A Criminal Magic (28 page)

I let myself relish the victory.

*    *    *

The day only gets better. I go down to practice expecting a heap of hell from some of the troupe for playing boss, but when I announce that Gunn's on the road and they're going to need to deal with
me
,
I barely get a grumble, not even from Tommy or Rose. Our practice even reminds me a little of our days back in the clearing, when our only real worry was figuring out how to make our magic all it could be. No blood, no back-office deals, no secrets.

So in honor of the troupe, I suggest our immersive finale be a garden, like the one that Billy and Ral built in the clearing, on that first day Gunn was testing us.

Because there're some things that you can't speak, but that magic can say.

“The finale is perfect, Joan,” Ral says, after we break a little early, all share a smoke outside the Den's door, the winter breeze a welcome change from the trapped air of the show space. His smile has returned, as has his normal olive skin, the aftereffects of his shine bender gone. It relieves me, and I nod and touch his shoulder. I guess we all need to escape once in a while.

“The garden might be one of our best finales yet. It's beautiful.” Grace blows a steady train of smoke circles that she somehow enchants into a parade of smoky flowers. I laugh as I attempt to grab them.

“They're right,” Alex whispers beside me. He's so close our arms are touching, his forearm putting the slightest pressure on my recent blood-magic scars. He looks up at me with his perfect smirk. “The crowd's lucky that Gunn got called away—that it's you at the helm. Tonight's going to be extraordinary.”

And when the doors open tonight, I taste things I've never tasted so exactly before, though of course I've gotten whiffs of them—pride, and ownership. Like the Red Den really could be my show. Like I was made to dazzle and win over a crowd, and make them fall in love.

“Let's light this place on fire, Joan,” Alex says, as the first wave of patrons in their black-tie best and dazzling dresses floods the cocktail bar.

I match his smile. Not going to lie: when he came back to the
show space wearing a tux, I almost wrapped myself right around him. Alex reminds me of what magic can feel like. He reminds me of the best kind of performance, one that taunts and teases and slowly sneaks up on you, until it has you completely.

“I'm ready,” I say. “Just hope you can keep up.”

“Getting a little cocky, aren't we, considering last night I had sixty-three percent of the crowd on my side of the mirror?”

“Sixty-three percent? You're sure about that?”

“Positive,” he teases, as he takes his place on his side of the glass stand. “You might need to step up your performance, Joan. I daresay the pupil is eclipsing the master.”

A group of older women dressed to the nines in furs and red lipstick settle into the front row on my left, while a few couples in matching silky black sit down on my right.

“Put your magic where your mouth is, Danfrey.” I nod to my side of the glass stand. “Prediction: I've got the whole crowd by the end of the show.”

He gives a put-on, theatrical gasp. “She raises the stakes,” he says. “Challenge accepted.”

Alex warms the crowd up with a manipulation of my replica that must be impressive, but not jaw-dropping. I can tell by the whispers of the ladies on the front bench, the ones ogling and whispering about
Alex
, instead of his magic.

When it's my turn, I go for broke and light Alex's replica up from the inside, as if I'm turning him on like a jack-o'-lantern. His face, suit, skin—they glisten. He looks otherworldly as he glows from the glass. A few audience members on his side actually stand up because of the whispers on my side and angle around to see. Alex even breaks our protocol, takes a few steps toward me instead of returning my trick with another of his own, and peers around to spy on what I've done.

“You're supposed to wait until the end of the round,” I stage-whisper, and the patrons closest to us laugh.

“I couldn't.” His actual face looks almost as radiant as his replica's.

We're flirting, sparring, pushing each other with our magic—we both know it. I want to beat him so badly. A very small part of me wants him to beat me.

Truth be told, I want us both to soar.

And then I block out Gunn's warnings about Alex with everything I've got. Because Gunn's not here right now. For once, I focus not on what I should do, but on what I want. And maybe, just tonight, I deserve that.
I want to lose myself in this. . . . I want to lose myself in him.

We run through it again and again, and before I feel like I've fully settled into the trick, the clock chimes its hourly bell, nine chimes for nine o'-clock, marking the end of the performance hour.

“I'll meet you over by our spot on the right after the intermission, okay?” I say to Alex, once I reach him.

“Where are you going?”

“I'm working the floor tonight, remember?” I wink at him. “Pretending to be Gunn? I need to check in with the rest of the team.”

Alex folds into the crowd for the parlor trick intermission, and I start making the rounds, checking in on the troupe, making sure everyone has their part to play in the finale. To me, it sort of feels like our first show.

“I know you're nervous, but this is going like clockwork, Joan,” Grace says when I find her near the front. “And I'd sure as hell rather answer to you than Gunn.”

“Billy and Ral all right?”

She smiles. “Think they're honored about the tribute to their garden.”

I feel myself beaming. “And Tommy and Rose?”

She throws a glance across the show space, where Tommy
leans over Rose in the corner, whispering. “As hard to read as ever.” She laughs. “I think they're fine.”

I laugh with her, squeeze her hand. I'm grateful for her, for everything, and for just one minute I let myself pretend that this really is my place, that there is no Gunn.

I walk with purpose,
confidence
, through the crowd, excited to get back to Alex and begin the finale. But then I spot him on the other side of the show space—and I realize he's been pulled aside by Boss McEvoy.

I can't hear them from here, even if I attempted to use magic, but Alex looks upset. His brow is creased, and he's using hand gestures, speaking to the floor, as McEvoy keeps interrupting him heatedly, like he's barking. Even from halfway across the room, I see the deep-purple bruises underneath McEvoy's eyes, the dull-gray polish to his skin. He's either hankering for something magic, or he's coming down. Then he grabs Alex's collar and yanks him closer.

Panic grabs me and I start cutting through the crowd, though I'm not sure what the heck I'm going to do when I reach Alex. Tell the boss of the Shaws to calm down? Get some air? Gunn's not here, none of the higher-ups are here to calm McEvoy down—

Thankfully, before I reach them, McEvoy stumbles away from Alex, swimming upstream against a crowd now gathering in the center for our finale.

I tap Alex on the shoulder.

He whips around, looks like he's just seen a ghost.

“What was that about?” I say breathlessly.

“It's fine, it's nothing,” Alex says slowly, runs a hand through his blond hair. “He's just taking the night off, and he's all hopped up on dust. I've seen him like this before. I'm used to him taking it out on me.”

But I don't know how someone like Alex can ever get used to being treated like that, can learn to accept it. It makes me hate
McEvoy just a little bit more. It also makes me wonder what Alex's father was like, if this wonderful boy has learned to smile in the face of being browbeaten. “Was it strange seeing him here, in this world, instead of out on the street?”

“Strange, but in a good way,” Alex says. “Reminds me how lucky I was to get out from under his shadow.”

“Come on.” I take his hand, pull it gently. “I think it's time we got you your own breath of fresh air.”

And our magic immersion finale is just that. Trees sprout up and bloom along the aisle. A huge crisscrossed lattice of ivy runs one story above the floor, from the double doors to the back stage. Birds fly, darting across the two-story space, and grass begins to grow up from the cement floor. And as we watch our troupe's magic unfold around the audience, Alex takes my hand and squeezes.
Long ago there was a sorcerer who met her match, who finally understood all that magic could be
—

And just like magic, Alex taps into something raw and pure and electric inside me. I feel . . . light,
free
, by his side, like I'm riding my own personal high, and without Gunn here to tether and weigh me down, I get an idea, wild and unlike me. A chance to celebrate my recent turn of fate, to reward myself just a little, live a little bolder and bigger in the now. Honestly, I'm not even sure if I want to do it or if I
need
to do it, if the desire to let go—to forget my charge, my past,
myself
—has become so strong that it's taken on a mind of its own. And despite my complicated past with it, I know shine is the only thing that will actually let me get as lost as I want to.

So when we approach the stage to brew our sorcerer's shine for the audience, I whip around and sputter to Alex, “When we're done, I think—I think we should join the crowd tonight, on the floor.”

Alex studies me, confused, as we approach the stage stairs. “What do you mean, take sorcerer's shine?”

I blush and turn away.
What if he doesn't want to? What then?
“Tommy and Rose do it every night—and Billy and Ral join the crowd on their fair share of evenings. Only one time, like a celebration. Just once. I thought, I mean, if you don't want to—”

I let my garbled sentence hang there, watch a storm of emotions cloud Alex's face. We arrange ourselves onstage, each take a glass bottle that's been left for us.

Then Alex leans in and whispers, “I want to.”

We brew our magic touch into our bottles, and then once more to ensure we've got enough for the audience. The stagehands take the bottles of shine, pour them into shot glasses, and start to pass the glasses around to the crowd. And then the place explodes into a beautiful chaos, and the rest of my troupe, sans Grace, begins to descend into the madness themselves, each grabbing a shot of shine from a nearby stagehand's tray.

This time Alex and I go with them. I don't meet Grace's eyes as I move with Alex to the floor, even though I hear her call after me as I move to the stairs, “Joan, wait, where are you going?” Because I'm kind of as surprised as she is that I'm actually going through with this, and yet I also don't want to stop.

Alex looks around. “Do you want to stay on the floor with the audience?”

No, I want you for myself
. “The underbosses aren't using the VIP lounge tonight, since Gunn's on the road. We could go there.”

“How gracious of Gunn.” Alex smiles. But I can tell he's nervous, maybe as nervous as I am. “Lead the way.”

As soon as we get to the small lounge along the left corridor, I close the door behind me and spellbind it, lock it tight. The room's cozy: a few chairs, a little round table, and a sofa. A room meant to serve as a clandestine meeting spot, for Gunn's
bigwig guests and the underbosses who trade schemes behind magic concealments. But right now the room is ours. And it feels charged, dangerous. Alex and I have been alone before, but not like this.

“You sure you want to go through with this?” Alex raises his shot glass of shine.

Shine will always have dark edges, thanks to Uncle Jed and the way he ended up losing himself in the bottle. And yet, I want so much more from Alex, and I know shine is the only thing that will let me escape myself, let me have him, in the here and the now. “I think so.”
But I know so. I want to wrap a cocoon around us. Just for one night, I want to know you in a way I can't form words around, in a way that I'm positive only magic can say.
“Have you ever tried it before?”

Alex peers into his glass. “A few times. In darker days.” When he next looks up, his eyes hold a strange mix of warmth and hunger. “I have a feeling it will be different with you.” He touches his shot glass to mine. “If you want to jump, I'll jump with you.”

And then, before I get cold feet, I take the shine and swallow it.

It burns a bit on the way down, feels like I'm drinking pop heated over a stove, but when it hits the center of my gut, it spreads across my loins like warm honey. And then the warmth rushes up from my core to my throat and spreads around my mind. The world sparks to life, dances, tilts, and I stumble and collapse into the corner. There's hysterical laughter pawing at my ears before I realize it's mine.

“Whoa,” I whisper, then laugh and look at Alex, who's stumbling into a seated position on the floor next to me. I laugh again. “The word ‘whoa' is so strange-sounding, isn't it? W . . . H . . . O . . . A . . .” and then I can literally see the letters,
W
,
H
,
O
,
A
,
come floating out of my mouth like little word balloons.

“Here.” I grasp at the air, giggling, trying to wrap my fingers around the
A
that continues to float up from my mouth to the ceiling. “An
A
, for Alex.”

I keep the little letter trapped in my hand like a firefly and try to hand it to Alex. But he's already collapsed onto the floor, back to the ground, sprawled out and looking up at the ceiling of the lounge, like the shine has somehow broken it open to the heavens.

Wait, it
has
.

“Oh my God.” I lie down, straighten myself out beside him, and look up at a thick swirling constellation, a dusty, bright collection of moving, blinking stars.