by Trudi Jaye
Jack looked at Maddy, confused. “What’s this?” He gestured to the elephants.
“I’ve been making them all morning. This is only a few of them. I think it’s because I gave Garth an elephant. It’s the only origami I ever made for him.”
“They’re all blue,” whispered Rilla, her face pale with some unspoken realization.
Maddy nodded. “I usually like a variety of colors. I don’t understand it.”
Viktor took a deep breath. “We have to assume Hugo has him. It’s the only explanation. She’s connected to him. It would make sense that she feels it.”
Rilla glanced over at Maddy, speculation in her eyes. “I don’t think it’s just their connection. She’s got power in her own right. Look at the elephants. Properly.”
Jack picked one up and for a second there seemed to be a little zing of lightning between his finger and the paper. He placed it on the palm of his hand and held it up to his eyes for a careful inspection. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Maddy nodded impatiently. They didn’t have time for this. “So how do we find Garth and Simon?”
“We’ve already been searching for Hugo so we know a fair few of the places he isn’t,” said Jack. “We’ll have to send your boys out again, Viktor.”
Viktor nodded. “That’s fine. They don’t mind. It’s a break from working under my thumb.”
“What about the security camera?” said Rilla. “We could look at the footage by the gate to see if they left in Garth’s car and what time. That might give us some clues as to how far away they’re likely to be.”
Jack nodded. “It’s too early to ring the sheriff’s office. We’re on our own for now.” He paused. “They might not be much help against Hugo anyway.”
Just at that moment, the phone in the corner rang. Jack leaned over and grabbed the receiver. “Jack speaking.” He paused to listen. “Hey, Greg. How’re you?”
Maddy glanced at Rilla, who frowned. “It’s the main outside line,” Rilla whispered, watching Jack’s face. “Greg’s a local deputy sheriff.”
“Okay, thanks for letting me know. We’ll be right there.” Jack’s voice was rough with emotion, and when he put down the phone, Maddy saw tears in his eyes. “They’ve got Dad. He’s in a bad way, up at the hospital. It’s touch and go, and they’re not sure he’ll pull through. They want us there now.”
Rilla put her arms around Jack, crushing him into a tight hug. “Oh, thank God they’ve found him.”
“There’s more.” Jack glanced at Maddy. “He was found on the highway, about four miles from here… in Garth’s car.”
Maddy felt her heart stop inside her chest. The room went blurry for a moment, and she put one hand on the desk, afraid she was going to faint. Then the world steadied. “Did your father say anything about what happened to Garth?”
Jack shook his head. “Dad hasn’t been conscious since they found him,” he said in a grim voice. “I have to go to him.” He looked down at Rilla.
Rilla put her hands on either side of his face. “Of course you do. But he’s going to be fine. The Carnival will protect him.”
“Is it strong enough?”
“We’ll make it strong enough.”
Jack put his forehead against Rilla’s and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he pecked a quick kiss on her lips and stalked across the room. Before he left, he turned. “I’ll call when I know how he is.”
Once he was gone, Viktor cleared his throat. “What are we going to do in the meantime?”
“You look at the security tapes. They’ll still give us an idea how long Hugo has had Garth. We’ll take a look where Blago was found.”
Viktor nodded. “I’ll send a couple of the others out to search more of the motels.”
“Right.” Rilla waved for Maddy to follow her. “Come on. Let’s get busy.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Garth watched silently as Hugo looked over the plans for his latest trick.
“It’s really quite amazing,” he said conversationally. “I plan to see if I can return from the dead.”
His head was aching, and Garth couldn’t concentrate on what Hugo was saying. His foggy brain was trying to tell him something, trying to get him to pay attention, but he kept slipping away, caught in a swirl of pain caused by a bright light or sudden movement.
“To show the audience how dangerous the actual trick is, I’m going to put two big glass containers side by side,” continued Hugo. “It will be really quite dramatic.”
Garth nodded. His eyes closed and then flicked open again. He needed to concentrate. There might be something he could use in the middle of the ramble.
“Lucietta will set them on fire at the same time. I’ll escape from the one, and you’ll burn alive in the other. It will be my most dramatic show ever.”
Garth blinked. “You’re going to burn me alive?” The surge of adrenaline focused his mind.
Hugo smiled. “At the same time your little Carnival puts on their show. People can watch what I’m doing via a live Internet feed, or they can go out into the cold, wet night to your little Spectacular.”
“Simon knows about this?” It hurt to think Simon had helped Hugo kidnap him. That he could be involved in murder was beyond that small level of pain.
Hugo waved his hand in the air. “The boy is too soft-hearted. I haven’t told him yet about your part in the show. But he is my greatest supporter.” Hugo’s voice softened as he talked about his son.
“Don’t you think he’ll be upset?” Garth slurred.
“He knows what I’m doing is for him.” Hugo waved it off as if it were common knowledge.
“How is burning me alive going to help Simon?” Garth struggled to make the connections Hugo was suggesting and didn’t know if it was his foggy brain or Hugo’s logic.
“It’s not about burning you. It’s about destroying the Carnival. Lucietta tells me you’re the cog around which the Carnival moves. I was mistakenly focused on the Ringmaster… until now.” Hugo’s glittering eyes focused fully on Garth for the first time.
Garth shivered under the crazy intensity in those eyes. “Why do you have to destroy us?”
“Because you are the reason for everything bad that has happened to my family, including the shipwreck. You and your kind.”
***
Maddy walked around the car, trying to focus on whether it looked the same as last time she’d seen it. Tears welled in her eyes and she struggled to hold them in.
Calm down.
She needed to keep a clear head if she was going to help them.
“What do they think happened here?” she asked Rilla.
“Greg couldn’t tell me much. It’s only because he knows what Garth’s car looks like that he even knew who to contact. Blago had no ID on him, and he’s not been a local here for well over thirty years.” Rilla gazed down the road as if trying to imagine what had taken place.
Maddy walked back and forth beside the car, moving farther and farther away with each pass along the roadside. It wasn’t a busy road. In the ten minutes they’d been here, one car had passed by. “There are tire tracks in the mud over here,” she said, glancing over at Rilla.
“Do you think they’re fresh?”
Maddy shrugged. “The mud is still wet, so my guess would be yes. But really, I have no idea.” She crouched down beside the tracks. “Think there were two cars here. The two tire markings are very different.”
Rilla walked around behind her, searching the bushes close to the road. “If Lucietta is still with him, that makes sense. But I don’t understand about leaving Blago here. Why let him go so easily?”
Maddy thought about it. “He’s got Simon and Garth now. They can get him into the Compound, can’t they? And he’s here in Madison, so maybe he just didn’t need him anymore.”
“You think this is all part of his plan? Letting Blago go, kidnapping Garth?” Rilla’s voice was soft.
“It wouldn’t surprise me. From wh
at Simon has told me, Hugo seems to have a love for theatrics, a need for the adoration of his audience rather than just a desire to astound and amaze.”
“So he’s going to use Garth somehow?” Rilla asked, her sharp eyes focused on Maddy’s face.
Maddy nodded slowly. “But what makes him hate the Carnival so much?”
Rilla shook her head. “Jack said he was spouting about a family vendetta because our ancestors threw his ancestors out of the Carnival. But that seems a little farfetched. More likely, it’s because we took Simon with us when we left Mountain Springs. But Hugo had already deserted Simon. He was on the run from the police, so we felt a responsibility to take care of a young boy alone. In fact, Hugo’s still on the wanted lists. I hope Greg realizes that.”
“I’m sure Jack would have told him.” Maddy stood and walked around the car one more time. “Did they say when the truck would be here to tow the car?”
“No. Just that we weren’t to touch it. We’re only allowed to look.”
Maddy nodded, absently gazing through the window of Garth’s red VW Beetle, trying to analyze the contents. A pen. A pair of shorts in the backseat. A couple CDs in the middle. Chewing gum wrappers on the floor. A drink bottle sitting on the seat. A crumpled-up piece of blue paper down one side of the passenger’s seat. “What would Garth do if he realized it was Hugo? Would he think to help us find him?” Something about the piece of paper set bells ringing in her head.
“Maybe. It depends on how he thought it was going to go. What are you thinking?”
“Do you know how to break into a car?” Maddy turned slowly to her companion.
Rilla looked up, her eyebrows raised. “No, I don’t.” Then she grinned, pulling a set of keys out of her pocket. “But I do know where Garth keeps his spare set.”
“You’ve had them the whole time?”
Rilla shrugged. “I just wanted us to have a good look around the outside before we focused too much on the inside.”
“Open it up, right now.” Maddy struggled to keep her frustration at bay.
“Okay, okay.” Rilla turned the key in the lock and opened the door, allowing Maddy to reach inside. She grabbed the piece of paper down the side of the passenger seat. She’d been right; it was familiar. Small perfect fold marks were creased over the square of paper. It was the remains of the origami elephant she’d made for Garth.
She didn’t think she’d imagined the wonder on Garth’s face the day she’d given him the elephant. He wouldn’t have pulled it apart for no reason. She looked down at the paper and then flipped it over.
Hugo Blue GHD1232
The words and numbers were scrawled across the page in rough writing. Whatever happened, he’d not had much time. Silently, she handed the note to Rilla.
“A license plate?”
Maddy nodded. “Seems to be. And it confirms what we assumed. It’s your friend Hugo Blue.”
***
“We still can’t find him anywhere. It’s like he’s not really here. I don’t know how he can be so invisible in such a small town. In our town.” Viktor’s frustration was clear as he paced up and down the Nine’s meeting room.
“I told you keeping the boy here was a mistake,” said Milton, gesturing angrily out the window. “Now my son is paying for that act of stupidity.”
Rilla frowned at Milton. “This isn’t about Simon. It’s about Hugo. I looked in that man’s eyes when he shot me, and they weren’t the eyes of a sane man. Simon’s a good kid and he doesn’t deserve to be left alone with a madman, even if he is his father.”
“That’s not our problem,” replied Milton, his voice rising in pitch.
Maddy watched him closely, trying to determine if his panic and fear were really for Garth or for himself in some way. She had a feeling there was more going on in Milton’s head than fear for his missing son.
“That’s not the kind of attitude we have ever taken here at the Carnival. We look after people. We take in strays. You’ve been away too long. You’ve forgotten how things work around here, Milton,” said Rilla, clearly angry.
“I know when your father was running things, we didn’t have people being kidnapped.”
“But we did have the Carnival taking care of disruptive elements by making them forget everything.” Rilla’s voice was harsh and her eyes flashed at Milton. Maddy had to work hard to not smile at the rebuke that Rilla wasn’t afraid to give Garth’s father.
The old man paled and the fire leaked out of his eyes. He nodded tersely and sat down.
Rilla looked around at the others in the room. “We just have to keep going. We have his car license plate now. Greg’s looking into that and will let us know if they find anything. He knows how dangerous Hugo is, so they’ll be careful.” She was sitting in one of the big plush black leather chairs that allowed a view out the windows over the Compound, her eyes dark.
“Have you spoken to Jack today? How’s Blago?” Alfie’s soft voice broke through the silence.
Rilla glanced over at him, and Maddy saw the fear in her expression. “Blago still hasn’t woken up. The doctors aren’t saying much, but they don’t seem hopeful.”
“I’m sorry, Rilla. It must be tough.”
Rilla nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “We can’t lose Blago—or Garth for that matter. We have to figure out a way to bring both of them back to us.”
Maddy cleared her throat. Five pairs of eyes flicked to her face, and she had to swallow over a suddenly dry throat to convince herself to keep going. “He’s smart. Hugo Blue, I mean. He’s planning something; that much is obvious. It’s time to start thinking tactically. We’ve got to start trying to outthink a master, to figure out what he might do.”
“But we don’t know him. None of us do,” snapped Viktor.
“Simon talked to me a little bit about him. I think we can extrapolate from those stories. But you also know some of the things he’s done, right? And we can find clips of him on the Internet, can’t we?”
Rilla flicked her fingers. “I can’t believe this didn’t occur to me before now. Frankie.”
Maddy frowned. “Frankie?”
“He was with us in Las Vegas. He knows Hugo.”
Viktor nodded. “And he’s really good online. He can find us some clips of Hugo, maybe offstage, that kind of thing.”
“Good, go get Frankie,” said Maddy. “We need as much information as we can get. Then I can work on a profile, build up an idea of him as a person, the kind of things he might do, the places he might hang out. The lengths to which he might go.” Maddy didn’t really want to think about the last part, but if she was going to save Garth, she needed to bring every analytical skill she had to the table.
“We’ll have to go to him. Jack’s at the hospital.” Rilla glanced over at Viktor for confirmation.
The older man nodded.
Maddy frowned but held silent.
Rilla stood. “Let’s go, then. Everyone else find as much information as you can and bring it to us at Frankie’s house in an hour.”
Maddy followed Rilla down the footpath again and back onto the main street. Rilla went right to the opposite end from Garth’s house and started up a long flight of stairs carved into the earth and held in place by wooden braces. They kept climbing higher and higher until Maddy felt like her lungs were going to explode, her breath coming in short gasps. When Rilla halted up ahead, she put a hand to a nearby tree, trying to catch her breath.
Then she looked up to see Frankie’s house. She’d been expecting another pole house. Maybe a wooden tree house built in between the trunks. She didn’t expect the interconnecting circular pods that were created around a stand of massive redwood trees.
It was modern but at the same time had the feeling it was a part of the landscape. The buildings were only accessible by a carved stepladder.
“Come on. He’s expecting us.”
At Maddy’s raised eyebrows, Rilla explained. “I asked Viktor to call him for us.”
They climbed
up the ladder and stepped into another world. In the surprisingly large first room, technology surrounded them. Computer screens lined the walls, gidgets and gadgets fitted in every spare inch of space. There was a red glow through the room, and Maddy could see it was repeated down the hall and into the next circular room.
“Come on. He likes to work farther down,” said Rilla. “This lot is just for show.”
They found Frankie sitting at a computer screen, watching a clip of Hugo on stage. Frankie was young and handsome, his smooth features set in vaguely sulky lines. He didn’t acknowledge Rilla or Maddy at first, just kept looking at the clip of Hugo. Maddy hadn’t really recognized the magician’s name, but now that she saw his face on the screen, she recalled seeing him on television once or twice.
Frankie glanced up and then back at the screen. “I’m trying to remember anything useful from what I know of Hugo. He’s a complete git, and he hates me, but he loves Simon. I was shocked when he hurt the boy. It was totally against what I’d seen of him before.” Frankie raised his eyebrows at Maddy. “Who’re you?”
Inside, Maddy bristled. How would this arrogant boy help them save Garth? Her fears started to rise again. Garth could die, and it felt like she was the only one who cared. Maddy tried to calm her breathing, but the small confined space made it difficult. She frowned at Frankie.
“Frankie, this is Maddy. She’s going to do up a profile to help us with Hugo.” Rilla smiled at Maddy and then at the back of Frankie’s head.
Frankie nodded, but his eyes didn’t leave the screen. “He’s an egomaniac. But I guess so are most performers. Look at Rilla here.”
Rilla rolled her eyes at Frankie. “Just because you’ve never taken to the stage doesn’t mean you don’t have an ego the size of Africa.”
“Ah, but I’m a completely different case. I get my thrills online.” Frankie wiggled his eyebrows at the screen.
Rilla laughed. “Are you saying I get my thrills in front of a crowd?”
Maddy looked between them. They weren’t taking this seriously. “Can we get on with this, please? We don’t know what he’s planning for Garth.” She couldn’t help it; her voice was sharp and hostile. Somewhere deep inside, she winced, but the fear and anger swirling around in her mind wouldn’t let her be kinder.
