Trance (22 page)

A breathless gasp from the audience.

A spotlight flashed across my face blurring my vision.

Someone’s hand on my shoulder pulled me backwards and I stumbled.

An angry shriek offstage that sounded like a wailing cat, followed by a string of obscenities.

I was still on stage. Still on camera. Watched by hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of people, and I didn’t have a clue what was happening.

“I can’t let you risk it.” Jason was in front of me now, his face inches from mine, his eyes alight with worry. “I can see it in you, Scarlett, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.”

The stone in my hand fell to the floor and amplified around the theatre as it hit the ground.

“But, I have to.” My voice sounded hollow, far away. It lacked the conviction that I knew had already left me.

“No,” he said. “You don’t.”

The fan blades swished behind my back, thumping to an ominous beat.

“Yes, she does.” The television executive came on stage, she hissed her words out like she was spitting them away. “If she doesn’t, I’ll see to it that her career is ruined. She won’t get paid, she won’t get any publicity, she’ll be a nobody. Is that what you want? You want to be a nobody, that can’t make it in showbiz?”

I was already a nobody. Just the assistant to the famous Thomas Tinks, or at least I used to be. I wasn’t him and I wouldn’t ever be. I was wrong to think I could be something more.

“No.” Jason shook me. “You are a performer, but you are much more than that.”

A quiet calm came over me, an inner strength that I didn’t know I had. I heard music in my head, something that I knew only I could hear.

I looked offstage. Lacey’s hands were in front of her face, wringing them. She expected me to run now., expected me to crumple and cry.

I glanced at the audience. With the lights up I could see their faces, all of them were looking at me with expectation. They all wanted me to walk through the blades, to entertain them. One woman rolled her eyes as if she knew all along that I’d be a coward. Was that what I was, a coward?

Not anymore.

I walked to the edge of the stage to speak to the crowd. “I’m not going through the fan today. I’m sorry if you came here, expecting that to happen, I really am. I know what it’s like when you think you can predict the outcome of every situation. Tonight you all thought you would see Thomas walk through the blades, and when he was hurt, you were waiting for the same thing to happen to me. But you know what? I’ve already done it. I walked through last night, and I could probably do it again right now, if I really wanted to, but I’m not going to. I don’t need to prove that to myself, that’s not who I am.”

A camera moved closer to me, and I knew they were zooming in on my face.

“You’ve all got to witness an amazing show tonight. Something that may or may not be shown on television how. You’ve seen Jason Green perform a brilliant act full of laughter and thrills. You’ve got to see me do some simple tricks too - most of which you have seen before, but some you may not have. The truth is, while I love being on stage, it was the laughter and applause that delighted me the most tonight. I never realized how much fun being funny could be. I never thought of myself as funny before.”

I smiled.

“But walking through the fan, knowing that if I make one tiny mistake I could get crushed just like my grandfather. I’m not willing to take that risk. But I don’t want you to think you’re missing out on something, so there is one risk I am willing to take.”

I turned my back on the audience and held out my hand to Jason.

He came over to me, tentatively at first, scanning the crowd and the camera’s, trying to understand what I was doing. When he was close enough I took his hand in mine.

“Jason, what I’m about to say is far scarier for me than walking through any blades. I’ve shut myself off from people and kept them away for fear that I’ll get hurt again. But pushing people away and walling myself off from the world hasn’t healed any of it. It’s still there, just below the surface, threatening to bleed out again the minute I bump against something. I know you said you only wanted to be friends…”

“I said that because I couldn’t make you happy. You were confident, strong before, and then, with me, you seemed weak and frightened. I was hurting you.”

“No. I was always weak and frightened, long before I met you. I’m just a good actress.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying I love you. I don’t want to be friends, I want more. I want to be your girlfriend, I want to be in your arms. If I have to risk the chance that you’ll hurt me, then so be it.”

“I won’t hurt you.”

Someone in the audience awed and another laughed. Nobody knew what to do or say. I wanted Jason to say something else, wanted to hear him tell me that he loved me too. Just say it, I willed. Tell me.

“Just kiss her,” someone in the audience yelled out.

He grinned. “I was thinking the same thing myself.”

He moved closer to me, his hand wrapping around my back, the other reaching into my hair, tangling his hands in it and messing it up. Lacey would be fuming that I’d messed my look up, or perhaps she wouldn’t. He bent me back slightly, his lips pausing just before they met mine.

He whispered into my mouth. “I don’t want to be friends either. This is what I really want.”

His lips brushed mine, lightly at first and then stronger and deeper. I wrapped my arms around his neck letting him hold me, trusting that he wouldn’t drop me. Trusting him, something new for me.

Someone whistled in the audience and there was more laughter.

I heard the television exec stomp offstage. I didn’t care. I’d find the money for Thomas’s bills another way. There was always another way.

Jason pulled away, letting me stand up again. I leaned into him as the crowd stood up, cheering and clapping for us.

I felt awkward, but at the same time exhilarated and happy.

He bowed to the audience, and I curtsied, before he dragged me offstage.

When we were away from the cameras and crowd, he turned to me. “Was that real or part of your act?”

“What?”

“Do you really love me?

Panic began to pulse through me. Did he really think I did that to save face? How could I be so stupid?

“I want you to say it,” he continued. “Here, without anyone watching. Without any cameras or audience spurring you on.”

“I can’t believe you’re doubting me.”

“I’m not doubting you. I believe you. But you need to prove it to yourself. Without being on show.”

“I love you. I’ve loved you almost from the moment we met, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. It was too scary and I didn’t understand at first. The attraction - that’s a given because, frankly, you’re gorgeous, but love - I felt it, I feel it. I want you to love me back.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You don’t love me?”

“I haven’t said that.”

“Then if you don’t love me, there’s nothing I can do. I’ll go on living my life. I’ll survive.”

“You’ll be you, no matter what I say?”

“Yes.” I didn’t understand where he was going with this. But I knew since it was true, that I would be okay.

He smiled and kissed me again. “I do love you.”

I swatted him. “Then why all this crazy talk? Are you trying to make me even more insecure?”

He laughed. “No. I’m trying to make you see that you don’t need me, or Thomas, or anyone. You only need yourself. I want you to understand that you don’t have to love me, because I love you. Feelings are real, and not a reaction to someone else. Real love, it needs to be individual, something that is true to yourself no matter what the world or another person thinks. Especially now.”

“Now?”

He shook his head. “You’ve just declared your love for me on camera in front of an audience of hundreds. I know you shut yourself off from the world you can’t see, but trust me. This is going to be big news. Everyone is going to have an opinion on this.”

“I don’t care. I don’t care what anyone says or anyone thinks. I love you, Jason Green.”

He leaned forward touching his forehead to mine. “I love you too, Scarlett Tinks. I really do.”

I bent over searching the stage floor for the rock that Jason had given me before the show. I kneeled down feeling the hard wooden boards beneath my knees, lowering my face until it almost touched the ground, looking for where the small gift might have fallen.

The
crowd had long gone, the cameras packed up. The only lights came from side stage, making it difficult to see anything on the floor. My gaze scanned each angle, my hand following, not trusting my vision to find it. To my left I glimpsed something that seemed out of place. A shadow that shouldn’t be there. I crawled forward to examine what was making it.

I couldn’t see anything, but I glided my hand over the floor anyway, and found success. The stone had angled itself between two floorboards, not enough to fall through, but enough to get stuck and be overlooked easily enough.

I pulled at it with my fingers, trying to get it free. Reaching up to my hair, I took out a bobby pin and straightened it out. It would work well enough as a lever. I pushed it under the stone and flicked upwards. Sure enough, the stone flipped out and landed just ahead of me.

I picked it up, rolling the stone in my hand. The lucky rock whose sole job was to make my night perfect.

Had it succeeded?

I closed my eyes holding it to my chest. 

Jason came and kneeled next to me. I knew it was him from his footsteps. Slow, strong, determined. I didn’t move.

“You know it’s not really lucky.”

I smiled, still not opening my eyes. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

“I found it in my yard before I came here. I told you it was lucky so you’d have the confidence to get through the fan.”

“Well, I think it’s very lucky.”

“It’s a rock.”

I opened my eyes. “You said you believed in magic.”

He laughed. “The kind that you do, hiding cards up your sleeve. Sure I do.”

I shook my head. “No real magic. The magic when you see a car everywhere if you are thinking of buying one, or how someone will invade your thoughts and the phone will ring and you just know it’s them. Or the magic when your skin tingles just before someone is about to kiss you.”

“Like now,” he leaned closer to me, tempting me with his lips.

I turned my head. “Something happened tonight that I didn’t expect. Something magical.”

“Only one thing? Hell, the whole night was crazy. Everything was different to what was supposed to happen.”

“No. I think it happened exactly as it was supposed to.” I turned back to him. “Everything.” I kissed him quickly and stood up, holding my hand out for him to help him up.

He smirked. “Now that we’re alone, we could make more magic.” He took my hand, but instead of letting me pull him up, he pulled me down into his lap, reaching his hand under my t-shirt and cupping my breast. The tingling magic fluttered.

“No,” I said. “Not here. I have a better idea.”

I kissed him, letting my tongue explore his mouth until he groaned and then I pulled away, standing up and holding my hand out for him again.

He took it this time, letting me pull him to his feet.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“You’ll see,” I said.

I still had the stone with me, when we pulled the car to a stop outside the fairground.

“It’s closed,” he said.

“When has being closed ever stopped you?”

He grinned and raised his eyebrow. “You certainly have found your confidence.”

“You have no idea.”

I opened the car door and got out. “I want to show you real magic. So you can see for yourself.”

He followed behind and I pressed the button to lock the car before walking over to the chain link fence. It rattled as I jumped up and scaled it easily.

Jason grinned and followed behind.

I took his hand in mine and dragged him toward the Hall of Mirrors. The door was locked, as I expected it to be. I reached up, feeling for the old nail. It was still there, after all this time.

“This is breaking and entering,” he said.

“Scared?”

“Not a bit.”

I used the nail to lever the hinge on one side out of its socket, and did the same for the bottom one. Then I pulled the door forward. It was still locked of course, but we weren’t entering on that side. I squeezed through and Jason followed.

I felt around for the light switch until my hand touched the set of four switches. I knew exactly the two I wanted, and flicked them up.

The lights in the crystal tree garden came on, as well as soft lighting in the mirror maze.

“Taking me back to the place we met. Kinky.”

I walked over to the mirror that showed me being split in two. “This is my favorite mirror. Two copies of myself that are both identical yet each of them have slight differences. Look.”

Jason looked into the mirror. “They look the same. Mirror images.”

“No. They’re different. The mirror isn’t perfect, it has scratches and grooves. It’s changed from people touching it, or from time. Each side slightly altered from the other one. Each reflection of me is changed, not a true copy. The slightest mark reflects back a poorer version of myself.”

He leaned in closer, his head appearing on both sides of the mirror. “Okay, yeah. I can see that.”

“That’s what I used to see. I used to see myself split in two, with both versions of myself imperfect. On one hand there was Scarlett Tinks, performer, magician’s assistant, destined to be on stage all my life since I didn’t know anything else. On the other side, there was Scarlett Tinks, the girl whose mother died when she was a eleven, blames herself for it, and who dated the man who killed her.”

I turned, looking at myself from different angles. “But neither of them are really me.
I learned that magic tonight. They might look like me, but they aren’t really me, just copies. I didn’t know the difference until a few hours ago.”

“What changed?”

“When I didn’t step through the blades, nothing happened. My life didn’t end, my career didn’t collapse. I didn’t even have a career before tonight because I don’t know what I want to do yet, I did what I was supposed to do, and what everyone in my family has always done. And that isn’t scary anymore it’s freeing. I can do anything. Anything. And if it doesn’t work, then I can do something else.”

Jason moved behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist so that there
were two reflections of us staring back at ourselves.

“Look, two copies, but they aren’t us. Anyone can say whatever they like about what they think we are, but they don’t know the true us. I used to worry about what other people thought of me. That’s why I couldn’t cope with going online or reading the news. But you know what, they only see the outer-selves, not who we truly are inside.”

“All that from tonight? Quite a revelation for one evening.”

“Are you teasing me?”

“A bit.”

I wiggled my hips back against him hoping it would drive him wild. I turned to face him and saw the glazed look in his eyes. “Could you always see the real me?”

“No. You hid yourself well, but I saw glimpses. Enough that I knew how special you were.”

“But you stayed. No one has ever stayed and fought for me before.”

“You’re worth it, every moment I tried to figure out what you were thinking, I looked past the facade, searching for the real you. You let your guard down enough times to let me see, let me fall for you. That’s why I stayed. I’ve never met anyone like you. Fragile one minute and confident the next. Independent and passionate, but vulnerable. Smart, funny, talented, loyal. And, of course, sexy as hell.”

I felt giddy again. “It’s probably too late to go to the hospital and visit Thomas. He’ll be wondering where I am and if I’m okay.” I traced my finger over his chest.

“Too late for visitors,” Jason agreed.

“I should probably go home then.”

“Probably.” Jason brushed my hair away from my cheek and tucked it behind my ear.

“Tomorrow is a new day, and I should get an early night.”

“Yes, early night.” Jason leaned down and kissed my neck. His fingers played with the edge of my t-shirt letting the sleeve slip down off my shoulder. His kisses trailed down my neck and over my shoulder. I quivered, falling into him, moaning softly at his touch.

My hands ran around his back, down his hips around to his stomach.

“Maybe I could stay a little bit longer.”

“No. You’re going to stay all night, here, with me.” Jason picked me up, carrying me to the mirror maze. “Here, where we first met.”

“The rogue of the mirror maze. He’s finally caught his damsel in distress.”

“I don’t think this damsel is in distress any longer. She’s going to be just fine.”