The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels) (17 page)

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.”

“What are you
talking about?”

“You’ve
changed your contract.”

“What? I — ”

“You are
lucky I still have use for you,” she whispers. Her voice is poison in the air.
It fills me with fear and magic. “Otherwise, I would make you beg for mercy.
What else have you done?”

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

“Get out,”
she says. “And stay out of my sight until I call on you.”

I don’t move.

“Out!” she
shouts. The entire room shakes at this, a minor earthquake, and the chair I’m
in whips around and topples me to my knees. I stand. I don’t hesitate. I reach
for the door and jump out into the sunlight, Mab’s rage a claw sinking deep
into my skin.

M
y first
impulse is to run. Not just away from Mab’s wrath, but out of the circus
altogether. The moment the idea crosses my mind, however, I feel something like
iron clamp around my lungs. I stagger and fall to my knees, desperately trying
to choke down air. My lungs burn, my eyes fill with stars. Then the idea floats
away, and so, too, does the constriction in my chest. I gasp as oxygen floods
me. I roll over onto my back and stare up at the blue, blue sky, breathing in
deep lungfuls of oxygen.

“Let me
guess,” he says. A shadow falls over me, and I peer back to see Kingston
standing there with his hands in his pockets. “You thought about dodging your
contract.”

My fists
clench at my sides. I turn over and jump to my feet so I’m facing him eye to eye.

“Contracts?”
I say, my voice barely holding in all the rage and fear now cycling through me.
“You want to talk about contracts?”

He takes a
half step back.

“Whoa, easy
tiger. I don’t know what Mab said but — ”

“I know,” I
say. “You don’t have to lie anymore. I know you know about me. My visions.
Lilith. Senchan. I know everything was just an elaborate lie.”

The moment I
say it, I wish I could take it back. Because I know there’s more to the lie
than just messing with my memory.
That
part I’m somewhat okay with — if
I signed up for it, at least I had some say in the matter. It’s the things I
can’t change, the things I didn’t agree to. Kingston pretending to care, toying
with me. Melody pretending we were friends. Everyone in this godforsaken troupe
pretending to be a family when we were all just watching our own backs. It’s
all broken down now, shattering to the ground in fragments I’ll never be able
to recover. No one cared. The only reason Kingston pretended he wanted me to
stay was because Mab still needed me. Not because he liked me. Because I was
useful
.
The thought makes my blood boil.

Kingston’s
usual smirk drops.

“She told
you?” he says. “What did she say?”

“I think you
know,” I say. My words tremble and I can barely contain the anger that wants to
spill through. “You’ve been fucking with my memory. You made me forget Lilith
and the fire. You’ve been messing around in my head!” The last bit comes out as
a yell, the words echoing around the empty site. I half expect Mab to come out
and escort me off the premises, but she doesn’t. No one comes.

Kingston
holds up his hands.

“I only did
what you told me to,” he says.

“I never
asked for you to erase my memory.”

“You did,” he
says. “I was there, when you signed your contract. When we laid out every
single term and condition, you wanted it all gone — your past, your visions,
all of it. You begged me to take them away. I was there holding your fucking
hand.”

“No,” I say.
His words open a floodgate.

I shake my
head, try to force out the new memories flooding in. Kingston, standing beside
me at the desk, one hand on my shoulder.
Are you sure about this?
It
wasn’t Mab who asked, it was Kingston. I put a hand to my head. The vision
flickers in and out, fighting with the old memory, trying to fill in holes I
hadn’t realized were there in the first place. There’s a ringing in my ears
like a train coming down the tracks. And I’m pinned to the rails, waiting for
it to strike and blow my mind to bits.

“So you don’t
remember everything,” he whispers.

“Shut up,” I
say, because every word is another memory, another lie to cover another lie.

“I was the
one who found you, Vivienne.”

I drop to my
knees and try to drown out the images, but I can’t, I can’t: Kingston walks
down the street while I’m sobbing in an alley. He walks in, his clothes soaked
but he’s still gorgeous with his faded jeans and deep brown eyes. When he sees
me, he kneels down in the puddle beside me and asks my name, asks why I’m
crying in an alley, and I can’t answer. He doesn’t wince at the blood on my jeans
that turns the water pink, or the blood on my hands and in my hair. He puts a
hand on the side of my temple and his touch is cool in a way that makes the
pain feel better. His eyes go wide and he whispers,
Oh.

“No,” I say,
my voice cracking. “What…is this?”

“It’s what
you wanted,” he says. He’s there at my side, I can tell. I can feel his shadow
in the sun and his voice so much closer. “It’s what you asked for.”

“How much did
you erase? Why would you change my memory, make me think I was bitten when it
was Lilith who nearly killed everyone?”

“I had no say
in that,” he says. “Lilith’s secret is written into everyone’s contract, except
for mine. Mab decided it was safer that way. And I swear to you, I only erased
the memories you wanted gone. I couldn’t change the fact that you wanted to
forget all of them.”

“Why? Why
would I ever want that?”

“Because of
your visions. They drove you here. You wanted to forget.” His voice is soft, so
soft. I curl in on myself and try to block out the burning in my head, the screams
of memories fighting to the surface. I don’t want them. I don’t want the pain
that’s clawing itself to consciousness. The train is closer, the rails shaking.
But I don’t want to lose this truth, either — I don’t want to keep hiding from
myself. Whatever the cost.

“What are
they?” I whisper, the burning growing to a wildfire. “The visions? Why me?”

“It’s who you
are; you get glimpses of what was, or what’s yet to come. Whatever you saw
before coming here made you want to lock them away. But…you can’t hide from
them forever. Not even my magic can change what you’re born with. I can only
hold the power off.”

He gently
puts a hand on my shoulder. I want to flinch but I can’t move. “Take a deep
breath,” he says.

“Don’t,” I
say. I want to. I want to fall into his arms and I want to trust him. I want
all of this to go away, to forget it all because I was happier not knowing. But
I can’t. I can’t go back to that. I can’t keep hiding, even though I wish I
could.

“Trust me,”
he says. I feel the first brush of magic easing the pain away…

“I said
don’t!” I shove him aside and push myself up to standing. The fire in my head
is raging and screaming and I want to rage and scream as well, I want to tear
this all apart.

“You lied to
me,” I growl, backing against the trailer like a cornered dog. “You lied to me
all along. I fought for you. I wanted you, and you fucking lied!”

He’s standing
now, hands raised in defeat. I expect someone to come around the corner and see
what’s wrong, for someone to see what all the shouting’s about, but no one
does. It’s just me and him and the inevitable breakdown.

“You knew all
along,” I say. “You knew everything about me — my past, my contract — hell, you
know more about me than even I do.”

His eyes are
wide and his hands are dropping, and I know I’m hitting my mark, so I dig
deeper. There’s too much pain in me, too much for one person. In that moment, I
want nothing more than for him to feel it as well.

“How can you
live with yourself?” I whisper. “Three hundred years of fucking everyone over,
messing with their minds. How many people have you manipulated like that? How
many people have you forced into loving you?”

And I’m sick
with myself for saying it, but I can’t help it. I was fine knowing I’d run from
my past, was fine thinking Mab knew more than I did. But I’m not okay with
this, with knowing that Kingston had changed everything around in my head and
had made me forget that he’d done it in the first place.

Worse, I hate
knowing that I was most likely right. How could I trust my feelings for him
when he had been playing in my head? How could I trust anything anymore? I
close my eyes and squeeze my hands against my temples. The ringing won’t stop.
I wish I could force it into
him,
make him see how it felt.

“I had no
choice,” he whispers. His words barely cut through the din in my head. “You
asked Mab to erase it, all of it. You signed the contract. I had to do it.”

“You didn’t
have to lie about it.”

“About what?”

I want to
sink into the side of the trailer, want to disappear entirely. The rage in my
head is dying down, sinking back below the surface, but the ache is still
there. I’m tired, so tired, and this feels like a fight I’ll never win.

“Liking me,”
I manage.

There’s a
long pause before he speaks.

“You think I lied about that?”

I don’t
respond, don’t even move. The images in my head are still warring for control,
still trying to piece themselves back into place.

That’s when I
feel his hand on the side of my face. His touch is cool, tingling. It melts the
pain away, even though I know he isn’t using any magic. It takes everything I
have not to reach out and touch him as well, not to pull him close and lose
myself in that touch. The rage allows me to keep that one small dignity
intact.

“You’re
right,” he says. My heart knots.
He lied. He lied about everything. No one
could love you. No one would want you to stay.

“I told you I
didn’t need someone,” he continues. His hand traces my jaw and I want to break
apart. “I played with you because you were cute and funny. But you fought for
me when no one else would. No one does that around here.” He laughs softly to
himself. I feel like I’m a yo-yo. Just that sad little laugh makes me want to
hold him, even if it is all a lie, even if he was just using me. In the middle
of all this crashing pain, the idea of comfort is intoxicating. I force the
feelings down as he continues.

“You were my
savior. When Senchan had me, you tried to save me when everyone else stood and
watched the show. And then I had to erase that from your mind, too.” He sighs.
“Do you know what that feels like? Knowing you tried to save my life and would
never remember? That I’d never be able to repay you because you wouldn’t know
of my debt?”

I can’t open
my eyes. I know there are tears straining to come through but I won’t let it
happen. I won’t.
This is just a game, too. I
did
remember, and this
is how you repaid me.
I reach up and take his wrist, gently, and draw it
away from my face. I don’t want to — no way in hell do I want to — but I refuse
to be toyed with. I’m done being the fool.

“How do I
know?” I whisper. “How do I know this isn’t another lie? How do I know this
isn’t because you need me to do something for you?”

He sighs.

“I do need
you,” he finally says. His words break apart the shell around me. “But not like
that.”

Then his
hands are once more on my face, and I open my eyes to see his lips inches from
mine. His brown eyes are like coffee, like mocha, and in that one glance, I
know that he’s telling the truth. I can see the hurt and desire, and I reach up
and thread my fingers through his long black hair. He closes his eyes and
smiles and then his lips are on mine. The world melts away.

His kiss is
soft and hard and tastes like cinnamon and need. His hand slides behind my head
and my hands are reaching around his neck and I’m kissing back as all the fury
and fear turns into something else, some great passion I can’t control. I pull
him close and he leans in and every inch of my body is pulsing with heat and
electricity and desire. The beast inside of me is roaring for a different
reason. I could fall into this fire and burn forever.

“No.”

The word,
that one word, and he tenses up. We both freeze. Then he pushes me away, wipes
a hand across his mouth like that could make her unsee everything.

“Lilith,” he
says.

But it’s not
just Lilith. Penelope stands behind her, her hands on Lilith’s shoulders. Her
expression is impossible to read, but Lilith’s is plain — rage and hurt. She
looks at me, and I can’t help but flinch, remembering the fire that flew from
her fingertips only nights before.

“You,” she
says. “You’re as bad Senchan. You try to take him. You cannot take him. I love
him.”

I take a deep
breath and wait for the flames to come. I wait for her to kill me, to burn the
whole world down. But she doesn’t. Her head drops when she’s done talking and
then she runs off, hiding somewhere out of sight.

“Well,”
Penelope says. “That was…unexpected.”

Kingston
stands and takes a half step forward.

“You knew,”
Kingston says. “You knew how she felt about me. Why would you do that to her?”

“I was merely
bringing her back to Mab,” Penelope says, holding her hands up in defense. “She
had run off. Again.” She turns her gaze to me. “And I have enough on my hands
keeping
this
one out of trouble. Which is clearly not working.”

“You’re a
heartless bitch,” Kingston says. Then he runs off in the direction Lilith went,
calling her name.

Penelope
looks at me.

“You were
supposed to be practicing,” she says.

“I was.”

She sighs.
“You mustn’t let your emotions get the best of you,” she says. “In this world,
show any sign of weakness, and it will be turned against you.”

“What are you
talking about?”

She smiles
one of her sad, lost smiles. “Let’s just say, for people like you and me, love,
freedom, happiness…well, unless we’re very specific from the beginning, they
just aren’t in the contract.”

She turns and
begins walking away. But as she goes, I catch her mumble something. It sounds
like
for now.

I close my
eyes and slide against the trailer. I can still taste Kingston’s kiss on my
lips, can still feel the tingle of his fingers in my pulse. Underneath it,
though, is an anticipation, a sort of fear. The way Mab paused, the catch in
her words. The sudden rage. Someone’s been messing with my contract.