Jairo slumped at his desk, pen in one hand, head propped in the other, and stared at the winter tour budget, not seeing the dates and locations and lines of red numbers. Instead, he saw the acidic look on his sister’s face when he inevitably showed up in her office to beg more funding.


Who knew what she’d ask him to do to get it. As far as his sister was concerned, the Veifa, Jairo’s performance troupe, was a frivolous waste of time, albeit one that didn’t waste any of her time, and it had kept Jairo occupied in Australia instead of screwing up her delicate international operations. But as the years wore on and Jairo failed to produce any significant findings for his sister’s research, she became tighter with the purse strings.


The show had never been profitable. That, perhaps, was something else wrong with the world, but Jairo could only fix one thing with this life, and it wasn’t going to be a lack of economic support in the arts sector. Not this time.


Maybe if he still had Gavrin by his side, they might have saved the world in more ways than one.


There was a soft tap at the open door. Jairo set the tour folder aside and looked up, smiling. ‘You don’t need to knock, Mel. That’s just for the riff-raff.’


Melarie, his co-production manager, smiled back and stepped into the office. ‘The riff-raff are drinking prosecco out of a disco ball.’


Jairo didn’t want to know. His cast and crew played hard, but they worked harder. As long as they hadn’t hollowed out one of the touring mirror balls, they could do what they wanted.


‘Here.’ Melarie slid a sheaf of papers across his desk, her forehead creased with a frown. Her near-black hair tumbled in all directions, wild curls that defied her otherwise brisk appearance: black shirt and pants, black boots. Simple, black-framed glasses. Jairo had never asked her why she needed glasses. A magician shouldn’t, but he’d seen her when she mislaid them, patting the space around her until her fingers found the frames, the lines of her face relaxing as she lifted them back to the bridge of her nose.


‘What’s this?’ he asked, picking up the papers.


‘A solution.’ A faint Welsh lilt carried her words. ‘But not without problems.’


Jairo scanned the first page. ‘A commission?’


‘Read on.’


‘For a school ball? Melarie, we don’t –’


Melarie waved a hand. ‘Read on.’


Jairo’s eyes widened when he read the number on the last page. ‘That would set us up for the next three years.’


‘Indeed.’


The Veifa never took commissioned shows. Their program was subject to change with the weather. And the money wasn’t good enough to be worth the hassle, despite his sister’s accountant demanding perfect books every quarter and spotting even the smallest of petty cash discrepancies. But a performance fee this high was something else. For one night. They could work in a town hall for one night.


Jairo glanced at Melarie’s tight expression. ‘What’s the catch?’


‘There’s a storm that night.’


Ah. Jairo put the papers down, leaned back in his chair and extended a hand, inviting Melarie to sit. She took the chair opposite the desk.


Jairo steepled his fingers. ‘You’re sure?’


She nodded.


‘Then we won’t take it.’


Melarie eyed him. ‘I think we have to.’


‘I’ll get the money. We’ll carry on like we always do.’


‘It’s not the finances. I had another vision. There’s a girl there with a shard.’


‘That’s a strange coincidence.’ Soulshards were the whole point of the Veifa, of Jairo’s project for the past twenty-odd years. A shard was a tough burden to bear, but the Veifa helped those willing to join the cause. Melarie’s visions found people with shards and predicted the thunderstorms the Veifa needed.


‘I don’t believe in coincidence,’ she said.


‘Me either. Who’s booking this? I can’t imagine a state school throwing that kind of money around.’


Melarie shifted. ‘Dark Star Productions.’


‘Never heard of them. What do they want us to do?’


‘Anything we like. We can do the H’nsla.’


The storm sacrifice show. Another reason for not taking venue gigs: they needed their big top. Without it, every audience member relied on Melarie to walk away with their sense of reality intact.


‘Let me check the Order isn’t behind it.’ Jairo rubbed the back of his neck, fingers tangling in his brown collar-length hair. His chest ached suddenly, like heartbreak, but for no reason. The invisible mark of a soulshard. If you knew what to look for, you could just see it in a person’s eyes. ‘It’ll be a lot of work for you,’ he added.


‘I’ll manage.’


Jairo flipped through the proposal again. ‘Do they say why we’re hijacking a school ball?’


Melarie’s face grew grave. ‘They said it is a seed event.’