“Come in,” I said, before he knocked.
He entered, closing the door behind him. “You slept through dinner. I tried to wake you.”
I was usually a light sleeper. I wondered why I hadn’t woken before. “Did I? I suppose I was tired.”
“Strange day,” he sighed.
I murmured my agreement. He made his way partly to his bed but then stopped, looking at the crumpled sheets as if they held no comfort. I scooted over on the bed, my heartbeat quickening. With a smile, he slid in next to me, settling his head on my shoulder.
I loved this simple affection. When I first met him, he was so aloof and removed. He still was, in many ways, but like me, he craved physical contact. And this closeness was so nice. Only Cyril had ever given me any physical affection growing up. My parents had never hugged me. Not once.
For a time, we said nothing. We listened to each other’s breath as the flames in the fireplace made shadows dance on the wall.
“Is this uncomfortable?” Drystan asked, tapping the Lindean corset I wore under my clothes.
“There’s no such thing as a comfortable corset.” I strived for lightness.
“Then why do you wear it?”
“Because a boy with breasts is a bit of a curious sight, even if they’re not very large,” I said, a blush creeping up my cheeks.
“Well, everyone here knows the truth. So if it’s a day where we’re just around the theatre, I don’t see why you couldn’t leave it off. No one would mind.” Drystan traced his fingertips lightly over the corset, and I swallowed hard.
“I suppose,” I said. “Here, budge up.”
He sat up, and I loosened the corset stays under my shirt, sliding it over my hips and throwing it onto the floor. I took a deep breath, my ribs free. In that moment, I felt so fully aware of all the parts that made me: the breasts beneath the rough cloth, the little extra between my legs, the shaved down on my cheeks and the wider spread of my hips. I felt… comfortable.
“That is better.”
He chuckled.
We rearranged ourselves. This time, I rested my head on his chest. Drystan stroked a hand along my spine, up and down. I grew dozy with the feel of his feather-light touch.
“Before I fall asleep,” I murmured. “I have to tell you something.”
“Mm?” he said, and I felt the sound echo in his ribcage.
“Cyan said I could tell you. About her.”
I felt his breath hitch.
“You don’t have to. Or she could tell me herself.”
“She knows that. I think she’d rather me tell you. Rather than her having to show you.”
“Is she like you, then?”
“What? Oh.” I coughed, remembering the horrible night I showed him and Aenea what I was rather than tell them because I did not know how to explain. Just before our lives fractured further. “No, it’s not that.”
“How do you know? Have you seen her naked?” he jested.
“No!” I sat up. His eyes dropped to my chest, lazily. I fought the urge to cross my arms over my chest. “You are not making this easy.”
“Sorry, I’ll behave. No more jokes. Cyan?”
Lord and Lady, how to say it? “Cyan can, um, well... She can read minds.”
He stared at me, and then he began to laugh, just as I had responded to Cyan. He kept laughing though, even when my face remained still as stone.
“Did she do some mentalist trick on you? Cover her eyes and ask you to choose a number between one and twenty?”
“She asked me to think of my fondest memory. And she told me every little detail about it. Including what painting was on the wall, and what book lay open in my lap.”
He sobered at that. “That’s not possible.”
I waved my hand vaguely. “Plenty would say the same about me.”
“But isn’t yours mainly physiological? It’s not mindreading!”
“I’ve been seen by a lot of doctors. None of them have ever come across a case quite like mine. Besides, don’t you remember what else I can do?”
“Remember what?”
“The night we ran away from the circus.” We’d never spoken of it. In the beginning, we were both too broken. And then… it was easier not to discuss murder and death.
A shadow crossed Drystan’s face, his pupils wide and dark. “I don’t remember most of that night… after the cane.”
“You blocked it out?”
He shrugged. “I suppose.”
I didn’t want to bring up that night, but I pushed on. “When the clowns were chasing us, and they trapped us. I told you to close your eyes. There was a flash. And we escaped.”
His brow crinkled. “I think I remember a flash. It’s all jumbled.” Had he truly forgotten the memories to save himself from the pain? I wished I could do the same.
I puffed my breath out from between my cheeks. “Come on,” I said, leaving the warm cocoon of the bed. “As ever, it’s easier to show people than to tell them.”
“You could show me what’s under your clothes again. I remember that clearly enough.”
I threw him a dirty look, even as my face burned. “You said no more joking.”
“Maybe I wasn’t joking,” he said, sending another shiver along my spine.
Unable to articulate my thoughts, I turned from him. We shrugged into our jackets and shoved our feet into our boots. Up to the roof we went, and down the frozen drainpipe. Snow lay thick upon the ground. The world was dark, the sky brilliantly clear, each star shining down on us like a pinprick of light through black cloth. The air was fresh and cold.
It took a long time to find a Penglass dome that wouldn’t be easily seen by people in the tall buildings to either side. Finally, I found one a little taller than us, hidden just inside an alley next to a shop with boarded windows.
Drystan looked at the dome in confusion, his teeth chattering with cold. “Why are we here?”
“Stand here, so anyone walking by won’t see.”
He complied. I took a deep breath, my bare palms hovering above the dome. Excitement coursed through me. And fear. Had it really been months since I had done this? Penglass called to me, especially every Penmoon, but I always resisted, not wanting to risk someone seeing… someone being hurt. But would the glass be like it was the night with Cyril, or like the night of the Penmoon?
“Keep your eyes shut until I tell you it’s safe,” I warned.
He did, and I closed my eyes to near slits.
I pressed my palms to the cold glass. Beneath my hands, the dark cobalt Penglass began to glow. The light reflected off the snow until it seemed as though we stood on diamonds. I took my hands away, widening my eyes. It was safe. The imprint of my hands remained.
“You can look,” I said.
Drystan crept closer, the blue light illuminating the planes of his face. His eyes were wide with wonder, his lips parted.
“You created the flash?”
“If I touch it on the night of the Penmoon and focus, it becomes blinding.” I swallowed, thinking of the clowns. I had tried to forget that, because of me, they would never see again.
“How is this possible?”
I tried to lock away the memory of that night in a corner of my mind, along with the other horrors. It was the only way not to be haunted. “I don’t know. I discovered it by accident, when I was climbing with my brother.” That memory had been one of the most amazing of my life, and then utterly terrible. Cyril had fallen off the smooth surface of the Penglass, breaking his arm. I had jumped down the Penglass after him, leaving two long trails of light as I did so. Nearby residents had seen them, and the next day photos graced the cover of the newspaper. No one had ever linked it to me. At least, I did not think they had.
Drystan reached out to touch the glass, but it remained dark under his fingers. I drew a few swirls like the winter wind, illuminating the snow a little more.
“So you see,” I said. “There’s much in this world we don’t understand. I can do this. I never grow ill. My arm healed before I stopped wearing the sling. So if I can do all of this, then what Cyan can do does not seem beyond the realm of possibility.”
His head jerked back at that. “How much quicker did your arm heal?”
“Two weeks or so.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He sounded hurt.
“I wanted to pretend it was not that odd. That I was not that odd.” My voice caught, surprising me.
“You’re not odd. This, what you can do… it’s beautiful.” He came close, and wrapped me in his arms. “You’re beautiful.”
My breath hitched in my throat.
Our lips met. I pushed him against the glowing glass, the stubble of his chin scratching mine. I rested a hand on the Penglass, the cool blue light bathing us as we kissed, careless of who might see.
20
HIDDEN MESSAGES
“Sometimes, I wish séances were real. That I could reach through the veil and speak to those I have wronged. I wish I could apologize to my wife. I’d apologize to Taliesin’s lover, who I stole away because I could rather than out of any real affection. So many men and women I have wronged, reduced to ghosts and shades. They surround me, but I can never let them know I regret what I have cost them, both the living and the dead.”
Jasper Maske’s personal diary.
We clasped hands about the round table, me with no small amount of trepidation.
With Cyan here, sharing skin-to-skin contact, who knew what could happen? Dread prickled the back of my mind. Cyan’s gaze flicked to mine as she sensed my unease.
We had studied nearly nonstop the last few days. The mornings were for magic, and the afternoons and evenings for séances. Maske gave us many lectures on the history and the importance of séances.
“The atmosphere must be just so,” he had said the previous night at the dinner table. “Dark enough so that if one of us needs to sneak about, we’ll be able to, but not so dark that nothing can be seen. Props are useful, especially in superstitious households. I’ve kept a record of almost every house I’ve been to, writing down the names, appearances, and dispositions of each member. Many of my clients are repeat business, so I tailor my approach. I’ll teach you several variants, but only practice, time, and intuition will help you discover which approach is the correct one for you and those you hold the séance for.
“A séance is very different from stage magic. In a magic show, most of the audience doesn’t believe you’re really doing magic. But with a séance it’s entirely different. Some are complete cynics, others are not sure, and others believe or desperately
want
to believe.” He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. “And you’ll have enemies and allies both at the same table. They are also active participants. It’s not one volunteer called up to the stage from the audience. Each person in turn may be asked to divulge something personal. Each will have loved and lost.
“I view séances differently from my magic performances, though in the last fifteen years, they have not exactly warred for my attention. Though I am aiming to deceive people at a séance, sometimes I feel as though I help them. Grown men have wept like broken-hearted babes at my table when they think they have made contact with a long-dead loved one. They’ve felt like they’ve been able to say goodbye, even if, deep down, perhaps they know they have not.”
Tonight, Maske was the same somber-faced man I had seen on my first night at the Kymri Theatre.
“Show me what you’ve learned,” he said. We had studied, and now was the test. If we performed well, we would start performing séances next week, beginning small with merchant and tradesmen families, and working up to nobles as our reputations grew. I was glad to learn the skill – if magic shows proved not to support us, between séances and street magic, we would never starve. That comforted me. I had spent several days on the street just after I ran away from my old life as Iphigenia Laurus. I had been hungry and scared, terrified that I would have to return home.
In my new home, the curtains of the parlor were drawn, and candlelight flickered, casting long shadows along the walls. The Vestige crystal ball rested on the table before us. Alder script had been drawn on the dark tablecloth in chalk.
Maske was our subject, and so Cyan led the séance. During our practice sessions this morning, I learned that for séances, I was also better suited to being an assistant, sneaking behind dust curtains and folding myself into small spaces. I could not speak the lies with the same assurance that Cyan or Drystan could. I did not know what that said about them or me.
“We welcome you to our sacred circle, Jasper Maske,” Cyan intoned. Her face was covered with black gauze, a bride of darkness. She wore a dark Elladan dress, wasp-waisted in a corset. Only her hands were bare, decorated in swirling designs of silver paint, her nails black as night.
“Tonight we call the spirits to peek their heads up from the currents of the River Styx, to whisper the words they wish they could have told us in life. I have known a heartache that few others have possessed. Through this grief, I may pull back the veil and pass along the messages of the dead, Jasper Maske. Close your eyes and imagine who has passed that you wish to speak with. For we have all known, loved, and lost.”
Maske concentrated. Cyan’s brow crinkled as she spied on his mind. Drystan opened his eyes. I squeezed his hand and he squeezed back.
“Someone comes to me through the mists of the otherworld…” Cyan shuddered, her head falling forward on her chest. I felt a humming deep within my chest.
Whispers in Alder echoed in the room. “She hears us, too. She hears us, too.
She hears us, too
.”
Cyan’s head rose, and my spine turned to ice. Though I could not see her face through the veil, I knew that it was not Cyan.
Before I could break the circle, her veiled head turned to mine. The gauze faded to mist, drifting from her face. Her eyes glowed the bright blue of Penglass, and the crystal ball on the table blazed the same hue.