Girl in the Shadows (12 page)

fourteen

The next day I was headed to the Maroni trailer for my conversation with Nan when I bumped into—literally, to my horror—Dez. He came out of nowhere, and we collided.

He put his hands on my arms, steadying me.

“Was that a ploy?” I asked. “Have you been waiting around?”

That grin I wanted not to like returned. “Someone’s in a mood. Why would I be waiting around here?”

He looked around, and his eyes settled on the Maronis’ RV. He lowered his voice. “People say things about Nan Maroni, you know.”

Dita had said as much, but it felt wrong to gossip about her. “So I’ve heard. They probably say things about me. And about you too.”

“If they were saying things about you
and
me, I’d like them better.”

Gah.
My cursed heart couldn’t help responding to this.

“Don’t blush,” he said. “Though it is cute. You don’t want to hear the gossip? Everyone likes gossip.”

“Fine. What do they say?”

“That she has magical powers.”

I should’ve guessed this was what he’d say. “She doesn’t seem like a witch to me,” I said, careful. It was too close to home.

“Me either,” he said. “Enough about her. I’m more interested in you. Did you decide yet?”

He might as well be doing the boy equivalent of batting his eyelashes. This level of charming should come with a danger category designation like a hurricane.
We’ve got cat-five flirting developing in the middle of the Cirque camp.

“Yes,” I said. “Memphis work for you?”

“Memphis it is.” He grinned. “You want to hang out now? Discuss the details?”

I could hardly tell him I was here for Nan. “Right now I’m going to see Jules.”

“I know a brush-off when I hear one. See what you can find out about Raleigh’s schedule, when he gets to his tent before his act. I’ll do the same for the assistant, and we’ll compare notes. Talk to you soon, lovely Moira.”

He smiled at me, and I braced for another kiss, but he sidled off when I didn’t stop him from going.
Argh.
I pulled myself together, completed my journey, and knocked on the door to the Maroni RV.

“It’s open. Come in!” Jules called.

The family was watching an old movie together, or hanging out while Nan and Jules did, anyway. Their father, Emil, gave every appearance of napping. Novio Garcia was there too, with an air of Zen suffering, in a kitchen chair pulled over to the side of the couch.

Jules had the remote next to her. She started to pause it and get up. So I had to awkwardly say, “I’m here to see Nan.”

Nan rose. “I’ll be back in five minutes. Keep watching. You know I can quote the entire thing from memory.”

Jules looked between us with interest but settled back into the couch.

Nan met me outside on the grass. I was a little worried Dez might return and spot us together, but the coast remained clear.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I started looking for my mother.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Did you find her?”

“She put a phony name on the birth certificate: Regina A. Ghost. And then she sent me a message. A clear one.” I pulled up the e-mail on my phone. “She doesn’t want to be found.”

“What woman would do such a thing?” she asked. “Use a fake name on a birth certificate?” An unfiltered response, because she added, “Sorry. If she’s Praestigae, that might explain it. The secrecy.”

“I still don’t get what that means. But she somehow knew I’d requested the birth certificate, and she didn’t like it.”

I held the phone out for her. She peered at the screen.

“What a strange woman.” Nan shook her head slowly, considering. “Has your magic presented again? Have you tried to call on it?”

We were speaking softly, but I still looked around to confirm that no one was paying attention to us. Dez had that ability of popping up unexpectedly. There were a few people crossing the grounds nearby, but they seemed safely head-in-the-clouds in their own worlds, unconcerned with ours.

“It came back the other day.” When she frowned in concern, I explained. “It was okay. Barely. It was during a performance. I was in a straitjacket. But I was able to rush through the end.”

Her mouth was slightly open. “In a straitjacket?”

“Doing an escape. You didn’t think I was all about card tricks, did you? Anyway, I made something out of a regular coin.” I had the heart-shaped former penny in my pocket. Much as I wanted to toss it, I felt like I should hang on to it. When I held it, it was almost like my palm heated again, just barely. Not enough to freak out over.

But like the little copper heart had a spark of life in it.

“May I see?” she asked. No badgering like that first day in the tent.

I produced it, rolling it out to the end of my fingers and showing it to her.

She didn’t take it, and I was relieved not to have to hand it over. She squinted.

“Were you visualizing this when it happened?” she asked. “It is a heart? The real kind?”

“I wasn’t. I was thinking about the person who gave me the penny.” I didn’t elaborate on who that was. “He, um, had heart pain. No lasting effects, though.”

“So much detail for an accidental creation.” She paused. “I wish we knew more about your limits. Your mother’s reluctance to be found seems like an important part of the puzzle. Can you talk to your father about her? Are you still in contact with him?”

Dad. The reason I was here. The only person I could guarantee to have some kind of answer. “I was afraid you’d say that. Yes, I am. I’ll call him.”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” she said, and started to go back inside to her movie.

“Wait.”

She stopped.

“This coin everyone is searching for,” I said. “Should we be worried about that?”

“I hope
everyone
isn’t searching for it.” Her face darkened, and there was a distance to her answer, like she was reliving the past at the same time she spoke. “Jules promises me that no one will find it, and I have to believe her.”

“But if someone did find it . . .”

“The coin in and of itself holds lucky magic—it protects the holder—but only if they use it, keep it on them. Like all magic, even an object of good can boast a double edge, a sharp one. It can corrupt. It can make the wearer feel untouchable. That’s why it’s a good thing it’s gone.”

But the coin wasn’t truly gone. Remy and Jules knew where it was, and Jules had some plan to move it. I kept that to myself. Their secrets weren’t mine to tell.

Nan’s next words sent guilt spiking through me. “You must tell me if you hear anything about it. We can decide what to do. These people would be a danger to all of us.”

“I should tell
you
, not Thurston?” I had gotten the distinct sense the other night that she didn’t fully trust him.

“You’re too smart for your own good. But, yes, Thurston believing in magic would not be a good thing. I don’t want to encourage him to start.”

“Why would it be so bad for him to know?”

For anyone to.

“You might think those tidy break-ins were nothing much to worry about, and perhaps you would be right. But they were a beginning. People will do things to possess even a fraction of magic. Thurston is a good man, but he is curious and powerful. I would rather he stay a good man, with limits to his power.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “No word to Thurston. If I hear anything that makes me concerned, I’ll come straight to you.”

That wasn’t a lie. I wasn’t concerned about what I’d overheard. To be completely honest, another item of magic on the loose seemed like a welcome distraction for anyone who would potentially notice mine. It was a threat that there were people looking for magic, and misdirection could be as powerful a tool as any magic coin.

Looking satisfied, Nan glided back to the RV and disappeared inside.

I took my phone out of my pocket as I walked away and considered the little voice-mail icon. It had been lit up since that morning, a tiny numeral one superimposed over the audio reel symbol. I pressed to play it, holding the phone tight to my ear. Even if it hadn’t said who the missed call was from, I already knew who it would be.

I’d been dodging Dad for almost a week now, hadn’t I? Texting back with first the address in Ithaca, then sending an e-mail about how busy I was. I still hadn’t come up with a Dad strategy for the delicate operation of asking him about my mother. He would want to fly straight to me, and that obviously couldn’t happen. Not yet.

For so many reasons.

None of this made it any less nice to hear his voice. “Moira, sweetheart, it’s Dad. If you’re mad about what happened before you left . . . I should have been nicer about it. But call me, all right? I’m having daughter withdrawal over here. Also, I need to complain about everyone at the theater. And I have to take the little quiet guy on a tour of my private collection, which you know I hate. Oops, I’m now actively making a case for you
not
to call. I hope you’re learning a lot and having fun. But not too much fun. Call me. Okay, bye, love you.”

I didn’t want to hurt him, and asking about my mother was going to do that, at a minimum. He was a good dad. He cared. I thought even his prohibition on magicianship came from a place of wanting to protect me from the slings and arrows of the world—or, more accurately, from failing at achieving something he viewed as smoke and mirrors, an impossible mirage.

I deleted the message after I finished playing it back, but I didn’t return the call. Not yet.

I’d just finished a coin trick and was waiting for Raleigh to make his twenty-minutes-early arrival for his second performance. It would be three days in a row, if he showed, good enough for me to proceed with the plan that Dez, Dita, and I were concocting for Memphis.

The head costumer, a colorful eccentric named Sunshine, had been all too happy to get to work on a new costume for Dita, and to create a mask for me that would make me look like I’d “stepped out of a magical dream.” She’d clapped her hands and said, “Cat eyes.”

As Dez had suggested, I’d been observing Raleigh’s arrival and departure times, stationing myself near his tent before each of the two performances he did during each midway session. (More than two would be death for a magician—too much risk of someone returning a third time and seeing how the illusion was created.)

Scanning for Raleigh, I turned to take in the crowds coming my way and saw Dez instead. He was having a serious conversation with the devil-bearded man who’d been dealing on poker night, Rex the family friend. Tonight he wasn’t in a suit coat, but he did sport an old-fashioned hat. Not a fedora, but something like one. Brandon was with them, listening intently.

Dez said one last thing, then left the two of them behind.

And spotted me.

“My favorite person,” he said, sidling up. The almost-fedora moved away in the crowd behind him. “How are you doing?” he asked.

The question struck me as sincere, not just polite.

“I’ve been better, I’ve been worse.”

“Too bad,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

He smiled at me, and my heart responded immediately by speeding up.

“Don’t doubt me so, Moira. I like you. I’m proving it. I only meant that your answer sounded like you could be doing better. I hate to hear that.”

“Oh. Did you find out about the assistant?”

“Yep. She shows up as close to curtain as possible. Five minutes early, max.”

In the distance behind him, I saw the Ferris wheel spinning through the air. Dez would have to get back to his own stage soon. And Raleigh chose that moment—right on schedule, actually—to pass by us, pulling on his stage jacket. He stopped and frowned at the two of us.

“Ready to let me open yet?” I asked sweetly. It was worth a shot.

“Keep asking.” But he added, as he always did, something to string me along. “It’ll happen someday.”

I sighed. Pure theater.

For a moment, it seemed like he might say something else, but in the end he just shook his head and went on around the back of his tent.

Our plan was solid. It would work. On our first night in Memphis, Dita was going to distract Raleigh—she was going to ask his advice on suit cuts for future variations on her new costume, something male magicians knew a lot about, in exchange for teaching him how to tie bow ties perfectly.

“Have you figured out what trick you’re doing for your big debut?” Dez asked. “I saw you in the straitjacket. I hope this one’ll be less painful?”

Behind him, the arms of the Ferris wheel stopped, shining in place in the night sky. “Why would an audience want to watch something easy, Mr. Knife-Thrower? Would that make them feel like they’d seen something beyond what they could do?”

“People like tricks.” He refused to cede the point.

“People like daring.”

“You’re doing something scary is what you’re telling me?” he said.

“I’ll be using the straitjacket again. And I’m bringing my own coffin,” I said, enjoying the way his mouth had dropped open in surprise. “Don’t worry. I’ll teach you your part before I climb into it. Any problem?”

He swallowed, then grinned. “For you, anything.”