Алекс Калер - The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels)

A couple songs later, I stand up and leave the tent, dropping the juggling balls in a props basket backstage. There’s no one around — no one at the pie cart, no one in lawn chairs outside of their trailers. Everyone must either be inside their air-conditioned bunks or out at the watering hole. Hopefully, Mel found some of the eye candy she was after. I wasn’t kidding; one of us deserved some action, and since I clearly wasn’t going to be getting any from Kingston for quite some time, it might as well be her. Was there even anyone else in the troupe who was gay? Or was her only hope at getting laid outsourcing?

As I head to the pie cart for water, a shape dodges in front of me, then another shadow close behind. Poe chasing a mouse.

The cat pauses in front of me and turns its yellow eyes up to mine, the rodent forgotten. His front paw is still in a cast. Something in my memories shifts.

“You can’t have him.”

I spin around.

Lilith’s standing behind me. She’s in a lacy white floral dress that makes her look like a doll, her head tilted to the side in that lost-bird manner she often has. There’s even a pink ribbon tied in her hair. The sight of her makes the air feel warmer, makes me take a half step back.

“What?” I ask. Poe slinks around from behind me and curls around Lilith’s feet. She bends down and picks the cat up, then stands and looks at me dead-on.

“You can’t have Kingston. He is too good for you. He is mine.” There’s nothing vapid in her voice. The contrast between her words and her appearance chills me to the bone. Not everything is what it seems here. Then what the hell is Lilith hiding?

“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

Her eyes narrow.

“I won’t let you steal him away. I won’t let you do what the bad man did to him.”

“Bad man?”

“Bad man Senchan.”

Her words fill me with fire, and as her brown eyes turn red, my vision burns. Smoke fills my nostrils, screams and crackling as Lilith is there on the field, burning the man from the Summer Court. Burning the fields and the Summer Fey within. Lilith, flames looped around her in cords, flames of her fingers, fire and wrath, and Senchan burning and screaming and cracking apart with corn-husk skin. And then Mab’s there, covering Lilith in a hug, and the fires die down and she’s whispering. My baby, my baby, stop now, please.

I take a deep, shuddering breath. Bile rises in my gut. I drop to my knees and vomit, my hands clenching the ash-covered earth. Senchan, burning. Senchan, screaming. His ash is everywhere.

“What…what did you do?” I manage.

“Bad man,” Lilith says. There’s a smile in her words that twists my intestines. Pride. Sheer, contented pride. “Bad man gone.”

She kneels down at my side.

“You don’t look so well, Vivienne. You look weak. Kingston despises weak women. Which is why he will always choose me. Always.”

She puts Poe on the ground beside me, and together they run off, disappearing into the cornfield like the damned.

Mab opens her trailer door after the second pounding knock.

She’s in a black velvet-and-rhinestone blazer and velvet leggings. Her hair is bleached white today, and her green eyes spark at the sight of me. The air around her seems to shiver with shadows, but I stand my ground. Her trailer is completely dark; no candles, no walls, just shadow.

“Vivienne,” she says. “I thought I left you under Penelope’s watch?”

“I remember,” I say. The words come out as a croak. My throat is on fire and every breath is sandpaper and flame. There are two worlds battling in my head, and my body is splitting apart at the seams. “I know about Senchan. I remember.”

I don’t know how I expect her to react. Shock? Anger? Whatever it was, I wasn’t expecting her to smile and step back into the trailer.

“Come in,” she says. Her tone grows motherly in an instant. “Let’s talk.”

I step inside the trailer. The door closes behind me and all is black, black and empty, save for her hand on my back. Then a cool breeze blows past me, smelling of ice and dust, and a faint blue light flickers in the distance, then another. One by one, a host of candles blaze into life, their flames the blue of a summer sky. Her office materializes from the dark in tendrils of fog, wisps that solidify into an ancient wooden desk, four walls, two chairs, and a bookshelf that covers the entire back wall.

She guides me into the seat and settles herself in the plush velvet chair behind her desk. Memories of my first time in this very chair settle on my shoulders, but there’s no time to feel at home. Something is wrong, very wrong, and I’m not going to be kept in the dark any longer.

“So,” she says, leaning back to prop her stiletto boots on the desktop. “Talk.”

The words are tumbling around in my head but I can’t seem to pick one to start it all off.

“I know,” I say again. “I remember him. Senchan. The Summer Court.” I take another shuddering breath as I try to think back without losing it — either the memory or my lunch. “I know Lilith killed him. I saw what Lilith is.”

Mab smiles.

“I find that highly unlikely,” she says. “But pray tell, what, exactly, did Lilith do?”

“She burned him. There was fire. A lot of fire. Lilith burned Senchan alive. And all the fey in the fields. She killed them all.”

Something flickers across Mab’s eyes, but it’s gone in an instant.

“That is quite a statement,” she says. “Especially since you seem to be the only one who saw such a thing.”

That’s when reality dawns on me, the memory of Kingston not quite meeting my gaze when I woke up with snake venom coursing through my veins and dueling memories in my head. He knew. Worse, he knew that I was supposed to be in the dark. He lied.

“You had him erase the memory,” I whisper. “From everyone.”

“Apparently not,” Mab says. She eases her boots off the table and leans in closer to me, fingers laced together under her chin. “You seem to remember everything. Which is especially odd since — if we are to be completely honest now — you were passed out in his trailer when the incident took place.”

“I…” I try to remember. She’s right. I know I’d been in Kingston’s trailer. I remember the blood trailing down his neck. I remember him shaking. And I remember Lilith, the two of us swearing to kill Senchan. Taking her hand… “I had a vision,” I say. The words taste strange on my tongue, almost tingling as I speak.

“That,” she says, “is impossible.”

“Why?” I whisper.

“Because. Your contract expressly forbids your visions to manifest. That’s why you joined us in the first place.”

I sit there in silence as she studies my face. Visions? I’m supposed to have visions? What happened to just being normal? Mortal? Or was that just a lie, too?

What am I?

“What are you talking about?” I finally ask.

“Well,” she says. She leans back and snaps her fingers. “I suppose that now the cat’s out of the bag.” From the bookshelf behind her, a massive volume slips down and glides over to the desk. It flutters open in front of her. My name is at the top of the page, beneath the words Official Contract .

Her finger slides down to one of the bullet points.

“Paragraph 1C,” she says. “As part of her agreement, Vivienne Warfield shall have no recollection of her powers, past, present, or future, unless deemed necessary by Queen Mab or…”

She pauses.

“That isn’t right.”

She looks up at me and her eyes are blazing.

“You’ve been in my office.”