“Now, ladies, gather round for the most stupendous demonstration sleight of hand this side of the Mississippi,” she said in her best imitation of a carnival talker—never barker, that was a misnomer—as she shuffled the cards. “Now, steel your nerves because this astonishing feat of prestidigitation was taught to me in my misspent youth by none other than Melvin the Magnificent—world-renowned keeper of the secrets of magic and mystery.”
Dani giggled, breaking Cordelia’s concentration on her banter. “Melvin was a darling. He was the closest thing to a grandpa I would ever get. He was a real finger-smith. Featherlight hands and a master at misdirection.”
She shuffled the cards between her hands, fanning them out in a spread, tapping them against the table. “He originally taught it to me to help me figure out spatial awareness, how to move around people without touching them. But then he figured out I had a knack for it, and he amused himself by teaching me different tricks.” She offered Dani the deck. “Pick one.”
Dani selected a card and Cordelia nodded. “Look at it, don’t show it to me.”
Cordelia spread the cards again, flipping them and shuffling again. She fanned her hands over the deck, then reached under the table and knocked it twice. She picked up the deck, cut it, and motioned for Dani to slide the card back into the deck.
“Now, think about your card, picture it in your mind,” Cordelia said.
“Isn’t it cheating if you’re a psychic? You can just sense which card she touched,” Sonja observed, watching the process very closely.
Cordelia continued to shuffle the deck. “Not really. I’m not a bloodhound. The whole deck feels the same to me. It’s just sort of a tickle of awareness that someone else touched it.” She paused to pull a card, the three of spades, and showed it to Dani. “Is this your card?”
Dani shook her head. “No.”
“How about this one?” Cordelia held up the six of hearts.
Dani snickered. “No.”
“Hmm, weird. How about this one?” Cordelia held up the four of diamonds.
“It’s OK, sweetie. It’s been a while since you’ve tried,” Sonja said soothingly.
Cordelia grinned. “It’s OK because I suck at card tricks, but tell me this, Dani. Where’s that necklace you were wearing before?”
Dani gasped, her hand going to her bare throat. “What the hell?”
Cordelia shrugged and lifted her hand, the tiny silver bee charm suspended from a long chain by the tip of her finger, barely making contact with the metal.
“How did you do that?” Sonja demanded as Dani grabbed her necklace out of Cordelia’s hands.
“Same way I took your watch. With my shields all the way up so I didn’t see a damn thing,” Cordelia said cheekily.
Jillian burst into guffaws at the furious and confused expression on Sonja’s face as Cordelia dangled the watch in front of her face.
“And Jillian’s phone,” Cordelia said, dropping it gently on the table.
“Not my phone!” Jillian cried, snatching it up from Cordelia’s hands.
Cordelia cackled. “Sorry, but it was just sticking out of your back pocket.”
“OK, but I didn’t feel you take it. At all,” Dani protested, her hands at her neck.
“I took the phone, the watch, and the necklace before we even got to the table,” Cordelia said. “But all the silly tapping and hand-waving was to keep you distracted so you didn’t realize they were missing until I wanted you to.”
“Sorcery!” Jillian whispered.
“That was the sort of thing Melvin taught me, because he figured it might help me eventually,” Cordelia told them. “Of course, my mom wanted me to put it to criminal use, because she was never one to waste an opportunity, but I refused. It was just another way I failed her, refusing to become a pickpocket.”
“Your mom sounds like a piece of work. And I say that as someone whose mother is also a piece of work,” Dani said. Cordelia was relieved to see no real resentment on her face as she dropped her jewelry around her neck again.
“Mine will never meet my baby,” Jillian offered. “I don’t think she’ll care, but I stand by it.”
Sonja conceded, “My mom’s pretty amazing. My dad, too.”
“They are,” Dani agreed.
“I’m basically depending on them to re-parent me,” Jillian added. “What about your dad?”
“No clue who he was,” said Cordelia. “I don’t think my mom even knew.”
Jillian’s gaze took on a knowing quality. “Well, if Mel and Yelena and Henry and these two, for that matter, have taught me anything, it’s that your blood family sucks sometimes, but you can find another family—one you make yourself—and they can make up for what you went without.”
“I would really like that someday,” Cordelia admitted. “And hey, I’ve already collected myself a surrogate grizzly bear brother.”
“You did,” Dani said. “And he will eat Brendan or Alex if they hurt you, so just keep that in mind.”
“Really?” asked Cordelia.
“That’s an exaggeration,” Jillian assured her.
“Oh, good.”
Jillian nodded. “He would just make them disappear so no one ever found them.”
“That’s comforting, thank you,” Cordelia sighed.
Buoyed by the courage from her girls’ night, Cordelia marched right up to Alex’s door the next morning to have an honest conversation with him.
And then she turned right back around because that was a terribly stupid idea. Unfortunately, he’d spotted her through the window and caught her just as she’d cleared his porch.
“Cordy, did you need something?” Alex asked.
“I just wanted to stop by and…well, I don’t want to say apologize for leaving so abruptly, because that was more of a professional courtesy than anything else.”
“It’s not the first time you’ve left me abruptly,” Alex said with an ironic tilt to his lips.
Cordelia cleared her throat. “Ah, right to the point then.”
“Yeah, Cordy, right to the point,” Alex said, his brows furrowed. “One minute, we were talking about running away, making a normal life together, and the next, you were gone. What happened?”
She sat at the picnic table closest to his trailer. He followed, sitting on the rough wood, despite his carefully tailored slacks. This was a conversation she wanted to have in the open, where anyone might come and save her by interrupting. “Bernadette happened. I was packed and ready to meet you. I decided to have one last dinner with my mother. Give her a chance for closure, you know? One last nice memory? For once, she was…almost normal. Sweet, which honestly, should have tipped me off. We got through a conversation without arguing. She even made me a cup of tea, which turned out to be full of some sort of sleeping pills. I woke up the next morning, and the trailer was moving, and we were in Nebraska. About three hundred miles away from you. And my phone was still in Ohio. For the first time I can remember, we didn’t go back to Candella that winter, which I can only imagine was to keep you from looking for us there. How did you end up here? Working in the League under an assumed name?”