Conjured

“You,” Eve said.

“Me,” Aidan said. “And you.”

She noticed that a line had formed behind a woman wrestling a toddler. If Zach were here, he would have been recruited to help at the desk. “I don’t have time to talk right now.” Eve started to march past Aidan. The man in the gray suit, she saw, was still there. He watched her from the bench.

“I know. And that’s why we need to talk.” The flirting lilt vanished from his voice. “We don’t have the luxury of time anymore.”

Halting, Eve stared at him. “Do you know where Zach is?”

“Zach? Ahh, Zach. So that’s his name.”

She felt her hands ball into fists. “Did you … take him anywhere?”

Aidan spread his hands to show his innocence. “I’ve never met him. I don’t even know what he looks like. Besides, why would you think that of me? I’m wounded, Evy. Truly.”

Eve couldn’t say why she didn’t trust him—and even if she could articulate it, she couldn’t say it out loud with the librarians listening. And they were listening. The closest librarian feigned interest in her computer screen, but her eyes kept darting to Eve and Aidan, especially Aidan. Another librarian stared openly, as if watching a TV show.

“I have to talk to Patti.” Eve brushed past Aidan. He caught her arm.

“You have to talk to me. And Victoria and Topher, of course. C’mon, we don’t bite. At least not often. And never in public. I swear we’ll be the model of decorum. We’ll only talk.” He tightened his grip.

“Let go of me,” she said quietly.

The other librarians ceased typing. She didn’t hear any pages rustle or books being stacked. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the patrons were watching also.

“I saw the photo on the bulletin board,” Aidan said, just as quietly. “That girl … She was Victoria’s sister. We need to talk to you.”

Eve felt as if her blood were freezing, crystallizing in her veins. She shook her head. “You’re lying,” Eve said loudly. The antlered girl belonged to her memories, deep in the past and in another world.

One of the librarians piped up. “Want me to fetch Patti?”

Aidan released her. He took a step backward and raised his hands as if in surrender. “You can trust me, Green Eyes, even if you don’t know it yet. I have your best interests at heart. We all do.”

Keeping an eye on him, Eve skirted around the circulation desk. The other librarians kept their eyes on Aidan as well. He didn’t vanish or even budge. She felt shivers on her skin. If he was telling the truth … She couldn’t think about that right now. She had to find Zach. Zach first, then she’d face Victoria.

She pushed open the door to Patti’s office and stepped inside. “Patti …”

Patti’s desk chair was swiveled to the side. A sweater was draped over the armrest. She’d just stepped out, Eve guessed. Her computer hummed softly, and her desk lamp was on.

On the desk under the lamplight, in the center of a semicircle of books, was a small box. It had gilded edges, jeweled faces, and an ornate clasp.

Eve took a step backward slowly, carefully, as if her knees weren’t fully functional. Her heart thudded so hard and fast that the sound of it filled her ears. She felt it beat through her chest and into her skull. Her lungs tightened, as if her rib cage were constricting. It was hard to breathe, and the air felt thick.

She’d seen this box.

In a vision.

It had a silver clasp in the shape of a tree. Rubies clustered like glittering apples in the silver leaves. It was the size of her palm and had slats on all sides. There was also a hook on the top so it could hang from a rope—or from a silk ribbon inside a wagon between feathers and painted skulls.

It couldn’t be real.

And it couldn’t be here.

She backed against the door.

As her back touched the door, she screamed, and she shoved her hands forward as if she could shove the box and all it meant away.

Books and papers blew off the table in a blast. The box flew against the wall and smashed into it. It crashed down, falling over stacks of books, end over end, and rolled onto the carpet. It lay on its side, and Eve kept screaming.

Behind her, voices were shouting. And then she heard shouts change to screams as magic poured out of her like water through a broken levee. Books flew from the shelves, and the computer monitor shattered into shards of plastic, glass, and metal.

Eve plunged into darkness.

Dangling from a silk ribbon, the boxes sway as the wagon bounces over the road. I am tossed against the painted wood walls, and I feel my skin bruise.

Eyes in the boxes watch me, and I watch them.

Bottles clink together on the shelves. Skulls snap their mouths open and shut. The skull of a mouse, of a bird, of a cat, of a man. Across the wagon, the Storyteller knits a ribbon of red and blue and gold. It coils around her feet already. Still, she knits it longer and longer.

“Once upon a time,” she says.

I want to speak, but my lips won’t move.

“A man and a woman wanted a child …”

I touch my face with my fingers. My skin feels soft and pliant, but my lips are sealed shut. I tug at them, and then I tear. My fingers gouge my cheeks and chin and lips. My mouth will not open.

Across the wagon, the Storyteller continues to knit. “So they made a child out of clockwork parts.”

I have blood on the tips of my fingers and under my fingernails.

“And when it was older, it killed them.”

The pain in my fingers feels exquisitely sharp, like tiny needles, and I see the droplets of blood form perfect spheres that plummet toward the wood floor of the wagon. But they do not hit. Instead, I hear rain on the top of a tent. I am no longer in the wagon. I am in the tattered red carnival tent. Rain seeps through the holes in the fabric so that it seems as if the tent itself is crying.

The rain slides down the paint on the face of the clown who contorts himself in the center of the tent. He is alone, and his dance is beautiful, a slow ballet that crosses over the floor of wood shavings. There is no music except the rain.

“Choose a card,” a voice says behind me. It is the Magician, and when I turn, I see he stands at a table of red velvet. Cards spin in the air around him as if they were birds. The cards float, twist, and then land in his open hand.

Four fall to the table, facedown.

One card flips over without the Magician touching it.

It’s the image of a sword in a disembodied hand. “The Ace of Swords,” the Magician says. Another card turns over on its own. “The Wheel of Fortune.” A third card flips, showing a man in a robe with a chalice, a sword, and flowers on a table before him. “The Magician.” And then the final card. It is blank.

I look up at the Magician for him to explain, but he is gone, and so is the tent around me.

I am outside, and the stars are spread close and thick in the sky, so many little pieces of brightness that I suddenly understand the word “stardust” because it looks like the blackness has been dusted with specks of light.

I smell burned caramel and popcorn, and I hear the ring and clatter of carnival games. The prizes hang above the booths—delicate clockwork birds in golden cages, masks made of curved horns, a flute that plays by itself. And I realize that I am perched like the prizes, high above the ground.