by Esme Devlin
She smiles. “Then you would have this island under your control and all the people in it. We’d double up on everything. Instead of syphoning off money for your… endeavors, we take back the mainland, and then you’d have all the money and power you could need for said endeavors.”
“Hmm. You have it all worked out, don’t you?”
“I have a lot of time to think, banished to these four walls the majority of the time.”
“Too much time to think, that’s what I think,” I tell her as I get up from the bed and make for the door.
“What will you do?” she calls after me.
I stop with my hand on the doorknob and turn to face her. “For all your grand scheming, you failed to take one key detail into consideration.”
Celeste tilts her head to the side as if pondering a puzzle. “And what is that?”
“I only like grand schemes when I think of them.”
34
Sapphire
There’s another girl in my room now.
This girl is younger than me, though you’d barely know it from the painted face she wears to perform.
They say she is an even better dancer than I ever was. More shapely than me, with a body that looks like it was built for pleasure and not for snapping in half accidentally like mine. The patrons love her. Maxim loves her.
They even call her Sapphire, though it makes little sense because she doesn’t have one green eye and one blue.
This all came from Ruby, after she hugged me so tight I thought she might kill me.
Maxim still hasn’t spoken a word to me.
“Are you still a virgin, though?” Ruby asks me.
We’re sitting in my new room.
This one is a level lower than my last one, still above the massive pits the circus pups sleep in, but not on the same level as the performers. It’s cold and damp, with a constant dripping that keeps me awake for long hours in the night and only candles for light.
I shake my head. “No.”
Her face fills with pity, and she scoots across the thin sleeping mat to pull me in for a hug. “I’m so sorry.” When she draws back, the pity has gone and her eyes narrow. “Was it him? Did he hurt you? How many? Tell me everythi—”
“It wasn’t like that,” I reply, shaking my head.
“What do you mean it wasn’t like that?”
I don’t really know what I mean.
I don’t know what it was or wasn’t like.
I’ve been here for two nights now and spoken to nobody except for the unknown guard who brought me here. I’ve had countless hours to think about what it was like, and I’m still not really sure myself.
So I start at the very beginning.
I tell her everything.
The tank and the face paint and the fighting cage. The games he used to play with me. The girl in the room next door. I don’t mention the things Celeste told me, about the curse or the safe place or Baron’s agenda, and I pause for a long time considering if I should tell her about the baby or not.
But the child will show soon enough.
And if I want it to be healthy, I need proper food and pills.
I need to know if she thinks Maxim will give me that.
“You’re what? How far along are you?”
I shrug. “Not that far.”
Ruby nods. “Okay, okay. Don’t worry. I’ll fetch Scout. You know his grandmother, the old witch who does the tarot? She has plants that’ll take it away. We just need to find a way of paying her.”
“No.” I grip her hand tighter. “No. I don’t want that.”
She puts her free hand to her mouth and looks at me like I’ve just committed some heinous act. “Sapphire, you’ll be ruined. If we can find a way to be rid of it, maybe we can convince Maxim you’re still a virgin and he might take you back. You’d get a new name and costume, but you could go back to your old life.”
Just the thought has a heavy weight sitting in the pit of my stomach. “I don’t want my old life back.”
“Then… a new life. It’s not so bad, Sapphire. You get used to the clients. Remember what I told you about building the castle? You don’t even think about it.”
I shake my head. I can’t give him up. He’s the only part of Baron I have. “I can’t do it.”
Ruby leans back and looks around the room. Well, what she can see of it in the dim light from the single candle. “Then we must tell Maxim. You can’t stay here.” She shakes her head before looking back at me and clutching my hand. “Maybe he’ll put you in the room with the other expectants. I hear it’s not too bad. The food is better.”
The other expectants. That’s the place you go to wait out your pregnancy. You get food and warmth and shelter, and in exchange, you hand over the baby to become a circus pup.
And just like my Scout, if he’s strong and smart, he’ll be a guard, and if he’s strong and stupid, it’ll be off to the fields with him.
But he’ll surely be strong and smart. How could he be stupid with a father like Baron?
I nod at Ruby, biting my lip. “Okay. Tell Maxim.”
That’s the only real choice I have now.
35
Baron
There is a show on tonight, however, it’s not a particularly enjoyable one.
I think perhaps my favorite thing about these shows was watching Sapphire’s reaction to them.
The way she would flinch when someone took a chib in the eyeball. The way she would recoil when an ear or a toe was bitten off. The way she would cling to me toward the end, as if I weren’t the very same person putting her through all this.
The way she would wriggle around on my lap when my fingers would take themselves for a wander. Sometimes, I’d flick and pinch her tiny little nipples just to make her squirm, imagining her cheeks turning pink underneath all that paint.
I miss her.
I truly do.
I barely think about anything else. I no longer have the urge to care.
Andrei hates it. He’s always hated when I’m distracted, and this goes beyond mere distraction. This is being present in a room and being a thousand miles away, all at the same time.
“There is someone here to see you,” Andrei says.
I flick him away with my hand.
I’ll see nobody. In my mind, Sapphire is here, sitting on my lap, her beautiful mismatched eyes widening in horror at the gruesome scene before us. My heartbeat dancing as my mind makes a note of all the things I’m going to do to her.
What game should we play tonight, my sweet little girl?
Maybe she will run, and I will pretend she has a chance of not being caught for a while.
I decided to build something for her. It is a room that’s not a room. More of a maze, but not really a maze. In a maze, there has to be more than one choice, doesn’t there?
Left or right? Which way?
No.
What I’m building is more like a rabbit run. Full of mirrors and glass and doors that aren’t even doors. Illusions. There is only one way, and that is the way I create for her.
“Baron?”
“Leave me,” I tell him, not even bothering to turn around.
“You will want to see this person,” he says, more firmly than I had expected.
Sapphire?
My Sapphire has returned to me?
I turn my head, frowning as I take in the little rake of a boy standing a step behind Andrei. This boy doesn’t have the haircut given to most males to keep the fleas at bay, which is shaved to the bone completely. No, someone has allowed this boy to keep his hair longer on the top, which means wherever he came from, he is cared for.
He has big brown eyes full of mischief, which remind me of my own at that age.
I like him.
The boy steps forward and clears his throat. “Denim sent me.”
“Denim?”
He nods. “Denim is Maxim’s second. Denim told me to come and Conrim sneaked me out with one of the dirt bikes.”
Intriguing. I narrow my eyes at him, though he won’t see, and sit up in my chair. “What the fuck is with the im names?”
The boy makes a face that conveys that he thinks I was born yesterday. It’s really quite amusing. “Im is the last two letters of Maxim’s name. Means you’re in his inner circle. It’s a great fat honor to get an im name.”
Jesus suffering Christ. The man’s vanity knows no limits. “Adorable. Now tell me, precisely, why you are here.”
“It’s Sapphire.”
My Sapphire. Just the thought of her name on someone else’s tongue angers me, but I shall try to keep that at bay for now. “Oh? How is she?”
“Ach.” The boy shakes his head. “She’s not good. I can’t even get a smile out of her—and I always get a smile off the girls.”
“So she’s upset,” I say with a shrug. “She left me. She chose her bed, and it wasn’t mine. Tell Denim I don’t care.”
I don’t tell him that is only partly the reason I will not go and fetch her. Saying it aloud would just make me sound petty, even if that is indeed what I am.
“They’re going to do to her what you… what you do to women here.” He glances down at the cage in the middle of the room. “I don’t know what she did to you, but I know she don’t deserve that.”
“Doesn’t,” I correct him. “She doesn’t deserve that. Speak properly.”
“Doesn’t,” he mutters.
“Better.” I nod. “Why?”
“Because she’s nice!”
I let out a hollow laugh. “I meant, why are they going to do that to her?”
“Oh. It’s a setup. Maxim’s real pissed about what you went ’n’ done to her. She’s damaged goods now. They want you to catch wind of it and show up. Then Maxim will kill you, because you didn’t pay for her, and he knows you can’t keep your end of the deal because you killed those men who wur gonna do the… uh… electricalities.”
I chuckle, not even bothering to correct his awful grammar.
My little Sapphire and her big mouth.
So not only does my meddling grandmother assume I will be so easily manipulated, now the circus freaks do, too.
I am not someone who is manipulated. I’m the manipulator.
I rest my masked face on my hand while I try to think. I’m getting better at this.
Of course I want to get her.
I’ve wanted to get her since the day I found her gone.
The only thing stopping me from going and fetching her was that Celeste forced me into it, and I will not be forced by anyone to do anything. I’ve been suffering through my spite by imagining she is still here with me.
Of course I want to get her.
But what if this is just another trap?
Is the boy even trustworthy?
I turn back around to face him. “They sent you all the way here with nothing but a scrambler?”
He shrugs, as if that’s no big deal. “Had to be me. I’m the only one that’ll fit through the gate. Plus, Hum the giant would never rat me out. I make it my business to make friends in high places.” His face breaks into a smile a beat later, and his eyes light up, as if he’s only just realized the pun. “High places.” He chuckles. “I crack myself up.”
I’m smiling at him myself, but thanks to the thick layer of metal separating us, he won’t know that.
“Still, I don’t see how you survived the ride without even a weapon on you. I think you had help.”
He shakes his head. “Nope. No help. I’m just fast is all.”
“How fast?” I flick my chin in his direction.
“Unbelievably fast. Faster than you.” He looks around at Andrei and the rest of my guards. “Faster than all of you. You might think you’re the dog’s balls with your big muscles. I keep myself lean and tight—peak physical condition.”
I snort with laughter. “Really? You look half-starved.”
The boy narrows his big brown eyes, not a hint of fear about him. “I’m going to give you that one for free, because Sapphire loves you. But the next one won’t go without payment.”
I hit the side of my chair, barking with laughter this time. I liked this little gutter rat from the moment I saw him, and there is nothing I like more than proving myself right.
“What is your name, boy?”
He shrugs and then gives me a smile. “Don’t got one. The other pups call me Thirty-two. Sapphire calls me Scout, but I hate that so don’t even think about it.”
I hold my hands up. “Fair enough. Can you read? Write?”
He looks down and scuffs his shoe against the wooden floor. “I mean, I know the letters, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“If that’s what I was asking, I would have asked that.”
He glances up at me, only to lift his eyebrows. “Why you so interested?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Well, I can’t very well let you go now, can I? You might be trying to trick me. Knowing your level of literacy will decree what is to be done with you.”
"Like I says, I know my letters. Not all of them, but most.” Then his eyes seem to light up. “But I'm good at other stuff. Useful stuff.”
“Such as?”
He lifts his shoulders as if trying to act coy, but I see through him. “Me? I could talk the back legs off a donkey. Sit me on a fence and the birds’ll come and feed me. Learned to pick pockets before I could walk. Learned to read the tarot from the great Ethelinda herself—that’s my grandmother, runs in my blood. Never been beaten on a dirt bike, I’m a fucker with a bullwhip, never lost a game of—”
I hold my hand up. “That’s quite enough.”
The boy grins at me. “Told ya.”
I eye him up for a second, wondering if I should do it. “Come with me.”
Yes. Yes, I think I shall.
This means I lose, of course. But I’m too tempted not to.
The boy—Scout or Thirty-Two or whatever the fuck he’s called—follows on my heels, practically skipping to keep up as I weave through the hotel.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere.”
I take a sharp left.
“What are we doing?”
“Walking.”
I take the stairs two at a time.
“When will we—”
I stop dead in my tracks, holding my finger up to his face. “Stop. I like you, but don’t annoy me.”
His face turns to stone for a minute, big brown eyes gazing up at me, and then his mouth breaks into a slow smile before he thumps me on the arm. “You had me going for a second there. That mask is pretty terrifying. Now come on, we don’t have all day, do we?”
He turns on his heels and races up the rest of the stairs, and I have no real choice but to follow the little shit.
“Where to now, Boss?” he asks at the top, hands on his hips while he glances left and right down the corridor.
I don’t bother answering as I take a left and continue down the hallway, and he doesn’t say another word until I unlock the door to my bedroom.
“Whoa, big guy,” he holds his hands up, taking a step back. “I like girls. Only girls. Not saying there’s anything wrong with boys… you’re just—”
I cut him off with laughter, giving him a clip around the ear for his arrogance. “I like neither. You have nothing to worry about.”
“You like my Sapphire,” he says as he follows me into the room.
I make my way over to the box that sits on top of my dresser, unlocking it and moving the photo of my mother to the side. “Sapphire’s a monster. And she’s mine, not yours.”
He folds his arms across his chest, about to argue, but the small rectangular card in my hand must catch his eye and he’s already onto something else. The boy is a squirrel.
Perhaps that is what I shall call him.
“What’s that you got there?”
I hold the card out between two fingers, and he crosses the room to grab it out of my hand. He turns it over carefully and then looks up at me
. “This is my grandmother’s card.”
“Indeed. We have something of a bet ongoing over it. Tell me what it means.”
“So she can win? Or so you can win?”
“Does it really matter?”
He shrugs. “Not really. You think this is going to tell you if fetching my Sapphire is a good idea or not?”
“Stop calling her that,” I snap. “And yes.”
He lets out a sigh. “Moon card. See, there’s the moon. Two towers on each side, one’s good and one’s evil, but they both look the same to crayfish standing at the bottom. On either side of the river you have the wolf and the dog, one’s wild and feral and the other is domesticated and civilized.”
My eye twitches. “That’s it?”
He hands it back to me. “That’s it.”
“What exactly have you told me that I couldn’t have deciphered myself just from glancing at it?”
The boy shrugs his shoulders. “What do you want to know?”
I shake my head. “Uh, my future? That is what you promise, is it not?”
That slow, arrogant smile spreads across his face again, as if he’s so much smarter than me. “The meaning depends on which angle we’re going for. Love?”
“No!” I scoff. “Don’t be so ridiculous.”
“So with love,” he continues regardless. “This means it’s full of misunderstandings. Nothing is as it appears. Things are clouding your judgment, things from your past, and you need to let them go.”
I shake my head at him. “Enlightening. Truly. For surely the same could not be said and ring true for every other human on the planet—ever.”
He smirks and takes the card back out of my hand. “The dog and the wolf. Who you going to be?”
“Isn’t that what you're supposed to be telling me?”
“Okay, fine. You’re the dog, and you should go and get my Sapphire. Dogs listen to their betters.”
I scoff at him. “I’m nobody’s dog.”
“Fine. You’re the wolf, and you should go and get my Sapphire. Protect what’s yours. Show them who’s the boss. The alpha of the pack.”
