The Night Circus(13)
“Help me, then,” Marco says, looking up from his books. “Think of something. An object. A significant object that I cannot possibly know about.”
Isobel sighs but she obediently closes her eyes, concentrating.
“It’s a ring,” Marco says after a moment, picking the image out of her mind as easily as if she had drawn him a picture. “A gold ring with a sapphire flanked by two diamonds.”
Isobel’s eyes snap open.
“How did you know that?” she asks.
“Is it an engagement ring?” he counters with a grin.
She clasps her hand to her mouth before she nods.
“You sold it,” Marco says, picking up the fragments of memory attached to the ring itself. “In Barcelona. You fled an arranged marriage, that’s why you’re in London. Why did you not tell me?”
“It is not exactly a topic of proper conversation,” Isobel says. “And you hardly tell me anything about yourself, you could have fled an arranged marriage of your own.”
They stare at each other for a moment, while Marco tries to come up with an appropriate response, but then Isobel laughs.
“He probably looked for the ring longer than he looked for me,” she says, glancing down at her bare hand. “It was such a lovely thing, I almost didn’t want to part with it but I had no money and nothing else to sell.”
Marco starts to say he can tell she received quite a good price for the ring, but then there is a knock on the door of the flat.
“Is it the landlord?” Isobel whispers, but Marco puts a finger to his lips and shakes his head.
Only one person ever knocks upon that door unannounced.
Marco waves Isobel into the adjoining study before he answers.
The man in the grey suit does not enter the flat. He has never entered the space since he orchestrated the transition, pushing his student out into the world.
“You will be applying for a position to work for this man,” he says without greeting, taking a faded business card from his pocket. “You will likely need a name.”
“I have a name,” Marco says.
The man in the grey suit does not inquire as to what it might be.
“Your interview is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon,” he says. “I have handled a number of business matters for Monsieur Lefèvre of late and I have put in a strong recommendation, but you should do whatever is needed to secure the position.”
“Is this the beginning of the challenge?” Marco asks.
“This is a preliminary maneuver, to place you in an advantageous position.”
“Then when does the challenge start?” Marco asks, though he has asked the question dozens of times before and never received a firm answer.
“That will be clear at the time,” the man in the grey suit says. “When it does begin, it would be wise to focus your attention on the competition itself”—his eyes move pointedly to the closed door to the study—“without any distractions.”
He turns and exits down the hall, leaving Marco standing in the doorway, reading and rereading the name and address on the faded card.
*
HECTOR BOWEN EVENTUALLY relents to his daughter’s insistence that they remain in New York, but he does so for his own purposes.
While he makes occasional comments that she should be practicing more, for the most part he ignores her, spending his time alone in the upstairs parlor.
Celia is quite pleased with the arrangement, and spends most of her time reading. She sneaks out to bookstores, surprised when her father does not inquire as to where the piles of freshly bound volumes came from.
And she does practice, often, breaking all manner of things around the house in order to put them back together again. Making books fly around her room like birds, calculating how far they can travel before she must adjust her technique.
She becomes quite adept at manipulating fabric, altering her gowns as expertly as a master tailor to accommodate the weight she has regained, her body feeling like her own again.
She has to remind her father to come out of the parlor for meals, though lately he has refused more and more often, barely leaving the room at all.
Today he will not even respond to her insistent knocking. Irritated, and knowing he has charmed the locks so she cannot unlatch them without his own keys, she kicks the door with her boot and to her surprise, it swings open.
Her father stands by a window, intently watching his arm as he holds it out in front of him, the sunlight filtering in through the frosted glass and falling over his sleeve.
His hand fades completely and then returns. He stretches his fingers, frowning at the audible creaking of the joints.
“What are you doing, Papa?” Celia asks, curiosity trumping her annoyance. It is not something she has seen him do before, either onstage or in the privacy of her lessons.
“Nothing to concern yourself with,” her father says, pulling the frilled cuff of his shirt down over his hand.
The door slams shut in her face.
Target Practice
LONDON, DECEMBER 1884
The dartboard hangs precariously on a wall in the study, between tall bookcases and ornately framed oil paintings. It is almost camouflaged in the shadows despite its bold pattern, but the knife reaches its target each and every time it is thrown, very near the bull’s-eye that is obscured by the newspaper clipping pinned to the board.