The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels)

by Алекс Р. Калер A. R. Kahler

  I sit and I wait. I don’t know what I expected when I psyched myself into guard duty, but it wasn’t the reality of getting soaked to the bone and having pine cones digging into my ass. I shiver, but I don’t move. I watch Melody’s door and it’s only when I check my watch and see that only twenty-three minutes have gone by that I start to wonder if this is even necessary. If Kingston suspected something, he’d be on guard and would have enchanted or hexed the door to make it impenetrable or something like that. Hell, maybe Zal was patrolling the woods right now, if he could do such a thing. Kingston was right; if Mab couldn’t protect us — and if I didn’t trust Kingston’s magic — what chance did I have? Still, as uncomfortable as it is, I feel better sitting out here in the rain with the owls. At least I’m thinking that I’m doing more than I would if I were back in my warm, cozy trailer. I shove the thought away and try to shift my weight off whatever twig is getting a little too personal with my personal space. The rain pours. The trailers stay dark. Nothing happens.

  I’m about to call it a night at 1:59 when something crosses my path. My heart leaps into my throat, but I keep quiet. A moment later, I realize it’s not a person or Zal or a wandering faerie. It’s Poe. The cat curls up at my feet and I reach out to stroke it. Its fur tingles like static under my touch.

  “Lilith,” I hiss into the rain. “Where are you?”

  I can barely hear my own voice over the sound of water falling through the trees, but something above me snaps and I jerk my head to the branches above. There’s a shadow moving around up there, though I can’t really make it out. She says nothing, but I can tell it’s Lilith. The figure waves, and I wonder if I’ve been forgiven for liking Kingston, or if she’s forgotten entirely. At least we have the same idea of whom to protect. I settle back down and keep watch.

  Time ticks by and the only things that move are the rain and Poe shifting around in front of me. The cat starts shying away from my touch, so I stop trying, keeping my hands shoved in my pockets to stay warm, and wishing either something would happen or the sun would rise so I could go to bed. I check my watch again. 2:43.

  Poe stirs, stretches, and wanders off.

  Something behind me rustles, and I assume it’s just the cat chasing a waterlogged mouse. Then I hear voices, and my breath catches.

  I turn, very, very slowly, and sink even deeper to the forest floor. I try to blend in with the undergrowth that I’m now thanking rather than cursing for making this entire stay uncomfortable as hell.

  I can’t see anything, not in the darkness. And through the rain, I can’t make out distinct voices. Just words. I try to edge closer, every inch of my skin on fire with adrenaline. Someone’s definitely out there, someone trying to remain hidden. I sneak closer, down an all fours, my stomach grazing the ground as I crawl. Then I stop, because I can hear them now, two voices. One of them, I’m sure, is the blond guy, but the other? Wherever she is, I hope Lilith’s getting a better view than I.

  “…can’t back out now,” the man’s voice hisses. I can just imagine him, the shadow of him, standing only a few feet away. “You know what’s at stake. The Dream Trade must stop.”

  The response is whispered, a mumble I can barely make out.

  “Had enough?” the man says. “Too much blood on your hands?”

  Another pause, and it sounds like someone’s crying their words out. If I could get closer…

  “No,” the man says. “The next phase will happen, with or without your help.”

  Another sob.

  “If you fail — ” and then he pauses. I hear a snap as something moves closer to me. My blood is pounding louder than the rain, and the only thing I can think is shit shit shit. Then there’s a hiss, and the man curses as Poe leaps from the underbrush.

  “Damn cat,” he says. Another pause. “Leave,” he finally says. “And do your part.”

  I don’t move. I don’t know how I can tell, but the guy is gone, vanished like he had before. I don’t dare move an inch in case he’s hovering somewhere nearby. I stay there, crouched in the mud, waiting for him to put a knife in my back or for the other person to stumble across me. Nothing happens. Time ticks by, and every inch of me aches from stillness. The rain doesn’t stop. Lilith doesn’t appear by my side. There’s nothing but rain and silence.

  I don’t leave, though. I don’t move. Not if something is about to happen, not if there’s a threat.

  Only when the first streak of light brightens the rain clouds do I move away from my spot. Only when I’m positive Mel hasn’t been taken, and that the people I care about are safe. I strip off my raincoat and scurry back to my trailer, stepping gently inside so none of the other bunks register the shift of weight. I dry off and curl up under the covers, hoping I’ll get enough sleep to last the rest of the day.

  I close my eyes and picture only cold and darkness and conspirators bathed in shadows, but at least my friends are safe. At least we’re safe.

  CHAPTER TEN: NOTHING FAILS

  I don’t think my eyes have been closed for ten minutes when someone’s knocking at my door. There’s bile in my throat and a cold that won’t get out of my limbs, but I push myself out of bed and open the door. No fucking way keeps repeating in my head. Everyone’s safe. They have to be safe. But somehow I know that’s not the case.

  It’s Lilith. Not Kingston, coming to say that someone else has bit the dust. I highly doubt the girl has that sort of mental capacity. I could kiss her in relief.

  She ducks under my arm and comes into the room, Poe gripped tight in her hands. Her clothes are dry and clean, but there’s a smear of mud across her pale forehead and her eyes are just as shadowed as Melody’s were yesterday.

  “Bad man,” she says the moment she sits on my bed. “Bad man, bad man’s here. Bad man wants us.”

  I look out the door once more and make sure there isn’t a commotion. No one is screaming about another death, so I close it and look at the kid shaking back and forth on my bed. She looks like a doll. One that walks around your house at night stealing knives and hiding your puppy in the freezer.

  “The bad man,” I say. “Yes, you saw him last night. Who was with him?”

  “Bad man,” she says. “Bad man chasing, bad man finding.” She looks up at me. “You can’t protect them.” Her voice has turned eerily sober once more. “And they can’t hide from him. She will die. And he will die. We will all die if the Summer Court finds us.”

  “Who?” I ask. “Kingston? Mel?”

  But she’s back in la-la-land, singing Kingston’s name under her breath. I sigh. The only other person who saw what happened last night is as good as a vegetable. The sigh becomes a yawn, and I’m about to ask her to leave or at least make room on the bed so I can continue my nap, when there’s another knock on my door.

  I open it. Kingston. Fuck.

  “It’s Melody,” he says before I even say hello. “She’s not waking up.”

  We’re out the door and walking toward her trailer in a heartbeat, Lilith at our heels. She’s still singing his name, but Kingston doesn’t seem to notice. I swear the world has slowed down; I can feel every footfall, every beat of my acidic heart pounding out its terrible truth. I failed. I failed. I failed.

  “What happened?” I ask. No one’s outside except for the cooks in the pie cart, and the air smells like bacon. “What do you mean she’s not waking up?”

  He gives me a look. “I went in to check on her. And she didn’t wake up. What doesn’t click for you?” His words are biting, but they aren’t hitting home. If roles were reversed I’d be just as terse.

  Lilith giggles at that. “Kingston’s smart. Lilith’s smart, too.”

  “Yes you are,” he says in an offhand way. Then we’re at Melody’s door, and he opens it without knocking.

  Her bunk is the same size as mine, with the same furniture setup, except the curtains drawn across the windows give the room the feeling of a crypt. The stale air and stench of sweat don’t help. Kingston walks right up to the w
indow and opens it, letting in light and fresh air. Melody is on her bed, the sheets tangled around her. I move closer and see the sweat dripping down her forehead. Her eyelids look like they’ve been covered in dark stage-makeup. She’s pale — pale as her white sheets — and except for the slightest tremble of her lips, she’s not moving.

  Lilith sidles up beside me and stares down at Melody. Poe purrs loudly in her hands.

  “Melody’s sick?” she asks, like a child asking why Granny isn’t coming home from the hospital.

  “Very,” Kingston says, stepping over to Melody and putting a hand on her forehead. A soft haze seems to flow from his fingertips, but it only lasts a second before he slumps to sitting on the bed as well. He runs his hands through his hair. Zal is once more twined around his arm, its head on the back of Kingston’s hand. The ink is a little smudged, as though even the serpent’s tired of trying to hold itself together.

  “Lilith,” he says. “Would you…would you please get Mab?”

  “Auntie Mab?” Lilith asks.

  “Yes,” he says. He sounds so, so tired. “Tell her there’s something wrong with Melody. Now, please.”

  Lilith puts Poe on the ground and nods, then turns and opens the door for her cat. They both slink out into the filtered light.

  “You didn’t leave her side last night, did you?” There’s a thermos sitting on the desk beside her bed, along with a book I remember Kingston carrying around. “You stayed in here to keep an eye on her.”

  “Someone had to,” he says, with more venom in his words than I expected.

  “I was outside,” I whisper. “In the woods. Watching.”

  He looks at me and there’s a surprised smile on his lips, but it fades in a moment. “I don’t know what’s wrong. No one came in, nothing changed. Zal was patrolling just outside the trailer all night. I didn’t sleep at all and now — ” He leans back against the wall and closes his eyes. “Now I’m too tired to light a candle, let alone heal her. I failed her, Viv. She’s going to die because of me.”

  “No, she won’t,” I say. “I think I know what’s going on. Last night, I heard someone out in the woods. Well, two people, but I only heard the one. It was the Summer Court guy. He said something about the next phase needing to happen.” I nod my head to Melody and whisper, “Do you think she’s the next phase?”

  “How could she be?” he asks. “She doesn’t have any magic. She’s just a girl.”

  “I thought she was — ”

  “She’s not,” Kingston whispers. He closes his eyes, like he doesn’t want to witness what he’s about to say. “She’s mortal, like you. She just doesn’t like admitting it.”

  I stare at Melody for a moment and wonder what got her into this mess. Was she an orphan like me? Or was she running from something else? I sit down on the other end of the bed and put a hand on her forehead. She’s burning up. If she had been running from something, it looked like it was finally catching up. Knowing this…she looks so much tinier, so much more frail. I always expected her to have some magical ability she never let on, something that made her invincible. But she was normal, mortal, and Kingston brought her here. Why? I don’t have time to ask him.

  The door opens, and Mab walks in. She’s in her sequined dressing gown, her hair loose and curling down her back. Her face is guarded, but she doesn’t seem wrathful, at least not now. She closes the door softly behind her and raises an arm like she’s throwing confetti into the air. The walls of the bunk glow gold for a moment — the slightest shimmer of light — and then are normal.

  “Prying ears,” she says, and steps forward, leaning in between Kingston and me to examine Melody.

  For a moment, no one says anything as Mab traces Mel’s outline with her hands. I watch Mab’s face, but it gives nothing away, not a hint of concern or recognition or rage. She is a perfectly painted mask of obsidian eyebrows and crimson lips. When she steps back, she looks at the both of us.

  “Which of you found her like this?” she asks, her voice a smoky whisper. It’s exactly what she said when we gathered around Sabina. My stomach drops.

  “I did,” Kingston says. “I didn’t leave her last night, after the show. She said she wasn’t feeling well, so I decided to keep an eye on her.” Neither of us mentions meeting on the beach. Neither of us wants to wonder if that’s when she became so ill.

  “And in the light of all that has happened, you failed to come to me?” Mab’s voice has a dangerous edge, even though her tone is still perfectly civil.

  “You had enough on your plate,” Kingston says. He doesn’t flinch from Mab’s gaze. I’ve never seen the two of them interact before this, but somehow, there’s no sense of a power struggle. They both seem to be on the same playing field. And that field is way, way above me. “I figured it was just a…a by-product.”

  There’s a silence in the room, then, one that makes me feel they’re sharing more than I can catch, one that makes me feel like I shouldn’t be there. It makes me wonder if that’s precisely why Kingston came and got me first. I’m the buffer to keep Mab’s rage in check.

  “Perhaps so,” Mab says. “But whatever illness has taken her…it's not normal. She has been cursed.”

  “I know,” Kingston says. “I can’t break it.”

  “Nor can I,” Mab says. “But that’s precisely why you brought her in, isn’t it?”

  They both look at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I thought, perhaps — ” Kingston begins, but Mab waves her hand and cuts him off.

  “You put your love of this girl,” she says, and a part of me hopes she means me, and not Melody, “before your obligations to the show. Under normal circumstances, you know what that would entail.” She looks again at Kingston, and there’s a sneer, one that says she’s caught on to the game. “But these aren’t normal circumstances, are they? You know I’ll be kind.”

  Kingston doesn’t contradict her. He just crosses his arms and stares at Mab like they’re discussing politics over tea. Mab raises her hands and steps away from the bed.

  “I’ve taught you well,” she says. Then she looks at me. “Vivienne, if you please?”

  “You want me to leave?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “I call upon line 23B of your contract. I request that you break this girl’s curse, or at least discover its maker so I may dispose of him. Though,” she says, looking at Kingston, “I don’t think there’s much doubt that the Summer Court is at fault.”

  Something burns inside of me at her words, something that singes through my brain the moment she utters the word contract. I want to say I have no clue what she’s talking about, but the fire is building and burning. And then I’m putting my hands on Melody’s face, one on each side, and I’m closing my eyes. The fire inside is flash and thunder and everything is roaring, roaring, the world ripping apart and filing itself back together. It’s nails on concrete fire in water trees on fire burning through suns and stars and emptiness circling the tunnel of falling, falling, falling into white. Then there’s someone’s words cutting through it all.

  “I call upon line 23C. Forget.”

  And I’m back. There’s only a ringing in my ears and a heat in my head, but there’s no fire or thunder anymore. I’m sitting on Melody’s bed covered in sweat and shaking. I can’t tell if I’m starving or about to throw up. Mab and Kingston are both looking at me with blank expressions on their faces.

  “Well,” Mab says. “That was most…unenlightening.”

  “What, what was that?” I manage, though my words are sour in my throat.

  “None of your concern,” Mab says. She raises an eyebrow. “Nothing happened, you just aren’t feeling well. Or don’t you remember?”

  “I…” But I don’t remember. I just remember sitting in the trailer, listening to them talk about curses and Mel and then feeling faint. “What was I talking about?”

  “Nothing,” Kingston says, putting a hand on my shoulder. There’s no magic, this time, but his p
resence cuts through the sickness anyway. “We should get you out of here, in case whatever Melody has is catching.”

  He helps me to my feet and squeezes me past Mab, who is still looking at me like an interesting specimen. Kingston opens the door for me and ushers me out, an arm looped around my waist.

  “I…does Mab know what’s going on?”

  “Not yet,” Kingston says. He speaks slowly, like the words are hard to find. “But we have a better idea now of what we’re up against.”

  “And?”

  He looks at me and tries to smile. It slips into a grimace. “And it isn’t good.”

  * * *

  Melody doesn’t wake up for lunch, so Kingston and I spend the meal outside her trailer, dining and talking as the clouds from yesterday’s rain slowly dissipate. He even brought a picnic blanket. It would be romantic, if not for the fact that we’re both waiting for Mel to cry out and need us. I can’t help but notice the way Kingston twitches every time there’s a noise. I’m surprised he hasn’t asked Zal to keep an eye out, but the tattoo is still wrapped around a bare arm. Maybe his familiar can only come out on special occasions?

  “You going to practice?” Kingston asks, clearly trying to keep the conversation light. We can see the pie cart from here, and people are slowly starting to meander off to wash their plates and practice or take a quick run into town. I see that Richard and Vanessa have a table to themselves, and seem deep in discussion.

  “I don’t think there’s a point in practicing anymore,” I say. It feels stupid, worrying about learning how to juggle when one of my only friends is practically in a coma and we’re all at risk of getting murdered. But, as Mab said, the show must go on, with or without us. Just the thought of being thrown back to the outside world makes my stomach flip. I try not to count the days I have left on my fingers.

  He takes a deep breath. “If you want, I could help out.”