Pale Queen Rising (5 page)

My eyes snap open.

He leans back, a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Hair?” I ask, still breathy, still thinking I can maybe salvage this, but I already know I can’t. Damn it. Ruse is up.

“Yeah. Your hair. It should be purple by now.” All breathiness is gone, but his chest is still heaving a little, and I can tell that whole fake seduction worked better on him than he wants to admit. “What, you don’t think I’d try out a full-on love spell on Mab’s prime assassin without checking to make sure you were susceptible first?” He takes a sip of his coffee. “I’ve heard the stories about you. I’d have been more shocked if Mab let you come here—anywhere, really—without at least a few magical wards. I’m not an idiot.” He raises his mug in toast. “Still, that was some
excellent
acting on your part. You do your mother proud.”

The way he says it, the bitterness in his voice, is scathing.

I take a sip of my coffee and roll with it.

“But you
would
have tried out a love spell,” I say. I gesture to myself. “Because I mean, obviously.”

He shakes his head and chuckles. “Probably. I’m assuming what you told me was a lie? The loose Dream and all that?”

“Actually no. I find it’s often easier to tell the truth to my targets. Keeps them on edge.”

“So you, what? Watch the show and make sure it’s all going to Mab?”

“That’s the gist of it.”
I guess.

“And if someone is skimming?”

I flourish my wrist and a small fan of throwing daggers appears like magic. Mainly because it is.

“They die,” I say.

He laughs. “This is the
Immortal
Circus. You know that, right? I know French is hard to understand and all but . . .”

I gently toss a dagger at the table. It thunks into the wood not a millimeter from his ring finger. He shuts up. He might be immortal, but I’m positive he can still bleed.

“I’m good at what I do, magical contracts or no,” I say. “Hopefully you don’t have to find out just
how
good.”

That’s when I realize why I feel so out of place. It’s not because I’m not necessary, not because everyone’s doing their damnedest to make me feel unwelcome. It’s because I feel like I’m here for
them.
I’m here to be seen.
Like . . . I don’t know, a prize pony.

Or bait.

After some pointless small talk about sales and marketing, Kingston tells me he has “other things to worry about rather than babysitting” and leaves me at the table. He doesn’t sound pissed when he says it. Honestly, it sounds like a front. I must have gotten under his skin much better than he let on. A part of me is disappointed—he was fun when he was trying to get into my pants—but I didn’t come here to make friends or playthings. This is just another job, circus tent or no.

The grounds start filling up as people leave their trailers and begin their day. Some head straight to breakfast; others vanish into the surrounding field with yoga mats in hand. A few people start juggling, and there’s a low tightwire set up by one of the smaller tents that a young girl begins prancing across. But the people who catch my eye are the ones who look like biker punks, all denim and leather and tattoos, who leave their trailers with the bleary faces of the perpetually hungover. Their presence breaks up the stoic uniformity of the place—they drag their evenly spaced lawn chairs into semicircles and crack open six-packs. A few light cigarettes. Only one of them does anything remotely circuslike: some girl with a dreadlocked Mohawk begins juggling beer bottles high into the air, a cigarette dangling from her mouth.

Seeing as I’ve got a day to kill, I might as well start trying to learn what I can. And these are my type of people. At least, they seem more like burnouts than the ones stretching at seven in the morning, which means they’ll probably be up for banter.

I head over, grabbing another mug of coffee on the way and wondering if I could steal the carafe on my way home.

You know those scenes in the movies when the new girl approaches the cool kids and the cool kids all stop and punch each other on the shoulders and nod at the new girl like she’s fresh meat? That’s honestly what I expect to happen when I step up to these people, especially since I’m not dressed in my usual work attire—a little leather goes a long way when meeting other ruffians. But they don’t. They barely notice me. Save for one girl.

“What’s up, buttercup?”

Like as with Kingston, there’s something about her that’s eerily familiar, and I wonder if maybe she’s been by Winter to chat with Mab. She’s got shoulder-length brown hair and is relatively petite, in that I’m-an-athlete-and-could-still-bench-you sort of way. She also doesn’t seem to fit into this group at all—no tattoos, no dirty denim. Just a brown floral skirt and white T, both immaculately clean. About the only thing that ties her to them is the delicate septum ring in her nose.

“Hi,” I say. I hold out a hand, but she ignores it. She’s smiling at me like she’s been waiting for me to arrive. It’s a complete reversal from Kingston and that psycho-goth, Lilith. “I’m Claire.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m Melody.” She steps over and gives me a hug. “It’s really good to see you.”

“Do I know you?”

I’ve faced down demons and murderers and worse, but her embrace sends my body into shock. Hugs aren’t exactly common fare in the Land of Ice and Horror.

“Oh, sorry, no.” She backs off when it’s clear I don’t subscribe to the touchy-feely brand of interactions. “It’s just I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Uh-huh.” Okay, so maybe this Melody girl is just as unhinged as the rest of these performers. But at least she’s nice about it.

“Anyway,” she says, “these asshats are the tent crew.”

A few of the closer ones nod, but the rest don’t even notice the introduction.

“I’m sort of the head of them,” she says. “Though I also do admin.”

“You look like a performer.”

Her expression goes from happy to pained in a millisecond, but then she’s back in control. “Not anymore,” she says. “Anyway, enough about me. What brings you here?”

I spend the rest of the morning and afternoon bumming around, trying not to get in the way. Melody’s a gracious host at first, but even she has her limits with my antisocial nature, and after twenty minutes of us hanging around the tent crew and discussing the tour, she admits that maybe I should just go explore for myself. Which I do.

Trouble is, without a show going on, there’s no influx of Dream, so it’s impossible to trace any leak. I can feel small traces of the stuff lingering in the air, can taste the excitement of last night’s haul, but it stays safely on the circus grounds. If someone’s stealing from the show, they clearly aren’t interested in mopping up the small stuff. It’s maddening, waiting around, knowing I could still be asleep or could have manipulated time to arrive just when the show started. Mab wanted me here now for a reason, but I sure as hell can’t figure it out beyond punishment-by-boredom. Because, like I said, I’m not a PI—I’m not about to interrogate every performer in the troupe. Tact isn’t my forte, and I highly doubt Mab would appreciate learning I had to maim her main source of Dream just to find out that no one had a clue what was going on.

Instead, I wander the grounds and watch people practice and feel like a general creep. I’m sorely tempted to head back to Winter, speed up time between the worlds, and come back when it’s dark. But I don’t, because I’m a masochist . . . and not interested in incurring Mab’s wrath.

I save the big top—the
chapiteau
, Melody reverentially called it—for last, having made my way around the trailers and booths and changing tents. The air is hot and humid as I stand outside the flap to the black-and-purple tent, small gusts of warm wind bringing scents of hay and dirt and manure. But as I stand there, staring up at the dimmed neon sign for the Cirque des Immortels,
I can’t fight the shivers racing across my skin. Every once in a while a light breeze flickers out from beneath the curtain. It feels cold and dusty, like a grave.

I reach out and touch the thick vinyl to push it aside.

Pain sears across my eyes, a bolt of heat that drops me to my knees.

“And this is the chapiteau,” comes a voice behind me. I turn my head, and there’s Mab, leading a girl with blonde hair and bloody jeans toward the tent. Both of them waver in the sun, light filtering around and through them. My vision tilts . . .

“I don’t know if I should stay,” the girl says. Why is her voice so familiar? Nothing about her stands out besides the blood.

“Nonsense. You’re safe here. I swear to you, within this tent, nothing will befall you.”

I open my mouth to ask what Mab’s doing here, but then they step forward and pass straight through me.

I nearly vomit as another wave of pain hits. I drop my head to my knees and squeeze my temples with my hands, willing the ache away before it crushes me into a bloody mess.

Then it’s gone.

“This place has ghosts.” It’s not the happy-go-lucky Melody. It’s Kingston.

I look back slowly, fully expecting the world to swim and for it to not actually be him.
What the hell was that?
I think. A vision? I don’t
get
visions.

He is silhouetted by the sun, and I can tell he’s not certain whether to back away or bend down to help me up. He picks the middle ground and just stands there like a statue. At least the statues where I come from are helpful.

I force myself to standing and wipe the dust from my jeans. I still haven’t even made it past the entrance. The tent feels colder now that I’m closer.

“Places like this . . .” He shakes his head. “Sometimes you can’t escape the memories.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. Now that I’m standing, I feel a little light-headed, but thankfully I don’t faint or sway. “I was just a little woozy. Not exactly warm where I come from.”

“Right.” He takes a small step toward me then, and I can’t deny there’s some sort of magnetism there. Maybe it’s magic or maybe it’s the fact that it’s clear he’s used to getting what he wants—he has charm, and a part of me wants to get lost in the illusion. Something about him promises the act of forgetting. “That’s why you’re seeing things.”

“How did you . . . ?” I begin, then catch myself.
Shit.

“I’m a witch. I know these things.” He hesitates. “What did you see?” It doesn’t actually sound like he wants to know.

“None of your business.” I take great pleasure in the subtle physical reaction he has, the slight lean back. Oh yes, he’s used to getting exactly what he wants. Too bad I’m used to the same thing.

He shakes his head and turns, muttering “Just like your mother” as he leaves.

I’ll take it as a compliment.

I look toward the tent warily, then remember it’s just a damn tent, and brush past the curtain to step inside.

Four

I’m back in one of the castle’s many courtyards. Grey cobblestones arc out from a central fountain made of sharp planes of ebony, stretching toward waist-high black bushes that lean heavily against the castle walls. The fountain looks like some sort of intergalactic laser, but rather than a beam of light shooting from its top point, there’s a cascade of water delicately frozen in its downward spiral.

“What did you find?” Mab asks.

“Nothing,” I say, sitting down on the rim of the fountain. There are tiny azure fish in the basin, ensconced in the ice. Not that they’re dead. They somehow swim through the frozen block like it’s water. They don’t even know they’re trapped in there, that there’s a whole new world on the other side. The metaphor is way too apt for my liking. I tap the surface and watch them dart off. “The place was a dead end.”

Mab sighs and examines the bush beside her, cupping a delicate crystalline rose in one hand. She’s in her usual evening wear, meaning a velvet riding cloak trimmed with white fur and a sheer black dress beneath.

“Kingston’s a charmer, eh?” I continue. Mab’s not in a talkative mood tonight, which honestly isn’t that different from any other night. Something about her is a little more reserved than normal, though. It has me on edge.

“Not a single lead?” she asks. Something in her voice seems smaller than before. She doesn’t look up from the rose.

“Nope.” I cross my legs and stare at her, watching my breath puff about me in small clouds. With the wave of a finger I make it change shape, turn into ships ghosting through the night air. It passes the time for a few moments while she continues to slowly walk around the hedges, examining the roses in silence. Even though I’m used to the cold, I’m not dressed for this, and my skin flecks with goose bumps. “Why did you send me there?” I ask. It’s all I can do not to let my teeth chatter.

“To see if there was a leak in Dream.”

“Bullshit.”

She looks at me. I can’t tell if she’s about to chastise me or smile. I continue before she can do either.

“You knew the show was safe. No one in the troupe can leave to deliver Dream without your express permission, and even if they could, treason is a death sentence.”

“Contracts can be manipulated,” she says.

I laugh.

“Which is precisely why you keep them in your bedroom.”

Oh, that shocks her. Her delicate black eyebrows nearly disappear in the fur of her hood.

“Yeah, I’ve snuck in there. What kid wouldn’t? And it’s kind of hard to miss a book bound to a table with enchanted chains.”

Because damn, that thing had been protected. It had been years since I’d been in Mab’s room, but even then I knew the runes burned into the wood and the pulsating green chains meant business. That thing wasn’t going anywhere.

“Nothing in the troupe can change,” I say, thinking back to the boredom everyone seemed to emanate, the perfection of the placement of
everything.
“You’ve made sure of it.”

She plucks a rose and glides over to me. I’m pretty certain she’s actually floating, because when she nears me, she’s at eye level, and she’s not that tall.

“When did my little girl become such a petulant woman?” she asks.

“I learned from the best.”

Her slap makes my teeth ring. I resist the urge to punch her back, and then the second impulse to put a hand to my cheek in shock. She’s yelled at me, threatened me, locked me away. But she hasn’t smacked me since I was eight and trying to juggle my throwing knives.

“This may seem like a game to you, Claire.” Her voice is dangerously quiet, and it makes a fresh wave of goose bumps race over my skin. “But my kingdom is in danger.”

“We found one stray witch selling Dream.” My jaw makes an unhealthy popping noise. “It’s not that bad. We don’t even know if there
is
someone out there buying. The guy could have been bluffing to throw us off. One final
screw you.
”

She doesn’t answer. She just crushes the rose in one hand, not breaking eye contact. I see it spiral to the ground from the corner of my eye. As the ashes twist, so, too, does the courtyard. The world breaks apart into crystalline shards, and the next time I blink, the courtyard is gone.

In its place is a room as large as a football field, the ceiling—if there is one—high beyond the reach of the few torches spaced below. Even though the light is gold and warm, the air in here is even colder than outside. I really, really should have brought a coat.

Mab sits beside me, and it’s only then that the vertigo hits. We’re sitting on the head of a massive gargoyle jutting from the wall, easily a hundred feet from the floor below.

The room is nearly empty. Bolts of fabric are scattered throughout in haphazard rows, some in rolls and others folded thick. Between them are rows of iron stands covered in glass jars with multicolored liquids. There are small pyramids of stacked gold and silver and ebony, mammoth tusks whose points disappear into the shadows above. Beautiful though they are, it’s what they contain that makes them truly valuable. Even from here, I can feel the Dream infused into every object—it’s woven in the thread of the tapestries, distilled into the vials, forged into the precious metals. The contents of this room are worth more than anything else in the kingdom.

But despite all of the things strewn about, the room feels empty. There’s too much space between the objects, a sparseness that settles into my bones. Because the room looks like it was made to be filled to the brim. The fact that there are only a few rows, a few piles of affluence, is harder hitting than if it were completely barren. It’s like those enormous houses I occasionally saw in the mortal world, all glorious facades and immaculate furniture in the windows. But once inside, I realized there’s nothing in the pantry, no clothes in the five walk-in closets. The money was spent on showmanship, and everyone suffers for the indulgence.

“What’s this?” I ask, fully knowing where we are.

“Our storeroom,” she says. “Where we hold all the Dream in Winter.”

She says it sadly, her words swallowed up by the void. That can’t be right. This can’t be all there is. Winter is
vast
and this could barely feed the castle for a week.

“But it’s so . . .”

“Empty?” she asks. I look over, and somehow, with her hood pulled up and her hands in her lap, Mab looks like a little girl. One being chased by a particularly nasty wolf.

“Yeah. What happened?”

She shrugs and continues to look out at the expansive room.

“It was a slow transition,” she says. “In the years after the Oracle’s War, after I lost one of the few aces I had up my sleeve, Oberon began taking more and more of the Dream from the mortal world. I thought it a natural transition at the time, an evening of the scales. One my kingdom could handle and eventually overturn. But every year we gained less and less; Oberon’s kingdom has flourished in the aftermath of the Oracle, and mine has slowly slipped into disrepair. The world should be ripe for Winter—the darker dreams are rampant, and yet even they don’t hold the same weight as they used to. What we
do
gather is nearly impotent.”

My skin prickles. Mab’s never told me anything about the Oracle’s War, only that it happened and—like anything else in Winter’s history she doesn’t approve of—it should be ignored. She gestures to the room as though she hadn’t just dropped a history bomb.

“We may have found only one rogue trader, but even that is a crippling blow. Oberon and I have always lived in balance. Even in the grips of our worst war, we knew we needed each other to survive. Summer needs winter, night needs day. Our workings even the scales of life. If there are more leaks in the system, more Dream going to something outside of our carefully crafted system, the balance of all life will be thrown. This will go beyond the world of Faerie, Claire. Faerie and Mortal are twined together. Should Faerie starve, so too will the humans. Dream is more than just food for us. Dream is power. Life. Strength.”

I look around the empty room. How have I not noticed this earlier? I decide, rather than take my oversight to heart, to ask.

“How the hell are you keeping this secret?”

“Never show weakness, Claire. I’d hoped I’d taught you as much. If my kingdom knew what was happening, they would begin to lose faith in my rule, which would make us ripe for an attack.”

“An attack? You really think someone’s going against you? I thought Oberon and you were at peace for a few more years.”

“Oberon and I have a temporary agreement, yes. But if someone else is stealing
my
Dream, then it is clear to me they mean to pose a threat.”

“You think they’re building an army. To what? Overthrow you? That’s ridiculous.” Mab’s a veritable force of nature. Like storms or the season of winter itself, she’s not something you could just overthrow, not without dire consequences.

“I think the wisest defense is a sharp offense; cut out the threat before it truly becomes one. And that is why I have you.”

We don’t linger in the storeroom. Mab waves her hand and suddenly we’re sitting on my bed. Moonlight streams through the curtains behind her, making her a darker shadow against the night, her eyes glowing like Saint Elmo’s fire.

“You will return to the mortal world in the morning,” she says. “Take Eli. You may need an extra set of eyes.”

“Really? Eli?”

“Do you know any other fit for the job? You will track down those who are stealing Dream, from me or from Oberon. I have no doubt there are others out there—the deficit we’ve noticed lately can be due to nothing else. Interrogate when you can. Use whatever means necessary. And when you are done, kill them. We cannot risk them turning back to their Trade.”

“Can do, boss.” My voice is deadened, just like the rest of me.

The ghost of a smile touches her lips, now outlined in the light of the moon.

“Good night, sweet child,” she says. Then she closes her eyes, and the darkness behind her swallows her whole.

I don’t know what’s more unsettling—the fact that she referred to me as
sweet child
or that, for the first time in my life, Mab is genuinely relying on me to keep her and everyone else safe.

My hits up to this point have all been minor. Yeah, I’m great at what I do, and yes, there’s no room for error. When Mab tells me to kill, they’re as good as dead, no sweat. I’d always assumed the targets were of some political import—usually, they were tied to Summer or the unclaimed Fey who inhabited the Wildness between the kingdoms. Important kills, to be sure. But I always figured the world would continue to function if I messed up. Which really just meant “died in action.”

But this? This is a weight I can’t shake. This is more than Mab’s kingdom on my shoulders. This is the world.

I head into the bathroom and start the bath, even though a part of me is too tired to even soak in the tub. I feel ridiculously worn-out considering I did nothing but wander around and stand behind the scenes of a circus show. I didn’t even watch the show, despite my joking with Kingston. Instead, I spent those two boring hours wandering the backstage area, tracing Dream and making sure it was being stored and sent out properly. It was. I stare at myself in the mirror, at the shadows under my eyes and the frazzled hair that probably needs a cut seeing as it’s now reached my shoulders, and wonder if I’ll ever look like I’m not one step from the grave. Probably not. Especially not with my current job prospects.

Eli?
Really?

The tub is filled and ready before I even strip off my clothes, but I head back into the living room and grab a bottle of bourbon and bring it back with me. No fancy cocktail tonight.

I slip into the tub with the bottle in hand and take a long pull, settling back amidst the suds. It’s only then, when the first wave of heat and tingle of alcohol wash over me, that I remember just why I feel so off. It wasn’t just waiting at the circus or talking to Mab.

It was the vision.

“What the hell is going on?” I ask no one. A part of me wants to call Pan and talk to him, but I know this isn’t something he would understand.

I don’t have visions. I’m normal, mortal; my skills are from the runes and glyphs traced down my spine like a long black scar. Not one of them has to do with having visions of . . . of what? The past? How long ago? Mab looked like she always did, and the girl with her . . . I shake my head. I can’t remember the girl’s face. Just the blood on her jeans.

This place has ghosts.
That’s what Kingston said. So had he known the girl? And why was I getting a vision of that? I mean, of all the useless things to have some sort of psychic flare-up over, a girl with bloody jeans is pretty far from impressive. It could have at least been about whoever is stealing the Dream.

The question flashes through my mind.
What if it’s her?

I take another swig of bourbon and submerge deeper into the tub. I may not know who this mystery girl is, but she’s the closest thing I have to a lead. I’ll find her. It’s what I do.

And when I
do
track her down, she’ll have a lot of explaining to do. Mostly about how she managed to get into my head.