Circus of The Darned (2 page)

Tesla a bath. It wasn't that Tesla was dirty, but next to Bruno's glossy coat he was more of a

grayish color than pure white.

"No, I'm talking to Tesla."

Soren's eyebrows scrunched up as he handed me a bucket."Same difference. I bet you were

talking about
him
again."

I fed and watered Tesla, waiting until Soren was done pampering Bruno before grabbing his

sleeve and tugging him toward the blue-and-gold trailer I shared with my mother. "Come on, my mom is cooking breakfast."

"Really?She's cooking?"

"Yeah, I know, a miracle, huh? Think I should call the newspapers or something?"

Soren snickered. We both waved at Mikaela and Ramon as they emerged from their Circus of

the Darned RV looking sleepy.

"Why is she cooking?" Soren asked. "You didn't cast one ofher own spells on her, did you?"

I laughed. "Mom is the witch, not me. I'm just…" I held up my gloved hands, the black lace outer gloves hiding the fact that beneath them I wore a thin, flesh-colored pair of latex gloves.

"She's making breakfast as penance."

"Ah," he said, nodding his head wisely. I fought to keep a smile from curling my lips. Soren was the only one near my age in the whole GothFaire, so we tended to hang out together a lot.

Besides which, he was my friend. He helped me with Tesla, and he tried to teach me the magic

tricks he was learning from his father, although I didn't seem to have his knack for it. "She lost her keys again?"

"Cell phone," I answered. "The new one she just bought to cover all ofEurope ."

"Ah," he said again, and this time I did grin. I thought he'd grin back, but instead he shot me a serious, half-wary look from beneath the thick brown lock of hair that hung over his forehead.

"What did you say to Tesla?"

"What did I say…oh.Just now?Nothing important."

Soren sucked on his bottom lip for a moment, before saying quickly, "You were talking

about
him
, weren't you?"

"Him who?"I asked, knowing exactly whom he was talking about.

"Benedikt."He rolled his eyes as he hurried alongside me. I slowed down a hair, remembering that he couldn't walk as fast as I could. "He's the only one who makes you get that look on your face."

"What look?" I touched my gloved fingertips to my face.

His brows pulled together in a frown. "The one you get around Benedikt—kind of dreamy, kind of annoyed."

I laughed out loud. I couldn't help myself—Soren's description of my expression just about

perfectly described my reaction to Ben, vampire of my dreams. Or so he wanted to be. I still

wasn't sure about the whole girlfriend to a Moravian Dark One thing. "I wish you'd lighten up on Ben, Soren. He's not really as bad as he looks."

"He has a motorcycle and long hair," Soren said darkly, his freckled fair-skinned face going red with embarrassment. He refused to meet my eyes as I socked him gently on the arm. "And

earrings and tattoos. And he makes you angry sometimes."

"A lot of people have long hair, motorcycles, earrings, tats, and make me angry," I said, caught between the desire to tell Soren the truth about Ben, and the urge to tell him there was nothing

going on between us. Because of his physical defect (one leg was a few inches shorter than the other), Soren tended to be a bit touchy sometimes, especially concerning Ben. I don't quite know why he'd taken such an instant dislike to Ben, but I did my best to keep him from getting too bent out of shape. "He just happens to be one of them. And before you say it, I know he's dangerous, you don't trust him, and he means only trouble for me. Heard it before, got the T-shirt, Soren."

He made an angry sniffing noise as we rounded the long metal trailer that Mom had let me paint

when we arrived at GothFaire two months before. Everyone's trailer had been customized to

reflect their personality, and ours was, I thought, a particularly nice arrangement of gold stars and moons on a midnight blue background.

I admired it for a moment before I realized that Soren wasn't saying anything.

I sighed to myself, knowing that I'd inadvertantly offended him. "I'm sorry, Soren. I didn't mean to make you mad. I appreciate you being all concerned about Ben, but honest, there's no reason

to be. We're just friends. And he's not going to do anything to hurt me. He can't, he's…" I closed my mouth over the words that would spill Ben's secret. As far as I knew, only two people in the GothFaire other than Imogen and I knew what she and Ben really were. I wasn't about to go

blabbing around to everyone that they were part of
an
immortal
race
that most people thought of as vampires.

"I'm not mad," he said stiffly. "I don't care what you do."

I stopped Soren as he was about to walk past the door to our trailer, my hand on his arm. He

looked down at my gloves, his eyes stormy. I gritted my teeth for a moment,then peeled off both the black lace glove and the latex one, gently touching my fingertips to his wrist. Instantly my head was filled with his emotions, anger roiling around with frustration, a smidgen of jealousy, and something soft and warm, a squidgy feeling of… I gasped and jerked my hand back. Soren's

cheeks fired up even redder than they had become with just a few days in the strong Swedish

sunlight, but his eyes didn't leave mine, almost belligerently daring me to say what I'd felt within him.

"Oh. I… uh…" I stammered, not knowing what to say. I slipped my gloves back on, waving toward the trailer door. "We'd better hurry to breakfast while Mom is still in the cooking mood."

He stiffened for a minute, and I thought he was going to say something, but instead he gave a

sharp little nod and swung open the door to the trailer.

I blew out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding and followed him, wondering how it was that just two months ago I'd wanted to blend into the crowd, praying that no one would notice that I was different from everyone else in my high school. Big, gawky, and uncomfortable around the

kids in my school because of my weird talent, I had few friends and not much of a life. Now here I was traveling all over Europe with a job—palm reader in training—a horse that depended on

me to earn his feed and vet bills, a drop-dead gorgeous vampire claiming I was the person he'd

waited three hundred years for, and Soren crushing like mad on me.

Life is sometimes too weird for words.

Chapter Two

"Oh, there you are. How did the readings go tonight, honey?"

I shrugged and slipped behind my mother into the booth, where she handed out spells and

bottles of good luck, protective amulets of all varieties, and her big seller, love charms."Same old, same old.Big and small mounds of Mars, lots of lines, a couple of scars, and one missing

finger."

She gave me a warning look out of the corner of one eye as I picked up Davide, her fat black-

and-white cat, and sat down in the chair he'd been occupying. Davide gave me a long look, his

whiskers twitching irritably as I stroked his back. Mom handed over a bottle of good luck,

warning the buyer to use it sparingly.

"Were you wearing your gloves?" she asked, once the buyer had trotted off. "Or did you really read palms?"

I lifted my chin. Mom had made a deal with Peter that I would read palms every night for four

hours, in exchange for Tesla's food and other incidentals. Peter said once my apprenticeship to Imogen was up—I had another two months left on that—he'd also start paying me a salary in

addition to the horsey things. "I did the readings the only way I know how."

She shook her head as she gathered up her things. "Franny, Franny, Franny… the god and

goddess gave you a gift. You should be proud of it, proud to use it to help people."

"I don't see how being able to feel people's emotions and thoughts is going to help anyone—"

"You were given that gift for a reason, honey," she said, just like I knew she would. We'd had this argument regularly since I was twelve, when my "gift" (I thought of it as a curse) manifested itself. "If you would just open yourself up to the path… oh, bullfrogs, I'm late. I'm off to get into my invocation things. We're short on happiness and insight, honey, so don't allow anyone to buy more than one of each."

I nodded, eyeing the colorful array of glass vials that Mom had set out to entice buyers. Unlike other people who hocked similar items, the stuff my mother made and sold actually worked. I

know,I had a case of the giggles for three weeks straight last year after she accidentally spilled a batch of happiness on me.

"Oh, there's a man looking for you," she called over her shoulder as she hurried off toward our trailer. She waved toward the end of the row of booths, where the main tent that held the magic shows was located. "I think he's somewhere down there."

"A man?"I asked, wondering if Ben had returned.But no. Mom knew Ben. Even if she didn't approve of him—and I sensed another "you're too young to have a boyfriend" lecture coming over her—she wouldn't refer to him as just
a man
, I wondered who could be looking for me, and why, but didn't have too long to ponder the question. Mom's booth was very popular no matter

what country we were in because she used only positive magic.

"I'm sorry, but for curses, you'll have to visit the demonologist," I politely told a serious-looking young man. I held up an onyx-colored bottle decorated with a question mark charm. "The

nastiest thing we have here is forgetfulness."

The man frowned even more. "Where is this demonologist?"

I pointed toward the right. Although it was almost eleven o'clock at night, it was still light out, kind ofa twilight . Because we were so far north, the sun never completely set during the

summer. The Swedes have something they call white nights—basically, it's light enough to read

by, but not as bright as the midnight sun areas farther north in the Arctic Circle."Black and white-striped awning on the left-hand side. His name is Armand. You can't miss him—he has a

goatee and horns."

The man blinked at me.

"The horns arefake ," I reassured him."Just for effect." I waited before the guy left before adding, "At least I
think
they'refake ."

You never really knew with the people around here.

I sold a few spells, had to argue with a lady who wanted to buy all three of the remaining bottles of inner beauty, and caught someone trying to do the five-finger discount on a packet of dried

rose petals (one of the ingredients in the do-it-yourself love spell kit). I've always told Mom that she should keep something bad on hand for people who tried to rip her off, but she insists that we return cruelty with kindness, so instead of calling over Kurt (who, in addition to being a

magician, also doubled as a security guy), I grabbed the girl's hand and sprinkled a little kindness on it, gritting my teeth the whole time.

"Have you seen Tib?" Mikaela asked when the shoplifting girl ran off rubbing her hand. She stopped in front of the booth, scanning the crowds.

"Not lately, but if you look for a group of drooling women, you're bound to find him," I answered, sucking in my lips in case I was slobbering just thinking about Tibolt.

Mikaela, her husband Ramon, and Tibolt made up Circus of the Darned, a group that specialized

in odd sideshow-type acts. C of D was traveling with us for a couple weeks, something they evidently did each year.

Mikaela made an annoyed sound, her short black hair sticking up like a porcupine's spines. She

muttered something in Swedish,then said, "He is supposed to be checking the chainsaws!"

"The chainsaws?Oh, for your juggling bit. Yeah, well, you know Tibolt.Where he goes, so go a whole bunch of girls."

Mikaela, who just happened to be Tibolt's cousin, rolled her kohl-lined eyes."Hrmph. When is your mother's circle?"

"inan hour. She always holds them at midnight.Something to do with the lineup of stars and stuff. Are you going to watch?"

"No, she has invited me to join."

My eyebrowsraised up. Mom was usually very picky about inviting non-witches to participate in

her circles. She normally tapped into the big Wiccan network that spread acrossEurope , using

the local witches to form circles.

"Are you Wiccan?" I asked.

Her spiky hair trembled as she shook her head. "I am a high priestess of Ashtar."

"Wow. A high priestess who juggles running chain-saws, spews fire, and swallows swords.

Cool!"

She grinned at me for a minute. "It runs in my family. Tibolt is a mage, you know, but he will be at the
blot
tonight after our show."

"He's a mage?"

She nodded."A practitioner of magic. He is fifth level."

I couldn't help wondering if he was working some sort of mojo that had all the girls fawning on him. I mean, yeah, he was gorgeous and all, but I had a seriously hot guy who believed that I was the key to his salvation, and yet even I couldn't resist staring at Tibolt.

"Uh… how many levels of mageness are there?"

"Seven. Oh, there he is—I will see you at the circle, yes?"

I sighed."Probably. Mom likes me to watch. She thinks it's good for my inner spirit or

something like that."

She mumbled something about that being true,then raced off toward the tall blond man who was being swarmed by a gaggle of females.

Ten minutes later I was relieved of booth duty, and went off to watch the end of Peter and

Soren's magic act.

Normally the magic acts were over by ten PM so whatever Goth band was playing with us that

week could set up and go live by eleven, but the during the two weeks that Circus of the Darned teamed up with the Faire, there were no bands, and the magic acts alternated with C of D shows, which included a killer double sword-swallowing finale that made me hold my breath.

I slipped into the back of the main tent, standing at the rear to avoid getting in anyone's way.