by A. R. Kahler
Kingston chuckles again, but stops quickly. He doesn’t want to be happy around me. He doesn’t want to show his human side.
Good. If he’s trying to hide that, he’ll be off-kilter, which will make finding out his other secrets just a little bit easier. Sometimes, playing with humans is too damn easy.
“So why are you here? I’m guessing it’s not for pleasure.”
I grin. “I take my pleasure where I can.” I look him in the eyes when I say it. Sex can be the greatest weapon of all. “Though you’re correct in assuming Mab didn’t send me out here to see the show.”
“What is it now?”
He looks haggard. Should witches look haggard? I thought they’d have some wicked magic to reduce crow’s-feet and under-eye bags, but this guy just seems to stick to coffee. Which doesn’t appear to be doing him any good.
“She thinks there might be a leak.”
“A leak?”
“Someone outsourcing.”
He pauses.
“Our Dream goes directly to Mab,” he says slowly. “We’ve never had any problems before.”
“Be that as it may, it doesn’t mean someone else isn’t skimming off the top before it even goes to ship. Maybe someone higher up?”
Things connect in his head, and he leans back a little once he realizes he’s a prime suspect.
“I’ve been in charge around here since Mab left, and I’d appreciate you not implicating me in all this. I can’t be stealing from the show. No one could. Our contracts prevent it.”
“And those contracts have never been jeopardized before.”
Mab told me all about the circus’s history, and how one lone performer banded with Summer to manipulate the contracts every worker within the show had signed. The contracts were magical and binding, but someone named Penelope had figured out how to undo them. The resulting deaths and battles had caused a huge hit to the show’s Dream intake and Mab’s faith in humans. Penelope was Mab’s prime example of why you shouldn’t trust anyone whose word wasn’t binding.
He looks away. I can tell he was hoping I’d be just another pretty face. Sucks for him.
“So you won’t have a problem with me looking around,” I say. “I’ll need to see the show, of course. Front row seats. Y’know, royalty and all.”
“You truly are your mother’s daughter,” he says. Is it my imagination, or does he sound a little angry about that? “But that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Of course not.”
He looks back to me, and for the first time in our interaction he looks at me like I might be something of an equal. I want to pat his hand consolingly and say there there, because he was right the first time—we are on different levels. They’re just opposite of what he initially thought.
“Why are you really here?” he asks. “Mab wouldn’t send an assassin to do an investigator’s work unless she was expecting something bloody.”
Pan told me not to trust this guy, and I don’t. Especially because at this moment, the long line of tattoos that stretches up my spine starts to tingle. Bastard’s trying to use magic on me. And once I see him smile, I know just what sort of magic he’s trying.
Love spells. The oldest tricks in the book.
I smile back. Good. This is really good. I turn up my personal charm as my own literal charms keep his magic at bay.
“I’m not supposed to say,” I whisper, dropping into a conspiratorial giggle. I glance around to make sure no one’s looking and gesture him closer. He leans across the table, the scent of his musky cologne amplified in the growing heat. “But I know I can trust you. My last hit went south. The guy was hoarding Dream, but he wasn’t sending it to Oberon. He was a free agent. And I think Mab’s scared.”
The truth is, I have no clue why I’m here. Frank was pulling in a small amount of Dream compared to the rest of Mab’s Trade, and I can’t imagine why it would actually scare Mab enough to send me here to check her supply chain. Sure, someone might be trying to rise against her, but the amount of Dream being skimmed is tiny—barely enough to feed a single faerie, let alone an army. There’s something Mab isn’t telling me. Which, I guess, isn’t anything new.
That’s not something I’ll admit to him, though. If it got back to her that I was doubting her rule, there’d be hell to pay.
Kingston doesn’t sit back when I’m done talking. Instead, he leans a little closer, his eyes looking deeply into mine. The only word to leave his lips is “huh.”
“I know,” I say. I move one hand closer to his, so our skin just brushes. It’s electric, and I don’t know if it’s the magic he’s working or my own imagination.
I can see why Pan told me not to trust the guy. My chest is warm, my heartbeat fast—it doesn’t matter that I know the guy’s an asshole and trying to magic me into liking him; he has genuine charisma.
“I was hoping you’d give me the full tour,” I say, a little breathlessly. “You know . . . leave no space unexplored sort of thing.”
“Yeah?” he breathes. Is he getting into it as well or is it just a front? Hard to say, but so long as I get him to trust me, it doesn’t really matter.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll show you anything you want,” he says. He leans in even closer, lets his lips brush my ear, and I almost chuckle. He thinks he’s closing the deal. I close my eyes and let a tremor pass through me in anticipation of his final, lusty words. “I’ll even show you what color your hair would be right now, if you didn’t have so many wards against magic.”
My eyes snap open.
He leans back, a shit-eating grin on his face.
“Hair?” I ask, still breathy, still thinking I can maybe salvage this, but I already know I can’t. Damn it. Ruse is up.
“Yeah. Your hair. It should be purple by now.” All breathiness is gone, but his chest is still heaving a little, and I can tell that whole fake seduction worked better on him than he wants to admit. “What, you don’t think I’d try out a full-on love spell on Mab’s prime assassin without checking to make sure you were susceptible first?” He takes a sip of his coffee. “I’ve heard the stories about you. I’d have been more shocked if Mab let you come here—anywhere, really—without at least a few magical wards. I’m not an idiot.” He raises his mug in toast. “Still, that was some excellent acting on your part. You do your mother proud.”
The way he says it, the bitterness in his voice, is scathing.
I take a sip of my coffee and roll with it.
“But you would have tried out a love spell,” I say. I gesture to myself. “Because I mean, obviously.”
He shakes his head and chuckles. “Probably. I’m assuming what you told me was a lie? The loose Dream and all that?”
“Actually no. I find it’s often easier to tell the truth to my targets. Keeps them on edge.”
“So you, what? Watch the show and make sure it’s all going to Mab?”
“That’s the gist of it.” I guess.
“And if someone is skimming?”
I flourish my wrist and a small fan of throwing daggers appears like magic. Mainly because it is.
“They die,” I say.
He laughs. “This is the Immortal Circus. You know that, right? I know French is hard to understand and all but . . .”
I gently toss a dagger at the table. It thunks into the wood not a millimeter from his ring finger. He shuts up. He might be immortal, but I’m positive he can still bleed.
“I’m good at what I do, magical contracts or no,” I say. “Hopefully you don’t have to find out just how good.”
That’s when I realize why I feel so out of place. It’s not because I’m not necessary, not because everyone’s doing their damnedest to make me feel unwelcome. It’s because I feel like I’m here for them. I’m here to be seen. Like . . . I don’t know, a prize pony.
Or bait.
After some pointless small talk about sales and marketing, Kingston tells me he has “other things to worry about rather than babysitting” and leaves me at the table. He doesn’t sound pissed when he says it. Honestly, it sounds like a front. I must have gotten under his skin much better than he let on. A part of me is disappointed—he was fun when he was trying to get into my pants—but I didn’t come here to make friends or playthings. This is just another job, circus tent or no.
The grounds start filling up as people leave their trailers and begin their day. Some head straight to breakfast; others vanish into the surrounding field with yoga mats in hand. A few people start juggling, and there’s a low tightwire set up by one of the smaller tents that a young girl begins prancing across. But the people who catch my eye are the ones who look like biker punks, all denim and leather and tattoos, who leave their trailers with the bleary faces of the perpetually hungover. Their presence breaks up the stoic uniformity of the place—they drag their evenly spaced lawn chairs into semicircles and crack open six-packs. A few light cigarettes. Only one of them does anything remotely circuslike: some girl with a dreadlocked Mohawk begins juggling beer bottles high into the air, a cigarette dangling from her mouth.
Seeing as I’ve got a day to kill, I might as well start trying to learn what I can. And these are my type of people. At least, they seem more like burnouts than the ones stretching at seven in the morning, which means they’ll probably be up for banter.
I head over, grabbing another mug of coffee on the way and wondering if I could steal the carafe on my way home.
You know those scenes in the movies when the new girl approaches the cool kids and the cool kids all stop and punch each other on the shoulders and nod at the new girl like she’s fresh meat? That’s honestly what I expect to happen when I step up to these people, especially since I’m not dressed in my usual work attire—a little leather goes a long way when meeting other ruffians. But they don’t. They barely notice me. Save for one girl.
“What’s up, buttercup?”
Like as with Kingston, there’s something about her that’s eerily familiar, and I wonder if maybe she’s been by Winter to chat with Mab. She’s got shoulder-length brown hair and is relatively petite, in that I’m-an-athlete-and-could-still-bench-you sort of way. She also doesn’t seem to fit into this group at all—no tattoos, no dirty denim. Just a brown floral skirt and white T, both immaculately clean. About the only thing that ties her to them is the delicate septum ring in her nose.
“Hi,” I say. I hold out a hand, but she ignores it. She’s smiling at me like she’s been waiting for me to arrive. It’s a complete reversal from Kingston and that psycho-goth, Lilith. “I’m Claire.”
“I know,” she says. “I’m Melody.” She steps over and gives me a hug. “It’s really good to see you.”
“Do I know you?”
I’ve faced down demons and murderers and worse, but her embrace sends my body into shock. Hugs aren’t exactly common fare in the Land of Ice and Horror.
“Oh, sorry, no.” She backs off when it’s clear I don’t subscribe to the touchy-feely brand of interactions. “It’s just I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Uh-huh.” Okay, so maybe this Melody girl is just as unhinged as the rest of these performers. But at least she’s nice about it.
“Anyway,” she says, “these asshats are the tent crew.”
A few of the closer ones nod, but the rest don’t even notice the introduction.
“I’m sort of the head of them,” she says. “Though I also do admin.”
“You look like a performer.”
Her expression goes from happy to pained in a millisecond, but then she’s back in control. “Not anymore,” she says. “Anyway, enough about me. What brings you here?”
I spend the rest of the morning and afternoon bumming around, trying not to get in the way. Melody’s a gracious host at first, but even she has her limits with my antisocial nature, and after twenty minutes of us hanging around the tent crew and discussing the tour, she admits that maybe I should just go explore for myself. Which I do.
Trouble is, without a show going on, there’s no influx of Dream, so it’s impossible to trace any leak. I can feel small traces of the stuff lingering in the air, can taste the excitement of last night’s haul, but it stays safely on the circus grounds. If someone’s stealing from the show, they clearly aren’t interested in mopping up the small stuff. It’s maddening, waiting around, knowing I could still be asleep or could have manipulated time to arrive just when the show started. Mab wanted me here now for a reason, but I sure as hell can’t figure it out beyond punishment-by-boredom. Because, like I said, I’m not a PI—I’m not about to interrogate every performer in the troupe. Tact isn’t my forte, and I highly doubt Mab would appreciate learning I had to maim her main source of Dream just to find out that no one had a clue what was going on.
Instead, I wander the grounds and watch people practice and feel like a general creep. I’m sorely tempted to head back to Winter, speed up time between the worlds, and come back when it’s dark. But I don’t, because I’m a masochist . . . and not interested in incurring Mab’s wrath.
I save the big top—the chapiteau, Melody reverentially called it—for last, having made my way around the trailers and booths and changing tents. The air is hot and humid as I stand outside the flap to the black-and-purple tent, small gusts of warm wind bringing scents of hay and dirt and manure. But as I stand there, staring up at the dimmed neon sign for the Cirque des Immortels, I can’t fight the shivers racing across my skin. Every once in a while a light breeze flickers out from beneath the curtain. It feels cold and dusty, like a grave.
I reach out and touch the thick vinyl to push it aside.
Pain sears across my eyes, a bolt of heat that drops me to my knees.
“And this is the chapiteau,” comes a voice behind me. I turn my head, and there’s Mab, leading a girl with blonde hair and bloody jeans toward the tent. Both of them waver in the sun, light filtering around and through them. My vision tilts . . .
“I don’t know if I should stay,” the girl says. Why is her voice so familiar? Nothing about her stands out besides the blood.
“Nonsense. You’re safe here. I swear to you, within this tent, nothing will befall you.”
I open my mouth to ask what Mab’s doing here, but then they step forward and pass straight through me.
I nearly vomit as another wave of pain hits. I drop my head to my knees and squeeze my temples with my hands, willing the ache away before it crushes me into a bloody mess.
Then it’s gone.
“This place has ghosts.” It’s not the happy-go-lucky Melody. It’s Kingston.
I look back slowly, fully expecting the world to swim and for it to not actually be him. What the hell was that? I think. A vision? I don’t get visions.
He is silhouetted by the sun, and I can tell he’s not certain whether to back away or bend down to help me up. He picks the middle ground and just stands there like a statue. At least the statues where I come from are helpful.
I force myself to standing and wipe the dust from my jeans. I still haven’t even made it past the entrance. The tent feels colder now that I’m closer.
“Places like this . . .” He shakes his head. “Sometimes you can’t escape the memories.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. Now that I’m standing, I feel a little light-headed, but thankfully I don’t faint or sway. “I was just a little woozy. Not exactly warm where I come from.”
“Right.” He takes a small step toward me then, and I can’t deny there’s some sort of magnetism there. Maybe it’s magic or maybe it’s the fact that it’s clear he’s used to getting what he wants—he has charm, and a part of me wants to get lost in the illusion. Something about him promises the act of forgetting. “That’s why you’re seein
g things.”
“How did you . . . ?” I begin, then catch myself. Shit.
“I’m a witch. I know these things.” He hesitates. “What did you see?” It doesn’t actually sound like he wants to know.
“None of your business.” I take great pleasure in the subtle physical reaction he has, the slight lean back. Oh yes, he’s used to getting exactly what he wants. Too bad I’m used to the same thing.
He shakes his head and turns, muttering “Just like your mother” as he leaves.
I’ll take it as a compliment.
I look toward the tent warily, then remember it’s just a damn tent, and brush past the curtain to step inside.
Four
I’m back in one of the castle’s many courtyards. Grey cobblestones arc out from a central fountain made of sharp planes of ebony, stretching toward waist-high black bushes that lean heavily against the castle walls. The fountain looks like some sort of intergalactic laser, but rather than a beam of light shooting from its top point, there’s a cascade of water delicately frozen in its downward spiral.
“What did you find?” Mab asks.
“Nothing,” I say, sitting down on the rim of the fountain. There are tiny azure fish in the basin, ensconced in the ice. Not that they’re dead. They somehow swim through the frozen block like it’s water. They don’t even know they’re trapped in there, that there’s a whole new world on the other side. The metaphor is way too apt for my liking. I tap the surface and watch them dart off. “The place was a dead end.”
Mab sighs and examines the bush beside her, cupping a delicate crystalline rose in one hand. She’s in her usual evening wear, meaning a velvet riding cloak trimmed with white fur and a sheer black dress beneath.
“Kingston’s a charmer, eh?” I continue. Mab’s not in a talkative mood tonight, which honestly isn’t that different from any other night. Something about her is a little more reserved than normal, though. It has me on edge.