Free The Fortune Teller's Daughter by Jordan Bell Page B

overwhelming my better senses.
His fingertips brushed the back of my bare thighs. His eyes darkened when I
inhaled and he pulled back sharply, breaking the moment.
    I blinked,
shook my head to clear it.
    All the
wonderful possibilities of the carnival, of the Magician, of everything I
thought was supposed to be mine, unraveled, too.
    “You win.” I
reached behind my neck and pulled the key from beneath my t-shirt. He rose to
his feet, crowding me, his hands catching himself on my waist when I swayed
unsteadily. We stood too close, but neither of us pulled away.
    “You said it
was hidden.” 
    “I lied.”
    “Let me,” he
murmured and took the cord from my fingers. He pulled it over my chin, nose,
and carefully threaded it from my bed-messy hair. His hands were gentle,
different than the ones that had threatened me earlier.
    He returned
the key to his own neck where it lay stark against his white shirt. For the
next minute, the next year, we lingered longer than was appropriate and with
all my body I begged him not to leave me behind.
    “I would
have made an excellent member of Imaginaire , you know.”
    “Maybe. But
things are complicated right now. There’s no place for outsiders.” The Magician
touched a finger beneath my chin and lifted it as he had behind his tent. I
shivered at the touch, at the way he gazed down at me, his expression
unreadable but intense. “Don’t look at me with your big, sad green eyes. It
won’t work. I am unmoved by the manipulations of lion-haired girls. I cannot
hire you, and wouldn’t hire you if I could. I assure you that despite what you
think, Cora would not thank me for taking you with us. Likely she would have me
murdered in my sleep. Violently and thoroughly.”
    His skin
felt warm and he smelled of chocolate and caramel, which seemed viciously
unfair.
    “I don’t
believe you.”
    “Things are
different now.”
    “I am not
afraid, if that’s what you think.”
    I could feel
him breathing, that was how close we stood. He lowered both hands to my arms
and for a moment I thought he might pull me the last inch into him. I wouldn’t
have minded. It was too easy to be bewitched by him.
    Instead he
pushed me back, displaced me from his control. “Do not return to the carnival,
Serafine. It is not for you.”
    His words
acted like ice water and I instantly chilled to his touch. He stepped away from
me and headed for the door. It was difficult to turn and watch him go. At the
door he hesitated, backlit by the hallway light, half the tube lights burnt
out.
    “This is no
place for you, either. You should leave this miserable apartment and go
somewhere brighter.”
    He lingered
a minute longer, gazing at me, at my shoulders and arms and naked legs. He ran
his hand across his firm mouth as if he considered something important, but
without giving it voice, he turned and was gone.
    I closed the
door. Locked it. I could feel the loss of his presence right away, cold on my
skin and the smell of damp in the walls. Not even a hint of caramel popcorn. As
if I’d made him up. Wished him into existence.
    Thunder
clapped and shook the old building, made the windows groan and the radiator
whine. I got out a pair of cotton pants and pulled them on to guard against the
new cold. He was right, of course, this was no place for me. I was tired of
being here alone. Waiting.
    I made it
halfway to the couch when he knocked on the door. Proper this time. Two knocks.
I stopped in my tracks, my heart catapulting against my rib cage. The cold
retreated. The loneliness too. Before he could flee, I ran to the door and,
shaking, undid all the locks.
    “You came
back. I didn’t think…”
    The man in
the doorway was not the Magician.
    Though I
didn’t realize it until he was shoving his way inside.
     
     
     

9
    __________________
     
     
    In a nothing
neighborhood outside Boston, my mother and I lived for two weeks in July in a
tiny motel where the doors all faced the parking lot and women in their