Conjured

Plucking the cards from the air, the Magician displayed them, showing that each card had a drawing of a figure: an old woman, a young girl, a harlequin, a queen, a reaper … He blew on the cards, tapped them, and the figures detached from the card faces. The paper figures lurched across the stage. He sent them into the audience. They crawled over the audience members, their eyes flat and their progress unslowed. They climbed onto the shoulders or heads of different audience members, whose smiles faltered as the paper feet and hands touched them.

“This time, the cards choose you,” the Magician said.

A few of the audience members tried to remove the paper creatures and people. They clung fast. Some pulled harder, and the paper bodies tore.

The Magician shuffled the blank Tarot cards.

As one, the paper figures turned their heads toward the center of the audience. They climbed over people faster with a single-minded determination, converging on the boy Aidan. They climbed up his legs and over his body, laying against his clothes as if glued to him.

“Remember him,” the Magician said softly to the doll. The boy Aidan didn’t move as the paper figures stuck to his shirt and hair and skin. “He has magic.”

The doll met Aidan’s eyes.

And Aidan vanished with a soft pop.

* * *

Outside the wagon, after the performance, Aidan waited on the steps. He still had the paper figures from the Tarot cards on him. One sat on his shoulder, swinging his paper legs. Another clung to the pocket of Aidan’s shirt. Others were stuck to him like magnets.

“I believe these are yours.” Aidan flashed a dazzling smile at the Magician.

The doll felt unable to move, as if she were on strings but no one had tugged them to make her walk or talk. A part of her wanted to scream at Aidan to run. A part of her wanted to run to him. The rest of her did not move or speak.

The Magician smiled. “Did you like the performance?” He fanned the blank cards, and the paper figures clambered down Aidan’s body and crawled up the Magician and onto the cards.

“Very impressive.” Aidan stood up lazily, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He hadn’t looked at her yet, the doll noted. She stared at him with her green marble eyes that couldn’t blink. “But I am here on business.” Aidan drew a wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open. A badge with a ring of circles was inside.

The Magician’s smile did not waver. “Oh, it’s show and tell!” He drew out a box from the pocket of his robe. “Have you ever seen one of these?” He turned the box over in his hands, sliding it over the backs of his hands and around in a figure-eight. “Marvelous device. Impervious to strength or weapons or magic. Yet if you twist it in a particular way and squeeze, you can crush it and its contents with one hand. A trade secret.” He fixed his eyes on the doll as he said this. “Now, how can I help you, officer?”

“I’m looking for this girl.” Aidan held up a photograph. It was a photo she’d seen before—a girl with yellow hair and green eyes with this boy in a pizza parlor. In the photo, his arm was draped around her.

“I haven’t seen her,” the Magician said.

Aidan turned to the doll. “And you?”

The doll stared at the box. The boy was inside it. Zach, she thought. The Magician held the box in one hand, fingers curled around it, about to tighten. “She isn’t here,” the doll lied.

“But you’ve seen her?” Aidan asked.

“Come inside and we’ll talk,” the Magician said. His smile was frozen on his face. Don’t hurt him, the doll thought.

Smiling broadly, Aidan said, “I’d be delighted.” He followed the Magician up the cherry-red steps to the door of the wagon. The doll wanted to scream at him to run, to hurl magic at him to stop him, to scream for help with every bit of air trapped in her cotton body.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she followed Aidan and the Magician with Zach’s box inside. By the time she stepped over the threshold, there were two boxes in the Magician’s hands, and Aidan was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The magician drew chalk circles on the floor of the wagon. He hummed to himself as he added symbols and runes. Dully, the doll watched.

He rocked back on his heels and studied his work.

The doll looked away. She counted the mirrors inlaid in the wall. Each button-size mirror reflected a part of a bird skull or a corner of a box, or a piece of the Magician himself—an elbow in one, a swirl of cloak in another, a bit of his beard in a third.

She heard the click of a clasp and looked back at the Magician. He held one box in his hand. The lid popped open, and the sides fell apart. Zach tumbled out onto the floor. He moaned as the Magician trussed him in bloodstained yarn.

“Eve, that was …” Zach stopped as he saw the chalk circle. His eyes widened, and he struggled against the yarn. “No! Are you going to kill me? Eve, is it me next?”

The Magician dragged him to his usual cot and tied him to it. Zach twisted and flopped. “Hush,” the Magician said. “I don’t harvest the powerless.”