“You can't lie to me, can you? That's one of the Dark One rules, isn't it?”
His eyes weren't black, as I expected. The gold bits glittered brightly. “Yes, it's one of the rules.”
“So you could force your way into my mind, but you never would because you know it would really cheese me off?”
He looked a bit annoyed. “It goes deeper than that, but that is the basic idea, yes.”
“Wow. This is pretty powerful stuff. You'd let me kill youâyou can't lie to me . . . Is there anything else? I mean, do I have, like, absolute power over you?”
He gave me a really weak smile, kind of like he didn't want to, but couldn't help himself. “There's a lot more, and no, I'm not going to tell it to you. Not until the time comes that you are ready to hear it.”
I couldn't help myself. I knew I shouldn't be encouraging this, but I just couldn't help myself. “When will that be?”
“I have no idea.” His face was unmoving, the wind ruffling his long hair around his shoulders.
“Oh.” I wanted to tell him that I didn't think things were ever going to work out between us, but I didn't. Some part of me, some tiny little part, wanted me to work things out. It kept me silent.
“What are you up to?” he asked. “Whose mind do you want to read? And what does it have to do with Imogen and money?”
I was a little surprised he didn't know what Mom and Absinthe had cornered me into doing. Soren knew, and although I doubted anyone else did, I was pretty sure either Mom or Absinthe would tell Imogen. For some reasonâprobably one of those Moravian thingsâImogen always seemed to know the latest gossip. But apparently she hadn't told her brother about the thefts.
That
was interesting.
It was also icky. I hated feeling suspicious of Imogen. She and Soren were my only friends here.
And Ben. But he wasn't really a friend; he was a Dark One who needed me to bring the light back into his life. . . .
“It's just a little project I'm doing,” I finally answered, not wanting to tell him the truth of my suspicions.
“What sort of a project?”
“Nothing you need to worry about. I can handle it, no problem.”
I started to walk past him toward Imogen's tent, but he stopped me again. “Fran . . .” His forehead was all wrinkled up in a frown. “If you get into trouble, any trouble, you know I will help you.”
“Like with Absinthe? Yeah. I know. And thank you.”
“No, not just like the episode with Absinthe. Any troubleâyou know that I will help you no matter what the problem. You just have to ask me.”
“What makes you think I can't deal with my own problems?” That warm, glowy feeling inside me fizzled out into annoyance. “You think that just because I'm a girl I need to be bailed out of every situation, right? Well, think again, Benedikt Czerny. This is the twenty-first century. Women don't need guys to do everything for them anymore.”
His frown tried to match mine, but I'm the queen of frowns. “I didn't say you couldn't. I simply meant that there are some things that are better left to me. It doesn't lessen your strength to admit that there are some things you can't do.”
“Yeah?” I poked him in the chest, just because I knew it would annoy him. How dared he think I couldn't handle my own problems? Patronizing me, that was what he was doing, and I hate being patronized almost as much as I hate to be pitied or thought of as a freak. Patronizing is number three on my list of things I really, really dislike. “You've got that âI'm so macho, couldn't you just die' look on your face, so you're not fooling me one single bit.”
“All I said was thatâ”
“I know what you said; I'm not stupid! You said if I was too wimpy to deal with my own life, you'd come along like some big, brave vamp knight and rescue my pathetic butt. Ha! I have news for youâmy butt doesn't need rescuing. I can do anything you can do. Well . . . with the exception of peeing standing up. And drinking blood. I don't think I could do that; it's just too icky. And the healing thing. And warding stuff, but I could do that if someone taught me how, so that really shouldn't count.”
“Franâ”
“Good night, Ben.”
Without staying to hear any more of his macho bull, I headed off down the aisle that was growing more and more packed with people every minute. The magic acts were popular, but it was the bands that really brought the crowds out, and as Absinthe had brought with her a German band that had local fans, the crowds were even thicker than normal. I wound my way through them, skimmed around the line of people waiting for Imogen, and presented myself to her, saying, “Peter says you're supposed to show me how to read palms.”
She looked a bit surprised at that, glancing at my hands. I turned my back on the people and tugged my gloves out from where I had tucked them into my pocket, pulling them on and taking the chair that Imogen indicated. She was reading a fat man's rune stones, but I figured it wouldn't hurt me to sit and watch how she did her readings.
“How did your ride go?” she asked in between customers.
“Fine. Has your brother always been so pigheaded?”
“Pigheaded?” Her eyebrows rose. “Benedikt?”
Two guys and a girl took the seats across the table from us, arguing about who wanted to go first.
“It doesn't matter.” I waved aside my comment.
“Oh, but I think it does,” she said, giving me one of her mischievous grins before turning to the threesome and asking who wanted what.
I sat with her for almost two hours, taking a little break to get some water and to give my mother a chance to run and change for her invocation hour. Imogen showed me all the pertinent points on the palms of those people who came to have her read them, telling me how to interpret the various lumps, lines, bulges, and assorted other hand stuff. It was okay, but to tell the truth, I didn't quite buy it. I guess that was because I knew I could tell a whole lot more about the person just by touching my bare fingers to their palm than by interpreting a big mound of Mars to mean they were particularly argumentative.
I didn't have a chance to talk to her alone until just as the new band was about to start. All of the tents except the piercing one closed down then. Most of the Faire people went in and watched the band, joining in the dancing and stuff. Peter thought it was good for business to have everyone mingling, and said it made for repeat customers. Imogen always went to see the bands, and almost always spent the two hours the band was on dancing with one guy or another, dodging Elvis as he tried to convince her to dance only with him. I usually hung around outside, sometimes talking to Soren, sometimes to Tallulah the medium (she hated music of any sort), sometimes just being by myself.
I waited until Imogen finished with her last customer. She glanced toward the big tent as the loudspeaker crackled into life when Peter announced the band.
“Here, take this,” Imogen said, shoving her money box at me. It was crammed full of forints and euros.
“What do you want me to do with it?” I asked, wondering if she had skimmed some off the top for her shopping trips, then immediately felt guilty for even thinking that about someone who was my friend.
“Give it to Peter for me, please. I so want to hear this Picking Scabs.”
That was the name of the band, Picking Scabs. I know. It's beyond me, too. I suppose it could be worse. It could be Pickled Scabs.
I gnawed my lip a bit. “Aren't you supposed to count it up and stuff, so you get your fair share?”
“You can do it for me, can't you? Please, Fran?” She stuffed her rune stones in a big leather satchel and gave me a brilliant grin.
“Wait, Imogen. I wanted to ask you . . . uh . . .”
“Yes?” She stood tapping her foot impatiently, her eyes watching all the people streaming into the big tent as the screech of feedback echoed throughout the Faire. The band was evidently about to start.
“Did you go shopping today? I looked for you, but didn't see you.”
“Yes, I went into Sopron.” That was a big city about ten kilometers down the road. “Was that all you wanted?”
“No. Um. What did you buy?”
She looked at me like my head had turned into a monkey. “Clothes.”
“A lot? I mean, did you find a lot of good bargains?”
She laughed her tinkly little laugh that reminded me of a stream burbling. “Fran, I never buy bargains. Those are for the peasants.”
She traced a quick ward above my head, and dashed off toward the big tent. I sighed. So much for my detective skills. I'd been questioning people all day and was no further than when I started. Except now I knew that possibly everyone connected to the Faire could have had a shot at the safe . . . but I had felt only seven people on the safe's handle. It didn't make sense. It just didn't make sense.
I spent ten minutes counting Imogen's take, writing up the info on her slip and tucking it neatly into the box. Then I went to hunt down Peter.
“Hey, Peter. Imogen gave me this to give to you. I counted the money and wrote it on the slip.”
“What?”
Peter was at the back of the tent with Teodor the security guy/bouncer who kept an eye on everyone. Peter's little balding head was bopping along with the music, which was loud, loud, and then more loud. The bass positively throbbed in my teeth, it was so loud. The lead singer screamed in German into the microphone. I always crank my headphones up when I'm listening to musicâloud is definitely better than softâbut this was ridiculous! The sound screeching from the big amps was so pervasive it filled everything, every space, both inside the tent and inside the people. I felt it crawling around the edges of my brain and knew then that Absinthe had managed to find a band that knew some sort of magic. Probably they cast a spell to make the audience adore themâImogen said that was pretty standard stuff.
I repeated my words, bellowing them about four inches from his ear. It was barely enough to be heard. He nodded and took the cash box, tucking it under his arm to applaud as the music stopped.
I didn't want to touch him. I had touched more people in the last day than I had in a month, and I wanted my brain back to myself. I spent a few seconds being mad that my mother had manipulated me into the position of having to do the thing I hated most, but then my inner Fran pointed out that I had offered to do it in exchange for something I wanted.
I hate it when my brain does that sort of thing.
The next song started. I decided there was no way I could possibly come right out and ask Peter if he was stealing from himself for some purpose I couldn't begin to imagine, gritted my teeth, and peeled off the glove from my left hand, edging my way closer to him. He was bouncing and bopping around in that “I'm cool and I can dance” way that adults think make them look like they know how to dance (which they don't). I let my hand brush against him a couple of times, turning so it was my palm that touched his arm. He never even noticed when I backed away.
I noticed, though. I backed into Ben.
“Hi,” I yelled, trying to be nonchalant, like I didn't care whether he was there or not, but failing when he grinned at me. I couldn't resist his grins. They made me go all warm and puddly inside.
“Dance?” he yelled back, and tipped his head toward the mass of people dancing like crazy in the main area of the tent.
“Sure.”
He grabbed my hand, looked down, and, without even asking me, peeled off my gloves and stuffed them in his back pocket. He held out his hand for the other gloves. I gave them to him. He pushed us through the crowd until we were in the middle of the pack. There must have been three hundred people jammed into that tent, all dancing like mad. Ben kept a hand on me as we joined in, but it was hard going, since every two seconds someone's elbow bumped me, or leg jostled me, or arm hit my back, or hair swung out.
“This is like dancing in a can of sardines,” I yelled in Ben's ear.
“Do you want to leave?” he yelled in mine.
“Not now. Maybe in a bit.”
I swear, someone in the band was using magic, because everything started to get better. Ben smiled, and somehow managed to keep us moving so hardly anyone smacked into us. I kept my hands on his arms, and gave myself up to the moment. The music didn't seem nearly so harsh and annoying, and started to make sense. Along the fringes of the dance area I could see Mom dancing with a laughing Peter. Imogen had evidently given Elvis the go-ahead, because they were dancing near us, Imogen looking a little bored, Elvis all but drooling on her. Even Soren was dancing, with a girl, yet! I smiled at him and swung around when Ben turned us, just barely avoiding Kurt's long hair as he did a little twirl with a tall blond woman.
“Everyone's here,” I yelled happily to Ben, feeling for once like I was truly a part of a group, nothing special, just me, just one little cog in a great big wheel.
“They have to be; the lead singer's using a glamour,” he answered. “It makes people want to dance. Can't you feel it?”
“Yeah, but I don't mind. Hey, look, there's Absinthe.” He looked where I pointed. I've never seen Absinthe even near the tent when the bands played, but there she was, her spiky pink hair bobbing up and down as she danced with Karl.
“I'm so happy,” I said, and threw my hands up as Ben laughed with me, grabbing my waist to spin me around. “Everything's so wonderful!”
I realized my mistake the second my fingers came in contact with the bodies surrounding me. Images, thoughts, hopes, desires, sadness, sickness, sorrow . . . As Ben spun me around, a hundred thoughts filled my mind. I pulled my arms back in, but not before I touched someone.