The Fortune Teller's Daughter (18 page)

More.

Eli’s grip tightened, and just before I thought he’d
lift me against him, he pushed me towards his bed. He released me and lifted
the covers away while I settled in.

It was hard to squash my disappointment. He climbed
over me, for one delicious second he hovered against my body, his eyes meeting
mine, before finding a spot unnecessarily far away.

We lay quietly side by side, not touching, though I
was irrationally aware of where our bodies
almost
met.

Without asking, I moved closer until we touched, until
he groaned with the pleasure of contact, and opened his arm for me to slide
beneath. We held on as if our life depended on not disengaging. I listened to
him breath, his heartbeat, and wanted him to touch me in the worst way. When I
ran my leg up against his, he shuddered, caught my hip, and pulled me almost on
top of him.

We slept locked like this, his face buried in my
curls, so close I could feel his breath on my neck.

What we were doing, I knew somehow, went against all
the rules.

But we didn’t stop.

My sleep was dreamless. For once, someone kept the
nightmares away. For once I’d started waking up without dark smudges beneath my
eyes.

Sometimes I woke to the sound of his long, deep
breaths and little pleasant rumbles, as if he were a cat dreaming.

When I slept beside him, Eli slept deeply, vulnerably.
While he dreamed, he wasn’t damaged or beyond repair. Here he became new again,
boyish and sweet. And mine. In a way I couldn’t describe to anyone, not without
sounding desperate and delusional. Here when he slept, when he released his
worries and gave them to me to keep for the night, he was mine in a way I
thought maybe he wasn’t with anyone else. Didn’t allow himself. I wanted to
believe that. I did believe in that, but only at night. While he slept.

In the morning I tried to sneak out of his arms early,
hoping to get to my tent before anyone noticed I wasn’t there, but as soon as I
tried to leave him he tightened his hold and dragged me across the sheets to
his side, mumbling softly into my neck.

“No,” he whispered. “Not yet.”

It was not meant to last, of course. How could it? He
was the Magician. I was the mongrel.

The next night, after the final curtain fell, I went
to him once more, hungry to fold into his arms and disappear until dawn.

Instead of finding him waiting, I found his door
locked.

__________________

Eli

Her thoughts were tempestuous, willful things he could
feel through the carvings in his door. He didn’t know exactly the words
spinning through her beautiful mind but he got the heat of them, the hurt of
them. She lingered inches from where he stood, but she might as well have been
a thousand miles and a hundred years away for all the good it did.

He was wrong to have her in his bed. She was
twenty-two, still a young girl and he couldn’t even remember what year it had
been when he’d been twenty-two. He’d had Castel then and they’d still been in
London, probably, but beyond that he couldn’t remember. It was before
Imaginiare
,
but not much more.

And he’d had so many women in his bed since then that
it seemed grotesque to think she would become another notch. Another warm body
filling his worthless nights. She didn’t fit.

Cora, of course, would never have forgiven him for
taking Sera into his bed even if they’d both been clothed and he’d never even
kissed her. Not for lack of wanting or imagining. And he knew she thought about
it every bloody night. Where her thoughts trailed, indecently over his body, he
could feel the sensation of her mouth, could feel a memory that hadn’t yet
happened passing over his collarbone, his throat, his chest.

Lower.

Jesus, he’d woken up once with her curled against his
chest, her face pressed against his bare skin, lips slightly open and touching
the hollow of his throat and he’d almost taken her right then and there. Woken
her by burying himself inside her.

The memory shook him. He ran a hand through his hair
for the hundredth time and willed his hands to stop trembling. After what felt
like forever she backed down the steps, one at a time slowly as if she wanted
him to change his mind and come after her and god damn if he didn’t almost do
that.

Then she was gone and her thoughts slid away. His
shaking stopped and the quiet filled his wagon.

He could not let this continue. If she had been anyone
else he would have gone to hell and not fought too much over it. He didn’t have
much character left to save, but he wouldn’t destroy her on the way. She
was…worth more than that.

Eli touched the key around his neck, then dropped it
under his shirt. He turned to crawl back into his bed alone where he would, no
doubt, spend the entire night not sleeping. She wouldn’t sleep in her tent.
She’d be cold and there’d be no one to pull the blankets up when she kicked
them off. There’d be no one there to push the hair out of her eyes while she
dreamed or to nudge her when she started to snore.

Shit.
Shit.
He ran a hand through his hair
again. How’d everything get to be so damn complicated? She was just a girl. A
mouthy, arrogant, bossy girl. He definitely didn’t like those types of girls.

But, despite himself, he liked
this
girl.

Unwilling to go to bed without her and unable to go
after her, he stood like an idiot in the middle of the room.

 A sharp rap on his door made up his mind.

He paused, his heart making such noise in his chest
that he couldn’t hear his own thoughts. If it was her, then to hell with it. He
would never be able to look into those big green eyes and send her away. He’d
face the consequences and he’d wrap his body around her and sleep with his nose
against her neck where he could hear her breath and feel her heat and smell her
skin.

And taste her…

No. No. Too much. Too far.

The Magician stalked to the door and yanked it open,
ready to grab her and pull her into his room and carry her to his bed where she
damn well belonged.

He jerked back from grabbing Alistair and doing
anything whatsoever with the carnival director who stood with his hand on his
cane, emotionless and still as death.

A single brow quirked.

“Expecting someone?”

Eli leaned against the door and shoved one hand into a
pocket, unwilling to give him the slightest indication that he had, in fact,
been expecting someone else entirely.

“What do you want?”

“We need to talk.”

“It can’t wait?”

“It cannot.”

Eli stepped out of the way and let the carnival
director inside. He glanced around the clearing for Sera, but she was gone.

He shut the door and when he turned, the carnival
director stood unsettlingly still again, staring without blinking, both hands
on the top of his cane.

“Are you sure you’re not expecting someone?” When the
Magician didn’t answer, Alistair glanced around the small space, found a chair,
and settled into it. “A red haired young lady, as an example?”

Eli tried not to let his reaction to her described
show in his face, but he doubted he did a good job. He leaned against the door
and crossed his arms over his chest. “I have no idea what you’re talking
about.”

“I’m sure you don’t.” He leaned back and set his cane
across his knees. “Very well. Your brother is still alive, I’m afraid.”

“I told he was. As much as I’d like to believe Sera
could make our lives so simple, I knew he’d survive the fall. He’s given you
proof?”

“He set the train yard in Chicago on fire and has been
making merry little messes across the Midwest in our wake. He’s close, if he’s
not already here.”

“Castel cannot enter
Imaginaire
.”

The carnival director blanched at the name. “Must
you?”

Eli ignored him. He hated how everyone at the carnival
made Castel out to be the devil incarnate. “He knows as soon as he tried to
cross the fence I’d know immediately and he’d have to kill me to get to the
rest of you. As long as no one is stupid enough to leave the carnival grounds,
we’re safe.”

Alistair leaned forward and pointed at Eli’s wrist.
“As long as you have
that
, we are not safe.”

Absently he touched the keyhole tattoo. As usual, it
felt cold to the touch.

“I don’t need to open this. I’m stronger these last
few days than I have been in years. Castel won’t cross the gate.”

“Oh yes, and what’s so special about the last few
days?” The carnival director’s eyebrows shot up and his eyes narrowed and Eli
knew he knew.

He lied anyway. “Nothing. I’ve managed some sleep for
a change.”

“So the gossip is true.”

Eli snorted and looked away. “What the hell are you
doing listening to carny gossip?”

“Are you completely mad? Your brother is out for
revenge because of what
you
did to
him
,” Alistair punctuated each
word with a thrust of his finger into the air between them. “And you’re lining
up targets for him? Oh what he wouldn’t do if he found out about
her
.”

Eli froze, letting the implication wash over him. If
Castel knew she was important to him, even just a little, he’d find a way to
take her from him violently.

“I will not allow it.” Panic made it hard to breathe
suddenly. “I can keep her safe.”

“Put an end to it
now
.”

“No.” The Magician stood and paced across the room
close to his bed where her scent was still strong and lovely. He couldn’t look
at the director, didn’t want anyone to see evidence of his alarm. “She lets me
sleep. She makes everything easier. I can’t explain it, but I can do things I
haven’t been able to since we went dark. Since…” he trailed off and met the
carnival director’s warning eyes. “Since the accident.”

Alistair looked away. He tapped the cane against his
knee distractedly, nervous gesture Alistair was not prone to indulging.

“There aren’t many ways to kill a magician, Eli, but
Cora would have found one if she knew about you two. That should be enough of a
reason to end it.”

“I haven’t touched her.”

The carnival director snorted. “I am sure that is not
true.”

He scowled. “I am not discussing this with you.”

“Eli, I am saying this as your friend. End it or he
will.”

“We’re done.” He pointed at the door. “Get out.”

Alistair didn’t argue. They’d known each other much
too long to push boundaries when they were reached. He stood, straightened his jacket,
tapped his cane twice, and started for the door.

Before he reached it, Eli stopped him.

“I need to know.” Alistair looked at Eli’s hand on his
elbow. “Is she yours?”

“Mine.” The carnival director mulled the word over as
if he’d never heard it uttered before, a foreign sound he couldn’t wrap his
tongue around. “Cora and I were never…” He waved the final word away, even
after more than a century too much the gentleman to refer to such torrid
activities.

“Then why would Cora give her your name? If not yours,
then who does she belong to?”

Alistair hesitated and Eli released his hold on him.
“I’ve thought about it many times since Serafine came to us. I don’t know why
Cora would have left the girl with my given name. I wish I knew. Maybe to make
sure I took her in when Serafine eventually found us.”

“You think Cora knew you’d open the gates again and
that Sera would come to us?”

Alistair met Eli’s gaze, both of them a little uneasy
with the conversation. Fortune tellers had that effect on people who knew exactly
what sort of magic they wielded. “Oh yes. She told me where I could find her
when I was ready to reopen. The exact address.”

__________________

Sitting in an ornate, horse drawn carriage on the
bottom tier of the two story harlequin carousel, I stabbed an itty bitty
bayonet beneath a seam and pulled until it ripped and let loose yards of
velvety fabric from its dress shape.

The carousel was kept a virtual secret from me until
this morning when one of the dancers I was helping casually asked me if I’d
taken a turn yet.

The carousel had apparently become a kind of urban
legend of the carnival. The dancer told me that people traveled across the
world to treasure hunt for it. Some found it, some didn’t.

Sometimes, she said, they’d change cities several
times before someone finally found the carousel hidden amongst the tents where
it hadn’t been the day before. 

True to my inability to accept that in this world of
magicians and ageless acrobats that magic and legends might be real, I went
hunting for it. A thing that exists can’t
not
exist sometimes just
because. The idea made me crazy. It reminded me of my mother and her impulsive
contrariness.