“You’re the first person to ever tell me that.” I look like my dad. He had yellow-blond hair streaked with white-blond in the sun. One of the few photos my mom kept out of him was the three of us at the beach. Dad held me in his arms, and it was clear that I was made of all the highlights in Dad’s hair and Mom’s bottomless brown eyes. I used to hold that picture all the time and smile and point out how I looked like Daddy, and Mom would nod and look away. I think it hurt her sometimes to see him in me.

“Yes. I suppose your hair used to look like your father’s.” She tenses, and her eyes flit away from me for a moment, scanning the room like she’s looking for a lion that might pounce.

“So you saw me when I was a kid. You kept in touch with my mom.”

“You could say that.”

I don’t really know what to say next, so I blurt, “I want to know everything.”

“Do you?” Julia raises her brows and then furrows her forehead. “What did Cassia tell you about the Society?”

It takes me a second to realize she means Mom. Mom went by Cass. I never heard her called anything else.

“Nothing.” The bitterness in my voice surprises me. I wish Mom had let me in, and maybe she would have, or maybe she would have kept this world hidden from me forever. Maybe she would have seen my troupe’s show with me and made up some explanation for how the magic was only illusions. The lump in my stomach tells me I’m right.

Julia actually looks surprised. “But you found your way here anyway.” Her voice goes quiet and pensive, like she’s talking more to herself than me. “And you have quite a lot of power.”

“You were in my mom’s troupe.”

“Yes,” Julia says. “With Edgar and Samuel… and Lucius. We were inseparable for a long time.”

So Lucius was part of Mom’s troupe. “She used to tell me about you all, how much she loved performing with you.” Not Lucius, for some reason, but I don’t mention that. “So why did she leave?”

“Because she fell in love.”

“With my father? Was he like you?”

“Joseph?” Julia laughs, although her eyes are tight around the edges. “Not even a little bit. He was a true artist. Each illusion was a piece of brilliant craft to him. He wanted nothing to do with our tricks, but your mom was enamored with his talent and wanted him to join us. He ended up winning her over instead, not the other way around.”

“She gave up magic for him.”

“She gave up a lot for him.” Julia chews on her lip for a moment, as if she wants to say something else. She doesn’t.

“I bet you have stories.”

She nods.