The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels) (22 page)

D
eath hurts.

It’s not the release everyone says it is, not the light at the end of the tunnel. Death is falling down a staircase in the dark while covered in thumbtacks.

I open my eyes and try not to wince at the faint light that sears into my brain. A few blinks and I realize the cool blue light is from candles. Candles in crystal skull sconces. Death is classy.

“So,” Death says, her voice smoke and grave dirt. “The dreamer awakens.”

I push myself up, numb in spite of the needles shivering under my skin. A fine Oriental rug is below me.
Very classy.

“Where am I?”

Death appears at my side as a shadow. Her eyes are jade, her lips crimson, her face pale gravestone.

“Where do you think?”

And then I see the desk, the bookshelf, all plucking themselves out of the blackness in puffs of fog. I see the chairs, and the open book.

I’m not dead after all.

Mab reaches down and I take her hand, let her help me up to standing. She leads me over to the desk and gently helps me into the chair. Then she sits opposite me. She wears only smoke, though her whip is coiled on the desk beside the book of contracts. The tip is covered in shining golden blood.

“I’m alive,” I say. My voice feels strange in my throat, like I’m using someone else’s lungs.

“For now,” Mab says. She leans back in the chair. “What do you remember?”

I think back. I remember the battle, the tent burning. Oberos. Lilith. And I remember white, white light streaming from my hands…

“What did you do to me?” I whisper.

She just chuckles.

“I told you your gifts would flourish in time,” she says.

“What gifts?”

“Hmm, I’m afraid I can’t say.” She leans forward and points to the page. My name is at the top. “After all, you were the one who requested not to know.”

I make to lean closer but she pulls the book back.

“No spoilers,” she says, and closes the book shut. It rises from her hand and inserts itself back onto the shelf.

“Trust me,” she says, twisting her words like she’d twist the coil of her whip, “you don’t want to know the specifics. You locked that part away for a reason.”

I try to ignore the shiver that wants to race up my spine, the eerily familiar tingle in my fingers — the touch that destroyed the fey and somehow subdued Kassia. Who is she protecting from my past? Me, or herself?

“Does this mean…does this mean I’m one of you? Fey?”

She shakes her head. “You asked never to know the specifics, and I refuse to break your contract. There’s been far too much of that lately for my liking.” She says it like we’ve just been stealing cookies from a cookie jar, rather than dying because of Penelope’s interference.

“I need some sort of answer,” I say. I look to my hands. “I know I’m not normal. Normal people can’t do…whatever it was I did.”
Oracle,
the Night Terror had called me. What did that entail?

“
Normal
is a horribly overrated word,” she says. She leans across the table as though she’s going to take my hand. She doesn’t, just looks at me closely. “You aren’t quite human,” she says. “I can tell you that much. And your abilities — which you fervently requested I hide from you — are more than just seeing glimpses of the future. You have much, much more power than that. But until you are ready to use it, your contract expressly forbids we speak of it.”

Not for the first time, I wonder what horrible power is resting inside of me, what past is lingering behind me. What could I possibly have wanted locked away forever? I push the question away and try to focus on the things I
can
get an answer for.

“What happened? With Lilith? Everything?”

She just smiles. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, either. Let’s just say that you’ve lived to see a side of our dear Lilith that very few have. Your abilities allowed you to face that side. And win.”

“Did I kill her?” I ask, remembering her screams, her darkened, cracking face.

“Of course not,” she says. “Lilith is far too dear to me to allow for it. You merely helped restrain her.”

“So she’s still out there,” I say. I begin to push myself from my chair, heart doing double-time. “She’s still killing — ”

“Sit,” she commands. I do. “Lilith is no longer a problem. She has been dealt with. You are both safe.”

“But Oberos, the Summer Fey — we’re under attack.”

“Love, you try my patience.” She sighs and examines her nails. “If we were under attack, do you think I’d be here right now? No. Oberos has fallen, and our Lilith has made sure that no Summer Fey has lived to tell their king what happened. You and I, we are the few who remember.”

“But Oberon…he’ll come back. He’ll try to take over again.”

She just shrugs and looks at me over her nails. She smiles. “The Summer King and I will always be at war. That’s what makes this so much fun.”

Kingston and Melody are standing outside of the trailer when Mab lets me go. I barely step out the door before both of them leap on top of me, crushing me in their hugs and jabbering nonstop. It’s only after they’ve both kissed me on the cheeks a dozen times that they pull back and let me breathe. Melody looks livelier than ever, and even Kingston — though his eyes are dark with sleeplessness — is beaming. I look away from them and realize we’re no longer in the abandoned cornfield. We’re on a baseball pitch surrounded by pine trees, a lake in the distance.

“What happened?” I ask, because Mab still hasn’t given me a solid answer — just told me that in light of circumstances, she has changed my obligation from juggling to sideshow psychic.
Consider it a promotion
, she said, and sent me on my way.

Kingston shakes his head and looks at Mel.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Melody says.

We walk to the edge of the lake, none of us talking. It’s early afternoon, and there are families and dogs spread out across the beach. Kingston leads us to a spot away from the main crowd, taking off his shoes to wade out into the soft surf.

“Well?” I ask.

“Well,” Melody says. “Turns out I’m the tent.”

I raise an eyebrow. “What?”

She sighs. “I’m the bloody tent. That’s why I’m here, why Mab signed me on.”

I look to Kingston, thinking maybe she’d had some sort of mental injury after being kidnapped. “What is she talking about?”

“It’s her story,” he says, and puts a hand on her wrist.

“And I only just found out. Okay, well, you know how you don’t age?” she asks.

I nod.

“Yeah. Magic doesn’t just work like that. There’s a tithe; for many to be young, one must bear the burden of age. The same works for immortality. In order for everyone to remain immortal, someone has to die. The only catch is that that someone has to remain with the tent at all times, otherwise the tithe is broken.”

“And that someone’s you,” I whisper. I don’t look at her; I’m watching Kingston, at the way he's staring at her with that sad, protective look in his eyes.

“Yep,” Mel says. “No superpowers for this lesbian. I just get to grow old and watch you all stay young. But hey, so long as I’m healthy and near the tent, you all are safe and immortal, so I guess it works out.”

Suddenly, I understand: her illness whenever the tent or performers were hurt, the reason Penelope needed to get her out of the way. If Melody was gone, the tent became vulnerable — everyone became vulnerable. Penelope had sworn she was saving Mel by having her taken away, that she hadn't altered her contract. By severing the bond between Mel and the tent, she had in the process spared my friend's life. Penelope hadn't been as full of shit as I'd thought.

“That’s horrible,” I say. It's really all there is to say.

She shrugs and looks out over the water. “That’s the contract. Apparently, it’s a genetic thing, nothing magical at all. Kingston found me when I was born and brought me here. I was raised in the circus, and I’ll die in the circus. Thankfully, though, I don’t have to remember that if I don’t want to. I can believe I’ve been whatever age I am for eternity.” She turns to Kingston, but he doesn’t flinch. He just wraps his fingers around her hand and drops his head. Now I know why he felt so responsible for her; he was going to have to watch her die. And he would have to keep changing her memory so she would have no clue.

“Your mom would have been proud of you,” Kingston says. “She was an amazing woman.”

I can’t even begin to imagine what sort of mother would allow that to happen to her kid. That said, I can’t imagine what my own mom would have done to make me leave and run away to join this place. Whatever it was, I’m almost glad Kingston erased the memory of it.

We don’t say anything for a while after that.

Finally, I whisper.

“What happens now?”

“You know Mab,” Kingston says. “She’s already signed on a new cast to make up for those we lost in the fire. The next show’s in four days.”

“The fire?”

“Yes,” he says, with more emphasis in his words than is necessary. “The freak tent fire. We lost half the troop. Thank the gods Mel was away, or we'd have lost her too.”

I open my mouth to ask him what the hell he’s talking about, because it wasn’t a fire that killed everyone, it was Oberos and Lilith and — But his glare stops me short. He knows.
We are the few who remember,
Mab said. Kingston, Mab, and I. We are the only ones who know what really happened. Every other survivor had their memory wiped by Kingston. I wonder if they tried to erase mine again. I wonder if there’s a reason it keeps failing. Keeping track of all these secrets is going to be impossible.

“Right,” I say instead.

“You should see the new tent,” Melody says, either completely missing or deliberately ignoring the look that Kingston gives me. “It’s gorgeous. Much sexier than the old one.”

“It suits you,” Kingston says with a small grin. I try to smile as well, but I can’t share the amusement. I don’t know how Kingston does it, remembering it all. Every time I close my eyes, I see and hear and smell the chaos of battle. If it weren’t for sheer stubbornness, I’d ask him to make me forget. Or, at least, try.

The pie cart that night is bustling with faces I’ve never seen. There are a few people close to my age and some older men and women. Everyone’s talking loudly, everyone’s excited for their new acts and new costumes. It will be an entirely new show, Kingston explains to me at the table. Everything’s going to be different. I can't help but stare at them all and wonder what sort of
bind
caught them in Mab's well-manicured clutches. Did everyone here have blood on their hands? Or were there darker secrets hidden behind those smiles?

I nearly jump out of my skin when Lilith sits down beside me bearing a tray heaped with macaroni and cheese. She looks just like she always did — blue porcelain-doll dress, black hair in ringlets, smooth face. Only no cat. She looks naked without Poe. I wonder if she even remembers she had a cat. I decide I’m not about to ask. She smiles at me and cocks her head to the side.

“You okay?” she says. “Jumpy jumpy Vivienne.”

I try to laugh and take a deep breath to keep from screaming. I go about eating my food, but find my appetite is gone with her around. I keep imagining the way she burned Penelope without so much as a pause, the way she lit the whole world aflame. All through dinner I wait for her to turn on me, wait for her features to break apart and reveal a monster of brimstone and sulfur, but it doesn’t happen. She keeps to herself and eats almost everything on her plate and shapes the rest into a smiley face, then gets up and wanders off, leaving the tray behind.

“Odd one, her,” says one of the new girls sitting across from us. She’s got curly brown hair and a scar near her left eye, but her smile is bright.

“You have no idea,” I say, and reach out a hand to introduce myself. She shakes it.

“Sara,” she says. “Pleasure to meet you.”

She goes on to tell me about her training as an aerialist, her tours of New England and the Midwest, but I can’t follow. She reminds me of someone, and the thought makes my stomach churn.