The Fortune Teller's Daughter by Jordan Bell

hurt. My face felt slick and warm with my
own blood, coagulating now and drying. It clotted in my hair, made my clothes
feel stiff. I felt nauseous. I felt like I had drowned and this was the world
that lay at the bottom of the ocean.
    My magician
came to me, knelt before me even though I couldn’t see more than the silhouette
of him in the red darkness, but I could feel him. With my free hand I pushed
his sweaty hair from his eyes and he stilled when I touched him, then responded
by turning his nose into my palm and taking a deep, crushing breath.
    “Serafine.”
    He sighed my
name, clutched my hand to his face as if he were afraid I might pull away. We
were in bad shape, the two of us.
    “Are you
ok?” he said into my wrist, his lips brushed against my pulse. I gripped him
tightly.
    “Not even a
little bit.”
    I could feel
the train slowing its suicidal trajectory. I wondered if he was doing it,
somehow, but I no longer thought it mattered. I could not bring myself to
question the impossibility of who he was.
    “At least
he’s gone now.”
    “He’s a
magician.” He pulled away from my touch, even as I reached for him. “That would
not have killed him.”
    I gaped. “I
pushed him from a moving train into the side of a subway tunnel!”
    “We’re
tougher than we look.” He groaned and prodded at his own hurt body. “Castel
likely disappeared before he ever hit the ground.”
    I shook my
head. The train slowed a little more and ahead of us I could see the lights of
a station crawling closer.
    “Who was he,
Eli?”
    We were quiet
together for a long time with only the sound of the wind and the clattering of
metal on tracks between us. It did not seem to be the easiest thing he’d had to
do all night, answering this question.
    “Castel used
to be a magician for the carnival.” He climbed to his feet, but kept his hands
in contact with me as he slid into the seat beside me. “We were an act,
together, for a very long time.”
    “You were
friends.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”
    The train
groaned, a broken sound, as it pulled into the empty station. 
    He covered
his face against the bright lights and leaned forward onto his knees.
    “Not
exactly,” he said, his voice muted and haunted and far, far away. “Castel’s my
brother. My twin.”
     
     
     

11
    __________________
    Eli
     
    The Magician
charmed the officer at the edge of the subway station parking lot into
searching for his bad guys elsewhere. It was an easy trick, something Eli could
do without thinking. After a few drinks. Blindfolded.
    But that was
before Castel had tasked him almost to ruin. When the cop blinked dumbly into
the Magician’s face, there was a second when Eli thought the charm wouldn’t
work and he’d have to resort to knocking him out the old fashioned way and
making a run for it. But then the officer turned and wandered off towards the station
where his comrades were fanning out. As soon as the officer’s attention led him
elsewhere, Eli took Sera’s hand and dragged her away into the dark, wet
streets.
    The wound on
her face was ugly, a broken star beside her left eye that wouldn’t stop bleeding
no matter how many times he stopped them and held pressure to the wound. She
swayed in his arms as if she were dancing to music he couldn’t hear, murmuring
about the ocean. Confessing her fear of drowning.
    He did not
want to admit that all her blood scared him.
    Eli had
never enjoyed Chicago, but that night he liked it even less. They’d gotten off
the train too soon and the distance to the train yards seemed insurmountable.
It might as well have been on the other side of the world. He needed to get her
help, needed to get both of them within the safety of the gates where Castel
couldn’t reach them. Even if Sera didn’t believe he could have survived being
pushed off the train, Eli knew better. He knew how he’d survive the fall
that would kill a normal man, and if he could do it, Castel could as well,