Impasse MONTRÉAL, AUGUST 1902

After the illusionist takes her bow and disappears before her rapt audience’s eyes, they clap, applauding the empty air. They rise from their seats and some of them chatter with their companions, marveling over this trick or that as they file out the door that has reappeared in the side of the striped tent.

One man, sitting in the inner circle of chairs, remains in his seat as they leave. His eyes, almost hidden in the shadow cast by the brim of his bowler hat, are fixed on the space in the center of the circle that the illusionist occupied only moments before.

The rest of the audience departs.

The man continues to sit.

After a few minutes, the door fades into the wall of the tent, invisible once more.

The man’s gaze does not waver. He does not so much as glance at the vanishing door.

A moment later, Celia is sitting in a chair across the circle from him, still dressed as she had been during her performance, in a black gown covered with delicate white lace.

“You usually sit in the back,” she says.

“I wanted a better view,” Marco says.

“You came quite a ways to be here.”

“I had to take a holiday.”

Celia looks down at her hands.

“You didn’t expect me to come all this way, did you?” Marco asks.

“No, I did not.”

“It’s difficult to hide when you travel with an entire circus, you know.”

“I have not been hiding,” Celia says.

“You have,” Marco says. “I tried to speak with you at Herr Thiessen’s funeral, but you left before I could find you, and then you took the circus across the ocean. You’ve been avoiding me.”

“It was not entirely intentional,” Celia says. “I needed some time to think. Thank you for the Pool of Tears,” she adds.

“I wanted you to have a place where you felt safe enough to cry if I could not be with you.”

She closes her eyes and does not reply.

“You stole my book,” Marco says after a moment.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“As long as it is somewhere safe it does not matter whether I keep it or you do. You could have asked. You could have said goodbye.”

Celia nods.

“I know,” she says.

Neither of them speaks for some time.

“I am trying to make the circus independent,” Celia says. “To untie it from the challenge, from us. From me. I needed to learn your system to make it work properly. I cannot let a place that is so important to so many people fade away. Something that is wonder and comfort and mystery all together that they have nowhere else. If you had that, wouldn’t you want to keep it?”

“I have that whenever I’m with you,” Marco says. “Let me help you.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“You cannot do this alone.”

“I have Ethan Barris and Lainie Burgess,” Celia says. “They have agreed to assume management for the basic operation. With a little more training, Poppet and Widget should be able to handle the manipulation aspects that Ethan and Lainie cannot manage. I  …  I do not need you.”

She cannot look him in the eye.

“You don’t trust me,” he says.

“Isobel trusted you,” Celia says, looking at the ground. “So did Chandresh. How can I believe that you are honest with me and not with them, when I am the one you have the most reason to deceive?”

“I never once told Isobel that I loved her,” Marco says. “I was young and I was desperately lonely, and I should not have let her think I felt more strongly than I did, but what I felt for her is nothing compared to what I feel for you. This is not a tactic to deceive you; do you think me that cruel?”

Celia rises from her chair.

“Good night, Mr. Alisdair,” she says.

“Celia, wait,” Marco says, standing but not moving closer to her. “You are breaking my heart. You told me once that I reminded you of your father. That you never wanted to suffer the way your mother did for him, but you are doing exactly that to me. You keep leaving me. You leave me longing for you again and again when I would give anything for you to stay, and it is killing me.”

“It has to kill one of us,” Celia says quietly.

“What?” Marco asks.

“The one who survives is the victor,” she says. “The winner lives, the loser dies. That’s how the game ends.”

“That—” Marco stops, shaking his head. “That cannot be the intent of this.”

“It is,” Celia says. “It is a test of endurance, not skill. I’m attempting to make the circus self-sufficient before  … ”

She cannot say the words, still barely able to look at him.

“You’re going to do what your father did,” Marco says. “You’re going to take yourself off the board.”

“Not precisely,” she says. “I suppose I was always more my mother’s daughter.”

“No,” Marco says. “You cannot mean that.”

“It’s the only way to stop the game.”

“Then we’ll continue playing.”

“I can’t,” she says. “I can’t keep holding on. Every night it becomes more difficult. And I  …  I have to let you win.”

“I don’t want to win,” Marco says. “I want you. Truly, Celia, do you not understand that?”

Celia says nothing, but tears begin to roll down her cheeks. She does not wipe them away.

“How can you think that I don’t love you?” Marco asks. “Celia, you are everything to me. I don’t know who is trying to convince you otherwise, but you must believe me, please.”

She only looks at him with tear-soaked eyes, the first time she has held his gaze steadily.

“This is when I knew I loved you,” he says.

They stand on opposite sides of a small, round room painted a rich blue and dotted with stars, on a ledge around a pool of jewel-toned cushions. A shimmering chandelier hangs above them.

“I was enchanted from the moment I first saw you,” Marco says, “but this is when I knew.”

The room around them changes again, expanding into an empty ballroom. Moonlight filters in through the windows.

“This is when I knew,” Celia says, her voice a whisper echoing softly through the room.

Marco moves to close the distance between them, kissing away her tears before catching her lips with his own.

As he kisses her, the bonfire glows brighter. The acrobats catch the light perfectly as they spin. The entire circus sparkles, dazzling every patron.

And then the immaculate cohesion stops as Celia reluctantly breaks away.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Please,” Marco says, refusing to let her go, his fingers holding tightly to the lace of her gown. “Please don’t leave me.”

“It’s too late,” she says. “It was too late by the time I arrived in London to turn your notebook into a dove; there were too many people already involved. Anything either of us does has an effect on everyone here, on every patron who walks through those gates. Hundreds if not thousands of people. All flies in a spiderweb that was spun when I was six years old and now I can barely move for fear of losing someone else.”

She looks up at him, lifting her hand to stroke his cheek.

“Will you do something for me?” she asks.

“Anything,” Marco says.

“Don’t come back,” she says, her voice breaking.

She vanishes before Marco can protest, as simply and elegantly as at the end of her act, her gown fading beneath his hands. Only her perfume lingers in the space she occupied moments before.

Marco stands alone in an empty tent with nothing but two rings of chairs and an open door, waiting for him to leave.

Before he departs, he takes a single playing card from his pocket and places it on her chair.