Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top (3 page)

She and Jacob walked in silence, away from the lights and noise to the edge of the fairgrounds, where the ground sloped down through a tangle of brush and trees toward the shore of White Bear Lake. The water sprawled toward the horizon, a black mirror in the darkness. She made out a bone-pale spire on the edge of the water—a ruined church, the only building left of the ghost town the lake had swallowed.

Jacob pulled out a cigarette case, offered Salem one. She took it, though she hadn’t smoked in years. Circuses, cigarettes, strange men—she was relearning all sorts of bad habits today. He cupped his hands around a match and she leaned close; he smelled of musk and clean salt sweat. Orange light traced the bones of his face as he lit his own.

“So, witch, ask your questions.”

She took a drag and watched the paper sear. “Who is the burning man?”

“Ah.” Smoke shimmered as he exhaled. “An excellent question, and one deserving of an interesting answer.” He turned away, broken-nosed profile silhouetted against the fairground lights.

“These days he’s a train man—conductor and fireman and engineer, all in one. He runs an underground railroad, but not the kind that sets men free.” His left eye glinted as he glanced at her. “Have you, perchance, noticed a dearth of spirits in these parts?”

Salem shivered, wished she’d thought to wear a coat. Jacob shrugged his jacket off and handed it to her. “This train man is taking the ghosts? Taking them where?”

“Below. Some he’ll use to stoke the furnace, others to quench his thirst. And any that are left when he reaches the station he’ll give to his masters.”

“What are they?”

“Nothing pleasant, my dear, nothing pleasant at all.”

“What do you have to do with this?”

“I’ve been tracking him. I nearly had him in Mississippi, but our paths parted—he follows the rails, and the Circus keeps to the freeways.”

“So it was just bad luck he got caught in my bottle tree?”

“Your good luck that he left you in peace. He hunts ghosts, but I doubt he’d scruple to make one if he could.”

“So why the invitation?”

He smiled. “A witch whose spells can trap the Conductor, even for a moment, is a powerful witch indeed. You could be of no little help to me.”

“I’m not in the business of hunting demons, or ghosts.”

“You keep a bottle tree.”

“It was my grandmother’s. And it keeps them away. I like my privacy.”

“He’ll be going back soon with his load. The end of the month.”

“Halloween.”

He nodded. “That’s all the time those souls have left, before they’re lost.”

“I’m sorry for them.” She dropped her cigarette, crushed the ember beneath her boot. “I really am. And I wish you luck. But it’s not my business.”

“He takes children.”

Salem laughed, short and sharp, and tossed his jacket back to him. “You don’t know my buttons to press them.”

He grinned and stepped closer, his warmth lapping against her. “I’d like to find them.”

“I bet you would. Good night, Jacob. I enjoyed the show.” And she turned and walked away.

That night Salem drifted in and out of restless sleep. No dreams to keep her up tonight, only the wind through the window, light as a thief, and the hollowness behind her chest. A dog howled somewhere in the distance and she tossed in her cold bed.

Six years this winter since she’d come back to nurse her grandmother through the illnesses of age that not even their witchery could cure, until Eliza finally died, and left Salem her house, her bottle tree, and all the spells she knew. Years of sleeping alone, of selling bottles and beads and charms and seeing living folk twice a month at best.

We’ll always work best alone
, her grandmother had said. Salem had been willing to believe it. She’d had her fill of people—circus lights and card tricks, grifting and busking. The treachery of the living, the pleas and the threats of the dead. Dangerous men and their smiles. Living alone seemed so much easier, if it meant she never had to scrub blood and gunpowder from her hands again, never had to dig a shallow grave at the edge of town.

But she wasn’t sure she wanted to spend another six years alone.

October wore on and the leaves of the bottle tree rattled and drifted across the yard. Salem carved pumpkins and set them to guard her porch, though no children ever came so far trick-or-treating. She wove metal and glass and silk to sell in town. She wove spells.

The moon swelled, and by its milksilver light she scried the rain barrel. The water showed her smoke and flame and church bells and her own pale reflection.

A week after she’d visited the circus, someone knocked on her door. Salem looked up from her beads and spools of wire and shook her head.

Jacob stood on her front step, holding his hat in his hands. His boots were dusty, jacket slung over one shoulder. He grinned his wolf’s grin. “Good afternoon, ma’am. I wondered if I might trouble you for a drink of water.”

Salem’s eyes narrowed as she fought a smile. “Did you walk all this way?”

“I was in the mood for a stroll, and a little bird told me you lived hereabouts.” He raised ginger brows. “Does your privacy preclude hospitality, or are you going to ask me in?”

She sighed. “Come inside.”

The bone charm over the door shivered just a little as he stepped inside, but that might have been the wind. She led him to the kitchen, aware of his eyes on her back as they crossed the dim and creaking hall.

The cat stood up on the table as they entered, orange hackles rising. Salem tensed, wondered if she’d made a mistake after all. But Jacob held out one hand and the tom walked toward him, pausing at the edge of the table to sniff the outstretched fingers. After a moment his fur settled and he deigned to let the man scratch his ears.

“What’s his name?” Jacob asked.

“Vengeance Is Mine Sayeth the Lord. You can call him Vengeance, though I’m pretty sure he thinks of himself as the Lord.”

Jacob smiled, creasing the corners of autumn-grey eyes; his smile made her shiver, not unpleasantly.

“Sit down,” she said. “Would you like some coffee, or tea?”

“No, thank you. Water is fine.”

She filled a glass and set the water pitcher on the table amidst all her bottles and beads. Vengeance sniffed it and decided he’d rather have what was in his bowl. Jacob drained half the glass in one swallow.

“Nice tree.” He tilted his stubbled chin toward the backyard, where glass gleamed in the tarnished light. He picked up a strand of opalite beads from the table; they shimmered like tears between his blunt fingers. “Very pretty. Are you a jeweler too?”

She shrugged, leaning one hip against the counter. “I like to make things. Pretty things, useful things.”

“Things that are pretty and useful are best.” He ran a hand down the curve of the sweating pitcher and traced a design on the nicked tabletop. Salem shuddered at a cold touch on the small of her back.

Her lips tightened. Vengeance looked up from his bowl and rumbled like an engine. He leapt back on the table, light for his size, and sauntered toward Jacob. Big orange paws walked right through the damp design and Salem felt the charm break.

“Did you think you could come into my house and ’witch me?”

“I could try.”

“You’ll have to try harder than that.”

“I will, won’t I.”

He stood and stepped toward her. Salem stiffened, palms tingling, but she didn’t move, even when he leaned into her, hands braced against the counter on either side. His lips brushed hers, cold at first but warming fast. The salt-sweet taste of him flooded her mouth and her skin tightened.

After a long moment he pulled away, but Salem still felt his pulse in her lips. Her blood pounded like surf in her ears.

His scarred hands brushed the bottom of her shirt. “You said something about buttons . . . ”

“Will you help me?” he asked later, in the darkness of her bedroom. The smell of him clung to her skin, her sheets, filled her head till it was hard to think of anything else.

Salem chuckled, her head pillowed on his shoulder. “You think that’s all it takes to change my mind?”

“All? You want more?”

She ran her fingers over his stomach; scars spiderwebbed across his abdomen, back and front, like something had torn him open. Older, fainter scars cross-hatched his arms. Nearly every inch of him was covered in cicatrices and ink.

“Is prestidigitation such dangerous work?”

“It is indeed.” He slid a hand down the curve of her hip, tracing idle patterns on her thigh. “But not unrewarding.”

“What will you do if you catch this demon of yours?”

He shrugged. “Find another one. The world is full of thieves and predators and dangerous things.”

“Things like you?”

“Yes.” His arms tightened around her, pressing her close. “And like you, my dear.” She stiffened, but his fingers brushed her mouth before she could speak. “Tell me you’re not a grifter, Jerusalem.”

“I gave it up,” she said at last.

“And you miss it. You’re alone out here, cold and empty as those bottles.”

She snorted. “And you think you’re the one to fill me?”

His chuckle rumbled through her. “I wouldn’t presume. Raylene misses you, you know. The others do too. Wouldn’t you be happier if you came back to the show?”

The glass in her chest cracked, a razorline fracture of pain. “You don’t know what would make me happy,” she whispered.

Callused fingers trailed up the inside of her thigh. “I can learn.”

He rose from her bed at the first bruise of dawn. “Will you think about it, if nothing else?” Cloth rustled and rasped as he dressed in the darkness.

“I’ll think about it.” She doubted she’d be able to do anything else.

“We’re here through Sunday. The circus and the train.” He stamped his boots on and leaned over the bed, a darker shadow in the gloom.

“I know.” She stretched up to kiss him, stubble scratching her already-raw lips.

Her bed was cold when he was gone. She lay in the dark, listening to hollow chimes.

Salem spent the day setting the house in order, sweeping and dusting and checking all the wards. Trying not to think about her choices.

She’d promised her grandmother that she’d stay, settle down and look after the house. No more running off chasing midway lights, no more trouble. It had been an easy promise as Eliza lay dying, Salem’s heart still sore with guns and graves, with the daughter she’d lost in a rush of blood on a motel bathroom floor.

She didn’t want to go through that again. But she didn’t want to live alone and hollow, either.

The bird came after sundown, drifting silent from the darkening sky. The cat stared and hissed as she settled on the back step, his ears flat against his skull.

“Come with me, witch. We need you.”

“Hello, Memory. I thought I had until Sunday.”

“We were wrong.” The girl lifted a bone-white hand, but couldn’t cross the threshold. “We’re out of time.”

Salem stared at the ghost girl. Older than her daughter would have been. Probably a blessing for the lost child anyway—she had a witch’s heart, not a mother’s.

The child vanished, replaced by a fluttering crow. “There’s no time, witch. Please.”

Vengeance pressed against her leg, rumbling deep in his chest. Salem leaned down to scratch his ears. “Stay here and watch the house.”

As she stepped through the door, the world shivered and slipped sideways. She walked down the steps under a seething black sky. The tree glowed against the shadows, a shining thing of ghostlight and jewels. Beyond the edge of her yard the hills rolled sere and red.

“Where are we going?” she asked Memory.

“Into the Badlands. Follow me, and mind you don’t get lost.” The bird took to the sky, flying low against heavy clouds. Salem fought the urge to look back, kept her eyes on the white-feathered shape as it led her north.

The wind keened across the hills and Salem shivered through her light coat. The trees swayed and clattered, stunted bone-pale things shedding leaves like ashes.

The moon rose slowly behind the clouds, swollen and rust-colored. Something strange about its light tonight, too heavy and almost sharp as it poured over Salem’s skin. Then she saw the shadow nibbling at one edge and understood—eclipse. She lengthened her stride across the dry red rock.

Time passed strange in the deadlands, and they reached the end of the desert well before Salem could ever have walked to town. She paused on the crest of a ridge, the ground sloping into shadow below her. On the far side of the valley she saw the circus, shimmering bright enough to bridge the divide.

“No,” Memory cawed as she started toward the lights. “We go down.”

Salem followed the bird down the steep slope, boots slipping in red dust. A third of the moon had been eaten by the rust-colored shadow.

Halfway down she saw the buildings, whitewashed walls like ivory in the darkness. A church bell tolled the hour as they reached the edge of town and Memory croaked along with the sour notes.

Shutters rattled over blind-dark windows and paint peeled in shriveled strips. The bird led her to a nameless bar beside the train tracks. Jacob waited inside, leaning against the dust-shrouded counter.

Salem crossed her arms below her breasts. “You said Sunday.”

“I was wrong. It’s the burning moon he wants, not Hallow’s Eve.” Witchlight burned cold in the lamps, glittering against cobwebbed glass. His eyes were different colors in the unsteady glow.

“Where is he now?”

“On his last hunt. He’ll be back soon.”

“What do you need me for?”

He touched the chain around her throat; links rattled softly. “Distraction. Bait. Whatever’s needed.”

She snorted. “That’s what Memory’s for too, isn’t she? That’s why he was watching your act. You’re a real bastard, aren’t you?”

“You have no idea.”

She reached up and brushed the faint web of scars on his left cheek. “How’d you lose your eye?”

He grinned. “I didn’t lose it. I know exactly where it is.”

Memory drifted through the door. “He’s coming.”

Jacob’s smile fell away and he nodded. “Wait by the train station. Be sure he sees you.”