Kiev was the opposite of Luxembourg. Funny how two places could be populated with human beings but be so completely different, Gavin mused as the train puffed and growled through town. Although the city was built on a series of seven hills with a winding river at the bottom of the valley, the place had no greenery in it whatsoever. Not one tree, flower, or blade of grass grew anywhere. Stone and steel, smoke and sludge hemmed Gavin in. Street after street of blocky buildings crouched low over cobblestoned streets. Gargoyles clung to rooftops and intricately carved monsters crawled across archways. Forests of chimneys belched out clouds of smoke or flashed plumes of yellow flame. Pipes urinated endless streams of waste into the river. A crowd of workers huddled outside a factory, hoping to be called in for a job. More people moved up and down crowded sidewalks. The men wore gray shirts, and the women wore brown dresses and head cloths, and they kept their heads down as they walked. Bright colors seemed to have been outlawed, and the lack pulled Gavin’s spirits lower and lower with every passing moment. Something else bothered him about the crowds, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
Mechanicals ruled the streets. Skittering spiders and brass horses and hovering whirligigs clogged the pavement and the air above it. Automatic streetcars rattled down their tracks, drawing iron boundaries behind them. They all pumped out steam and coal smoke, turning the air thick with white mist and yellow sulfur. Gavin turned away from the window with a feeling of nausea. The something he couldn’t figure out continued to bother him, and it gave him a slight headache.
“How can people live here?” he said.
“People live in all kinds of places,” Dodd said philosophically from his own chair near the table. “Many of them can’t go anywhere else. My usual thought is to be grateful I don’t have to stay.”
Gavin thought of his ship, his graceful Lady, now being hauled inexorably into this stony trap by an iron demon, and wondered how grateful he should be. He sighed. Once Alice had finished distributing the cure here, and once they were reasonably safe beyond the reach of Phipps, they could reassemble the Lady and fly for the Orient. As it was, he felt restless and out of sorts after days of inactivity. They had arrived in Berlin to find reward placards with Gavin’s likeness on them plastered over nearly every empty surface and a notice about him that circulated daily in every local newspaper. Alice, who hadn’t been with the Third Ward long enough to be photographed, had escaped such treatment, but her description had been bandied about, as was Feng’s. This forced Gavin to stay hidden either aboard the Lady or in Dodd’s car during the circus’s entire time in Berlin. Alice and Feng risked slipping out to spread the cure around and brought back reports that underground stories of a woman with a demon’s hand and a man with an angel’s voice were already circulating. A number of Alice’s “patients” asked Feng to sing, and he quickly demurred.
“When I sing,” Feng said, “donkeys die in the street.” So one night Gavin spent an hour with the little nightingale, recording the same song over and over until he was satisfied he’d done it perfectly. He gave it to Feng so he could play it for Alice on her nightly missions. But some time later, the nightingale came fluttering back to him. His careful music was gone, and the nightingale instead spoke in Feng’s voice.
“The lady wants you to know that the nightingale’s music is pretty, but not the same as yours,” it said, “and it makes her sad to hear it.”
More than once, Feng himself happily remained behind to accept from a grateful cure recipient what he called “additional gratuity,” a practice that infuriated Alice and Gavin both-Alice on moral grounds and Gavin because it meant Alice was forced to travel back to the circus unescorted through Berlin streets. Feng, however, seemed unfazed by their fury, and Gavin understood more fully why Feng’s father had decided not to allow him to continue as a diplomat in England.
When Alice returned from these midnight excursions, she collapsed into a deep sleep that lasted long enough to make Gavin nervous. He spent hours sitting by her bunk, just to be near her. The iron spider on her arm lay between them, glaring red and bubbling with blood. He barely got to speak with Alice, hardly even saw her awake. This mission to cure the world drove her to exhaustion, and while he couldn’t fault her for it, he found himself wishing she would give up some of her intensity. Leaving London and Alice’s fiance behind was supposed to have granted them the freedom to love each other, but instead they found even less time for each other than before. How could Gavin compete with a world of plague victims? At times he wanted to shake her and shout that he was dying, that any day his life could end, and she would have all the time she wanted to spread the cure. But he didn’t. The devotion and intensity made Alice herself, and changing any of it would make her into a different person, someone he wouldn’t want to spend his remaining time with. He could either love her or change her, but not both.
Dr. Clef didn’t seem to share Gavin’s unhappiness. He stayed locked up in the ship’s laboratory, scribbling with pencil on endless sheets of paper or with chalk on a slate, and manipulating long sections of his alloy into odd shapes. Gavin had been afraid that he was trying to re-create his Impossible Cube, but Dr. Clef waved this idea aside.
“It is as I told you,” he said blandly. “I cannot re-create it, now or ever.” But he would not say what he was working on.
As time passed, Gavin took to spending more and more time in Dodd’s car. It was larger and more comfortable than any stateroom on Gavin’s ship, and Dodd seemed glad to have him, his sole connection to Felix Naismith, though they never spoke of the man.
Enforced idleness didn’t sit well with Gavin, and his hands worked without him. Even now, as the train puffed through Kiev, he wound wire around a wooden dowel, slid the dowel free, and snipped the length of the resulting coil with cutters, creating a pile of little rings.
At last the train screeched to a stop. It had taken a spur of track that cut past an enormous open square, perhaps three hundred yards on a side and bordered by tall buildings, beyond which rose columns of smoke and flame. Half the stone square was crowded with market carts and sooty freestanding tents. The other half, the side closest to the tracks, had been painted off, clearly set aside for the circus. Just beyond the tracks lay the slate-gray Dnepro River. Oil glistened in a rainbow sheen on its surface far below the cut stone banks. Steel boats of varying sizes chugged along in orderly procession, their stacks spewing yet more smoke into the already overburdened air.
The moment the train halted, the door to Dodd’s car jerked open and in popped a portly man with long mustaches under a bowler hat. His name was Harry Burks, and he was the advance man, the person who traveled ahead of the circus to start the publicity and smooth the way with local officials. He spoke a dozen languages and loved nothing more than spending an evening in a pub making new friends. Gavin had never known him to forget a name or a face.
“Dodd!” Harry boomed. “Right on time. Good, good! You know how the Ukrainians feel about punctuality.”
“What’s the news, Harry?” Dodd asked.
“Nothing major, thank heavens, thank heavens. We have the southern half of the market square for as long as we need it, and we can leave the train on this side spur, though I had to promise the chief of police and the town council and their families front-row tickets along with the usual bribes. Placards are already up all over town, and I’ve taken out advertisements in all the usual places. I’m also trying something new-paying hansom cabs and spiders a small fee to paste placards on themselves. Walking advertisements, you know. We’ll see if it helps, if it helps.”
“Fine idea,” said Dodd.
“And remind everyone not to go out after dark,” Harry warned. “Kiev clockworkers can snatch anyone off the street after sunset, and there’s nothing you can do about it, nothing you can do.”
Dodd nodded. “Will do. And the other matter?”
Harry gave a sideways glance at Gavin. “Not a word, not a word. Your little friends may have been the toast of Berlin, but no one’s talking about a reward for an American boy or an English girl, and clockwork cats are all the rage in Kiev. I think you can come out and breathe some smoky air at last, my boy.”
A load of tension drained from Gavin, and he slumped in the padded chair. Freedom at last!
“But,” Harry continued, holding up a finger, “there are other rumors. I’m hearing tales about a young woman, an angel who cures the plague with a touch, with a touch, and of her young lover who makes beautiful music for her.”
“Uh-oh,” Gavin said. “How is word getting around so fast?”
“Who knows, who knows?” Harry shrugged. “But there is more. The newspapers are saying there are fewer new cases of plague, and more of those who have it are recovering. Recovering! People are beginning to hope. That should give you reason to be careful, my boy, especially here.”
“I’m always careful,” Gavin said, though even as he said it, he knew it was mostly a lie. “But why here?”
“Don’t forget that Kiev is supposedly the birthplace of the plague. She certainly has more zombies and clockworkers than anywhere else in the world, and it’s a pity the Zalizniak and Gonta put all their resources into machines of war. They might have found a cure of their own, otherwise. At any rate, if the general population learns where to find you and that young lady, you’ll be overrun, like Jesus and the lepers. So watch your step, my boy, watch your step.”
An image of Alice caught in a mad mob of desperate plague victims flashed through Gavin’s mind and his fingers went cold. “Understood, sir,” he said.
Dodd rubbed his hands. “Let’s get set up. I want the midway ready by nightfall so we can make parade by tomorrow afternoon.”
Outside the train, a crowd was already gathering under the gloomy sky, though everyone stayed carefully outside the painted boundaries. Here, no one stepped out of line. Once again, something about the crowd nagged at Gavin. He examined the people, trying not to stare, but still he couldn’t work it out. They looked perfectly normal. Perhaps a few more than the usual had clockwork pieces or prosthetics, but that wasn’t it. Gavin shook his head. It would come to him later, he was sure.
Performers in work clothes spilled out of the other train cars and slid open the boxcar doors. The animals within howled, roared, and growled with agitation, glad to see sunlight, however hazy. Gavin sympathized. An official-looking man dressed in a blue uniform and accompanied by a brass spider the size of a collie strode up to Dodd and spoke in Ukrainian, to which Dodd smiled blankly. Harry stepped forward and took over, withdrawing a sheaf of stamped papers from his coat pocket while the circus buzzed to life and the drab crowd watched with interest. The cool autumn air was heavy with acrid smoke and steam, no little of which was added by the circus’s own locomotive. Gavin smelled coal and ash and dust and polluted river water, but the city air wasn’t as close as the air within the train car, and Gavin stretched, enjoying it.
Despite frequent visits when he was younger, Gavin had never been part of the circus setting up, and he turned to Dodd with a certain amount of excitement, especially after spending nearly a month in hiding with so little to do.
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Dodd said frankly, “so the best thing you can do is stay out of the way.”
The circus performers worked liked a well-oiled mechanical. First the mahouts led the elephants, both mechanical and biological, out of the boxcars while other roustabouts hauled out enormous rolls of canvas and bundles of wooden stakes with the ease of long practice. It wasn’t possible to pound tent stakes through cobblestones, but before Gavin could wonder about that for too long, he saw a pair of roustabouts slide a stake into a hole that already existed, drilled long ago for exactly this purpose. It meant that the circus had no flexibility about what tent could go where or how big each could be, but it did allow a circus or other events to exist in the center of a city with no parks or grassy squares. The roustabout teams pounded the long stakes into the earth below the street with sledgehammers while teams of other workers laid out canvas. Once two rows of stakes were all in place and the red-striped canvas was laid out between them, the roustabouts pushed two long poles under the canvas and propped them up to create an opening underneath. Two more poles were placed farther in to lengthen the opening, which made enough space for the next step.
The mahout whistled, and the mechanical elephant puffed and snorted its way into the dark interior. Roustabouts followed with more long poles. Gavin, itching with curiosity, couldn’t stand it anymore. He ran down to the tent and ducked inside. The brass elephant, now operating with perfect efficiency under Alice’s careful repairs, was dragging tall, heavy tent poles upright, thereby shoving the tent’s roof higher and higher. Gavin stood out of the way, feeling like a child near the enormous mechanical beast in the increasingly larger space. Once there was enough room, more elephants-live ones-were brought in, and the work went faster. The three enormous center poles took a trio of elephants to haul upright, with the trapeze artists and spiders up in the rigging to ensure they were set properly at the roof. Other spiders scampered about, fastening ropes and tying knots. The center ring was hauled in piecemeal and fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle. An automaton wheeled the talking clock woman to the entrance and wound her up, touched her metal cheek, and went off to help with other jobs. More people brought in bleacher seats to assemble, and the tent became loud with clacks, clatters, clinks, and shouts. For once, the clockwork plague kept its distance, and the analytical side of Gavin’s brain remained quiet, allowing him to watch in wonder as the Tilt assembled around him like a genie rising from the desert.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” said Alice.
Gavin hadn’t noticed her slip up to next him. A smile automatically burst across his face, and he leaned in to kiss her. She still looked a little pale, her skin contrasting sharply with the dark metal of the spider on her hand.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Not entirely myself, but one can only sleep for so long,” she said with more candor than she usually allowed herself. “Thank you for watching over me.”
He flushed a little. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I heard you singing in my dreams and knew you were there.” She squeezed his hand, and the entire circus slowed and stopped. He became aware of the softness of her skin on his, the warmth of her breath, the pulse of their hearts. He never wanted the moment to end, but the second hand on the clock outside ticked forward, and the noises smashed back into existence.
“We need to go,” Alice said.
“Where?”
“Linda wants to see us.”
Outside the tent, the midway and sideshow were taking shape. Animal cages and brightly painted wagons were rolling out of the boxcars, and several smaller tents were going up. No one merely talked. They shouted and hollered, bellowed and bawled, trying to attract as much attention as possible for the circus. Lions roared, seals barked, elephants trumpeted. The sounds bounced off the hard buildings that bordered three sides of the square, creating a swirling cacophony that both unnerved and exhilarated Gavin.
As they picked their way through the chaos, Gavin noticed the dam for the first time. It rose high above the oily Dnepro upriver, clearly visible in the dank air even though it sat between two hills well over a mile away. Water gushed through spillways, and Gavin’s sharp ears picked up the faint roar of it all even above the noise of the circus setting up.
“Wow,” he said. “How did they build that?”
“I have no idea,” Alice said. “But I’m sure it’s the reason Kiev has so many electric lights. Come along.”
Where the sideshow was setting up, they came to a canary-yellow wagon, its wheels chocked into immobility. The door sported a sign: MADAME FABRY. The sign also showed a crystal ball, stars, and a palm, in case the viewer couldn’t read English. Gavin knocked, and the door flew open to reveal a tallish woman who Gavin happened to know was over sixty but could have passed for ten years younger. Her thick brown hair was covered with a gypsy scarf, and she wore glasses. Her overly patched skirt and blouse-part of a costume, now that they were setting up-rustled about her busy frame as she put her hands on her waist.
“Well, it’s about time you got here, honey,” she said brightly. Her accent was American, probably Midwestern, though Gavin had heard her speak with a Southern drawl more than once.
“Aren’t you supposed to say, ‘You’re late,’ or something like that?” Alice said.
“Why would I say that, sweetie?” she said. “Oh! The fortune-telling. Right. No, dear, I save that for the flatties. Gavin’s been rude, is all. Dozens of cookies and butterscotch sweets I’ve given him over the years, and then he hides in the circus for weeks without coming to see me even once.”
“Sorry,” he said, unabashed. “I’ve been a little busy.”
“Kemp said you wanted to see us,” Alice said.
“Yes, yes, come in.”
Linda ushered them into her comfortable wagon. Against the back wall stood an intricately carved bedstead with a plump featherbed and duvet covering it. Wooden cupboards hung from the walls, and a tiny stove took up one corner. A table folded down from the wall, with stools to sit on. But Gavin’s eye went straight to the automaton. He stood in the corner opposite the stove in a case of glass and metal similar to a ticket booth. From the waist up he looked like a brass man wearing a brown jacket and red vest. From the waist down, he was a complicated mass of metal and gears-no legs or feet. His jointed fingers gleamed in the light of the lamp hanging from the ceiling off the rivets on his face and neck. The top half of his head was made of glass, and suspended in some sort of clear medium within which floated a human brain. Copper clips and wires were attached to it, and little electric sparks flicked and jumped about like fireflies. No matter how many times he had seen that, it took Gavin a moment to remember not to stare. Alice put a hand to her mouth.
“Hi, Charlie,” Gavin said.
The automaton opened his mouth. “Gavin,” he said in a metallic voice. “And this is Alice?”
“I am,” she said. “You have the advantage of me, sir.”
“Sorry. Charlie Fabry. I’d offer to shake hands, but…” He tapped the glass in front of him with a brass finger. “And you’ve met my wife already.”
“Quite,” said Alice, and Gavin knew her well enough to see she was trying to cover shock.
“Charlie used to be a wire walker,” he told her. “He fell during a show and would have died, but a clockworker happened to be in the audience, and… well, you can see the result.”
“Gives you a whole new insight,” Charlie said cheerfully. “No appetites, fewer needs, simpler wants. Liberating.” He leaned forward with a creak until his nose nearly touched the glass and his voice dropped to a raspy whisper. “You can see what you never saw before.”
“I don’t understand,” Alice said.
“We’ve been discussing your little trip to the church in Luxembourg, honey,” Linda said.
Alice looked startled. “You know about that?”
“Everybody knows about that,” Linda said. “Not much goes on without everyone hearing about it eventually. I read in the newspaper that a large piece of the church was destroyed, too, but the vicar is planning to rebuild it even bigger, which will help when he applies to have it declared a cathedral.”
“Is that what you wanted to ask about?” Gavin put in.
“Lord, how I do talk. No, honey. This is.” Linda lifted a handkerchief from the fold-down table, revealing three tarot cards. The first card portrayed a skeletal figure swinging a sword over a field of grain and was labeled XIII. The second showed a burning tower falling to pieces. Two men fell screaming from it, and it was labeled XVI: LA MAISON DIEU. Laid crosswise over the dying tower was the third card, on which was rendered a man in priestly red robes. He held a golden staff in one hand and made a gesture of benediction with the other. This card was labeled V: LE PAPE.
“I don’t know anything about tarot cards,” Alice said primly. “I avoid this sort of thing as nonsense.”
“Place your hands palm-up under the window, if you would be so kind.” Charlie slid aside a small opening at the bottom of his glass case, much like a ticket taker might. After a moment’s hesitation, Alice obeyed. The spider on her left hand left her palm bare, but the metal clanked against the shelf beneath the window opening. Gavin watched warily. A pair of red lights beamed from Charlie’s eyes and ran over Alice’s hands. She jumped, but didn’t pull away. The lights ran over every inch of Alice’s hands, then went out.
“Very interesting,” Charlie said. “You have refined tastes, but you work with your hands. You’ve been touched by the clockwork plague more than once, you are deeply in love, and you can’t get this spider off your arm.”
“And you can tell all that from my palms, can you?”
“No, that’s just gossip around the circus. Your palms say the future is going to be difficult. Your fate line is ragged and rough, especially after your heart line. That means your future will be twisted and shredded by emotional decisions. You can change that, of course, but it’ll be entirely up to you.”
“Didn’t Gavin say you were a wire walker?” Alice asked. “Why are you telling fortunes?”
“I was a wire walker first,” Charlie replied genially. “But now that I’m freed of my body, I can see a great deal that other people can’t. It lends itself to fortune-telling.”
“So you’re not reading my palms at all.” Alice’s tone was shrewd.
Charlie shook his head with a faint creak. “No. I pretend because no one believes pronouncements from thin air.”
“That’s not true,” Alice said. “We believe pronouncements from teachers and parents and others in our lives.”
“You didn’t believe Monsignor Adames.”
Gavin blinked. “How did you know we talked to Monsignor Adames? The church… mess was in the newspaper, and I can see how people in the circus might put that together with our absence, but we didn’t even tell Dodd that we talked to Adames, or what he said.”
“I saw it.” Charlie ran a metal finger over the glass casing that topped his head. “Everything is connected. I told you that. Bits of pasteboard can give us a crude glimpse into the future, and the particles that run through my brain give me even clearer knowledge.”
Alice said, “That’s-”
“Nonsense? Ask your Dr. Clef about that,” Charlie said. “According to some very interesting theories he’s been busy proving as we speak, certain tiny particles affect one another over long distances. Turn one particle, and its twin, no matter how far away it is, will turn as well. Just like flipping a card. Clef also claims that time is nothing but an illusion created by our own limited senses, and that as many as eleven other dimensions exist beyond our ability to see, but they still affect what happens to us. Everything is connected in one way or another, and once you accept that idea, the possibility that three tarot cards could fall out of Linda’s deck and my electrical systems could play ‘Camptown Ladies’ at the very moment you had a conversation with a man named Nicolas Adames doesn’t seem very far-fetched.”
Linda, who had been waiting near the table all this time with her hands folded, said, “Honey, let me tell you what the cards mean and then you can decide what to do about it, all right?”
“Very well.” Alice sighed, clearly not convinced. She took up a stool next to the table and Gavin stood behind her. Strangely, he didn’t share her skepticism. In the long moments when he watched over Alice, he sometimes found himself drawn into deep places, places where things could exist everywhere and nowhere all at once, where tiny, graceful objects appeared and disappeared so quickly, it was difficult to say they had hardly existed at all, where almost everything was vast, empty space that threatened to swallow him up, where matter was made of an infinity of tiny, delicate strings that vibrated and sang with a wonderful perfection that made him weep with joy and envy. And just as he was reaching out to touch them and change their song, alter matter itself, Alice murmured in her sleep, and the sound snatched him backward and upward into a bumbling world of impossible hugeness that could only be manipulated by tearing it apart by fire or grinding it around gears. It was maddening. If there were a way to better understand how it all fit together, he wanted to hear about it.
Linda took up a stool opposite Alice while Charlie watched from his booth. Tiny jolts of electricity arced across his brain.
“Normally, honey, I’d dim the lights and burn some incense and have Charlie make some whoosh-whoosh noises,” Linda said, “but you aren’t flatties, so I’ll give it to you without the show.”
“We appreciate that,” Alice said.
“How do you tell fortunes to people who don’t speak English?” Gavin asked.
“I speak more than just English, honey, and Charlie speaks what I don’t. The pictures on the cards tell the rest. Most of my business is actually from women who are expecting.”
“Why them?” Gavin said.
“They want to know if it’s a boy or a girl. I dangle her wedding ring on a string over her middle and tell her what the baby will be based on which way the ring moves. Then I write it down in my book.” She gestured to a leather-bound diary on a high shelf. “I have predictions going back twenty years.”
Alice leaned forward, interested despite herself. “And how many come out right?”
“Lord, honey, I have no idea. Probably half. I can’t tell a thing from a wedding ring. I just tell them what they want to hear. Part of the show.”
“So what happens when you’re wrong?” Gavin wanted to know.
“Usually we’re long gone by the time the baby’s born, dear. But sometimes when we come back to a city, I’ll get an annoyed mother who shows up with a daughter, ready to fight because I told her she’d have a son. I tell her that I didn’t get the prediction wrong. She heard me wrong. Then I get my book down and show her where I wrote she’d have a daughter, and I’m off the hook.”
“Because you write the opposite of what you say,” Alice supplied.
Linda nodded with a smile. “There you have it, honey. It won’t do to have the fortune-teller come out wrong.”
“So why should we believe you now?” Alice demanded.
“Do or don’t.” Linda shrugged. “But you aren’t paying me and I like you both, so I have no reason to make anything up.”
Alice didn’t look convinced, but Gavin said, “Fair enough. Tell us what the cards mean, Linda.”
“Sure, honey. Look closely.” She gestured at the cards on the tiny table in front of her. “All three cards come from the trumps. They indicate large, important events that are difficult to control or change. The first card that fell out of the deck was the mystery trump, which everyone calls Death. Before you panic, let me tell you that it doesn’t mean someone’s going to die. It means one thing will end so something else can begin. You can’t stop the end from coming, but you can decide which direction the new thing will take. Since it fell out first, I assume that’s what’s coming first.”
“All right,” Alice said.
“The second trump card is the House of God. It’s as bad as it looks-utter destruction. Unlike the Death card, this is an end out of which nothing new can begin. It doesn’t mean someone will die, but it might. It’s not a good omen, honey.”
Linda’s words sent a chill over Gavin’s skin, and her cheerful tone only made the dreadful prediction worse. Alice, however, remained unmoved.
“I see,” was all she said.
“The third card landed across the House,” Linda continued, seemingly oblivious to Alice’s attitude. “This is why I called you in to talk to you. Charlie told me what the priest said to you, and this card is the Hierophant or Pope. He symbolizes religious leadership, power, and discipline. When one card lands across another, the crossing card is interfering with the card beneath. In this case, we have a religious leader who is interfering with total destruction. And just as these cards landed on the floor, Charlie told me what your priest said.”
“That flood and plague will destroy us all if I fail,” Alice murmured.
“No.” Gavin put his hand on her shoulder. “He said flood and plague will destroy us all if I fail. He said that I can cure the world, but you have to let go.”
“Let what go?” Alice growled. She held up her spider hand. “This? I wish I could.”
“He said that you have to let him go,” Charlie said gently.
Alice rounded on him. “How do you know that?”
“I believe I already explained that. And the fact that I do know lends credence to what Adames said,” Charlie replied. “Gavin can cure the world, but only if you let him go. Otherwise the world will perish in flood and plague.”
“How am I to let Gavin go?” Alice was getting truly worked up now. “I don’t hold him. I don’t chain him down. He’s free to leave anytime he wishes.”
But when the words left Alice’s mouth, a pang went through Gavin. He shook his head. “No,” he said.
Alice halted and twisted on her stool to look up at him. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t leave you, Alice.” His throat grew thick, and his jaw trembled. “I could never leave you. I love you always.”
Her eyes softened. “I know, darling, I know.” She took his hand. “But I’m not holding you. I’m not forcing you or chaining you. Am I?”
“You’re leading me, Alice Michaels.” The snaps and sparks that danced across Charlie’s brain created a hypnotic pattern of particles that blurred the edges of Gavin’s vision. Words poured from his mouth in an electric river. “You go, and I follow. You pulled me out of that tower of destruction and changed me, and then you took me through the city of white and changed me again, and now you’ve led me down to the city of sulfur to change me one more time. You bring me places, Alice, and I can’t stop you and I don’t want to stop you.”
“Is it a bad thing, Gavin Ennock?” she whispered.
“I don’t know.” The half trance fell away, and he gave a little laugh. “I’ve never been in love before.”
Alice smacked the table with her free hand. “What’s the point in making prophecies if they don’t make sense? Why can’t a fortune-teller-or priest-simply say, ‘Don’t leave the house on Wednesday; you’ll be hit by a streetcar’?”
“The monsignor did say he couldn’t see everything properly,” Gavin reminded her. “At least now we know that I have a role in spreading the cure, too.”
“There’s one more card,” Linda said. “I saved it for last because it landed some distance from the others.”
From her pocket she pulled another card and laid it face up on the table. It showed a white-haired man seated on a throne surrounded by water. He wore blue robes, a yellow cloak, and a crown. In one hand he held a large cup and in the other he held a scepter.
“This is the King of Cups,” Linda explained. “He’s a fair-haired man, very artistic, patient, and unselfish, but given to flights of fancy. He cares deeply about others and shares their pain.”
Gavin picked up the card to examine it. “That sounds a little like me, but-”
“It’s not you, honey. Kings are older men, and fathers.”
The remark sliced through Gavin like a knife made of ice. His fingers went numb and he dropped the card again. It landed on the table. For a moment he couldn’t speak. Then he said, “This is my father?”
“Probably,” Linda said. “Court cards are usually people, and kings are often father figures. It fell away from the others, which tells me that the person is far removed, but coming closer.”
Gavin touched the card with a shaky finger. “I always thought he was dead. Where is he? What is he doing? Why did he leave me? Us?”
“I don’t know.” Linda looked sympathetic. “I just know he’s out there somewhere, and your destinies are intertwined.”
Alice gathered up the cards and handed them to Linda, her posture once again brisk. “We know nothing of the sort. I’m sorry, Linda. I know you believe what you’re saying, but I simply can’t.”
“Listen, honey,” Linda said, “the reason for casting fortunes isn’t to tell you what will or will not happen. It’s to let you know the choice is coming so you can look at your options and prepare yourself instead of being hit blind. Believe or don’t believe-it doesn’t matter. We’ve had the conversation, and you can’t unhear it.” She reached into her pocket and handed them each a small candy wrapped in paper. “Butterscotch?”
“I’m not twelve anymore, Linda,” Gavin said, but the remark came out a little dazed.
“Honey, you’re young enough to be my grandson. As far as I’m concerned, you’re six.” She shooed them toward the door. “Now, get out there and change the world before it changes you.”