The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels) (12 page)

Time ticks by
and the only things that move are the rain and Poe shifting around in front of
me. The cat starts shying away from my touch, so I stop trying, keeping my
hands shoved in my pockets to stay warm, and wishing either something would
happen or the sun would rise so I could go to bed. I check my watch again.
2:43.

Poe stirs,
stretches, and wanders off.

Something
behind me rustles, and I assume it’s just the cat chasing a waterlogged mouse.
Then I hear voices, and my breath catches.

I turn, very,
very slowly, and sink even deeper to the forest floor. I try to blend in with
the undergrowth that I’m now thanking rather than cursing for making this
entire stay uncomfortable as hell.

I can’t see
anything, not in the darkness. And through the rain, I can’t make out distinct
voices. Just words. I try to edge closer, every inch of my skin on fire with
adrenaline. Someone’s definitely out there, someone trying to remain hidden. I
sneak closer, down an all fours, my stomach grazing the ground as I crawl. Then
I stop, because I can hear them now, two voices. One of them, I’m sure, is the
blond guy, but the other? Wherever she is, I hope Lilith’s getting a better
view than I.

“…can’t back
out now,” the man’s voice hisses. I can just imagine him, the shadow of him,
standing only a few feet away. “You know what’s at stake. The Dream Trade
must
stop.”

The response
is whispered, a mumble I can barely make out.

“Had
enough?”
the man says. “Too much blood on your hands?”

Another
pause, and it sounds like someone’s crying their words out. If I could get
closer…

“No,” the man
says. “The next phase will happen, with or without your help.”

Another sob.

“If you fail —
” and then he pauses. I hear a snap as something moves closer to me. My blood
is pounding louder than the rain, and the only thing I can think is
shit
shit shit.
Then there’s a hiss, and the man curses as Poe leaps from the
underbrush.

“Damn cat,”
he says. Another pause. “Leave,” he finally says. “And do your part.”

I don’t move.
I don’t know how I can tell, but the guy is gone, vanished like he had before.
I don’t dare move an inch in case he’s hovering somewhere nearby. I stay there,
crouched in the mud, waiting for him to put a knife in my back or for the other
person to stumble across me. Nothing happens. Time ticks by, and every inch of
me aches from stillness. The rain doesn’t stop. Lilith doesn’t appear by my
side. There’s nothing but rain and silence.

I don’t
leave, though. I don’t move. Not if something is about to happen, not if
there’s a threat.

Only when the
first streak of light brightens the rain clouds do I move away from my spot.
Only when I’m positive Mel hasn’t been taken, and that the people I care about
are safe. I strip off my raincoat and scurry back to my trailer, stepping
gently inside so none of the other bunks register the shift of weight. I dry
off and curl up under the covers, hoping I’ll get enough sleep to last the rest
of the day.

I close my
eyes and picture only cold and darkness and conspirators bathed in shadows, but
at least my friends are safe. At least we’re safe.

I
don’t think
my eyes have been closed for ten minutes when someone’s knocking at my door.
There’s bile in my throat and a cold that won’t get out of my limbs, but I push
myself out of bed and open the door.
No fucking way
  keeps repeating in
my head. Everyone’s safe. They have to be safe. But somehow I know that’s not
the case.

It’s Lilith.
Not Kingston, coming to say that someone else has bit the dust. I highly doubt
the girl has that sort of mental capacity. I could kiss her in relief.

She ducks
under my arm and comes into the room, Poe gripped tight in her hands. Her
clothes are dry and clean, but there’s a smear of mud across her pale forehead
and her eyes are just as shadowed as Melody’s were yesterday.

“Bad man,”
she says the moment she sits on my bed. “Bad man, bad man’s here. Bad man wants
us.”

I look out
the door once more and make sure there isn’t a commotion. No one is screaming
about another death, so I close it and look at the kid shaking back and forth
on my bed. She looks like a doll. One that walks around your house at night
stealing knives and hiding your puppy in the freezer.

“The bad
man,” I say. “Yes, you saw him last night. Who was with him?”

“Bad man,”
she says. “Bad man chasing, bad man finding.” She looks up at me. “You can’t
protect them.” Her voice has turned eerily sober once more. “And they can’t
hide from him. She will die. And he will die. We will all die if the Summer
Court finds us.”

“Who?” I ask.
“Kingston? Mel?”

But she’s
back in la-la-land, singing Kingston’s name under her breath. I sigh. The only
other person who saw what happened last night is as good as a vegetable. The
sigh becomes a yawn, and I’m about to ask her to leave or at least make room on
the bed so I can continue my nap, when there’s another knock on my door.

I open it.
Kingston.
Fuck.

“It’s
Melody,” he says before I even say hello. “She’s not waking up.”

We’re out the
door and walking toward her trailer in a heartbeat, Lilith at our heels. She’s
still singing his name, but Kingston doesn’t seem to notice. I swear the world
has slowed down; I can feel every footfall, every beat of my acidic heart
pounding out its terrible truth. I failed. I failed. I failed.

“What
happened?” I ask. No one’s outside except for the cooks in the pie cart, and
the air smells like bacon. “What do you mean she’s not waking up?”

He gives me a
look. “I went in to check on her. And she didn’t wake up. What doesn’t click
for you?” His words are biting, but they aren’t hitting home. If roles were
reversed I’d be just as terse.

Lilith
giggles at that. “Kingston’s smart. Lilith’s smart, too.”

“Yes you
are,” he says in an offhand way. Then we’re at Melody’s door, and he opens it
without knocking.

Her bunk is
the same size as mine, with the same furniture setup, except the curtains drawn
across the windows give the room the feeling of a crypt. The stale air and
stench of sweat don’t help. Kingston walks right up to the window and opens it,
letting in light and fresh air. Melody is on her bed, the sheets tangled around
her. I move closer and see the sweat dripping down her forehead. Her eyelids
look like they’ve been covered in dark stage-makeup. She’s pale — pale as her
white sheets — and except for the slightest tremble of her lips, she’s not
moving.

Lilith sidles
up beside me and stares down at Melody. Poe purrs loudly in her hands.

“Melody’s
sick?” she asks, like a child asking why Granny isn’t coming home from the
hospital.

“Very,”
Kingston says, stepping over to Melody and putting a hand on her forehead. A
soft haze seems to flow from his fingertips, but it only lasts a second before
he slumps to sitting on the bed as well. He runs his hands through his hair.
Zal is once more twined around his arm, its head on the back of Kingston’s
hand. The ink is a little smudged, as though even the serpent’s tired of trying
to hold itself together.

“Lilith,” he
says. “Would you…would you please get Mab?”

“Auntie Mab?”
Lilith asks.

“Yes,” he
says. He sounds so, so tired. “Tell her there’s something wrong with Melody.
Now, please.”

Lilith puts
Poe on the ground and nods, then turns and opens the door for her cat. They
both slink out into the filtered light.

“You didn’t
leave her side last night, did you?” There’s a thermos sitting on the desk
beside her bed, along with a book I remember Kingston carrying around. “You
stayed in here to keep an eye on her.”

“Someone had
to,” he says, with more venom in his words than I expected.

“I was
outside,” I whisper. “In the woods. Watching.”

He looks at
me and there’s a surprised smile on his lips, but it fades in a moment. “I
don’t know what’s wrong. No one came in, nothing changed. Zal was patrolling
just outside the trailer all night. I didn’t sleep at all and now — ” He leans
back against the wall and closes his eyes. “Now I’m too tired to light a
candle, let alone heal her. I failed her, Viv. She’s going to die because of
me.”

“No, she
won’t,” I say. “I think I know what’s going on. Last night, I heard someone out
in the woods. Well, two people, but I only heard the one. It was the Summer
Court guy. He said something about the next phase needing to happen.” I nod my
head to Melody and whisper, “Do you think she’s the next phase?”

“How could
she be?” he asks. “She doesn’t have any magic. She’s just a girl.”

“I thought
she was — ”

“She’s not,”
Kingston whispers. He closes his eyes, like he doesn’t want to witness what
he’s about to say. “She’s mortal, like you. She just doesn’t like admitting
it.”

I stare at
Melody for a moment and wonder what got her into this mess. Was she an orphan
like me? Or was she running from something else? I sit down on the other end of
the bed and put a hand on her forehead. She’s burning up. If she
had
been running from something, it looked like it was finally catching up. Knowing
this…she looks so much tinier, so much more frail. I always expected her to
have some magical ability she never let on, something that made her invincible.
But she was normal, mortal, and Kingston brought her here. Why? I don’t have
time to ask him.

The door
opens, and Mab walks in. She’s in her sequined dressing gown, her hair loose
and curling down her back. Her face is guarded, but she doesn’t seem wrathful,
at least not now. She closes the door softly behind her and raises an arm like
she’s throwing confetti into the air. The walls of the bunk glow gold for a moment
— the slightest shimmer of light — and then are normal.

“Prying
ears,” she says, and steps forward, leaning in between Kingston and me to
examine Melody.

For a moment,
no one says anything as Mab traces Mel’s outline with her hands. I watch Mab’s
face, but it gives nothing away, not a hint of concern or recognition or rage.
She is a perfectly painted mask of obsidian eyebrows and crimson lips. When she
steps back, she looks at the both of us.

“Which of you
found her like this?” she asks, her voice a smoky whisper. It’s exactly what
she said when we gathered around Sabina. My stomach drops.

“I did,”
Kingston says. “I didn’t leave her last night, after the show. She said she
wasn’t feeling well, so I decided to keep an eye on her.” Neither of us mentions
meeting on the beach. Neither of us wants to wonder if
that’s
when she
became so ill.

“And in the
light of all that has happened, you failed to come to me?” Mab’s voice has a
dangerous edge, even though her tone is still perfectly civil.

“You had
enough on your plate,” Kingston says. He doesn’t flinch from Mab’s gaze. I’ve
never seen the two of them interact before this, but somehow, there’s no sense
of a power struggle. They both seem to be on the same playing field. And that
field is way, way above me. “I figured it was just a…a by-product.”

There’s a
silence in the room, then, one that makes me feel they’re sharing more than I
can catch, one that makes me feel like I shouldn’t be there. It makes me wonder
if that’s precisely why Kingston came and got me first. I’m the buffer to keep
Mab’s rage in check.

“Perhaps so,”
Mab says. “But whatever illness has taken her…it's not normal. She has been
cursed.”

“I know,”
Kingston says. “I can’t break it.”

“Nor can I,”
Mab says. “But that’s precisely why you brought her in, isn’t it?”

They both
look at me.

“What?” I
ask.

“I thought,
perhaps — ” Kingston begins, but Mab waves her hand and cuts him off.

“You put your
love of this girl,” she says, and a part of me hopes she means me, and not
Melody, “before your obligations to the show. Under normal circumstances, you
know what that would entail.” She looks again at Kingston, and there’s a sneer, one that says she’s caught on to the game. “But these aren’t normal
circumstances, are they? You know I’ll be kind.”

Kingston doesn’t
contradict her. He just crosses his arms and stares at Mab like they’re
discussing politics over tea. Mab raises her hands and steps away from the bed.

“I’ve taught
you well,” she says. Then she looks at me. “Vivienne, if you please?”

“You want me
to leave?” I ask.

“No,” she
says. “I call upon line 23B of your contract. I request that you break this
girl’s curse, or at least discover its maker so I may dispose of him. Though,”
she says, looking at Kingston, “I don’t think there’s much doubt that the Summer
Court is at fault.”

Something
burns inside of me at her words, something that singes through my brain the
moment she utters the word
contract
. I want to say I have no clue what
she’s talking about, but the fire is building and burning. And then I’m putting
my hands on Melody’s face, one on each side, and I’m closing my eyes. The fire
inside is flash and thunder and everything is roaring, roaring, the world
ripping apart and filing itself back together. It’s nails on concrete fire in
water trees on fire burning through suns and stars and emptiness circling the
tunnel of falling, falling, falling into white. Then there’s someone’s words
cutting through it all.

“I call upon
line 23C. Forget.”

And I’m back.
There’s only a ringing in my ears and a heat in my head, but there’s no fire or
thunder anymore. I’m sitting on Melody’s bed covered in sweat and shaking. I
can’t tell if I’m starving or about to throw up. Mab and Kingston are both
looking at me with blank expressions on their faces.

“Well,” Mab
says. “That was most…unenlightening.”

“What, what
was that?” I manage, though my words are sour in my throat.

“None of your
concern,” Mab says. She raises an eyebrow. “Nothing happened, you just aren’t
feeling well. Or don’t you remember?”

“I…” But I
don’t remember. I just remember sitting in the trailer, listening to them talk
about curses and Mel and then feeling faint. “What was I talking about?”

“Nothing,”
Kingston says, putting a hand on my shoulder. There’s no magic, this time, but
his presence cuts through the sickness anyway. “We should get you out of here,
in case whatever Melody has is catching.”

He helps me
to my feet and squeezes me past Mab, who is still looking at me like an
interesting specimen. Kingston opens the door for me and ushers me out, an arm looped
around my waist.

“I…does Mab
know what’s going on?”

“Not yet,”
Kingston says. He speaks slowly, like the words are hard to find. “But we have
a better idea now of what we’re up against.”

“And?”

He looks at
me and tries to smile. It slips into a grimace. “And it isn’t good.”

Melody
doesn’t wake up for lunch, so Kingston and I spend the meal outside her
trailer, dining and talking as the clouds from yesterday’s rain slowly
dissipate. He even brought a picnic blanket. It would be romantic, if not for
the fact that we’re both waiting for Mel to cry out and need us. I can’t help
but notice the way Kingston twitches every time there’s a noise. I’m surprised
he hasn’t asked Zal to keep an eye out, but the tattoo is still wrapped around
a bare arm. Maybe his familiar can only come out on special occasions.

“You going to
practice?” Kingston asks, clearly trying to keep the conversation light. We can
see the pie cart from here, and people are slowly starting to meander off to
wash their plates and practice or take a quick run into town. I see that
Richard and Vanessa have a table to themselves, and seem deep in discussion.

“I don’t
think there’s a point in practicing anymore,” I say. It feels stupid, worrying
about learning how to juggle when one of my only friends is practically in a
coma and we’re all at risk of getting murdered. But, as Mab said, the show must
go on, with or without us. Just the thought of being thrown back to the outside
world makes my stomach flip. I try not to count the days I have left on my
fingers.