Born of Illusion by Teri Brown Page B

him interesting.”
    He looks past me and pulls out a book, Unexplained Mysteries of the Nineteenth Century . “This one devotes a whole chapter to him.”
    As he hands the book to me, our fingers brush and I receive a rush of emotional messages. Curiosity, amusement, and some other emotion I can’t identify. It makes me shiver a bit.
    “Thank you.” I quickly turn back to the shelf and squeeze my eyes shut, hoping he’ll just move on. After a moment he does, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
    I wait until I hear the door open and close before hurrying to pay for my book. It’s getting late and I still need to do the day’s marketing.
    The household upkeep is my job and has been since I was a little girl. My mother’s too spent from work to do much in whatever home we happen to be in. Usually I enjoy it, but this morning, the frigid weather and my anxiety over last night compels me to rush through my shopping as soon as I make it back to our neighborhood.
    The hair on the back of my arms rises just as I enter Wu’s Tea Shop. The feeling isn’t overpowering, like the time my mother and I were attacked by a purse snatcher on our way home after a show. Then, the foreboding was so strong it almost drove me to my knees. This is just unsettling, like something around me is just a bit off.
    Swallowing, I glance around the shop, but the only people inside are the clerk—an elderly Chinese man with a long braid and perfect English—and a round woman, who’s probably some family’s capable housekeeper.
    So if the threat isn’t in here it must have come from outside. Am I being followed? And if so, why?
    I walk through the store slowly, feigning preoccupation with the staggering assortment of teas and the odd Oriental knickknacks. The bell over the door rings and I startle, but it’s only the housekeeper on her way out.
    “Can I help you, miss?” the clerk asks.
    I nod. “Yes, I’ll take this one.” On impulse, I pick up another packet of tea for Mr. Darby. “And this, as well.”
    The storekeeper places my tea in a paper bag and rings up the purchase. I linger at the counter as long as possible chatting with the clerk, who turns out to be Mr. Wu himself.
    When I can’t possibly procrastinate any longer, I take my leave and pause just outside the door. The neighborhood is busier now, the streets packed with harried mothers doing their shopping, children playing raucous games to keep warm, and elderly men and women exchanging neighborhood gossip.
    I take a deep breath and open myself up. Over the years, I’ve realized that my clairvoyance has separate facets—emotions that come to me when I touch other people, uncontrollable visions that pop up out of nowhere, and those rare occasions when I get the eerie sense that something bad is about to happen.
    For survival’s sake, I’ve had to hone my observation skills to a razor-sharp point because the truth is that what people say isn’t always how they feel .
    Though I don’t see or sense anything out of the ordinary, I still hurry through the rest of my shopping, not even lingering to visit with the shopkeepers as I usually do. Thanks to my time with the circus I’m pretty good at defending myself, but I don’t want to risk it. Plus, I want to get back home to make sure my mother is all right.
    As always, the thought of the circus brings to mind all the wonderful people I knew there. “Circus” was actually an optimistic term for a ragtag collection of freaks who couldn’t get employment with the bigger, more successful shows, but I’d only been nine years old when we joined and, after spending two years with them, those freaks became my family. Swineguard, the knife thrower, taught me how to use a blade and to hold so still that even my heartbeat slowed. Hairy Harold played checkers with me every night after the show, and Komatchu, the Last of the Zulu Princesses (actually a former maid from Atlanta), loaned me books from the trunkful she hauled with her