by Gwenda Bond
Nan absorbed that. I waited, not sure what her next move was. For my part, I believed Maria Garcia was telling the truth. She sounded too affronted not to be.
Nan said, “You swear on your father’s grave that you aren’t behind this?”
The two of them stared like they could see inside each other.
Maria said, “I swear it on my father’s and my mother’s graves.”
Nan rose, tucking the cards away. She reached for my arm and pulled me up. “We’ll see ourselves out. My apologies.”
She wasn’t softer when she said it. She was—if it was possible—harder. Brittle. I worried she’d crack into a million pieces. Gone was the strength that had carried us here.
Remy was blocking our way. But when I gave him a slight shake of my head, he pressed against the sprawling marble counter, allowing us to pass. Slinking out together, it was like we’d committed a crime, rather than come to avenge one.
We didn’t speak on the way home, and when we got inside, Nan pushed me down onto the couch as she went into the back. “Wait here.”
I melted into the cushions, knowing if I closed my eyes I’d be out no matter how much I didn’t want to sleep. I expected to have one of those terrible nightmares, and that it would be about Sam and Beauty. He had died because of something that had taken place decades before. Something everyone blamed Nan for. He died because of magic.
Magic. Yes, finally I was almost convinced it was real. Which was a crazy thought, but what made the most sense. Even Sam would probably have been forced to agree with me at this point. Except he couldn’t anymore.
Nan returned, and I didn’t miss that her right hand was closed in a loose fist. She was holding something. She settled down, facing me.
I sat up. “What do you have?”
“In a moment,” she said, “I’ll explain in a moment. I wish I knew this was the right thing.” She tapped her empty hand against the back of the couch, watching me. “But there’s no way to be sure. It’s all I have.”
She was clearly talking to herself, so I waited until she finished. I asked, “Your affair with Roman Garcia back then . . .”
Nan sighed. Every line in her face showed under the overhead light. She looked much older. “It’s not important. Not right now.”
“He had a family,” I said. “So did you—didn’t you?”
“My boys were still little. I don’t know what your dad would remember. I think he only knows what people said when we left.”
“You weren’t married, but Roman was.” She claimed it wasn’t important, but it had to be.
“The woman is always at fault in an affair. At least, as far as everyone else cares. I was the one who got blamed. Roman . . . he was magnetic. He could get his wife to forgive anything, even that.”
“It doesn’t sound like it worked out that way,” I pointed out. “The Garcias hate us.”
“And we them. Or we should.” She sighed again. “Are you just mad that it turns out I had a relationship with your boyfriend’s grandfather?”
I stilled.
“So he is your boyfriend. I thought so, after that scene at the graveyard.” And then she unfolded her fingers and held up her palm between us, as if that fact alone had decided her.
The light didn’t reflect off the small, round object. It was metal, but dulled by the passage of time. Bronze, maybe? A coin of some kind.
There was something that pulled me. My hand rose before I could stop, reached out to touch the coin. The effect was the opposite of what I’d felt when I touched the elephant hair. I wanted to grab it.
I hesitated.
“Take it,” Nan said. “It’s the only way.”
The coin warmed in my fingers, or at least I was almost sure it did. Having it in my hand made me feel different. I studied the small bronze coin. Roman numerals were engraved on it, and the rough shape of someone’s head. “What is this?”
“It is from the Circus Maximus, the very first circus of any kind. An ancient Roman coin the Garcias passed down to their family patriarchs. I don’t know who got it to begin with, or where, but it was their luck. The reason they said they never had bad accidents and always achieved great performances. Roman . . . treated it like a talisman. I took it from him when I left the circus.”
I had to digest that. “You stole it?”
“He owed it to me.”
Holding it in my hand, it was hard to imagine letting it go. Rationally I knew that was an insane thing to think. But when magic begins to make sense, rationality leaves the building. I weighed the coin’s unusual warmth in my palm and started talking.
“The people who were hurt . . . killed . . . that summer. Those tragedies had to do with those other objects, didn’t they? Were those things his too? What happened?”
I bathed again in the loud silence of things not yet said.
“You told me you gave the Garcias the cards, before, as a peace offering. Why did you lie?”
“Because I hoped it wouldn’t matter,” she said.
“That has to mean they stole them. You realize that?”
“It doesn’t. I don’t think she did. Whoever broke in that night . . . whoever’s doing this . . . they know the whole story. They found the objects and planted them, and they left the cards in the Garcias’ RV. It must have been to deflect attention. Send us in the wrong direction.”
The idea that someone had thought this through enough to misdirect us made the whole thing even scarier. And more infuriating. “Glad someone knows the whole story.”
When she finally responded, she said, “The coin is something more than good luck. It’s powerful enough to protect you. After what happened to Sam . . . It needs to be on you when you perform. Promise me.”
“How do you know? Have you used it before?”
“Never. I wanted to leave all this in the past, where it belonged. I swore I would never do anything more than lay the cards, read what they told me the future held. Tarot is a small magic, compared to what is in the coin.”
Nan pursed her lips, then, “Jules, you can’t tell anyone you have it. Especially not your boyfriend.”
“You’re not going to tell me to stop seeing him?” I dare you to.
“I’m not a fool. Not anymore. Just promise me you’ll keep it quiet. Look what happened to Sam.”
“Who besides the Garcias and you and Dad would care about Sam and Dita dating? It could just be a coincidence.”
Nan narrowed her eyes, crow’s feet deepening. She looked as old as the earth, as the stars. And yet fragile. “It isn’t, and you know it. I don’t know who’s doing this, but I’m sure of that. And it would only worry your father. Just . . . be discreet. You have been so far. It shouldn’t be any hardship.”
I waited to see if she’d say anything else. When it became clear she wouldn’t, I said, “I’m not going to stop looking for answers.”
She smiled, and that sense of her being an ageless elder vanished. She was Nan. Herself, amused and sad. “Why do you think I’m giving you the luckiest charm there is?”
I closed my fingers around the coin. “Can I do magic?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. Not many people can now. And even if you could, I wouldn’t teach you how. I will never work that kind of magic again. It only leads to pain.”
“Damn,” I said.
Her eyebrows lifted.
“I was hoping for a bright spot in this sea of awful,” I said.
If I had magic, I’d find a way to use it to fix things instead of breaking them. But at least I had the coin, maybe the one piece of magic in all this that could do good, if what she said was true. A piece of magic would have to be enough.
twenty-seven
* * *
I was up early the next morning to pack my gear and costume. The night before, I’d taken a tiny pair of scissors from Mom’s sewing kit and slit the lining in my right walking slipper. The opening was the fraction I needed to tuck the coin safely inside. The slippers went in the over
sized bag last, and I zipped it up and lugged it out to the kitchen.
Not believing Nan from the start had resulted in losing Sam. My grief was so raw that it felt like an open wound in my chest. So I was embracing a new strategy. I would believe Nan. I would proceed under the assumption that her magic worked.
Dad was drinking coffee at the table. He blinked at me over the edge of his cup like I might be a mirage. The dark circles under his eyes echoed the sloshing liquid in the mug. He took in the bag. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“My walk’s today. Why aren’t you ready to go?”
He paused, cup in midair. “Julieta, is this really what you think is best?”
“I am walking the Board of Trade at noon. Everyone else doesn’t think it’s canceled, do they?” He made no answer. “Do they?”
I tossed the bag on the floor. “Get ready. I’m going to tell Thurston it’s on.”
He set the cup down. Mom called from the back, “Emil? What’s going on?”
I could sense things about to go south. I had a plan. It was my only plan, and it involved doing this Fourth of July walk.
“Listen,” I said. “We have to go on. Sam wouldn’t want everything to stop. It’s the Batman building. I have to do this, for him. People will think this family is done for unless we prove that we’re not.”
And I wanted to show whoever planted those objects that I wasn’t done for either.
Nan entered the room in her red dressing gown. Dad sighed. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
Since he was now looking at Nan, I did the same. I pleaded my case to her.
“I’ll be perfectly safe. Every precaution will be taken. Has been taken.” She’d know what I meant. “I need to do this. There’s a reason they say the show must go on. It’s not just for me, it’s for everyone.”
Nan narrowed her eyes. She said, “It’s not your first time up there, and if you promise you’ll take . . . care, then I don’t see any reason to stop you.”
“I promise,” I said, quickly. “Dad, please.”
I was prepared for him to keep arguing—and Mom too, once she emerged. Depression had kicked in hard over losing Sam, and Beauty being shipped off. She felt responsible.
Dad stood in one clean motion, like he was preparing for a walk or a fight, his muscles controlled. I waited, trying to settle on an argument to convince him, while he took the three steps to stand in front of me. He lifted a hand and laid it on my cheek.
“You’re certain?” he asked. “You’re up to this? It would be fine not to be. You and Sam are close.”
“Were close.” My throat was tight. “I need to do this.”
His hand lowered to my shoulder. “We’re leaving town later, going back to work at the next show anyway. I don’t see what it can hurt. Go find Thurston. I’ll take care of everything here.”
Thurston must have stayed up late the night before, and had many drinks. When he answered the door of his trailer, he badly needed coffee, a shave, and a shower.
“Jules?” he said, dazed.
He struck me as genuinely crushed by the events of the last few days. Enough that I had serious doubts that he could be our culprit, though I still wanted to get my hands on the letter from Roman he’d held on to. If the guilty party wasn’t him or the Garcias . . . then who?
“Has something happened?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “But we’re not done, right? You do want the show to come back from this week.”
“I do,” he said, but slow with confusion. “Why?”
“I’m doing my walk. Today. The Fourth of July walk.”
By the time I got through to him why I was there, that my parents were on board, he was picking up the phone to call his assistant. He told her to get the mayor for him. The guys had just started breaking down the tent so we could leave, and his next call was to order Remy’s dad to get his crew and the rigging for the wire together instead.
The scouting had been done at the location. And by now getting the wire strung for the outdoor walks was old hat.
“So, we’re on?” I said, standing in the door of his giant RV, nervous that someone would say no, that it was too late.
Thurston held his phone to his chest. “I’ll take care of it. Give me a half hour and meet me back here.”
I ran all the way to get Dad and my bag.
An hour later, Thurston, Dad, and I stood on the street below the forty-story art deco monster in question.
Because of the holiday, the sidewalks and streets around us were free of the busy traffic that would have usually clogged the area. No fast-talking men in suits lingered outside, phones glued to their ears, like I’d seen when I’d initially scouted the building. There were a few families scattered on the sidewalks and a couple of street vendors setting up, but it was early in the day. Thurston’s press team and the city’s July Fourth celebration organizers were just putting out the word that the walk was back on.
I slowly took in the view of the building from this low vantage, starting from the bottom and working my way up the impressive brown stone structure. There was a bank of revolving doors at the bottom, and, a story and a half above, an old-fashioned clock, its white hands and numerals stark against a black and gray background. It was the standout feature up to the twentieth floor, which featured a setback and broad open gap—which I’d be walking across. The rest of the building continued to thrust upward.
The silhouette narrowed until finally, at the very top, a silver statue of the robed goddess Ceres balanced, as if she’d climbed up the building for the view. She was a Roman deity who had something to do with fertility and crops. Financial types—I’d never understand them.
At the upper levels, the building was tall enough for the sun to hit the stone and turn it nearly golden. Fluffy white clouds lazed in the sky above. There was almost no wind, almost no humidity. The conditions were perfect.
I watched as our guys stretched the wire across the sixty-foot gap.
Dad strode over to me. I followed his gaze as he looked behind us. The building stood at a T-shaped juncture of streets. LaSalle Street unfurled into a canyon of buildings stretching back and back and back. After appreciating it, we turned to face the building again, looking up to where the men were working.
“That’s a beautiful line,” Dad said.
“It sure is.” I left him standing there and approached the building. I put my hands on the stone and peered straight up, focusing on the wire. “Me and Batman,” I whispered, with regret that Sam wouldn’t see it. I called to Dad and Thurston. “Let’s go on up.”
I was meandering around the flat section of roof that led to the wire when I had a shock. Remy was here, supposedly on-site to help his father and the rest of the setup crew. But that wasn’t the real reason, and I knew it. I was keenly aware of the coin hidden in my slipper and what I intended to do because of it, and of Nan’s instructions not to tell him.
I made excuses and went to put on my costume and finish my makeup in a nondescript women’s restroom on the twenty-first floor. The filmy grouted tile wasn’t what I wanted my favorite pair of slippers touching, but no way I was going barefoot on it. I glossed on red lipstick. I added another coat of mascara. I straightened the lines of my red sequin costume in the smudged square of the mirror. I shook out my hands, and smoothed my hair back into its already tight knot. I bent and tucked my finger into my slipper and felt the solid shape, waiting there.
I was about to trust it. I was about to trust Nan. To trust that magic could be real. No reason to be nervous then, was there? But I was.
For all my reassurance to Dad, part of me wasn’t sure I was ready for this. Whoever had been toying with my life all summer had killed my surrogate brother. My best friend. And they’d thought afterward to scoop up that emerald scarf and take it back. I had to prove to them that their plotting didn’t matter. They weren’t going to scare me off or get away with tormenting my family any longer. We were part of something impor
tant here at the Cirque—finally—and that wasn’t going to be ruined over a grudge. I owed that much to Sam.
I checked my reflection one last time, marveling that the girl I saw there looked so familiar. Like she hadn’t changed a bit.
When I opened the door, Remy leaned against the wall in the long, cheap-carpeted hallway. “I’m alone,” he said, “though probably not for long.”
He peeled off and came toward me, took my hands in his. The worry in his face was unmistakable. “Jules, what are you doing?”
“I’m . . .” I’m believing in magic. Using a good luck coin my grandmother gave me, which she stole from your grandfather, to make sure I survive this walk, and memorialize Sam and strike back at our enemy, whoever he or she might be.
I wanted to just tell him. Say the words. But, no, I’d vowed to trust Nan this time. And she said I couldn’t. “I’m . . . doing a walk in memory of Sam. It’ll be fine.”
“But—”
“Someone will come along any second. Remy, we can’t tell anyone about us. Not yet. Not until we know who planted the objects. Nan made me swear. She thinks it’s why Sam was targeted, because of him and Dita.”
His head tilted back a fraction, like I’d surprised him, but he nodded. “Whatever keeps you safe. But . . . Jules . . . do you believe the scarf hurt Sam?”
I have to. “We can’t dismiss it. Not anymore.”
“We’ll consider everything. We will find out who was behind this.”
I heard Dad’s voice trying to soothe someone, and pulled back. Remy disappeared into an open office door beside us. When Dad turned the corner, I saw who he was trying to calm.
“Mom,” I said, putting on my best long-suffering voice, “the ideal view is from below.”
“I’m worried. Upset is the worst way to perform. You know it.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“It’s too late for me to back out now.” I pulled on her crossed arms, dragging her forward until we reached a window. The streets below were packed with red, white, and blue. Or, rather, a lot of people wearing those colors.
“No, it isn’t,” she said.
