The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels) (18 page)

Someone is
targeting
me.

I
t’s dinner time when Kingston comes and finds me again.

I’m in my trailer, reading a book and trying not to think of everything that happened that afternoon, which isn’t really working because now that I know my memory’s been tampered with, that’s all I can think about. How much did Kingston hide from me, and why the hell did I want it hidden in the first place? Why the false memories? Why the grand illusion? And, perhaps most importantly, what landed me here to begin with? I try to think back and am met with only haze and grey and patchwork moments that could have been pulled from anyone’s life: walking to school, watching movies with friends whose names I can’t remember, eating dinner with my mom whose voice I can’t hear. Nothing remarkable. Nothing that would put blood on my hands and visions in my head. Nothing spectacular. What
was
I?

The worst part was, every time I closed my eyes, those weren’t the only thoughts coursing through my mind. Every blink, every moment of darkness, and I felt his lips on mine, tasted the cinnamon of his tongue and felt the heat of his breath. Every blink, and I was back, crushed against his chest. Every blink, and I wished it would have lasted longer.

But that was the trouble. It was just a moment. Moments were easy to erase or change. How long would he let me keep this before he turned around and blanked it out? A large part of me didn’t want to trust him, wanted to be pissed at him for toying with my past. But the rest of me knew. I had asked for that. I’d signed the contract. It was the things I hadn’t asked for that sent me reeling, the things he could take away at any moment. How long did I have before he got tired of me and made me believe I was tired of him? I kept closing my eyes, reliving the moment over and over, waiting for the inevitable shoe to drop.

So when Kingston knocks and lets himself in, it’s almost a relief, almost like stepping up to the executioner’s block. I know what he’s going to say. And I’m not going to wait around for it.

“Kingston, listen,” I say, “about today — ”

“Not now,” he says, walking past where I’m sitting on the bed to stare out the window. Then he steps back and closes the curtain. “They’re back.” There’s panic in his voice that makes my skin go cold. Everything I wanted to say drains in an instant.

“Who?”

“The troupe,” he says. It’s almost a relief. We’re not under attack by the Summer Court or anything horrible. Just the troupe back from the watering hole.

“Oh.”

He must note my relief, because his hands clench at his sides and when he speaks, there’s more anger than before.

“No, not
oh.
They’re back. But Melody’s not with them.”

“Maybe she got lucky?” I start, but this clearly isn’t the time for jokes. “Come on, Kingston, she’s not a kid.”

“No, she’s not. She knows not to leave the troupe.” He’s pacing back and forth. “This is bad, this is really, really bad.”

“Why? She can take care of herself.”

Then he stops and takes a deep breath. “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you,” he whispers. He turns to face me.

“Melody’s not like us. Remember when I said she was human? Well, it’s more than that. She doesn’t have the same immortality clause that we do, and she’s only twenty-two. Like, actually twenty-two. And without her, we’re all fucked.”

“What are you talking about?” I say.

“I can’t explain,” Kingston says. “Contractual obligation.” He runs his hands around his neck, as though the very thought of telling me is choking him — a feeling I know all too well.

“So let’s go find her,” I say.

“We can’t,” he says. “We have no idea where she is and no way to find out. And if we tell Mab, she’ll go after her herself.”

He slouches down on the chair.

“Would you just tell me what’s going on?” I say. “Why is it a bad thing if Mab looks for her?”

He makes a noise that sounds like gagging and shakes his head, looking up at me with a sad grin.

“Damn these contracts,” he says. “Don’t you see? This is precisely what they want.”

“Who?” I’m getting tired of this cat-and-mouse game of information.

“The Summer Court. They took her. They must have. I can’t tell you why, but I know they did. And you’re one of the few who understands the danger.”

“I do?”

“Don’t be stupid,” he says. “You saw it. You saw Lilith on the field, you saw her kill Senchan and the other Summer Fey. One of them must have escaped and told their king. They know about Lilith. They know what she is. The Blood Autumn Treaty is broken. Now, we’re at war.”

“Why would they care about Lilith? She’s just…” But I can’t finish the sentence because she’s clearly not just a little girl.

“Do you remember Sheena?” he asks.

I nod. It’s hard to forget watching a purple-haired girl turn into a floating orb of light.

“Lilith’s…Lilith’s like that. Kind of.”

“She’s a Summer Faerie?”

He shakes his head.

“No. Different. But the Summer Court…they want her dead. And if they know she’s here, they’ll kill everyone around her ’til she’s gone. That’s why they took Mel. Why Mab can’t go. That’s what they want — they want us to be weak.”

There’s no clashing outside, no fires or screams. The only noise is the rest of the troupe laughing, the sound of music as the chefs finish up the evening meal. It doesn’t sound like war.

“Now do you understand? If Mab leaves, we’re more defenseless than…” He coughs. “Guess I’ll just leave it at that. Mab can’t know. But the barriers between this world and Faerie are weakest at dusk. If we don’t get Mel back before then, we’re dead. The Summer Fey will kill us all.”

“So what do we do?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Mab will find out soon enough, but…there’s something we’re not getting. There’s something missing.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighs and runs his hands through his hair again.

“We’ve been set up,” he says. “The deaths, the tent, all of it. They weren’t just warnings, they were trying to weaken us. But that should be impossible. Contractually, we can’t die. We can’t be weakened.”

“That’s it,” I say. Mab’s reaction is suddenly making sense, the widened eyes and accusing stare. “The contracts.”

“What?”

I stand up and walk past him, pacing because it feels like the right thing to do.

“Before we…before I saw you, Mab was showing me my contract. She got pissed off and yelled at me for something. Said I’d changed it. I hadn’t thought about it ’til now — ”

Kingston stops me.

“You
changed
your contract? How?”

“I didn’t,” I say. “But she thinks I did.”

Kingston’s nodding, now. “That makes sense.” He chews the inside of his lips as he thinks. “Someone’s been changing the contracts. Little changes at first, so we wouldn’t notice. An injury here, an accident there.”

He snaps his fingers, a small spark igniting and burning out.

“That’s it. That’s how people are dying. Someone’s changing the contracts to make them vulnerable. It all makes sense.”

“But how?” I say. “The contracts are in Mab’s trailer. She’d never let anyone touch them, let alone rewrite them.”

Kingston’s face darkens.

“Of course,” he whispers. He pushes past me and opens the door, but I grab his arm before he can pull it open.

“What?” I ask.

“Who does Mab trust above all others?” he says. “Who’s been with her the longest?”

Realization dawns.

“Penelope,” I whisper.
The woman chained here for life.

He nods.

“Bingo. That’s why she placed you under Penelope’s care. It wasn’t so she could watch after you, it was so you’d keep an eye on
her.
” He pulls open the door. “So let’s go find that mer-bitch and make her talk.”

We jog to Penelope’s trailer, past the troupe now standing in line for dinner. We don’t knock, just pull open her door and rush inside.

She’s sitting in front of her mirror, brushing her long red hair and staring into the placid depths of glass. She doesn’t even start when we burst in, just keeps brushing her hair.

“If you are looking for a new place to fornicate, I suggest picking a trailer that is unoccupied,” she says.

“You have one minute to talk before I burn you to a fucking crisp,” Kingston says. As if to accentuate the point, the air around his palms shivers with heat.

“It is quite rude to enter someone’s trailer without knocking,” Penelope says, as though she’s oblivious to the fact that Kingston’s on the edge of burning the whole trailer down. “And even more rude to threaten their life. Tell me, to what should I be confessing?”

She watches us from the reflection in the mirror. The heat from Kingston grows and I step a little to the side.

“Don’t play dumb,” Kingston says. “I know you’ve spent your life pretending to be a daft bitch, but I’m on to you now. You’ve been changing our contracts. You’re the reason everyone’s dying.”

“That, my dear, is an awfully strong accusation.” She draws the brush through her hair one more time, then sets it down. “Do you have any proof?”

Kingston opens his mouth, then closes it.

“Precisely,” Penelope says. She reaches for a tube of lipstick and glides it over her lips, making the perfect pucker in her mirror. “I suggest you come back when you have more concrete evidence. Or evidence of any kind, for that matter. ” She sets down the tube and turns around in her chair. The fire in Kingston’s hands is simmering, but I can tell he feels precisely as I do; there’s no doubt that Penelope did this. If anyone in the entire troupe would be looking for a way out, it would be her — it explained her reaction to seeing Senchan in the field, her talk of finding an exit clause. But who would believe it? She was just so
perfect.

She stands and walks over to us.

“If you don’t mind,” she says. I don’t step aside. I want to punch her.

“Melody is missing,” Kingston says through clenched teeth. “If you have any humanity left, you’ll tell me where she is.”

A look crosses Penelope’s face, the mildest of concern.

“I assure you,” she says, “I have no clue where Melody is. But the tent’s still in one piece. Take comfort in that.”

Then she steps past us and opens the door. It slams behind her, leaving us alone and aimless.

“Fuck,” Kingston says. He punches the trailer wall, making the whole thing shake.

“What do we do?” I ask.

“She’s right,” Kingston says. “There’s nothing we
can
do. We have no proof.”

I glance around the room and something clicks.

“Maybe we do.”

He looks at me in confusion as I walk across the room to Penelope’s nightstand. I’m praying that she didn’t think ahead, that she wasn’t thinking we’d storm in here like this. I open the drawer. There, nesting in a little brass bowl, is the necklace. The black diamond glints like a raven’s eye.

I pull it out by the chain and hold it up.

“What is that?” Kingston asks.

“I don’t really know,” I say. “But according to Penelope, she can store her memories here. If what we need is a confession, it’s probably in here.”

Kingston’s eyes go wide as he crosses the short space between us.

“You’re a genius,” he says. I blush. A beat passes and I’m staring at his eyes as he stares at the necklace. “How do we use it?” he asks.

I take his hand and turn the palm up.

“I think we just ask,” I say, and drop the diamond into his palm, clasping both our fingers around it at the same time.

The room spins.

Shadows are everywhere.

There’s a man in the shadows. A man with white hair.

“I want out,” Penelope says. She stands in the shadows, too, her body pressed against the trunk of a tree. She’s in a dark cloak that hides every inch of her, but her voice is clear.

“Out?” Senchan says. “Is that why you called me here?”

Penelope hesitates. “I’ve been under Mab’s control for centuries,” she says. “I cannot bear it another day.”

Senchan smiles sadly. Is it moonlight filtering through the trees, or is he really glowing like that?

“I feel your pain. Truly I do. But I’m afraid things just don’t work like that. Your contract is quite binding. In order to break it, well, you’ll have to do something for
me.
”

“Anything.”

Senchan’s eyes widen. “A bold promise. You would truly give anything for your freedom?”

“I have nothing else to live for, nothing left to give. Everything has already been taken from me. Name your price and I will see it met.”

Senchan takes a deep breath.

“We want the Trade to end.”

“You know I don’t have the power to shut down the show.”

“No,” he says. “But that is our price. End the Cirque, and you will be free. We don’t care how you do it, only that you deliver. Unless you think the price is too dear…”

“No,” Penelope says. She glances around. “I may have a way.”

“Yes?”

“Kassia.”

Senchan takes a step back, as though Penelope punched him in the gut.

“Kassia is dead.”

“No,” Penelope says. There’s a fervent heat in her words. “She’s still alive. I have seen her. Mab is hiding her.”