by Kim Smejkal
The plague doctor shifted toward her. Again. He’d be in her lap soon enough.
His thigh kept pushing against hers. His smile was of the everyone loves it blinding variety. He’d clearly bathed in made-for-Celia pheromones that morning, basking like a lizard on a rock as he drove the wagon, using his honey to lure Celia in.
She’d always liked honey.
Damn it!
Celia ground her teeth, actively refusing to be charmed. She might not know what to do about Diavala, but this was something she could handle.
Instead of leaning away from him again, she let the next big bounce of the wagon take her closer. Her thigh pressed hard against his from knee to hip, and she slotted her arm under his as if they were puzzle pieces sliding together. Now his arm was a captive of her chains as well. When she tilted her head toward him, her exposed lips under her mask pointed at the long line of his jaw. Her words fluttered against skin. “Is this what you’re after?”
She reveled in the moment when his body tensed; he hadn’t expected her to play offense.
“Whatever satisfies you, devil.” His voice was soft and deep, soothing and calm. But his smile didn’t know what to do with itself.
Celia’s fingertips grazed the leather of his pants, down and up in one sweeping stroke, with the jingling of chains tracing the trail until she found an open clasp of his trench coat. She notched her thumb into it and cupped the plane of his hip. Two could play at his game. She didn’t move her lips from near his ear. “It might work for you onstage, to offer heaven and then snatch it away. But I’m not your audience, plague doctor. Remember that. I didn’t pay an admission fee; I don’t leave when the gates close.”
Her body was alight, but her words came from someone else: sure and strong, as soft, deep, soothing, and calm as his. They swayed together to the motion of the carriage as one body, the rain pattering above and misting them from the sides. She resisted, barely, the urge to pull the chains around him so they were trapped together.
Celia whispered, “If you want to dance with me, I’ll expect you to finish what you start.”
They rolled over a deep rut, and the wagon lurched. Her hand clasped his hip tighter. Her lips rolled closer. With her free hand, she pulled her beast mask down so it hung against her chest like a macabre necklace. “And I’ll expect you maskless, Griffin, so ask yourself if you’re ready for that particular dance.” Her gaze roamed along his neck, and she had to quell the absurd desire to search for the source of the clove and lemon scent with her lips.
Her mind had seized on an opportunity to scare him into backing off, using his plague doctor shield against him. But her heart pounded in a way that was incongruent with her threat . . . as if it truly wanted his submission. Every point of contact with him burned through her costume despite the cool damp.
Retreat, retreat. Under her hand, his hip flexed as he shifted.
She waited for him to pull away, to realize that his exasperating game with her was over. She waited for the win.
But he didn’t pull away.
Instead, the plague doctor tilted toward the damp Book of Profeta in Anya’s lap and pushed his words right over Celia’s head. “I assumed you two weren’t believers.”
“We’re not,” Anya mumbled. “There’s nothing else to read, and some of the stories are actually pretty good.”
Where Celia was determined to amass numbers, perfect the show, and please Diavala, Anya spent her free time analyzing every word of the Book of Profeta, the version in her hands relieved of its duty as a plant stand in Kitty Kay’s wagon.
“The ink is a parasite. A subtle poison,” Anya had hissed at their last stop. “If we could access the Chest Majestic, smash it, burn the filth inside, all Diavala’s power would die with us. We’d be her last batch of inklings, and a thousand-year reign would end. Look, the Chest is said to be indestructible, but I bet that’s yet another Profetan lie. In order to be called indestructible, someone, at some point, must have tried to destroy it.” Anya had stabbed her finger at the tattered, water-stained book. “There must be something in here. A story we can look at through a new lens.” Anya’s single-mindedness was becoming alarming. “If only I could rip the ink from my veins,” she’d muttered. “Dangling, dripping, bleeding out in black and red . . .”
When Celia had reached into the Chest Majestic all those years ago and submerged her hands in the ink, it had startled her that it felt so normal. Cool and creamy, like milk. Then a mild tingling as it soaked through her skin and wound its way into her bloodstream, like coming into a warm room after a crisp night. But when she lifted her hands out, they’d repulsed her. Thick, viscous strings of black dribbled on her skin: moving too slowly, congealing into globs too quickly. Instinct had made her try to flick it off, but not a drop of it let go, so determined was it to finish its course and merge with her blood.
She understood Anya’s disgust, but she couldn’t get over that central fact: the ink was in their blood. They were the poisoned ones. This was their fight, and it was an impossible one. Impossible to smash the heavily fortified and guarded Chest Majestic unless the mistico miraculously decided to help them. Impossible to fight back at all. Diavala was too powerful, her institution too strong—but Celia had lost the ability to reason with Anya about it days ago.
Stuck there, with no help in sight coming from her friend, wrapped around a plague doctor but determined that he would be the one to pull away, Celia stared at the horses. From the corner of her eye she caught Anya shaking her head and casting her a frown—What the hell are you doing?
Fantastic question. Trying to call him out on his bullshit had only highlighted her own.
Every muscle the plague doctor possessed was tight with tension—his leg, his waist, his face—but he acted as if Celia weren’t curled around him at all.
And just like that, she knew she wouldn’t win.
Still, as the seconds turned to minutes and the minutes stretched on, she realized that maybe he wouldn’t win either. The bumps in the muddy road didn’t loosen the strain in his muscles, but bunched them up more. And as he coiled, she did too. They tightened together like snakes determined to choke each other.
She didn’t need to use those chains after all.
One of his hands had moved to hers at his hip, but not to pull it away.
They passed another notice board with two familiar faces front and center. “There you are again.” The plague doctor forced a chuckle, and it rumbled down his chest and fell into her clutching hand. “So popular, you two.”
She would have flushed deeper if she wasn’t already mighty warm. Retreat. Retreat!
The moment the Mob had protected their new members coming through the checkpoint, those notices were made redundant. When Marco had raised his concerns, Kitty Kay’s words to him and the troupe had been, amidst heavy peels of laughter, “Since when does the Mob care about the outside world? We have our own!”
And Celia knew that the plague doctor agreed. Whatever crime they believed Celia and Anya might be guilty of or caused them to flee the temple, the Mob’s moral compass swung independently from the rest of the world.
No one had dwelled on the Touched mistico in Sabazio. They’d flitted by it so quickly, Celia had to wonder what other kinds of things Citizens of Everywhere routinely saw. Only the plague doctor and Vincent had acted strangely since Sabazio, both for entirely different reasons.
The plague doctor cleared his throat. “Kitty Kay has you on the playbill now. Milloni and Ravino rode ahead to plaster posters all over Malidora that have your ghastly faces on them.” He gripped two sets of reins loosely in his free hand, driving the eight horses pulling the wagon in a way that made it look easier than breathing. “The whispers are turning to roars. The rumor is the Rabble Mob have found a way to harness some rare magic. That we’re entertainers, but more.” He hooked a boot around Celia’s ankle and pressed his calf along the top of her shin. “Interesting, that everyone is picking up on the more you
two bring to the show, isn’t it?”
Anya mumbled something unintelligible. Celia nodded, her breath clamped inside tight lungs.
She didn’t fight him when he casually worked her thumb out of the buttonhole of his jacket. Or when he cupped her hand from behind and splayed her fingers against his chest, holding her palm flat so she felt his heart beating under his skin. A little fast. Like hers.
With a little more room to move, he pointed his mask at Celia, angling his face in front of her so she couldn’t escape the hint of his eyes behind those dark lenses.
She didn’t fight him, but damn, she should have.
She watched his lips form slow, low, deliberate words—“Your pupils have swallowed your irises, little devil”—then transform into the full force of his wide, confident, unwavering smile.
“Damn it, you’re infuriating!” she said. As she tried to untangle herself from the plague doctor, she expected him to laugh in victory. But the only sound he made was a warm, melting hum that flowed through the length of him and into the places where they still touched.
She straightened her hair before pulling her mask on, trying to snatch back the last strands of her dignity, then shuffled closer to Anya.
Anya calmly flipped a page of the book and said, “That was entertaining,” without even looking up.
“Hate you too,” Celia grumbled.
Anya shrugged. “I’d bet anything his pupils are even bigger, Cece.”
“True,” the plague doctor said. “It’s quite irritating.”
Celia wanted to jump off the wagon onto the beautiful silver dapple in front of her and leave them both behind.
Many excruciating minutes later, the plague doctor slowed the wagon to a halt for the next scheduled stop and leaped over the side, leaving them without a word.
The ruts in the muddy road were full of water, streaming like rivers. The sky wasn’t its usual Illinian gray, but a violent shade of indigo, the seamless cloud cover deciding to match their moods. Tree branches in the surrounding countryside creaked and groaned, protesting against the wind.
The burst of movement as people emerged from the dozen different wagons was immediate, loud, and over almost as soon as it had begun. The rain pounded too hard to linger outside, so it was a mad dash for everyone to congregate inside with their friends for a meal.
Celia and Anya were the only ones who stayed out in the misery. With the Book of Profeta tucked under her arm, Anya wrung out her long hair like a sodden rag. The rain pounded down on the awning above them like a meat tenderizer as they waited for Seer Ostra, sloth and travel cook, to finish preparing everyone’s lunch, so they could run around handing them out. Celia’s apologies to the troupe had taken the form of mending Georgio’s many costumes, playing Imp tiles with Ravino, hammering nails into wobbly floor planks so Caspian and Sky could frolic instead of work, teaching Remy to draw, and handing out Seer’s meals. Anya had helped with some of it.
“I can’t handle this anymore,” Anya said. Drenched and shivering, her dress more dampened gray than white, she pointedly looked from Celia to Vincent’s wagon and back again, her fuse burning dreadfully low. Time on the road had done nothing but make her wet and determined to push back against Diavala, every turn of the wagon’s wheels toward Malidora cinching her frustration tighter. “I’m going inside, and you’re dealing with lunches alone today.” Anya leaned in so they were almost cheek to cheek. “You can do it. It’ll be fine.” She delivered a quick peck to Celia’s nose to soften the razor’s edge of her words before sloshing away.
The gnaw in Celia’s stomach wrenched itself into a knot. There was the real issue: not the plague doctor’s simmering, not the incessant rain, not Anya’s preferred reading material.
Celia had avoided Vincent for days, leaving Anya to deliver his meals, but that didn’t mean she’d been unaware of his presence. After the night Diavala had revealed herself, where menace dripped from every word, so obviously not-Vincent, Diavala had retreated. In every aspect, Vincent remained mostly the same—quiet, watchful, serene—going about his business as if nothing were amiss.
But Celia noted his sleep-deprived, shadowed eyes, the way he sometimes abruptly stopped and looked around as if he needed to get his bearings, the way he gently traced his purple and blue bracelet from finger to wrist, lost in thought.
“He needs a vacation or something,” Remy had remarked.
Celia could have sunk into the ground from the weight of her shame. It wasn’t right that she ignored her friend, no matter how terrified she was that Diavala might steal the conversation.
Vincent’s wagon was snakelike, with an accordion bend in the middle. The dark and deserted main living area led to the sleeping areas, partitioned off with curtains, making a long hallway.
Or a tunnel.
Or a throat.
“Vincent?” She knew where his space was, had visited this wagon often to draw with Remy or play tiles with Vincent, but she whispered as she walked, holding her mask in front of her as if the horns could defend her. How had Anya done this so often? “Vincent?” She left a trail of water behind her like the slime trail of a slug.
She took a steadying breath before wrapping her fingers around the thick curtain to his private room.
“Vincent?”
He sat cross-legged on his cot, one candle illuminating the comfortable space, holding a small framed picture in his hands. Celia had seen only a few tintypes in her life. Tenors didn’t translate to photographs, so people used them only as keepsakes of family and close friends. Unless you knew the subjects well, the captured images were too vague to mean much. As if dress, facial features, and body type were enough to illuminate the soul of a person.
“I brought lunch for you.” Celia placed the plate on his small side table with an abundance of care.
“You’re soaked, Lalita.” He grabbed one of his blankets and tossed it at her. She juggled her mask to catch it.
Again, stupidly, “Vincent?”
She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and sat down opposite him, examining his face and searching every dip and line for evidence of the other. Even without his white face paint he looked ghostly, his light eyes blending into pale skin, everything leached of color.
Is it you, Diavala? Can you hear everything? Celia stared hard into Vincent’s eyes, cursing that there wasn’t more light. She needed proof—a dull, darkened gaze, a flicker of malice, some tangible evil and otherness—it had to be there. She needed to see it.
She didn’t.
“I didn’t grow up in this Rover troupe,” he said, showing her the tintype. “We mix and mingle, right? Otherwise we’d be a frightening group, all interbred and strange.” He chuckled in his melancholy way. “Well, I suppose we’re strange anyway, but stranger.”
He pointed to himself, a young Vincent, maybe ten or eleven, surrounded by a gaggle of siblings and three smiling adults standing behind their rowdiness. Only a few of the children aimed themselves forward, most ignoring the formality of a portrait session.
“We did this before splintering. All of us over ten years old were sent to different Rover bands.” It sounded like Vincent, the conversation innocent enough to be with him.
So Diavala hadn’t lied. She took residence with someone. Two souls in one body. But did that mean Diavala was allowing this conversation? Where are you right now, Diavala?
“Is that why you’ve been so—withdrawn—lately?” Her heart boomed in her chest. “You miss them?” She swallowed and leaned forward.
“No, just feeling nostalgic. Looking backwards is always laced with a bit of regret, isn’t it?” He smiled his sad smile, sounding like an elder at the end of his life rather than a young person on the cusp of experience.
That scared her.
He sighed and put the picture down. “I have been feeling different the past few days, though. It’s like I’m vibrating on the inside. A struck tuning fork covered in flesh and skin.”
S
he startled back. “Your bones are humming?”
Humming bones. It’s all games, darling. It’s all lies. You lose when your bones hum from the inside. The fair-haired mistico, with her rotten breath and manic eyes.
Celia’s very first lesson after she’d arrived at the temple—and now she finally understood it. The humming bones happened under Diavala’s possession. The Touch was a product of unpossession: inevitable, terrible. At the hands of the mistico’s training: final.
Vincent misunderstood her reaction and shrugged it off, embarrassed. “It’s nothing. I’m just tired.”
It wasn’t nothing. Finding the cure for the Touch was everything. Celia was prepared to dance with Diavala as long as possible just to make sure Vincent survived without losing his mind.
“When did it start? Sabazio?”
He startled at her quick questioning. “No. When we were already on the road. Or maybe I just didn’t notice it. It was so subtle at first, but it’s . . . growing.” He shook his head, like that sounds so stupid.
Then a shudder raced through his shoulders, out of control and sudden. With a quiet groan, his crystal eyes flicked up and caught hers. Her heart stopped.
She swallowed. Inhaled. Leaned backwards. “Diavala?” she whispered.
“The devil’s work? Maybe something like that, Lalita.” It still sounded like Vincent, the endearment soft on his lips.
But then he smiled again, not sadly. Far too many teeth gleamed. Celia wanted to run.
One moment Vincent, the next Diavala. The other lingered just under the surface. Nothing changed in Vincent’s tone or tenor, or in his eyes. He remained her doomed Palidon.
Celia needed to gather information. Be a miser hoarding coin, a farmer reaping harvest, a child collecting bugs. A goal to keep her from screaming. From crumpling. From running.
If she could examine her collection later, maybe something in it would be useful.
“I’m curious—” Celia started.
Diavala nodded. “Of course you are.”
