by Trudi Jaye
Her legs carried her down the hallway and out into the forest beyond. Instead of going down toward the village, she walked up, toward the top of the hill. Each step she took was faster than the last, until soon she was running as hard and fast as she could, right to the top. Once she was there, she took gasping breaths, trying to breathe through the pain and fear raging around her body.
What had she done? She’d fought hard to be made Showmaster when her father left in such a disreputable fashion. There had been opposition to it, but that hadn’t bothered her; she’d known she was the best person for the job. The one person who would always put the Carnival above her own needs. The one who’d been raised in the shadow of the last Showmaster.
What had happened? When had she lost her confidence?
Her heart lurched.
The last Showmaster, her Da, had proved he wasn’t fit for the role either. He’d hurt everyone, sabotaged the show for almost two years, all for some strange sense of guilt he’d felt for Lucietta. She’d managed to curl him around her long, pointy finger and convince him it was his fault she’d had a bad life.
What a crock.
She thought back to Blago’s words. He’d mentioned getting even. Her thoughts ticked over as she realized their importance. Blago thought she’d killed Lucietta for revenge, because of her father.
What Blago didn’t understand was Missy didn’t blame Lucietta, not really. The woman had been a bitter old cow, ready to do harm to everyone at the Carnival, no doubt about that. But she hadn’t created the problems in the Carnival, the lessening of the magic. It had been Christoph who made all that happen. Missy squarely blamed her father—and her mother when she left with him—for betraying the Carnival and creating the problems they now faced.
There was a small kernel of hate in her chest, directed at her father, and it was getting bigger and bigger every day. If her father hadn’t been weak, Luci would never have been able to use him like she did.
If her father had loved the Carnival, if he’d loved Abba like he always said he did, then he would never have been able to do what he did.
***
Zeph looked around the room and wondered what the hell was going on. Everyone looked stunned.
“What did you go an’ do that for?” said Alfie to Jack.
“What are you talking about? She left on her own.” Jack shrugged defensively.
“She would never have been able to renounce, dammit, if one of you two hadn’t let her go.” Alfie was angry, to judge by his expression. “Lookin’ at Rilla’s face, she weren’t the one who let her go.”
Zeph and everyone in the room turned to Rilla, who indeed appeared shell shocked. Her face was white and her blue eyes looked bruised in her face.
“What is it? What happened?” Jack looked confused.
“You let her renounce,” said Rilla in a soft voice. “If you hadn’t accepted it, she wouldn’t have been able to do it. You really do blame her for Lucietta’s death.” Rilla paused and took a breath. “I thought you would get over it. That you really couldn’t blame her like Blago does. It’s not a rational emotion. Missy was defending herself against a woman who showed time and again that she was out to destroy us. A woman who killed my father, who tried to kill me.” Rilla gestured at her chest, her movements jerky. “You still blame Missy, like you’ve forgotten everything that horrible woman did. And now you’ve gone and accepted it.” Her voice got louder and louder until she was yelling at Jack.
Jack frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Did you not feel it? She’s been set free. She’s no longer the Showmaster, and it’s because you let her go. Now we’re even weaker—we have no one else to take her place—and you’ve hurt Missy even more than she’s already been hurt.”
“I didn’t do a thing!” Jack protested.
“You did everything,” whispered Rilla, her eyes huge in her face.
Zeph cleared his throat. Enough was enough. “Can we get back on topic here? None of this helps my mother.” He glanced at Rilla. “Our mother. I don’t care about your politics or the crappy way you’re treating Missy. Which is pretty bad from what I can see. I don’t care about what’s been happening in the past or what’s going to happen for you in the future. What I do care about is getting my mother back. So you lot need to focus.”
Jack took a breath and nodded. “He’s right. Let’s figure this out first and then sort out our own problems.”
Rilla looked like she might disagree but then closed her mouth and nodded.
***
It didn’t take long for Missy to head back to her house. Her brain was numb and she wasn’t paying attention to anything around her—she was just focused on leaving. She packed the clothes that came to her hands first, the easiest ones to see, and just dumped her toiletries into a plastic bag, shoving them into the bag she’d found in the bottom of her cupboard.
Her hands worked mechanically. She didn’t allow herself to think or feel. She pushed it all down to a place she couldn’t reach and boxed it in. She wouldn’t let this beat her. She wouldn’t.
Her bag packed, she pulled the tiny stepladder out from its place and put it squarely under the old family bookshelf. She stood on it and had to stretch on tiptoe to get the book she was after on the top shelf. Economies of the Home, First Edition. Her mother’s least favorite book. Opening it, she grabbed the small box hidden in the cut-out space inside. She put the book back on the shelf and climbed down. Lifting the lid of the small box, Missy took out the wad of bills her mother had stashed for emergencies. This definitely counted.
She grabbed an apple and some cheese from the fridge, a couple of bags of potato chips from the cupboard, took one last look around the home she’d lived in all her life, then walked out the door.
The plan wasn’t settled in her mind yet, but she knew she had to leave. The Carnival used to be her savior, the only place she felt comfortable and safe, but now it was completely unbalanced, with sharp eyes and sharper tongues aimed in her direction, trying to knock her over. That was the one thing Missy couldn’t stand, to feel unbalanced. What kind of high-wire act would she be if she didn’t even feel centered on the ground?
Taking the overgrown path around the edge of the Compound, Missy found her way out to the road without being seen and started walking down the street into town. She hadn’t left a note or any clues as to where she might be.
Let them wonder where she was.
How long would it take before anyone realized? Not today at least. Her joint practice with Luther wasn’t until tomorrow morning. He’d be pissed at her, but that wasn’t her problem now.
Her feet crunched on the gravel alongside the road, and the crisp air made her pull her jacket around her body more tightly. Missy just kept walking, trying not to let her thoughts dwell too much on the realities of what she was doing.
Maybe she should try to find her parents.
It was a dazzling thought. It had never occurred to her before that if she wasn’t part of the Carnival, she didn’t have to abide by their stupid rules about never seeing her parents again. She could find them and make sure they were okay. At least her mother, if she could.
They were probably fine. She wasn’t really worried, but it would be good to see her mom. To have her arms wrapped around her and to hear her say something comforting, to tell Missy everything was going to be all right. Even if it were only for a little while.
She was in the middle of a lovely fantasy of being reunited when she realized it could never work. They’d chosen to leave her and she hadn’t gotten over that yet—might never get over it.
So she still didn’t know where she was going to go. She needed to find a job, which meant she needed another circus.
A shudder went through her body. She would lose the river of magic that flowed through her body if she were no longer part of the Jolly Carnival. It would affect how high she could go in the air, the lengths she could push herself, the extraordinary nature of her perform
ance. Recently, she’d felt the power surging inside her again—ever since Rilla and Jack were confirmed as joint Ringmasters—and it had been mind-blowing.
The thought of going back to how she’d felt just after Abba had been killed—like she was running on empty—made her hesitate.
She started walking again. She’d survived; they all had.
It wouldn’t be so bad. She would just have to work harder, be stronger on her own.
The rumbling sound of a motor behind her interrupted her thoughts. She turned and saw a large motorbike and sidecar heading toward her along the road.
Zeph.
She turned back and kept going, ignoring him as best she could. She couldn’t believe it had only been last night she’d been laughing and joking with him. It seemed a million years ago. Another lifetime. She straightened her spine. It didn’t matter. She kept striding along the side of the road, her head held high.
It took a moment before she realized he’d slowed the bike to ride beside her. She ignored him.
“You want a lift?” he asked eventually.
Missy thought of the long walk into Madison. “No,” she said.
“Come on. You can get in the sidecar. There’s a helmet.”
Missy glanced at him and then back to the road ahead. “No thanks.”
“What happened back there?”
“None of your business. Just head back to your hotel like a good little boy.”
“I’m not going back to the hotel. I’m going to L.A., to visit The Experiment. They’re all still trying to figure out what they’re going to do back there.” He gestured dismissively toward the Compound. “So I’m going to get my mother back on my own. They can’t keep her against her will; I’d like to see them try to stop me taking her.”
“You’re heading to L.A. right now?” A light went on in Missy’s brain. If she could make it to L.A., she’d be able to find work. She knew enough about the different performance groups that it would be easy to convince them to take her on.
“Yep.”
“Okay. I’ll come with you to L.A.”
He shook his head, surprise on his face. “I didn’t… I meant I’d give you a lift into town.”
“I’m not going to town. I’m going to L.A.,” said Missy as she walked around the bike. “And you owe me my boon from last night.”
“I’m not giving you a lift all the way to L.A. It’s not happening.” He sounded grim. “And you didn’t win. The security guard interrupted us.”
“You offered me a lift. And I won our bet, fair and square. You owe me.” She put one leg into the sidecar, holding on either side with her hands, and climbed in.
Zeph just watched her, his eyes stormy under dark brows. “It’s going to be a long, hard ride on that seat,” he said.
Missy moved around on the rigid sidecar seat and put the old-fashioned helmet over her hair. “I don’t care. Just get going. We’ve got a long trip ahead of us.”
He stared at her for a moment, his eyes blazing. Then he revved the engine and took off without another word.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Zeph clenched his hands around the handlebars and tried not to think of the pain. His leg was throbbing in time to the engine, which would have been okay, except it was also burning up the side of his body. On top of that, it felt like someone with several large needles was jabbing simultaneously over his whole leg every couple seconds. He kept glancing down to check he wasn’t actually on fire through some freak accident.
But his leg looked normal. He gritted his teeth and focused his attention back on the road ahead of him.
They’d been riding all day, with only one stop for gas. Missy looked tired and windblown, but Zeph was determined to make up for the time he’d wasted by going to the Compound. She’d been the one to insist on joining him all the way to L.A., and he wasn’t going to take it easy just for her. He revved the engine and went a little bit faster along the long, flat road. He had the bike firmly pointed west, and he wasn’t going to stop unless it became absolutely necessary.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he got there or how exactly to deal with the people who had his mother. He knew enough about circus people from her to know he needed to be careful. His mother used to sit on the front porch on a hot summer afternoon, sip lemonade, and tell him tales about living with the Carnival. The craziness, the bright lights, the costumes. The instability, the fear, the insecurity. It all beat together like a drum in his head, thumping out a rhythm that thrummed through his mind—
“Hey!”
Missy’s yell was accompanied by a thump to his good leg that jerked him back to the present. The bike was headed on a diagonal across the center line toward the only oncoming traffic they’d had all morning—a massive truck.
Honk, honk.
Zeph jerked the handlebars and pulled them back to the proper side of the road. He shook his head, trying to clear the thrashing beat inside his head. The truck’s horn would have knocked him out of his daze, but his heart was racing and the adrenaline, instead of giving him the buzz he normally experienced on the ramps, made his hands shake and his vision blur.
He pulled to the side of the road and stopped, trying to ease his racing heart.
Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.
Missy narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you okay?”
“I need to walk around for a bit,” he said, lifting one long leg over the seat and standing. His bad leg collapsed under his weight and he fell to the ground with a hard thud.
Zeph lay there, eyes closed, pain ricocheting through his body. He couldn’t think, only feel, as the agony spread across his whole body.
Seconds later, Missy was beside him. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into a sitting position, holding him there when he would have slumped back to the ground.
“What the hell happened? Is it your leg?” she demanded. She didn’t seem to notice her breast was smashed up against his shoulder as she supported him.
He nodded, silently cursing his stupid leg yet again. Nothing had been the same since he’d had the accident. He couldn’t even ride a bike to rescue his own mother. He bashed one fist into the dry earth. The stinging pain on the side of his palm just mixed in with the rest.
“You need to walk around on it, get it mobile again,” she said, moving to stand up.
He reluctantly let her pull him to his feet and started to hobble around on the dusty ground next to the bike. He had his arm around Missy’s shoulders, leaning heavily on her. He gradually managed to let go.
“Maybe we need to take a food break,” suggested Missy. “Did you bring anything to eat?”
Zeph shook his head.
“Lucky I came prepared, then,” she said with a grin. She opened her bag and pulled out a packet of potato chips.
“High quality snack,” he said.
“Hey, I was in a hurry. And I don’t cook that often. Tami and her team are too good.”
Zeph limped over to stand next to Missy and grabbed a handful of chips out of the bag. “So why’d you renounce like that?” he asked softly.
She flicked a surprised look up at him. “How do you even know what that means?” she said.
“They talked about it after you left. Rilla was pissed at Jack.”
“Yeah, well, he was the one who let me go. And if one of the Ringmasters doesn’t have faith in me, it doesn’t matter if the other one does or not.”
“So they were the ones you’d been arguing with last night?” It was all becoming clearer now. He understood why she’d been so passionately angry about the fight.
Missy nodded, her eyes focused on some point in the distance only she could see. “They want everything to be the same as it’s always been, and I want to break out, do something a little more exciting and cutting edge.” She shrugged. “I get it in one way—it’s been a rough couple of years, and we’re only just building up the magic again. But if you don’t take risks, you stagnate.”
Zeph nodded
slowly. “But it’s not just about that fight, is it?”
Missy’s gaze flicked to Zeph’s face, and he felt the electric shock of looking into her startled chocolate-brown eyes.
“Jack’s got… other issues with me. He blames me for something that’s not my fault.”
“The death of that woman? Lucietta?” He didn’t know why, but he felt compelled to make Missy talk about it with him.
She hesitated, and he thought she was going to tell him to go to hell. Then she sighed. “There’s more to it than that, but yes. Jack’s got it in his head that I killed his aunt, and he can’t get past that. He’s conveniently forgotten she was trying to kill me first, and she’d been working to systematically destroy the Carnival.”
“Sounds like he’s not that great a Ringmaster.”
Pain flashed across her face. “He was great at first. But ever since that night, everything has been going from bad to worse. Jack accepting my renouncement is the last straw. I can’t go back there now.” Her eyes were large on her face, and Zeph wanted to just gather her up in his arms and tell her everything would be okay.
But he didn’t. “I’m sorry,” was all he said.
She nodded and took another chip from the almost empty packet. “It’s fine. I don’t need the Carnival to survive.”
“You don’t, you know. I’m sure you’ll find somewhere else.” He took a step and cried out when pain slashed up his thigh. Closing his eyes for a moment, he tried to breathe through the pain.
When he opened his eyes again, it was to find her watching him with solemn eyes. She nodded toward the bike. “I’m riding the bike from now on. You need a break,” she said with a complete change of topic. He got the impression their moment of honesty was over. She glared at him and pushed back her hair. He caught the scent of mint and coconut.
Zeph glared back at her. “There’s no way you’re taking over. This is my bike, my mission. I just needed a bit of time to recover.”