I don’t have a trick planned. I don’t have a target set up. Instinct takes over. I fling the first knife into the air, catching the hilt in my palm again with ease. They cheer at my simple trick and magic surges in my fingers, and my knives begin soaring as I juggle them with a grace I never had during my well-practiced coin tricks. I don’t even flinch as Xander begins flinging his cards into the path of my knives until each knife holds several victims.

I bathe in the applause, confident enough to scan the faces of the audience now.

A knife slips through my fingers.

I move my foot to keep it from skewering me, and it clanks against the concrete bench before falling and hitting the ground. Xander grabs my arm as I teeter. Once I’m steady, I look up for the face that made me fumble.

Stacie.

I never did tell her exactly where I was, but I did say Santa Cruz, and I wouldn’t put it past her to just head down and try to find me, but the thing that really startles me is the face next to her. We first met when she defended me from a bully making fun of my coin tricks, and that’s the same boy whose arm she’s tucked under now—Adam, I think is his name. He laughs as he sees me recognize him. Stacie gives me a little wave. Why the hell would she bring him here?

“Are you all right?” Xander’s hand still clenches my arm.

“What are they doing here?”

“Who?”

I try to point, but I don’t see them anymore.

I feel sick. “Help me down.”

Xander does so without question. I pull the wounded cards off my knives and hand them to him before tucking my knives back into my boots. I look for Stacie and Adam, but the crowd’s gotten too dense. People push in around me, trying to talk to me, but all I hear is buzzing.

Until one word rings out louder than the others. “Cops!” someone yells.

The crowd breaks apart around us. Xander grips my hand and pulls me with them before freezing.

“Diantha,” he says. “Damn it. We should know better. There’s always cops outside on the streets here, and all it takes is one asshole to go running.”

He doesn’t have to explain himself. Diantha’s Black.

We both turn around, and Xander jumps back up on the table, scanning the crowd. After a second, he jumps down. “I spotted her with Reina. Looks like they got ahead of the crowd.”

“What about the others?” I glance back, but all the tables are empty.

“They’ll be fine,” Xander says as he pulls us into the swarm of people moving away from the scene of our show.

CHAPTER 19