The Fortune Teller's Daughter (2 page)

“So that’s where you’ve been spending your retirement
years.” The magician produced a match from behind his ear, though Rook was sure
it hadn’t been there a moment before, then struck it long across the stone. He
didn’t smoke, at least, hadn’t last time Rook had seen him. Instead of lighting
something with it, he let the match burn to his fingertips, filling the room
with the smell of sulfur and ash.

“In a manner.”

“Then what are you doing in Prague, Alistair?” Eli
stubbed out the match and produced another one. “More importantly, what are you
doing
here
?”

Alistair leaned back in his chair, conscious of the
wet seeping through his clothes. “I’m unlocking the gates. I’m bringing the
carnival back to life.”

The magician’s steel grey eyes flashed furious,
consumed like the match. “That,” he growled through clenched teeth, “would be
foolish.”

“It’s time. She’s been silent long enough.”

“It will
never
be enough time.”

A quarter of wood combusted in the fireplace, causing
sweat to break out across Alistair’s brow.

But as quickly as the emotion flared, it was over. A
dark shadow fell across the magician’s face that made his already broody
demeanor seem particularly hostile.

Rook tugged at his gloves, the apartment growing
quickly too hot. “Perhaps a drink?”

The magician crossed the room for the table with the
hot plate and a stash of glasses. From his dresser he procured a bottle of
something cheap and amber that smelled like bitter fruit but went down smoother
than he expected. While Rook drank, Eli pulled a second chair across from him
and fell heavy into it.

“Don’t do this.” He stared silently into his glass,
and then, “
Why
would you do this?”

“Delilah, Curtis, and Tomodon are dead.”

The magician’s expression fell. He let his own glass
drop to his knee, unfinished. “How?”

The fire crackled and between the two men, two old
friends playing God with the universe, Rook looked away. “Murder. Curtis in Beijing.
Tomodon in his apartment in California. And Delilah…” Rook’s heart pounded when
he remembered the smooth, dark skin of the contortionist when she’d been young
and vibrant and under his protection. He ran a finger across his throat, rough
with stubble. “Her neck had been snapped clean. No struggle.”

Eli’s brow furrowed.  

“I’m sorry.”

“I found a
Soul
coin at each grave site. Delilah’s
was buried but the other two had been left in plain view. He wanted me to find
them, I think.”

Their eyes met. “He?”

“Oh yes. Who else, and why? Though I doubt he sullied
his own hands with the dirty work. He’s got a few of the old crew in his employ
– Finnes and Cylic for sure. Scattered he can pick us off one at a time, but
together we’re protected. You must return with me to the carnival.”

“Absolutely not.”

Rook leaned forward, set his hands on his knees. “I
can’t protect them without you.”

“You can’t protect them
at all
.” Eli brought
his hand to his forehead, touched his brow briefly before dropping it to his
left wrist. He rubbed the tattoo there, an old fashioned keyhole. He didn’t
seem to notice he was doing it. “Why should I do this thing I said I would not
do when I left?”

“Because you live in a shitty one room, drowning
yourself on cheap alcohol, wasting nights with women you’ll never love,
performing for audiences of ten or less in theaters that bring in more money
from topless shows than they do from
you
.”

The magician jerked to his feet, fists drawn like he
might strike the carnival director, but he stayed his rage. Even after all this
time, after so much self-loathing, he still had enough pride to defend his
talent. Perhaps there was life left in his old friend.

Cautiously, Rook lifted his gaze.

“Oh, I’ve kept both eyes on you my friend. I half
expected your untimely death in some back alley years ago. I know about your
stint with the opium king, about the fire at Delgado’s, and about the devil
incident in Morocco before you ended up here penniless and drifting. You’re at
the very bottom now, Eli. Your manager’s about to cancel your final act and
you’ve nearly lost all control of the last siphon of talent you’ve got. Do you
really want the Great Dragon to go out
here
? In this place? Forgotten?
Come back with me to the beginning. One more time.”

The magician shook his head once and looked away. From
thin air he produced a gold coin, too big to be a quarter, thin and rubbed
almost smooth with time. A
Soul
, a carnival coin from the
Carnival
Imaginaire
. The last in circulation.

He turned it head over tails across his knuckles,
vanished and reappeared it in one palm, then the other. Like magic. Firelight
captured its grooves, its barely legible scrawl.
Step right up, young sir,
young miss. Ten tickets for a Soul, one Soul for a wish. Step up…step up…

“We will invite such catastrophe if you unlock those
gates,” the magician warned.

The carnival director stood and extended his hand.

“Let him come.”

__________________

Two abrupt
knocks yanked me from my sleep and as I lay there wild-eyed trying to figure
out where I was and what was happening, the abrupt knocks turned into rapid,
insistent rattling. Like a woodpecker. That I would crush with my bare hands if
they didn’t stop immediately.

Too much
light poured in through the blinds and outside I could hear crazy drivers
honking at the crazy pedestrians. Someone shouted and the subway train trundled
into the stop across the street. So much noise and it was the impatient person
on the other side of the door who would not be outdone.

I scrubbed
my hands across my eyes and rolled off the couch. The wood floor sent icy
chills up my legs as I stumbled barefoot towards the noise. I made sure all the
important bits were covered by pajamas before rising up onto my tiptoes to peer
through the peep hole into the hallway.

There was no
one there.

Yet the
person on the other side continued to knock, pause, knock. I suspected it was
probably my pervy landlord getting wise enough to stand where I couldn’t see
him if he wanted me to actually answer the door. He’d want rent, which I didn’t
have, or an excuse to stare at my chest, which I wouldn’t give him. I
considered going back to bed and dealing with him later, but an annoying little
scratch of curiosity kept me cemented in place. It might
not
be Maurie,
and if not, who knows what sort of fortune had made its way to my doorstep?

It was never
a good idea to snub fate before a girl had her first cup of coffee.

I checked
the chain and cracked the door open enough to peek out.

…and then
lowered my eyes to a small but burly man standing at my door in a top hat and
tails, no taller than my belly button. He wore a blue orchid in his lapel, so
blue and so purple it seemed to glow from within.

Once he saw
me seeing him, the dwarf bowed with a flourish.

I shut the
door.

Weird things
happened in the world all the time. Weird, unexplainable things. They happened
to my mother so often weird had become mundane. She knew a great many
performers, all a bit odd, from palm readers to illusionists to cross-dressing
acrobats. More than once we’d entertained a bearded lady in our apartment and I
could remember one portly gentleman who wore fake fangs and insisted I call him
Vlad
.

But not me.
Weird wandered around me. It got out of the way politely as I walked by. This
was certainly the first time I’d ever been awakened by a dwarf dressed like he
was taking me to prom.

I patted my
wild red hair into some order, checked my t-shirt and shorts again to make sure
I was half-way descent, flipped the chain, and opened the door once more.

“Good
afternoon,
fräulein
,” he said, his accent a little
forced, although I couldn’t tell if he was American trying to sound German or
German trying to sound American. Either way, I’d not had enough coffee to deal
with this. I rubbed my eyes.

“Afternoon?”
I asked. “Are you sure?”

“Quite.” He
checked his watch. “It is twelve twenty-six. And thirteen seconds.”

“Damn.” I’d
slept like hell until dawn when I finally passed out. I’d missed the busiest
time of day at the market, which meant rent was going to suck this month. I
propped myself against the door and gazed down at my visitor, feeling tall for
maybe the first time in my life. And likely the last. “I’m a little afraid to
ask, but can I help you?”

“With any
luck. Today I am but a messenger.”

“And
tomorrow you’re the groom? Concierge? Stage magician?”

The dwarf
looked scandalized. “I am absolutely
not
the stage magician.” He reached
into his jacket and produced a piece of cardstock the size of a postcard,
overlaid with vellum, although he looked at me as if I maybe no longer deserved
it.

“Of course,”
I said as sincerely as I could muster while standing in my pajamas in front of
a dwarf in a top hat. “I should never have suggested it.”

He
considered my apology and then offered me the card, albeit somewhat
reluctantly. I took it from his gloved hand.

Handwritten
across the vellum in blue formal script was one word. A name.

Corazon
.

I stilled,
the impact of the name heavy in my lungs. I ran my thumb along the letters,
felt the indentation where the writer had pressed the nib of his pen.

It took all
my will to hide the tremor in my hands.

The vellum
concealed a postcard picture of a carnival tent, faded colored stripes caught
in the wind. The ringmaster stood in front of the big top, head bowed, arms
outstretched to the drawn tent flaps. She wore a red coat with tails and small
black shorts that exposed long legs down to her high heeled boots that laced up
to her knees. In one hand she held a cane. In the other, a top hat.

Alistair
Rook’s Carnival Imaginaire.

The name
meant nothing to me, though it felt like it should. It had presence, like a
bass drum in my chest. I searched my memories for a scrap, a mention, anything,
but there was nothing.

“What is
this?” I asked, swallowing my unease.

He cleared
his throat and nodded to the card expectantly. I turned it over.

I’ve
unlocked the gates one last time. We have need of a fortune teller. Come home.

Rook

Come home.

“This is for
Corazon? The fortune teller? Are you sure?”

“
Ja
.”
The dwarf gave me a look of exhausted patience, having had his word questioned
twice in so many minutes. “This is her residence, yes?”

Instead of
answering, I asked, “What is
Carnival Imaginaire
?”

The dwarf
squinted and leaned into the doorway to stare up into my face. His top hat cast
his plump cheeks in shadow making him look oddly menacing for being three feet
tall. Without thinking, I took a step back.

“Nein. Who
are
you, girl?”

Don’t
tell him.
Irrational paranoia held back the simplest answer in the world.
He didn’t move and neither did I. I didn’t even breathe. He waited as still as
if he weren’t real at all, this German dwarf who knew my mother’s name but
didn’t know mine. 

Against my
better judgment, and when I couldn’t hold my breath a moment longer, I
relented.

“Sera.” The
name came as an exhale. I felt a little bit like the word had been pried from
my mouth. “Serafine Moreau.”

He
straightened. “Serafine Moreau, you will see to it that the Corazon receives
this?”

I nodded. It
was a lie I couldn’t speak out loud, but he seemed to accept it as a promise
nonetheless.

The dwarf
tipped his hat to me one last time. I watched him march to the end of the hall
and disappear down the steps before I closed the door and returned the chain to
its slider.

The exchange
had barely lasted a few minutes but it felt later all the sudden, as if more
time had passed than it should have. I shrunk against the door and stared down
at the curving handwriting of this mysterious Alistair Rook, whom I’d never
heard of, calling my mom home.

Impossible,
of course.

The dead did
not receive invitations to carnivals, mysterious or otherwise.

__________________

My mother
was not a witch, though it was sometimes hard to be sure about that, especially
when you were sick and she showed up with a pot of soup the color of collard
greens that smelled repugnant but she swore could cure anything. When you
complained about the boggy stench, she’d say
that’s how you know it works
and insist you drink up immediately. When in less than twenty-four hours you
miraculously recovered, it was hard not to think of the fortune teller as
something
other
.

She may or
may not have
actually
been clairvoyant. She’d read the cards and
recommend blessed candles or cleansing crystals, but it was when she poured her
client a cup of tea that the real magic would begin. In less than five minutes
she’d have a grown man in tears, spilling his heart and soul, all his lies and
secrets, shamelessly and without reserve into the gossamer folds of her skirts
like a child. She had a way of helping you root out the ugly, painful,
embarrassing truths and after it was all over you’d leave $30 poorer but
completely reanimated in spirit.