The Immortal Circus: Act Two (2 page)

They started the week after Oberos attacked. And they’re getting worse.

Melody has a bottle of wine in one fingerless-gloved hand. She’s one of
those girls who looks like she should spend all of her time in some café in
Prague or Paris, with her slight European features and pale skin, the elflike
face and pixie-cut brown hair. But she also dresses like a reformed hippie.
Tonight she’s in a patched coat and tweed trousers, her green combat boots worn
and scuffed. So if she
were
in a café, it would have to be very
bohemian.

“You okay?” she asks, one eyebrow raised.

I’m really hoping I didn’t scream out loud. I take a deep breath and
shake it off. I haven’t told anyone about the visions. I know they’re not
supposed to be happening, that they’re against my contract, which is precisely
why I want to keep them secret: they let me know that Kingston hasn’t erased
anything, that Mab’s hold on me is weakening.

I just wish I knew how to control the visions.

I wish I could stop seeing the world end.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Just cold.” I pause. “How did you know I was up
here?”

I really, really hope I didn’t scream.

She sits down beside me, pulls a corkscrew from the pocket of her coat,
and opens the wine with deft fingers. The moon is thick and full above us, so
even though it’s nearing midnight, her features are easy to see. Everything’s
washed down to muted silvery tones, making the whole night seem even more
otherworldly. A few more breaths and the nausea fades.

“Because you’re a loner,” she says. Then she looks at me and winks.
“Also, Kingston told me.”

I roll my eyes and reach for the bottle that she hands over at the same
moment, trying to keep down the fear from the vision. At least now that I’ve
had a vision, I shouldn’t have another for a week. Hopefully.

“Strange show tonight,” she says. And it’s obvious she’s not talking
about the acts themselves—they went smoothly, just as they always do. Another
perk of the show’s magical proclivities.

“I know,” I say. “Any clue who did it yet?”

She shrugs and reaches for the wine. I take another drink before handing
it back. Drinking helps calm the nerves, even when the subject isn’t the most
comforting.

“You know Mab,” she says between sips, “if she
does
know anything,
she’s not saying. One thing’s for certain, though. It ain’t from within the
troupe.”

“What makes you say that?” I ask. My heart both lifts and drops at that
statement. I’d been toying with the idea of mutinous performers ever since
Kingston left—maybe one of the newbies was drafted into a contract they really
weren’t happy with. I don’t think I’d like to see anyone in the show go postal.

On the other hand, if it’s not from within the troupe, it means Mab was
right: It
was
the Summer Court. And war’s at hand. I think of the
visions, of the smoke and monsters, and have a sick sort of dread thinking
they’re related.

“Well,” Mel says, interrupting my flashback. “Everyone was onstage for
the finale.”

It’s such a simple statement that I feel like an idiot.

“What about the Shifters?” I ask.

She raises an eyebrow at me. The Shifters are the people currently
tearing down the tent. Shapeshifters. Just a little bit of genetic magic and
they’re able to lift the heaviest of pylons. Or turn themselves into dragons or
freaks, depending on their mood.

“I already double-checked with them. It wasn’t their doing, but they’d
like to shake the hand of whoever did it.”

“When did you start getting all cushy with the Shifters?” I ask. She
hands me the wine before I even reach for it.

She shrugs again. “I like knowing all the newbies. Besides, the Shifters
love
to party.”

Which is true. I’ve been to the Shifters’ bonfires. Lots of booze, lots
of laughter, and lots of lewd behavior. Definitely Melody’s scene.

“Anyway,” she says. “I know it’s not them. Which begs the question: Who
hates Mab enough to set her effigy on fire? That’s the sort of wrath-incurring
shit you only read about in the Book of Revelation.”

I take a long drink before answering.

This is the hard part of Kingston’s memory magic. Not everyone remembers
the same things, and if they do, they remember them differently. In this case,
Melody believes the tent was set on fire accidentally, and that’s why we lost a
good number of the troupe. She doesn’t know the truth. Kingston, Mab, and I,
we’re the only ones who know that Lilith is more than just a lost little girl.
Lilith is actually a vessel for the demon Kassia, the demon who burned down the
tent and killed half the troupe.

Okay, that might be an overstatement. Oberos, Prince of the Summer Court,
was stupid enough to try attacking us in an attempt to get at Kassia. Combined,
the two tore our show a new asshole.

Oberos didn’t make it out of that battle. I still have nightmares of him
exploding into burning butterflies.

Kassia came out victorious. In some fashion, at least: the little girl
Lilith is back, and apparently Kassia is once more safely locked inside. For
now. Again, the vision flashes through my mind. It makes my cold skin go
colder.

“Earth to Viv,” Mel says. She pokes me in the ribs as she grabs the
bottle from my hand. “That was a question.”

“Oh,” I say. I shake my head. Down at the pitch, one of the king
poles—the massive poles that hold up the canopy and all the high rigging—starts
to tilt toward the ground as the Shifters strike it.

I want to tell her about the Summer Court. I want to tell her about the
danger that I know is looming on the horizon, the pending war I can feel in my
bones. But I can’t. I’ve tried. My contract forbids it.

Which means I need to do what I’ve been doing too much of lately: lie.

“I don’t know,” I finally say. “I’m sure Mab has a string of jealous
lovers out there. Maybe one of them decided to strike back.”

This makes her laugh, as I’d hoped it would, and the momentary tension
dissolves. She hands over the wine, and we settle back in the grass. We watch
the Shifters tear down and don’t talk about anything serious for the rest of
the wine. We chat until the bottle is empty and the night gets colder than is
comfortable. Then we meander back down to the trailers and say goodnight. The
tent’s still not entirely packed away, and it probably won’t be until just
before sunrise. I do
not
envy the tent crew.

Kingston’s not inside my room when I get there. There’s a good chance he
won’t be back tonight, especially not if Mab’s having him act as watchdog or
asking him to twist the rules and use his magic to help the Shifters work. I
strip off my clothes and settle into my tiny twin bed. My bunk in the
double-wide trailer isn’t the most luxurious of lodgings, but it’s starting to
feel like home. Granted, because I don’t really remember having a home, that’s
not saying too much.

I lie back and stare at the light slashed across the ceiling. The warmth
of the wine is fading, and in the back of my mind I wonder if this is how
undercover agents feel.
I
know that we’re on the verge of war, yet
everyone else is oblivious. I want to scream the truth in their faces, but
instead I just grin and bear it and wait for hellfire to rain down. When I
close my eyes, all I can see is Mab’s burning effigy, the flames looking
remarkably similar to the fires from my vision on the hill. As sleep drifts
over me, Mab’s body becomes Kassia, and she’s no longer burning, but dancing in
the flames. The last thing I see before darkness closes in is Kassia holding
out her hand and asking me to play.

You’re
not supposed to know when you’re dreaming; that’s sort of the first rule.

So the moment I realize I’m standing in the old tent, the moment I
know I’m fast asleep, I’m already wishing I’d wake up. Not because the sun is
streaming through the blue and black canvas and the air is heavy with heat; not
because I look down and find myself standing in a pool of blue ink; I want out
because in front of me, dead center, is our once star contortionist, Sabina,
arched back on her pedestal with a vacant grin plastered on her face. The
puddle at my feet drips from a slash in her neck, the neon-blue blood dripping
slowly down the velvet and steel of her stand. Sabina, whose death spelled the
beginning of the end for so many others. Sabina, whose murderer was never
actually found.

I take a step back and nearly trip over something that clatters at my
feet. I turn.

The shock of seeing Roman impaled on his six swords, his body
supported on their points like some bloody bridge, is muted. I’m transfixed by
the blood dripping blue rivulets down his splayed arms, at the look of surprise
on his face. But the disgust I’d felt when we found him like this barely three
months ago is missing. I feel like I’m floating. Floating in blue light and
blood.

“I told you,” Mab says. Her deep, dusty voice anchors me back to the
ground. I turn and she’s standing there, the third point in this grisly
triangle, wearing smoky glass stilettos and a glittering blue ringmaster coat.
Her hair flows over her shoulders in waves of black, and her eyes glint green.
“I told you your powers would blossom in time.”

“My …?” I begin, but before I complete the sentence, there’s a noise
beside me, and I look over to see Lilith standing there with her tabby cat,
Poe, clutched in her arms. Lilith’s in a blue baby-doll dress, her black hair
tied back in blue ribbons. She looks like she should be sitting on some little
kid’s nightstand, not standing in the dust of the ring.

“Silly Vivienne,” Lilith says, her cherubic head cocked to the side
like a broken sparrow. “Thinking she can get away.”

“Get away?”

Lilith’s grin widens. Her skin cracks like broken concrete, faint
lines of red light spilling from the fissures that rip across her cheeks. Her
eyes flush fire.

“You cannot run away from your own past, stupid girl,” Lilith says.
Her voice is deeper and burns with brimstone. It sends chills down my spine.
“Your demons will always find you. Always.”

Poe leaps from her arms and twines around my feet. His touch makes my
skin tingle and burn. I can’t help but watch the dead cat as it prowls away,
toward a body lying broken on a cold tile floor, the linoleum stained with
smears of blue. A girl with curly brown hair and lifeless eyes. A girl whose
faded laugh rings through my head and stains my heart.

“Claire,” I whisper. The word is a dagger for reasons I can’t even
grasp.

Mab’s hands clench my shoulders. She whispers in my ear.

“You can’t run away forever,” she says. Her fingers dig deeper, and
the dream explodes in the screams of stars.

I’m nursing a cup of coffee in
my hands and watching my reflection waver in its black mirror. My hazel eyes
are bleary and ringed with dark shadows, my long blonde hair pulled back in a
wayward ponytail. I look like I’ve been run over by one of the giant semis that
carries the tent. I feel like it too. Something’s itching in the back of my
brain, but I can’t put my finger on why my instinct tells me I should be
freaking out. It feels like I haven’t slept in a week.

Kingston
never showed up. I try not to dwell on it. I tell myself I’m a big girl, and it
doesn’t matter that my boyfriend didn’t sneak into bed in the middle of the
night to curl up next to me. Like he had every other night. But as I sit and
look at my coffee and try to remember why my dreams feel like a clusterfuck,
assuring myself of anything positive is impossible. Especially at 6 a.m.

I hate jump
days.

The rest of
the troupe is milling around at about the same pace as me. I glance up and
watch the Shifters crowded around the coffee table. They’re in leather and
denim and ripped plaid shirts, like some punk-rock Hell’s Angels. Almost all of
them are covered in tattoos and piercings, and at least half of them have
dreadlocks and multicolored hair. They look like the type of people you’d run
away from in a dark alley, which, appearances being what they are, means
they’re most likely
precisely
the type of people you’d want to run into
in a dark alley.

I realize
I’m staring when one of the new guys catches my eye and winks. He’s got a pink
Mohawk and a septum piercing. He reminds me a lot of Roman, the old leader of
the Shifters, although the new guy is a bit more squat. The thought of Roman
makes my stomach clench. It’s hard to forget the last time I saw him, impaled
on his swords and bleeding in the morning sun. Memory stirs, but then the guy
looks away and it’s gone.

“Hey,” Kingston
says. He sidles up behind me and twines his hands over my shoulders, giving me
a light massage. I glance up at him. There are dark clouds under his eyes, and
he’s definitely wearing the same sleeveless shirt he wore yesterday. I clearly
wasn’t the only one who didn’t sleep for shit. “How are you?”

“Where were
you last night?” I ask. I don’t want it to sound as accusatory as it does; I
try to tell myself it’s because I want to know what’s going on, and not because
I’m bitter that he didn’t come back. I set the coffee down on the picnic table.

Kingston
doesn’t answer at first. He looks away, toward the trailers. Toward Mab’s
office.

“Searching,”
he says.

“For?”

He shrugs
and reaches for my coffee, taking a long sip. When he returns it, there’s only
a tiny bit left. I glare at him, and he waves his hand over the mug; it fills
itself back up with dark heaven. I take a slow sip. Generally speaking,
Kingston likes his coffee a bit
stronger
than the rest of us. I can’t
tell if I’m glad or disappointed that there’s no magical booze in this one.

“Just
glorified guard duty, double-checking contracts and all that,” he says. He’s
not speaking very loudly, which tells me more than enough: Mab doesn’t want
this becoming common knowledge. “Mab started a rumor that the effigy burning
was a publicity stunt, though how anyone buys that is beyond me. At least she’s
not asking me to
tweak
anything.”

I nod and
lean back against him. He kisses the top of my head.

“What are
we going to do?” I ask. I want to tell him what I’ve seen. But if I do, he
might be obligated to make me forget. Holding back kills me, but I refuse to
risk it.

I also hate
feeling like I can’t trust the man I love.

“She won’t
tell me,” he replies. I can tell he’s trying hard to control his voice, just as
I can tell he’s as frustrated about it as I am. “We just keep performing until
she says otherwise.”

“She says
Oberon’s declaring
war,”
I say. “That means people dying. How can she be
okay doing more performances when we could be ambushed at any moment?”

“That’s Mab
for you,” he says. “The show must go on.”

“Easy for
her to say. She’s got her Court to run back to.”

He sighs.

“I don’t
like it either. But she’s our boss. And she’s the Winter Queen. The show is
important to her; she won’t let anything bad happen to us. She’s probably
sending ambassadors over to Oberon right now to smooth things out. If she says
she’s got it under control, she’s got it under control.”

I nod and
he leans down, kissing me gently on the lips.

Trouble is,
I’ve heard that before. Spoiler: Mab didn’t have it under control. And it
didn’t end well.

Mab glitters center stage, like
a disco ball made human. A disco ball with curves to kill, poured into sheer
leggings and a ringmaster coat of pale-blue mirror shards. Every inch of her
breathes sex and rock and roll and every other thing your mother told you to
avoid, from the points of her gunmetal stilettos to the tip of her whip
cracking in the spotlight. She is smoke and seduction, the coolest palette of
blue and haze. Only her top hat seems out of place, with its ruby as bright and
lush as a beating heart.

I watch her
from the side of the tent. I’m wrapped tight in the billowing shawl and heavy
beaded necklaces I’m forced to wear for my psychic gig. I can’t help but
contrast Mab and her barely concealed tits and my own twenty layers of tulle
and velvet. On the one hand, I don’t have to carry a giant tree of cotton candy
like I did in my last role. On the other, I look like I inherited all the
hand-me-down clothes of every cliché medium in existence. I glance at one of
the male acrobats warming up in the aisle beside me. Shirtless, of course, and
wearing only spandex and rhinestones.

Why am
I
the only one in the show that looks like a prudish grandmother?

After Mab’s
initial whip cracks, Kingston saunters onstage. He’s in his usual magician
attire, which is to say, not much at all: sequined black dress slacks, gleaming
leather shoes, and a black cape slung over one shoulder. I can practically feel
the estrogen flush the moment he walks on stage. And, most likely, a few jolts
of testosterone as well. If Mab is sex and rock and roll, Kingston is slow jazz
and cuddling with handcuffs. From his saunter to the feathered serpent tattoo
that twists itself down his perfectly sculpted torso, every inch of him equals
sex
god
.

I grin a
little at the thought that he’s all mine.

Mab and
Kingston square off onstage and bow formally to each other. Then Kingston rips
off his cape and twirls it in front of him in a billow of black. He pulls it
away to reveal a stand covered in glowing golden baubles. I raise an eyebrow.
This is new.

Mab takes a
few steps back, flicking her whip with small cracks like a housecat eagerly
waiting to pounce. Her light-blue lips are curled in a grin. I don’t know when
she switched from burgundies to blues, but the new color palette makes my
memory shift uncomfortably.

Then,
before I can figure out why I’m suddenly trying to remember my dreams, Kingston
picks up a glowing ball and tosses it to Mab.

Her whip
reacts, fast as a lashing serpent. I barely see her arm move as she flicks the
tail out. With a crack that echoes like a gunshot, the globe explodes in a
cloud of golden dust and glittering light.

The crowd
barely starts applauding before Kingston tosses another sphere at her. Another
flick, and this explodes as well. Mab twirls on one heel and snaps the whip in
a figure eight before her, and then Kingston throws another ball, and another.
She plucks both from the air in a series of two short snaps, the exploding
baubles lighting the stage like strobes. The crowd doesn’t know when to stop
clapping, so they keep up the applause, the cracks of her whip barely audible
over the noise.

Kingston
doesn’t stop throwing. Mab is practically dancing now, leaping back and forth
across the stage, the whip a blur in her hand. Kingston is moving just as
fluidly, lobbing glowing spheres and spinning and flipping with every toss. The
stage is covered in glowing golden glitter, the air above them a constant
stream of glimmering dust. It’s like watching fireworks fall in slow motion.
Like watching gods weave constellations in the night sky.

“Kingston
is pretty.”

The voice
shouldn’t carry over the applause, but it does. It cuts through the din like a
scalpel, directed to my ears alone. Despite the heat of the tent, I shiver.
Then I look down at Lilith.

Every time
I see her, I expect for her to freak out just like the night she burned down
the tent and nearly killed me. But she’s just staring out at the show with a
childlike grin on her childlike face. Her white dress glows blue in the light,
the tiny embroidered carousel horses on the hem glittering with sequins. Her
curly, black hair falls loose around her shoulders, a ribbon just peeking
through the waves. I don’t know if she realizes her hands are held at her chest
like she’s cradling something that isn’t there. I don’t know if she remembers
her cat, Poe, that was killed by the Summer Fey and subsequently released
Lilith’s powers. I’m still not entirely certain what happened that day or why
Lilith’s cat apparently contained all of her evilness. All I know is, the cat
is gone and the girl’s still here.

I think I
would have preferred it the other way around.

“Yeah,” I
say. I try not to shrink against the bleachers. I don’t raise my voice because
I don’t want one of the punters to shush me. “He’s pretty.” I wonder how many
more times we’ll have this conversation.

“I like
Kingston,” she says. She looks up at me. Her green eyes glow. “I like him
lots.”

“I know,” I
say. A few months ago, she tackled me in a cornfield because I admitted to
liking him too. I try not to talk to her in general, but when I have to,
Kingston is the last topic I want on the table. “He … likes you too.”

Lilith
laughs. It’s not the innocent twinkle you’d expect her to have. It’s deep.

“I know,”
she says. The vapid tinge to her voice is gone. My hackles rise. She sounds a
lot like Kassia, the demon hopefully still locked beneath her skin. “And soon
he’ll have no choice but to prove it.”

Then,
before I can ask her what the hell she means—not that I’d expect to get any
answer out of her—she vanishes underneath the bleachers. I watch her go. It’s
only when I notice the applause has swelled in intensity that I realize the act
onstage is done. I look out to catch the end of what looks like a spectacular
denouement. The air glows with blue and gold sparks, while both Mab and
Kingston breathe heavily, hands clasped together and bowing as one. Then they
turn and head backstage. The lights dim, and the floor of the stage glows with
stardust.

“Is she
always that strange?” the acrobat beside me whispers into my ear. I look at
him; he’s one of the new recruits who specializes in hand balancing. Young,
starry-eyed—that perfect mix of tall, black, and stunning. Blue crystals spiral
over his right pec. Even the
new guys
are sexy by default.

I can’t
find my voice. It’s lodged somewhere between my fear of Lilith and the nagging
sensation her words dredge up. Every time she speaks, I feel the world crashing
down in brimstone around me.

I nod.

“Huh,” he
grunts. Then, before he says anything else, the lights shift and he bounds
onstage, doing a flip over the ring curb in perfect unison with the hand
balancers entering from the other sides.

I watch
their act, but I can’t focus. Lilith’s words are burning in my brain.

My powers
might be locked away … but are hers?

“But what
is
Lilith?”
I asked.

Kingston
sat next to me, the bonfire making his brown eyes flicker copper. Not even a
week had passed since Lilith went insane, and I still couldn’t get the feeling
of her burning eyes out of my skull. PTSD wasn’t even close to describing it.
Even during the murders, I had felt somewhat safe in the circus. But now,
knowing she was always around and potentially always on the verge of losing it
again, I felt like I should be packing heat every time I went to the porta
potty.

She
wasn’t at the bonfire, of course. Lilith didn’t ever socialize, which made me
wonder what she actually did with herself for the portion of the day she wasn’t
watching creepily from the sidelines. The Shifters sat across from us on the
other side of the fire. I wasn’t worried about them listening in. They were
currently forcing the new recruits to undergo initiation, which in
shapeshifting-carnie-land meant getting blackout drunk on absinthe and having
to shift into whatever the old guard wanted.

Naturally,
that side of fire was a runway of well-endowed porn stars and more than one
lewd impersonation of Mab. Which, to be fair, were pretty much one and the
same.

A few
months before, when I was the newbie, I would have been blushing at all the
flesh on display. Funny how fast things had changed.

“You
know I can’t answer that,” Kingston said. He was staring at the fire, biting
the corner of his lip. “We’re not allowed to talk about her.”

“But
what if she’s dangerous?” I pressed. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see what
she could do.” Just saying it made the memory of Penelope bursting into flame
flash in my mind, along with the sickening scent of Penelope’s flesh as it
crisped and peeled, floating up into the burning sky ….

“I know
what she’s capable of,” he said darkly. “And I know Mab’s got her under
control.”

I shook
my head.

“I’m
getting sick of this,” I said. Someone across from us burst into laughter. One
of the Mab impersonators sprouted an alligator tail. But not from her butt.
“Everyone acting like nothing happened. Like nothing’s different.” I shivered
in spite of the roaring flames. I wanted to lean into Kingston and find some
comfort there, but I couldn’t. Not when he was being stubborn like this. I knew
he knew more than he was letting on.