Wonder Show (22 page)

But whatever her thoughts had been, they were now as faint as breath in winter air.

If she could only find the box of matches and the candle, she could put her time to good use and search the files. Mister had taken her notebook along with the rest of her things, but it didn’t matter—she had memorized the list of names by now, and she had spent long enough thinking about the graveyard girls. She was here for herself this time. But after exploring every nook and corner, all she’d found was a lot of cobwebs and one dead mouse. Holding the mouse in her hand, Portia felt her childish imagination lurch to life like an old carousel, and she brought herself to tears with a story about how the mouse had died all alone in this dark place. She let a torrent of sadness wash over her, too tired to fight, too tired to pretend she didn’t care.

Now she simply sat, her knees pulled up to her chest, and tapped a rhythm on the dusty floor with her boot heels.

She had lulled herself so thoroughly that she didn’t hear Delilah approaching, and her stomach skipped when the little door swung open.

“Dinner,” Delilah sang. She leaned to set the plate and the glass on one of the boxes just inside the door and started to close it again.

“Wait,” Portia whispered. “What day is it?”

Delilah smiled. “What difference does it make?”

Portia couldn’t quite say why she wanted to know, except that she still had the Wonder Show’s route somewhere in her memory. If she knew the date, she might be able to figure out where they were. To be with them in her head, standing on the bally or watching the road roll by from Gideon’s truck.

“I just want to know.”

Delilah stepped into the room. She kept one hand on the door frame behind her as she squatted in front of Portia.

“You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “He is never going to let you leave again. He might never even let you out of this room, angry as he is. So it does not matter what day it is, or what month, or what year. This is it. This is all there is for you now.”

Delilah sounded different, more refined. More like Mister.

“Did he tell you to say that?” Portia asked.

Delilah smiled again. “No. I just happen to know how he thinks. He’s been helping me with my reading. He can be very kind, when he wants to be.”

Portia’s stomach flipped again, unpleasantly. “Why does he care so much that I ran away?”

“It wasn’t the running away. Girls have run away before.” Then she added, “Although no one has ever taken his bicycle.”

“That’s what this is about? The bicycle?”

“Of course not,” Delilah said. “It’s because of Caroline.”

No matter how many times she had said it to herself, tried to absolve herself, tried to forget, hearing Caroline’s name in the dusty air was like seeing her die all over again.

But how did Mister know that she had given Caroline the poison? How did he know she had been in this room before, found the bottle, and taken it from here? She had been so careful not to tell any of the other girls about the files. The only other one who knew was . . .

“You!”

Delilah stood up. “What?”

“You told him!” Portia’s voice caught in her throat. “You told him?”

Portia watched Delilah’s face as it struggled to decide what expression it wanted to wear. It settled on something like irritation.

“Yes. I told him.”

“But . . . why?”

“You keep asking questions when the answers don’t matter. Here’s where you are. What do you care about why? Why don’t get you anywhere.”

But it did matter, to Portia. After all the stories she’d learned from Jackal, all the tales she’d heard from Mrs. Collington and Doula and Violet and everyone else, she had come to believe that knowing where she’d come from was much more important than knowing where she was going next. The future would always be uncertain. Who she was, that came from the past.

“Tell me. Please.”

Exasperated, Delilah smacked her hand against the door frame. “Because you promised me. I brought you here, and you promised you’d pay me back, and then you just left.” She leaned in, ever so slightly, and lowered her voice. “You left me here. And I saw you go. So, yes.
I told him.
”

Then she took a deep breath, coughed, and folded her hands together. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

Portia felt her neck getting hot. It had been a long time since she’d had cause to be so angry at someone. It almost felt good.

“So that’s it then, Delilah?” she hissed. “You go back to the kitchen and bring me bread and water and what? You wait for me to die here?”

Delilah shrugged. “You know as well as I do, when Mister gets an idea in his greasy head, there ain’t—
isn’t
anyone who can change his mind.”

“What idea?”

“How should I know? I’m just the kitchen girl.”

And she slammed the door behind her.

The Big Idea

Five meals later, Portia was set free.

Except that there was very little freedom involved.

He sent Delilah to fetch her, as if Portia were a disobedient pet. The two girls exchanged no words as the one escorted the other from the not-so-secret room, down the hall, and into his study.

He sat in his wing-backed chair, facing the fireplace. His head crested the top of the chair like a dark sun on the horizon.

He did not speak.

Delilah left her at the door. Portia searched her face for any sign of apology, of regret or sympathy, but the girl held her blank expression. Portia recognized the look. It was the same kind of forced disinterest that everyone wore on the midway as they approached the sideshow, the same determination not to look excited. Not to look like anything. To make a mask of their own faces.

Mister waited until he heard Delilah close the door. Then, rising slowly, he turned and treated Portia to the same repulsive grin he’d worn when she first arrived at The Home. “I’ll skip the pleasantries,” he said. “We have so many things to discuss.”

She held her tongue. There was nothing to say. Yet.

Mister strolled across the room and stood next to his desk chair, waved one spidery hand at the chair on the other side, and waited for her to sit down before he did the same. It was oddly familiar—as if all the days when she’d sat in the same spot, wearing the same dress, feeling the same mix of revulsion and dread, were now swirling together through time. Erasing the borders of days and weeks so there was no measure of time, no past, no future. Only this room. Only this moment, over and over again.

“Well,” said Mister as he leaned back in his chair, “what do you have to say for yourself?”

She felt afraid and hated herself for it. She pictured herself on the bally, the day that Jackal had told her his story.
Truth is not what the audience wants,
he’d said. And she knew he was right. Mister would never know her as she actually was—he knew a version of her, a disobedient child in need of punishment. That was whom he spoke to now, and that was who would answer.

She shrugged and petulantly replied, “What do you want me to say?”

He raised one eyebrow. “Tell me why you did it.”

“I don’t know.”

Mister studied her for a long moment. “Tell me,” he said again.

His voice was getting harder, colder, and Portia knew she was pushing him. She also knew he would push back.

She shrugged again and crossed her arms. “No.”

Could he see over the desk, see her knees shaking like cornered animals?

“Tell”—he leaned forward now—“me.”

She would not let herself look scared. If Delilah could keep her mask on, if all those rubes on the bally could do it, so could Portia.

“I don’t owe you an explanation,” she said. “I don’t owe you anything.”

He laughed then, a dry sound like old wood breaking apart. “Oh, but you do,” he said, his voice low. “You owe me
everything.
Do you want to know why?”

She tilted her head ever so slightly, offering one ear.

“Because I fed you, sheltered you, clothed you, when no one else would. Because I kept you alive. And because I sent those men to get you instead of calling the police.”

“Should I thank you now?” Her voice sounded like every spoiled little girl she’d seen on the midway, whining for popcorn and cotton candy and one more ride on the Ferris wheel. It made her feel as if she were channeling someone else. And it made Mister furious.

He stood up, pounded one hand on the desk, and bellowed, “You murdered my wife!”

The air stood still, frozen, waiting. Portia swallowed and forced words from her gripping throat. “It wasn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . .”

Mister sat down, brushed the lapels of his jacket as if he were smoothing the bristled fur of some wild animal. He detested such displays of emotion. Composed once more, he said, “Of course you didn’t. But still, there must be consequences. Obviously I can’t let you leave here again.”

There was only one way he’d kept girls here before.

“I will never marry you,” Portia spat.

Mister’s face twisted as if he’d just tasted something vile. “I should hope not,” he said. “Don’t flatter yourself, my dear. I have no intention of marrying again. It just never seems to work out for me.”

“Then, what?” Her voice nearly broke. “Why would you want me to stay if you hate me so much?”

Mister sighed. “Oh, Portia. You have never understood this place properly.” He leaned back once more, wove his long fingers together, and settled them on his chest. “The very essence of the McGreavey Home for Wayward Girls is the
girls.
Without the
girls,
there is no life here. There is no purpose.”

This, Portia supposed, was the way he spoke to parents, to the townspeople, to anyone from Outside who would listen. He sounded like a preacher delivering a familiar sermon.

“And the truly beautiful part is the transformation. Girls are brought here for many different reasons, but then they find each other, they merge. They all become the same. They become better.” He raised an eyebrow in Portia’s direction. “Of course, some need more time than others to complete their metamorphosis. But I am a patient man. I will keep them for
as long as it takes.
”

The last five words swept over Portia like a blanket made of ice.

“You see, Portia?” Mister hissed. “It is not that I
want
you to stay. But I cannot let you leave. You are still a work in progress.”

He slowly opened a desk drawer, and her notebook appeared in his hand. He set it down, flipped through the pages until he came to her list of names. He tapped the paper with one long finger. “Like so many others, Portia, you have resisted my efforts. And like them, you must be dealt with.”

“Are you going to kill me, then?” she asked. “Like you killed them?” She tried to make her words sound hard, tried to fire them like a bullet. Her only weapon.

Mister started, his hand twitching on the notebook’s open face. Then he laughed, the same dead, dry sound as before. “I didn’t
kill
anyone. Those girls are every bit as alive as you and I. At least, I think they are. Not many of them have kept in touch, you see.”

“What did you do to them?”

He smiled. “I gave them new lives,” he crowed. “It’s the perfect arrangement, really. There are so many enterprising men out west, farmers and miners and general store owners. And they all need hard-working women at their sides. I simply bring them together. For a small fee, of course.”

“But,” Portia sputtered, “the graves—”

“Empty, my dear. Just in case the families come looking for their girls.” He leaned forward a bit. “Of course, they never do.”

Finding out that Mister wasn’t actually a serial murderer was quite a bit less comforting that she might have expected. Portia called up what little bravado she had left. “You won’t get away with this,” she told him. “You can’t just send me wherever you want and marry me off.”

“But there’s no one to stop me,” he said. He reached into the drawer again. Pulled out a thin folder. Tossed it at Portia.

The folder caught the edge of the desk and spilled its contents on the floor. She saw her name in Sophia’s handwriting, the letter her aunt had written so long ago to ask Mister to take Portia in. She saw other notes in Mister’s writing, spiked and gnarled like winter branches.

Saw the blood-red word stamped across the front:
DECEASED.

“No,” she whispered.

“They’re
dead,
” he replied, savoring the word. “Your aunt knew your parents could never come back for you. She knew it even before she brought you here. And she didn’t live much longer, either. Terribly unlucky, your clan.”

“You’re lying.”

Mister waved his hand at the scattered pages on the floor. “It’s all there. Parents: deceased. Aunt: deceased. Rest of the gypsy-wagon clan: whereabouts unknown.”

Her throat felt full of hot stones. All this time, all of the faces she had examined, and the notes she’d made, and the searching. She had never had a chance of finding Max. She had come back, given up her only chance of freedom, for nothing.

“There is no one left, you see. You are—”

A flash outside the window.

A face, far above where a face ought to be.

It was Jim.

Mission of Mercy (and a Bit of Revenge)

It had taken four days for them to find her. And their arrival produced the one and only genuine scream Portia ever heard come out of Mister’s mouth.

Within minutes, they were all lined up in the living room, like some otherworldly army battalion, standing at attention. Mrs. Collington and Mrs. Murphy and the Lucasies (even a glowering Joseph), Jim, Jimmy, Mosco, and Marie. Mister was pressed against the wall at the far end of the room, waving a fireplace poker like a sword.

“Stay back!” he bellowed. “Don’t come any closer!”

“Oh, honestly,” said Mrs. Collington, “I do wish you’d stop that.”

“Making a damned fool of himself,” muttered Jimmy.

Portia couldn’t resist kissing Marie on the cheek, for effect, though she did restrain herself (just barely) from climbing onto the couch to greet Jim the same way. Then she took her place next to Mosco. Looking down, she could see the pearly handle of the knife he’d tucked into his belt.