“I’m fine.”
“Gin it is,” he says. He sets two glasses on the table, pours them a quarter of the way full and then slides one to me. “Here. Drink some. Compose yourself. I’m going to change into something more comfortable.”
He disappears into the other, more private tent. While he’s gone, I take a sip of the gin and then immediately spit it back into my glass. I untie my mask for the moment, to release some of the pressure on my forehead and my sinuses. All the crying in the past week has turned me into a mess. And Luca’s show outside managed to agitate my anxiety. But gradually, my heart rate slows. I tap my fingers against the table to the rhythm of the Freak Show’s opening song to avoid thinking about Luca’s blood on my tunic.
Then Luca returns, so quietly I hadn’t heard him approach, and I freeze. My nose is running, I’m sweating and I’m maskless. He pauses, studying my face, and I brace myself for an expression of disgust or discomfort. But it never comes.
He sits across from me. “Are you all right?” he asks.
“I’m managing.” I fiddle awkwardly with the mask in my lap, tracing over the glass shards with my thumb. I rarely remove my mask and never in front of near strangers.
I’m still beautiful without my mask, I tell myself. Nevertheless, I tie my mask back on and hate myself the entire time I do it. My face shouldn’t matter. I shouldn’t care what he thinks. But I do. And it’s hard enough to sit here, salvaging what remains of my pride after asking him for help, and talk about Gill and Blister.
He takes a generous sip from his glass.
“Should you be drinking?” I ask.
“It makes me nicer,” Luca says.
“Then drink up.”
“I wanted to thank you for helping me earlier. That man could’ve run off with a lot of money, and I’m not quite as rich as I used to be. So...can I get you anything else?”
“I’d rather we talk about Blister and Gill.”
“Of course. I—”
“I don’t think we should work together.”
He sets his glass down on the table with a clunk. “Does your father disapprove?”
“I haven’t even told him—”
“Good. I doubt he’d like to know his only daughter is spending her nights in the Downhill.”
“Anyway,” I say with annoyance, “Villiam believes the perpetrators are from outside of Gomorrah, looking to shake him. I agree with him.”
“Didn’t you tell me the other day that you didn’t believe that? Someone knew Gill slept alone in the other tank. Someone knew how to kill your illusions. You think a group of Up-Mountainers, however cunning Villiam believes them to be, could accomplish that?” Luca stands, abandoning his drink, and begins pacing his tent. “It has to be someone inside Gomorrah. Someone targeting your family, not Villiam. If they wanted to target Villiam, they would have simply killed you. That would have been easier and more efficient.”
“Why don’t you have more of that gin?” I mutter.
“You agree with me, don’t you?” He stops pacing to examine me.
“I... I don’t know what to believe.” Both he and Villiam make sense. I wish I were smarter, able to weigh each perspective equally. One argument from Villiam or Luca is enough to sway me, and I am rocking back and forth like a seesaw.
“It doesn’t matter,” Luca says. “You don’t have to decide. But it makes sense to research both ways of thinking. Just...stay. Hear me out.”
“Why are you so eager to help me?” Doesn’t the gossip-worker have better things to do? If he is right about the killer being in Gomorrah, I don’t want to abandon the opportunity to find him by only investigating Villiam’s political enemies. But I wish I understood Luca’s motives better. Especially if we’re going to become partners.
“This is a fascinating puzzle,” Luca says.
“I’m glad you find the murders of my family so fascinating.”
“What did you think I would say? That I’m a saint? That I love coming to the rescue of damsels in distress? We both know that I’m no hero and you’re no damsel. Sorry, princess, this isn’t that sort of story.”
I purse my lips at his condescension. Luca is hardly my idea of a fairy-tale hero.
“Fine. I agree with you—the killer could be in Gomorrah,” I admit. “We can be partners. We don’t have to be friends.” My voice is biting.
He hesitates. I can’t possibly have offended him after that speech of his. “Fine.” He resumes his pacing. “It strikes me as odd that Nicoleta is the only one without any strange abilities.”
I suppose the pleasantries are over.
“Nicoleta does have abilities,” I say.
“But she doesn’t have an act.”
He’s certainly done his research.
“That’s because she’s terrible at performing. We need a stage manager, anyway,” I say. “Nicoleta is much stronger than she looks. She could probably snap iron, if she wanted to. She just...isn’t always strong. Only when she’s upset or scared, so it’s hard to work something like that into the show.”
“And you didn’t plan the abilities, right? They were, um, born that way?”
I wonder how he could possibly know this and hesitate before giving my answer. “Yes.”
“What is your inspiration for each illusion?”
“I wanted them to be my family.”
“In theory, could you recreate Gill or Blister if you tried?”
I grimace at the idea of trying to replace them. That wasn’t what Luca was implying, but that is what his words conjure, nonetheless.
“No. I could, I suppose, create people similar, but much of their personalities—and their abilities—weren’t in my original plans. I could make up, for instance, another two-year-old boy, but he may or may not turn out to be like Blister, regardless of how much I try.” I picture Blister in my head, his sweet face and big, brown eyes, and the anger and grief settle in my stomach, heavy and hollow. “And usually before creating that sort of illusion, I feel, I don’t know, a spark. Inspiration, I guess.”
“You just said your inspiration was family members,” Luca says.
“I don’t know how I do it, exactly. But the idea comes to me somehow. To make a sister. To make an uncle. I wake up picturing them in my head, and there is a need to create them, like an empty space in my mind that needs to be filled. It’s the same space they go when I make them disappear. The locked Trunks.”
There’s a pause. “Maybe you could elaborate—”
“It’s hard to explain. Why does this matter?”
“I like having the whole picture.”
“But it’s not an exact science. It’s an art.”
“You’re not a thinker, are you?” He runs his hand through his chin-length blond hair while I seethe at the insult. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about jynx-work,” he says, sitting on the floor and motioning for me to join him. “About all the different sorts. Where I come from, people only spoke about them as if there is one type: demon-work.”