Blackfin Sky (19 page)

Still, she waved hello – just in case.

‘What do you mean? Where are we?’

Sky looked at Jared, then pointed to the circus. ‘We’ve gone back in time. Something about that circus, or the people
in
the circus, is connected with how someone tried to kill me. I don’t know how it ties together, or even why you’re here this time, but as you
are,
you might as well help me get some answers.’

Jared looked at the nearby circus, showing no surprise at finding what should have been a burned wreck now intact. ‘Sure. Come on, let’s check it out.’

They made their way carefully through the woods to the forest of pitched tents which made up the circus. Although the music was playing and the circus lights flashed garishly above her head, Sky had the impression that the main events weren’t happening at the moment, and the crowds were yet to come. Instead of heading straight for the Big Top, Jared gestured that they should walk through the line of stalls making up the midway between the great striped performance tents. The smell of popcorn and candyfloss and other sticky-sweet things filled her nostrils, and she stared hungrily at the glass-fronted display of the doughnut vendor’s stall.

‘Only two pounds per half-dozen, sweetheart,’ the boy manning the stall said in heavily accented English, though Sky couldn’t identify the accent. ‘Or free if you give me a kiss.’ The boy grinned, revealing a dark space where all his front teeth were missing. Sky hurried on after Jared, her eyes wide as she took in her surroundings.

‘Look!’ Sky pointed further along the row to where a kiosk draped in heavy fabrics bore the sign
Madame Curio: tarot, palmistry and divination. £5 per session.

‘I don’t suppose you happen to have a fiver, do you?’

Jared patted himself down, checking the pockets of his coat, but came up empty.

‘
Nada
.’

‘Damn. She might be less crazy now.’

‘Why don’t you just go and talk to her anyway?’ Sky looked at him dubiously. ‘What’s she going to do, run away screeching? If we really have gone back in time, your death-that-wasn’t hasn’t even happened yet.’

Sky could see his point. She crossed the thoroughfare to the kiosk and poked her head inside. Madame Curio sat in the stuffy interior, eating what appeared to be a blue ice lolly. Despite the fact that this was sixteen years earlier than when Sky had last seen Madame Curio, the old woman looked just as old and weathered.
At least she’s wearing clothes now,
Sky thought
.

‘Welcome, child. Five pounds for your future.’

Sky fiddled with the lace edge of her camisole. ‘Uh, I don’t actually have five pounds…’

Madame Curio’s eyes narrowed. ‘What
do
you have?’

Beside her pyjamas, the only thing Sky was wearing was a woven leather bracelet Cam had given her for her birthday. Madame Curio unsnapped the fastening and whipped the bracelet away.

‘That will do. Sit.’

Jared stayed at the opening to the kiosk, stooping to watch what was happening inside. Madame Curio didn’t even acknowledge him. She held out her hand to Sky and nodded for her to do the same. Sky hesitantly put her hand in the palm of the old woman’s and waited. For a long moment, Madame Curio didn’t move or speak. She didn’t even appear to be breathing, and somehow all the sounds of music and voices and the general hubbub of the circus faded to nothing.

Am I fading out again?
Sky wondered, but she didn’t have that insubstantial feeling which usually accompanied her fade-outs.

‘Your parents have lied to you, many times.’ Madame Curio spat to one side after announcing this, narrowly missing a cat which Sky hadn’t noticed curled up in the corner. ‘But their lies no longer serve to protect you. I see a time, years from now, when you are sixteen…’ Madame Curio looked up at Sky, apparently baffled by the contradiction, ‘when you will save your father’s life, but this will bring you danger. Other hand.’

Madame Curio gestured impatiently until Sky laid her left hand with its palm facing upwards over the old woman’s.

‘A boy will be both a tether and a joy in your life.’ She looked up and held Sky’s eye. ‘There are those who would try to keep you apart.’

Sky swallowed hard, but said nothing.

‘There is no way for him to save you.’

‘Ask her who you need saving from,’ Jared whispered next to her. Madame Curio said nothing, so Sky cleared her throat and asked the question. But the old woman had reached behind her, and now held a crystal ball in front of her face. For a moment, Sky saw the distorted image of Madame Curio’s face through it, but as though the light had shifted to hit it at a different angle, the face in the ball seemed to twist and change, until it became a murky orange skull, its empty eye sockets and lipless grin mocking her. The old woman dropped it and gasped.

‘
Get out
.’

‘But I just need to know who—’

‘OUT.’

Sky scrambled from the kiosk as gracefully as she could in her flimsy pyjamas and muddy feet. Madame Curio pointed a shaking finger at her.

‘You had a worm in your head, girl. A WORM.’

With that, Madame Curio ducked back inside the kiosk and pulled the flap down, closing herself in. A moment later a pale, weathered hand snaked out from behind the flap and flipped the sign so that it read:
Madame Curio: closed for spiritual reflection.

‘Guess that was a dud,’ Sky said, turning to look for Jared, only to find that he had vanished. She made a full circle, feeling like a twirling idiot in her lace-edged pyjamas, but there was no sign of him.

‘
Jared?
’ She hissed, trying not to draw attention to herself but doing so all the same. Sky smiled sheepishly at the small boy who was staring up at her.

‘Who are you?’ He pinned her with his gaze in the way no normal three-year-old should have. ‘You don’t fit.’

Sky sighed, giving up on finding Jared for the moment. ‘Tell me about it. Do you know where the ringmaster is right now?’

The boy turned his head and drew in a breath in preparation for yelling.

‘Wait, wait! Don’t shout for him! I mean, can you just tell me where he is?’

The boy thought it over, dark eyes studying her. Then he grinned.

‘I’ll tell you where he is,’ he said. Then he pointed over Sky’s shoulder.

‘Well, hello,
chère
.’ Severin was leaning against a tent pole, a slim black cheroot dangling from between his lips. Otherwise, he was dressed identically to when Sky had first seen him in the Big Top, minus the tall top hat. The glint in his eyes was exactly the same, however: a mix of curiosity, deviousness and amusement. ‘I was wonderin’ when you’d show up again.’

Severin ushered Sky away from the midway. She hesitated, however, when he opened the door to an old-fashioned caravan and beckoned her to follow.

His head reappeared at the doorway a moment later, looking thoroughly confused by her non-compliance. ‘What is the matter?’

‘I’m not going into a caravan with a strange man,’ Sky answered, holding her ground despite the hammering of her heart. This man might not
look
threatening, with his blue eyes and dimpled grin, but something about him rang seven kinds of alarm bells with Sky. It wasn’t that he gave off a
predator
vibe – not at all. But Sky still knew instinctively that he wanted something from her. And his voice … there was something so familiar about it, even though his accent wasn’t anything she’d come across before in Blackfin, but held the deep, lazy rhythm of the Mississippi.

He was one of the people I heard whispering!

Sky was
almost
certain his voice had been one of those she’d overheard whispering of murder the first time she had materialised at the circus, but there was no way she could learn more without actually talking to him. Still, the realisation made her hesitate.
If he murdered someone, I can’t just go into a caravan with the guy.

‘I am Augustus William Severin the Third, ringmaster of this here circus.’ He grinned and bowed from the waist. ‘And you are?’

Sky narrowed her eyes. ‘Skylar.’

‘And now we are no longer strangers,
chère
. Come, it’ll be a sight easier for us to converse without having to shout through the door, don’t you think?’ Still, Sky hesitated. Severin sighed theatrically and retreated inside his caravan where Sky could no longer see him. ‘Come in whenever you get tired of hanging around out there.’

Sky stood outside the caravan in her bare feet and nightclothes, feeling like a genuine idiot, for all of five seconds before she hurried inside. She found Severin at a bench table inside the cramped caravan, two cups of green tea in front of him and another black cheroot in his hand.

He held up a silver case and offered one to Sky, smiling wryly when she didn’t move, eyeing him from across the small space.

‘Aw,
chère
. You’ll catch a face full of wrinkles if you keep pulling it like that. You’ve nothin’ to fear from me.’

Sky didn’t say anything. It was difficult not to just watch Severin, the way he held his cheroot so the smoke curled upwards in spirals, his eyes sharp and focused even when half-lidded, as they were now.

‘Much as I enjoy the scrutiny,’ he drawled, flicking ash into a glass vase on the table, ‘I’m sure you didn’t come back here just to watch me smoke.’

Sky cleared her throat, then edged towards the table. Severin followed the movement with his eyes, but was otherwise completely still, as though he was used to being around animals that spooked easily.

‘Are you going to kill me?’

Severin laughed, and it was as musical-sounding as the circus bells. ‘Now why in the world would I do that?’

Sky’s fingertips were white against the edge of the table. ‘I don’t know you. I don’t know what you want.’

‘Firstly,
chère
, you came here looking for me, so it seems that you’re the one who’s wanting something. Secondly, if it sets your mind at ease, I’ve never killed a soul in my life. I can think of better ways to pass a good time.’

She studied him a moment longer, and Severin let her. Nothing about him was threatening in the slightest, but that in itself felt strange. ‘Why were you staring at me the other night, in the Big Top?’

His mouth twitched in a suppressed smile. ‘
The other night
was nigh on three months ago,
chère
. And I believe you know the answer to that question yourself.’

Sky had been about to protest when Severin disappeared. No prelude, no fading out or possibility of it being a trick of the eye. One moment he was sitting facing Sky across the formica table, the next he was not.

Then he was again.

Sky scrambled away from the little table, knocking over her cup of tea as she reached for the door. Only Severin’s voice stopped her.

‘Don’t leave yet, sweetness. I was merely trying to answer your question as best I could. I’m a Pathfinder and, as they say, it takes one to know one. And it’s also one very good reason why I’d never dream of harming you.’

Sky’s mouth was still hanging open at what she had just witnessed. It wasn’t possible, was against the laws of physics.

But it’s no more impossible than what you’ve done yourself,
her internal voice countered. She had, in fact, done exactly what Severin had just demonstrated – only with a three-month intermission, and considerably less panache.

‘How – how did you do that?’

Severin laughed. ‘The same way you do it,
chère
. I focus on a choice, trace the pathways which unfold from it. Those strands of light, you know? They are the pathways. Then I concentrate on the pathway I want, until …
poof!
It bursts open and I’m there, in another version of now.’

Sky returned to her seat silently, trying to fathom what he was telling her. It was another long, awkward silence. ‘You … you just go to another reality? Then come back whenever you want?’

Severin stubbed out his cheroot, not looking at her for what seemed like the first time in hours.

‘Of course.’

‘How do you control it?’

His eyes met hers again, pure cerulean blue. ‘At first, I had to practise, as it seems you will have to. It’s like playing chess – once you see all the pieces, know how they move, all the strategies, the dependencies – then you can see the path that’ll get you to where you want to be. Checkmate.’

Sky had seen TV shows about conmen who could slick-talk their way in and out of almost anything. Had she given some sign that told him she played chess?

‘Don’t give me those eyes. Chess was an easy call – the game is a scaled-down version of what we do. We are exceptional players.’ Severin leaned sideways and swung his legs up onto the bench seat, crossing them at the ankles.