The Magician's Lie (25 page)

1905

Resurrections

Three weeks before the end of the circuit, it was time for Clyde to go back to New York for a few days to work with the new kid he'd hired for the practical work and get everything settled up right. I had three nights in a row booked in Savannah, challenging but hardly outlandish. I had gotten so used to having Clyde around. I missed him too much now that he was gone again. I wasn't sleeping well—I was restless, constantly waking up over and over to find only minutes gone by—but a couple of fingers of brandy helped with that.

On the third night in Savannah, I was looking forward to my brandy. I was exhausted from the demanding routine and from the lack of good sleep, and I wrapped my linen robe tightly around my tired body and poured myself a good heavy glass, and all was well until I heard knuckles rap against the door, which I hadn't yet locked for the night.

“Yes?”

I expected Doreen, who had stepped into a certain role as my proxy most nights, accepting bouquets of flowers and sending away unwelcome visitors, but it was not her voice that answered. No voice answered. Instead the handle turned, and someone stepped up into the car and swiftly closed the door behind him, and quickly it was already too late.

The lamplight glinted off his pale hair. He looked almost angelic, with the light hitting him like this, at this angle. But he was earthbound enough, a sandy-haired man in a suit slightly rumpled from travel, with a grin that would have looked cheerful and welcome on any other face. He paused with his back pressed against the door and waited. Perhaps he was waiting for me to panic, to scream. Instead I only stared.

It couldn't be him. It couldn't. It wasn't.

It was.

“Ada,” he said in a new voice, one with a hoarse scratch to it, where there had been none before.

The shock of seeing Ray alive and well and here froze my blood, and I was helpless.

“So,” I said, but no other words would come. I remained at the table and sipped at the brandy to wet my dry mouth, still somehow hoping that this wasn't happening to me.

“So,” he echoed me. “Offer your cousin a drink?”

“No,” I said and didn't dispute him on semantics. I took another sip instead.

It was impossible. He couldn't be here. It could be a look-alike, or a brother, or a bad dream. I had seen enough illusions to know things weren't always as they seemed. But it was perfectly him, his hair longer than it had been in Chicago, the face just a little more worn. And I saw the mark on his throat, a sharp straight line. I knew I was awake by the spiraling dread in my belly, too insistent for the dream world.

I had killed him, hadn't I? There had been so much blood. I remembered how it gushed, how my hands were slick with it, how neither pressure nor magic would keep it from flowing. How I wished so hard to save him but was certain I'd failed. Yet here he was. Not a facsimile, not a look-alike, not a dream. Ray, in the flesh.

There was only one possible explanation. I hadn't killed him after all. The wound had been deep and terrible, but no matter how close he'd come to death, he hadn't crossed over. His heart hadn't stopped. His body hadn't gone cold. Of all the bodies that covered the floor of the storeroom next to the Iroquois, left for dead, one had risen.

In some small way, that should have made me glad, I supposed, not to be the murderer I'd thought myself for more than a year. But I couldn't rejoice at seeing him walking and talking, not in the least. If I hadn't taken his life, it seemed certain he would take mine. It couldn't end any other way. The railcar was a prison now, just another box from which there was no escape. I had never wished more that I could be Houdini.

I desperately needed to think of something to say. If I could keep him talking, maybe he wouldn't touch me. If he touched me, I would fall apart.

He stared at me, seemingly waiting for more words. I didn't have any. I didn't have anything. I had my brandy, which I drank, and that was all. I remained in the chair as if welded to it.

While I drank, Ray finally stepped away from the door, though we both knew he was still close enough to lunge back in an instant. He reached over to the sink where the straight razor sat—Clyde had forgotten it there, and I hadn't wanted to touch it—and placed it on the table between us. I knew how strong he was. He didn't need the razor at all. Alone in the private train car where no one could hear me scream, all it would take was his bare hands.

“You don't scare me,” I said, which was a bald lie. He terrified me. He always had.

“You don't think I'll hurt you? I've done it before.”

“You have.”

“And you're not scared?”

“If you hurt me, it hurts, and then it goes away,” I said, chin up, fierce. “I'll survive it.”

“You're not the only one I could hurt. There's that boy.”

“He's not a boy.” A wave of cold crashed over me. I hadn't immediately thought of the threat to Clyde, but of course, my tormentor had.

“Whatever he is.” Ray sneered, stepping closer. “Your manager. Your lover. The slender one with the dark hair and the fine eyeglasses. The one who rubs his thumb along the bottom of your spine when he thinks no one is watching. The one who lives in New York, in rented rooms on the second floor of a house facing Jane Street. You care about him. And if you don't do what I say, I will kill him.”

How long had he been following us, stalking us, watching, learning? I thought I was scared before, but when he threatened Clyde, all the fear before was just like a shadow of a hint of fear. This fear hurt more than being thrown twenty feet down from a hayloft. More than the guilt of surviving a fire in which many better people had perished. More than any broken bone. It hurt the most because I didn't know when it would end. It might never.

If he knew where Clyde lived, all bets were off. Because I had no doubt at all that he would follow through. I felt the panic set my bones alight then, worrying that perhaps he'd already hurt Clyde and this was all just for show, but I made myself think like him. Of course his ultimate goal wasn't to hurt my lover; it was to hurt me. He would give me a choice, because the consequences would be so much worse for me afterward if I knew I'd had the power to choose. Every way he'd hurt me before would be like a bee sting compared to how I'd feel if Clyde were killed, knowing I was the one responsible.

I forced myself to stand and look Ray in the eye. Then I asked, because I couldn't ask anything else: “What do you want?”

“Everything.”

Cold and growing colder, I said, “Be specific.”

“You let me do what I want. No objections, no conditions. I want to break you and heal you.”

“For what purpose?”

“Because I want to,” he said. “I've wanted to since the beginning. You've always looked down on me, and I want you to know you can't do that, not ever again.”

“You're insane,” I replied.

“I don't see how that changes anything,” he said, almost cheerfully.

With that, he stood close to me and reached his hand around my back, stroking the base of my spine lightly, running his thumb along the thin skin over the bone, just as he had seen Clyde do. It was a threat and a promise, and it paralyzed me, because I knew exactly what he meant by it. He wouldn't just break my bones. He would break me, period. That was his intent.

I hoped for a knock on the door. I hoped for a burst of inspiration. I hoped for the strength to bluff my way through and refuse him, catching him off guard so I could turn the tables. I hoped for anything and everything. Nothing came. Nothing at all.

I did the only thing I could do, then.

I gave in.

After a restless, sleepless, awful night, I sent Clyde a cable telling him we were through. I wrote and rewrote it a dozen times, searching for the right words, searching for a way to send a secret message that Ray couldn't see through. He was watching me, of course. He watched silently the whole time, standing behind me without a word. He only moved when I crumpled up each failed attempt in order to discard it, reached across me to grab the ruined sheet of paper, and deposited it in the wastebasket.

On the thirteenth attempt, I finally settled on the right lies, simply told. No secret codes, no hidden cry for help, just a plain, clear message bringing everything to an end. I told Clyde I didn't love him anymore. I told him I'd grown to hate him over the past months, unable to trust or forgive him for the wrongs he'd done me, and that his appalling suggestion of marriage was the straw that broke the camel's back. I accused him of seducing me for money, doing what a poor boy with a handsome face and few other talents does best. I tried to be as horrible as possible, harsh and petty, hoping he would believe me capable of such cruelty. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was sure he could. I'd been distant lately, ever since we'd started sparring over the Halved Man, and perhaps he thought there was more to it; this explanation could easily make sense to him, even though it wasn't anything close to the truth. I told him our business and personal relationships were now at an end. An intermediary would contact him to manage the separation of finances in due time, ensuring that he didn't profit from our association any more than he should, by the letter of our signed contract.

I also told Clyde not to contact me, that I never wished to hear from him again. I threatened lawsuits and worse if he even tried. This was a specific instruction Ray had given from over my shoulder, but I quickly realized it didn't matter. He had watched me write the telegram and watched me send it. I realized he would be with me every sleeping and waking moment. Even if I did receive a reply, he would be there to intercept it. My life was no longer my own, just like that.

Deep in my girlish heart, I wished Clyde would come rescue me. The rest of me knew better. If he came, a rescue wouldn't be the outcome. Not when Ray was ready to kill him on sight if I didn't obey. All I'd be doing was delivering my beloved more swiftly into the grave. A living Clyde was preferable to a dead one, no matter whether I'd ever see him again. This way at least I could daydream of him, imagine him free, his happiness in trade for my sacrifice. This way one of us would survive. And perhaps, I told myself darkly, he would be better off.

Then I made changes. Some were suggested by Ray, in a tone that indicated they were not really suggestions, and some I did for my own sanity. I gave the twins their walking papers, then Tabitha, then Doreen. All knew me too well to think I'd throw Clyde over. They had to go. The twins stormed out, their angelic faces dark with anger. Tabitha sobbed. Doreen begged me for a reason, and while I tried to muster a frosty, imperious voice to dismiss her, the best I could manage was a simple “Because it's time.” Ray stepped in and hustled her to the door, patting her back soothingly, and shot me a dark look. He wanted me to be a better actress, I supposed. It was all I could do to act like a human being.

Then there was a blur of work. Shifting the less experienced assistants into new roles meant more training and more trouble, and I had to overhaul the program completely. I gave up the Halved Man for several nights, which caused grumbling in the crowd. I had come up with a new version of the illusion that didn't require twins, but I needed a new assistant to pull it off. We held hasty auditions in Bloomington. I chose a promising deaf boy who I knew would be both grateful for the work and undisturbed by the noise of the crowd or the rumors.

I missed Clyde like I would have missed a limb.

Everyone in the company knew he and I had been together this past year. It wasn't known by the general public because we'd kept mum when asked by the newspapers, but among our little family, we'd made no secret of it. Now I wished we would have, but it was too late. They would think me a fickle whore. I couldn't change that. I'd prided myself on building this strange family, on sowing the seeds of warmth and trust, but now a switch had been flipped, and they weren't family anymore. I couldn't let them matter. I couldn't let concern for their welfare distract me from my own. There was something far more important to be done.

I had surrendered on the outside, but on the inside, I knew there were two things I could do: I could escape and outpace Ray to New York, hoping that Clyde would still be there, or I could figure out how to kill him.

Killing him should have been easy. I'd stabbed him before in desperate anger, and now I was twice as desperate and infinitely angrier. Could I do it with the straight razor again, do it right this time, in an unguarded moment? Stab him in the gut if I needed to, when he bent over my body to hurt me in whatever way he pleased? Or better yet, wait until he was asleep. He had to sleep sometime. Didn't he?

But Ray was smart. Always had been. He was with me all the time, at every moment, when we were awake. He installed a new lock on the railcar door, and when he slept, he locked it from the inside, with the key hidden on his person, in a place he knew I'd never reach willingly. Everything sharp disappeared from the railcar. I searched in vain for the straight razor, a knife, a knitting needle, anything. He laughed, watching me hunt over every inch. He'd even stripped the car of mirrors so I couldn't break one for a sharp edge to use against either of us.

With the mirrors gone, he did my makeup himself before each show, wielding brushes and powders with what I had to admit was a doctor's skill. Every night, we went through the ritual. First was the flesh-toned cream, which he spread across my nose and cheekbones and blended with fluttering fingertips up to my hairline and down over my chin. The brush of matching powder danced lightly over my entire face, followed by a lighter variation of the same dance, softer, smaller bristles applying peach-colored powder to the apples of my cheeks. Gently, he held each eyelid closed with a thumb while he drew a kohl pencil along the very edge of my lashes, one eye and then the other. Last, and possibly worst, was the feeling of another, sharper pencil outlining the tender nerve endings of my poor lips, and then a wet brush of waxy lipstick filling in the outline. I was vulnerable at every moment, and I never knew if the precise, methodical application of these paints and powders would be interrupted with sudden pain, which could come from any direction. He might jam the brush down my throat, or curl his hand around a paint pot and slam it into my gut, or slowly work the point of a hat pin under my fingernail. Some nights there would be pain every minute; some nights, none at all. It seemed impossible that after such torture, I always looked beautiful. I had never applied my own makeup with such care. Ray was a brute with the hands of a surgeon, and I would have admired him if he hadn't been as dark as the devil himself.