The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels) (13 page)

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

The weight of
what he says stuns me for a moment. Sure, I’d entertained the idea, but having
him actually offer to mess with my mind makes me pause.

“I thought
you said you didn’t do that anymore.”

He looks
away, toward Melody’s door. “I’ll do what I have to to keep you around. Even if
Mab said what she did in anger, she can’t negate it. Faeries can’t lie.”

“It’s not
important,” I say, though I’m touched by his words. There’s more to this guy
than I first thought. “I kind of think there are bigger things at stake.”

He sighs.
“Maybe.”

“Why is it
such a big deal?” I say. “The Dream Trade, I mean.”

The
question’s been nagging at me ever since he mentioned it, and after last
night’s spying venture, it sounds like there’s more to it than just sustenance.
It almost sounded like some drug cartel, the way the Summer Court was willing
to kill just to have it stop. But they’re just dreams. Surely there are other
ways of making people imagine.

Kingston
takes a bite of his apple and stares up at the sun. “I told you, dreams are
what keep the faeries alive. If people didn’t dream about them, they wouldn’t
exist.”

“So they’re
figments of our imagination?”

He chuckles.
“Ask Mab that and find out. No, it’s more like a symbiotic relationship.”

“Last night
when I was in the woods, the guy said the Dream Trade must stop. What if this
isn’t about killing us? What if the Summer Court just wants Mab to stop hogging
all the faerie food?”

Kingston
grins at me. “I’m sure Mab already thought of that, and it’s really not so cut
and dry.” He tosses the apple aside and stands, reaching his hand down to me. I
take it; his grip is warm and slightly sticky. He pulls me to standing. “It’s
time you saw the Wheel,” he says.

I don’t
question. He doesn’t let go of my hand as he takes me around to another
trailer. His touch tingles, and I don’t know if it’s magic or my imagination or
some combination of both. I half-expect him to take me to some invisible,
hidden door, but it’s just another bunk like any other. Door number zero.

“Now,” he
says, looking over his shoulder with a conspiratorial grin, “You can’t tell
anyone I showed you this. Technically speaking, Mab and I are the only ones
allowed in.”

I glance
around. There’s no one nearby — they’re all at lunch or practice. I’m hoping my
streak of rebellious bad luck isn’t still with me.

“Maybe we
shouldn’t — ” I begin. “I don’t want her more pissed off.”

“Pussy,”
Kingston says. He squeezes my hand, though, and pulls open the door, stepping
inside and dragging me in behind him.

The door
closes silently, and at first it’s as dark as Mab’s trailer. It smells of hay
and barn wood and summer heat. Kingston snaps his fingers and a flame appears,
balancing on the tip of his index finger.

The flame
floats out of his hand and disperses to all corners of the room, lighting a
couple dozen candles along the way. The room glows with warm light, its
contents slowly coming into focus.

It’s about
ten feet square — much larger than the trailer, which makes me think we’re not
actually in the trailer at all — and the walls are wood. The floor is
cobblestone with tufts of hay scattered across the smooth grey stones. The room
is entirely bare except for a single structure in the middle of the room. It’s
wood and round and clunky and covered in threads. A loom.

It’s so
ordinary it’s a letdown — not that I’ve seen any looms in real life. I could
easily imagine Rumpelstiltskin sitting on one side, turning a pile of straw
into gold. But there’s no one there. Still, the giant wheel — easily my height —
turns slowly on its own, pulling a myriad of strings into place, the shuttle
sliding back and forth at a lazy pace. Kingston takes me around to one side, to
where the completed pattern is working itself out and draping into a large
wicker basket.

“This,” he
says, “is what all the fuss is about.”

I stare at
it.

The fabric
the loom produces is beautiful, sure. It’s a rainbow piece of cloth covered in
twisting patterns and colorful swirls, but it doesn’t look special. Probably not
worth creating an entire circus for. Definitely not worth killing over. Sabina’s and Roman’s and Melody’s bodies flash through my mind. All that suffering and
loss, all for a bit of pretty silk?

“That’s it?”
I say. I can’t help but sound disappointed. I was picturing some beautiful
golden Wheel of Fate or something encrusted with diamonds. Something more up
Mab’s alley. This? This is just something out of a heritage museum. It’s
borderline pathetic.

“I knew you’d
say that,” Kingston says. “Which is precisely why I brought you here.”

A pair of
tiny scissors appears in his hands. The blades glint in the candlelight. He
reaches down into the basket and snips, pulling out a tiny square of cloth.
It’s barely the size of a thumbnail.

“This,” he
says, holding the square with the scissor blades like a tiny morsel, “would
sell in the Night Market for a minor favor or a day’s worth of subjugation.” He
holds it out. “But I’ll give you a taste for free.”

“It’s a scrap
of fabric.”

“Just touch
it,” he says. I reach out. He drops the tiny blue square of cloth in my palm.

Lights
explode across my vision and suddenly I’m no longer in the trailer; I’m soaring
through the clouds, light shining from the heavens. My arms are stretched out
to the sides and I’m giddy, laughing, bubbling with happiness. I swoop down,
break cloud cover and smile at the brilliant green fields that stretch all the
way to the horizon. I bank right, coast into a beam of soft sunlight —

And I’m back.
My arms are stretched out to the sides and there’s a giant grin on my face. I
quickly drop my hands and try to force away the dopey smile. Definitely not
quickly enough.

“Flying
dream, eh?” he says. “Should have thought as much. Blues usually are.”

I look down
at the fabric in my hand. The tiny bolt is now grey. The moment I move, it
dissolves into ash.

“One use
only, I’m afraid,” he says.

“What was
that?”

“A dream,” he
says. “Energy. Pure, creative, spontaneous energy. Mortals experience it as
visions. For the fey, it’s like oxygen.”

I look at the
loom.

“So this, what,
converts dreams into fabric?”

Kingston
shrugs. “Something like that. It solidifies energy, focuses it into something
tangible. I’ve seen Mab store it in crystals and books and skulls, whatever
takes her fancy. This is just easier to regulate. She can sell by the yard and
make a killer profit.”

“You make her
sound like some sort of drug lord,” I say.

“What’s the
point of drugs if not to dream?” he says, and I can’t think of any way to
counter that.

“Anyway,
that’s the Trade. Mab converts all dreams in the tent into this, which she then
sells or distributes to the other fey. Her own Court gets a discount, while
Summer is taxed. But they need it, so they pay. Mortals don’t dream as much as
they used to, and Summer’s still putting all their effort into the publishing
industry…which wasn’t their best idea.”

I watch the
loom weave its slow pattern, imagining it working double-speed when the tent is
full and imaginations soaring.

“I still
don’t see why it’s such a big deal,” I say.

“It’s
sustenance for them,” Kingston says. He moves in a little closer. “Entire
civilizations have been destroyed for less. Religion, ideology, love.” He looks
at me, a wild glint in his eyes. “Love is usually the one everyone feels is
worth dying over.”

“Have you
ever been in love?” I ask. I don’t know where the words come from. I only know
I want him to answer without words, the way I’d like to draw him close and
breathe him in.

“Have you?”

I reach out,
my hand only an inch from his arm.

And then
there’s a knock at the door. Kingston jerks back and walks over to it.
Damn
my shitty luck.

“Should I
hide?” I ask. Even as I say it, I know there’s nowhere to hide in the space.

He just looks
at me and shakes his head with a smile that makes me feel idiotic. He opens the
door. It’s Lilith. She barely gives me a second glance as she steps into the
room.

“Saw you, saw
you come here,” she says. “Important, important.” She goes up on tiptoes to
whisper something in his ear, something that makes his eyes go wide. If he
looked pale before, now he looks positively ghostly.

“Show me,” he
says, and jumps out the door. Lilith goes right after him. Neither of them look
back to see if I’m following, but I run over and hop out the door into the
blinding sun. They’re already sprinting toward the chapiteau. I follow.

Lilith takes
us around to the far side of the tent, the one facing the woods. Poe is sitting
beside one of the support stakes, staring at the blue wall panel with a bristle
to his fur. Lilith slows down when she gets there. It takes me a moment to
figure out what caused Kingston to raise a hand to his mouth. Then I see it.
There, in the seam between the blue and grey panels, is a rip. Not just a tiny
tear, but a good eight-foot gash that starts just above arm’s reach and stops a
few inches above the grass.

“No,”
Kingston whispers over and over, like a terrible mantra. I look away from the
rip and stare at him. Lilith is kneeling at his side, one hand out to pet Poe,
the other reaching up to lace around Kingston’s fingers. He looks mortified.

After a
moment of standing there, I ask the question digging at me.

“What’s the
big deal?”

He looks at
me like I’ve just spoken the worst of heresies.

“Get Mab,” he
says through his fingertips. “Get her. Now.”

I know that
look, ‘the sky is falling’ darkness, and I turn without question and run
straight toward Mab’s trailer.

Mab’s door
opens immediately after the first knock.

She stands
before me in a leather vest and a black mesh undershirt that reaches her
knee-high leather boots. Her leggings are black leather as well, and her waist
is cinched with a belt of tiny silver skulls. Behind her, the trailer is
swathed in shadows and candlelight and the scent of moss and pine. She leans
out the door toward me. I step back, almost dropping into a curtsy.

“Mab,” I say.
“Kingston…Kingston told me to get you. The tent — ”

“What about
the tent?” she asks, cutting me off. She steps down and the door closes behind
her. “What else could possibly go wrong today?”

“There’s a
rip.”

She actually
flinches back at this, as though I’ve slapped her across her rouged cheekbones.
One hand goes to her chest, the other reaches out and grabs me by the shirt.
She pulls me in close. “Show me.”

I lead her
across the grounds, over to where Kingston and Lilith are still standing.
Neither of them has moved. Even Poe is transfixed by the rip.

Mab releases
my shirt and steps past the two of them, one hand just barely touching the
tent, her fingers flinching back as though it’s on fire. She hovers there a
moment, her face unreadable, and none of us dares to breathe, let alone ask
what’s going on.
It’s just a fucking rip in the seam,
I want to say, but
clearly there’s more to it than that. Like most things in this company, I have
no doubt there’s more to this than meets the eye.

“We tear down
now,” Mab says. Her voice is quiet, and there’s a waver in her words. That note
of fear is enough to make me believe the worst. She was calm for the murders,
for the confrontation with the Summer Court’s herald. Whatever this is, it’s
worse than all of that, and I have a terrible feeling it’s only the beginning
of the end.

I
can
bring you somewhere safe,” she said. She offered her hand, and I took it. I
don’t remember why I had been in the alley, and I don’t know what had brought
me to listen to a strange woman in the middle of Detroit. All I remember is
that when she smiled, I believed her. Nothing could have been worse than what
lay behind me.

She led me
down the street, not saying much. People passed by us with umbrellas and raincoats
and didn’t look at us twice, even though we should have looked out of place.
They may have been dark shadows moving through the mist and rain. But Mab and
I, we were something darker, something hidden in the corners of sight. When I
think back, the one thing I remember is the greyness, the melancholy, and the
splash of crimson that was Mab’s dress. Then we turned the corner and stepped
into another world.

The tent
rose above us in the neon-lit park, all blue and wild and vibrant,
Cirque
des Immortels
roaring in acid-green lights. It was color and sound, reds and
blues and yellows, tufts of fire and spinning clubs. Music cartwheeled through
the crowd that laughed and pointed in the broad avenue leading up to the tent.
I stopped, speechless, and watched as giants on stilts trundled past, stared at
the woman clothed in only a python standing beside a sign for a freak show. Mab
put a hand on my shoulder, but she didn’t make me move. The place smelled of
popcorn and cotton candy and something else, something that defied scent.
Something that smelled like energy and excitement.

“Welcome,”
she said. “Welcome to your new home.”

There’s a
pause after Mab’s declaration. She stands there, staring at the rip in the
tent, and none of us dares to breathe. Finally, she turns around and crouches
low so she’s at Lilith’s level. Poe prowls around her feet, rubbing against her
leather boots. She ignores him.

“Lilith,
baby,” she whispers, “Auntie Mab needs you to tell the Shifters to come at
once. When you’ve done that, I need you to go into my trailer with Poe and hide
until I find you.”

“Hide?”
Lilith says, cocking her head to one side like a broken bird.

“Yes,
sweetie,” Mab says. She reaches out and pets Lilith’s head. The exchange makes
me cringe. “I fear the bad man might be nearby, and we don’t want him finding
you.”

She stands as
Lilith scampers away, Poe at her heels. She looks at Kingston and me, takes a
deep breath, and then hesitates. Mab never hesitates. Mab is assured,
confident, powerful. Once more, I feel the end drawing near. In spite of the
heat, my skin is covered in goose bumps. I want nothing more than to grab
Kingston’s hand for support, but he still looks shell-shocked and worlds away.
Besides, I can’t show weakness. Not now. Not in front of Mab.

“Kingston,”
she finally says. “It is becoming increasingly clear that someone is trying to
destroy us. I fear we may have a spy in our Court.” Am I imagining it, or did
her eyes flicker to me? “After teardown, you will go ahead to the next site.
Take no one, tell no one. Once there, you will use every enchantment at your
disposal to make the ground hallowed. Do I make myself clear?”

Kingston
swallows hard and nods.

“Vivienne,”
Mab says, turning her serpent’s gaze to me. “I am putting you under surveillance.
You will be placed under Penelope’s watch until this situation has been sorted
and your name cleared. Yes?”

“I…” I falter
under her gaze, but there’s a feeling of indignation in me that flares for just
a moment.
She’s
the one that brought me here.
She’s
the one who
promised I’d be safe. And now
I’m
the one she suspects is behind all
this? “Why?”

Mab takes one
slow, dangerous step forward. She is taller than me by only a few inches, but
her anger makes her taller.

“Given your
past,” she says with a decided twist to the word, “you are a suspect
individual.” Her eyes bore into me, and I have the sense she’s seeing something
I can’t. Memories seep into my head, the color red on my knees the day she led
me here, the feeling of needing to run, to get as far away as fast as I could.
I clench my fists. Was I running from myself?

Then she
steps aside and begins to walk away and the train of thought derails into
nothingness. “Besides,” she says, not even turning back. “Lilith has already
told me you were sneaking around last night. If you don’t want to be a suspect,
I propose you refrain from suspicious activities.”

The fire in
me wants to run after her, wants to grab her arm and demand she tell me what
the hell she’s talking about. But before I can make what would probably be the
worst — and last — mistake of my life, Kingston puts his hand on my shoulder
and the rage dies down.

“Come on,” he
whispers. “Let’s get out of here before the Shifters arrive.”

With that, he
draws me away from the tent and leads me toward the pie cart.

“I always
find problems are easier to deal with over coffee,” he says, handing me a mug.
I didn’t miss the slight hand-wave over the rim as he passed it over, so I’m
more than suspicious as I take a sip. Unlike the last time he magically spiked
my drink, this one doesn’t taste like battery acid. I try not to wince as I
take a few long gulps, hoping either the caffeine or magical alcohol helps
settle my nerves. Neither does.

“What was she
talking about?” I finally ask. “What did she mean,
given my past?
”

I watch
Kingston as I ask this and can’t help but notice that he’s studiously looking
away.

“I don’t
know,” he finally says. “It’s
your
past, after all.” Maybe I’m just
getting better at lying or he’s getting worse, but I have no doubt whatsoever
that he isn’t telling me the truth.

Up until
then, it hadn’t really bothered me that I couldn’t dredge up the details of my
past. It was one of those things that just seemed better
not
to think
about: high school, sitting bored in math class, driving lessons, summers at
the public pool or playing video games. It was all there, but it was all coated
over, hazy almost. And as far as I was concerned, that was probably a good
thing. The trouble was, it was all so plain, so generic; there was nothing
there that would make someone suspicious of me.

Except for
those times when, looking back, I could have sworn there was blood on my jeans
the day Mab found me. Blood that wasn’t mine. But even that memory is slippery.
Maybe it was just a dream.

I run a hand
through my hair and close my eyes. There are worse fates than being put with
Penelope for a few days. Much better than a sword through the gut or
half-decapitation. At least, that’s what I try to convince myself. Some doubt
lingers in the back of my head, though. What if it
was
me? The deaths
happened at night…what if I sleepwalked or was under a spell or something?

A moment
later there’s a hand on my arm, and then Kingston’s leaning in. He smells like
cologne and coffee, a mix that’s oddly comforting.

“I’m sorry,”
he whispers. “I know how unfair Mab can be, but she’s just scared.”

“I’m not the
killer,” I say.
At least, I don’t think I am.
“I almost saw them, last
night.”

“Well, if
it’s any consolation, I don’t think you’re the killer either.”

I open my
eyes and look at him. He’s looking right at me, his face only a few inches
away. How many times have we been like this? Half a step away from leaning in
and kissing, a second away from doing what my heart’s been begging me to do
since I first laid eyes on him. If I wanted to, I could end the streak; I could
lean in and kiss him here and now.

“Why not?” I
ask.

“Because,” he
says. His comforting smile turns wicked. “You’re too much of a wimp to kill
anyone.” He taps my nose with one finger and pulls away, hops off the table,
and stands, stretching back like a cat. I can feel myself blushing. Another
moment lost. I'm hoping it's not some sort of karmic trend.

“I better be
off,” he says. “Mab would skin me alive if she knew I was still waiting
around.”

He turns to
go and then stops, looks back.

“Keep
yourself out of trouble,” he says. His face is serious. “I mean it.”

“You too,” I
say.

He winks.
“Me? Never.”

Then he’s
walking away, and I’m left with a cooling cup of coffee and the sense that
nothing’s going to get easier to deal with, not anytime soon.

“How is your
practice going?” Penelope asks. We’re once again in her trailer as the rest of
the crew does the grunt work. I can see the tent from the window; Mab is out
there with a few Shifters. They’re carefully folding up the ripped panel like a
flag. It doesn’t touch the ground once.

“What?” I
ask, not looking away. There’s a steamer trunk at Mab’s feet, and the two
Shifters are gently placing the panel inside of it.

“Your
juggling practice. I assume you’ve been training night and day.” She talks as
though that’s clearly the only thing I should be concerned about, as though
there’s nothing going wrong. Maybe she really does spend all of her time
secluded away in her trailer, lost in her own little world. I can’t really blame her for it. Outside, Mab closes the lid and latches it.

I turn my
focus back to the computer. Penelope’s at another laptop, figuring out losses
and gains and ticket sales. Once more, Mab’s refunding the tickets for
tonight’s show and donating to nonprofits so people won’t be too pissed for
missing the sold-out performance. And I’m the one sending out the notification
emails, each one personally addressed because Mab likes things to have that
personal touch.

“Practice?
Not good,” I say. “I wasn’t made to juggle.”

Penelope
sighs and taps away at her keyboard. She looks tired, like the rest of the
troupe, with a light layer of makeup and a faded
Cirque des Immortels
hoodie. I hate to admit that she makes even that look attractive.

“Mab’s always
like that,” she says. “I should know. Always making rash decisions she can’t
get out of later.”

I shrug and
go back to emailing Mr. Carson, apologizing to him and his two lovely daughters
for having to refund the tickets but promising to donate to St. Jude’s to offset
the harm done. Somehow, Mab has more than just his contact details on file.
There’s a full paragraph of his family history, his employment status and
income, and even a line at the bottom that I hope is a joke.
What the
customer dreamt of becoming as a child.
Mr. Carson, apparently, wanted to
be an astronaut. Now he’s the general manager of a local Taco Bell. If she has
this much information about her customers, I can’t help but imagine what she
has on file for the rest of us. Which makes me wonder…

“That memory
you showed me…you said that you were with her before that, before the circus
got started?” I ask.