He feels a surge of power so strong that it makes him light-headed. There are two pairs of cuffs left, chaining her firmly to that chair. Unbreakable, inescapable steel. Two is enough, he tells himself. She has no way out unless he lets her out. She has to know that. So once he makes it explicit—the favor only she has the power to deliver for the release only he can grant—she’ll jump at it. She has to.
She stares down, down at her stockinged feet in their dangling shackles and the scattered sequins shed from her dress in the struggle. The loose tendrils of her hair fall to obscure her face. He can imagine what she’s thinking, but he doesn’t want to imagine. He wants to hear it straight from her mouth.
He reaches out and pats her knee. It feels like the right thing to do, somehow.
“I said I don’t want to talk about him,” she says. “But I can’t avoid it.”
“Ray?”
“Ray,” she says, barely whispering the name.
He’s confused. “But you told me the whole story already, didn’t you? He attacked you, and you killed him for it. What else is there to say?”
She gasps. “How can you be so glib about it?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No!” she shouts, and fresh tears spring to her eyes. “You don’t realize. You don’t have any idea! I was a child when it started. A child! And him following me, tracking me, watching me, every single day! Do you have any idea what it’s like, to live on the knife’s edge like that? Knowing yesterday you stopped it, but tomorrow you might not? There’s only one thing worse.”
“Giving in?”
“Yes.”
“So—you gave in?”
She slumps in the chair, her eyes shadowed. Her hair and her clothes and her posture all give her the air of perfect defeat. “I can’t do this anymore. With you. These questions. I can’t.”
He doesn’t speak right away. He waits and watches her face, trying his best to read it. There is something about her now that seems emptied out, and he chooses to believe her. She seems to be well and truly overcome.
At length, he says, “Then what shall we do instead?”
She says, “First I want you to wipe my face before the tears dry on it.”
Reaching out with the handkerchief, he dries the nearer cheek with a light and tender hand and asks gently, “And then?”
“And then I want to tell you the rest of the story. When things took a turn. When it all started going bad, and I couldn’t stop it.”
“Good,” he says, drying the other cheek. “Good. That’s what I want to hear.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
1904
The Halved Man
Clyde and I were reunited in New York upon his return, and once I was in his strong, sheltering arms, I never wanted to leave them.
“But are you all right?”
I nodded fiercely, yes.
“You’ll be ready for your show in two days, won’t you?” he asked, and if I was a little disappointed that talk had turned so quickly to business, it helped me calm my own heart.
I drew back and collected myself. “Yes, I’ll be ready,” I said.
He pulled me toward him again and said, “I missed you. I can’t even tell you how much I missed you,” and I tried to let myself relax against him. He pulled at my skirt playfully, but mindful of the wound on my thigh, I murmured something about waiting a little longer, and he didn’t insist. I hadn’t tried to heal it yet. I was afraid somehow I wouldn’t be able to, that whatever magic had once been in me was gone. Seeing Adelaide had bolstered my spirits and reminded me I was capable of soldiering on, but it hadn’t made everything fine and safe and right. Neither of us had the right kind of magic to pull off that trick. No one did.
I couldn’t rest, not really, but travel and emotion and fatigue meant that at least I slept.
The next day, I woke up curled against the warmth of Clyde’s body, which had always been wonderful to me. So long known, so long familiar. But in the first breath when I woke up, I inhaled his masculine, musky smell, and for a moment, I didn’t recognize him, and I sat bolt upright, heart pounding.
As soon as I recognized my surroundings, the bedroom of the Jane Street apartment, my world settled into place again. I lowered myself back down, and Clyde shifted in his sleep to put his arm back over me. I lay still, but my mind was still spinning. That fear was far too fresh in me, too close to the surface. I needed to find some way to drive it down again.
I had been afraid of Ray more than half my life, but the fear had gone dormant with distance. Now it was fully awakened again. Terrified and threatened, my head spinning, I had lashed out with all my strength and loosed a waterfall of blood from a fellow human being’s body. He was the only thing in the breathing world I feared, and he had turned me into a killer. I could feel those surging moments of desperation again, wishing over and over to heal the gaping wound and stop the coursing blood, going mad at my failure. Even the thought of him dead at last, a cold body among all the other cold bodies, didn’t kill the fear.
Was it him I was afraid of, or myself?
The fear was up against me, inside me, under my skin. Adelaide had said to use it. How could I do that? How could I push it away, or transform it into something else?
I lay on my back, staring up at the blank white ceiling, thinking of that awful day. How entirely helpless I’d felt, right up until I lashed out, and how regret had washed over me afterward. How the terror was like a djinni escaped from his lamp, never to be crammed back in. How everything had spiraled out of control, and how fervently I wished that everything could come out differently.
And that was the seed of the illusion. How I didn’t need to fear either Ray or myself if I could take back that day. If I could end the confrontation my own way, on my own terms. How I could bring death, yes, but afterward, if I chose to, bring life.
By the time Clyde woke up and turned his sleepy gaze on me, I had the idea fully formed. The illusion. Powerful and magical and unique.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Good morning.”
“I have an idea.”
“So do I,” he said, nearly purring, and ran his finger up my arm in that tickling way he knew I loved.
“Not now.”
“When?”
I couldn’t hold back a smile. “Soon.”
He rolled over, stretched, kissed me gently on the lips, and settled himself back against the pillows. “So what’s your idea?”
“A new illusion. One of the boys. Who’s the best?”
“At what is the question.” He eyed me, half suspicious.
“Not anything in particular. He doesn’t need to be a dancer or an acrobat. Well, an acrobat might be good. But not necessary. It’s a passive role, really.”
“Go on.” Idly, he rubbed my shoulder.
“He just needs to have presence, mainly. Oh. And act scared.”
“Scared about what?”
“About what I’m going to do to him.”
“And what are you going to do to him, love?”
“Cut him in half,” I said.
“What?” Clyde’s hand dropped from my shoulder.