by A. R. Kahler
Like she’s wondering whether I’m worth keeping or if it’s time to take out the trash.
Judging from the silence, and the fact that I’m definitely about to pass out from blood loss, I think it might be the latter.
“You have failed me, Claire,” she says. Her voice is low-lying smoke, and the way she twists my name tells me I’m screwed. “You know that I do not take well to failure.”
I can’t move my jaw to explain myself. I can barely muster the breath to groan.
“Sadly, I still have use for you. Even in your current state.” She waves her hand dismissively at this, as though I’ve failed to dress up for a formal event. She looks to the space behind me.
“I leave this in your hands. I need her in fighting shape. Immediately.”
There’s a rustle of footsteps behind me.
“As you wish,” comes his voice. Apparently Kingston hadn’t abandoned me here after all. Bastard was just staying out of sight. Letting me stew.
I blink slowly, and when my eyes finally open again, Mab is just disappearing in a swirl of smoke and Kingston is lying on the ground beside me. Why is he lying down? Is he dead?
But no, he blinks, and the grim expression on his face shifts, just slightly, as he reaches out and brushes the side of my face with his fingertips. I’m suddenly reminded of the moments right after sleeping with him, when he looked vulnerable. When I had him under my thumb, and not the other way around.
I expect a monologue. For him to refuse. But he just curls my hair between his fingers and stares into my eyes.
“This is going to hurt like hell,” he whispers. He smiles when he says it.
Then his aura shivers with magic, and as the crisp lightning of it folds over me, as my entire body sets itself on fire, I finally find the breath to scream.
“You have been asleep long enough,” she says.
I try to blink myself awake, but my eyes are heavy, and the darkness in the room isn’t helping spur me to move. Everything in me aches—my breath is ragged, every inhalation causing my lungs to scratch against my ribs; my head throbs like I haven’t had caffeine in two days; every fiber of every muscle and tendon burns with a slow fire, as though I’ve been working out to exhaustion. But I’m alive. And when I roll over and squeeze the pillow to my eyes, eyes still closed, pain lances through my fingers. The fingers I’d been missing.
Thank the gods. I honestly thought Kingston would have left those off as punishment.
It takes forever for the gears of my brain to begin working again. Click, I’m alive. Click, I’m in a bed. Click, I don’t recognize that voice. I open my eyes at that one.
The light in here is dim, almost pitch-black, but nowhere near as dark as Oberon’s cell. I still squint, trying to making out the girl standing a few feet away, her body in silhouette from a thin stream of light behind the curtain. A few more things click into place. I have no weapons. This is not my room. I am not wearing clothes. In that order. Then the girl steps forward, and her voice finally matches with one from my memory. Despite the heat of the room, my skin goes cold. She is not someone I want to be naked and defenseless around.
Lilith.
The girl waves her hand, and suddenly the room is filled with light. I think it’s some sort of magic at first—which I want to think is impossible because I don’t want to believe she can wield magic—but then realize it’s just her reaching to the wall to flip a switch. The sudden illumination makes me squint my eyes shut. But they’d been open long enough to take in my surroundings: a small room, barely the size of a closet, with a desk against the near wall and a window beside it.
Lilith should have been indication enough, but this cements it. Kingston didn’t leave me in Winter. He brought me to the Immortal Circus.
“What are you doing here?” I croak. My throat is sore, as though I’d swallowed a spiked mace.
“I should ask you the same,” she replies. The bed creaks as she sits down beside me. I try to push away, to get farther back, but the bed is smaller than a twin and I’m against the wall an inch later. “You know you are not welcome.”
“Neither are you.” It’s about as bold as I can be right now. Did Kingston take my clothes off for me? Click, click, click.
She chuckles silently to herself.
“Winter didn’t want you,” she says. “That is why you are here. Mab did not want to look at you. You, her greatest failure.”
I open my mouth. But I can’t find the words I want to say: something sharp and biting and proud. They aren’t there. They are dead.
Lilith is right. I will never admit that to her, but she is definitely right. I open my eyes and stare at her. She’s in a loose black dress hemmed with lace, a belt of silver bird skulls around her waist. Black hair falls loose over her shoulders, a single blue ribbon tied through like Alice.
She reaches over and touches my cheek. Her skin burns, as though a fire blazes deep within her, and for a moment I imagine her fingers wrapping around my jaw, squeezing my bones to ash as easily as wet cardboard. But she just rests them there, staring into my eyes, the heat of her hand making sweat break over my skin.
“I thought you were more,” she says, almost to herself. “I thought we burned just as bright. But I was wrong. When they took your fire, you became dim. When they took mine, I learned to tend the flame in secret. You would be wise to do the same. For when the Pale Queen comes for you, you will need every power at your disposal.”
“What do you know about her?” My head is swimming, and not just from her closeness or this conversation. My body is faltering. It wants to pass out. Darkness seeps in at the edges of my vision, turning the trailer into a nightmare fun house, ghosts creeping in, hands reaching . . .
“That she is more powerful than she was. Hell has changed her.”
“What . . .”
Her green eyes smolder more harshly than Mab’s ever have, but the shadows pull in closer, and my burning body is heavy.
“Her name is writ in hell.”
As I sink under again, I can’t tell if I said the words, or she did.
When I become conscious again, I’m alone. The room is dark, though a harsh light beams through the drawn window shades. I don’t want to move. The ache in my body has lessened, and I actually feel like my old self, but that almost makes it worse. Being back to normal means moving forward—something I’m normally quite good at, and something I definitely don’t want to do right now. Because moving forward means dealing with the repercussions of my actions. All of which have helped move the Pale Queen into a stronger seat of power.
I close my eyes again, let the darkness press in on me as Lilith’s words filter up through the depths.
I wasn’t allowed to stay in Winter. Mab saw me as a failure. I was going to have to fight to make up for my mistakes. That was the worst part. No rest for the wicked. Never rest for me. I just don’t think I have any fight left. Not that that’s an option.
A few minutes later, I push myself up from the bed and remember once again that I am naked and weaponless and relatively unsure of where I am, besides the circus. I also have to pee. And there is no bathroom in this room. Thankfully, once my head clears from the swirling rush of sitting up, I notice that there’s a set of clothes on the desk. They aren’t mine—that’s for damn sure. I reach over and grab them, the trailer swaying gently from the motion, and I’m not certain if the sway is all in my head or not. My body doesn’t fully seem to be mine. Not yet. My fingers have regrown, and my bones have re-formed, and the bruising has gone down. But the wiring isn’t fully connected. My movements are clunky. If I got into a fight right now, I’d probably knock myself out. If I didn’t faint first.
The shirt is cheap black cotton, with Cirque des Immortels printed on the front and STAFF on the back. It’s a very flattering XL and clearly a men’s shirt. Thanks. There are grannie panties I ignore and a pair of jeans that are scuffed and frayed and—although a size too big—fairly sexy in their rattiness. Not that I really c
are, since sex appeal isn’t even close to the top of my priorities right now. The main sticking point is that there are no weapons. Not even a letter opener I could sharpen.
So, once I’ve dressed—slowly, carefully, because even those small movements make me want to pass out—I grab some pens from a plastic popcorn container on the desk and shove them in my pocket. They aren’t much, but they can still take out an eye or puncture an artery. I don’t expect to have to do that within the safety of the Immortal Circus, where everyone is contractually obligated to remain young and beautiful under Mab’s rule forever. But stranger things have happened.
I shamble out of the trailer and into the cold night.
Then I realize it shouldn’t be cold, because it’s still the tail end of summer. I glance up. The sky is thick with clouds, blocking out any starlight or moonshine, and my breath comes out in puffs. There’s a folding chair beside my door, a paperback and a mug of coffee sitting on the seat. The coffee is frozen over.
This is not good.
I hug my arms around me and try to run to the line of porta potties a little farther away. A part of me can’t believe I’ve fallen this far, to be running to porta potties—bootless, coatless, weaponless—in the dead of night in the middle of nowhere, rather than pounding on Kingston’s enchanted trailer door to use his magical mansion’s facilities. The rest of me can’t imagine doing that, because it no longer feels like I’d be enacting my entitlement in forcing him to let me in. It would feel like begging.
So I use the porta potty, and it smells exactly as I thought it would, but at least it has toilet paper. And hand sanitizer. When I step outside and stare back at the clouds, I shiver.
The circus grounds are empty. The light I saw from the trailer comes from giant work lights mounted on steel girders, casting the ground in harsh shades of white and black. It makes the place feel even more like a ghost town. Not that I’d expect anyone to be up at whatever-the-hell-o’clock it is, but still. The main tent—the chapiteau—sits to my right, a few dozen feet from the housing trailers. And, for the first time in my knowledge, it waits unfinished.
The structure is, at the moment, nothing more than four large steel girders sticking up from the ground, more lights mounted atop them. Bench seats circle the pillars, and canvas lies in piles behind the benches, like a sloughed skin. From here, I can almost see the ring laid out in the center, barren and waiting and illuminated by more stage lights strung up between the poles.
It’s ugly. And something about it makes me colder than the wind. Because no one is out burning the midnight oil to finish its construction. Even though I’m not part of the show, I know it’s wrong for the tent to be half finished like this.
“It’s not right, is it?” she asks.
I nearly jump out of my skin, but thankfully manage to hide the shock under another shiver.
Melody steps up beside me. I have no idea where she came from or how she managed to sneak up on me, especially when it looks like she can barely stand on her own. She still looks like she’s in her twenties—pixie-cut brown hair, elfin face, mismatched wool hippie clothes—but she starts coughing the moment she’s beside me, doubling over on herself in a way that makes me doubt she could stand up again.
Despite myself, I reach out and hold her upright. The last time we talked, I kind of maybe sort of threatened to have her fired and/or killed. Even though she was the only person in the troupe who had ever treated me like, well, a person.
“Thanks,” she manages when she stands back up, leaning against me. She doesn’t look at me, but I know that’s also her way of accepting my unspoken apology.
“You doing okay?” I whisper. Like there’s anyone out here to overhear.
She shakes her head. It’s the answer I expect, but it still makes my gut drop.
Melody is tithed to the circus—her health ensures the health and safety of the show and everyone in it. If she dies, the circus becomes vulnerable: contracts weaken, performers get hurt. And suddenly the show, which is a bastion in and of itself, becomes vulnerable to attack. Precisely what the Pale Queen would be waiting for, since the show gathers much of Mab’s Dream intake.
I nod to the half-formed tent.
“What’s going on?”
“Can’t you feel it?” she asks. Her arms are wrapped tight around herself, and her voice is hoarse. Like she’s been smoking.
“What?”
“The wrongness.”
I glance around, and the grounds are just as empty as they were seconds ago. But it’s late. Surely that’s not too abnormal. The cold, yes. But maybe the tent crew just didn’t want to set up when they were freezing their tits off.
“What do you mean?”
She looks at me. Really looks at me.
“You actually don’t know, do you?” she asks.
“No, and I don’t like having things dangled in front of me, unless it’s a male stripper.”
She doesn’t smile. I don’t expect her to—it was a pretty bad joke. At least my humor’s returning . . . no matter how crappy it is.
“What time is it?” she asks.
“I don’t know.” I don’t like where this is going. “Late?”
“It’s four thirty.”
“a.m.?”
She looks at me. Her gaze is deadpan.
“No fucking way,” I whisper.
Her nod is the only response I get before she looks back to the chapiteau.
“So where is everybody?”
“Gone,” she replies.
“Everyone?”
It takes a while for her to answer, and when she does, it’s not with words. She heads away from me, walking toward one of the trailers a little way off. It’s the food cart—I can tell from the garish paint job and the folding table out front. Normally, it would be laden with baked goods and leftover food and canisters of coffee, the chefs inside jamming out to bad pop music. Now there’s just a coffeepot and a few doughnuts and silence.
“It started a few days ago,” she says, pouring herself the remaining coffee. Then she hands it to me. My heart melts a little bit at the friendly gesture. “You were missing. Kingston said something was wrong. And then the next morning the sun rose, but not as high, and a few hours after that it set again. Like midwinter.”
The coffee is cold, but I don’t say anything and swallow half of it down in a gulp. I shiver. She notices. She walks over to the trailer door and opens it for me. The interior is cramped with the stove and fridge and hanging pots and pans. But the heat is clearly on, because the moment we’re inside, I start feeling a little warmer. She takes the remaining coffee back from me and pops it in the microwave.
“I don’t want to say it, but we’re finished. We’ve lost half of the troupe in the last week alone. Which should be impossible.”
The microwave dings, and she hands me the reheated coffee, not bothering to ask if I need it sugared down.
“Why impossible?”
“Contracts,” she says. She leans against the counter. I can tell she’s trying to make the motion look nonchalant, but I can also tell that she’s resting a lot of weight in that pose.
Ah yes, the notorious faerie contract, responsible for ensnaring more mortals than I care to count.
“What about them?”
“They don’t allow us to leave, for one thing,” she says. She coughs again. It sounds as if something’s trying to claw its way out of her throat. “And they keep us safe, for another. But apparently that’s all in the past. We had two injuries a few days ago, right before the move. Broken ankle from a human pyramid, and a contortionist pulled a muscle in her back. Neither has happened before—neither should have been possible. When we moved to the new site, a large chunk of the performers abandoned ship. Figured there was a loophole or something, that if Mab’s end of the bargain wasn’t being fulfilled, they didn’t need to stay. And they were right. Most of the Shifters up and left halfway through build, when the sun started to set. Said that this shit was beyond their pa
y grade. I couldn’t even try to convince them to stay. I mean, I didn’t. Hell, if I could leave—”
She coughs again, and this time, when she doubles over, she doesn’t stand back up, but puts her hands on her knees and stays there, wheezing.
“Not that it matters,” she finally mutters. “Since I’ll be dead before the week is out.”
It’s a small stab to my heart, but I force it away. I may no longer have magic, but that doesn’t mean I can suddenly have emotions.
“I suppose it’s not a good time to ask what day it is, then?” I say.
She chuckles.
“It sure as hell isn’t hump day,” she replies as she forces herself to stand. I take another sip of coffee. Comforting people isn’t my forte. Drinking coffee is.
“It could be,” I say. I grin, try to be some weird mix of lascivious and comforting. She smiles back, but it slips pretty quickly.
“If I go . . .”
She looks out the window. She looks lost.
“What does happen?”
“Usually there’s a replacement,” she says. “On the cusp of the old tithe’s passing. At least, that’s what Mab told me last year—bitch is really bad with birthday presents.” A cough/laugh, and then she continues. “But I can feel it. It’s weird. It literally feels like having threads unravel from my skin—I can feel the magic slipping off as I die. Which isn’t far away.”
I don’t ask how she knows that. It’s probably impolite.
“We all have to die,” I say. “It’s just the course of life.”
“I know. But the thing is, there’s no replacement. My power has to pass on to someone. For a while there, I thought maybe it meant I was still okay—if no one had come to take my place, maybe it wasn’t actually my time to go. Maybe I was just sick. Not that I can get sick, but you know. Rationalizing.” She sighs and fights down another hacking fit. “Then the performers started to leave. A few have tried before—way before you were born—but they don’t make it past the gates before their contracts loop in and kill them. Now that they know they can leave without repercussion . . .”
