The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels) (14 page)

“Indeed,”
Penelope says, not looking up from her work. “I was with her for the very first
show. It was just her and me on tour, then. I was but a child. The Only Living
Fiji Mermaid, she called me.” Penelope looks up at me. “Not exactly the way a
girl should grow up, though there was
some
glamour on the road. When we
weren’t at Court, she and I would stand on the busiest boulevards in the
biggest cities: London, Paris, Berlin. She would erect a fish tank and set me
inside of it. I would wave and smile at the crowds and she would collect the
gold.”

“Why did she
need gold?” I ask. Mr. Carson’s been sent out, and now I’m staring at a photo
of Miss Jessica Meyers, thirty-two, who once wanted to be a ballerina.

“She didn’t,”
Penelope says. “It was the attachment she needed. People gave us money because
we had inspired something within them, got them dreaming of the impossible.
That infused what they paid us. It was, if nothing else, a very crude beginning
to the Trade.”

How long
has this been going on?
But that’s not what I really want to ask her.

“So how long
is your contract?” I ask.

She doesn’t
answer right away. She looks at me for a long moment, seeming to study whether
or not I’m worthy enough for the answer.

“Life,” she
finally says, her voice filled with a resolute sadness. The word fills the
room.

“But I
thought…I thought we couldn’t die? It’s in the contracts.”

“Now you’re
finally catching on to the way Mab works.” She looks back down at the computer.

“So…you’re
here forever.”

“Perhaps,”
she says. “There’s always an exit clause.”

“What is it?”
I ask.

“If you’re
trying to keep your head down after being accused of murder, my dear, asking
about the termination of people’s contracts isn’t the way to go about it.”

I blush and
look back to my screen. I start tapping in Miss Meyers’s name, apologizing for
the horrible inconvenience, and saying we’ve booked her a ticket for the ballet
that’s coming through next month. I can feel Penelope’s eyes still settled on
me.

“Besides,”
she finally says. She goes back to typing. “What you should really be worried
about is your own exit clause. No one wants to run away forever, not really.”

“I don’t know
it,” I say. “I don’t remember what I signed, or why I even did it. It must have
seemed worth it at the time.”

Another
pause.

“You remember
nothing at all?” she asks.

“No. But
apparently it was enough to make Mab suspect me of killing everyone.” I hadn’t
said it aloud before this, but the words spill from my lips and hang in the air
like bloodstains. It’s like signing my own death warrant, and I can’t help but
wonder if telling this to the gossip queen of the troupe is a terrible mistake.

“Interesting,”
she says. She gives me a considering glance. “You don’t strike me as the
murderous type.”

“Try telling
her that,” I say. I lean back in the chair and try to block out everything
swarming around in my head. There’s no way in hell I’ll be able to get a
juggling act together for Friday, no way I’ll be able to clear my name even if
I do. The only way around it is to find the real killer, which isn’t going to
happen with Penelope as my new guardian. And there’s another reason I need to
find the killer. I need to make sure it’s not me. I mean, I
know
I
overheard the Summer Court dude talking to someone else. It
can’t
be me.
But a small part of me is saying that stranger things have been happening.

“Mab wouldn’t
listen to me,” Penelope says. “You know how she is.” A brief pause. “We all
have pasts we wish we could run from, Vivienne. The trouble is, they always
manage to catch up with us in the end, no matter the magic attempting to keep
it at bay.”

“What are you
saying?” I ask. There’s a nervous quake to my heart, like maybe she knows more
about me and my history than I do, which, I’m starting to realize, wouldn’t
take much.

“I’m just
observing,” she says. “As I said, I’ve been with the troupe from the very
beginning. I’ve seen numerous performers come and go, their past sins atoned
for. But not one of them left happy, I can tell you that.”

“Why?”

“Because what
they were running from — all of them — was something from within. They may have
joined to escape incarceration or execution, but their demons never left.”

“I don’t have
any demons,” I say. I’m not liking where the conversation turned. Mainly
because I’m not convinced anything I say is true.

“Darling,
everyone has demons. Yours have just gone quiet.”

“Maybe that’s
a good thing. Maybe it was part of the contract.”

“Perhaps,”
she says. “But where has that gotten you?” She gestures to the room. “You might
not know, but Mab does. And it sounds like your demons need reconciliation
rather than ignorance.”

I don’t say
anything to that. Her words sink down into my bones, binding themselves to memory.
She has a point. Whatever I was running from is still there, still haunting my
movements. I rub my hands together and try to force out the uncertainty. For
the first time since I came here, when I think back to my past, deep inside I
feel unclean.

Mab wasn’t
lying when she said I’d be put under Penelope’s custody. I’m not allowed to
leave her trailer except to use the Porta-Potty on the edge of the grounds, and
even then, Penelope goes outside her trailer to keep an eye on me. It weirds
the hell out of me the first time I go to pee and realize she’s timing me, but
when I get back to her bunk she acts entirely nonchalant, as if she was just
outside enjoying the sunshine. She even opens the trailer door for me and waits
a bit before coming in herself. That said, there’s one freedom I want that I’m
strictly denied. I’m not allowed to go check in on Melody.

“She’s fine,”
Penelope assures me as she boils the electric kettle for afternoon tea. “If
anything was amiss, we would know.” She smiles warmly. “Trust me, in a company
this small, it’s impossible for the welfare of another to slip through the
cracks. Now, English Breakfast or Earl Grey?”

By the time
the tent’s been torn down and packed away, I’ve emailed all of the refunded
tickets and spent a good chunk of time staring at the Internet, hoping it would
entertain me. Any other day, I’d have been overjoyed having an afternoon of
sitting in the AC, wasting time online.

Except now,
I’m realizing that I can’t really enjoy myself online because all these little
things are adding up in ways that make my skin crawl. I don’t know what my
email address is. There aren’t any blogs I know I read regularly. I don’t
remember my Facebook account or anything else. Did I even
have
an email
address? I take a deep breath and try to stay calm, try not to worry. Maybe I
was just too cool to use social networking. Maybe I’d grown distant from all my
friends and stopped communicating with them. I try to think back, try to
remember chatting with someone — anyone — online, but the memory doesn’t come.
I stare at the home screen and try not to have a panic attack. With a
calculated slowness, I type my name into the search bar. Hit enter. Nothing
comes up. Nothing whatsoever. Somehow, the search is completely, entirely
blank. I stare at the white screen and wonder how no one in the world shares my
name, how there is no trace of me out there whatsoever. Something about the
wrongness of it makes me want to gag, or throw the laptop out the window. My
hands are shaking.

When Penelope
closes the lid of the laptop, I’m almost relieved to be torn away from the
damning screen. I blink a few times and stare up at her. What was I just
looking at?

“Time to hit
the road,” she says.

By the time
we’re in the cab of one of the trucks — just her and me, this time — I can’t
even remember what I’d been worrying about.

We reach the
next site at midnight. We’ve driven halfway across the Midwest, down
interstates clogged with cars and back roads that seemed more mud than
concrete. Now, we’re somewhere in Nebraska, on a plot just off the edge of the
highway. As our truck heads down the dirt road toward our site, I catch a
glimpse of a farmhouse and a few tractors. We really are in the middle of
nowhere this time. How the hell does Mab expect to sell tickets all the way out
here? The caravan stops at the edge of the cleared field and Penelope parks.
The cars are parked facing the same way, lights still on and many engines still
running. There’s a crowd of people assembling in the headlights, a mob of
performers silently staring at the dark field.

“What’s going
on?” I ask. I reach for the handle but then realize that Penelope isn’t moving.
Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel, and in the green light of the
dashboard, her face looks even more sallow than this morning. She doesn’t look
terribly beautiful now.

“It’s him,”
she whispers. “He’s here.”

I look back
out, almost ask what she’s talking about. Then I see him.

There’s a man
standing in the middle of the cleared plot. His hair is so blond it’s white,
his skin is just as pale, and he’s in a sharp grey suit with lines like razors.
It’s the man from the show, the man from the Summer Court.

And one of
his arms is looped around Kingston’s chest, the tip of a dagger pressed to his
throat.

I
don’t wait.
I jump out of the cab and run the short space to the mob of performers. All I
can see is Kingston. All I can see is the tiny line of blood dripping down his
neck. My world goes red. Someone tries to grab my arm as I run forward, but I
push him off.

“Get off
him,” I growl.

I stand at
the front of the assembled mob, a few steps ahead of everyone else. My
white-knuckled fists are clenched at my sides and there’s a burning in the pit
of my stomach that threatens to overwhelm me. I am half a second shy of going
ballistic on a guy who could probably kill me with a thought.

He glares at me.

“Who, child,
are you?” he asks. His voice is deep. Precisely the same as I remember when I
was hiding underneath the semitrailer, listening to him and Mab argue.

“Someone you
don’t want to fuck with,” I say. I don’t know where the words come from. The
man’s got a knife pressed to Kingston’s throat; I’m in no position to play
chicken. My skin tingles as the fight or flight response kicks in, all gears
shifted to fight.

“Vivienne,”
Kingston whispers. “Please, don’t…”

The bastard
pulls him in tighter.

“Vivienne?”
he mutters into Kingston’s ear. Then he looks at me with a devilish grin. “Ahh,
I see. The wicked witch has a suitor.”

“Fuck you,”
Kingston says, which just causes the man to dig the knife in deeper. Another
line of blood trickles down his neck. His chin is raised high, as though he can
squeeze his way out of this. That’s when I notice that Zal, too, seems to be
pierced from the knife. The tattoo is squirming underneath the blade, stuck
like a butterfly on a pin.

“And he likes
her!” he calls out with a laugh. “The witch fell in love.”

Kingston
squeezes his eyes shut and says nothing.

“You weren’t
listening to me,” I say. I take a half step forward. The tingling in my hands
grows stronger, feels like pins and needles coiling beneath my skin. “Let him
go.”

“Now, now,”
the man says. He turns the knife just a little bit. “Let’s not be too hasty.
I’m not here for him. I’m waiting for…her.” He looks past me, past the troupe,
to where Mab is pulling in.

The black Jag
pulls up beside one of the semis. Her headlights go out. Then, the headlights
of every truck in the lot blink out, one by one, until we’re all standing in
complete darkness. Even the moon and the stars above seem dimmed. The only
thing I can hear is the wind and Kingston’s ragged breath. Everything else
seems to be waiting for the storm.

Mab appears
from her car in a haze of blue light that stretches out across the ground like
talons. She is shadow at first, then darkness made solid, a presence I can
barely see but can feel with every nerve of fear in my body. She hovers as she
moves forward, her skin pale and glowing, her black dress twining itself out of
and into the night air. Glowing ice forms in the grass around her, crackling
out in thunderbolts. Her image flickers, and she’s suddenly standing beside me.
The man’s and Kingston’s features are outlined in the glow of the demonic
Faerie Queen.

“What is the
meaning of this?” Mab asks, her voice colder than frost, darker than midnight.

“You have
broken the Blood Autumn Treaty,” he says.

“Bold words,
Senchan,” Mab says. Both of their voices carry over the field, both as clear as
crystal. “Once more, you come onto my land — “

“Ah ah,” tsks
the man — Senchan. He wags his free finger. “You see, that is where you are
wrong. This land is
neutral.
”

Mab takes in
a sharp breath that seems to hiss from the cornstalks around us.

“You
dare.
”
She says. “You
dare
spy on my Court and impede my plans.”

“Your plans
are moot,” Senchan says. “You know the price of your insurgence. You will give
the girl up, or we will hunt you down and flush her out of hiding.”

Kingston
gasps as the knife goes deeper.

“Release
him,” Mab says. “And we will talk.”

“Not until
you’ve promised me safety from your dogs,” he says, nodding toward me.

Mab doesn’t
even glance over.

“I swear that
none in attendance shall harm you. Release him.”

Senchan
hesitates. Then he withdraws the dagger and knees Kingston to the ground.
Kingston stumbles. I hold out a hand, reach forward to help him up, but then
he’s standing, and before I can do anything, he runs. Not into my arms. But
toward the trailers.

Senchan looks
at me with a smirk on his face.

“Maybe not in
love then, after all,” he says.

“Enough,” Mab
says. “Come back to my trailer. We will speak there.”

“No chance,
Queen,” he says. “We will stay here. On neutral ground. With both your and my
Courts as witness.”

Mab doesn’t
even flinch at this. “Let me guess, your kin are hiding like snakes in the
grass,” she says.

The man bows,
mockingly. “I learned from the best.”

“Vivienne,”
Mab says. “Check on Kingston. Make sure this beast hasn’t hurt him.”

I nod, not
entirely sure I want to run after him when he clearly didn’t want my help in
the first place. But I also have no desire to stay here in the crossfire. Now
that Kingston is safe, the fight impulse is dying, the heat in my hands faded
to a faint tingle. I turn and head through the crowd, straight toward
Kingston’s bunk.

The bunk
numbers are barely visible in the darkness, but I finally find 13. Kingston’s.
I don’t even knock; I just open the door and step in.

The only
light is coming from a green candle on his table. He’s on his bed and barely
looks up at me coming in. Then something slams into me, pushes me to the wall.
A hand clamps over my mouth.

“Are you?” my
assailant asks. “Are you bad man?”

Lilith.

I shake my
head, and she steps back.

“Oh.
Vivienne.”

Then she
steps away. She goes over to the bed and puts one arm around Kingston. That one
small action makes my blood boil. I want to protect him, but I can’t tell if
that’s protecting him from Senchan or from Lilith’s arm around his waist.
He’s
mine,
something in me hisses, even though I know it’s not true.

“Bad man hurt
Kingston,” Lilith whispers. “Hurt him bad.”

“I’m okay,”
Kingston says. He looks up at me.  There's something in his eyes that tells me
his words couldn't be further from the truth. For one thing, I've never heard
his voice waver before. The wound is still dripping a smear of blood down his
neck. Zal has disappeared from sight. “I’m okay now.”

“What did he
do?” I ask. The fire in me builds. I want to kill Senchan for doing this to
him, whatever it was. My fists are clenched and I can hear the blood in my ears
grow louder. It takes everything I have not to yell at Lilith, to force her out
of the trailer so I can take care of him. But I don’t. For some reason, a part
of me knows Lilith needs to stay.

“Nothing,”
Kingston says. “I mean…I’m not hurt. But he has my magic.” His voice cracks at
this.

“What?” The
roar grows louder.

“He…when I
got here, he ambushed me. And I don’t know how, but he took it.” He holds up
his hands in a begging posture. “That’s why I couldn’t enchant the place,
couldn’t make it part of Mab’s territory. He stole my powers. It’s all my
fault.”

“I’ll kill
him.” The words echo in my ears, and that’s when I realize I wasn’t the only
one saying them. Lilith is staring at him.

“I’ll get
your magic back,” she continues. “Mab be damned, I will kill him for hurting
you.” She looks at me, and there’s a fire in her eyes, a literal glow of red
and gold that makes me edge further against the wall. Her gaze makes my skin go
hot, like standing over the edge of a volcano.

“Vivienne,”
she says. Her voice is cinder and ash. “We must kill him. Together. Tonight.”

I’m not a
killer. I’m not.

She holds out
her hand.

I’m not a
killer.

I look at
Kingston. The blood still trickling down his neck. The lost look in his eyes.
The bloodlust in me hums.

I’m not a
killer, but I’d kill for him.

I nod at
Lilith. Senchan will pay for this. Senchan will die. I take Lilith’s hand. The
world explodes.

Fire and fire and

blood

and
    fire

scream
fire blood fire    body burns fire fire

faerie

kill

                                    kill

kill

            kill

                                                            kill

                        fire      fire
                                                     fire

fire
fire

kill

Senchan

Mab

Lilith walks to Senchan

Poe

            Kitty
kitty kitty kitty

curls at Mab’s feet.

Poe watches.

                                    Kitty kitty

Lilith walks

fire burns

in         her eyes

                        two      coal eyes         brimstone
sulfur burning

Lilith walks

                                    past

                        the troupe

Senchan stops talking.

Lilith. Get back inside, sweetie.
Mab says.

                                   
Please.

Lilith
walks to Senchan.

                                                            You
hurt him.

                                                                        You
hurt Kingston.

Fire
burns fire blood

fire
blood faerie fire fair faerie blood

Yes.

Senchan
says.
I hurt him.

And
I will keep

hurting

everyone

you
love.

Until
you come with me.

Or
until this show is in flames.

Lilith, please. Get back
inside.
Mab says.

No.

Lilith.

Let
her play.
Senchan says.

Let
her see

what
happens

when
those she loves get hurt.

Senchan
reaches

down

He
picks up Poe.

Poe                  hisses

growls

spits

Senchan
holds the cat

by
one leg

with
one hand

the
other

Don’t —

Don’t
—

s n a p s

the cat’s leg

in        

half                

Lilith

burns

fire      fire                  fire      fire

fire
breathes fire eats            fire fire           screams           fire      fire

fire
howls fire                        fire burning fire

blood
and       flame

Senchan
screams      

fair
faerie blood

                        on
fire

Senchan
burning

fire
flaming blood
     

Lilith, stop!

Fire
fields

fire
burn corn burn

smoke
burning faeries burning

Lilith
on fire

eyes
bright

blood
in darkness

fields               burning

Lilith
burns

            everything

                                    burns.

“Vivienne,
please, wake up.

                                                wake
up.

                                                            wake
up.”