With Sylvie’s arrival, however, the spell between Émile and me had been broken. He gathered two more apples and paid for all three.

“Monsieur Giroux,” I called out.

“Please, call me Émile.”

I paused before saying his name. His glorious name. “Émile, where do you live?”

“Why? Are you coming for a visit?” His hair glinted in the morning sun. No one had ever looked at me with such desire.

I blushed and I heard Sylvie snicker. She was observing me flirt—something I had never done before. “Your ticket.”

“Rue Delambre.” He began to tell me about floors and numbers and I waved him away.

I do not need house numbers or floors. The tickets to Le Cirque Secret don’t work that way. The admission is enchanted. The circus thrives on the energy of people who desire it. The surest way to get a ticket to Le Cirque Secret is to wish for it—blowing on birthday candles, wishing on stars, or tossing pennies—those devotions work well.

And the tickets have minds of their own. They’re wicked little things, preferring patrons who barter their soul for admission—say, someone who says or thinks “I’d sell my soul for a ticket” will most surely find one on their doorstep, if for no other reason than to tempt them.

As one of the mortal residents of the circus, I possessed a certain amount of sway with the tickets, but they were moody little things and you have to ask them respectfully, and not too often, for a favor. I simply had to wish him a ticket, as I did the circus door, and one should appear for the next performance. Yet I nodded politely while he made me repeat his street number and address back to him.

May 16, 1925

Today was the unveiling of our new act. The clown Millet delivered a bouquet of blush peonies, cream roses, and green hydrangeas to me before the show, a gift from Émile Giroux, who would be watching me from the second row, center.

After the article, audiences expected the corkscrew, so they got it. While I’d seen Esmé performing her illusions, I didn’t appear to have that same talent. The ability to levitate was my gift, so I threw myself into perfecting my signature move. While Hugo’s act had been a straightforward trapeze performance, it needed to change with the enhancement of magic. Over the next week, Hugo and I began directing several clowns and women in a performance that started on the ground and moved to the air.

Madame Plutard balked when I asked for coordinating leotards in the same striped pattern in hues of aqua, soft pink, and moss green with elaborate gold-and-cream piping. All the performers donned white wigs to look like me. The baroque effect was something similar to the colors you’d imagine of the fashion of Versailles.