SOPHIE

I delivered my gift to Yoni’s dressing room and slipped out to my seat. Lately I had been taking eighth-row seats on the aisle by the side emergency exits. I was to regret that tonight.

Yoni’s mood was down in the opening part of her show. I didn’t wonder. When they started “So High” as the second song, I thought, Something went wrong with her new boyfriend, and when she didn’t fly in that number, I knew it. The band members looked at each other a lot during the first part of the show.

She sounded sad, so sad.

The great room filled up with a sad, edgy energy. The first five rows of audience members were crying, or throwing their programs at one another or the stage. I started crying.

Then someone seized me by the arm and dragged me from my seat into the aisle.

It was my father.

He pulled me through the emergency side exit into the relative quiet of a service corridor.

“You cannot hide from the caul,” he said. “You will never be able to run away again.”

I opened my mouth to shriek at him.

He threw me from him, and then—put his hand into his coat pocket. “Quiet!”

My voice stopped in my throat.

“Come outside now,” he said.

I had to follow him. My legs wouldn’t let me run away.

We walked along the corridor until it let us out into a small parking lot. My father pointed. It was deep night out here. The lake lapped at the edge of parkland, and a bicycle path wound among trees, out here behind the big concrete theater building.

We followed the path along the water to a circle of big white limestone slabs. It would be a perfect place to bring a boom box for a picnic and dancing.

When I was in the circle, he said, “Stop! Stand there.”

My legs stopped before I wanted to. I almost fell over.

He came toward me in the circle. He kept looking over his shoulder at the trees in one spot.

I looked down. On the grass, in the dark, someone had made a smaller circle inside the stones, off-center, near a dark spot under some trees. I bent down and touched it. My fingers came up damp and white. Spray paint.

“Don’t move!”

Then came that dreadful paralysis that Papa had put upon me in his suite yesterday. I swiveled my eyes around as best I could. This spot was deserted. A quarter-mile away ran the expressways, bright, busy, oblivious. A hundred yards away was the back door of the theater. No one would come out of that door until the show was over and the staff was sent home, around midnight. Nearer was the bike path, but not so near that a jogger might hear what we said. And past the path was a stone wall only an inch high, and a drop-off into the lake. This can’t be good.

Only faint light came through the trees from the parking lot.

Then my father leaned down behind one of the stones a moment.

Harsh light burst out, blinding me from four directions. I squinted. Outside the circle, I saw now, stood lamps mounted high on tripods, glaring into the circle.

My father approached me. “Good. Now you will summon your friend.”

“Bon chance,” I tried to say. No sound came from my throat.

“Ah. Sorry, I’m still learning to use this thing. You may speak, daughter.”

“And say what?” I spat. “If you think I would—” He gestured at me. “Gghk!” My throat was seized by an invisible hand.

“How much is enough?” he muttered.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t raise my hands to my throat.

He took the caul out of his pocket and frowned at it, squeezing it in his hand.

My blood drummed in my ears. My arms hung, useless, at my sides.