Алекс Калер - The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels)

He just looks at me and shakes his head with a smile that makes me feel idiotic. He opens the door. It’s Lilith. She barely gives me a second glance as she steps into the room.

“Saw you, saw you come here,” she says. “Important, important.” She goes up on tiptoes to whisper something in his ear, something that makes his eyes go wide. If he looked pale before, now he looks positively ghostly.

“Show me,” he says, and jumps out the door. Lilith goes right after him. Neither of them look back to see if I’m following, but I run over and hop out the door into the blinding sun. They’re already sprinting toward the chapiteau. I follow.

Lilith takes us around to the far side of the tent, the one facing the woods. Poe is sitting beside one of the support stakes, staring at the blue wall panel with a bristle to his fur. Lilith slows down when she gets there. It takes me a moment to figure out what caused Kingston to raise a hand to his mouth. Then I see it. There, in the seam between the blue and grey panels, is a rip. Not just a tiny tear, but a good eight-foot gash that starts just above arm’s reach and stops a few inches above the grass.

“No,” Kingston whispers over and over, like a terrible mantra. I look away from the rip and stare at him. Lilith is kneeling at his side, one hand out to pet Poe, the other reaching up to lace around Kingston’s fingers. He looks mortified.

After a moment of standing there, I ask the question digging at me.

“What’s the big deal?”

He looks at me like I’ve just spoken the worst of heresies.

“Get Mab,” he says through his fingertips. “Get her. Now.”

I know that look, ‘the sky is falling’ darkness, and I turn without question and run straight toward Mab’s trailer.

Mab’s door opens immediately after the first knock.

She stands before me in a leather vest and a black mesh undershirt that reaches her knee-high leather boots. Her leggings are black leather as well, and her waist is cinched with a belt of tiny silver skulls. Behind her, the trailer is swathed in shadows and candlelight and the scent of moss and pine. She leans out the door toward me. I step back, almost dropping into a curtsy.

“Mab,” I say. “Kingston…Kingston told me to get you. The tent — ”

“What about the tent?” she asks, cutting me off. She steps down and the door closes behind her. “What else could possibly go wrong today?”

“There’s a rip.”

She actually flinches back at this, as though I’ve slapped her across her rouged cheekbones. One hand goes to her chest, the other reaches out and grabs me by the shirt. She pulls me in close. “Show me.”

I lead her across the grounds, over to where Kingston and Lilith are still standing. Neither of them has moved. Even Poe is transfixed by the rip.

Mab releases my shirt and steps past the two of them, one hand just barely touching the tent, her fingers flinching back as though it’s on fire. She hovers there a moment, her face unreadable, and none of us dares to breathe, let alone ask what’s going on. It’s just a fucking rip in the seam, I want to say, but clearly there’s more to it than that. Like most things in this company, I have no doubt there’s more to this than meets the eye.

“We tear down now,” Mab says. Her voice is quiet, and there’s a waver in her words. That note of fear is enough to make me believe the worst. She was calm for the murders, for the confrontation with the Summer Court’s herald. Whatever this is, it’s worse than all of that, and I have a terrible feeling it’s only the beginning of the end.

I can bring you somewhere safe,” she said. She offered her hand, and I took it. I don’t remember why I had been in the alley, and I don’t know what had brought me to listen to a strange woman in the middle of Detroit. All I remember is that when she smiled, I believed her. Nothing could have been worse than what lay behind me.

She led me down the street, not saying much. People passed us by with umbrellas and raincoats and didn’t look at us twice, even though we should have looked out of place. They may have been dark shadows moving through the mist and rain. But Mab and I, we were something darker, something hidden in the corners of sight. When I think back, the one thing I remember is the greyness, the melancholy, and the splash of crimson that was Mab’s dress. Then we turned the corner and stepped into another world.

The tent rose above us in the neon-lit park, all blue and wild and vibrant, Cirque des Immortels roaring in acid-green lights. It was color and sound, reds and blues and yellows, tufts of fire and spinning clubs. Music cartwheeled through the crowd that laughed and pointed in the broad avenue leading up to the tent. I stopped, speechless, and watched as giants on stilts trundled past, stared at the woman clothed in only a python standing beside a sign for a freak show. Mab put a hand on my shoulder, but she didn’t make me move. The place smelled of popcorn and cotton candy and something else, something that defied scent. Something that smelled like energy and excitement.

“Welcome,” she said. “Welcome to your new home.”

There’s a pause after Mab’s declaration. She stands there, staring at the rip in the tent, and none of us dares to breathe. Finally, she turns around and crouches low so she’s at Lilith’s level. Poe prowls around her feet, rubbing against her leather boots. She ignores him.

“Lilith, baby,” she whispers, “Auntie Mab needs you to tell the Shifters to come at once. When you’ve done that, I need you to go into my trailer with Poe and hide until I find you.”

“Hide?” Lilith says, cocking her head to one side like a broken bird.

“Yes, sweetie,” Mab says. She reaches out and pets Lilith’s head. The exchange makes me cringe. “I fear the bad man might be nearby, and we don’t want him finding you.”

She stands as Lilith scampers away, Poe at her heels. She looks at Kingston and me, takes a deep breath, and then hesitates. Mab never hesitates. Mab is assured, confident, powerful. Once more, I feel the end drawing near. In spite of the heat, my skin is covered in goose bumps. I want nothing more than to grab Kingston’s hand for support, but he still looks shell-shocked and worlds away. Besides, I can’t show weakness. Not now. Not in front of Mab.

“Kingston,” she finally says. “It is becoming increasingly clear that someone is trying to destroy us. I fear we may have a spy in our Court.” Am I imagining it, or did her eyes flicker to me? “After teardown, you will go ahead to the next site. Take no one, tell no one. Once there, you will use every enchantment at your disposal to make the ground hallowed. Do I make myself clear?”

Kingston swallows, hard, and nods.

“Vivienne,” Mab says, turning her serpent’s gaze to me. “I am putting you under surveillance. You will be placed under Penelope’s watch until this situation has been sorted and your name cleared. Yes?”

“I…” I falter under her gaze, but there’s a feeling of indignation in me that flares for just a moment. She’s the one that brought me here. She’s the one who promised I’d be safe. And now I’m the one she suspects is behind all this? “Why?”

Mab takes one slow, dangerous step forward. She is taller than me by only a few inches, but her anger makes her taller.

“Given your past,” she says with a decided twist to the word, “you are a suspect individual.” Her eyes bore into me, and I have the sense she’s seeing something I can’t. Memories seep into my head, the color red on my knees the day she led me here, the feeling of needing to run, to get as far away as fast as I could. I clench my fists. Was I running from myself?