the stack of sheet music. He brushed the top of my hand with his index finger, tracing my veins. I trembled under his touch.

“Don’t apologize. Please… I’m glad you told me. I should be the one saying sorry. It wasn’t cool that I didn’t give you a chance to explain. That voice in my head, the way it floated in, then her face in the mirror. It wigged me out. I didn’t think—I just reacted,” I said, twisting a few strands of hair around my fingers.

“You saw her, in the mirror?”

“Yeah.”

“So, do you see these people al the time then?”

“No. Not al the time. I most just try to ignore them.” I paused.

“Henry, you mentioned that Lucian sees them, too?”

“Yes.”

“Can he see your mom?”

“Probably, but she stays far away from him. Up here mostly.” He pointed to his head. “I had no right, Gemma. I was out of line, and the fact that I scared you,” he swalowed hard but continued, his voice almost a whisper, “that’s the last thing I wanted to do. I don’t want to do anything that might chase you away.” Instead of a singular finger, he wrapped the whole of his hand around my wrist.

The warmth started immediately, seeping through my forearm and climbing toward my shoulder. His hand was big and dwarfed the bones of my arm.

“I’m not going anywhere, Henry, although by the sounds of it, Lucian would be thriled if you chased me away.” I looked at his face, the bruise around his eye already healing. The difference was remarkable, the injury less prominent than it had been only hours ago. It stil looked painful, though, and my gut sank when I thought of the reason behind how it came to be.

“If Lucian knew that I shared any of this with you…” He looked down at the table, his face grave. “To say he’d be pissed would be like caling a hurricane a puff of wind.”

“This afternoon…something else happened,” I said. His face was serious.

I told him about my run, the vision in the clearing, the creepy cloaked man. By the time I’d finished, Henry looked pale, uncomfortable. The sensation transferring from his skin to mine chiled as my story continued. In contrast, I felt at ease. Henry’s mere presence seemed to exude a calming influence, as if everything would be al right simply because we were breathing the same pocket of air.

“There’s more. I saw a man, a new shade, in the mess tent after I came back in. Irina, she’s a psychic, and she asked me if I could see him.”

“Can she see the shades?”

“No, but she can hear them. And this one whispered to her, in Italian.”

“What did he say?” He was holding his breath.

“Libro magia. Ci’ondolo.”

“Libro magia is magic book. And ci’ondolo…” Henry was quiet for a minute, brow furrowed, face down. Then he looked up at me. “Pendant. Maybe charm or necklace…”

“You speak Italian?”

“Sort of.” He smiled, his eyes sad. “Alicia speaks Italian.” Alicia, who lives in his head. Creepy. I touched the side of his arm.

“He’s talking about the AVRA-K, isn’t he…? Libro magia?” Henry nodded.

“But what about ci’ondolo? What was he talking about?”

“I think it’s about the avrakedavra charms. They were made at the time of the book’s creation, meant as healing tokens. I’ve never seen one, but I know they exist. Somewhere in the world,” he said.

“Why would he want me to know about that? And isn’t abracadabra something magicians say to their top hats?”

“It is now, when it’s pronounced like that, but in the old, old days, it was used in healing practices. It’s been sort of bastardized over time.”

I chuckled at him. “How do you know so much about this?” A smal smile slid across his lips. “How do you think I know?” Oh. Right.

“You’d kick ass on Jeopardy.” He laughed at me. How I loved his smile.

I could trust Henry. What we were sharing was volatile, damming stuff—information that could undo a lot of lives in a very short span of time. And although I wasn’t accustomed to talking so openly about the shades and their presence in my life, I suppose if it ever came to blows, it would be my brand of crazy against his.

But his mode of weird came with an added perk—his touch.

“Henry, that hand thing you do…yesterday when I reached up to touch your face, it felt like I was being electrocuted. I even bit through my lip.” Henry looked down. “It was so different than the warmth.”

“The touch is based on my emotions. When I’m happy or content and in control, it’s warm. When I’m angry or scared, it can be very painful to the person on the receiving end.” Just as Ted described, the way it had been with Alicia.

“Can you control it al the time? Like, how do you shake hands with people without them figuring it out?”

“I can hold it back for a few seconds, usualy long enough to get a handshake out of the way. Unless I’m nervous or something…

then I wear gloves.”

I remembered that he had worn gloves that night when he and his father had come for dinner. He’d been nervous, to come here?

“It’s like holding my breath. I can keep the warmth back, but never the dark energy. That has a mind of its own,” he said. “I was annoyed with Poole for making me look like a douche, and of course, at Lucian, for this,” he pointed to his face. “I was tired and pissed, and you just happened to be the one I took it out on. I’m so, so sorry for that, Gemma.”

“When you just touched me, it started out warm. But when I told you about what happened this afternoon, it cooled a little,” I said.

“And now?”

I smiled. “It’s warm again.”

“You make me feel safe,” he said, his eyes soft. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Henry released my wrist and splayed his arms across the table surface, elbows bent and palms up. Though I desperately wanted to, I didn’t touch him, but as he spoke, he looked at his hands, his brow wrinkled, as if to curse each and every finger for having caused me pain that moment in the hal at school.

“Don’t apologize. I sort of deserved it for being such an idiot and gasping. It made everyone turn and look at you,” I said.

He puled his arms in and folded his hands into one another, his fingers crisscrossed.

“Does this touch thing work on everyone? I mean, does anyone else know you can do this, or have you ever touched someone and had them say, ‘Hey, that was odd’?” I couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like if he touched more than just my hand or my face, what it would feel like if our bodies were…closer. Without the barrier of fabric between our skin.

“Wel,” he smiled, “I know it affects different people in different ways. It sort of depends on the person I’m touching. It has little if any impact on my father, but I had a nanny once who used to complain that I hurt her when I threw temper tantrums.” I laughed, imagining a young Henry stamping his feet because he had to leave the park or couldn’t have another cookie. “No one else knows about it.”

“Yeah, about that… Ted knows. When I told them about your black eye, it sort of came up. He said that you inherited the gift from your mom.”

Henry laughed quietly under his breath. He wouldn’t have known his mother’s touch if she died when he was a baby. How painful for him to hear such an intimate detail about his own mother from a stranger.

“When I was a little kid, Lucian told me that I was very strong for my age, so I couldn’t touch anyone else without hurting them.

Gave me a superhero complex for a while. I started to think that maybe I was like Superman, that I could crush rocks with my bare hands.”

“And could you?” I smiled. As far as superheroes went, I was partial to Wolverine, but Superman…I could go with that.

“No, but not for lack of trying. I nearly broke my hand a couple of times squeezing the life out of a few unfortunate river rocks.” I chuckled at the vision of a young boy clamping down on a rock until he was blue in the face. “But it taught me a very important lesson,” he continued, serious again. “I learned that I could make a stone turn white hot, or glacier cold, just by holding it in my hand and thinking certain thoughts.”

“So you are kinda like a superhero.” I raised an eyebrow and gave him a playful smirk.

“Far from it. Lucian used to tel me that each person has a gift. I just figured that was mine.”

A gift. Al this time I’d been running from mine, afraid if I embraced it, I’d be locked up with my mother. Hearing about Henry’s acceptance of his own talents made me feel, somehow, less crazy.

“Things are going to get worse for us before they get better, aren’t they?” I searched his eyes for a flash of reassurance, wishing he’d tel me that this was al just some outlandish practical joke. But there was no flash. Just the consolatory stare that people gave you when they delivered bad news. He didn’t answer me verbaly. He didn’t need to.

The quiet was interrupted by a knock on the trailer door.

“Come in,” I said. Marlene entered. She looked tired and a little unnerved.

“Hi, Henry.”

“Helo, Mrs. Cinzio.” He greeted her with his award-winning smile.

“I just came in to see if you two kids were hungry. Early dinner is about up, if you want me to bring you anything,” she said. Henry looked to me to answer first, and now that she mentioned it, I was feeling a little holow.

“Food sounds good. Henry, you can stay for dinner, right?” I said.

“That’d be cool.”

“Wel, what does a strapping young man such as yourself fancy to eat?” Marlene relaxed, her tone flirtatious. She liked Henry.

“Whatever Gemma’s having would be perfect, Mrs. Cinzio, thank you,” he said.

“I think it’s linguine tonight,” she said. “And cut that out. I’m Marlene. Mrs. Cinzio is Ted’s mom, and she’s older than dirt.”

“Thanks, Marlene.”

Marlene returned in a flash, food in hand, and disappeared just as quickly, though not before tucking my bouquet into a vase. She gave us a wiggle of her fingers as she stepped out of the trailer, leaving Henry and I alone once again. I liked being alone with him.

He smeled so good, and despite everything, al the bizarre stuff going on, he made my stomach flutter, in that good way. I loved that even though he was considerably taler than I was, he leaned into me when I talked, as if every word I spoke was the most important thing he’d ever heard. I loved how he scanned my face, alternating between my eyes and my lips, as if waiting for the perfect moment to bend over and kiss me.

The food was tasty, and it was charming to have our own private dinner party away from the chaos of the meal tent, away from Ash’s angry glares and Junie’s incessant chattering. Marlene must’ve told Ted that Henry was here, but he didn’t come knocking. Maybe Ted was waiting for Henry to make the first move.