The Fortune Teller's Daughter (27 page)

She didn’t scream. He wrapped a length of rope around
her neck twice and squeezed until she was still.

And I got my way. There was no more time. I wasn’t
hers anymore. I wasn’t anyone’s.

After.

I stopped sleeping because the nightmares replaying
that day woke me in tears. I didn’t deserve her. I didn’t know her. I wanted
her gone from my life and when I got my wish I realized she’d taken all of me
with her and left this nothing girl behind.

On the floor of the Magician’s stage, wrapped in a
blanket magicked from thin air, in the darkness but for the fairy lines he summoned
to dance against the roof of the tent, I told him everything. I told him about
what I’d done to her, about that day. I told him I knew about the accident and
that we couldn’t have secrets. If we were going to do this, if we were going to
fall in love for real and not only when drowned in each other’s pleasure, then
we’d have to share our demons.

I thought he’d let go. Take this last chance at
freedom. No strings attached.

He didn’t.

__________________

“I should have told you myself.”

Eli sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees,
twisting the Soul coin across his knuckles in a distracted, nervous way. I sat
on the floor a few feet from him, cross legged, watching him take the news
badly.

“It doesn’t matter. Did he leave anything out?”

“No, actually, he told it exactly as it happened.” He
squeezed his hand around the coin until his knuckles went white, and when he
opened his hand again the coin was still there. If he meant to make it
disappear or not, I wasn’t sure. “Alistair had no choice but to close down and
scatter everyone. Most of us went into hiding so that Castel couldn’t track us.
I did a better job than others because your mother helped me stay one step
ahead of him. He wasn’t able to find me until I came out of hiding and returned
to the carnival. Some weren’t so lucky.”

“My mother helped you?”

He nodded and began to manipulate the coin between his
fingers again. “Yes. She’d get me a message when he was close and I’d move
again.”

“Castel eventually tracked some of you though, right?”

Eli nodded, his face grave. “Three of us. He killed
them, or the men who worked for him did. That’s what brought us back together.
Alistair thought we could protect each other better from inside.”

“Do you think that’s why he killed them? To force you
out?”

The tempest in his eyes told me he hadn’t considered
it before that moment. Eli ran his hand across his firm mouth.

“That is very likely.”

“Tell me about the key.”

He touched the shape of it beneath his shirt, then
showed me the tattoo of the keyhole on his wrist. “This was Cora’s doing,
actually. Between Olivia and the fire, I was a mess. Self-destructive and
completely out of control. Before we fled the carnival, she gave me a way to
lock our powers. Being twins, we pull from the same pool of magic, so by
locking away my half, we were forced to share his. What we can do now are parlor
tricks to what we could do then. He can’t be allowed access to that much power
again. There’s no telling what damage he could do, forget the number of
Imaginaire’s
he’d kill all for the sake of his revenge.”

“Technically,” I said before taking a deep breath.
“There’s only one
Imaginaire
he requires for that.”

Eli lifted his eyes, warring emotions darkening them.
A warning, and also, a promise. “Don’t even think about it, Serafine. I mean
it.”

I held up my hands in surrender. “I am not the
self-sacrificing type. No hero halo here I promise. But if he gets in and he
looks to do what he’s done before, you can’t let everyone else suffer because
he’s a psychopath and you don’t want to see me hurt.”

“Not hurt, Sera. Dead. An eye for an eye.”

“He loved her, Eli.”

The Magician shot to his feet. “I don’t care! He’ll
take you over my dead body, Sera, I swear on everything I have ever believed
in. I won’t trade you to save myself. I have waited too long for you to lose it
all now.”

His beautiful words made my hands shake. I could
hardly look at him or away from him. He must have seen their effect in my eyes
and his hard expression softened.

“You were going to do it before,” I murmured. “On the
train. You gave me to him to protect the key.”

“I had no intention of allowing him to kill you. If I
would have picked you, it would have made you a bigger target than you have
been already.”

“Eli.” I held up a hand, thoughts occurring to me
faster than I could place them on the game board. He stopped his pursuit and
waited. “He didn’t make me a target that night. He made it today. Why today?
And how did he get me the note to meet him if he couldn’t come through the
gate?”

It took him a second to let my questions sink in, and
then he released a volley of swears that ended with him throwing the Soul coin
at the wall hard enough that it bounced and rolled back to me. I picked it up
off the floor and pocketed it.

“Someone’s helping him. One of our people is
helping
him. I have to go talk to Rook right now. Where are you going to be? Somewhere
safe. I don’t want you to be alone.”

He took my hands and pulled me off the floor. We stood
close and I wanted to kiss him, wanted to bury myself in his arms until this
was all over. But we didn’t have the luxury of time. Castel was coming.

“Micah wanted me to come to her show. I’m meeting Lily
there. I won’t be alone.”

He nodded. “Stay with Micah and Lily. Artom is working
their show tonight. If you feel like you’re in danger at any point, go to him.
He hits like a stick of dynamite. He can protect you until I get there.”

My Magician kissed my forehead then, and the corner of
my eye, and the tip of my nose, the curve of my mouth. “I’ll keep you safe,
Sera. I will make Castel understand that there is nothing to be gained from
sacrificing one love for another.”

“Be careful, Eli,” I whispered against his kiss. I
clung to him, pressed my hand over the Page of Cups and buried the other into
his soft, raven curls. “Castel’s coming for us. Please be careful.”

“Understand me. My brother left me the day that Olivia
died. He was there and then he was gone. The man he is now is a stranger and a
monster. I will not hesitate to end him if it comes to it. Olivia would not
want this for him and he is a long time past saving.”

I kissed his cheek and inhaled the scent of him, the
cloves and brandy of his skin. Somehow I found my way to his mouth and for a
few precious moments we indulged in the one thing I didn’t think we’d ever get
enough of. When he broke the kiss, I felt dizzy and weak.

“I’ll meet you right here after the aerial show.”
Gently he tilted my chin up to meet his unwavering, hard gaze. “I won’t be
parted from you. It’ll never come to that.”

__________________

Lily met me
at the entrance to the Galaxy tent wearing a floor length lace dress that
looked like wet paint clinging to her skin. It revealed a crescent moon
tattooed on the small of her back. She looked distracted and a little bored as
guests filed in to see the big aerial show of the night.

“Ah, amour,”
she purred when I got to her. “Couldn’t tear yourself away?”

“That’s
never going to grow old,” I answered dryly. “And no. My ‘love letter’ was
actually a creepy little stalker message from the other brother. Eli’s gone to
talk to Rook about it. I have a bad feeling.”

Lily froze,
her small mouth forming a silent
O
. “You talked to Castel?”

“The one and
only.”

“He’s coming
here?”

“Eli thinks
so. And soon. We’re supposed to stay near Artom and collect Micah when we’re
done. Apparently he thinks the buddy system is going to help, but I think
that’s wishful thinking. My gut tells me there’s nothing we can do to prepare.”

She closed
her mouth and nodded. “I believe you’re right. Maybe tonight’s a good night to
stay in.”

“If you want
to ditch me, I’ll understand.”

She scoffed
and waved her gloved hand dismissively. “I’m not a coward and I’m not afraid of
Castel. There are some things in this world that are scarier than magicians.” One
perfect blond eyebrow arched over her blue eye.

“Like you?”

“Like me.”

“I feel
better already. Let’s go. If I have to sit through a performance afraid that
the place is going to burn to the ground while I’m in it, I’d rather at least
get to see the show.”

We slipped
in with the crowd and bypassed the ticket taker to find seats at center ring.
Tonight the trapeze seemed so tall I could hardly make out the bars swinging
faintly with the whistle of air coming in. Down the middle of the tent hung two
twin white panels of fabric, but otherwise the stage was empty.

Lily looked
at her watch and settled into her seat on the bleachers. Despite wearing a gown
better suited for a black tie event, she looked perfectly happy on the wooden
bench surrounded by fallen pieces of popcorn and children with sticky cotton
candy fingers.

The crowd
settled as music box music started to play, quick lilting flute notes that the
sent the acrobats running and tumbling from all corners of the tent. They
backflipped and cartwheeled to the ladders and then shimmied up them like
little ants rushing to and fore. They flipped around onto the ladder so two
climbed together, one on each side, and the ones to make it to the top first
grabbed the trapeze bar and swung out, nearly missing the one on the other
side, acting more like monkeys than acrobats until the music slowed back down
and they slid into place crouched up on the platforms on either side of the
tent.

The crowd
applauded and the music became more fairy tale sweet and less wild rumpus.
Micah strode out to the middle of the tent.

She had on a
large silver coat with tails, a mimic of the traditional ringmaster garb. She
wore a silver dusted top hat, her white hair in ringlets, two big white circles
painted on either cheek like blush. She held up her hands in the air and the
applauding became a furious crescendo.

“Ladies and
gentlemen! Welcome to
Carnival Imaginaire
! Let! The Show! Begin!”

The music
explode and the trapeze artists leapt to their bars and flew through the air to
each other, cartwheeling forward to catch the waiting hands only to be swung
with such speed
back back back
towards the ceiling. They pendulumed back
around where a third acrobat was waiting legs out, feet tucked in. The middle
one spun in midair and at the very last second between flying and falling
stretched out her arms and caught ankles.

While the
three birds leapt and spun and flew free through the air without nets or wires,
Micah tossed off her top hat, stepped out of her silver boots and unfastened
her coat. It slid off to reveal white angel wings on her back and a cut away
costume of white feathers falling diagonally across her chest to become her
silver body suit.

She bowed to
the crowd, then ran out to the white panels of fabric hung from the ceiling and
began free climbing them to the top.

As she
climbed, a fourth acrobat came running out dressed similarly to how Micah had
been dressed, carrying one of the carnival’s snow globes.

The music
cut off at the top of a note. The small acrobat spun the key on the base of the
globe and then stepped back as it began to play.

The tent
shimmered. Without thinking I reached for Lily’s hand and she let me take it.
I’d only seen this moment once before, but still it amazed me as the floor of
the Galaxy tent was one moment plain black tarp and the next it was covered in
peaks of snow, tall pine trees rising up towards the trapeze girls, framing the
two white panels Micah climbed. A pool of frozen water sat directly below
Micah, mirroring her movements across the glimmering surface.

Gasps of
surprise, distress, and awe rippled across the tent. Adults and children alike
closed their eyes, pinched themselves as if to wake from dream, too astonished
to believe that the winter wonderland they saw before them could be real.

It couldn’t
be real, of course.

But it was.

The music
box music continued to play as Micah took her position, wrapping a panel of
fabric around each ankle. She slipped into the splits in midair, perched upon
the knots she’d made. She turned and twisted herself inside the fabric, climbed
and dropped as it unwound her towards the waiting ice.

Before
striking it she let loose one of the panels and swung free, stretching her arms
and legs in a midair pirouette. Watching her, it all looked so breathtaking and
easy, though I knew it was anything but. The crowd gasped and
ahh
ed
every time she swung towards them, every time she let herself fall upside down,
suspended only by her ankle or wrist. Every time she did something that seemed
impossible and magical.

Watching her
dance through the air, I almost forgot about Castel.