“Adam, I'm sorry,” Felix says. He's paler than usual, and the expression of guilt on his face is once I've rarely seen. “I figured the chance of her being one of the women I found was such a long shot that I didn't want to bring it up until we had more to go on. I didn't consider the chance that seeing a picture might bring back memories. I'm so sorry—”

“It's fine,” I tell him, even though my heart is pounding and I'm struggling to keep my tone even. Somehow I manage to force myself to take a seat in the booth again. “It's okay, it's fine. I get it. But seriously, Felix, you can't keep shit from me anymore. I don't want you to keep lying to me just to protect my feelings or whatever.”

For just a moment, I see something caught between hurt and anger flash in his eyes. “I've never lied to you. I wouldn't lie, Adam.”

I close my eyes and take in a deep breath. “I know, I know. Poor choice of words. But the point is, you keep hiding stuff from me because you think you know what's best for me. Maybe let me decide that for once, okay?”

Felix leans closer to me across the table, his voice dropping low so that no one else can hear him. “I'm the one hiding stuff? For Solomon's sake, you spent months ignoring me, keeping everything you're thinking a secret until I forced it out of you! Fine, I kept things to myself when I probably shouldn't have. But you've been doing the exact same thing!”

“Except the stuff I kept secret was about me, it was about my life,” I hiss back. “This isn't your information to hide from me!”

“You don't think it affects me when you start cutting me out and keeping me in the dark?” Felix demands. “You don't think just giving up any attempt at communication has an impact on our relationship?”

I don't respond. That isn't what this is about, and I know he's not going to listen to reason. He must be thinking the same thing, because he leans back in the booth seat and crosses his arms over his chest, unconsciously mirroring the passive-aggressive pose I've taken on. We glare at each other across the table for another half a minute until El reappears, a white binder in hand, her cheeks flushed from her brief exposure to the chill night air.

She drops it on the middle of the table and slides back into the seat next to me.

“All right then, let's take a look at this sucker,” she says; and then she finally seems to notice the air of tension between us. One of her eyebrows climbs skyward and she looks from me to Felix. “Circe; I was only gone for about a minute. What the hell did I miss?”

“Nothing,” I reply shortly, without taking my eyes off Felix. “So where are these pictures?” All I want to do is grab the binder and start searching for them myself, but somehow that feels like losing this stand off.

Felix sighs in irritation, uncrosses his arms, and pulls the binder towards him. He flips through a few pages in protective slip covers until he comes to a section in the middle.

“Here,” he says, turning it around and pushing it towards me and El so we can see the pages.

They're photocopies of newspaper articles from the main magician's paper, the Sorcerer's Times, from about twenty years ago. Most of them are accompanied by a photograph, all of them teenage girls and young women.

Elizabeth Torres Still Missing, reads the headline of the first article.

"Elizabeth Torres, 19, has now been missing for nine months, since November 18th of last year. She was last seen leaving Sir Laugh-A-Lot's Comedy Club where she was employed at approximately ten in the evening. She was last seen wearing a black t-shirt and blue jeans, with a gray coat. The Department of Missing and At Risk Magicians have been unable to find any hints as to her whereabouts. If you think you might know anything about Elizabeth Torres, you are urged to contact the DoMaARM immediately. Elizabeth, if you are reading this, your mother says that she loves you and wants you to come home safe.”

Her picture is at the bottom of the article. She's got a round face, and large, wide set eyes. It's her senior portrait, which must have just been taken a year before this article was printed. The photo is two decades old, but she could have been any one of the girls I'd gone to school with.

“They never found her?” I ask, staring down into her dark eyes, just two smudged photocopies of a photograph of the real things.

“Not as far as I could find,” Felix replies.

Elizabeth Torres doesn't look familiar to me, but I still find it hard to turn the page, like I'm hiding her away somehow.

Next is a Sarah Connolly, only seventeen. The article states that it's suspected she may be with her boyfriend, who is also listed as missing. After that is Samantha Shuhe, twenty-one; then Kate Jones, fifteen; Jacquelyn Robbins, twenty-two; Emma Wren, twenty.

I look through the reports of all forty women and girls, staring hard at their slightly blurry faces until my eyes hurt.

“She kind of looks like you,” El says two or three times, pointing to various photos, but by the time I get to the end, all I feel is a little sick to my stomach.

“I don't know,” I say, closing the binder on the faces of the lost. “I don't know. It's been too long. I don't remember.” I push the binder away from me, and Felix reaches forward to take it, his expression uncertain as he looks hard at me.

I lean my head back against the booth seat and close my eyes. I feel weird. My chest is tight. I keep seeing their faces in my mind, daughters, sisters, mothers; all of them complete strangers to me.

“Where's that waitress?” El demands.

“I'll go pay at the register.” I hear the shuffling sound of Felix standing up. “Let's find a hotel and get some rest.”

He walks towards the front of the diner, and a moment later, I feel El reach over to squeeze my arm.

“Hey, it'll be fine. We've got a chance now, what with the hospital. Having these pictures might help a lot. Someone there might might be able to recognize her if she's in one of those photos.”

“Yeah, of course. I'm just tired is all. Driving always makes me tired.”

“Yeah. Okay,” she says, but I can tell she's not convinced.

We pile back into Felix's car and he heads for the least Norman Bates-y motel he can find. El and I are prepared to make do with sharing a single room between the three of us, but Felix asks if there are any adjacent rooms left and pays for two himself.

“Great,” El sighs in relief. “I hate sleeping with boys.”

“That makes one of us” Felix snorts.

El punches him on the shoulder, and they continue to bicker in an almost-playful way all the way to our rooms. They're just a little too loud, their tones just a little to light; and neither of them keeps eye contact with me for more than a moment or two. Which is fine by me. I know the reason Felix was willing to pay for two rooms, and I'm not looking forward to what's coming next. Maybe I can avoid it if I get right into the shower the moment we get inside. I'll just stay there until the hot water runs out, and by then, Felix is sure to have fallen asleep.

We get to our rooms on the second floor, right at the end of the motel. El says good night and heads in to hers, and a moment later Felix has the door to ours unlocked. He pushes the door open and gestures for me to head in first.

He flicks on the light behind me as I toss my bag onto the floor next to the bed. There's the bathroom door, but suddenly crossing the room and taking off all my clothes seems like so much effort.

Instead, I just sink down onto the edge of the bed, feeling tired all the way down to my bones.

Felix drops his bag on the ground next to mine, and then just sort of hovers awkwardly in front of me, like he can't decide whether to sit or stand or what.

“Are you okay?” he finally asks, after spending the better part of a minute mustering up the courage.

“I didn't recognize her,” I say, and I can feel heat rising to my face the moment the words I'd been desperately trying to suppress force themselves out of my mouth. “I didn't recognize her.”

“Adam,” Felix says, his face contorting as he takes a sudden step towards me and puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Adam, you were only three. You were so little, it was so long ago.”

“I should have recognized her,” I gasp, and I don't even bother trying to keep in the tears anymore.

Felix drops to his knees in front of me and pulls me in tight, letting me sob into his shoulder.