Free Clockwork Twist : Trick by Emily Thompson

carnival game,” Jonas answered as if it were true as could be.
    Tasha laughed quietly behind a black-gloved hand. “Very well,” she said, taking control of herself again. “Well, then why don't we agree to keep our own secrets without contest?  That way we can work together and each get what we want.”
    Niko muttered something in Serbian.
    “You are quite magnificent, my dear,” she said to him clearly in English, “but two more capable fellows would only improve our odds of success.”  She looked back to Jonas and Twist. “Providence has smiled on us tonight.  These two are much more than they appear to be.”
    “Am not,” Jonas muttered.
    “You haven't once looked into my eyes,” Tasha said. “Yet this one trusts your eyes better than his own,” she added, gesturing to Twist. “If I had to guess, I'd say you had a powerful Sight that you're being careful to control.”  At this, Twist's face showed obvious amazement.  She smiled at him, quite satisfied.
    Jonas looked at Twist, and jabbed an elbow at him angrily. “I'm trying to outsmart a world class celebrity here.  Stop giving away my hand!”  Twist stared back at him in innocent and wounded bewilderment.
    “Are we going to stop toying with each other soon, and come to an arrangement?” Tasha asked pleasantly. “If you let me help you, we can get Myra back by noon tomorrow.”
    While Jonas made a show of thinking it over, Twist could only think of Myra.  He was already half way to Paris to keep someone from taking her away, but now someone else entirely had done it.  He felt like the ground had suddenly gone out from under him.  He didn't know if she was safe, hurt, frightened, or even still alive.
    “Stop playing games,” Twist began darkly, looking to Tasha. “Look me in the eye and tell me.  Can you lead me to Myra or not?” Jonas looked at him, his eyes gone pale green again.
    Tasha looked back at Twist, as if searching for something in his eyes.  Then, she simply nodded and gave him a gentle smile. “I promise you I can.”
    “Then what are we still doing here?” Twist grumbled, turning back the way they'd come.
     

 
     
    Twist watched silently as Tasha shuffled the black playing cards in her bare, pale hands.  She'd assured him that they couldn't leave to follow after Myra until sunrise.  He loathed the idea of waiting, but had no other leads.  Her long fingernails flashed blood red in the dim firelight, but the black cards in her hands had no color at all of their own: each suit was demarcated with the traditional shapes, but all four suits were painted in silver.
    “So,” Jonas asked, from the other side of the simple wooden table that was set on the sand near the warm camp fire, “what's a famous Russian celebrity doing here in the desert outside Suez with a Serbian, on the hunt for mythical Cyphers?”
    Tasha smiled, looking to the cards in her hands. “No secrets after all, then?”
    “I'm just making conversation,” Jonas said, sipping at his glass of deep, red wine.  The cloth canopy over the table billowed gently in the dull, dry wind.  “We've got time to kill, don't we?”  Niko rolled his eyes and glanced away at the softly crackling fire behind Tasha's chair, taking a drink of his own glass of wine.
    A pair of Egyptian men glanced at the table from where they sat, on crates beside the few tents set up at the edge of the small camp.  The silver smoke from their long pipes wafted around their dark whiskered faces as they spoke softly together.  Their clothes were the color of the sand around them, and their eyes were as dark as the star-studded sky over head.  Twist snapped his eyes away before they caught him staring.
    “We don't we play a game?” Tasha said, placing the deck of cards on the table before her, face down. “I'll read your fortune,” she said to Jonas, smiling up to his eyes.  He turned them to the wine glass in his hand before she could catch them. “Everything I get right