Gifted, A Donovan Circus Novel (16 page)

Nikolas shook his head. “No
way,” he whispered to us. “Give everyone a minute to break away and then I want
to see him.”

Delia nodded in agreement,
cheeks wet with tears.

We waited for the crowd to
disperse and shuffled around so it didn’t appear as though we were
intentionally staying. Brooklyn and Bianca immediately lit cigarettes, and I
couldn’t blame them. If I was about to see a dead body, I might need one too.

As we waited, I looked up to see
Gabriel. He stood by himself near a tree where Sheffield might miss him, but it
was obvious he wanted to see Marty’s body. I excused myself from the group and
walked over to him. He barely so much as glanced up and I rethought my decision
to strike up conversation until he spoke.

“Unbelievable, right?” he said.
He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and offered me one. I shook
my head; he instead took one for himself.

“No one can explain how an
Unbreakable got killed. Have you ever heard of anything like this?” I asked.

“Once,” Gabriel replied. “But it
was an accident—guy drowned. Nothing remotely close to Marty.”

“I don’t really remember him
from before, but he made sure to introduce himself when I came back. It’s so
sad. One of the strangest things,” I commented.

He shrugged again. “Damn shame,
but nothing anyone can do about it. Guy’s dead.”

“Well, Gabriel, dead or not,
Marty was a part of this family. People are going to try to find ways to take
action,” I said, taken aback by his indifference.

“What do they think they’re
going to do? Go after the guy’s killer? Please. Whoever did this is probably
long gone. Or it’s some stupid townie, probably from the other night, that
we’ll never find. Then we’ll leave and it’s over.”

“Did you know Marty?”

“Not very well, but yes, I spoke
to him several times, mostly about weather or the shows. Just because the guy
died doesn’t mean I’m gonna start crying.”

“Gabriel, he was
murdered
. Even if you didn’t know him
well, you’re as much family in this troupe as he was. What about the rest of
us? How do we know we’re safe? Doesn’t that worry you?”

He shrugged again. It infuriated
me. Loyalty was a huge priority. Even though I didn’t know Marty well and had
only been here a handful of days, I still felt anger towards whoever killed
him. This would cause pain throughout the entire crew; of course it made me
unhappy.

“We take care of one another,
Gabriel. We need to stick together. I think you should start understanding that
before getting too deep within the troupe, otherwise they’ll know you don’t
care about being here.”

“I don’t get why you’re taking
this so personally, Lucy. You and I have been here the same amount of days; why
do you care so much about someone you met once? About people you barely know?”

“Are you kidding me? After the
other night? We’re a part of this now. You’re in whether you like it or not.” I
couldn’t grasp how little he cared.

“False. I happened to be in a
situation where I had to defend myself. Just because we all fought some townies
together doesn’t make us best buddies.”

“Are you really even saying
that? When you agreed to be here, you agreed to be in a family—”

“You keep saying that word, so
first of all, please stop,” he interrupted. “But second, “family” means nothing
unless you’re accepted and loved by them. You signed your name on a piece of
paper and agreed to do some flips; it doesn’t mean you belong.”

His coldness stunned me into
speechlessness. I thought after the other night we shared something, that maybe
he even liked being around me. I wasn’t trying to sneak looks at the lunch
table or anything, but in my opinion, a life-threatening situation created a
sort of connection. Embarrassed and angry with myself, I didn’t even realize my
arm was on fire until Keegan whistled softly in our direction.

“Luce, you okay? You know you’re
on fire, right? C’mere,” he said, motioning back to my friends.

“Yeah. Wasting my time over
here,” I replied. I shook the flames off.

Gabriel quirked an eyebrow at me
and I stomped off back to where everyone stood. The crowd thinned out and
Sheffield disappeared into the dark, presumably to call the police. We all
stepped up to get a better look. What we saw took our breath away.

As soon as I saw him, I
regretted it. All that resembled Marty now was a charred corpse. The smell was
god-awful and I held my breath to keep from inhaling the rotten stink of his
scorched skin. It looked as though he had been burned alive. His hair was burnt
off, clothes and skin blackened beyond recognition.

Neither Bianca nor Delia could
stop their tears and Brooklyn lit another cigarette, her hands trembling so
much it took her four tries to light it. Not taking my eyes off Marty’s body, I
offered up my hand and she finally lit it with the fire in my palm. The others
stood there in grim silence.

I hardly registered when Gabriel
stepped up, took one look at Marty’s body, and never so much as blinked. He
stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered off without a second glance.

I couldn’t stop staring at
Marty, lying there dead on the ground. The only bodies I had seen were in
caskets. This was nowhere close. His burnt, blackened face with his mouth
frozen in a forever-silent scream would haunt me to my grave. He’d been
destroyed. My stomach threatened to upchuck its contents.

Then a terrible thought struck
me.
Someone did this to him. They watched
him burn alive. What if it had been a Firestarter? How else would an
Unbreakable die this way?

I immediately shook it off. No
way, I thought. No one here could be capable of this evil torture. Whoever did
this must be full of hate and rage. There was no way anyone in the troupe could
be responsible. I couldn’t accept anyone would do this to someone with whom
they spent every day of their life.

“I think you’re right,” Brooklyn
said, breaking the silence. I jumped; I forgot that she could even do that.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “I’m
not exactly thinking straight.”

I took a step towards her and
put my arm around her for a moment. No matter my annoyance at her, this was not
the time or place to get upset over something like her reading my mind. “It’s
okay. I’m glad you agree.”

Finley sounded far away when he
spoke. “Agree with what, Brooklyn?”

“There’s no way this was a
Firestarter,” she replied in a shaky voice. She took a long drag on her
cigarette.

Nikolas turned to the side, his
eyes accusing me. “You seriously think it could be one of us?”

I nearly wilted under his glare.
“No! Brooklyn agreed with me because I was insisting there’s no way it
could
be one of us. When I see anything
fire-related, my first instinct is to make sure I didn’t cause it, so my
thought process went faster than I could stop it.”

I babbled so fast that I doubted
anyone understood me, but Bianca jumped in. “It’s okay. We know what you meant.
But you’re right—no way it was one of us. This is cruel.”

“I’m willing to put money down
it was one of those stupid townies from the other night. They got their revenge
on us, took the first they saw out,” Finley growled.

“That’s a big difference between
drunken brawl and murder. It would have taken them a long time to realize he
was Unbreakable and to plan that fire,” I reminded them.

“Yeah, but look at him, Lucy. He
was set
on fire
. It’s not a
big jump to see the connection, what with your burning the guy and Nikolas with
that explosion. They probably jumped him and did it. Marty didn’t have a
chance,” Finley argued.

“That makes sense,” Keegan said.
“If he was patrolling the lot and saw them, they would kill him as fast as they
could. Make sure no other gifted find them and get out fast.”

“Even if that’s true, that
doesn’t really make me feel better. That means he died because of me,” I said
miserably.

“I’m pretty sure I told you all
to get to your campers. It wasn’t optional,” Sheffield bellowed from behind us.

We all jumped at his angry
voice. I spun around and bumped into Keegan, who put his hands on my shoulders
to steady me.

“C’mon, Sheffield. You can’t
expect us not to see what happened to him,” Nikolas said.

“I don’t care what you want to
see. This part isn’t a circus show, despite your surroundings,” Sheffield
replied. He kept his voice calm but the red face gave away his anger.

“What happens now?” Bianca asked
in a small voice.

“Nothing you need to lose sleep
over,” he said.

“Hate to break it to you, boss,
but the image of Marty’s body is going to keep me awake for days,” Brooklyn
said. I agreed.

Sheffield snorted. “Then I guess
you should’ve listened to me the first time and gone back to your camper
instead of trying to get a glimpse. What is this, the paparazzi? Get the hell
out of here.”

“Aren’t you going to call the
police?” I blurted out. It slipped out; I hadn’t meant to be noticed. But
instead of only Sheffield snorting at me, the entire group turned to look at me
as though I’d grown wings.

“You’re joking, right? Call the
cops? And tell them what, that our nearly impossible to kill carnie got killed?
Right, that’ll go over extraordinarily well,” Finley replied.

My red face gave away my
emotion, so I ignored my instinct to hide and dove in. “But it’s not like it
was a natural death or even an accident. A man was murdered. I think that’s
enough reason to bring in the cops. What if it was from what happened the other
night?”

Sheffield walked closer to us.
“Lucy, it doesn’t work that way, not with our troupe. Add in the unusual death
and
the fact so many of us, Marty
included, are gifted, and it gets too complicated. We can’t afford to let this
get out in the public eye. It’s not just that we’d lose money. Humans
don’t—won’t—understand us if they knew about us, our powers. It’s a
war waiting to happen. I won’t allow my people to become involved with such a
mess.”

“But what happens now? What’ll
happen to Marty’s body, to his murderer?” I argued.

“We’ll find them and handle it,”
Sheffield said. It sounded final and ominous.

“But if it’s a townie and we
move to the next city, we might not have the chance again,” I tried again.

Keegan squeezed my shoulder and
I could tell it was a warning. They all thought I was too persistent, that I
needed to let it go and have Sheffield handle it. I sighed and shut my mouth.

Chapter
11

We returned to our camper where
Delia immediately went to town on a bag of cookies. I shot her an incredulous
look.

“I am a nervous eater. Do not
judge me,” she mumbled through crumbs, a scowl on her face.

“Is Sheffield really not going
to tell anyone outside of the troupe? I could understand if it weren’t
something this serious,” I said.

“Lucy, you know as well as
anyone how people react to us. I do not see any way that cops—local in
this part of the country, I might add—would be able to help or solve
anything. So many regular murders do not even get solved. How would they handle
an Unbreakable being incinerated?”

I winced at her word choice.
Delia had quickly moved from shocked to angry and was now expressing her
feelings through chocolate consumption. She even ate fast. I was pretty sure I
saw her eat a sleeve in about thirty seconds. Impressive.

“I want to know how any sort of
justice can be achieved if no one is going to look into it.”

“Sheffield did not say it would
not be looked into,” Delia replied. “He only said that we are not calling the
cops.”

“So what does that mean? He’s
going to solve the murder by himself?”

“I am sure he will do everything
he can to figure it out.”

I sighed, frustrated. “Well,
what about
why
Marty was killed? That
part really doesn’t make any sense, according to the information I know about
him.”

“I cannot figure that one,
either. He was the nicest guy. He never married or even dated that I know.
We
were his family. You know he has been
here since Sheffield started the show. They have been close friends for a long
time. I do not know how anyone could do such a terrible thing. They must be
crazy. Sheffield is going to absolutely own them when he finds out the truth.”

“His death must have been
terrifying.”

“How he died…I have never heard
of such a thing. He could lift weights and defy being crushed but he could not
avoid something like being burned alive. His body never had a chance to recover
from something that severe. A bus could have hit him without consequence, but
how could anyone expect this?”

“Dee, I’m not saying one of us
did it, but how could a townie get that close to him? Nobody here trusts
strangers. Hell, they barely trust
me
because I’m new.”

“I am more concerned about the
fact that he was burned alive. If someone, for example a townie, wanted him
dead, I would think the first thing they would do would be to either shoot him
or beat him to death. Neither would work on him, but fire, it is a whole new
type of hurt. His skin looked like it tried to resist, but it was too much for
someone that is not meant to withstand that kind of firepower. It is like the
killer knew Marty’s gift and how to get around it.”

“What if the men from the other
night did it? They must still be angry.”

“That seems like the most likely
solution. It is the one I believe,” she admitted.

“What if they’re trying to frame
us or tear us apart?”

“We know what those guys look
like and I described them pretty well to Sheffield. I am unsure what he will do
with that information, but I know it will not go to waste. He will look into
it…”