Chapter Five

I hope the birds are okay.

I slink down to the floor, breathing hard.

Boots stomp toward me. Instinct propels me to my hands and knees, and I scramble back the way I came, but a hand grabs my sweatshirt and yanks until I backpedal onto my butt. I’m dragged around the last wall of boxes and into the light.

The bird girl looks up from where she’s bent next to her cage of spilled birds. Her eyes widen in recognition, but she says nothing, going back to cooing softly at her riled doves.

The fire girl looms above me, flames twisting in one of her palms, but it’s her face that scares the shit out of me. I scoot away from her snarl, but she’s faster. Her free hand snatches my upper arm and pulls me to my feet. Even though she’s not much taller than me, her grip is iron. But it releases me the second she makes eye contact. Her hand darts out and yanks the hood off my head.

“Hey,” I say. I feel more vulnerable without my face half hidden.

“You,” the fire girl grumbles. “What are you sneaking around for? I almost roasted you like a bug.” She turns her glare on Xander, who’s leaning against the edge of the long wooden table with his arms folded across his chest, watching us with a smirk on his face. “You told me you lost her,” she says.

Lost me?

“And now I found her, darling.” Xander’s voice is practically a purr, like he’s talking to a wildcat.

I’m not here for him, but my stomach drops a little at the way he calls her darling.

“No. She found us.” Her expression could set him on fire. Maybe they just have history. Turning back to me, she gives me a once-over. “Come on in. I’m Aristelle. We have a lot to talk about.” She propels me toward the table.

“I…” My mouth opens and closes. I glance around the room. It’s nothing much—just as dingy and chaotic as you’d expect backstage to be, with clothes piled on the floor and boxes with props overflowing. The long, worn wooden table sits in the center, surrounded by an array of mismatched folding chairs. It’s the kind of room I’d be comfortable in—if not for the people.

My stare settles on the twins. Their clothes drip even though their hair is bone-dry. Their breath falls and rises like any other human, except for the fact that they never seem to breathe out of sync with each other.

In and out, in and out. They turn their heads toward me and stare back.

I grab a full cup of water that’s definitely not mine from the table and lift it to my lips, eyeing them over the rim. Holding their breath that long isn’t even the weird part. David Blaine held his breath for seventeen minutes. No illusions either. He explained the lengths he went to, to be able to do it. The first time he tried to break the record on television, he ended up convulsing underwater as the overwhelming urge to breathe took over. He was pulled out, but he kept trying. The only strings behind his trick were sheer determination and will.

The twins weren’t under that long.

I’m still struggling to find another explanation—one that’s easier, one that lets me go back to just wanting impressive illusions.

But their clothes changed right in front of me.

I can’t remember if I blinked. I didn’t. But I was trying so hard not to, maybe I did, like when you’re playing the blinking game as a kid and knowing you can’t blink makes the urge almost impossible to fight.

I blinked. I must have.

But no. I didn’t.

I place the cup back on the table. My hand trembles, sloshing water over the side.

“She already knows,” Aristelle says.

“She must have snuck onto the stage,” the bird girl says.

“I suppose that gets rid of the awkward bit,” Aristelle says.

“Ava.” I don’t like the soft, slow way Xander says my name. He sounds like a predator trying to keep me from running. “Why don’t you sit down, and we’ll talk about what you just saw.”

“I didn’t see a thing.” My damn voice cracks. I don’t know why I deny it. I came back here for answers. It must be the basic instinct to pretend everything is the way you’d thought. It’s probably why so many people refuse to accept that vampires are real. But I’m not one of those people. I can make leaps that others won’t.

Aristelle’s head snaps in my direction. “She’s going to bolt.”

Xander takes a step closer to me.

Aristelle rises slowly from the table and stalks toward me.

I consider fleeing like prey. I’m standing in a room with people who aren’t quite human. I feel that truth in the tremble in my limbs that screams at me to go, go, go. Maybe they are vampires. Maybe vampires have magic, and that’s why Mom didn’t want me asking about the real stuff. Maybe she knew a lot about vampires, and that’s why they killed her. I don’t know. The real vampires didn’t give up a lot of details during their ten minutes of fame, so all I know are myths and legends and movies. Maybe vampires walk in sunlight and play with cards.

But I don’t think so. If they were vampires, they had plenty of time to rip my throat out.

This is something else.

This is what Mom wrote about. It wasn’t hyperbole or fantasy. She was talking about this.

I need to know. The bird girl slides into a seat at the table next to the girl dressed in green. Both give me small smiles, so I take the open end of the bench next to them while Xander and Aristelle sit across from me. I sit down a little too hard.

“Okay, then,” Aristelle says.

Xander puts a hand on her arm. “Let’s give her a minute to settle in.”

“We don’t have a minute.” Aristelle jerks her arm away from him.

“Yes, we do.” Xander turns a tight smile on me and then waves a hand at the girl in the green dress. “This is Diantha.”

Her green dress shimmers as she twists slightly toward me and smiles, warm and inviting even though she says nothing. She’s gorgeous as always. I pull at the hem of my sweatshirt.

“Briar and Bridgette.” Twin girls with white-blond hair shift their sky-blue eyes on me. They don’t smile. They seem disappointed that Aristelle didn’t burn me.

“Reina.” The bird girl reaches across Diantha and pats me on the arm.

“Sorry about your birds,” I mumble.

“They’re fine.” She winks.

“And, of course, Aristelle.” Xander gives her a dramatic little bow, like he’s introducing her onstage. She looks as if she could burst into flames again at any moment.

But I’m with her. I’m burning with my need for answers—not pleasant introductions. I decide to just blurt it out before Xander can decide to talk about the weather. “So, you have magic… like, real magic. No strings. No tricks. Magic.”

“Well, I’m actually quite good at sleight of hand,” Xander says. He snaps his finger, and the queen of spades appears in his hand. He winks at me. “That was all skill. No magic, but this…” He opens his palm and the queen of spades floats into the air and then explodes into all four suits of queens. He blows them in my direction, and they drift around my head like a crown. He waits, like he expects me to clap or something.

I give him nothing. I already know what he can do. I need answers about how he’s doing it.

Diantha clears her throat. “Maybe now’s not the time for that.”

“Sorry,” he says as the cards drop around me. “You’ve heard of the Society of American Magicians?”

I nod. They were formed in the early 1900s. Houdini was the well-known president for a while, until he died.

He takes a deep breath. “Well, we’re part of an older society, with secrets that go beyond how we pull off illusions. We call ourselves the Society of True Magicians, and yes, we have real power in our blood that lets us perform tricks way beyond what an ordinary magician could do.”

I open my mouth, but he holds up a hand with a tight smile. “Save the questions until the end, please.”

I scowl but stay silent.

“The Society formed in Rome around fifty AD with some sleight-of-hand magicians called the Acetabularii. They practiced the ball-and-three-cup trick we still see today. Anyone with real skill at sleight of hand could do it. I bet you can do it?” He raises an eyebrow in question.

I don’t bother answering. Of course I can.

He smirks. “Thought so. Anyway, the story goes, one of the magicians was gambling big on her own tricks, confident she could move the ball where she wanted with skill and misdirection. She was the best. The crowds loved her. But one day a very wealthy man wanted to play, and the magician bet her entire worth on that single game, but the wealthy man guessed correctly, and no amount of misdirection was going to save the magician from destitution. She knew the ball was under the guessed cup, but in desperation, she willed it to move to another one. And it did. It didn’t make sense. She went home with her newfound wealth and tried to make it move with only her mind again, and it worked at first, but only for a day or two. So she tried again with an audience, and it worked again.”

“The audience gives you magic?” I ask. It’s actually easy to believe when I think about the way I felt onstage with Xander, when the audience was enthralled and half believing he had real magic. It felt like I did too. It felt like I could do anything at all.

“Yes and no. The audience feeds the magic already in us. Magicians stuck together even back then, so they started experimenting. They found that more than one of them could move the ball only with their minds, but the conditions had to be right. They needed an audience to watch. Though now we’ve realized it’s more than the watching; it’s the believing. The magic’s strongest when your audience believes your tricks are real, and then you can make them real. Not everyone could do it, though. The ones who could do real magic described the feeling of being in front of an audience as a bubbling or humming in their blood. They passed it off as adrenaline, but it was something much more.” Xander pauses, and his eyes focus in on me, waiting.

Bubbling blood. I know that feeling. I passed it off as the rush of being onstage.

Mom knew the feeling too. Craved it.

“I’m one of you,” I say.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Aristelle says. “You’re not one of us until you’re one of us. You’ve got magic in your blood, but that doesn’t make you special. Everyone does.”

I turn to Xander like I’m expecting him to rebut her and tell me I am special, but then I feel a little silly about it.

Xander sees my look. “We think everyone has a little bit of power in them, but for most people, it’s so insignificant that they’ll never feel it, and for those who feel it, they explain it as something else. Very few people have enough of it to use it.”

“But you think I do.” I narrow my eyes at Aristelle before shifting my stare to Xander. “You were talking about me before I sent the birds flying.” It was either me or the girl in gold, and technically he directed that invitation backstage to me. “You told me to come back after the first show. Did you already know who I was?”

“Aren’t you a sneaky little rat,” Aristelle says.

“You clearly want something from me, so I’d rethink insulting me.”

Aristelle looks like she’s choking on her tongue. Xander chuckles, but his eyes stay locked on mine like he’s trying to read me.

“You knew my name,” I press. “Did you already know who I was?” My skin prickles. I’m starting to feel like this was a trap set just for me. If they already know who my parents are, then maybe it was.

“I told you that you gave me your name. I didn’t use any manipulation on you.”

I don’t believe him, but it’s not impossible. I was in a bit of a daze from the high of being onstage.

“Should we know who you are?” Aristelle raises her eyebrows.

I could drop my last name. I could tell them about Mom and what she wrote in her journals, but I don’t. There wasn’t just a desire for her old life in Mom’s journal entries. There was fear, too. And there was one page I’d written off before, but it digs into my mind now.

I don’t know if he’s coming after her or me. Probably both.

I always wondered who the he was in the entry. And if I was the her. It could have been written before I was born. Mom could have written it about one of the members of her troupe, but who was after her? We did move around a lot. What if it was about another magician chasing us? A rivalry? What if the vampire who killed her was involved?

I think of the tall, creepy dude who warned me away from here.

My uncertainty keeps me from sharing.

I also don’t like the way they keep stealing glances at each other. But I notice things like that—probably more than most. When you don’t have stability in your life, reading people can be the only way to see what’s coming.

I don’t have their whole story yet, so I’m not going to give them mine.

“Are you somebody?” Aristelle asks. I don’t like the way she phrases the question.

“No,” I say.

They sit silently for a moment, like I’m going to change my answer.

“You’re not answering my question. Tell me why you were waiting for me.”

Xander nods like he’s made up his mind about something. “We travel in troupes because if we perform together, we all get that boost of magic in our blood. We can also feel other magicians when their powers are being used or sometimes if we’re just close by them. People who don’t know any better pass the feeling off as attraction.”

I work hard to keep my face straight, because I definitely felt that pull to be close to him, to be close to all of them, really, and I wrote it off as wanting the illusions or, in Xander’s case, being attracted to him. I’m almost relieved to know it’s not real.

“So when you were on the stage with me, I could feel the power building in you.” He pauses. “A lot of power, actually, and then I watched your coin trick on the street. You’re a natural. That’s why I told you to come again, and that’s why I invited you backstage. You clearly have the ability to be one of us with the right training.”

He thinks I did that coin trick on purpose. I open my mouth to correct him but change my mind. I want them to think I belong with them. “But you said you needed me—not that I need you. You’re forgetting I heard all of that, so why don’t you stop dancing around and tell me everything.”

Reina’s been quiet for so long that I almost forgot she and Diantha were beside me. “We were looking for a new apprentice, so we were watching for anyone to respond to the magic.” Her warm smile soothes some of my instinct that’s telling me to get out of here. “Obviously you caught our attention.”

“But you sounded desperate.”

“We are,” Diantha says.

I wait for her to say more, but she looks at the table.

They all stare at each other like they don’t know how to explain whatever’s coming next. Xander looks like he’s working himself up to speaking, but then he freezes and tilts his head like a voice is speaking just to him. Another look passes between Xander and Aristelle.

“We have a quick thing to take care of. Wait here.” Xander stands up.

“What?” I rise from my seat.

“Now doesn’t seem like the time for this,” Reina says.

“There’s always time for this,” Aristelle says.

Aristelle and Xander practically run out the door.

Reina turns a painfully cheerful smile on me. “They’ll be back in a jiffy.”

“Do you want to play dice?” the twins ask in unison.

I shake my head and step back. “I think I need some fresh air.” Diantha and Reina share a look. “I’m not going to run,” I add, but my own voice doesn’t sound sure.

They let me walk away, but I’m barely out on the street when Diantha comes up beside me.

“You should follow them,” she says. “I don’t know how much they’re planning to tell you, but whatever they say, it’s not the same as seeing.” She points to the left. “They went that way.”

I have no idea how she can tell where they disappeared to. I don’t see them, but I don’t hesitate. I need to know what they’re not saying. What someone’s not telling you is always more important than what they are telling you.

I give Diantha a nod and then run. I hate running at night, but it’s fairly busy, so I’m not too worried about getting jumped.

Before long I spot Xander’s green hair and slow. I follow, keeping to the other side of the street. I try to stay behind other people walking to their evening plans, but Xander and Aristelle keep stopping. Each time they do, they shift their heads in the same direction before moving on. We’re drifting out of the heart of downtown. There are fewer people, and I worry they’ll turn and spot me, but they don’t. They only pause and wait, like they’re deciding which way to go, but they don’t talk to each other before striding on. It’s like they know where they’re going but don’t at the same time.

The hairs on my neck prickle.

It feels like I’m hunting them, but it feels like they’re hunting too.

They pause beside a bar with nobody outside. Xander reaches out and grabs Aristelle’s hand, interlocking their fingers. He flashes a smile at her as he does, and then they move around the side of the bar.

My stomach feels like it’s in my toes, making my feet too heavy to move.

That’s not what I expected, but I force myself forward.

Just before I reach the dark alley they disappeared down, a young man runs out of it.

I take a step back. His wide eyes roam over me like he doesn’t even see me. His fingers hold his neck. He runs in the other direction.

My heart starts pumping so fast I let out an unsteady gasp. Breathe, I tell myself as I reach into my backpack for my stake.

I’ve practiced for this.

I watched 30 Days of Night a dozen times, even though the scenes where vampires killed people made me sick. I wanted to cry and hyperventilate each time, but I taught myself to breathe through the pain and the fear and the memory.

Focus.

They’ve obviously tricked me. Of course real vampires would have powers I don’t know about. Mom must have gotten tangled up with them somehow. Maybe she even knew they were vampires. Maybe she even knew Xander and Aristelle. For all I know, they’re the ones who killed her.

My breathing is calm. Perfect.

The stake in my hand is rough, and my grip is solid even though my palms sweat.

I take the last few steps to the mouth of the alley.

Xander pushes a girl against the side of the bar. His forearm presses into her throat. Aristelle stands in front of the girl, her nose just inches from the girl’s neck. They’re only a few feet from me, so I don’t wait, I don’t think, I just charge.

Xander’s closest, with his back slightly to me, so I hit him and send him stumbling into Aristelle, who gets knocked onto her ass. She snarls, but then her eyes widen a fraction when she realizes it’s me. As Xander stumbles, he grabs onto one of my biceps and carries me with him, and I end up slammed against the wall.

There’s a wicked curl to his lips when he looks down at me, but then it fades. “Ava?”

“Saying my name won’t help you,” I say.

His eyes widen as he feels it: my stake pressed against his skin, ready to take his heart.

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