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  Chapter 2: The Magician

  “Crying slowly and sucking on a gun.”

  Danzig, “Do You Wear the Mark”

  Once the applause died down and the audience was out the door, the magician went backstage. The night was dark and close, a proper night for an execution. Greg did not care that Lazarus, this whiner, this Mr. Play-It-Safe, was unhappy with his tricks with fire. Tonight the bird saw a bad guy, and the ball showed his face. Fire cleanses. You can’t hide your filth from the flames. The firebird was like radar that detected sinister and wicked souls, and the crystal ball was the display on which Greg could see them. Lately, the ball had not shown Greg what he wanted to see, and his tension had been rising. He was nervous, and only Martha’s company gave him peace. But when Martha was not there, a strange hunger devoured him from the inside. But tonight, at last, was the night.

  Greg had to see the malefactor’s face in the ball to spot him in the crowd of spectators leaving the circus. The image in the ball had already started to fade, but it was still possible to discern some facial features. A balding middle-aged man, square chin, glasses on a hooked nose, a face that seemed to belong to a professor or a doctor, not a murderer. But appearances can be deceiving, a fact Greg knew better than anyone. The ball was never mistaken. So many towns, so many shows, and the ball had never pointed him to the wrong man. Greg had little time; he needed to find the man with glasses. The magician set the crystal ball aside and went to a marquee. He was lucky. A part of the audience had lingered, as if expecting the show to continue. Children asked their parents to let them see the cages with the freaks—a fire-breathing monkey or a Cyclops woman.

  Greg spotted the man from the ball. He was standing alone, feigning interest in the proceedings. He began to wander among people and went to examine the tent area. But his eyes kept returning to the same thing, a little girl no more than eight years old who was begging her parents to stay for a while at the circus. They explained to her that it was late and time to go home, but they seemed in no hurry to leave. The girl was wearing a white dress with red polka dots and red patent leather shoes. The clothes were well worn, though clean. By the standards of the town, in which the appearance of the traveling circus was the main event of the year, the girl’s dress was almost ceremonial.

  The man with glasses was dressed in a boiler suit and greasy oversized pants. A hired auto mechanic. Not the most enviable job for someone his age, but for people like him, career and money were not the most important things in life. He stood a few meters away from the girl, his gaze sliding over her, razor-sharp and dark as a dry well, but he did not dare approach. Greg had seen that gaze before. It was the gaze of a man who does ugly things to pretty girls.

  “Hey, mister,” Greg called to him. “Mister, wanna see a trick? Absolutely free.”

  Greg moved through the sparse crowd toward the man with glasses. Someone in the crowd recognized the magician, and he heard cheers. A few people even slapped him on the shoulder. Greg did not care for such chumminess, but he forced himself to smile. He didn’t want to frighten the man in the boiler suit. He needn’t have worried. The man was so entranced by the little girl that he did not realize the magician had addressed him. By the time the penny dropped, Greg was standing next to him. “Mister, you’re a little hard of hearing,” Greg said, smiling. He heard a few twitters of laughter. “I want to show you a trick. I’ll do it in a split second.”

  “No, don’t bother,” the man said. “I must go home.”

  “What’s up, mister? It’s fast. I just want to show you a trick, not all the Guiding Light episodes at one go,” Greg continued. The laughter increased.

  “Honestly, it’s time for me to go home,” the man replied, clearly not happy with the attention or the laughter from the crowd.

  He started to walk away, but a bearded, burly jasper in the crowd put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, stop acting up! Don’t be prim. Everybody wants a free ride.”

  The man with glasses raised his hands apologetically, and the bearded man, looking pleased, nodded to Greg. The magician nodded back.

  “What’s your name?” Greg asked the man with glasses.

  “Mr. Berry,” the man replied.

  “Hmm, Berry. Well, Mr. Berry, please check the pockets of your trousers, but please be careful.” Berry rooted around in his pockets, and his face took on a puzzled expression. When he pulled his hands out of the pockets, they were holding large red strawberries. A smattering of applause followed.

  “Mr. Berry, let’s convince the audience that you didn’t put the berries there in advance,” Greg said. “Check your pockets one more time.” The man with glasses did ​​as Greg asked. This time he pulled out raspberries. The applause was louder.

  “Please, Mr. Berry, don’t stop.”

  Berry put hands in his pockets several times, and each time he took out some berries, which he gave away. He looked a little woozy. He was obviously not used to being in the spotlight. He became distraught, his face paled, and his movements became awkward. The children and adults were happy about the free berries, and Greg forced Berry to check his pockets until everyone had some.

  “Perhaps that’s enough,” Greg said at last. “Let’s not misuse Mr. Berry’s time, because I promised the trick would be short. In fact, Mr. Berry, I want to pay you for this inconvenience.” Greg held up his hand, put it over the man’s balding head and over his left ear, and showed the crowd and Mr. Berry a five-dollar bill, clenched in his fist. “For your pains, Mr. Berry.”

  Mr. Berry hesitated a moment, and then hurried away, followed by the envious glances of the crowd. Greg took his leave and went to his trailer. Now he could take his time and wait until everyone else in the circus fell asleep. He would have a few hours before morning, when they would start to disassemble the main tent and load the cages. The trick with the banknote had gone smoothly. Berry was so confused and scared that he had not noticed Greg plucking a hair from his head. The hair was a bit short, but it would be enough.

  Greg crossed the backyard and walked past the brothers Blanche and Black, who barely paid any attention to him. He hoped Martha was in a pad room brushing up after the performance, so he would be able to stay in the trailer alone. He was lucky. There was no one there. At the rear of the trailer was a chest that contained supplies for tricks. The chest was small because Greg relied more on his inner magic, his instincts, the fire in his blood. Normal magicians only pretended they had magic, and their tricks were carefully planned stunts, the execution of which required a ton of stage props, boxes, mirrors, barrels, mechanisms of all kinds, and mechanisms masking mechanisms. In other traveling circuses, illusionists needed more space for rehearsals and a truck to carry all their equipment. That was not necessary for Greg. His magic was real, even though he did not fully understand how he was able to manipulate it. Because of his abilities, Lazarus Bernardius had picked Greg off the streets and found a new home for him among the circus freaks and renegades. Greg quickly realized that everything in this circus that seemed like an illusion or like expensive makeup to fool the audience was real. These monsters and whackos were real. Lazarus crisscrossed the country to find them and give them shelter. To be called a real circus, Bernardius needed only a magician.

  Or a real mage. Lazarus insisted that Greg not use magic outside the circus and forbade him from harming anyone. Greg had agreed, although the prohibition annoyed him. What was the sense of fire magic if it couldn’t be used for real benefit? It was like having a million dollars and not daring to spend a dime. Greg had obeyed at first, but eventually he learned to circumvent the ban. He did not try to negotiate with Bernardius. The craggy old man wouldn’t have approved killing people. His philosophy was that the circus inhabitants should communicate with ordinary people as little as possible. They should mix with normals only to buy food, sell tickets, repair cars, and find out if they had heard about any strange things in their neighborhoods.

  Greg pulled an oiled bag out of the chest. There
were black candles in the bag, each one as thick as a grown man’s forearm. In the dim light of the trailer, the candles gleamed strangely, as if made of polished black steel instead of wax. If someone stared at one for a while, it would appear to be alive, its butyraceous glow pulsating, its surface similar to the carapace of a huge insect. Greg took one of the candles and Mr. Berry’s strand of hair. He carefully wrapped it around the wick, which was much longer and thicker than the wick of a normal candle. With a slight hiss, the hair grew into the wick, issuing a greenish glow. Greg took the candle with Berry’s hair, put the rest of the candles back in the bag, and left the trailer.

  The circus was on a vacant lot on the outskirts of a town. Greg had to go around the encampment perimeter, choosing the darkest spots, trying not to make any noise. He soon disappeared into the night. When he had gone a good distance from the circus and was walking down the poorly illuminated streets of the town, he lit a candle. Its flame was weak, more like a smoldering. Holding the candle at arm’s length, Greg checked to his right and his left, in front of him and behind him, all around. Candle flames flickered and twitched when Greg chose the wrong side, but grew brighter when the magician headed in the right direction. The candle burned most vividly when it was pointed northeast, so Greg went in that direction. A night action was not pleasant or fast, but it was the easiest way to track down the killer, and Greg did not complain.

  The magician was so focused on the candle flame that pointed the way to Mr. Berry that he did not notice the short stooped figure following him in the shadows. Small Zaches, bynamed Zinnober, could be very stealthy in the dark.