Sleight (13 page)

“Even if I needed help, no one would dare get involved. They al need Dmitri money. Nobody is going to do anything noble that might jeopardize their precious subsidies.”

“But what does this have to do with me? With the shades, uh, the ghosts? How does Lucian know?”

He fidgeted with the sunglasses in his hands.

“Henry, please…answer me. You’re freaking me out.”

“You know that Ted and Lucian go way back, years before either of us were born. There’s stuff going on that we are a part of, even though we had nothing to do with it. You see the dead, but do you know why? Did you know that you can talk to them?” I was riveted to my seat, very frightened that perhaps Henry Dmitri didn’t have friends because he was as nuts as Delia.

Sensing my growing discomfort, Henry dropped his sunglasses and reached over toward me. I flinched.

“Please,” he whispered, “don’t be afraid. Give me your hands, and listen.” I’d been sitting on my hands to keep them warm, but the seriousness of his face provided ample reassurance that he wasn’t going to hurt me. Not here, not in the parking lot of the high school. There would be too many witnesses.

I slowly retracted my fists from under the warmth of my thighs and held them in the air, hovering just above his open palms.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, the blue-green of his eyes radiating a strange warmth.

“Yes,” I said, placing my hands in his. As I did so, his thumbs and pinky fingers wrapped around the sides of my hands. Henry closed his eyes.

“Helo, Gemma.” A woman’s accented voice, young and soft and kind, danced into my brain, not through my ears but via some internal auditory channel, more like a song than actual spoken words. Melodic…beautiful. And terrifying.

I tried to pul my hands away but Henry held fast, his breathing steady, his eyes reopened and looking into mine. A flicker in the rearview mirror puled my attention. The woman—the one I’d seen trailing Henry al over the place—she smiled at me. I whipped around in my seat, yanking my hands from Henry’s grasp. She had vanished.

Without the warm influence of Henry’s touch, I was back in my own skin, the cold air of the car’s interior cruel. My teeth chattered and I shivered, prompting Henry to turn on the car and crank up the heat.

“She’s the one who folows you around…” I felt dazed.

“My mother.” Henry was silent, his face worried, but more prominent was the look of fear in his eyes. I realized he was just as freaked out as I was as he sat facing me in his seat, transfixed on my body and what language it relayed. “I guess you could say she’s like my guardian angel or something.” He tried to make it sound like everyone had a guardian angel. I knew for a fact that not everyone did. I certainly did not.

I sat quiet for a moment, my head against the seat. I stared straight ahead, searching for clarity, some perspective. I wasn’t finding it on the dashboard or out the front window.

“Can you see her, you know, around? Here in the car?” I said.

“No. I just hear her. In my head.” Henry tapped his temple.

I turned to Henry. “I’m so confused. What does al of this have to do with me?”

“Gemma…” He reached out one hand toward me again, but I stuffed my fists back under my legs. I couldn’t focus on any one thing, and was afraid to look in the mirror again. The adrenaline in my bloodstream pushed my brain into fight-or-flight mode as my subconscious played and replayed the woman’s voice. Henry’s mother’s voice. The rims of my eyes began to burn.

“Please, don’t be afraid,” he said, his eyes pleading with me to listen. He placed his right hand upon my cheek and with his thumb wiped away a tear I didn’t know had falen.

“D-d-don’t be afraid?” I stumbled on my words. “You tel me you—and I, apparently—can communicate with your dead mother, that I’ve been seeing her on a regular basis, and your father not only knows my deepest, darkest secret but he hates me for some reason, and I’m not supposed to be afraid? Explain it to me like I’m stupid, Henry—how does Lucian know?” I sniffed and puled away. I never alowed anyone to see me cry, and although we had just shared a very strange, very intimate moment, I wasn’t prepared to let Henry see me melt into a puddle of tears.

“I know this is a lot to take in—” he said. I didn’t let him finish.

“Henry, I don’t know what you want from me!” I said, anger and fear punctuating every word. I clutched my backpack and camera, and made a frenzied reach for the door handle.

The locks clicked down, fusing the door in place. My heart started to pound.

“Please, I’m begging you. Listen to me. You need to hear this,” Henry said, eyes wide. He looked paler than he was a moment ago.

“Unlock the doors, Henry.”

“Gemma…”

“UNLOCK THE DOORS!” I was teetering on hysteria, stuck somewhere between panic and fury.

We shared a long, doleful stare. “I’m sorry. Pleeeeease, you must listen to me.” He grabbed my upper arm, his grip tight and cool even through the layers of clothing. “Lucian is a very powerful man. You need to talk to your uncle about why you’re realy here.

It’s important. Life-and-death important.”

“How does Lucian know about the shades?” His face was blurred through the buildup of tears in my eyes. I’d protected that secret for so long…what if it got out? I’d be pushed aside, locked up, just as Delia had been.

“He sees them, too.”

I pushed the unlock mechanism and puled the silver handle. The tears began to fal, one splashing on my pant leg. My foot out the opened door hovered above a puddle that had accumulated in a depression in the pavement.

“Wait!” Henry tightened his grip, his voice sharp. “You deserve to know the truth. Ask Ted about the book. Ask him, Gemma,” he said. Without looking at him, I bailed from the car and bolted toward the school, racked with sobs. There was nothing I could do but run. Past the three soiled, sad-looking, dead children. They had reappeared, their heads folowing me as I ran by. I couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact, couldn’t risk them trying to talk to me as the voice in the car had. Did you know that you can talk to them?

I detoured around the main entrance and ran to the footbal stadium. It was raining, a light drizzle that soaked my thin jacket and turned my hair into long, sopping strings. I fished my cel phone out of my jeans pocket and dialed Aunt Marlene’s number, praying al the while she wasn’t strapped to the godforsaken turntable, knives hurtling toward her meaty thighs.

:16:

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

—Galileo Galilei

Twenty minutes later, I emerged from the dripping overhang of the stadium and climbed into Marlene’s car. Enough time had passed for me to colect myself, wipe the smeared mascara from my cheeks, and breathe in a rhythm closer to normal. As we drove out of the parking lot, I looked to the northeast corner. The black BMW was gone, leaving behind a sole patch of dry pavement where it had been sitting. He sees them, too… Ask Ted about the book…

“Are you okay, sweetie?” My aunt looked sick with worry.

“Marlene, did you tel anyone about the ghosts?”

“Heavens, no!” She tapped the brakes a little too hard, jerking us both forward. “Why?”

“Did Ted?”

She was quiet. “He would never tel anyone. Never in a milion years.” I glared at her, and then out the window.

“I need to talk to Ted,” I said, “about the book.” The color drained out of her face, as if someone had turned on a faucet and let the sum of her body’s blood supply spil out al over the car’s seats. “The book?” she said, her voice hardly louder than a whisper.

“You know what I’m talking about then, don’t you?” Marlene nodded. “We’l find Uncle Ted the minute we get home.” She was quiet the rest of the way.

The trailer was empty, though Irwin had neglected to turn off the stereo. A Beethoven compilation CD was playing Piano Sonata No. 14, Opus 2, “Moonlight,” the volume low and sad, a fitting score for the damp, gray day, the weight of secrets hanging low like the clouds.

Al this time I’d been led to believe that we’re here because Ted wanted to bring his circus into a new era, that Dmitri Holdings was an investor that would usher in a solid future for the Cinzio Traveling Players Company. Cut-and-dried business transaction. Right? Ask Ted about the book…

After dumping my stuff, I folowed Marlene across the courtyard and into the stadium. A fine mist stuck to everything, and steam bilowed from the warm mound of horse and elephant dung on the far end of the menagerie. The air was musky, heavy, the pungent aroma of animal mingling with the damp sawdust covering the ground.

Marlene held the tent flap aside for me and I moved through the backstage area, toward the central arena where the galop of horses and holers from riggers high above the ground flooded the space.

The clowns busied themselves with a pyramid, poodles yapping and running around in choreographed circles. Ted and Irwin stood in the center ring, the turntable positioned in the heart of the stadium, the freshly painted flames and iconic skeletons a reminder of things to come. Dante’s Roulette.

I walked around the westernmost ring, in front of the bleachers, to avoid getting in the way of the equestrian rehearsal. Thor, one of the Clydesdales, slowed when he saw me walk by. They were used to me having treats in my pocket. Ted did a double take when he saw me, concern splashing across his face as he looked behind me to Marlene.

“Gemma, what are you doing home?” he said, checking his watch. “Everything okay at school?”

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

Marlene put her hand on my shoulder and spoke in a quieter tone. “We need to take this conversation elsewhere. Gemma has some, um, important questions, and you’re the only one who can give her the answers.”

“Okay. Sure,” he said.

“Everything alright, Gems?” Irwin asked.

“It’s al good, Uncle Irwin,” I placed a reassuring hand on his arm. “Don’t worry.”

“Irwin, I’l be back in a few. Go grab some coffee,” Ted said.

We al moved out of the tent, back into the courtyard, Irwin branching off to the mess tent and Marlene, Ted, and me in single file to the office. I sat down at the table, the surface forever littered with paperwork, and Ted folowed suit, sitting opposite me.

Marlene perched on the smal couch perpendicular to the table, as if she would be the referee if our discussion got out of control.

“So, what’s up? Why are you out of school so early today?” he said.

“Funny thing happened. Henry seems to have had a run of bad luck with Lucian—showed up at school with a black eye yesterday and was absent today. He texted me to meet him in the parking lot after class. I was in photo, so I got a hal pass and went out to Henry’s car to see what was going on,” I said.

“You left class to go see Henry?” Ted asked, disapproval registering in his wrinkled forehead.

“That doesn’t matter. What does matter is the interesting little chat Henry and I had.” I paused, watching Ted’s face for evidence that he knew what was coming next. He was stoic, his expression teetering on annoyed. “First and foremost, I met his dead mother.

That was realy awesome,” I said, heavy on the sarcasm. Ted straightened in his seat. “Second, Henry tels me that Lucian hates my guts, doesn’t want me hanging out with his son, and that you have some crucial information you might want to share with me about why we’re really here in Eaglefern. Something about a book?”

“Wow…this, I didn’t expect. At least not yet.” Ted ran his fingers through his hair, the prior stoicism replaced with unease.

“Wel, apparently Henry thinks it’s important enough for you to tel me sooner rather than later, like, life-and-death important, to use his exact words, and I have to say that I agree with him. I’m pretty pissed off, in fact, that I’ve been duped into thinking we were stuck in this podunk shithole for the good of the circus,” I hissed.

“Thanks, so much, for trusting me.”

“Gemma, calm down. It’s not that I don’t trust you, for crimony’s sake,” he said, patting his chest pocket. “I just didn’t want to pul you into this any more than necessary, at least not yet. I was going to tel you—”

“When! When were you going to tel me? Don’t you think that I deserve to know the truth? Why are we here, for real? What is this book?”

“The answer to both questions is the same thing: we’re here because I had something that Lucian wants. A book. The book. It’s the AVRAKEDAVRA.”

“The what?”

“The AVRAKEDAVRA, or AVRA-K. It’s a magic book. I had it, and he wants it back,” Ted said. He puffed hard on a newly lit cigarette.

“That’s it? Al of this over some sily book?” Ted chuckled under his breath. “Yes, Gemma, al this over some sily book.”

“Fine. Give it to him so we can get back to our normal life. If you give it to him, wil we be able to go back on the road?” I said.

A flicker of hope.

“We’re not going back on the road. We’re grounded until the book is returned to Lucian.” Ted snubbed the half-finished butt in the ashtray and stared at the swirl of smoke as it dissipated. He took a deep breath, as if to calculate his next move. “And I don’t have it. If I did, I would’ve given it to him a long time ago, and this whole mess would’ve been avoided,” he said.

“What’s the big deal about this book? Where is it?” I said.

“The AVRA-K is important to Lucian. It’s very old. There are only seven of them, and it is powerful in the hands of people who know how to use it. It was given to me as a gift, and I wasn’t supposed to part with it, ever,” Ted paused, “but then I returned it to its rightful owners.”

“Who are…?”

“The Delacroixs—Thibeault and Eléne. Henry’s mother, Alicia

—the book belonged to her parents. I gave it to them after she died,” he said, looking down at the table.

“So cal the Delacroixs and get it back. Give it to Lucian. Tear down the big top,” I begged.

“You make it sound so simple.” He sounded tired.

“It should be. It is. Isn’t it?” I looked back and forth between Ted and Marlene, wishing I could understand why this had al become so complicated, so quickly. “Please, Uncle Ted…I’m scared. I’m afraid of Lucian.”