Before We Disappear

by Shaun David Hutchinson

Genres: YA Historical Fantasy; YA LGBT & Pride

Synopsis

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection!

It’s a new star-crossed romance about the magic of first love from the acclaimed author of We Are the Ants and Brave Face, Shaun David Hutchinson.

Jack Nevin’s clever trickery and moral flexibility make him the perfect assistant to the Enchantress, one of the most well-known stage magicians in turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Europe. Without Jack’s steady supply of stolen tricks, the Enchantress’s fame would have burned out long ago.

But when Jack’s thievery catches up to them, they’re forced to flee to America to find their fortune. Luckily, the Enchantress is able to arrange a set of sold-out shows at Seattle’s Alaska–Yukon–Pacific World’s Fair Exposition. She’s convinced they’re going to rich and famous until a new magician arrives on the scene. Performing tricks that defy the imagination, Laszlo’s show overshadows the Enchantress, leaving Jack no choice but to hunt for the secrets to his otherworldly illusions. But what Jack uncovers isn’t at all what he expected.

Behind Laszlo’s tricks is Wilhelm—a boy that can seemingly perform real magic. Jack and Wilhelm have an instant connection, and as the rivalry between the Enchantress and Laszlo grows, so too does Jack and Wilhelm’s affection. But can Jack choose between the woman who gave him a life and the boy who is offering him everything?

It’s a stirring tale about the magic of love from award-winning author Shaun David Hutchinson.

Release date: September 28, 2021

Publisher: HarperTeen

Print pages: 512

Sample

Jack

Paris, France—Le Théâtre d’Enfer

Friday, October 9, 1908

THE ENCHANTRESS STOOD under the proscenium arch—holding her willowy arms aloft as if she were preparing to conduct an orchestra, wearing a gauzy mauve gown that moved like morning fog—and dared the audience not to love her. None could resist. The Enchantress had taken me into her care after my mother had died nearly ten years ago, and I loved her. Even when I hated her.

Slowly, the Enchantress turned from the audience, revealing the drape of her gown around her shoulders that exposed the smooth skin of her back. Her costume would have been considered indecent in London or New York or Chicago, but it barely raised an eyebrow in Paris. Especially among the colorful crowd of the Montmartre theatre where the Enchantress had performed to a full house for the past four weeks.

The electric lights cast a flickering, ethereal glow across the stage. The Enchantress bent backward, curving like a gentle hill until she could press her palms against the stage and face the audience again. “Come,” she said in a husky, gravelly voice. “See for yourself that there are no wires. Touch everything.”

Holding her arched shape, the Enchantress waited, appearing bored, while a few brave souls climbed the steps to the stage to peer through the space made by the Enchantress’s body, to examine the air around her, to search for a platform or any type of mechanical apparatus. A brutish hired man remained nearby to discourage anyone foolish enough from taking the Enchantress’s invitation to touch too literally.

I stood in the shadows of the wings waiting. Chewing my nails to the quick. This part always made me nervous. If anything went wrong, it would shatter the illusion, and this particular illusion was why most had purchased a ticket and crowded into the theatre.

La Complainte de la Sirène. The Lament of the Mermaid. The first night the Enchantress had performed it was the last night there’d been any empty seats in the theatre. Word had spread like cholera of the Enchantress and her beautiful magic. Le Théâtre d’Enfer was no Odéon, but the stagehands were generally sober, the audience generally was not, and the proprietor hardly cheated us on the receipts.

Throughout her act, the Enchantress wore an expression of disinterest bordering on disdain, as if she were doing the audience a favor by deigning to appear and might leave if they disappointed her.

No one wanted to disappoint her.

The Enchantress mesmerized the audience from the moment the curtain rose until the second it fell. She held them captive as she performed one illusion after another, each more wondrous than the last, and following their release, they were never the same. Unlike some magicians, she earned her nom de théâtre every night.

Like I said before, I loved the Enchantress, though we’d spent so long together that I’d grown inured to her glamour. Even the Mona Lisa begins to look a bit plain-Jane and no-nonsense when you pass her every day. Yet I understood the longing the Enchantress inspired in all who laid eyes upon her. I sympathized with the hearts she broke in each city we swept through. The Enchantress was a force of nature, and most were simply caught in her wake, trying to not drown.

As the audience members who’d climbed on stage returned to their seats, I nodded to the stagehands that we were ready to begin. The Enchantress, still bowed backward, lifted her right leg. Followed by her left arm. She was taller than most realized, with long limbs that she moved so gracefully that they didn’t seem to bend at the joints so much as curve. Sometimes she seemed more ballerina than magician.

Their collective breaths held, the audience watched the Enchantress balance impossibly on one leg and one arm upside down, holding the pose with a preternatural ease. When the Enchantress was certain she had their full and unwavering attention, she raised her left leg. Only her right palm remained in contact with the stage. The rest of her body defied Newton’s laws, hanging suspended like an inverted hook. It should not have been possible, it frustrated the senses, and yet the audience couldn’t deny what they saw with their own eyes.

The Enchantress knew exactly how long to let the anticipation build. She possessed a natural gift for prolonging the audience’s ecstasy and anxiety as they waited, gripping each other’s hands tightly in the dark, for what came next. She guided them to the edge of their seats, forcing them to balance over the chasm, and then . . .

With no warning, the Enchantress rose into the air as if drawn upward by a line attached to her torso. Audience members gasped, one frightened person bit off a scream. The Enchantress floated nearly two yards off the stage. Her pale hair drifted around her head like seaweed, and her arms and legs moved languidly as if the space around her had been transmuted into water.

The Enchantress was beautiful and dreadful and tragic. Her body told the story of the mermaid with the broken heart who could breathe underwater and yet had still drowned. She drifted over the stage, allowing all to watch and to grieve for her lost soul.

“Thief! She is a thief!” A man’s nasal voice sliced through the thalassic silence. And what he actually said was, “Voleuse! C’est une voleuse!” but it’ll save some time if I translate his words directly to English.

“What the devil is going on?” Lucia d’Alessi appeared beside me. She was my age, small, with a stormy complexion and a perpetual scowl. Like me, she was an orphan who had been taken in by the Enchantress. We could never pass for actual siblings—I was as pale as an egg while she had the darker skin of her native Italy—and neither of us looked enough like Evangeline to convince anyone we were her biological children. Still, I loved her like a friend and hated her in the way only siblings could. Feelings that I assumed were mutual.

I peeked around the curtain, searching for the source of the interruption. Most of the audience was still watching the Enchantress, who had given no sign that she’d noticed anything was amiss, but a few had turned to the man at the rear of the theatre.

“She is a thief and a saboteur!”

“Chabrol,” I said, and swore under my breath.

Lucia gripped the silver end of her cane. “How many times did I say we should leave Paris before incorporating Chabrol’s illusion into the act?”

“Many times.” Henri Chabrol was a talented magician with absolutely no flair for the dramatic. His greatest trick was how quickly he could put his audience to sleep. His second greatest was an illusion unimaginatively called La Femme Flottante, during which Chabrol’s young assistant lay on a table, floated up, remained suspended in the air for a count of ten, and then drifted back down. I had seen Chabrol perform it a dozen times, and it’d rarely elicited more than tepid applause from the audience. Henri Chabrol had designed an illusion that had never been seen before, one that should’ve made him a legend, yet few outside of Paris knew he existed, and the few inside who did hardly cared.

The Enchantress immediately understood the illusion’s true potential and sent me to discover how it worked, which I did. There was no magic trick I could not unravel, no secret I could not discover. I also possessed other dubious skills, such as picking locks and pockets, and scaling buildings. I was a good magician’s assistant, but I was a better burglar.

When I returned to the Enchantress with the designs for La Femme Flottante, Lucia built the apparatus that made the illusion possible while the Enchantress added the spectacle people would pay to see. Shortly thereafter, the Enchantress introduced The Lament of the Mermaid to Paris, and it was hailed as a marvel. The money flowed in, and we lived in the manner to which we had grown accustomed and felt we rightfully deserved.

Yet Lucia was correct. We should’ve taken the illusion to London or Frankfurt or Rome. Stealing from Chabrol and then remaining in Paris to perform it had been courting disaster. And disaster had arrived, though fashionably late.

“Did you really sabotage his equipment?” Lucia asked.

“Only a little.”

“Jack!”

At the back of the theatre, two police had entered to stand beside Chabrol. He continued to accuse the Enchantress, loudly, of being a thief, and the audience was beginning to pay attention.

Through the commotion, the Enchantress maintained her illusion. She remained suspended in the air, never acknowledging the disruption, never so much as twitching a muscle in a manner that wasn’t rehearsed. As far as she was concerned, the show would go on until the curtain fell.

We were cooked. I doubted Chabrol could prove his accusations, but proof was rarely a barrier when the accuser was a man like Chabrol and the accused was a woman like the Enchantress.

I turned to Lucia. “It’s time for a fire escape.”

Lucia leaned heavily on her cane. “Do we have to?”

“Sorry, Lu.”

With little more than a sigh, Lucia disappeared into the shadows. A moment later, shouts of “Fire!” began. The word spread through the audience, their terrified cries drowning out Chabrol. They became an ocean wave surging toward the exits in a panic to flee, and Chabrol couldn’t fight them.

I lowered the Enchantress and helped her out of the harness that had held her aloft.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Lucia was already directing the confused stagehands, gathering what we could easily carry with us as we retreated.

“You did adequately, Jack,” she said, offering an insouciant shrug. “I’ve grown bored of Paris anyway.”

Jack

Paris, France—Twelfth Arrondissement

Friday, October 9, 1908

I KISSED THIERRY in the shadows in the alley behind his parents’ fromagerie. He smelled of Roquefort and Laguiole, and he tasted of Bûcheron and figs.

“Take me with you,” Thierry whispered into my ear. His lips were warm and his hands were consumed with wanderlust, respecting no borders.

A low chuckle rumbled in my chest. “Evangeline would never allow it.”

Evangeline Dubois was the name the Enchantress wore when she wasn’t performing on a stage. It wasn’t the name of her birth or even the name she’d gone by when she’d first taken me in—back then she’d been Victoria Harcourt—and I’d known her by other names still, but she’d been Evangeline Dubois the longest.

Thierry raked his fingers through my hair. “You owe her nothing.”

I caught Thierry’s wrist and pulled back to peer into his eyes. “I owe her everything.”

Thierry’s lip trembled. He was a soft, gentle boy, easily bruised. He hadn’t taken the news well that I was leaving. Especially after I’d explained the circumstances under which we were being forced to flee. Lucia and Evangeline were at the hotel packing, and I had slipped out unnoticed to say goodbye to Thierry.

“She doesn’t care about you, Jack. Not the way I do.”

“I’d be dead without Evangeline. She took me in after my mother died and—” I stroked Thierry’s cheek with my thumb. “Traveling with her, I’ve seen more of the world than most will ever see. I’ve dined in the company of royalty.”

“But does she love you?”

“Of course.”

Thierry’s eyes softened with pity. “No, Jack. I love you; she uses you.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed his body against mine. “I would love you for the rest of my life if you stay with me.”

I laughed until I realized he wasn’t joking. Thierry’s sincerity gutted me. I had been charmed from the first moment I met him—by the sunset hue of his eyes, his long lashes, and the way his front teeth pushed his lips slightly open—but it was his naked earnestness that had captured some small part of my heart and made me briefly consider his offer. “I doubt your parents would approve.”

“Then we’ll run away,” he said.

“To where, little mouse?”

“Anywhere.”

I sighed and leaned my head against his chest. “I’m only fifteen, you’re just seventeen. What would we do for work? Where would we live?” Thierry tried to answer, but I pressed my finger to his lips. “Your place is here, and mine is . . .” I paused and looked toward the end of the alley. “Not here.”

“My place is wherever you are.” Thierry squeezed me tightly as if unwilling to let go. “I would live in the sewers and steal food if necessary to stay with you.”

And I had no doubt he would. But while Thierry’s family wasn’t wealthy, he had grown up well fed and loved. His life had been free of true hardship. He was generous and kind, and had never been exposed to the cruelties of the world, while I knew them all too intimately and would do anything to avoid them.

“Evangeline and Lucia are my family,” I said. “I can’t leave them.”

“But I love you, Jack Nevin. I’ll never love anyone else.” Thierry lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. For a moment, my conviction wavered. I considered the life we might lead together. A life of poverty and hardship. A life of pain that might harden our hearts toward one another as resentment reminded us of the lives we’d left behind to be together. With Evangeline, I ate the finest food, slept in a soft bed in my own room. The day she had pulled me out of the gutter, she’d promised me I would never know hunger again, and she’d kept her word. In the end, the choice to stay or go was no choice at all.

“I know,” I said. “Goodbye.”

Jack

Paris, France

Saturday, October 10, 1908

PARIS VANISHED BEHIND us like a dream as the train picked up speed. Already the city and Thierry were fading from my memory as I looked eagerly ahead to the next adventure. Life with Evangeline was many things, but it was never dull. Since Evangeline had taken me in, we hadn’t remained in one city longer than a few months. We traveled across Europe, performing for rough crowds and royalty, honing our skills on and off the stage, meeting the most fascinating people and often stealing everything they owned. We were a motley family with an unconventional life that I loved, yet I couldn’t help wondering, if only for a moment, what it might have been like to stay in Paris. To attempt to put down roots and build a future. I wasn’t sure I was suited to that kind of life, not after all I’d done and seen with Evangeline, but still I wondered.

Evangeline Dubois was seated across from me in the roomy train compartment. Out of the costume of the Enchantress, Evangeline was still beautiful and beguiling. On stage or off, she commanded every room.

Beside me, Lucia drew in her sketchbook. She had been quiet since leaving Paris, but that was hardly unusual. Lucia was introspective, always dreaming up a new illusion or contraption with that gifted mind of hers. When she began chasing some idea or another, she could get so caught up in it that she forgot to eat or sleep.

“It’s a pity we had to leave,” Evangeline said.

I hung my head. “I’m sorry. Henri Chabrol brought the police, and—”

Evangeline waved me quiet. “You did the right thing. Though you must have been careless in his workshop for him to have found us.”

I hoped Lucia would bring up that Chabrol had found us because we’d performed the illusion we’d stolen from him in his own city, but she remained silent.

“Must’ve been,” I mumbled. “I’ll be more careful.”

“See that you are.”

My cheeks grew hot and my ears burned. It wasn’t fair that I was taking the blame, but experience had taught me that it was no use arguing with Evangeline. There were consequences to challenging her, and I had no interest in starting a fuss on the train.

I was grateful when Lucia asked, “Where should we go next?” drawing Evangeline’s ephemeral attention away from me.

After a pause, Evangeline said, “I’ve had a letter from Mr. Gleeson about a potential opportunity in America.” Alister Gleeson, Evangeline’s booking agent, managed to keep us employed despite the dubious circumstances under which we were often forced to flee.

“America?” I’d been born in New York City. When Evangeline had found me on the streets there, I was a scrawny, starving orphan of seven who likely wouldn’t have survived the winter. She had lured me in with warm soup and clean clothes and had promised to show me the world. We’d left New York for London shortly after that, and I hadn’t been back to America in the eight years since. I wasn’t sure how I felt about returning. It wasn’t my home, not really; but then, I didn’t know where home was. I had no idea where I belonged except with Evangeline and Lucia.

“I’ve never been.” Lucia’s eyes were back on her sketchbook, and her hand moved deftly over the page. Lucia was the genius behind the majority of Evangeline’s tricks. Evangeline had added Lucia to our family while in Florence five years ago, and Lucia had quickly proven her worth, though it was difficult to tell that by the way Evangeline treated her.

Evangeline continued as if neither Lucia nor I had spoken. “There’s an opportunity on the West Coast, in the state of Washington. A city called Seattle.”

Though I knew little of the geography of America west of the Mississippi, I’d heard of Seattle. Primarily because of its importance to the prospectors mining for gold in Alaska and the Yukon. The flood of wealth into Seattle had quickly transformed it from a frontier town into a thriving city in only a few short years.

“Seattle is preparing for a world’s fair that will span four months and is expected to attract millions of attendees.” Evangeline paused to let her words sink in. “They would like to book the Enchantress to perform for the entirety of the exposition.”

“America,” I said again, testing the weight of the word, which felt strange on my tongue. Part of me had thought I’d never go back, like I’d been exiled, and I’d grown used to the notion. But the idea of returning home intrigued me.

“The opportunities for enrichment are endless,” Evangeline said. “All those visitors with deep pockets passing through, ripe for someone with quick fingers to relieve them of their wealth. In the evenings, the Enchantress could beguile the crowded theatre, and during the day, Jacqueline Anastas could beguile the wealthy men of the city.” Jacqueline Anastas was one of Evangeline’s many personas, though far from my favorite.

Lucia grinned. “And what investment opportunity will Jacqueline have for these men?”

“A new type of light bulb?” I offered.

“An unsinkable ocean liner?” Lucia said.

Evangeline shrugged. “We’ll discuss the details later.”

I’d read about the world’s fair being held in Seattle, and my mind reeled with the possibilities. If we were careful, we could live like royalty and leave with wealth the likes of which we’d only dreamed of before. We wouldn’t need to travel the world; the world would come to us.

“I read an article that said the exposition will be free of alcohol,” I said. “Something to do with it being held on university grounds.”

“And?” Evangeline said.

“And it sounds like an opportunity we should explore.”

Evangeline’s smile was instantaneous, and it eased the last of the guilt I felt for failing her earlier. “That’s my good boy.”

Lucia cleared her throat. “I could assist you on stage,” she said. “If Jack is too busy.”

Evangeline burst into laughter. Each chortle caused Lucia to flinch and curl deeper into herself. “Not with that face, child.”

I tried to press my arm against Lucia, to offer her comfort, but she scooted away from me.

“Well?” Evangeline asked. “What do you say? Shall we travel to America?”

My opinion didn’t matter, and neither did Lucia’s. It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that Evangeline had already accepted the booking. Yet that didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. We would return to America and conquer a new city. We would make our fortunes in Seattle. The future was boundless and the possibilities for wealth and fame were limitless.

Lucia was already nodding when I said, “Count me in.”

“Then it’s settled,” Evangeline said. “We’re going to Seattle.”

Wilhelm

Beesontown, PA—Beesontown First National Bank

Monday, November 2, 1908

I APPEARED IN the bank’s basement like an epiphany, and disappeared like an errant thought. A moment later, I returned with Teddy. The air smelled like a lightning strike during a summer storm, but all was quiet.

Teddy glanced at me and pressed his finger to his lips. Somewhere above, a guard stood watch. He was likely asleep—it was nearly two o’clock in the morning, after all—assuming no one right in the mind would attempt to rob the Beesontown First National Bank. One sound could betray our presence, resulting in an undesirable outcome.

Teddy moved toward the vault door and pointed at it. I touched the metal and flinched.

“I can’t,” I whispered.

Teddy shoved me toward the vault. As I stumbled forward, I shut my eyes and imagined the vault as it had been when I’d stood inside of it earlier that day with the bank manager, who’d given me and Teddy a tour. The shelves stacked with cash and bars of gold, the lockboxes filled with the belongings the bank’s patrons believed were safe from people like Teddy. The vault door, brand-new, was made of steel and concrete. It scraped at me as I passed through it, tearing at my body and threatening to scatter my atoms across the room.

But it was over in an instant, and I fell the final couple of steps into the far wall before I caught myself. My breath came in ragged jags, as if I’d sprinted a mile, my stomach cramped, and my hands shook.

Outside the vault, Teddy would be pacing back and forth, tracking the second hand on his watch as it ticked slowly around. No matter how quickly I performed the tasks I was given, I was always too slow for him. Along the back wall stood twenty safe-deposit boxes, each secured with a dual combination dial. I scanned them, searching for box twelve, which held the object of Teddy’s most recent desire, and then began to work.

I shut my eyes until I found the between, the space that connected here and there. The between was an actual place that I crossed through when I used my talent to Travel. Usually, I passed through it so quickly that I didn’t notice it, but sometimes it was useful to linger there. From within the between, my senses were heightened and altered. I could see and taste sounds, I could feel colors. The lingering scent of my arrival whispered across my ears, and the rhythmic beat of my heart appeared to swing before me like Foucault’s famous pendulum.

I touched the top dial, carefully turning the combination lock. Each measured rotation looked to my ears like mist until, finally, one crackled. I repeated the process, turning the dial the opposite direction, then again a third time, before attempting the second dial. My heart beat wildly, and I let go of my hold on the between. The walls became solid again and sound lost all color. I preferred the between to the real world most times.

I opened the box and peered inside. Stacks of paper money lined the bottom, more money than I would ever hope to possess in my life, along with documents that were probably important, plus a revolver and a flat velvet case. My eyes lingered on the revolver. For a moment, I envisioned taking it and tucking it into the back of my pants. The look of surprise on Teddy’s face when I’d pull it on him. I let my fingers graze the barrel before I sighed and took the velvet case instead. From within my suit pocket, I retrieved a delicate folded paper spider, left it where the velvet case had been, and then shut the safe door.

Teddy grabbed my ear the moment I reappeared in the basement, and twisted. Surprised by the unexpected pain and exhausted from moving through the vault door, I cried out. Teddy twisted harder. I clamped my hand over my mouth to stifle further noise. Now that we had what he’d come for, Teddy might not have cared if he alerted the guard upstairs, but I did. Teddy swiped the velvet case from my hand and opened it. He sighed as if finally able to reach a persistent itch between his shoulder blades that had troubled him for days.

Inside the case lay a necklace more beautiful than any I had ever seen. A ring of sapphires, each about the size of my pinkie fingernail, with a sapphire in the center the size of a peach pit. Teddy held it up, letting the stones drip across the palm of his hand. It was breathtaking and precious.

Light hit the stones as someone called, “Who’s down there?”

Teddy grabbed my arm, squeezing hard enough to leave a bruise, and we were gone before the guard descended a single step, leaving nothing behind but the smell of new rain.

I lit the lamps in the small house we were staying in on the outskirts of town. I didn’t know what had happened to the owner, nor did I want to. I dug cold chicken left over from dinner from the icebox and sat at the table to eat while Teddy fawned over the necklace. I felt like a sinkhole had opened under my ribs, and I couldn’t get the chicken into my mouth fast enough.

“This once belonged to a Russian tsarina,” Teddy said.

“Did it?” I asked. It likely wasn’t true, but that didn’t matter to Teddy. The truth was whatever he believed it to be.

Teddy returned the necklace to its case and shut the lid before shifting his attention to me. “What happened to you in the basement?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

“You hesitated.”

I tore off a strip of the chicken. I’d eaten it almost down to the bones, and I could’ve easily eaten another. “The steel door had a higher concentration of iron in it than I’m used to.” I paused, expecting him to understand. “It hurts.”

His hand shot out like a viper and he grabbed my jaw, squeezing painfully. “You don’t say no to me,” he said. “Not ever. When I tell you to do something, you do it. Are we understood?”

I fought back hot tears as I said, “Yes, sir.”

Teddy held my gaze before he let me go. “Time to get some sleep. We need to leave town early tomorrow.”

As quickly as I could, I shoved the last scraps of chicken into my mouth and then followed Teddy to the bedroom. There was only one bed in the house, so I slept on a pile of blankets on the floor. I stripped down to my underthings while Teddy washed his face in the basin.

“I don’t know why you insist on defying me, Wilhelm,” he said. “You know what happens when you disobey me.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I’ll try harder to be good.” I lay down as Teddy stood over me. When I was settled, he pulled the iron manacle out from under the bed. One end was attached to the bed’s frame, the other he held open. He paused to examine the band of blistered, scabbed skin around my right ankle, and locked the manacle around my left instead. The iron itched where it touched my skin, but I dared not complain.

“Sweet dreams, Wilhelm.”