The Fortune Teller's Daughter (10 page)

Who are
we running from,
I wanted to ask.

Why do
they want you?

Why did
you come back for me?

Instead I
kept my head down against the rain and followed the path I’d taken earlier that
night in much different circumstances to the el, a lonely glowing artifact in
the dark. We climbed the stairs to the platform, the only souls going in either
direction. We stood close to the tracks, as close as safety would allow. We
said nothing. There was nothing to say.

The Magician
watched our backs, spun at every sound. Every few minutes he’d reach out to
make sure I was close enough to grab, tension like a bow ready to snap between
us.

The subway
squealed to a stop on the wet tracks. He put his hand on my back and urged me
onto the empty car. We sat together, one suitcase between my feet, my backpack
on the seat beside me.

When the
train jerked forward and we were on our way, I finally felt the wet and the
cold and the exhaustion. I slouched into the plastic bucket seats and let the
train toss me about bonelessly as it clattered down the rails.

Without
thinking, I leaned into his side to steal as much of his body heat as he’d let
me.

Without
asking, he took my hands, pale and icy in his grip, and rubbed life and heat
into my fingers. He threaded his fingers through mine, raised them to his
mouth, and cupping them in both hands, blew warm air across my skin that spread
magically up my arms and into my chest to stop the shivering.

“I don’t
even know your name.” I lowered my head to his shoulder and he relaxed
physically. Even though we were the only ones in the car, I didn’t speak over a
whisper. “And I mean your real name, no fake magician names like the Great
Lamborghini or the Enigmatic Master Mystic.”

He ran his
thumb along the back of my hand. If I wasn’t so tired and scared and sore, I
might have felt that touch all over my body. Tomorrow I’d think about that
touch. Not tonight.

“The Great
Lamborghini?” he murmured against my hair. “Where do these mad thoughts of
yours come from? You should be caged and studied.”

“You didn’t
actually answer the question though, magician.”

He stayed
quiet long enough that I started to drift sleepily between waking and dream,
sure he had no intention of answering me. His warmth, the comfort of his body
beside mine, was almost too good to be true.

A scratch of
a warning whispered in my ear to ruin it.
Don’t get too comfortable
.
This
is not yours
.

“Eli,” he
said finally. “Eli Matteo. I’ve gone by other names, but I prefer this one.”

Eli.

My magician
did have a name after all.

“How did you
get into my apartment?”

“I am a
magician
,
Serafine.”

“That
doesn’t even make any sense. My door was locked. The window is three stories
off the street.”

“I could saw
you in half too, if you like. I know all kinds of tricks.”

I snorted.
“No, thank you.”

He leaned
his head back and I could feel his breathing even out. He sounded tired.

“That’s too
bad.”

The train
car lurched manically on its tracks, robbing us of our stillness. Lightning
whiplashed across the sky outside, causing the lights to blink on and off while
thunder rattled the sliding doors. Eli stiffened and peeled his fingers from
mine, placed my hands in my lap as calmly as possible, and stood slowly. He
stepped into the middle of the aisle, legs wide for balance, and looked
carefully around our empty car.

“What is
it?” I followed his gaze, but there was nothing to see. There was no one else.

Fear made my
lungs hurt, made it difficult to stand. That predator feeling came back, that
acute, primal knowledge that if I went another step I’d never return.

“Sera…” Eli
warned and reached for me just as the train lurched sickeningly in one
direction so hard I could feel us leave the tracks, briefly, long enough to
feel my stomach bottom out. I stumbled, caught one of the vertical bars for
balance to keep from going to my knees. I lost track of Eli as the lights
strobed off and on, blinding and nauseating.

The man
appeared at the end of the empty car, standing so still as if the lurch of the
speeding train did not bother his equilibrium. The strobe effect made it
impossible to see his details, the thing that made him more than an apparition.

When the
lights flickered out and back on, the apparition seemed closer by a foot, head
bent. It flickered again when the lights stayed on, he shifted closer another
foot without ever moving his feet. Another foot. Like a bad radio signal. I
could almost see through him when he shifted another foot closer.

“Eli…what…”

“Stay behind
me,” he ordered and moved to block the aisle. He too seemed unimpeded by the
shake and rock of the train car even as it seemed to go faster, impossibly
fast, blowing through the next station without slowing.

The
apparition flickered out again, left an empty train car and my imagination
swearing it couldn’t have been real.

Then it
reappeared inches from Eli’s rigid body, caught the right frequency, and
snapped its head up.

“Castel!”
Eli gasped in the moment the Other cracked his fist into Eli’s sternum and sent
the Magician sailing down the length of the car to the opposite end.
Impossible.
No man had such strength. I knew this even as Eli lay unmoving in a pile on
the floor too far away for me to reach.

The Other
flicked his gaze from Eli’s body to where I’d been cowering behind the
Magician.

He tilted
his head, appraised me like a specimen he might buy in a secondhand store.

“Interesting.”

I didn’t see
him disappear. He was there and he was beside me, a trick of the flickering
lights or a result of my very real fear. He didn’t even let me scream.

A fist
wrapped around my throat and yanked me off my feet. Fingers like vices held me
aloft, like I weighed nothing, like there was no such thing as gravity. For a
moment it was like being underwater, and as the fist tightened on my windpipe
it also felt like drowning.

As black
splots blotted out the face of the Other, he cracked my face violently into the
window and let go.

Light
bloomed behind my eyes, colors I didn’t know existed became stars. Rushing like
water filled my ears and I fell in and out of my body as I slid wetly down to
the plastic seats and rolled uselessly to the dirty floor.

I heard voices.
Yelling and laughter.
Eli.
I moaned when I wanted to cry his name, but
nothing made sense. Everything moved in nauseating slow motion. The lights
faded in and out and that sensation of drowning filled my nostrils and throat
until I could feel the water behind my eyes.

Darkness.
Brief, beautiful darkness. And silence.

But not long
enough.

The noise
and light and motion snapped back like a rubber band. I opened my eyes and
sucked desperately for air that burned my lungs and stung my eyes.

“Eli,” the
Other said. “Is this any way to greet me after all these years?”

“You’ve been
very busy lately, Castel.” Eli paced like a caged animal. “I do not approve.”

Castel on
the other hand, swaggered to meet the Magician. He was leaner, smaller.
Compared to the Magician’s stockier body and sinewy muscles, Castel looked like
he might have been made of kindling.  

“I assume
you mean the late departure of our old friends. Yes, well, a boy’s got to have
his hobbies. Better than hiding in disgusting apartments in Europe, drowning
myself in liquor and women. But, then, that’s really your purview, not mine.
I’ve got plans for you, Eli. It’ll be a show like you’ve never imagined.”

Eli shrugged
easily.

“You’ve
never had what it takes to impress me. I’m curious what took you so long. I
figured I would have been the first stop on your serial killer tour.”

Castel
laughed. “Too easy, Eli. You’re too easy. How can you be my audience if you’re
dead?”

“What
happened to you, Castel? This isn’t you. It was
never
you.”

Castel
snarled. “You know damn well what happened to me. The worst thing happened to
me. And I have you to thank for it.”

Eli’s dark
gaze faltered and all this guilt poured it of those stormy grey eyes. He
deflated. Suddenly seemed smaller than Castel when only moments before that
wasn’t the case.

“It was an
accident, Castel, and I’m sorry. I will always be so sorry.”

“Not sorry
enough. Never enough.” Castel did something strange then. He placed his fists
together at the thumbs in front of him. As he pulled them apart a silver rapier
appeared between them, its guard an elaborate, beautifully coiled sweeping
cage. “Do you remember this trick? It was one of your favorites.”

Magicians
.
They were both magicians.

Eli did not
blink, but his weakness hardened over and he straightened. “What do you want
then, Cas, if not to kill me?”

I peeled my
face off the floor with a wet, sucking noise that turned my stomach. The ocean
sloshed behind my eyes and I fought my nausea as I pushed as far as my hands
and knees. I rocked back and held onto the seat beside me for balance. 

Castel
ignored Eli’s question. “You would set it on fire, and as the flames spread up
the blade to lick at the hilt, you’d swallow the sword whole. If the flames and
twists of smoke rising from your mouth weren’t impressive enough, you’d spread
your arms and levitate a foot off the ground.  The audience would come to their
feet and the applause would go on for ten minutes with such thunder the tent
would shake.”

There was
reverence in his voice.

Eli shrugged
again and rolled his sleeves one at a time as if preparing for his show. “It
was an excellent trick.”

His
distracted indifference only seemed to infuriate the other magician.

“I wonder.
If I ran it through you today, would fire pour from your body?” Castel
tsk
ed
and swept the blade back and forth. “Are you still the dragon or a sad,
miserable shadow of your former self? Have I made you fall so far, Eli?”

Before
Castel could finish his sentence, Eli pulled a throwing knife from thin air and
flung it at the other magician.

Impossibly,
he snatched it out of the air an inch from the tip of his nose. Eli narrowed
his eyes.

“Your
grandstanding bores me. If you want to fight, Castel. Fight.”

Castel
flipped the knife in his hand.

“If you
insist.”

Castel
swiveled and with a flick of his wrist sent the knife at me instead.

__________________

“You fight
me, Castel!” Eli shouted, but it was too late.

It happened
so fast I didn’t feel it. I heard it rip my shirt and skin, the sound of paper
tearing, and the knife
thunked
heavy into the floor.

I opened my
mouth but no sound came out.

Oh
.
My brain stalled. It didn’t hurt at first. I was too busy seeing the stark red
line across my skin, welling up quickly and sliding sticky and wet across my
skin.

There was
nothing in the world comparable to the sight of your insides showing up on the
outside.

After the
initial shock jump started my brain, the hurt rushed in. I clamped pressure
against it and bit down the scream of pain that clawed up my throat. I didn’t
think it was more than a graze but it bled so
easily
.

I forgot
about the men in my delirious freak out, at least until Castel howled like a
child when Eli struck his sword hand against one of the vertical support bars,
the sound of breaking bones ominous and loud.

The rapier
was released. It fell to the floor and rolled under a bench.

I tore my
eyes from them to yank the knife from the floor. Despite the
swishing,
swashing
waves behind my eyes I scrambled on my hands and knees down the
car to take shelter behind the row of plastic seats beside the car door.

Castel
created a shower of metal needles and hurled them at Eli, only to have my
magician tumble out of the way at the last minute. I covered my head and
screamed as they struck the polymer windows above me.

With Eli
rolling to his feet several feet away, Castel materialized a ball on the tip of
his fingers, the same as the one the juggler had used. Eli reached into the air
to pull his next weapon from nothing, but Castel screamed “
Enough
!” and
threw the glowing ball to the floor between them.

In the
impossible seconds before the ball touched the ground, I could feel my heart
beats slow. Eli closed his eyes and I closed mine.

There was no
noise as it detonated, but I could feel the light and heat on my face, behind my
eyelids and it left my ears ringing. It ripped me from my grip on one of the
support bars and threw me back onto the floor.

I did not
open my eyes until the bright white light faded.

Castel fell
inches from my face. He looked at me, his mouth twisted into laughter like
panic and disbelief. A little boy playing with fireworks, not expecting the
explosion and delighted by his own fear. Slate grey eyes met mine, full of
mirth and something else I couldn’t name. Didn’t recognize.

Something
awful.

The red
alarm lights went on but the train did not slow down.

We regarded
each other for a long time.

Something
about him seemed so familiar.

“Castel!”

Castel broke
our stare first in time to see Eli pull throwing knives from the air. Before I
could scream and with such impossible speed as to defy time itself, Castel
disappeared…