Vagabond Circus Series Boxed Set

by Sarah Noffke

  “Because Dave is dead?” Oliver asked. The boy was just a few months shy of sixteen, but he had the maturity in his eyes of someone twice his age. Titus always appreciated that about Oliver. It made him intriguing with his hip style and eyes that should belong to someone with a more serious appearance. It was a strange juxtaposition.

  “No, not because Dave is dead actually. No one really knows. Only the authorities and the members of Vagabond Circus,” Titus said. “I’m just afraid that even with lots of practice you won’t be able to sustain the illusion of Dave.”

  “I know my illusion flickered, but I was nervous,” Oliver said, dropping his head so all Titus saw now was his spiky black Mohawk.

  “The illusion did break,” Titus said. “And if that happened during a show we’d be in a lot of trouble. People don’t flicker. They don’t become transparent. And they can touch objects in the physical realm. What happens after the show when kids want autographs and we refuse them? That would be against everything Dave has ever done.”

  Illusions, as they aren’t real, can’t hold objects, or in this case a pen to sign a piece of paper. And Dave was well known for signing autographs and taking photos with fans after each show. If he didn’t then the reputation of the Vagabond Circus would be tarnished. Titus knew this.

  “And the other reason this idea won’t work is that creating a projection of the ringmaster would zap you of your energy. Oliver, you would definitely be too drained to do your own act as magician. What is Vagabond Circus without a magician?” Titus asked.

  “And what is Vagabond Circus without a ringmaster?” Oliver said.

  Titus sucked in a breath, pressing his hand to his brow as he shook his head. “I know. But I can’t lose you in your role.” He looked straight at the boy. “Thank you for the thought, but this just won’t work.”

  “What are you going to do then?” Oliver asked.

  “The only thing I can do. I only have one option at this point,” Titus said. He gave the boy an earnest expression, one that didn’t hide his true fear. “It looks as though I’ll have to put on my own top hat and take the role of ringmaster.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Zuma startled before striking a fighting stance when Finley entered Jack’s cell. He was both relieved to be back in her presence and also greatly disappointed that he hadn’t found Knight. What was the point of having Zuma if he couldn’t make her happy? He was cursed to love a girl who no matter how he tried was doomed to be indifferent.

  Zuma’s chest rose and fell from her spike in adrenaline as she realized it was Finley entering the room and not an approaching attacker. She narrowed her eyes, hurt. “Where did you disappear to?” she said, her tone sharp.

  “Nowhere,” Finley lied. He rushed forward, taking the spot next to Zuma’s side, staring down at Jack’s mangled body. “Oh, Jack,” Finley said, kneeling down and studying his figure.

  “He’s not dead,” Zuma said. Now wasn’t the time to confront Finley about abandoning her, but an opportunity would present itself. Presently, all her attention needed to be on getting Jack out of the compound and getting him help.

  Finley’s eyes studied the room in that way Zuma guessed was instilled in him by Knight. He had an incredible way to critically take in a space and make decisions. She’d noticed it from the beginning. Zuma watched as Finley’s chin tilted up to the ceiling and his mouth popped open.

  “He tried to levitate in,” Finley said.

  “What?” Zuma asked, turning her head up to peer at the skylight forty feet up. “And then they beat him?”

  “No, he wasn’t successful with the levitation. He probably fell from the ceiling,” Finley said.

  “Oh, my God,” Zuma said, seeing it in her mind and hating the visual. It made her stomach convulse with a violent shiver. “Power-Stopper,” she said, piecing it all together. “She stopped his ability to levitate. She did this to him.”

  “Exactly,” Finley said.

  “Can you teleport him out of here?” Zuma asked, circling Jack, her feet careful to avoid the blood and other fluids around him.

  Finley shook his head, remorse written on his face. “I don’t think so. For one, he’s passed out and his consciousness may not be willing like yours was to move with me. And then also I’m too…” He sucked in a breath, pausing his words. They weren’t ones he liked to associate with himself, not in any sense.

  “You’re too what?” Zuma said, sensing the hesitation swimming in Finley’s eyes.

  His lips twitched to the side. “I’m too weak,” he said and immediately busied himself studying Jack.

  “All the teleporting earlier,” Zuma said, figuring it out. “It zapped your skills, didn’t it?”

  “It depleted my energy to use my skill more than I’m used to,” he said, his eyes on Jack. Finley’s head turned to one side and then the other, like he was computing an equation and the body before him was the exponent.

  Now Zuma understood that drained appearance she’d see on Finley. It had looked all wrong on his face. Finley appearing weak was like the sun rising in the middle of the night. These things just didn’t make sense.

  Finley then kneeled down and went about carefully arranging Jack’s unbroken and broken limbs so he could pick him up. Zuma noticed that he didn’t even grimace when one of the wrecked legs made a squishing sound as he moved it. She had no idea how he managed the look of composure as he worked using his super speed and also a thoughtful gentleness. Finley drew in a deep breath and then, securing a hold around Jack’s armpits, he picked him up and slung him over his shoulder, firmly wrapping his arm around Jack’s hips.

  The acrobat’s legs were draped over Finley’s shoulder, soaking his shirt in blood. Jack’s head hung upside down on Finley’s back. It didn’t look like a comfortable arrangement, but it appeared to work.

  “Wait,” Zuma said, halting Finley from moving forward. “Are you strong enough to do that?”

  He gave her a conceited smirk. “I’m too weak to teleport more than one person through solid walls, but I can carry this guy all day long.”

  She nodded, grateful Finley was there and taking Jack to safety.

  “Come on. Let’s get out of here before Knight and his kids decide to return,” he said and turned for the exit, managing Jack’s unconscious and broken body easily.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Twice Fanny had tried to encourage Benjamin to eat. However, the ten-year-old refused each offer. Tiffany and Emily kept checking on him, poking their wide eyes around the door to Fanny’s room. They never said anything but the boy sensed they just wanted to ensure he was still there. Still breathing. Tiffany had always been notorious for checking on him in the night, saying that she was afraid he’d spontaneously stop breathing just as her grandmother had. That was the reason the eight-year-old girl had become a ward of the state at age five. Her grandmother had full custody of the girl since her parents chose a life of loud concerts and illicit drugs. When the old woman died there had been no one else to care for Tiffany.

  Benjamin raised his chin each time one of the girls checked on him. He didn’t want to make them worry, which he expected they were. He just couldn’t will himself to get out of bed. All day and night and day he’d occupied the crumpled sheets of Fanny’s bed. The longer he stayed there, the harder it seemed it would be to remove himself from it. Each hour brought more thoughts that troubled him. He worried for the future of Vagabond Circus. For his own future. And then he also grieved for the life that was lost, Dave’s life, and his own. Never would he be a star in Dr. Raydon’s circus. He might be a performer, but not for the illustrious ringmaster, the best master of ceremonies in the world. It had been the boy’s dream and it was gone.

  And now Benjamin was certain that the only other dream he ever had was just as unlikely to happen. Since the boy had met Dave, when he and Fanny adopted him from the orphanage, he’d admired the older man. From that moment on, he wanted to be just like Dave Raydon. The boy wanted to have t
he charm that the ringmaster had. He wanted to make people feel good about themselves. He wanted to change the world, just as Dr. Raydon had done.

  Feeling small and worthless and absolutely hopeless in that moment of loss, he wrapped his arms around his tiny body. “I wish I was Dave,” he said, pressing his eyelids together, pushing out giant tears. And then a pain so intense ripped through the small boy’s form. Benjamin opened his mouth to scream; however, nothing came out but a loose gurgle. His bones vibrated from something inside of him. His muscles felt like they were being stretched. They spasmed like a thousand charley horses were assaulting his body. His bones cracked and overextended and moved. This must be a hallucination from not eating or sleeping, he thought through the pain. But in truth the very grief which had planted Benjamin in this depression was also responsible for bringing him his dream traveler gift early. However, the boy would not understand what was happening for a little while longer. Presently, he was owned by the pain, a slave forced to endure the strange changes his body was undergoing.

  A long minute later everything in Benjamin grew still. All he felt was the ragged breath in his chest, which was too large. His hands reached for his stomach, which felt queasy and tight. But his stomach wasn’t his own. It was round and firm. He opened his soaked eyes to find he wasn’t wearing his own clothes. The boy was shockingly wearing a suit. A teal blue suit. And his hands weren’t his own. They were chubby and stiff with arthritis. He lifted them to his face. The bushy mustache was a strange sensation under his gloved hands.

  With an unmatched urgency Benjamin whipped himself out of the bed only to find new aches and pains in his body. He stumbled under feet that were too large, tripping on them three times as he made his way to the en suite bathroom in Fanny’s room. The boy had trouble negotiating his wide frame and stomach into the small bathroom. However, he’d watched Fanny enough times and remembered how she always slid into the small spaces of the trailer. He copied those actions now. Then his older heart seemed to palpitate in his chest when he looked in the mirror. Benjamin didn’t look back at himself in the glass. Staring at him in the clean and bright mirror was the face of Dr. Dave Raydon. His eyes copied the movements Benjamin’s made, searching the figure in front of him.

  Soon the boy who now looked like a man would realize he had come into his Dream Traveler gift early. He was a shape shifter.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Zuma wasn’t one to be frantic. And she also wasn’t one to allow raw emotions to spill out of her. However, seeing Jack curled up in her back seat threatened her very nature. His blood-drenched jeans clinging to the tan leather and the blank expression on his unconscious face made her stomach churn with revulsion. Never in her life had she seen something like this before. What lay before her was worthy of the evening news or a horror film, but not a part of Zuma’s reality.

  She kept whipping her head back to check on Jack, to stabilize him when the car moved. Touching him felt wrong, but necessary. Zuma swung her head around and was shocked again by the sight before her. Finley’s shoulders rested back in the driver’s seat, his chin even and his eyes discerning the obstacles on the road with an unrehearsed calm. In every way he appeared the opposite of how she felt then. How did he keep himself composed when tragedy was lying just a few feet away?

  His eyes parted from the road and found her. Finley didn’t say a word to Zuma, not out loud or in his head, but so much was communicated. And suddenly she found her vault of worries unlocked and falling out of her, like he was stealing them.

  “What are we going to do? What if we don’t get him to the hospital in time? What if he dies in my backseat?” She said each of her sentences faster than the prior one as her tension mounted.

  “He’ll be fine, Zuma,” Finley said, his voice unruffled, deliberate. “Right now I need more directions from you. Where’s the hospital?”

  “It’s straight up ahead,” she said, waving her hand absentmindedly in that direction as she spun around again to check on Jack. “Follow the signs.”

  Finley didn’t even give her a look, but she sensed his anger flare. Zuma turned back to Finley, realizing how entangled they were that she felt this slight bit of hostility at an emotional time like this. “The signs. They’re blue and have a large ‘H’ on them. That’s what I meant,” she said, watching as Finley’s sudden tension released. She threw up her finger. “There’s one. See. That’s the symbol for hospital.”

  He nodded and followed the sign.

  Zuma’s feet tapped the floorboard. Her fingers twisted together and apart over and over again. Every part of her seemed to be spilling over with her nervous energy. Finley had never seen Zuma so frazzled. He moved to put his hand on her, but froze halfway to doing it, realizing that it was too soon to expect she would want his physical comfort. Zuma had opened up to Finley at the compound but a lot had happened since then. Her best friend was currently fighting for his life in the backseat. And the man responsible for this situation was once Finley’s master. He redirected his hand to the console where it sat lamely.

  Zuma turned her head around again to check on Jack. He was sweating profusely and mumbling, but still incoherent.

  Hang in there, Jack, she said over the telepathic link which she could feel but only barely. It kept fizzling as if about to break, but so far, to Zuma’s relief, it had remained, although she hadn’t heard a message from him since the compound. And then all at once Jack went still. She spied the tiny movement of his chest stop and the link disappeared completely.

  “No!” she yelled, whipping around and crawling into the back seat.

  Finley spun around so fast he jerked the car into a nearby lane. “What is it?” he said, his eyes now on the rearview mirror.

  “He stopped breathing!” she said and then Zuma pressed her firm hands into Jack’s chest several times and delivered CPR. It was a strange thing to do from the floorboard of a speeding vehicle, but she’d do it from on top of a flying plane to keep Jack alive. Her mouth pressed to his cracked lips, gifting him with a breath. Again and again she alternated between pumping his chest and giving him oxygen. On the third attempt his heart ticked back on and his breathing kicked in again. And although the beat was weak and the breaths shallow, he was alive once more.

  “His body is going in and out of shock,” Zuma said, curled over him. “We have to get him help. He can’t go much longer like this.”

  “And he doesn’t have to,” Finley said, throwing the car into park. “We’re here.”

  The medical unit speeding out to them with the gurney was the most welcomed sight Finley had seen all day. “Good thinking about calling ahead,” he said to Zuma. Then he raced out of the car and stealthily and speedily pulled Jack out, careful not to make his life-threatening injuries worse.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  When Fanny rushed into the office tent she brought a cloud of dust with her, having run straight into the space kicking up dirt.

  “What is it? The message you sent said it was urgent,” she said to Titus.

  The creative director lifted his head from where it had been resting on top of his large hands, his elbows pinned on the surface of the table top. “It’s Jack. He’s alive,” he said.

  Fanny hurried and took the seat across from Titus, but after reading his expression and having too much tension springing around her body, she shot back into a standing position. “That should be good news. Why do you have that look on your face?” she asked.

  “He’s in surgery,” Titus said, picking up the cell phone next to him and turning it in his hands, expelling his nervous stress. “Zuma just called. Finley and she took him to a hospital and they don’t know how long until they’ll have real news.”

  “Well, what’s he in surgery for?” Fanny said.

  “His legs and back,” Titus said.

  “What? Why? What happened?” And everything suddenly shifted in Fanny. She wasn’t the warm caregiver or thoughtful healer. Her face was strained and shoulders burdened. T
his was how she’d looked when she came to Vagabond Circus as Nurse Fanny.

  “He fell from a great distance according to Zuma,” Titus said.

  “Oh no. He broke both legs, didn’t he?” she said, squeezing her eyes together, pressing the tears back.

  “And possibly his back,” Titus said in a discriminating tone.

  “No-no-no,” she said, shaking her head to shake away the tears now streaming down her cheeks. “If I could get to him, maybe I could help.”

  “Fanny, I need you here,” Titus said in a rush and then pushed back, trying to push himself away from what he’d just said. He couldn’t believe he was such a coward at a time like this. He cast his eyes low, hiding his look of mortification.

  “Right now he’s in surgery for things you can’t heal. He lost a lot of blood and bones have to be reset and…he lost consciousness before they got him to the hospital,” Titus said.

  Fanny nodded, her eyes glassed over. She couldn’t replace blood loss with her healing power or bring someone out of a coma or back from death.

  “So what do we do?” she asked.

  “We wait. Zuma will call as soon as he’s stable. Then we’ll make a decision. If there’s something you can help Jack with then you should go to him,” he said reluctantly. “Pack a bag and be ready to get on a plane to Los Angeles, but for now I need you here. Please, Fanny,” he said and brought his pleading eyes up to hers. Titus wondered if she sensed how weak he felt. Just the thought that she did coated his insides with shame. He wished he could be stronger for her, for himself, for Vagabond Circus.

  “Yes, of course,” she said and motioned him forward to where she was standing.

  Titus faced her with a confused look. “What?” he said.

  “Come here, Titus,” she said, waving him toward her again.

  He stood with a groan and walked around the table. Then a sound of surprise popped out of his mouth when she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. He hesitated, but only for a moment before he brought his arms around and hugged her back. After a moment she pressed him into her and then stepped back, looking straight at him.