The Ladies of the Secret Circus

by Constance Sayers

  “Well, frankly, I’m concerned about you going to Paris.”

  “Why would you be concerned?” Lara laughed. “I’m thirty years old.”

  “It’s not safe.”

  In the months since Todd disappeared, Lara continued to harbor suspicions that her mother knew more than she was telling. Now those suspicions were beginning to feel confirmed. “That painting could be worth millions.”

  “Or it’s worthless.” Audrey dismissed Lara with her hand.

  “Gaston doesn’t think so and he’s an art expert.”

  “Then I’ll go to Paris with Gaston, not you.”

  Lara inhaled, putting her hand on her hip and straightening her body. She decided the best approach was to say nothing.

  After a good minute of silence, her mother finally spoke. “Say something.”

  Lara shrugged. “I have nothing to add. As much as it pains me to tell you, Mother, you’ve kept things from me.” Her mother began to protest, but Lara put her hand up to stop her. “You’ll deny it, of course, but we both know it. I’m going to Paris. End of discussion. If this is about Gaston, I don’t need him to go with me. I can meet with Edward Binghampton Barrow the Fourth myself. It’s our family’s painting.”

  Audrey’s nostrils flared. “What on earth have I kept from you? I… I told you that I don’t know—”

  “Nothing,” said Lara, cutting her mother off sharply. “You’ve told me nothing.”

  “Because there is nothing to tell, Lara,” said Audrey, taking a drink of her coffee, then setting the cup down on the counter with a thud. “You’re beginning to sound crazy.”

  Audrey wasn’t manipulative. For her mother to keep something from her this long, and to protest this much, meant that Audrey was frightened. And for Audrey to be frightened, it had to be something big. Combining this hunch with what Shane Speer had said to her at the circus and what the man had confirmed last night, Lara thought she’d try to bluff. “I know that she’s trying to kill me.” She stared confidently into her mother’s eyes, not blinking.

  Audrey nearly yelped, causing the dogs to lift their heads instantly. “Who told you?”

  Lara’s knees went weak. While she thought she was being clever, she really hadn’t anticipated being correct. “The man at the circus.”

  “What man at the circus?” Audrey’s eyes widened.

  “The fortune-teller.” In exchange for information, Lara had promised Althacazur that she would not tell her mother about him. She thought it wise to keep that promise.

  Her mother visibly relaxed. “Oh, my dear, you cannot possibly think that poor teenaged boy was correct about anything. Hell, he wasn’t even through puberty yet.”

  But Lara’s bluff had worked. Someone was trying to kill her, and the comment about “the man” had upset her mother terribly. Lara just hadn’t mentioned the right man: Althacazur.

  “Of course he was correct. That’s why you’re here telling me not to go to Paris. Cut the bullshit, Mother, and start talking. You’ve never told me the truth about Todd. We both know it.” Lara shrugged.

  “Like what?”

  Lara shrugged again, noncommittally, but didn’t answer.

  Audrey slid onto the counter stool, placing her hands down in front of her, as if steeling herself for what she was about to say next: “There is a spell that we must maintain to keep us safe.”

  “A spell?” Lara cocked her head. And then it occurred to her: All the unnatural perfection of the town. It’s a spell. That made sense. It was the only thing, frankly, that made sense, and she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t realized it before.

  “The women in our family have been enchanting a protective spell since 1935. When she was nine years old, my mother, Margot, was the first to cast it.”

  “Margot? Not Cecile?”

  Audrey shook her head. “Apparently not, although I don’t know why. After Mother was gone, I needed to keep it going. Cecile taught me how to do it. She’d seen Margot chant it enough times.”

  “I don’t understand. Why does the town need a spell?”

  “The town doesn’t need a spell. We do. Kerrigan Falls simply benefits from the protective cloak we place over it. Cecile said that what she’d run away from in Paris would always hunt us without this spell. I have to reaffirm it every year.”

  Lara recalled what Althacazur had said to her last night: The fabric of this quaint little community your family has built for you is beginning to tear apart. Without my help, I fear it could be the end for you. This was the fabric he’d been talking about. “Let me guess. You do the spell on October ninth?”

  She nodded gravely. “And it goes along fine, except one night every thirty years when the spell seems to come down for one night. Cecile stressed that the spell had to be done at eleven fifty-nine on October ninth… the words must cross over to the tenth, and you must be finished by twelve oh one.”

  “That’s why you didn’t want us getting married on that day.”

  Audrey closed her eyes, like she was thinking of something painful. “I simply wanted you to move the wedding to the spring. That is a dreadful date and I couldn’t believe you chose it, but I swear that I don’t know what happened to Todd, my dear. You need to believe me. I just know that whatever happened to him, happened on that date, so it may have something to do with us, but I can’t be sure. Cecile wasn’t specific. Ever.” Audrey seemed annoyed at the thought of Cecile. “I always thought she was hiding something, so I guess I can understand your frustration with me.”

  Lara remembered how stubborn and secretive Cecile could be, but she knew there was more that Audrey was hiding from her. And it was about Althacazur. “Can I ask what drove grandmother Margot mad?”

  Audrey took a sip of her coffee. “It was around the time her magic came in. Cecile said she was turning on radios, lighting the stove. My mother always wanted attention, so she’d often go out of her way with mischief to scare people. Then she announced that she’d seen a man standing in the field. He spoke to her. Mother was never the same after that.”

  Lara leaned back on the counter. “Have you seen him, too?”

  “Have you?” Her mother’s voice was pointed. She locked eyes with Lara.

  Lara wasn’t about to start confessing first, so she bent over the counter toward her mother, waiting for Audrey to reply. She’d endured a lifetime of her mother’s secrets.

  When Audrey realized that Lara was waiting for her, she began to speak. “I saw him the first time when I was seven years old. My magic had just come in, and Cecile was terrified that he’d come looking for me. He did, but I told him to go away,” said Audrey with the sad, faraway smile that a distant memory brought her. “Cecile said magic had killed my mother, driven her mad. I saw the anguish on both Cecile’s and my father’s faces when they spoke of my mother, so when it began to happen to me, I wanted nothing to do with this legacy of madness, of magic. Althacazur visited me twice. Both times, I refused to speak to him. On the second visit he even brought my mother along with him.”

  “Margot?” Lara realized how cruel this must have been.

  “She wasn’t right, even then. Talking crazy.” Audrey wiped her eyes with her hands and tried to clear off her mascara. “I was a child, Lara. I saw my mother—the woman I most wanted to see—and I ignored her. Do you know what that was like for a seven-year-old girl with no mother?”

  Lara placed her hand over her mother’s, thinking of Audrey as a little girl and the pair of them—Althacazur with his glasses and Margot with her parasol. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’d never known her and yet, I let her go,” said Audrey, “because I was so afraid of what she was—what I thought that I was becoming as well.”

  “What we are.” Lara finished her sentence.

  “Yes,” said Audrey, clasping Lara’s hands. “What we are.”

  “And what are we?” Lara recalled the Ouija board moving at the slumber party, opening locks on her grandfather’s doors, and enchanting her wedding go
wn.

  “I don’t know,” said Audrey. “I suppose the answers were there, I just didn’t want them at the time. After Cecile died, it was too late, but she never wanted to talk about Paris. You might have more information in that journal than I ever wrangled out of her.”

  Lara went over to her briefcase and pulled out the journal. “You could be right about that.” She handed her mother the translation. “There are a couple spots here where my French isn’t so great, but it could be indicative of slang of the time that I don’t understand.”

  Audrey pointed to the journal entry date as she reached into her purse and pulled out her reading glasses, studying Lara’s notes. “This is incredible, Lara.”

  “I know you didn’t think she’d kept one, but I do think it’s Cecile’s diary from when she lived in Paris,” said Lara. “There is this rivalry between Cecile and her twin sister. There is also a third girl, Sylvie. She’s the trick rider.”

  “Sylvie on the Steed?” Audrey considered it, then let the idea go. “Cecile never mentioned she had a sister, certainly not a twin.”

  “I think Cecile didn’t mention a lot of things.” Lara flipped through the pages. “Don’t you think it’s strange that of all the professions that Cecile might have chosen, she started a circus?”

  “It certainly wasn’t a business that a woman ran back then, but circuses were places where women thrived, especially after the war. Still, I get your point: It’s not a business you’d seek out.”

  “Unless she’d grown up in one,” said Lara, handing her mother the book. “The woman in this book lived and worked in a very, very strange circus.”

  “Le Cirque Secret,” said Audrey. She reached over and touched Lara on the cheek. “I hated keeping things from you.”

  “I know you did,” said Lara, and she understood, because she hated not telling her mother that she’d also seen Althacazur, but the stakes were too high. “Something about this diary is off. The Cecile in this diary is not a trick rider, she’s a trapeze artist—rather magical, too—a bit like us. The answers we need are in Paris.”

  “If you’re going to leave Kerrigan Falls, then you need to learn a few protection spells.”

  “I’ve traveled a lot without needing a spell,” said Lara, laughing. “I went to Europe, on the road with Dad.”

  Audrey looked guilty. “No, my dear, you did not.” She twirled her cup intently. “I know that everyone thinks that I didn’t want Le Cirque Margot, so it closed. That isn’t the truth. I did want the circus, but Cecile had gone through so much with Mother’s madness, claiming she was being tormented while on the road by a pair of daemons—a man and a woman—the woman threatening to kill her and the man trying to help her. It got bad—really bad—in Gaffney, where Margot claimed that an angel with white hair had given her a protection spell. Well, of course Cecile thought it just another of Mother’s crazy ramblings, until Mother said the incantation. Cecile said the birds stopped singing immediately and the wind began to stir, leaves fell from trees, flowers wilted—you get the idea. Then, in some crazy attempt to test it, she walked into traffic.”

  Lara’s eyes were wide. “And?”

  “Traffic parted for her.” Audrey shivered. There was a soft breeze coming through the kitchen and the Airedales raised their heads to sniff at it. “Margot claimed that she was told to recite the spell each year on October ninth for her protection, but that it worked better if she stayed in one place. Something about Mother’s tales of a white-haired lady unnerved Cecile to the point that she believed it. When I came of age, she made me recite it to stay safe. But Margot was right. It didn’t work as well outside Kerrigan Falls. It offers some protection, but it needs to be administered daily if we’re not here. When Cecile was getting up in years, she began to think this ‘angel’ didn’t want us on the road with the circus, especially after the accident that I had with my horse.”

  “What accident?” Lara had heard all the tales from the old performers at Le Cirque Margot. There had been no mention of an accident involving her mother.

  “My horse, Belle, stepped into a strange divot that came out of nowhere during one of my shows; I toppled over her and nearly broke my neck. Belle broke her leg and had to be put down while I watched.”

  “So she closed the circus.”

  “I didn’t want her to, but she insisted. I think the old circus folks took my horse business as a sign that I’d turned my back on my legacy, but that wasn’t true. I promised Cecile that I wouldn’t rekindle any talk of a troupe, especially after you were born. When you went on the road with your father, I showed up in every city you toured. You just didn’t know I was there. I said the spell every night, faithfully. Even then, you still had the accident with the guitar wire that nearly electrocuted you.”

  “Oh, that was just a freak occurrence, Mother.” Lara could still see the frayed wire and the puddle of water, which had no real origin—it couldn’t be chalked up to rain or to any leak from the amphitheater’s ceiling. Still, the charge had gone through her hand. When she turned over her palm, it was still there, like a stigmata scar.

  “No.” Audrey shook her head. “You were nearly killed onstage in front of five thousand people. Even Jason was spooked—that’s why he’s never invited you on tour with him again.”

  “What about my summer in France and Italy?”

  “I can work wonders with hair and sunglasses. Even then, you were nearly struck by a moped in Rome.”

  Lara leaned heavy on the counter. “That was—”

  “—another accident?” Audrey cut in. “We’re safe here. Mother claimed it was a daemon of some sort trying to kill us—a woman.”

  “Do you know who?”

  Audrey shook her head. “But you are constantly reminding me that you’re thirty and you can take care of yourself, so it’s time I teach you what we really do.”

  They walked into Lara’s living room and Audrey took a seat on the floor, settling herself in front of the fireplace on the area rug. “I just need one candle, but you have to make sure that you have one with you always. Each night, you must do this.”

  Lara found a candle and handed it to her mother.

  “Perfect,” said Audrey. “You don’t have to be picky. The fire binds the spell.”

  Watching her mother run her hand over the flame again and again, Lara worried that the hand would burn, but it appeared to take on a sheen. “Yours will do this, too,” said Audrey.

  Bracatus losieus tegretatto.

  Eh na drataut bei ragonne beate.

  The door blew open and a gust of wind hit them. Her mother smiled.

  “Done,” said Audrey. “Now sit. I have some chants to teach you.”

  While they waited at the gate for the flight to Paris, Gaston kept a tight grip on Lara’s carry-on suitcase, which now contained the wrapped painting Sylvie on the Steed. He had chosen not to use an art handling service, preferring to keep the painting with them during the flight. Freed from its heavy frame, the painting was now small enough to fit into an international carry-on bag. Gaston had used acid-free packing paper to fill the hard-sided suitcase along with a healthy mixture of tissue and then bubble wrap.

  Lara hadn’t been to Paris since the summer after her sophomore year in college. Now she knew that she hadn’t been alone—her mother had traveled along with her that summer. She’d written down the incantation to keep her safe and purchased two small candles, which were now stored in her bag. While she hated to admit it, she was nervous—and a little frightened—knowing she might be in danger. In the end, Audrey had toyed with joining them, and Lara had hoped her mother could make the trip, but she had an expectant mare and decided to stay behind. The trip would be short—only forty-eight hours. They’d see Edward Binghampton Barrow soon after landing and give the scholar a day to decide whether it was a real Giroux or not.

  As they boarded, Lara took the suitcase from Gaston’s hand, pushing her carry-on toward him to take instead. It was her painting, her family’s potenti
ally valuable painting. Gaston made a move to take the handle from her and she shot him a look. “I’ve got it.”

  They landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport the following morning. Knowing their hotel rooms wouldn’t be available, they took a taxi directly to the Sorbonne’s Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art on Rue Vivienne on the Right Bank, Second Arrondissement.

  It was strange traveling with Gaston, a man she barely knew. He drank a steady stream of espressos and was prone to pacing while on his phone, securing art with the intensity of a stock trader.

  As she rode through Paris, Kerrigan Falls felt so far away, and her thoughts turned to Althacazur. He had told her that she wouldn’t need to contact him—he’d find her. So far in her life, he’d been able to do just that. Lara realized how much she’d needed this diversion. Althacazur had compared Todd to his lost love, Juno, and described them as mere illusions. While he indicated that he held the answers she was looking for, in her heart Lara felt the answer had been inside her for nine months now. She’d just needed to be somewhere else for a little context to be able to admit that Todd wasn’t coming back, because he couldn’t.

  She was deep in thought when the taxi slowed in front of a tall cement building and Gaston reached into his wallet and paid the driver.

  In the French Arts Section, they found room 313 belonging to Edward Binghampton Barrow IV. The man who answered the door was not gangly, out of shape, and dressed in tweed, as Lara expected, but rather a man with brown skin and close-cropped hair that was graying at the temples. He was slight and thin and dressed in black pants with a crisp white shirt, horn-rimmed glasses, and Gucci loafers. That’s where the fine detailing stopped. Much like fossils, all of his plants were dead and seemed to have been trying to flee out the window in search of sun or rain before they petrified in their terra-cotta pots. His office held hundreds of books organized in haphazard, thigh-high stacks, several with deep curves that threatened to topple, like dominoes. Any visitor wanting to avoid disaster walked sideways to the lone chair.