The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels) (7 page)

The two share
a look, but I don’t see their lips move. Instead, she turns and escorts him
away from the booth, behind the picket fence separating backstage from the
front. I know that following her would be suicide, but something in me can’t
resist the temptation. I don’t know why the hero thing has taken over, but the
very thought that this guy might be the one trying to hurt someone in my troupe
— my
home —
makes my blood boil.
No one messes with my family.
In
that moment, I realize it doesn't matter that I've felt like I'm still on the
edge of this place. These people took me in. If nothing else, I'm indebted.

I watch her
take him away from the chapiteau — not toward the backstage tent and not toward
the trailers. I grin in spite of myself. She’s taking him to the freak show.

Without
hesitating, I head toward the makeshift wooden sign and enter the tunnel of
freaks.

O
n my second
night in the troupe, I was gathered around a bonfire with Kingston and Melody
and a few others, listening to stories of past shows and the wild adventures
people had experienced off-site. Some had gone skinny-dipping in the Arctic.
Others reminisced about buying out an entire town’s stock of glazed donuts.
Kingston sat next to me, our arms brushing as he laughed. He kept waving his
hand over the thermos being passed around, magically refilling it with unknown
booze. I hadn’t really grasped that at the time. There were mostly Shifters
with us, and they could hold their drink. Most of them, anyway.

That’s when
they started playing Outfreak the Freak.

It was
Melody’s idea, probably because I’d just asked her why members of the tent crew
were called Shifters.

It started by
her daring Stephanie to turn into Mab, which made the girl crow with laughter
and ask
which incarnation
? Mel just smiled, said, “Present
.”

Stephanie
stood up, brushed herself off, and cleared her throat.

“Presenting,”
she said, “the most feared faerie in history. The one, the only, Mab!” With
that, her features melted and stretched, melding into a perfect likeness of
Mab. If not for the fact that Stephanie was wearing shorts and a hoodie — something
I doubt Mab would ever get caught dead wearing — she pulled it off
spectacularly.

“Fail!”
Melody yelled.

Mab/Stephanie
glared at her.

“Mab’s eyes
are more hunter green. I’d call yours mint.”

Stephanie
kicked sand in Mel’s face and sat down, promptly shifting back into her normal
pink-haired Goth self.

“Let me try,”
said Heath, a heavily tattooed man with thick round glasses. He stood up and
gave himself a shake as his blond hair turned black and wild, his features
angling up into a vision of Mab that was frighteningly realistic. Minus two
things.

“Boobs are
way, way too big,” Roman said.

“Not big
enough,” countered another guy.

Moments
later, every Shifter around the fire was doing their best impersonation of Mab —
some aiming for exactness, others just going wild. There were snake-headed
medusae and Mabs with red skin and devil horns. Others had two heads or five
breasts. It just got worse from there, as they deviated from impersonating Mab
into creating the weirdest creatures they could think of. Soon, the campfire
was surrounded by bleeding harpies and twelve-foot-tall stick men and — strangest
of all — a round blob of human flesh with no eyes or appendages, just a giant
mouth filled with broken-syringe teeth.

“That, my
friend,” Melody laughed, “is why they’re called Shifters. Shapeshifters, if you
want to be precise.”

“How the hell
do they do that?” I asked, watching the blob slurp itself back into the form of
a tiny girl with a green buzz cut.

“Lineage,”
Kingston said. “You know all those stories about gods mating with mortals?” I
nodded, thinking of Zeus and all his bastardized offspring. “Yeah, well,
replace ‘gods’ with ‘faeries’ and that’s what you get.”

I watched as
Heath — at least, I thought it was Heath — mutated into one giant blue breast.

“Not as
refined as the stories, eh?” Melody laughed.

“Never is,”
Kingston said.

Roman is the
first guy I recognize in the throng, though it takes me a moment to connect the
guy I’m looking at with the heavily pierced, blue-mohawked guy I’m used to.
This new, changed Roman is wearing a three-piece suit that looks like it was in
at least a dozen pieces before he resurrected it. Patches are fraying off the
elbows and I can’t tell if it’s mostly brown or tweed or black pinstripe. He’s
also at least seven feet tall, with thick black tattoos curling around his bare
wrists and tunnel plugs in his ear that are big enough to pass a tennis ball
through. His general face shape is still roughly the same, albeit pointier, a
bit more elfish. But he still has the blue mohawk.

“Vivienne,”
he says. His voice is much deeper than usual, rumbling in the depths of his
chest. “Enjoying the show?”

“Yeah,” I
say, looking around, trying to find my quarry. Everything here seems dusty and
antiquated, from the hand-painted signs proclaiming the bearded lady (classic),
bat boy, and serpent fingers, to the makeshift tents and pavilions set up for
the shows. I don’t see Mab or the blond guy anywhere.

“Looking for
something in particular?” he asks, the hint of a joke on his lips. “I hear the
fire eater’s quite hot this time around.”

“Mab,” I say,
ignoring the horrible pun. His face becomes serious in an instant.

Roman clears
his throat. He doesn’t ask me why I want to know, doesn’t ask if I’m getting
into trouble. We stare at each other for a moment; it's clear he already
knows something’s up, and he’s not interested in getting involved. Mab doesn’t
come into the freak show; whatever’s going on is serious.

“She went
that way,” he says, pointing to the side.

I glance
around. The tents back here are chaotic, all jammed together with no real rhyme
or reason. Small alleys appear between a few tents, leading off in more
directions and more shows. Hiding somewhere behind them is Mab and the man, and
my time to find them is running out fast.

“Any idea
which one?”

He shakes his
head. “Went down Alligator Alley. You’ll have to look.”

Across the
circular pitch from Roman stands a tank as wide as I am tall, and twice my
height. In its depths, waving slowly with a grin on her face, is Penelope. Her
red hair floats around her in a halo, her pale skin looking even paler in the
clear water. She’s wearing a bra made of sequined seashells, and from the navel
down, her body is that of a fish, with opalescent blue scales and a beautiful
fin as diaphanous as a betta's. She smiles at me, a tiny trail of bubbles
escaping her lips, and I wave back, trying not to look as rushed as I feel. To
the right of her giant aquarium is a space between a couple tents. A wooden
sign strung above it reads
Alligator Alley
with a bitten-off chunk
missing from the side. There are a few people walking in and out of the narrow
space, heading for or returning from the other tents nestled in the back.

“Thanks,” I
say.

“Be careful,”
he says in return, not looking at me. I nod and head into the crowd.

The air back
here is stifling. It smells of sawdust and horses, kerosene and sweat. I cram
down the tight passage next to a couple others and squeeze my way forward. I
can’t see Mab or the blond guy over the heads of everyone, and I’ve got a
sneaking suspicion they wouldn’t just be standing out in the open. They’re
hiding.

I come to an
opening in the tent on my left. I glance up.
Tarantina the Tarantuless — spiderphobes
beware
is written in black ink on the wooden sign. A rubber spider hangs
off the edge. Deciding to start at the beginning, I duck inside.

The moment I
enter the tent, I feel like I’ve stepped into the Amazon. Stunted trees arch
under the tent’s canopy, and long strands of moss droop down like broken wings.
All I can see is the winding path in front of me. The floor is dirt and the air
is thick and moisture immediately starts dripping down my forehead. There isn’t
much of a crowd in here, and it doesn’t take long to figure out why; every
surface is covered in spiders. Big Brown fuzzy creatures the size of my
thumbnail or larger than a plate roam freely over the tent. They dangle from
webs in the ceiling, crawl over the moss. A few scurry across the path in front
of me.

I shiver in
spite of myself. I’ve never been afraid of spiders, but that doesn’t mean I
enjoy the idea of a large one dropping down the back of my neck.

I creep
through the undergrowth, careful not to step on any of the spiders making their
oblivious way underfoot. The only sound in the tent is the hum of cicadas and
the occasional disturbing crunching noise; I can’t hear the music from outside
or the voices of the audience. I feel completely alone. I walk a few steps
deeper and turn a corner. The trees close in, reaching out with their leg-like
branches. Cobwebs stretch from floor to ceiling.

Something
slides across my neck and I jump, my hand immediately swatting at it.

A woman
stands behind me. Her hair is long and braided, her skin deep brown. She’s
wearing leopard skin and leather. Her feet are bare. There’s a tarantula the
size of my fist on her shoulder and another creeping through her hair. Tiny
spiders crawl up and down her legs.

“Vivienne,”
she says, flashing a razor-toothed smile. Her eyes glint gold and black.

I take a
deep, steadying breath and thank the gods I didn’t scream.

“Taran…tina?”
I say.

She laughs,
though her voice deepens. Her face changes.

“
Heath?”

He chuckles.
It’s just Heath’s face — stubble and all — that’s similar. The rest is
definitely feminine. He gestures to his body with the hand not holding the
spider.

“Convincing,
eh?” he says. “Janet usually does this gig, but she’s on security instead.”

“Security?”

Heath’s smile
slips. He doesn’t answer.

“Oh, right.” I
pause. “Has Mab come through here?”

“Hell no,” he
says. “You’re my only visitor so far. Well, a couple kids came through but they
ran off when they met Honey.” He holds up the tarantula.

“Okay,
thanks,” I say, turning around.

“You’re not
looking for trouble, are you?” he asks, his voice sliding back into cool
feminine tones.

“Never,” I
say, and head toward the exit.

“Good,”
he/she says. “Because I’ve got a feeling trouble won’t have any problem finding
you.”

The alley is
a little less crowded now. I can hear the music from the big top and know
they’ve probably already called out that the second half is about to start.
Everyone is heading toward the chapiteau. I stand on tiptoes, trying to peer
over the crowd, and see a shock of pale white hair near the end of the path. I
don’t wait. I push into the crowd and make my way toward the end of the lane.

When I get
there, the man is nowhere to be seen. The crowd has thinned out and I’m standing
alone in a small cul-de-sac. I turn around. I would have seen him leave, and
Mab wouldn’t have allowed magic with punters around. That’s when I notice the
small space hiding between the tents. A backstage exit.

I step toward
it and then stop. If Mab catches me sneaking out through there, she’ll know I
was following her. I might as well sign my own death warrant. I need to be
crafty. Inconspicuous. I glance at the tent next to the alley.
Human
Pincushion — adultz only
is written on the sign in curling ink. I have to
be sneaky.

I duck under
the tent flap and enter a room filled with dim light and the scent of hay and
oil smoke. The sounds of a viola are coming from a man in the corner, and it’s
like I’ve been transported back a few dozen years to the heyday of sideshows.
The inner tent walls glow orange in the lantern light and there, on a wooden
platform, is a Shifter girl. Her hair is pink and done up in six-inch spikes,
and the only thing she’s wearing is a black dog collar around her neck. Every
square inch of her naked flesh — from neck to nipples to heels — is pierced.
Rings, studs, even what look like nails and acupuncture needles, all sparkle in
the lamplight as she weaves a small, slow dance on the platform. The tent contains
mostly speechless men, all watching her undulate like a slow-motion belly
dancer. She catches my eye as I walk in and winks, then goes back to entrancing
the crowd. The black cauldron at her feet is already brimming with bills and
coins.

I take
advantage of the crowd’s fixation and sneak to the edge of the tent, where the
canvas overlaps, and crouch down. I peer out through the tiniest of cracks.
Hidden from the crowds, Mab and the blond guy stand beside a few crates.
They’re talking, but I can’t make anything out over the music. I don’t want Mab
to see me, but I’ve already come this far. And besides, I now feel like if
someone’s fucking with the circus, they’re fucking with me. I take my chances
and give the occupants of the tent one more glance to make sure no one’s
looking, then slip out into the night.