by Kevin Hearne
I chuck her under the chin, leaving the barest swipe of pinkish powder hidden under her high, lacy collar. “Well, then. You’re in for a treat.”
“Will it...hurt, sir?”
A low chuckle drifts through the crowd. Do they want it to hurt? Perhaps.
I lean down to whisper in her ear and she shivers. “No, love. You won’t feel a thing. Just do as I ask, and everyone will clap for you. You’re the star tonight.”
She nods, and I step back with a swirl of my cape. The crowd goes silent, expectant. Many of them have never seen a circus before, and no one has seen an act like mine. Some things are more real than others, and I am the former. Very few of the people on the other side of the footlights will ever understand the difference between legerdemain and true magic.
“The lovely Elise has volunteered to help us today, and for that, she will be richly rewarded. Tell me, Elise. What is your heart’s dearest desire?”
Her mouth drops open as she struggles for the right answer, gloved hands shaking as they clutch the chair’s arms. “To marry well and have healthy children.”
Well, of course it is, you unimaginative twit. Which I don’t say out loud.
“A fair request that I’m sure Saint Ermenegilda will hear and grant. And now, tell me: What is your darkest fear?”
Her eyes flash in terror and embarrassment, and she looks down at my polished boot tips, which can’t help but show her the worst of herself. “Being drained,” she whispers. She could mean by bludrats in the city or bludbunnies in the fields, but what she really means is me, or someone like me.
But the audience didn’t hear that. They never do.
Louder, I say, “What’s that, Elise? You’re afraid to be turned into a chicken?”
The crowd erupts in laughter, and she splutters a bit and gives me a wobbly grin.
“But...but...BUCK BUCK BACAW!” It erupts from her rosebud mouth as she leaps up from her chair, tucks her fists into her corseted waist, and jerkily pecks her way across the stage.
Her eyes are glazed over now, the crowd is loving it, and I twist a lone feather in my fingers and continue whispering under my breath. Elise hops up onto her chair and settles down in an unladylike crouch, making the crass lads up front howl. Her clucking builds to a surprised cackle, and she stands and lifts her skirts just a little, revealing a sky-blue egg between her high, buttoned boots.
“And wake,” I mutter.
“What...what happened?”
As if on cue, she swoons, and I catch her in a dramatic sweep of pink taffeta. Ever so gently, I set her atop the skull-sized egg on the chair, and it breaks with a loud crack.
“Oh!”
She stands and reaches for the pile of shards, withdrawing a simple slip of paper.
“Go on, darling,” I urge. “Give it a read.”
I love to watch their faces during this part, the moment they understand that magic is real. Her true love’s name will be written there, possibly the names of her future children. One girl saw that her beau was sneaking out with another lass and leaped into the crowd to strike him with his own cane. But this girl does something completely new.
Elise gasps.
Faints.
Falls to the ground.
When I check her pulse, I find that she is dead.
2.
I DO what any self-respecting predator would do: I pretend like it’s part of the act.
“Oh, tut. Poor girl must’ve had rather a surprise, eh?”
They laugh nervously, then raucously. Reaching for the slip of curled paper in her hand, I study it. The handwriting is familiar; my own, of course. But the words are unlike anything I’ve seen before, and I’ve done this trick a thousand times or more.
“You have a bad heart and will die immediately of shock. The magician, if wise, will run.”
I stand and shake my head. “The lad whose name is written on this slip will have his hands full with this one.”
Whispers rustle, skirts sway, gloved hands curl around warm, pink ears so they won’t miss my next proclamation.
“Who is it, then?” a brash fellow calls.
I just smile, careful to keep my lips over my fangs. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
With a dramatic twirl, I whip the black cape off my shoulders and drape it over the girl’s still form, grateful that she’s a wee thing and fits completely under the light-sucking velvet. My heart bangs around, and I quickly wipe away a drop of red-tinged sweat before the innocents in the audience grow any more fevered. I’ve never done this before, not with something as big as Elise.
A few mumbled words, slurry as old blood, and the cape flutters the last few inches to the ground, leaving two lumps behind. Hiding my sigh of relief, I flip it back onto my shoulders to reveal her high buttoned boots—empty, thank goodness--which I pick up and toss to the blushing boy.
“You’ll find her at the candy floss machine,” I say. “I imagine you two have a lot to discuss.”
As the crowd stares at him in fascination, I reach deep into my pockets. Normally, I would juggle fire and breathe rainbows and produce a unicorn from my top hat. But I don’t have that kind of time today. The crowd parts to let the boy with the boots past, and he’s walking as if he’s going somewhere horrible and can’t wait to get there. I don’t want to be around when he realizes she’s not showing up, barefoot and laughing, by the candy floss machine. Not now and not ever. I didn’t kill this girl, easy as it would’ve been, but no court in the land would ever find me innocent.
“Abracadabra!” I cry, flinging two fists’ worth of powder into the air over the crowd.
What happens next is pandemonium, all my spells going off at once.
A glowing dragon appears in a shower of sparks, spiraling after a flurry of butterflies. Fireworks explode like giant flowers, and a troupe of dancing bludbunnies in natty jackets jigs across the stage. Eyes light up in wonder, mouths open to ooh, and I disappear in a puff of lavender smoke.
By the time the illusions vanish, I’m dressed in plainer clothes, carrying nothing but a grimoire and scurrying away on the moors like the prey I never thought I’d be.
3.
I AM Criminy Stain, and I am the master of my destiny.
The master of my destiny is currently skulking around a birch forest, watching a very attractive Bludwoman who has no business being here. She has a picnic basket over her arm, and I’m rather surprised when she pulls out a steaming teapot of blood and starts splashing it all around the clearing, painting the stark white and black trees in sprays of poppy red.
This is the height of art.
I have never been so entranced in all my life.
After a week of wandering, I’d stopped here to sleep, mainly because it was pretty, and because there was a large caravan slumbering just a few miles away. But before I could investigate it, she showed up, this marvel of a creature. Lush, auburn hair in riotous ruby curls, heavy bangs hiding green-black eyes like a bottomless pond. Swan shoulders and bloody fingers and a golden rope around her waist like a belt, the hem of her green dress dipped in mud. She scans the horizon, searching for something. I don’t think it’s me she’s expecting, but I’m what she will get, nonetheless. I straighten my topper, check the buttons on my trousers, and prepare to step dramatically from behind a larch in a swirl of cape and magic.
“Greetings! I’m—”
“A bit creepy, actually,” she finishes for me. Bored eyes flick to my face, skim up and down like she’s reading a bad poem, and return to the horizon. Even her back is beautiful. “Now hush.”
“Criminy Stain,” I finish.
“That’s rubbish. Really. Be quiet. It’s almost here.”
No woman has ever spoken to me like this. I’m too stunned to speak. In the embarrassed silence that follows, I hear something coming. It moves through the forest like an elephant decimating a crowd, brave and large and proudly crashing. With a fussy sigh, I slip off my gloves and tuck them into my breast pocket. My clawed fi
ngers curl into weapons, my teeth bared as I scent the approaching beast.
“Get behind me,” I say, voice low.
Her response? She flicks her fingers at me and unties the rope at her waist. Which is a little disconcerting. Ladies undressing in my presence is nothing new, but they don’t usually do it when we’re about to be attacked in a blood-spattered forest.
Usually.
“Let me handle this, please. I’m sure you mean well, but you’re bound to muck it up.” She grins coquettishly as she fiddles with her rope in the center of the clearing. “Master Stain.”
I lean against the nearest unbloody tree, mimicking her lack of predation and self-preservation, and knowing that my long, dark hair and cloudy gray eyes are perfectly complimented by the background. “Would you at least do me the honor of your name before we’re both attacked, love?”
“My name is Merissa,” she says. “And technically, I don’t believe one can be attacked when one has purposefully lured a monster in with the express purpose of capturing it.”
“Capturing it?”
With a sudden spin, she kicks me neatly just above the stomach, knocking out my breath, and begins to swing her strange rope in a circle while I goggle at her. It’s possibly the most helpless I’ve ever felt, and damned if it isn’t riveting.
What the hell is she about?
In a rain of leaves and a shower of branches, a huge form barrels into the clearing, knocking over a small tree on the way. Gigantic hooves skid to a stop in the mud, and a horse the size of a volcano screams its challenge at the slight woman twirling her rope.
“Same to you,” she says tartly, and tosses the rope over its great head, easy as death.
“Look, love,” I wheeze, my wind barely returned. “Shouldn’t you--”
“Shut up or I’ll kick you again. Let a lady work.”
Sure enough, she’s working the horse now, taking control of it with her body and her rope. It’s a white bludmare, probably the largest animal on the continent, and its back is taller than the crown of Merissa’s lovely auburn head. With a tail that drags the ground, a mane that falls like rotten curtains, and a coat that should be gleaming white but is actually the color of old bone clotted with earth, the mare is magnificent and bestial and the sort of monster I would love to take in a fair fight. My instinct is to kill it myself and drink deeply, both satisfying my craving for blood and violence and, one might hope, impressing the lady.
But she’s politely requested I not do that, and she seems to know her business. My understanding of horses is limited to fighting and eating them, but she’s treating this one like a treasure, like possibly a friend. The mare’s skin shivers over as Merissa runs hands all over it, and whenever the horse jumps away from her, she allows it, then approaches calmly again. The creature’s frothing mouth is open just enough to show fangs the size of the woman’s forearm, but for some strange reason, the mare’s not biting her. Just putting up with her.
As she’s been putting up with me.
The girl has a deft touch with beasts, is all I’m saying.
“Shh. Shh,” she murmurs, and the horse snorts. “I’ll call you Luca. Would you like that?” The horse shakes her head. “Picky bitch. Kali, then.” The mare blows air in a satisfied sort of way, and Merissa grins at me as she rubs Kali’s bloodstained nose. “You could’ve saved yourself a bit of trouble if you’d had the good sense to select a less ridiculous name, Mr. Stain.”
“I generally kill anyone who snickers,” I admit.
“You’ve that look about you. Now make yourself useful and put an arm over Kali’s back while I knot up a halter, will you?”
And I do, because it means I can get closer to her, and because not doing so would brand me a coward.
“Let me tell you what I think, Mr. Stain. I think you’re on the run from something, gadding about in the forest all alone. I can tell you’re a man of taste and refinement who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. And I can also tell that you’re younger than you act and older than you look. In short, sir, I do believe you are trouble and you like it that way.”
She’s got a tied rope harness over the horse’s great nose now and nods to let me know I’m unnecessary.
I tip my hat and bow as soon as I’m out of kicking range. “What’s your point, poppet?”
“You amuse me. But don’t think for a moment that you’ll make me swoon, sweep me off my feet, or in any other way gain the upper hand in this relationship.”
“Ah, so we’ve a relationship now? Grand. I accept.”
Taking a fistful of the horse’s cobweb mane, she executes an utterly impossible leap and lands lightly on the broad, white back, making the mare jig around. The girl’s so wee, I’m surprised Kali can even feel her. Perhaps it’s the way her pointy little boots are lodged in the horse’s ribs or how she pulls the rope halter to and fro that keeps her in charge. I do believe that I, were I underneath her, would move with rather a lot more purpose.
“Will you walk or ride?” she calls down.
I take the hand she offers. “What fool would walk when he can let someone else do all the hard work?”
With a sudden yank, she helps me swing up onto the beast’s back, and unlike her, my weight is noticed. The horse’s muscles bunch in annoyance, and she turns her regal head and glares at me, showing fangs.
“You’ll have to share her, mate,” I say, and Merissa laughs.
“She’ll have to share me rather a lot. I need two of them, matched, for my act, you know.”
Her body ripples against mine, and she says, “Hup, Kali!” and then we’re running like hell through the forest, dodging trees as the bludmare’s hooves dig divots in the leaf mould. I’ve never ridden like this before, but I have a good enough idea that the best way to get through such a situation involves holding on rather tightly to the ravishing if peculiar creature in front of me and not making a fool of myself. The beast has a certain rhythm that I’m quick to find, and my thighs grip her ribs and the lady’s hips as my hands join around Merissa’s waist. She doesn’t seem to mind and lies lower over the mare’s neck, her doll hands tangled in billowing white mane. When Merissa let out a great, dancing laugh, her elation travels into my veins and settles there with what feels like significant permanence.
In this moment, I am smitten and I am smote. There is no difference.
Her mostly proper updo falls mostly down, and I will know the scent of her hair forever, a mix of violets and smoke and rich, black soil. Keeping my eyes open becomes an exercise in pain as her hair whips me to tears, so I tuck my face against her shoulder and trust her to steer our mighty steed to whatever end she has planned. And why not? The thread of my former comfortable if stunted life was severed as soon as Elise died at my feet. When a man has nowhere to go, he might as well go anywhere. And if that journey can begin wrapped around the most beautiful, intriguing spitfire of a woman he’s ever met, all the better.
I smell the caravan before I see or hear it. There’s no mistaking the scent of last night’s crowd and its sugary, salted leavings. Bits of popcorn and candy floss and sticky, fallen butterscotch apples litter the ground before a long train of wagons that’s noticeably shabbier than my last home.
Merissa sits up straight and murmurs silly things to the horse, and the mare’s ears flick back as she slows to a lumbering walk. Over her pretty head, I register a well-kept tightrope, brightly colored but oft-patched tents, and striped poles strung with lanterns. To my proprietary eye, it’s a serviceable if untidy caravan, although at this hour of the morning, its carnivalleros would do better to be outside, practicing and performing the routines and prop maintenance that would insure many more years of good spirits.
In short, it’s a place that could use my particular brand of loving cruelty, and I immediately wish to possess it, to which end I straighten my waistcoat and collar, retie my cravat, and smooth back my long hair into a tidier tail.
“Who’s the master of this house, then?” I ask.
> Merissa shakes her head and snorts. “Old duffer named Bartholomew Bailey. Human, fat as a maggot. Too paranoid to come out of his wagon these days after he was attacked by the wolf boy. Does business over a loudspeaker and through a tiny window, like a postal clerk. It’s all a bit embarrassing, you know. But of course, there are creatures that flourish in an absence of leadership, and most of ’em have teeth.” She turns her head with a practiced flip of her mad hair and gives me a sparkling smile that makes my stomach swoop in an agreeable sort of way.
“Well, love,” I murmur in her ear, “have any use for an accomplished magician?”
Her shoulder lifts and falls. “We already have one. Perhaps there’s a use for you in the Freak Tent, if you make a fine barker.”
“Oh, I can bark. But I’d rather battle your reigning charmer and take his place.”
The horse stops and sighs, and Merissa manages to slide off without touching me. When she looks up, her eyes seem to glow red. “Don’t even try. He’s very good. He’ll rip you to shreds.”
“Oh, so you know the future. Are you a fortune-teller, then?” I ask playfully.
She chuckles. “I’m a woman.”
And she slaps the horse’s rump, which makes Kali leap forwards with a scream, throwing me backwards. It takes every bit of cleverness I have to turn the flailing fall into a neat back flip, but I’ve been in the circus long enough to have trained as an acrobat. Landing neatly on my feet, I whip off my hat, bow deeply, and hold out a bouquet of blood-red roses.
“Oh, I noticed,” I say with a grin.
4.
SHE DOESN’T take the flowers. Doesn’t point me in the direction of her grub-like Master Bailey. With steps somehow both firm and dainty and hips swaying like a cobra, she saunters to her dirty white steed, plucks her rope from the ground, and leads the now-placid creature away.
But I know this dance, and I am an old hand at legerdemain. Even without a single soul visible, I understand the workings of this circus as well as a chirurgeon knows the inside of a man’s chest cavity. Stuffing the flowers back into my hat, I settle the topper firmly on my head and shoot my cuffs, heading off for the same thing the chirurgeon seeks: the object of brightest shining red.