Another child of the devil’s realm. This time, Ilsa wouldn’t miss her chance.
The audience gasped; Balthazar had fallen through the trapdoor in a cloud of smoke. Ilsa was meant to emerge in the box across the auditorium, but instead, she was chasing the stranger towards the lobby.
She didn’t get far. As the tail of his long coat vanished through the first set of doors, Ilsa caught a glimpse of her sentinel on the other side. He barely seemed to register what was happening. Perhaps he thought the flash of a coat zipping by was a new part of the act, but if Ilsa followed, too much would be revealed.
She couldn’t leave the corridor looking like The Great Balthazar, and she couldn’t leave the corridor looking like anyone else. The only way out was to finish the trick.
It had been less than ten seconds since Balthazar had vanished, but that was long enough for the auditorium to fill with murmured voices. She had already damaged their finale, so she returned to the door of the box, took a steadying breath, and stepped through as if nothing had happened.
* * *
As far as Mr Johnston was concerned, Ilsa wasn’t part of the finale. As he lambasted Blume about the blunder, she stood silently to one side and felt the magician’s quiet rage hang thick in the air.
His anger was stoking Ilsa’s own, so much so that any guilt she might have felt for doing wrong went skittering away. He ought to see how it felt to see his livelihood fail through no fault of his own.
“This bloody farce of a magic show is poor enough as it is, Blume,” spat Johnston. He was pacing about the dressing room as Blume sat at the table, his second post-show drink cupped in his fist. “If you had any respect for your standing engagement here—”
“I have every respect, Mr Johnston. These things happen in the theatre.”
“They happen” – Johnston advanced on Blume and flung the tumbler from his hand. Ilsa tensed as it shattered against the wall – “when their performer is too sodding drunk to do any better! This is your very last warning, do you understand?”
Blume’s eyes bore into Ilsa’s skull as Johnston left. The unspoken tension that plagued their relationship was palpable. Both of their careers relied on the other, and it wasn’t a comfortable state of affairs for anybody.
“What happened?” he said in a low voice, producing another tumbler from a chest near the vanity. “Where were you?”
“I’m truly sorry I was late, but we both know you got no right to be angry. This ain’t the first time the show’s got messed up, and I don’t mean by me,” said Ilsa, reining in her frustration as much as she could manage. It was difficult; losing first the boy, then the man in the long coat had shortened her fuse.
“No right?” he hissed. “Answer the question!”
Ilsa opted for a half-truth; he wouldn’t be kind about it if she mentioned the boy again. “Someone got into the corridor. I din’t see who. I was distracted. It won’t happen again.”
“A spy?” Ilsa shrugged dismissively. He didn’t deserve to know. “And why didn’t Bert see anything?”
“Did you ask him? P’raps he did.” Blume narrowed his eyes at her, and she stared him down. “Before you go telling me to get my act together, sir, consider this: if that trick’d come off, it would’ve been the only solid note we hit tonight, and it would’ve been because of me.”
“Because of you,” he slurred. “Aren’t we a team?”
Ilsa gritted her teeth, turning to gather her coat and bag so he wouldn’t see. When she got to the door, she looked over her shoulder at him, then wished she hadn’t. Blume was slumped low in his chair because he couldn’t hold himself up. The expression she had taken for anger was concentration as he tried to keep a grasp on the conversation. Something part-way between pity and disgust dissolved her anger, leaving her tired. “You ain’t a very good teammate, Mr Blume.”
He called after her as she left, each cry more remorseful than the last. Ilsa blocked them out. He deserved to stew a while.
Most nights, when Ilsa left through the stage door, she ducked into the next alley and shifted into a man; the tall, brawny type of man who wouldn’t have trouble walking home alone at night. But not tonight, because Martha was waiting for her outside the stage door, and a deep bruise was forming along her cheekbone. Ilsa’s stomach lurched.
“Martha?” There were finger marks on her neck. Her lower lip was swollen, and had been bleeding. As Ilsa took hold of her, she started to tear up.
“Ilsa, I’m sorry. I didn’t know where to go and my feet just carried me here.” Her voice shook. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“Don’t say that. You were right to come find me.”
She herded her in the direction of home, and between her tears Martha told her what had happened.
“I thought it was a clean lift, but I’d only got ten paces when I heard him shout. I din’t even look back. I just ran. He was drunk, and he was with his friends and… I should’ve dropped the wallet, only—” She let out a sob. Ilsa pressed her arm tighter around her and bit her cheek to hold in her anger. “Only I’ve had no luck all night, and I’m out of change, Ilsa.”
Ilsa tried not to picture the scene – an alley, a group of men and Martha on the ground, boots in her ribs – but it was all too familiar. Ilsa had taken her fair share of beatings as a street urchin, and witnessed plenty more. She remembered all the fates she had once pictured for herself – a knife in the gut; a brutish john who liked to make a woman hurt; shackles and the workhouse – and
