Read The Night Circus for Free Online

lady who once lived in France know of charms and talismans?” he asks.
    “Only things I’ve read in books,” she says. “I don’t remember what all of them mean. I only know the astrological symbols and some of the alchemical ones, and I don’t know them particularly well, either.” She pauses, as though she cannot decide whether or not she wants to elaborate, but then she adds, “ La Roue de Fortune , the Wheel of Fortune. The card in your book. I know that card. I have a deck, myself.”
    While earlier Marco had determined her to be little more than mildly intriguing and fairly pretty, this revelation is something more. He leans into the table, regarding her with considerably increased interest than he had moments before.
    “Do you mean you read the tarot, Miss Martin?” he asks.
    Isobel nods.
    “I do, at least, I try,” she says. “Only for myself, though, which I suppose is not really reading. It’s  …  it’s just something I picked up a few years ago.”
    “Do you have your deck with you?” Marco asks. Isobel nods again. “I would very much like to see it, if you don’t mind,” he adds, when she makes no move to take it from her bag. Isobel glances around the café at the other patrons. Marco gives a dismissive wave. “Don’t worry yourself about them,” he says, “it takes a great deal more than a deck of cards to frighten this lot. But if you would rather not, I understand.”
    “No, no, I don’t mind,” Isobel says, picking up her bag and carefully pulling out a deck of cards wrapped in a scrap of black silk. She removes the cards from their covering and places them atop the table.
    “May I?” Marco asks as he moves to pick them up.
    “By all means,” Isobel answers, surprised.
    “Some readers do not like other people touching their cards,” Marco explains, recalling details from his divination lessons as he gently lifts the deck. “And I would not want to be presumptuous.” He turns over the top card, Le Bateleur . The Magician. Marco cannot help but smile at the card before replacing it in the pile.
    “Do you read?” Isobel asks him.
    “Oh no,” he says. “I am familiar with the cards, but they do not speak to me, not in ways enough to properly read.” He looks up from the cards at Isobel, still not certain what to make of her. “They speak to you, though, do they not?”
    “I have never thought of it that way, but I suppose they do,” she says. She sits quietly, watching him flip through the deck. He treats it with the same care she showed with his journal, holding the cards delicately by their edges. When he has looked through the entire deck, he places them back on the table.
    “They are very old,” he says. “Much older than you, I would venture to guess. Might I inquire as to how they came into your possession?”
    “I found them in a jewelry box in an antiques shop in Paris, years ago,” Isobel says. “The woman there wouldn’t even sell them to me, she just told me to take them away, get them out of her shop. Devil cards, she called them. Cartes du Diable .”
    “People are naïve about such things,” Marco says, a phrase oft repeated by his instructor as both admonishment and warning. “And they would rather write them off as evil than attempt to understand them. An unfortunate truth, but a truth nonetheless.”
    “What is your notebook for?” Isobel asks. “I don’t mean to pry, I just found it interesting. I hope you will forgive me for looking through it.”
    “Well, we are even on that matter, now that you have allowed me to look through your cards,” he says. “But I am afraid it is rather complex, and not the easiest of matters to explain, or believe.”
    “I can believe quite a lot of things,” Isobel says. Marco says nothing, but watches her as intently as he had regarded her cards. Isobel holds his gaze and does not look away.
    It is too tempting. To have found someone who might even begin to understand the world he has lived in