Page 37 of Illusionist
Nova Calder.The name yields a handful of results scattered across six states. A speeding ticket in Nevada two years ago. A library card application in Oregon from last spring. All surface-level bullshit that tells me nothing about who she really is or what she's running from.
I lean back in my chair, the springs creaking under my weight. The laptop's fan whirs against the trailer's oppressive silence. Outside, carnival workers tear down the midway games, their voices distant and muffled.
“Come on,” I mutter, fingers dancing across the keys. “Give me something.”
I expand the search parameters, diving deeper into databases that require my more creative login credentials. Social media platforms, employment records, tax filings—the digital detrituseveryone leaves behind whether they want to or not. Still nothing substantial. Nova moves through the world like smoke, touching nothing, claiming nothing, leaving barely a trace.
The underground circuit angle proves equally useless. These places don't keep records—cash transactions, word-of-mouth referrals, performers who appear one night and vanish the next. It's why they exist. Safety in shadows for people like us who need to stay invisible.
I try a different approach. Missing persons databases. If Nova learned to disappear this thoroughly, maybe someone reported her gone before she perfected the art.
The search runs for several minutes before results populate the screen. I scroll through faces—runaways, kidnap victims, people who walked out of their lives and never looked back. The photos blur together until one stops me cold.
Nova Calder. Age 15. Last seen leaving Riverside High School, Spokane, Washington.
My breath catches. The photo shows a younger version of the woman who came apart in my arms last night—same striking green eyes, same defiant tilt to her chin. But this Nova has uncertainty written in the space between her brows. The report date: twelve years ago.
I click through the details.Parents: David and Susan Calder. Father works construction, mother's a dental hygienist. No history of abuse reported. No signs of distress prior to disappearance. Subject took clothes and approximately $200 in cash. Investigators suspect voluntary departure due to unspecified family troubles.
The case went cold after six months. No leads, no sightings, no body. Nova Calder simply ceased to exist at fifteen and didn't resurface in any official capacity until that speeding ticket years later.
“What the hell happened to you?” I whisper to the screen.
I dig deeper into the family records. David Calder still lives at the same address in Spokane. Susan Calder divorced him three years after Nova disappeared and remarried a guy named Peterson. No other children listed for either of them. Whatever drove Nova away, she never went back.
The frustration builds like pressure behind my sternum. I want names. I want faces. I want to know exactly who put that haunted look in Nova's eyes so I can hunt them down and return the favor tenfold. But the digital trail goes dark for years—the most crucial years, when she went from scared teenager to the fierce, damaged woman who picked my locks in under thirty seconds.
I push back from the laptop, scrubbing my hands over my face. The clock in the corner reads 1:47 AM. My eyes burn, my shoulders ache, and I'm no closer to understanding Nova's past than when I started. Maybe some secrets are meant to stay buried.
But as I reach to close the laptop, a thought stops me. Marriage records. I didn't check marriage records.
The idea seems ridiculous. Nova doesn't wear a ring—I've memorized every inch of her hands, the way her fingers work metal and chain, the elegant lines of her knuckles. No tan line, no indent where a wedding band should sit. She moves through the world like someone accountable to no one, answerable to nothing but her own survival instincts.
Still. I've learned not to dismiss hunches, especially the ones that feel wrong.
I navigate to the marriage database, fingers hesitant on the keys.Nova Calder.The search runs, and I expect it to come back empty like everything else tonight.
The result stops me cold.
Marriage Certificate: Nova Marie Calder and Roman James Miller. Date: June 15th, 2015. Location: Las Vegas, Nevada. Bride's age: 18. Groom's age: 35.
I stare at the screen, the numbers rearranging themselves in ways that make my stomach turn. Eighteen and thirty-five. She was barely legal when she married this bastard. The math crawls under my skin—if she disappeared at fifteen and married at eighteen, where was she those three years? With him?
“Roman Miller,” I say his name aloud, tasting poison.
Jealousy hits first, hot and irrational. She's married. The woman I held last night, who trembled in my arms and let me see her tears—she belongs to someone else. Has belonged to someone else for nine fucking years.
Then the anger comes, colder and more dangerous. Because eighteen-year-olds don't marry men seventeen years older unless they’ve been groomed. Because Nova learned to disappear for reasons, and I'm betting Roman Miller features prominently in that education.
I pull up everything I can find on Roman Miller. Age 44. Current address in Phoenix, Arizona. Works in carnival management—of course he fucking does. The pieces click into place with sickening clarity. Nova mentionedcreative differencesat her last carnival. She didn't leave because of artistic disputes. She ran from her husband.
Employment records show Miller has been running a traveling show for the past two decades. Always management, never performing. The kind of man who stays behind the scenes, pulling strings, controlling the narrative. I dig deeper into his background. No arrests, but that doesn't mean shit in our world. Carnivals police their own problems.
I'm deep in Miller's financial records when I stumble across medical records that make my blood sing. From Phoenix General Hospital, dated one month ago.
Patient: Roman Miller. Admission: Emergency surgery for penetrating abdominal trauma. Blood loss: severe. Surgical repair of lacerated intestinal wall. Patient stable but critical. Penetrating object: a rigging spike.
The timestamp shows he was admitted at 0:17 AM. Emergency surgery lasted four hours. He nearly died on the table twice.
