Girl in the Shadows (14 page)

I’d heard Dad tell Raleigh once that if there was someone in the audience obviously trying to see how everything was done, focus on that person. If you got them, you would get the rest.

Be a judge,
I thought at redheaded snake lady.
I’ll win you over.

When the rest of the audience quieted, I began my patter, walking up and down the stage as I did so. “Adelaide Herrmann, known as Addie to her friends and family, performed as the Queen of Magic for decades in the early 1900s. Following the death of her husband, the legendary Alexander Herrmann, she kept the show alive. Though she was carrying on his legacy, she also built one of her own. She could disappear in full view of the audience, and she reportedly once caught six bullets on a stage in New York. Sadly, she is mostly forgotten today, but she was the first female magician of the period—and one of the only women in magic history—to become successful as a solo star.”

I walked over to Dez. I could feel that I had the audience’s attention, if not their full investment yet. I held out the straitjacket, and he accepted it.

“Can you confirm this is a legitimate straitjacket—no tricks?”

He tested it as we’d discussed, pulling at the fabric and the straps to demonstrate.

“Satisfied?” I asked the crowd.

The snake tattoo lady’s arms remained crossed. But the rest of the crowd seemed with me, murmuring assent. I raised my arms, holding them out in front of me.

Dez pulled the jacket over them, sliding it slowly into place. He looked at me with enough intensity that he was
a
distraction. Not a distraction
for
me.

Moira, I want to kiss you.

He kept watching the crowd too, but his eyes always returned to me.

My cheeks went warm, and I returned to my patter. “Addie Herrmann would never have done such a violent escape as the one I’m about to attempt. She was a graceful performer, known for moving like a dancer. I hope to infuse this evening with some of her loveliness.”

“You will,” Dez murmured, and the heat in my cheeks grew.

The woman in the front row smiled a little, though she couldn’t have heard him. It was a positive reaction, though, so I’d take it.

I continued. “She moved like a dancer because that’s what she began as. Much like me, she practiced in secret as a teenager, because her family wouldn’t approve of the pursuit. Dancing, in her case, stunts like this in mine.” When I looked pointedly at the glass coffin, the crowd laughed. “Girls will be girls,” I said, and they laughed more. Even the snake woman smiled.

“When she was discovered, she became part of a revue. Then she went on to become a velocipede rider—what we’d think of as a bicycle racer, which was fairly scandalous at the time—before meeting and marrying Herrmann the Great. With him, she helped create the stage show as we know it now.” I indicated the tent. “With backdrops and with music, the great illusion made into art. And in her own show, Addie Herrmann never spoke, always performing silently to music. So my illusion will also be silent. I will not speak once I enter the airtight coffin you see on the stage, which will be sealed with me inside it. The air within will be expelled—you’ll hear something like a pop and then a puff—and then I invite you to hold your breath while I attempt to escape. See how long you can last. This is no trick. The small confines, as you can see, will make getting free more difficult. Holding my breath while struggling to escape, even more so. But Addie deserves a fitting tribute.”

I stopped speaking and put my back to the crowd so they could watch as Dez buckled the straps.

The tent was absolutely silent. He finished and stepped away, toward the coffin.

“If we are lucky and my performance is a pleasing tribute, maybe she will communicate with us, in one way or another.” I stalked across the stage to Dez, who held the coffin lid open. Music poured from speakers backstage, cued by his friend. At least he got the timing right.

There was no way I could have felt Dez’s hand through the canvas as he held my arm to assist me while I stepped up into the coffin. But I could have sworn I did.

The weight of the audience’s attention lay blanket-heavy over me as I reclined inside the glass container. My movements weren’t awkward, only because of my hours upon hours of practice. With a shake of his head, Dez looked down at me and then lowered the lid into place. The closure clicked, catching.

I closed my eyes, acclimating to the feel of the tight confines around me.

I took a deep breath in and held it. I reached out with one of my feet and pressed a button. Air gasped out of the coffin. I held my breath, and I hoped the audience did too.

Then I started to work my way free.

I turned to my side, bracing my left shoulder against the underside of the coffin. My face was pressed nearly to the glass, but not quite. I forced my lower arm to push against the fabric of the straitjacket.

Doing this while holding my breath made it more difficult because releasing that breath was usually what gave me the slack I needed. If I released mine too early, I’d be gulping in oxygen when I stepped onto the stage. That would hardly be a marvel, and not even close to a miracle.

Through the glass, I could see some faces in the crowd, including the snake woman’s. She simply watched, but other people were holding their breath or had their hands in front of their faces. They weren’t chattering. They were on the edge of their seats.

Exactly as I wanted.

I flipped around to get a better angle, using a little too much energy. I had to wriggle to get back into a place where I had enough leverage to work against the straps.

There.

Arms free. Now to undo the buckles. I reached around behind me and—

No, no, no. Not now.

My palms went hot as fire.

sixteen

My fingers burned as they worked the buckles, on fire as I tried to get them loose before something disastrous happened in full view of the audience.

If only I could plunge them into ice water
.

I shouldn’t have thought that. I should have thought anything else.

Because I knew what I’d done as soon as the first icy drop touched my jaw.

As I fumbled with the buckles, more water came.

Freezing water came from below, rising around me. More and more of it. I was surrounded, and the canvas of the straitjacket soaked through in seconds, growing heavy. Weighing me down, down, down.

It was far heavier than the weight of the audience watching. Heavy enough to drown me.

Squinting, I attempted to look through the water—swiftly filling the coffin—at the audience. I caught a glimpse of the red hair of that woman, still seated. But some people were standing. There were gasps, open mouths.

They’d all forgotten to hold their breath. And so had I, in the moments when my magic showed up. My magic had always transformed, not created. Now my magic was using the breath I’d released to make my wish into reality.

The icy water had filled the glass coffin. My lungs began to burn as badly as my hands did. My heart was on fire too.

I couldn’t last much longer.

I had to get out of here. And I’d told Dez not to break me out.

Usually when I did a trick or an escape, I was calm and methodical. You had to be. Being rattled—or rattling yourself—could mean certain death. Metaphorical and literal.

How much smaller the coffin felt, filled with water. I should have floated up, but I was pinned to the bottom by the straitjacket’s weight.

You can’t breathe, but you have to think.

There, a tiny piece of calm in that thought. In the ability to think. I grabbed onto it and pulled it to me. My hands and my lungs were still burning, but I remembered the heat in my hands was there for a reason.

It was my magic.

My magic was killing my illusion. But could it save me too?

I closed my eyes, hot pain racing through my body, and I envisioned the straitjacket transforming—not entirely into something new, but into a larger version of itself. A version loose enough that I could move. It felt almost like some strength poured into me. Not something I created, but some extra strength from outside.

I drank it in.

And when I shifted my arms, testing my limits, the extra room was there.

Quickly I brought my arms up and undid the buckles with motions half-frantic and half-practiced. I got the straitjacket off.

The heat in my fingers was receding, but if I stepped out of here right now, like this, everyone would see that I was near-drowned.

So I brought my hands up and covered my face below the sparkly mask.
Still in place,
I thought semi-hysterically.
Well done, costumer.
And I imagined a pocket of air in front of my face, pressing back the water. My hands on their own wouldn’t have been sealed tight enough to keep water from slipping through, but my magic did as I asked, because as soon as I felt the water around my mouth evaporate, I opened my lips and sucked in air. Those blessed breaths, shallow and then deeper, returned me to myself.

I was going to make it.

I pulled the straitjacket out of the way, thrashing against it to get it to one side.

The crowd was noisy enough for me to hear them through the glass. There were some claps, but more exclamations.

I looked up at the coffin lid, feeling almost normal, almost recovered. My lungs still burned, but less every moment.

When I stepped out of here, I’d be able to breathe freely again. I’d
be
free.

I focused on the words that had appeared above me, revealed by the moisture. The final element of this stage illusion.

Then I reached up and pressed on them, pushing the coffin lid up and open.

Hands grasped it immediately—Dez’s—and that was good, because my strength faltered.

He kept it propped open like I’d instructed him to, but he wore a troubled expression. He must have known something had gone wrong.

Later. Deal with that later,
I told myself.
Your cup didn’t empty and break.

I ignored him and pulled myself up, then onto my feet so that I stood upright in the coffin. The water sloshed around my ankles, hitting my lower calves.

The applause drowned out the mournful music, and then the violins stopped. There was a hiccup of quiet before the applause grew louder. I scanned back to the red-haired woman’s seat and felt a moment of insult: she was gone. She’d left. Why did that bother me?

Well, her loss,
I thought.

Dez offered me his hand, and I took it, climbing from the coffin onto the stage.

Releasing his fingers, which felt so warm in mine, so normal, so safe, I walked to the front and center of the stage. I raised my arms overhead and then lowered my torso into a deep bow.

No one, with the possible exception of Dez, seemed to have realized the icy water soaking my clothes and skin wasn’t a planned part of the act. And no one was registering any disappointment that according to the prop clock, I’d been in there for almost three minutes. An eternity compared to the two minutes I’d intended.

The last remnants of panic faded, and I straightened and swept a hand toward Dez, or more precisely, toward the coffin lid.

“She must have been pleased,” I said, throat straining to make the words sound normal. They almost did.

Traced by fingertip (mine, not Addie Herrmann’s) were the following words:

Greetings

from one Queen of Magic

to another

Backstage I was met with a furor of a different kind.

Dita hovered near the back entrance. “Moira, I—”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Raleigh spoke over her, confronting me before I had so much as a chance to sit. Or dry off.

He was in his tux and tails, his spooky top hat making him loom even taller. A black-and-white-striped bow tie hung loose around his neck, part of the distraction plan.

He should have been an intimidating sight, but suddenly I had no intention of apologizing. My magic had come, surged out of control, and then I’d controlled
it
. Not easily. But I had.

“Opening for you,” I said, crossing my arms in front of myself, for warmth as much as in defiance. My skin was all-over goose bumps from the water’s chill. But I refused to appear cowed. “You better get out there. The crowd is all warmed up. You don’t want them going cold.”

Raleigh glowered at me. “Moira Mi—”

“Miraculous, I know.” I cut him off before he could say my real last name.

He shook his head, lids lowering in a lazy way that registered as a warning. He pulled the bow tie from around his neck and tossed it at Dita, who lunged forward and caught it. “That’s why you offered to chat bow ties with me? To distract me, so she could do this? Horn in on my act?”

“That’s not exactly it,” Dita said.

“She only did what I asked. You can go, Dita.” She took the chance to bolt. I didn’t blame her.

“You’re not seriously guilting me over this, are you?” I said, shaking my head at Raleigh and narrowing my eyes. “Do I need to remind you how
you
got your break into magic?”

I didn’t mean Dad—or not just Dad, anyway. Raleigh had managed to hide from the custodians and stay overnight in the theater. When Dad showed up to rehearse a new illusion with some new assistants from the agency, Raleigh had revealed himself with bluster and asked to show Dad a trick. It was part of how I got the idea for unveiling my talents to my father. Why not show him, like Raleigh had? Only later did Dad find out Raleigh didn’t have any place to stay and would have had no money to get back to New Orleans if it hadn’t worked out. He’d hitchhiked all the way across the country.

He knew what it meant to want this.

“That’s different,” he said. “I had no other options.”

“Neither do I.”

Dez had stayed quiet, but he spoke up now with a calm that made me uneasy. “You shouldn’t yell at her. You should just be worried about trying to top what she did out there. Good luck. You’re going to need it.”

The two of them glowered at each other. Having someone truly in my corner was nice.

Brandon, with good timing for once, breezed through the curtain, pushing my coffin ahead of him. “Stage is clear.”

“Fine,” Raleigh said finally, and shrugged his shoulders high. Then he released them and shook off the tension. “We’ll finish discussing this later.”

He snapped his fingers at Brandon, who hopped to and helped maneuver the cabinet that had Marie and Caliban inside it already out onto the stage. Raleigh didn’t so much as glance in my direction while he waited for his moment.

As soon as Dez’s friend came back through, Raleigh glided past the curtain, doing something that earned him a hearty round of applause almost as soon as he appeared.

Now that Raleigh was gone, my hands were shaky. So was my body.

Wait, no.
The problem was the cold. I was shivering. The chill ran all the way through me, as soon as I allowed myself to feel it.

Dez put his arms around me, pulling me in close to him. I didn’t protest. Every molecule of my skin was screaming to get as close to his warmth as possible. “You’re freezing,” he said.

He looked around for something and settled on a robe beside one of the dressing tables, which he shuffled us over to without releasing me. He picked it up, billowed it around my shoulders, and pulled it close.

“Just get warm. Then you can send me away and go take a hot shower.” His lips quirked up on one side. “And not just hot because you’ll be in it. Too bad I have a show to do too, you know.”

“Don’t be . . . ridiculous.” My teeth chattered the tiniest bit, and I went quiet, absorbing the warmth.

“The water,” he said. “Where did it come from? That’s some trick you’ve got. I don’t see any way for it to be there.”

There was no denying the surge of victory that standing on that stage and hearing the applause had brought. But being trapped in that water had been terrifying.

I didn’t want to lie, so I didn’t. Not exactly. “It is, isn’t it? Some trick.”

He ticked his head to one side. “A magician never reveals her secrets?”

I should have thought of that. My brain needed to kick back into gear. “Do you think Raleigh will let me perform again?”

“I think everyone who watched you will be talking about nothing else.”

“Did you see that”—I paused for a small chattering of teeth—“lady who left? With the red hair. She wasn’t im-p-p-pressed.”

“No,” he said. “I saw an audience that was obsessed, who’ll be talking about it for days, like I said. And that kind of talk has a way of getting back to the boss. Thurston will know by the end of the night. But . . .”

“What?” I asked, afraid. The troubled look Dez had worn when I climbed out of the glass coffin was back.

It was too dark for me to see his eyes, but I could hear the concern in his voice. “That was an illusion, just an illusion, right? You weren’t in danger?”

I coughed. “This from the boy who threw a dozen knives at me?”

He didn’t budge. “You weren’t in danger then. Were you tonight?”

I struggled to come up with the right words. I didn’t want to lie to him, but I couldn’t blurt out that I possessed real magic. In the end, I didn’t have to. Brandon reappeared and cleared his throat loudly. “We have a paycheck to earn,” he said.

“Thanks for your help,” I told him, only somewhat grudgingly.

“That was badass,” he said. “But it was charity. So we better go, D. Can’t risk getting fired for your . . . friend.”

That quick, I was back to not liking him again.

Dez gathered the robe around me tighter, transferring the fabric he held to my hands so it would stay in place. He whispered, “Moira, I still want to kiss you.” He pressed a quick kiss to my lips before I could have stopped him.

Trouble was, I wouldn’t have. I was alive, my heart was beating, and the soft press of his lips to mine only left me disappointed we didn’t have time or space or privacy for a real kiss. For more.

And then I knew I was absolutely in danger, standing here, right now. I was done protesting. My feelings were real. I’d have to trust his were too.

“Well?” he asked, hesitating. “Were you in danger?”

His friend throat-cleared again.

“Not so much in danger,” I said, tapping his shoulder, “as playing with fire.”

“You mean me.” From his careless smile, I assumed he bought it. He left, disappearing through the back tent flap when Brandon lifted it aside.

I figured we were even. He’d lied to me when we met, about that stupid knife heart. A lie for a lie. Mine was almost the truth—except for the not-being-in-danger part. I was deep in it.