Алекс Калер - The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels)

Finally, I whisper.

“What happens now?”

“You know Mab,” Kingston says. “She’s already signed on a new cast to make up for those we lost in the fire. The next show’s in four days.”

“The fire?”

“Yes,” he says, with more emphasis in his words than is necessary. “The freak tent fire. We lost half the troop. Thank the gods Mel was away, or we'd have lost her too.”

I open my mouth to ask him what the hell he’s talking about, because it wasn’t a fire that killed everyone, it was Oberos and Lilith and — But his glare stops me short. He knows. We are the few who remember, Mab said. Kingston, Mab, and I. We are the only ones who know what really happened. Every other survivor had their memory wiped by Kingston. I wonder if they tried to erase mine again. I wonder if there’s a reason it keeps failing. Keeping track of all these secrets is going to be impossible.

“Right,” I say instead.

“You should see the new tent,” Melody says, either completely missing or deliberately ignoring the look that Kingston gives me. “It’s gorgeous. Much sexier than the old one.”

“It suits you,” Kingston says with a small grin. I try to smile as well, but I can’t share the amusement. I don’t know how Kingston does it, remembering it all. Every time I close my eyes, I see and hear and smell the chaos of battle. If it weren’t for sheer stubbornness, I’d ask him to make me forget. Or, at least, try.

The pie cart that night is bustling with faces I’ve never seen. There are a few people close to my age and some older men and women. Everyone’s talking loudly, everyone’s excited for their new acts and new costumes. It will be an entirely new show, Kingston explains to me at the table. Everything’s going to be different. I can't help but stare at them all and wonder what sort of bind caught them in Mab's well-manicured clutches. Did everyone here have blood on their hands? Or were there darker secrets hidden behind those smiles?

I nearly jump out of my skin when Lilith sits down beside me bearing a tray heaped with macaroni and cheese. She looks just like she always did — blue porcelain-doll dress, black hair in ringlets, smooth face. Only no cat. She looks naked without Poe. I wonder if she even remembers she had a cat. I decide I’m not about to ask. She smiles at me and cocks her head to the side.

“You okay?” she says. “Jumpy jumpy Vivienne.”

I try to laugh and take a deep breath to keep from screaming. I go about eating my food, but find my appetite is gone with her around. I keep imagining the way she burned Penelope without so much as a pause, the way she lit the whole world aflame. All through dinner I wait for her to turn on me, wait for her features to break apart and reveal a monster of brimstone and sulfur, but it doesn’t happen. She keeps to herself and eats almost everything on her plate and shapes the rest into a smiley face, then gets up and wanders off, leaving the tray behind.

“Odd one, her,” says one of the new girls sitting across from us. She’s got curly brown hair and a scar near her left eye, but her smile is bright.

“You have no idea,” I say, and reach out a hand to introduce myself. She shakes it.

“Sara,” she says. “Pleasure to meet you.”

She goes on to tell me about her training as an aerialist, her tours of New England and the Midwest, but I can’t follow. She reminds me of someone, and the thought makes my stomach churn.

Kingston sits next to me later on, when some of the troupe has wandered off to the beach. Melody and Sara are chatting on the other side of the table, the new girl leaning in just a little closer than socially acceptable for a first chat. Kingston seems amused by this as he slides his hand in mine.

“About earlier,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“For kissing me, or for kissing Lilith?” The rest of my memories might be a tumble of fire and screaming, but those two stand out clear and strong.

“You know I just did that so she’d help us.”

I look away. “Turned out well.”

He puts his hand on my cheek and makes me look at him. He smiles, a little sad.

“Witches don’t apologize very often, V,” he says. “Don’t make me regret it.”

I don’t know what I’m more surprised by — the new nickname or the fact that he actually seems to mean it — but I don’t care. I lean in and kiss him. I close my eyes and let the rest of the world melt away under his cinnamon lips. Melody whistles. Without opening my eyes, I flip her off. She laughs, and I chuckle too, pulling Kingston tighter, never wanting him to go away.

I lie in my tiny twin bed, curled against Kingston, with one arm wrapped tightly over his smooth, bare stomach. I can just imagine his tattoo curling beneath my hands. His breathing is slow and deep and I listen to it like I would the waves of the ocean. I smile and nuzzle my face against his neck. His scent is so familiar, his body fits so well against mine. It’s easy to forget the horrors of the past couple days when I’m next to him, easy to convince myself that none of it ever happened. When I told him what Melody said about not dating within the troupe, he just laughed and said it was because she was the only gay acrobat, and her view would probably be changing rapidly with Sara’s arrival. Then he drew me down onto my bed and kissed me, and that seemed like answer enough.

I try not to think of the past few days. It’s easier that way. I try to ignore the way my hands tingle when they wrap around him, try to block out the awful light that swept through me on the battlefield: the bloodlust, the innate knowledge of how to kill. The power that seared through my fingertips. I focus instead on his breathing, on his scent. Deep down, some small part of me knows without a doubt that this isn’t over, that I’ve only stumbled over the tip of the iceberg that holds Mab’s secrets. And it’s not what she’s keeping from me that scares me; it’s what I’m keeping from myself that makes my blood run cold.

No. Focus on his breath. Focus on how his muscles move beneath his skin and how right this feels, how normal.

Normal. Things can go back to normal…

When I close my eyes, sleep laps over me in warm, grey folds.

I dream.

My pulse is racing. We’re crouched in a shabby room in some old apartment complex, the browning wallpaper peeling off and curling on the linoleum. I can barely breathe, but it’s not me gagging. Every joint in my body is tensed and like iron, the knife in my hands gripped in white knuckles. The blade bleeds.

My sister’s face stares up at me, brown eyes open, mouth open. Curly brown hair, red dripping between her fingers that clutch at her chest. There’s blood on my hands, blood on my jeans, blood pooling on the floor around us. Blood and iron and all I can smell is brimstone, all I can see is flame and white.

“Vivienne, please,” she says. She’s gagging blood between her words. She’s crying. “Don’t.”

I’m sobbing. I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this.

“I’m sorry,” I say, over and over again. The walls move in closer, the light in my head blinds. I want to claw it all away, want to rip apart the howls inside my skull. I can’t get rid of the visions, can’t make the sounds of fire and death disappear. I can’t fight it, just like I couldn’t fight the other visions. I’ve seen everything, everything, and I never want to see it again. There are things no one should see. No one should see. No one should ever know. I’ve seen it. I know.

And worse, I know in that blinding light that I’m the only one who can stop it.