The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels)

Chapter Sixteen: Monster

It’s dinner time when Kingston comes and finds me again.

I’m in my trailer, reading a book and trying not to think of everything that happened that afternoon, which isn’t really working because now that I know my memory’s been tampered with, that’s all I can think about. How much did Kingston hide from me, and why the hell did I want it hidden in the first place? Why the false memories? Why the grand illusion? And, perhaps most importantly, what landed me here to begin with? I try to think back and am met with only haze and grey and patchwork moments that could have been pulled from anyone’s life: walking to school, watching movies with friends whose names I can’t remember, eating dinner with my mom whose voice I can’t hear. Nothing remarkable. Nothing that would put blood on my hands and visions in my head. Nothing spectacular. What was I?

The worst part was, every time I closed my eyes, those weren’t the only thoughts coursing through my mind. Every blink, every moment of darkness, and I felt his lips on mine, tasted the cinnamon of his tongue and felt the heat of his breath. Every blink, and I was back, crushed against his chest. Every blink, and I wished it would have lasted longer.

But that was the trouble. It was just a moment. Moments were easy to erase or change. How long would he let me keep this before he turned around and blanked it out? A large part of me didn’t want to trust him, wanted to be pissed at him for toying with my past. But the rest of me knew. I had asked for that. I’d signed the contract. It was the things I hadn’t asked for that sent me reeling, the things he could take away at any moment. How long did I have before he got tired of me and made me believe I was tired of him? I kept closing my eyes, reliving the moment over and over, waiting for the inevitable shoe to drop.

So when Kingston knocks and lets himself in, it’s almost a relief, almost like stepping up to the executioner’s block. I know what he’s going to say. And I’m not going to wait around for it.

“Kingston, listen,” I say, “about today — ”

“Not now,” he says, walking past where I’m sitting on the bed to stare out the window. Then he steps back and closes the curtain. “They’re back.” There’s panic in his voice that makes my skin go cold. Everything I wanted to say drains in an instant.

“Who?”

“The troupe,” he says. It’s almost a relief. We’re not under attack by the Summer Court or anything horrible. Just the troupe back from the watering hole.

“Oh.”

He must note my relief, because his hands clench at his sides and when he speaks, there’s more anger than before.

“No, not oh. They’re back. But Melody’s not with them.”

“Maybe she got lucky?” I start, but this clearly isn’t the time for jokes. “Come on, Kingston, she’s not a kid.”

“No, she’s not. She knows not to leave the troupe.” He’s pacing back and forth. “This is bad, this is really, really bad.”

“Why? She can take care of herself.”

Then he stops and takes a deep breath. “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you,” he whispers. He turns to face me.

“Melody’s not like us. Remember when I said she was human? Well, it’s more than that. She doesn’t have the same immortality clause that we do, and she’s only twenty-two. Like, actually twenty-two. And without her, we’re all fucked.”

“What are you talking about?” I say.

“I can’t explain,” Kingston says. “Contractual obligation.” He runs his hands around his neck, as though the very thought of telling me is choking him — a feeling I know all too well.

“So let’s go find her,” I say.

“We can’t,” he says. “We have no idea where she is and no way to find out. And if we tell Mab, she’ll go after her herself.”

He slouches down on the chair.

“Would you just tell me what’s going on?” I say. “Why is it a bad thing if Mab looks for her?”

He makes a noise that sounds like gagging and shakes his head, looking up at me with a sad grin.

“Damn these contracts,” he says. “Don’t you see? This is precisely what they want.”

“Who?” I’m getting tired of this cat and mouse game of information.

“The Summer Court. They took her. They must have. I can’t tell you why, but I know they did. And you’re one of the few who understands the danger.”

“I do?”

“Don’t be stupid,” he says. “You saw it. You saw Lilith on the field, you saw her kill Senchan and the other Summer Fey. One of them must have escaped and told their king. They know about Lilith. They know what she is. The Blood Autumn Treaty is broken. Now, we’re at war.”

“Why would they care about Lilith? She’s just…” But I can’t finish the sentence because she’s clearly not just a little girl.

“Do you remember Sheena?” he asks.

I nod. It’s hard to forget watching a purple-haired girl turn into a floating orb of light.

“Lilith’s…Lilith’s like that. Kind of.”

“She’s a Summer Faerie?”

He shakes his head.

“No. Different. But the Summer Court…they want her dead. And if they know she’s here, they’ll kill everyone around her ’til she’s gone. That’s why they took Mel. Why Mab can’t go. That’s what they want — they want us to be weak.”

There’s no clashing outside, no fires or screams. The only noise is the rest of the troupe laughing, the sound of music as the chefs finish up the evening meal. It doesn’t sound like war.

“Now do you understand? If Mab leaves, we’re more defenseless than…” He coughs. “Guess I’ll just leave it at that. Mab can’t know. But the barriers between this world and Faerie are weakest at dusk. If we don’t get Mel back before then, we’re dead. The Summer Fey will kill us all.”

“So what do we do?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Mab will find out soon enough, but…there’s something we’re not getting. There’s something missing.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighs and runs his hands through his hair again.

“We’ve been set up,” he says. “The deaths, the tent, all of it. They weren’t just warnings, they were trying to weaken us. But that should be impossible. Contractually, we can’t die. We can’t be weakened.”

“That’s it,” I say. Mab’s reaction is suddenly making sense, the widened eyes and accusing stare. “The contracts.”

“What?”

I stand up and walk past him, pacing because it feels like the right thing to do.

“Before we…before I saw you, Mab was showing me my contract. She got pissed off and yelled at me for something. Said I’d changed it. I hadn’t thought about it ’til now — ”

Kingston stops me.

“You changed your contract? How?”

“I didn’t,” I say. “But she thinks I did.”

Kingston’s nodding, now. “That makes sense.” He chews the inside of his lips as he thinks. “Someone’s been changing the contracts. Little changes at first, so we wouldn’t notice. An injury here, an accident there.”

He snaps his fingers, a small spark igniting and burning out.

“That’s it. That’s how people are dying. Someone’s changing the contracts to make them vulnerable. It all makes sense.”

“But how?” I say. “The contracts are in Mab’s trailer. She’d never let anyone touch them, let alone rewrite them.”

Kingston’s face darkens.

“Of course,” he whispers. He pushes past me and opens the door, but I grab his arm before he can pull it open.

“What?” I ask.

“Who does Mab trust above all others?” he says. “Who’s been with her the longest?”

Realization dawns.

“Penelope,” I whisper. The woman chained here for life.

He nods.

“Bingo. That’s why she placed you under Penelope’s care. It wasn’t so she could watch after you, it was so you’d keep an eye on her.” He pulls open the door. “So let’s go find that mer-bitch and make her talk.”

We jog to Penelope’s trailer, past the troupe now standing in line for dinner. We don’t knock, just pull open her door and rush inside.

She’s sitting in front of her mirror, brushing her long red hair and staring into the placid depths of glass. She doesn’t even start when we burst in, just keeps brushing her hair.

“If you are looking for a new place to fornicate, I suggest picking a trailer that is unoccupied,” she says.

“You have one minute to talk before I burn you to a fucking crisp,” Kingston says. As if to accentuate the point, the air around his palms shivers with heat.

“It is quite rude to enter someone’s trailer without knocking,” Penelope says, as though she’s oblivious to the fact that Kingston’s on the edge of burning the whole trailer down. “And even more rude to threaten their life. Tell me, to what should I be confessing?”

She watches us from the reflection in the mirror. The heat from Kingston grows and I step a little to the side.

“Don’t play dumb,” Kingston says. “I know you’ve spent your life pretending to be a daft bitch, but I’m on to you now. You’ve been changing our contracts. You’re the reason everyone’s dying.”

“That, my dear, is an awfully strong accusation.” She draws the brush through her hair one more time, then sets it down. “Do you have any proof?”

Kingston opens his mouth, then closes it.

“Precisely,” Penelope says. She reaches for a tube of lipstick and glides it over her lips, making the perfect pucker in her mirror. “I suggest you come back when you have more concrete evidence. Or evidence of any kind, for that matter. ” She sets down the tube and turns around in her chair. The fire in Kingston’s hands is simmering, but I can tell he feels precisely as I do; there’s no doubt that Penelope did this. If anyone in the entire troupe would be looking for a way out, it would be her — it explained her reaction to seeing Senchan in the field, her talk of finding an exit clause. But who would believe it? She was just so perfect.

She stands and walks over to us.

“If you don’t mind,” she says. I don’t step aside. I want to punch her.

“Melody is missing,” Kingston says through clenched teeth. “If you have any humanity left, you’ll tell me where she is.”

A look crosses Penelope’s face, the mildest of concern.

“I assure you,” she says, “I have no clue where Melody is. But the tent’s still in one piece. Take comfort in that.”

Then she steps past us and opens the door. It slams behind her, leaving us alone and aimless.

“Fuck,” Kingston says. He punches the trailer wall, making the whole thing shake.

“What do we do?” I ask.

“She’s right,” Kingston says. “There’s nothing we can do. We have no proof.”

I glance around the room and something clicks.

“Maybe we do.”

He looks at me in confusion as I walk across the room to Penelope’s nightstand. I’m praying that she didn’t think ahead, that she wasn’t thinking we’d storm in here like this. I open the drawer. There, nesting in a little brass bowl, is the necklace. The black diamond glints like a raven’s eye.

I pull it out by the chain and hold it up.

“What is that?” Kingston asks.

“I don’t really know,” I say. “But according to Penelope, she can store her memories here. If what we need is a confession, it’s probably in here.”

Kingston’s eyes go wide as he crosses the short space between us.

“You’re a genius,” he says. I blush. A beat passes and I’m staring at his eyes as he stares at the necklace. “How do we use it?” he asks.

I take his hand and turn the palm up.

“I think we just ask,” I say, and drop the diamond into his palm, clasping both our fingers around it at the same time.

The room spins.

Shadows are everywhere.

There’s a man in the shadows. A man with white hair.

“I want out,” Penelope says. She stands in the shadows, too, her body pressed against the trunk of a tree. She’s in a dark cloak that hides every inch of her, but her voice is clear.

“Out?” Senchan says. “Is that why you called me here?”

Penelope hesitates. “I’ve been under Mab’s control for centuries,” she says. “I cannot bear it another day.”

Senchan smiles sadly. Is it moonlight filtering through the trees, or is he really glowing like that?

“I feel your pain. Truly I do. But I’m afraid things just don’t work like that. Your contract is quite binding. In order to break it, well, you’ll have to do something for me.”

“Anything.”

Senchan’s eyes widen. “A bold promise. You would truly give anything for your freedom?”

“I have nothing else to live for, nothing left to give. Everything has already been taken from me. Name your price and I will see it met.”

Senchan takes a deep breath.

“We want the Trade to end.”

“You know I don’t have the power to shut down the show.”

“No,” he says. “But that is our price. End the Cirque, and you will be free. We don’t care how you do it, only that you deliver. Unless you think the price is too dear…”

“No,” Penelope says. She glances around. “I may have a way.”

“Yes?”

“Kassia.”

Senchan takes a step back, as though Penelope punched him in the gut.

“Kassia is dead.”

“No,” Penelope says. There’s a fervent heat in her words. “She’s still alive. I have seen her. Mab is hiding her.”

“If that is true, then the Blood Autumn Treaty is broken. The circus would be forced to shut down.”

“I would not lie.”

“We cannot attack until there is proof,” Senchan says.

“If I give you proof, if she reveals her true nature, will that be enough?”

Senchan nods and holds out his hand.

“Expose Kassia and Mab’s treachery, and you shall have your freedom. A good bargain, if I do say so myself.”

Penelope reaches out her hand.

“You will tell no one,” he says. She nods as they shake.

Light pours out between their fingertips. The light fills my vision.

I blink and I’m back in the trailer. Kingston is staring at me with his eyes wide and lips open.

“That’s it,” he says. “We have her.”

“Who’s Kassia?” I ask.

Kingston shakes his head.

“I can’t say. Contractual…”

He pockets the necklace, turns away from me, and takes a step toward the door. Then he turns around and pulls me toward him, presses his lips to mine in one quick kiss that fills me with fire. He pulls away and smiles.

“You’re a genius,” he says. Then he’s out the door. I follow right behind.

We’re not even a few steps outside the trailer when we spot Penelope. She’s not in line with the rest of the troupe. She’s standing near the edge of the chapiteau, staring out at the field beyond. Kingston pauses and stares at her. The air around him shivers.

“Kingston, no,” I say. “Let’s just go tell Mab.”

“No,” Kingston says. “I’m going to make the bitch pay.” He stalks toward Penelope and I stand there, torn between running to Mab and running after Kingston. The choice is easy; I run to Kingston’s side and take his hand in mine. His touch tingles.

Penelope turns when she sees us. Her gaze takes us in, the linked fingers, the set in our eyes. She smirks and turns away.

“Back for another round of false accusations?” she says.

“We know,” Kingston says. He holds up the diamond necklace. “We know everything.”

I expect Penelope to gasp, to yell, to do any number of things the bad guys do in movies when they’re found out. Instead, she laughs.

“Well done, Vivienne,” she says. “I was hoping you’d remember that. This would have been so anticlimactic otherwise.”

My heart drops. Penelope looks over her shoulder at my silence.

“What?” she asks. “You truly believe I accidentally left you in my trailer? Please, I’m not truly a — what did you call me? — a daft bitch.”

Kingston drops the necklace in his pocket.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because I want you to understand that my intentions were never to hurt people. I just wanted freedom. This was the only way.”

“If you’ve been changing the contracts,” I say, “why not just change yours? End your contract early? Why kill everyone?”

“You saw what happened when Paul’s contract finished early. Time is a force no magic can change. I couldn’t take the chance that the same would happen to me. No, the only sure way to be free was to end the circus. Then, I wouldn’t be dodging a contract. The contract would simply no longer exist.” She almost sounds sad about it, like she’s upset she had to get her hands so dirty, but Kingston and I are far beyond pity.

“Where’s Melody?” Kingston hisses.

“Safe,” Penelope says.

Fire ignites around Kingston’s fingertips. The heat is blistering and I drop his hand.

“Talk,” he says through gritted teeth. “Talk or I’ll make you beg.”

“Ahh, you see, that is what I was hoping for. It would have been disappointing to go to all that trouble for nothing.”

Neither of us say anything, but I can see Kingston’s resolve falter. Clearly, that’s all Penelope was after.

“I call on line 89F, point three.”

Kingston gasps and crumples to his knees. The heat in his palms vanishes.

“My, Kingston,” she says. “Whoever would have thought that a few words could quench your fire?”

Something snaps inside of me. I leap toward Penelope. The only thought in my mind is the image of punching her square in the face, of making her bleed and beg and suffer like everyone she’s hurt and killed in her quest for freedom. My arm pulls back, aims straight for her pretty jaw.

Then stars explode across my vision as something slams into my gut. I smack face-first into the earth and roll on the ground, clenching my stomach as iron binds itself around my insides. I can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t get the pain to go away.

“As you can tell,” Penelope says, “I’ve quite thought of everything. Your contracts expressly forbid harming me.”

She steps over and kicks Kingston in the ribs. Kingston gasps.

“You, on the other hand, have no such safeguards. Perhaps this will teach you to be more careful with whom you choose to confront.”

Kingston groans. I can barely see him as darkness inks itself around my vision.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Penelope says, her voice perfectly calm. “I think you’ll find that speaking of this to anyone else is a very, very bad idea.” Her words turn simpering. “Contractual, you know.” Then she walks away, humming happily to herself.

The moment she’s out of sight my lungs expand and I suck in a breath so sharp it’s painful. I scramble over to where Kingston’s sprawled out on the ground, his hands clutching his ribs.

“Are you okay?”

“She blocked me. My powers are gone.” He takes a deep breath. “That must be how Senchan did it. She worked a containment clause into my contract and told the bastard the line.” With a wince, he pushes himself to standing. I’m there, helping him up, looping his arm around my shoulder. Zal is wrapped around his arm. The serpent is smudging like mad, now, like those Mom tattoos slowly bleached off bikers’ biceps.

“How could she do that?” I ask. Penelope’s disappeared into the tents and trailers. Even the thought of chasing after her makes an ache creep through my skull. “How can she change the contracts?”

“I still don’t know,” Kingston says. “It shouldn’t be possible; Mab’s the only one who can dictate the terms.”

“So Mab can change them back? Now that she knows what’s wrong?”

Kingston shakes his head. “You can’t just negate magic like that. Power goes in cycles. She won’t be able to change our contracts ’til the next new moon.”

“So there’s nothing we can do.”

He doesn’t answer. Just the thought of yelling out that Penelope’s the traitor makes my throat burn and sting.

“If only you hadn’t signed your stupid contract,” Kingston whispers.

“What do you mean?”

“Your visions,” he says. “They’re the only way we could find Melody. If she was here, we'd be fine. But Mab’s the only one who can get you to use them.”

Another click. The shock in Mab’s voice when she read out my contract: unless deemed necessary by Queen Mab or… There was another. Penelope had changed my contract to allow someone else to summon my powers, someone who couldn’t be linked back to her.

“No,” I say. “There’s another. That’s what set Mab off. Someone else can access my powers.” My mind races. Then the scent of fire and brimstone fills my head, and it’s all horribly clear.

“It’s Lilith,” I say. “When I touched her, I had my vision. I thought it was just a reaction, but maybe…maybe she’s the other one on the contract.”

“Then we better find her,” Kingston says, staring up into the sky. The sun is getting dangerously close to the horizon. We only have a few hours until dusk.

He doesn’t waste any more time. Before I ask where he thinks she could be hiding in this vast cornfield, he’s running across the lawn toward the eight-foot-tall stalks. I’m right at his heels. The tent and all its inhabitants disappear behind us the moment we cross over, the world suddenly becoming heavier, more humid. Kingston runs full stop in front of me, navigating through the corn as though he’s got it all mapped out in his head. I don’t bother asking where we’re going. After a few minutes, he stops so fast I nearly bump into him. He puts up a hand and glances back at me, a definitive say nothing look on his face. Then he takes a few steps forward and motions for me to follow.

We emerge into a small clearing that could have been cleared by a UFO. It’s a perfect circle of trodden corn stalks, maybe twelve feet in diameter. In the center is Lilith, humming to herself and playing with a figure made of grass. Poe stalks the perimeter, staring at us with flat yellow eyes.

“Lilith,” Kingston says softly. “Lilith, it’s me. How are you?”

Lilith looks up at the sound of his voice, her face practically glowing with happiness that Kingston came to see her. She opens her mouth, then catches sight of me standing behind him. The happiness turns to disgust.

“What do you want?” she grumbles, going back to playing with the stick figure in her hands.

“We need your help,” Kingston says.

“Why?”

Kingston hesitates, and I wonder if it’s because he can’t find the right words or if he simply can’t speak them under Penelope’s new rules.

“It’s Melody. She’s gone missing. And we need to find her.”

“Tell Auntie Mab,” Lilith says.

“We can’t. Mab can’t know.” He kneels down at her side and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Please, Lilith. We need your help. I need your help.”

“Why should I?” she asks with a pout. She looks straight at me as she speaks. “You don’t like me. You just like her. Not me. Her. She’ll hurt you.”

I take a step forward but Kingston puts up his hand again without even looking back.

“Lilith,” he says, cupping her chin in his hand. “You know that’s not true. You know I like you.”

“You kissed her.”

“It was a mistake.”

The words come as a punch in my gut. It takes everything I have not to just drop to my knees right there. I can’t believe it, don’t want to believe it. He lied to you about everything else. He could have lied about this, too.

“Prove it.”

He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t take a breath or ready himself or anything. He just leans in and pulls her lips to his and kisses her. For a brief moment, Lilith’s eyes flicker to mine and the corner of her mouth turns up into a grin. Then she closes her eyes and leans into the kiss.

It goes on for an eternity, the two of them sitting in the middle of the circle in the amber light, and I can’t help but wonder if maybe this is how it’s meant to be. Both of them are powerful, immortal, ageless. What chance did I have with someone like that? What hope did I have against someone like that? I don’t cough, don’t interrupt the moment. And I don’t turn away. I won’t give her that satisfaction. Anger and betrayal and a hundred other emotions roil in my stomach, but I don’t give in. I won’t be weak. Not now, not ever. Not again.

When Kingston pulls away, he doesn’t turn back to me to give an apologetic glance. Lilith doesn’t look at me either. She just smiles at him, totally lucid, and puts a hand on his cheek.

“Kingston,” she whispers. “What can I do?”

Now he hesitates. “It’s Vivienne,” he says. “She has visions. But she’s under contract not to use them. We think…we think you can access them. It’s the only way of finding Melody.”

Disappointment battles across her face, but then she drops her hand and looks at me. That lost little girl is gone, and in her place is a creature I can’t even begin to come to grips with.

“What must I do?” she asks.

Kingston motions me over. I go and sit beside him, doing my best to stay composed, to not feel that mixture of rage and shame that are coiling around in my chest. I want to call him every name for bastard, want to run off before it gets any worse. Fuck them, fuck this show, fuck everyone. But I know I can’t leave, not until Mab’s done with me. If they go down, I go down, too. And I’m not going down without a fight.

Someone’s going to pay for all this.

“Repeat after me,” he says. “I call upon the contract of Vivienne Warfield, Line 17A. I summon her powers of Vision. Seek out and relay the location of Melody Bonaparte.”

Lilith nods, and begins to repeat his words, but the moment she speaks there’s a rushing in my head, a fire and wind and fury I can’t control, and I’m falling, falling, the wind screaming through every inch of me, and it’s only white and grey, white and grey, white and grey and screaming.

When I wake up again, I’m alone in the middle of the field. The sky is pink and orange and spread out wide above me, the cornfields alive with the sound of cicadas and wind. I push myself to sitting, try to force the ringing out of my ears. That’s when I realize I’m not actually alone. Lilith’s sitting on the edge of the circle, stroking Poe and watching me. Both of their eyes gleam in the fading light, Lilith’s green, Poe’s a dusty yellow. I feel like a victim in one of those horror movies, just woken up from a chloroform stupor to find myself in some basement-turned-torture-chamber.

“Where is he?” I manage to say. The words make my head throb.

“Kingston is searching for Melody,” she says. Her voice is so calm, so controlled. Poe mewls in her lap and she looks down and smiles. “Your vision told him where she is, and now he is gone. He will not return before sunrise. Melody is far, far away.”

“Why didn’t you go with him?”

“He told me to stay here. Keep you safe.” She looks at me and cocks her head to the side. “Weak, Vivienne. You are very, very weak.”

I struggle to standing and sway on the spot. I ignore her words and scan the field, though I can’t see anything past the edge of the circle.

“Where is he?” I ask again. “I have to find him.”

“You won’t,” she says. Everything in her voice says that this is precisely where she wants me to be. Dread creeps through my veins like ice. Is she teamed up with Penelope? Was this just some elaborate ploy to get me out of the way?

Lilith puts Poe on the ground and stands in one fluid motion. Even though she’s still in her white dress, even though she hasn’t grown and her hair is still tied back with a ribbon, she looks different, looks more in control of something I can’t place. And whatever that is, it’s terrifying. She steps right up to me, staring up into my eyes, pinning me like a serpent. “He told me to keep you here. Keep you safe. Safe with me.” She sings the last bit, the childish tune frighteningly at odds with her somber stare.

Rage boils inside of me, burning away the fear. Anger at him, anger at her, anger at all of them for fucking me over. Everyone’s been playing with me. Everyone. I’m not going to be played like this any longer. Fire burns.

I don’t think. I swing.

My fist connects perfectly with Lilith’s cheek, knocking her backward a couple steps. She staggers and Poe is hissing at her feet, but Lilith flicks a hand down in a shut up sort of gesture, and the cat goes silent. When she looks back at me, she’s actually grinning. The trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth makes her look positively demented.

“There’s the fire,” she says. “Let’s watch it burn.” She lunges forward and tackles me.

She knocks me to the ground and we roll. Stars flash across my vision as she punches me in the face. I gag as her knee connects to my gut. For having a twelve-year-old’s body, she fights like a heavyweight. But the rolling momentum carries and then I’m on top of her, slamming my fist into her face over and over before she flips us over and elbows me in the jaw. In one frighteningly smooth motion, she pins my arms to my chest. There’s more blood on her face, but she’s laughing. There’s a madness inside of her that makes my rage flicker. I know that look. There’s no amount of pain in the world I could inflict on her; she will always, always come back for more. Until one of us is dead.

“Oh, Vivienne,” she says. “This is why he’ll never choose you. You’re nothing. Mortal. Weak.” She sniffs and stretches her neck. “It would be so easy to fake your death, you know. A tragic accident. Wrong place, wrong time. He’d never even suspect.”

I try to swallow the blood in my mouth but the iron makes me want to gag. She leans in close to my ear. “You are very lucky we are currently on the same side. Otherwise it would be so, so simple to dispose of you.”

Poe hisses by our side and Lilith jerks her attention to the field. Something rustles in the undergrowth. Something chuckles. The sun has set, the horizon fading to hues of fiery pink and orange.

Then, something takes flight, a streak of fire that arcs high overhead. We both watch it fly, watch as it curves to the other horizon. There’s a flash of light when it falls out of sight and then another flies a similar path. Then another. Arrows.

Lilith and I look at each other. Her eyes go wide and the fire inside both of us vanishes.

The Summer Fey have arrived. We’re already too late.

Chapter Seventeen: ’Til The World Ends

We run through the corn, Lilith in the lead, me right behind her, cutting a straight line toward the tent. As we get closer, I can hear the screams. We burst from the field into a scene that makes my blood run cold.

The chapiteau is in flames.

Streaks of arrows are flinging down toward the tent like burning birds, the whistle and howl of arrow and flame growing louder by the moment. The grey and blue canvas is peeling and ripping as flames eat it alive. Lilith and I stop and stare in horror. Arrows are ricocheting off the trailers, sticking into the ground like fiery voodoo pins. Others have found flesh. There are two bodies in flames on the ground, but we aren’t close enough to see who they are. I don’t want to know. I don’t want those memories burned into my head.

Everything is chaos. Everything is fire.

Then I hear a voice, one that roars over the inferno and turns the air to ice.

“WHO DARES?”

Mab appears in front of the tent in a swirl of blue light and smoke. She hovers above the ground, easily three times her normal height, the top of her head level with the flaming pinnacle of the big top. Shadows swarm around her in a serpentine dance and her eyes are emerald coals. She is every nightmare combined. Just the sight of her pulls at the darkest corners of my imagination, makes my skin crawl and fills my blood with the need to flee. I nearly drop to my knees.

“WHO DARES ATTACK THE COURT OF QUEEN MAB?”

A gust of wind answers, the sound of chimes and summer breezes.

I turn around to see a golden apparition floating above the cornfield, a man made of liquid light with a halo of brilliance behind his head. His eyes are sapphire, and when he speaks, I feel my veins pulse with life, feel the very earth shiver with expectation.

“I am Oberos, prince of the Summer Court. I am here on the king’s behalf to deliver this message: Queen Mab — you and your Court are under direct violation of the Blood Autumn Treaty. You have knowingly harbored the daemon known as Kassia. As such, the Treaty is broken, and your Court shall pay in blood until Kassia is released or killed.”

Kassia. I glance at Lilith as things click. Lilith in flames. Lilith losing control. And Mab trying so, so hard to keep her out of sight. Why the hell is she so important? Lilith glances at me. She’s no longer in control. Her eyes are vacant and Poe is clutched in her arms, his fur sticking straight up.

“IF IT’S BLOOD YOU WANT, IT’S BLOOD YOU SHALL HAVE. WE WILL NOT REST UNTIL THE FIELDS ARE SOAKED IN SUMMER’S TEARS.”

The sky above us darkens at her cry.

“So be it,” Oberos says. The fields erupt in screams and howls.

More arrows fly through the air, but Mab’s on top of things this time. She raises a hand to the sky, flames of blue shadow leaping from her fingertips and dancing above the tent. The arrows strike the shield and vanish. A second later she disappears from the sky, appearing in front of me in the blink of an eye.

“Where is she?” she asks.

“Who?”

“Melody!” she yells. Her face is pale as a skull and her teeth are razor sharp. I want to curl up and die.

“I don’t know,” I say. A Summer Faerie leaps out of the corn behind us, humanoid and stick-like, a sickle in its hands. I duck as it swings for my head, but in a flash of light, Mab freezes it solid. It shatters in a thousand pieces when its foot hits the ground. “Kingston…he went after her. He used my visions to find her.”

Mab’s eyes flare in anger and I wait for the finishing blow. It never comes.

“We’ll speak of this later. If you survive,” she hisses, and then vanishes.

Next thing I know, there’s another mob of Summer Fey scrambling from the corn behind me. I don’t wait another second; I run. Lilith’s right ahead of me as we gun it toward the trailers and the illusion of safety, though I have no doubt in my mind that we are royally fucked. The Summer Court is closing in on all sides, fey of every sort running toward the troupe with bloodlust in their eyes. They take all shapes, from centaurs and twiggy dryads to floating balls of light and winged pixie girls. Even the ones that look like they should be stuck in someone’s garden have bloodlust in their eyes and make my blood run cold. We’re outnumbered. Horribly.

Mab floats high above, locked in combat with the glowing form of Oberos. He wields twin scimitars of liquid sunlight, she her whip that slices the sky in lashes of midnight. Every stroke of her whip sounds like thunder, every slash of his swords blinds like lightning. They are twin titans, and they are nearly impossible to see in the light of their fury. Lilith and I run past the pie cart, where a small huddle of our troupe is forming.

The Shifters are the first to leap into action. One girl drops to all fours and quivers. Scales erupt from her flesh, her entire body twists and contorts and grows, and leathery wings sprout from her spine. With a roar that sounds like every nightmare I’ve had come to life, she leaps into the air as an enormous red dragon, flames dripping from her maw like lava. The other Shifters follow suit, twisting themselves into every manner of mythical creature: three-headed chimera, twenty-foot-tall medusae, and a monstrous, lumbering cyclops that rips one of the telephone poles from the earth and wields it as a grisly club. I race under the body of a thirty-foot-tall tarantula that had once been a concessionaire, and notice a few other performers leaping into the fray, wielding powers I never knew they had.

Vanessa and Richard stand side by side, throwing daggers of ice that materialize from thin air. Maya, the tightrope walker, hovers a few feet above the ground. For a moment, she just floats there. Then her eyes glow blue and she lets out a scream that flings the approaching fey back a hundred yards. Lilith and I duck behind a trailer and lean against the side, panting. The sky is roiling above us and all I hear is screaming, the sounds of the dead or dying. We’re outmatched, there’s no question. We’re going to die. We’re all going to die.

Then something new comes crawling forth, something definitely not mortal and definitely not from the Summer Court. The shadows beneath the trailers quiver, ooze like oil. Then they change. Dark shapes pull themselves from underneath, their forms indescribable save for the terror they send reeling through my chest. One shadowy creature stretches out by my feet — a beast half-spider, half-man, with talons and fangs and hundreds of darting black eyes. I nearly scream. It stands and regards me, and I hear its voice hiss in my head: We fight for the same queen, Oracle. You need not fear us. The creature does a jerking sort of bow and then runs off, joining the other throng of black nightmares that stream toward the Summer Fey. I don’t have time to wonder what they are, but something tells me these are the Night Terrors Mel warned me about.

Oracle?

Blood pounds in my ears as the old fight or flight response wells up inside of me. This time, though, there’s a new sensation, a tingling that makes my fingers ache. A power like an electrical surge races along my skin. My hands feel alive with energy. Lilith chatters at my side, barely comprehensible over the roar of fire and screams.

Our solace doesn’t last.

I’ve barely caught my breath when a group of Summer Fey appears at the end of the trailer. Half of them look like walking saplings, with sprig-like appendages and berries for eyes. The other half are more sinister: drowned-looking things with seaweed for hair and long, rusted scimitars. They spot us and rush forward, yelling a gibberish battle cry. Lilith drops to the ground in the fetal position with her hands over her head. There’s nothing around to use as a weapon, and as they run toward me I want to close my eyes and just let it happen, pray that it will be a quick death.

But then something takes over, something that I can’t control. The tingling in my fingers courses through my blood, fills my limbs. I crouch low as the fey approach, adopting some sort of battle stance, all the while screaming inside my head. What the hell are you doing? Run! Run! But I don’t run, I just wait for them to crash upon me, a smile slashed across my face.

The first dryad reaches me, one clubbed arm raised to smash against my skull. Before it can splatter my brains across the trailer walls, I lunge forward, driven by a feral hunger that turns my world red.

I grab the creature’s arm and spin, snapping it in two and ripping the wooden appendage off entirely. The dryad screams, but not for long. As I rotate, I bring the severed arm up and over my head, shattering it against my attacker’s skull. The dryad explodes in a burst of leaves and butterflies, but my victory is short-lived. The others are upon me. I duck under the blade of a naiad and toss the dryad’s arm aside, sweep one leg out to knock over my opponent and smash my fist into another dryad coming in from the side. I grab the scimitar from one of the water-monsters and make to slash off another head, only to have my thrust blocked by a vine that bursts from the ground. More tendrils snake from the earth and twine themselves around my calves and wrists, pin me in a half-crouch. A naiad smiles at me, his waterlogged eyes red and bulging. He raises his scimitar over my bare neck.

The energy in my fingers turns to fire.

White light surrounds me, fills me, burns me with a thousand tiny suns. I see through half-closed eyes the vines disintegrating from my wrists and calves, see the shocked face of the naiad as he dissolves into nothing. Light fills me, blinds me, roars through me like the angry howl of a god. Bright, white, like a strobe illuminating the whole world, and then it’s gone.

I drop to my knees and shudder with newfound cold as the power leaves me. That’s when I realize that the mob of fey is gone. Only Lilith is still there, cowering in the alley between the trailers, arms wrapped around her head.

I stare at my hands. I swear I see faint traces of silver etched into the lines of my palm.

“What the fuck?” I whisper. Was this part of the contract as well?

I don’t have time to think. Another wave of Summer Fey bursts onto the scene, a new mix of dryads and will-o-wisps and creatures I have no name for. The bloodlust is gone. So is the tingling. I’m not about to test and find out if there’s enough power left over for round two. I reach down and grab Lilith by the shoulder, pull her up to standing, and duck into a trailer.

It’s not until I’ve slammed the door behind us that I realize where we’ve landed. Mab’s office.

It’s dark. The air has that cold, dry sensation of a cemetery on an autumn night. Lilith huddles at my side. I fully expect to hear the Summer Fey clanging against the aluminum door, but all is silent. Just the sound of me and Lilith breathing and the hammer of our hearts.

Then a light flares into being, and then another, cold blue candle flames that glimmer out of skull sconces. The office emerges from the dark like a beast surfacing from a midnight ocean — first the desk, then the chairs, then the bookshelves. And then another form appears in a wash of mist. We aren’t alone in Mab’s study.

Penelope.

She turns the moment she becomes visible, as though Lilith and I were the ones who just appeared from the gloom. In her hand is the book of contracts.

“Lilith,” she says. “I’d hoped Mab would send you here. Though I wasn’t expecting an escort.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask, my hands clenched at my sides. No tingling, this time, no power. And no chance of hurting her. She already saw to that.

“I could ask the same,” she says. “Though I’m pleased you’re here safe.”

“Auntie Mab won’t be happy,” Lilith says. She’s stroking Poe — I hadn’t even seen the cat get inside — with that distant tint to her voice. “She doesn’t like her book to be touched. No, no, not at all.”

Penelope shoots her a venomous glance.

“After this,” she says, “Auntie Mab won’t have a book.” When she looks to me, her eyes soften. “Vivienne, don’t you see what I’m doing? I’m saving you.”

I take a half step forward.

“Saving me? By bringing the Summer Fey here and getting us all killed?”

“I haven’t killed anyone,” she says. Her eyes go wild in that moment, as though I’m not the only one she’s trying to convince.

“You’re full of shit,” I say. “What about Sabina? And Roman? Hell, Melody’s probably dead now because of you!” The rage inside of me is growing, a white-hot anger I want to throw her way. But there’s still no power in my fingertips, no growing pulse of magic. Even if there was, I know there’d be no point. The very thought of harming Penelope is enough to make my chest constrict.

“I had no hand in their deaths,” she says. Her voice drops to a whisper. “My only task was to alter their contracts, to make them mortal again. I can only assume the Summer Court arranged for their execution. As for Melody, I have never touched her terms.”

“What about her illness, then? Why did she get so sick?”

She opens her mouth, but she doesn’t say anything. Not for a moment. “Melody’s fate is different from the other performers of this troupe,” she says. Her words are careful, as though every one is a chore. “She has always been mortal, and her fate has always been tied to the health of this show.”

“What did you do to her?”

“You already know,” she says. “I had her taken far, far away. The only things that can sever her bond to her duties are distance or death.” She pauses and looks at me. Her voice goes soft. “You may call me what you like, but I am no murderer. It was my choice to have Melody hidden away. Senchan would have had her killed. I saved her, so I could save all of us.”

“You’re insane,” I say. She’s completely lost it. She doesn’t seem to realize that outside the trailer, people are burning and bleeding — the very family of performers she’s deluding herself into thinking she’s saving.

“It was the only way,” she says. “It’s the only way we can be free. Our contracts will only be void when the circus is over. You and I, we should be working together. We’re the same.”

Then, before I can ask what she’s talking about, she places the book on the table. It’s open to my name.

“You see?” she says, and points to the very bottom line. “Section 72A: The duration of this contract is valid indefinitely, or until Vivienne is deemed to have served her purpose, whichever transpires first.” She looks at me with true sadness in her eyes. “Your contract has no end. I didn’t believe it at first, couldn’t imagine Mab would try the same trick on you as she had on me. But she did. You’re in this forever.”

Her words send my mind into a haze, a heaviness I can’t shake. I expect the memory to crash back upon seeing the evidence before me, but it doesn’t. No remembering signing my life away, no reason to have done such a thing. I glance at my hands. The light, the power, the visions…whatever it was, that was what I was running from. Whatever it was, it was bad enough to want it locked away for eternity.

“At first,” she says, her words barely above a whisper, “it sounds like an okay fate. But that’s now. That’s only after a few weeks. Imagine how it will feel when you watch a hundred years pass you by, a thousand. The world changes, empires crumble. Friends die. And you know that every day you will wake up and see the sun rise, and you will put on a show, and then you will go to sleep without even a dream to help you escape. Never aging, never dying. Oh, yes, it sounds okay now, but when you are as old as I, the torment is unbearable.”

I close my eyes and force myself to stay standing. What she’s saying is impossible to fathom, but the idea of it is trying to sink in. I keep seeing the print, this contract is valid indefinitely. I had wanted to run away, but had I really wanted to run away forever?

“There is only one way for this madness to end,” Penelope whispers. “If the show is over, our contracts are moot. If the Dream Trade stops, she has no more use for us. We will be free.”

I take a deep, staggering breath and open my eyes.

“What about her?” I ask, pointing to the girl.

“Lilith?”

I nod and look at her. If she’s paying us any attention, it doesn’t show. She’s nuzzling her cheek against Poe’s face.

“I needed a reason for the Summer Court to intervene. She was the perfect ploy. Once they have her, Mab’s reign is over for good.”

“But why?”

She just smiles. “I’m afraid I can’t say. Quite literally.” She taps the book in front of her, then closes it and begins to walk around the desk. “You should be thanking me,” she says. “I’ve done all I can to keep your friends safe from harm — even that witch of yours. When this is all over, you three will be free to come and go as you please.”

She walks by me, right within arm’s reach. I should grab her, should stop her. But her words have a weight. Sure, the circus is fun now; performing every day, seeing Kingston and Melody. An eternity of evenings under the stars and circus lights, endless nights of applause. But what happens a few years from now? Twenty? Fifty? What happens when Kingston and Melody’s contracts are up and I’m left here alone, day after day, without even Kingston’s magic to help me forget the years that edge by? Kingston’s image fills me with regret; I can’t even tell if he’s worth staying for. I’ve been living off lies the entire time I’ve been here. What Penelope’s saying sounds like the first bit of truth.

“Mab’s trailer is protected,” she says. “It leads straight into the heart of the Winter Court, which no Summer Fey can enter. Stay in here until this little war is over and you will have your whole life ahead of you. A normal life. One worth living.” She puts a hand on my arm. I don’t flinch. I can’t make myself move. Endless nights, endless lies… “I’m on your side. Really.”

The trouble is, I believe her.

“Come on, Lilith,” she says, holding out a hand. Lilith takes it without a pause. “It’s time to go meet your new friends.”

“Friends?” she asks.

“Yes,” she says. She opens the door; outside, all I can see is a silvery haze. “They’ve been waiting a very, very long time to meet you.”

They step out and disappear in the fog. The door shuts.

I don’t move.

There’s a war going on outside the trailer and I don’t move a muscle. The adrenaline is gone, the incredible power has faded. I stand in Mab’s trailer, alone, the silence deafening. I don’t even feel like a coward. I just feel helpless.

The book of contracts sits before me. Just looking at it makes me feel naked, vulnerable. I know without a doubt that if I were to take a few more steps, I’d have my entire life laid out before me. I’d know why I came here in the first place. I’d know more about these powers and visions. But as I look at it, I can’t bring myself to move closer. Somewhere, there’s a small voice in the back of my brain that doesn’t want to know. Knowing hurts too much.

I could stay here.

I could wait out the battle and let Penelope hand over Lilith. Then we’d be free. Tomorrow would come and Kingston and Mel and I would be together and we could head off and make a new life. No circus, no contracts. Freedom. We’d age together, live normal lives, get an apartment, and get real jobs. We’d laugh and fight and flirt and everything would be like in here, but more real. It wouldn’t all feel like some grand illusion just waiting for the final curtain to fall.

I could stay here.

I could wait.

But then I imagine their faces when I tell them what happened, when Kingston pulls out the truth and learns I let Penelope win, when he realizes it’s my fault that Lilith was lost and everyone’s death was in vain, and no one was avenged. He would hate me. They both would. The scorn nearly tears me apart. I stare at the book on the table and feel the weight of this press on me with its terrible burden. If I do the right thing, I’ll save the circus but eventually lose everyone I care about. I’ll be stuck in here forever, or until I’ve served whatever purpose Mab has for me.

If I let this happen, if I let Penelope win, I’d lose everyone a hell of a lot sooner.

It’s not even a decision.

I turn and run from the trailer, hoping I catch Penelope before she reaches Oberos.

Chapter Eighteen: Destroy Everything You Love

The world explodes into focus the moment I leave the trailer.

Flames leap across the sky and turn the entire world a sickening mix of yellow and red. Bodies litter the ground, some in flames, some mangled. Humanoid or overtly fey, the carnage is the same. The silence of the trailer gives way to the sounds of roars and screams. Even the earth heaves with tremors as the colossal Shifters and shadowy Night Terrors make battle with the Summer Fey. I look left and right and catch sight of Penelope as she drags Lilith to the edge of the cornfield. The battle rages around them, but their path is clear: no Summer Fey dares to attack them. I don’t have time to hesitate. I run.

I duck and weave against the throng of Summer Fey that surround the tent, trying to make my way toward Penelope. Lilith is walking calmly at her side, Poe right behind them. It’s almost like watching it in slow motion, the way they just keep getting farther away, the way everything moves like a dream. Then something clubs me over the back of the head and I yell out, stars bursting across my vision as I drop to my knees. Penelope doesn’t hear it, doesn’t stop. The cat does.

I can’t move, can’t bring myself to my knees as I call out for Lilith to come back, to fight. Another hit, to the side of my head this time, and I sprawl sideways across the ground. Warmth trickles from my skull. I taste blood. I watch them get farther away, watch Poe sit there and look between me and his master. They’re getting away. Penelope’s going to win. Something grinds into my ribs.

Then I see the Summer Faerie — an elf in leaflike armor with a giant sword — run past Poe. The elf stops, looks down, and with a sneer that makes my world go still, lops the cat’s head off.

Everything goes silent. All sound sucks from the world; a great void that hangs on one improbably long gasp. Rather than blood, rather than death, the cat just disintegrates in a cloud of red and grey ash. The only noise in the deafening quiet is the sound of burning.

Lilith drops to her knees.

Penelope stares at Lilith, then back. Her eyes lock on the elven knight, whose expression is slipping quickly from victorious to confused. She sees the puff of cinders, sees me on the ground. All this in a heartbeat. Then she screams.

That one noise seems to jump-start everything back into motion. I watch in horrid fascination as the ash that was once Poe flutters over to Lilith, swarming around her like moths. The dust settles on her skin, coats her entirely. Penelope backs away, but Lilith is quicker. Her hand darts out and latches on to Penelope’s ankle. Penelope screams again at the touch, screams like hell is trying to pull itself from her lips. Her ankle smokes, her jeans sear away under Lilith’s hand. The dust motes sink into Lilith’s skin, turn her even more pallid.

“I know what you would have done, Penelope McAllister.”

At first, I don’t register who’s speaking. The voice seems to come from everywhere. It burns inside my head, a simmering fire that heats my blood. It’s ancient. Powerful. Pissed.

Penelope’s still screaming, struggling, trying to get away, but Lilith’s grip doesn’t waver; her arm is still as stone.

“You would have had me killed.” Then I realize it’s Lilith. The memory of her prior outburst burns through my mind, the fire and chaos, and it all makes sense. Poe had been injured then, and Lilith went berserk. Now, Poe was dead. I didn’t need to know what was going on to know one very simple fact: whatever power Lilith had been hiding was now set free. Now, there would be nowhere on earth to hide from that hell.

Lilith’s hand twitches and Penelope’s ankle snaps. She jerks, nearly collapses, but before she can hit the ground her screams turn to gagging, and it’s not blood pouring from her mouth, but lava. It burns down her lips and shreds down her shirt, the scent of burning clothes and flesh heavier in the air than I’d ever thought possible. She stiffens, seizes. The gagging cuts short. Flames lick across her body as every inch of her incinerates. The process is fast and efficient, as though she’s made of oil-stained paper. Lilith slowly moves her hand away and stands, Penelope’s burning corpse casting her body in an eerie glow.

She turns.

Slowly.

So slowly.

And then she is facing me. She looks above me, past me, raises her arms to the sides as fire lances around her, flickering from the naked air in tongues and tendrils. Her next words echo in my head, make me wince with pain.

“I know what all fey would have done.”

Lilith goes insane.

The air around her turns white and red, flames billowing up in curtains that stretch toward the heavens. I can see her, barely, within the whorl of heat. She rises into the air like a fiery goddess. And when she reaches the peak of the chapiteau, she unleashes her chaos.

Flames lance down from her, spearing into the horizon, igniting the cornfield, filling the sky with heat and hungry fire. One pierces down toward me and I don’t even have time to shield my eyes as my world explodes in heat and light and then…silence. A quick glance around and I realize I’m still alive, completely untouched. All that’s left of the fey who attacked me is ash. I look up at Lilith and she catches my stare, nods slowly, then dips her head back to the heavens as the flames around her grow brighter. I don't know if she saved me because, as she said, we're on the same team or because she wants to kill me herself. I don't want to find out.

The fields alight. There’s no more room for sound beyond the crackle and roar of fire, not even the dying screams of the fey. I push myself to standing and see the chapiteau curling in on itself, peeling off in long ribbons of burning fabric that float away, like burial shrouds dissolving into the sky.

Lilith’s reign doesn’t go unchallenged for long. Arrows fly toward her, along with sparks and magical missiles and bolts of lightning, but they all vanish, all become nothing the moment they hit her cocoon of fire. And every shot at her receives a counterattack, a lance of flame that folds back to the assailant. I watch in horror as elves and fey burst into flame, some alive just long enough to scream and try to beat out the flames, others disintegrating on impact. Then another light fills the sky, a pure golden counter to Lilith’s fire. Oberos.

The two meet, brilliant sun and burning dark star, and the words of Oberos ring through the air.

“So, it is true. Kassia the daemon has been kept in hiding by the Winter Court.”

For a moment, I wonder if Oberos had killed Mab, but then she appears at my side in a swirl of shadow. Not a feature of hers is out of place — no sweat, no blood, not a stray hair. She could have stepped straight off the runway. Only her eyes are wild. She puts a finger to her lips and pulls me back, hides me against the wall of a trailer. Together we stand and watch in silence.

Oberos raises his scimitars out to the sides; they glow bright, like horns of sunlight. Lilith just laughs.

“You think you can take me, son of Oberon? I, who made rivers bleed and heaven weep with faerie blood?”

Oberos glows brighter. I wince, but keep my eyes open. I won’t miss this, even if it kills me. I doubt I’ll be making it out of here alive anyway.

“I will avenge the deaths of my kin,” he says. Is it my imagination, or did his voice falter?

“When I am finished,” Lilith says. “None will be left to avenge yours.”

Lilith attacks. In the blink of an eye she’s on top of Oberos, hands reaching around the Summer prince’s neck as flames leap about both of them. I can barely see them in their halo, can only make out the faintest blur as flame meets sunlight. The sky roils, the fields burn. No one else moves.

“When Oberos is dead,” Mab whispers to me, “we will have very little time. Kassia will come after me next. When she does, you will have to stop her.”

I pry my stare from the battle above and look at her, my eyes wide.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

She looks at me with those blazing green eyes, her hair a wild nest of black. She actually, amazingly, looks frightened.

“There isn’t time to explain,” she says. “Just be prepared.”

“I can’t fight that,” I say, looking back up to the sky. The ball of flame surrounding them is alive, twisting and writhing with their struggle. It doesn’t take an expert to realize that Oberos is losing: his light is dying, and the red flames grow brighter.

“You have, and you will.” Her words are dark as prophecy.

I don’t have time to ask what the hell she’s talking about. With a roar that shakes the trailers and makes the sky fall, Lilith’s red flames completely consume Oberos. The Summer prince screams and struggles, but he’s locked tight in Lilith’s grasp. Arrows once more fly from the fields as the Summer Fey try to rescue their prince, but it’s too late. I watch in horror as Oberos’s bright body burns from the inside out, sinister black and red flames spilling from his sapphire eyes, snaking from his lips. Lilith doesn’t let go, not until Oberos lets out a final scream and explodes in a flurry of sparks and burning butterflies.

Silence.

Then I feel the heat of Lilith’s gaze as she finds us.

“Auntie Mab,” she calls out, a mocking imitation of her usual childlike tone, “It’s time we talked.”

In the blink of an eye she’s there, standing right in front of us. The flames around her are gone, but she still radiates heat. Inside the shell of flickering heat waves, Lilith floats, somehow transformed. Her skin is grey, her eyes are red, her ripped dress hovers over her body like a cloud. When she smiles, it cracks her skin like fissures on pavement, small lines of red light streaming out.

“You thought you could hold me,” she says. “You thought I’d be your prisoner.”

Mab stands her ground.

“I protected you,” she says. “You would have been killed.”

“No,” Lilith hisses, the grass under her feet igniting. “I cannot be killed. Not until every faerie has died for what they did.”

“I will give you one more chance,” Mab says, her voice calm. “Relinquish this battle and serve me, and you may live.”

“Never.”

“Then you leave me no choice.” Mab takes a deep breath. “Vivienne,” she says, and I jerk my glance back to her. No, no, I don’t know what you — “Line 13.”

Light fills me. Brilliant, shimmering white light that makes my skin dance. I can’t see, can only feel the blaze of radiance that pulses in my blood, the light that is blood. My hands are fire, celestial fire, and all I hear is a single word, Lilith’s word — Kassia’s word — and that is no.

Kassia screams and is on me, her hands burning, reaching toward my throat. Deep in her eyes, I see hell blazing, feel its heat digging into my bones as she screams and tries to burn me, tries to tear me apart. But the light inside is brighter, brighter, and that’s when I realize my hands are on Kassia, too. My hands are locked on her shoulders, and I’m flipping her over, pinning her to the ground, the grass below her burning and flickering in our combined light, and she’s screaming, struggling as the light grows brighter, as it burns us both. And then I’m screaming, too. I can’t stop it, can’t stop the pulse and flare of the stars that rush through my veins, out from my fingers and into her skin. The world goes bright, bright, whiter than light.

White, white, then black.

Chapter Nineteen: Alive Again

Death hurts.

It’s not the release everyone says it is, not the light at the end of the tunnel. Death is falling down a staircase in the dark while covered in thumbtacks.

I open my eyes and try not to wince at the faint light that sears into my brain. A few blinks and I realize the cool blue light is from candles. Candles in crystal skull sconces. Death is classy.

“So,” Death says, her voice smoke and grave dirt. “The dreamer awakens.”

I push myself up, numb in spite of the needles shivering under my skin. A fine Oriental rug is below me. Very classy.

“Where am I?”

Death appears at my side as a shadow. Her eyes are jade, her lips crimson, her face pale gravestone.

“Where do you think?”

And then I see the desk, the bookshelf, all plucking themselves out of the blackness in puffs of fog. I see the chairs, and the open book.

I’m not dead after all.

Mab reaches down and I take her hand, let her help me up to standing. She leads me over to the desk and gently helps me into the chair. Then she sits opposite me. She wears only smoke, though her whip is coiled on the desk beside the book of contracts. The tip is covered in shining golden blood.

“I’m alive,” I say. My voice feels strange in my throat, like I’m using someone else’s lungs.

“For now,” Mab says. She leans back in the chair. “What do you remember?”

I think back. I remember the battle, the tent burning. Oberos. Lilith. And I remember white, white light streaming from my hands…

“What did you do to me?” I whisper.

She just chuckles.

“I told you your gifts would flourish in time,” she says.

“What gifts?”

“Hmm, I’m afraid I can’t say.” She leans forward and points to the page. My name is at the top. “After all, you were the one who requested not to know.”

I make to lean closer but she pulls the book back.

“No spoilers,” she says, and closes the book shut. It rises from her hand and inserts itself back onto the shelf.

“Trust me,” she says, twisting her words like she’d twist the coil of her whip, “you don’t want to know the specifics. You locked that part away for a reason.”

I try to ignore the shiver that wants to race up my spine, the eerily familiar tingle in my fingers — the touch that destroyed the fey and somehow subdued Kassia. Who is she protecting from my past? Me, or herself?

“Does this mean…does this mean I’m one of you? Fey?”

She shakes her head. “You asked never to know the specifics, and I refuse to break your contract. There’s been far too much of that lately for my liking.” She says it like we’ve just been stealing cookies from a cookie jar, rather than dying because of Penelope’s interference.

“I need some sort of answer,” I say. I look to my hands. “I know I’m not normal. Normal people can’t do…whatever it was I did.” Oracle, the Night Terror had called me. What did that entail?

“Normal is a horribly overrated word,” she says. She leans across the table as though she’s going to take my hand. She doesn’t, just looks at me closely. “You aren’t quite human,” she says. “I can tell you that much. And your abilities — which you fervently requested I hide from you — are more than just seeing glimpses of the future. You have much, much more power than that. But until you are ready to use it, your contract expressly forbids we speak of it.”

Not for the first time, I wonder what horrible power is resting inside of me, what past is lingering behind me. What could I possibly have wanted locked away forever? I push the question away and try to focus on the things I can get an answer for.

“What happened? With Lilith? Everything?”

She just smiles. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, either. Let’s just say that you’ve lived to see a side of our dear Lilith that very few have. Your abilities allowed you to face that side. And win.”

“Did I kill her?” I ask, remembering her screams, her darkened, cracking face.

“Of course not,” she says. “Lilith is far too dear to me to allow for it. You merely helped restrain her.”

“So she’s still out there,” I say. I begin to push myself from my chair, heart doing double-time. “She’s still killing — ”

“Sit,” she commands. I do. “Lilith is no longer a problem. She has been dealt with. You are both safe.”

“But Oberos, the Summer Fey — we’re under attack.”

“Love, you try my patience.” She sighs and examines her nails. “If we were under attack, do you think I’d be here right now? No. Oberos has fallen, and our Lilith has made sure that no Summer Fey has lived to tell their king what happened. You and I, we are the few who remember.”

“But Oberon…he’ll come back. He’ll try to take over again.”

She just shrugs and looks at me over her nails. She smiles. “The Summer King and I will always be at war. That’s what makes this so much fun.”

Kingston and Melody are standing outside of the trailer when Mab lets me go. I barely step out the door before both of them leap on top of me, crushing me in their hugs and jabbering nonstop. It’s only after they’ve both kissed me on the cheeks a dozen times that they pull back and let me breathe. Melody looks livelier than ever, and even Kingston — though his eyes are dark with sleeplessness — is beaming. I look away from them and realize we’re no longer in the abandoned cornfield. We’re on a baseball pitch surrounded by pine trees, a lake in the distance.

“What happened?” I ask, because Mab still hasn’t given me a solid answer — just told me that in light of circumstances, she has changed my obligation from juggling to sideshow psychic. Consider it a promotion, she said, and sent me on my way.

Kingston shakes his head and looks at Mel.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Melody says.

We walk to the edge of the lake, none of us talking. It’s early afternoon, and there are families and dogs spread out across the beach. Kingston leads us to a spot away from the main crowd, taking off his shoes to wade out into the soft surf.

“Well?” I ask.

“Well,” Melody says. “Turns out I’m the tent.”

I raise an eyebrow. “What?”

She sighs. “I’m the bloody tent. That’s why I’m here, why Mab signed me on.”

I look to Kingston, thinking maybe she’d had some sort of mental injury after being kidnapped. “What is she talking about?”

“It’s her story,” he says, and puts a hand on her wrist.

“And I only just found out. Okay, well, you know how you don’t age?” she asks.

I nod.

“Yeah. Magic doesn’t just work like that. There’s a tithe; for many to be young, one must bear the burden of age. The same works for immortality. In order for everyone to remain immortal, someone has to die. The only catch is that that someone has to remain with the tent at all times, otherwise the tithe is broken.”

“And that someone’s you,” I whisper. I don’t look at her; I’m watching Kingston, at the way he's staring at her with that sad, protective look in his eyes.

“Yep,” Mel says. “No superpowers for this lesbian. I just get to grow old and watch you all stay young. But hey, so long as I’m healthy and near the tent, you all are safe and immortal, so I guess it works out.”

Suddenly, I understand: her illness whenever the tent or performers were hurt, the reason Penelope needed to get her out of the way. If Melody was gone, the tent became vulnerable — everyone became vulnerable. Penelope had sworn she was saving Mel by having her taken away, that she hadn't altered her contract. By severing the bond between Mel and the tent, she had in the process spared my friend's life. Penelope hadn't been as full of shit as I'd thought.

“That’s horrible,” I say. It's really all there is to say.

She shrugs and looks out over the water. “That’s the contract. Apparently, it’s a genetic thing, nothing magical at all. Kingston found me when I was born and brought me here. I was raised in the circus, and I’ll die in the circus. Thankfully, though, I don’t have to remember that if I don’t want to. I can believe I’ve been whatever age I am for eternity.” She turns to Kingston, but he doesn’t flinch. He just wraps his fingers around her hand and drops his head. Now I know why he felt so responsible for her; he was going to have to watch her die. And he would have to keep changing her memory so she would have no clue.

“Your mom would have been proud of you,” Kingston says. “She was an amazing woman.”

I can’t even begin to imagine what sort of mother would allow that to happen to her kid. That said, I can’t imagine what my own mom would have done to make me leave and run away to join this place. Whatever it was, I’m almost glad Kingston erased the memory of it.

We don’t say anything for a while after that.

Finally, I whisper.

“What happens now?”

“You know Mab,” Kingston says. “She’s already signed on a new cast to make up for those we lost in the fire. The next show’s in four days.”

“The fire?”

“Yes,” he says, with more emphasis in his words than is necessary. “The freak tent fire. We lost half the troop. Thank the gods Mel was away, or we'd have lost her too.”

I open my mouth to ask him what the hell he’s talking about, because it wasn’t a fire that killed everyone, it was Oberos and Lilith and — But his glare stops me short. He knows. We are the few who remember, Mab said. Kingston, Mab, and I. We are the only ones who know what really happened. Every other survivor had their memory wiped by Kingston. I wonder if they tried to erase mine again. I wonder if there’s a reason it keeps failing. Keeping track of all these secrets is going to be impossible.

“Right,” I say instead.

“You should see the new tent,” Melody says, either completely missing or deliberately ignoring the look that Kingston gives me. “It’s gorgeous. Much sexier than the old one.”

“It suits you,” Kingston says with a small grin. I try to smile as well, but I can’t share the amusement. I don’t know how Kingston does it, remembering it all. Every time I close my eyes, I see and hear and smell the chaos of battle. If it weren’t for sheer stubbornness, I’d ask him to make me forget. Or, at least, try.

The pie cart that night is bustling with faces I’ve never seen. There are a few people close to my age and some older men and women. Everyone’s talking loudly, everyone’s excited for their new acts and new costumes. It will be an entirely new show, Kingston explains to me at the table. Everything’s going to be different. I can't help but stare at them all and wonder what sort of bind caught them in Mab's well-manicured clutches. Did everyone here have blood on their hands? Or were there darker secrets hidden behind those smiles?

I nearly jump out of my skin when Lilith sits down beside me bearing a tray heaped with macaroni and cheese. She looks just like she always did — blue porcelain-doll dress, black hair in ringlets, smooth face. Only no cat. She looks naked without Poe. I wonder if she even remembers she had a cat. I decide I’m not about to ask. She smiles at me and cocks her head to the side.

“You okay?” she says. “Jumpy jumpy Vivienne.”

I try to laugh and take a deep breath to keep from screaming. I go about eating my food, but find my appetite is gone with her around. I keep imagining the way she burned Penelope without so much as a pause, the way she lit the whole world aflame. All through dinner I wait for her to turn on me, wait for her features to break apart and reveal a monster of brimstone and sulfur, but it doesn’t happen. She keeps to herself and eats almost everything on her plate and shapes the rest into a smiley face, then gets up and wanders off, leaving the tray behind.

“Odd one, her,” says one of the new girls sitting across from us. She’s got curly brown hair and a scar near her left eye, but her smile is bright.

“You have no idea,” I say, and reach out a hand to introduce myself. She shakes it.

“Sara,” she says. “Pleasure to meet you.”

She goes on to tell me about her training as an aerialist, her tours of New England and the Midwest, but I can’t follow. She reminds me of someone, and the thought makes my stomach churn.

Kingston sits next to me later on, when some of the troupe has wandered off to the beach. Melody and Sara are chatting on the other side of the table, the new girl leaning in just a little closer than socially acceptable for a first chat. Kingston seems amused by this as he slides his hand in mine.

“About earlier,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“For kissing me, or for kissing Lilith?” The rest of my memories might be a tumble of fire and screaming, but those two stand out clear and strong.

“You know I just did that so she’d help us.”

I look away. “Turned out well.”

He puts his hand on my cheek and makes me look at him. He smiles, a little sad.

“Witches don’t apologize very often, V,” he says. “Don’t make me regret it.”

I don’t know what I’m more surprised by — the new nickname or the fact that he actually seems to mean it — but I don’t care. I lean in and kiss him. I close my eyes and let the rest of the world melt away under his cinnamon lips. Melody whistles. Without opening my eyes, I flip her off. She laughs, and I chuckle too, pulling Kingston tighter, never wanting him to go away.

I lie in my tiny twin bed, curled against Kingston, with one arm wrapped tightly over his smooth, bare stomach. I can just imagine his tattoo curling beneath my hands. His breathing is slow and deep and I listen to it like I would the waves of the ocean. I smile and nuzzle my face against his neck. His scent is so familiar, his body fits so well against mine. It’s easy to forget the horrors of the past couple days when I’m next to him, easy to convince myself that none of it ever happened. When I told him what Melody said about not dating within the troupe, he just laughed and said it was because she was the only gay acrobat, and her view would probably be changing rapidly with Sara’s arrival. Then he drew me down onto my bed and kissed me, and that seemed like answer enough.

I try not to think of the past few days. It’s easier that way. I try to ignore the way my hands tingle when they wrap around him, try to block out the awful light that swept through me on the battlefield: the bloodlust, the innate knowledge of how to kill. The power that seared through my fingertips. I focus instead on his breathing, on his scent. Deep down, some small part of me knows without a doubt that this isn’t over, that I’ve only stumbled over the tip of the iceberg that holds Mab’s secrets. And it’s not what she’s keeping from me that scares me; it’s what I’m keeping from myself that makes my blood run cold.

No. Focus on his breath. Focus on how his muscles move beneath his skin and how right this feels, how normal.

Normal. Things can go back to normal…

When I close my eyes, sleep laps over me in warm, grey folds.

I dream.

My pulse is racing. We’re crouched in a shabby room in some old apartment complex, the browning wallpaper peeling off and curling on the linoleum. I can barely breathe, but it’s not me gagging. Every joint in my body is tensed and like iron, the knife in my hands gripped in white knuckles. The blade bleeds.

My sister’s face stares up at me, brown eyes open, mouth open. Curly brown hair, red dripping between her fingers that clutch at her chest. There’s blood on my hands, blood on my jeans, blood pooling on the floor around us. Blood and iron and all I can smell is brimstone, all I can see is flame and white.

“Vivienne, please,” she says. She’s gagging blood between her words. She’s crying. “Don’t.”

I’m sobbing. I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this.

“I’m sorry,” I say, over and over again. The walls move in closer, the light in my head blinds. I want to claw it all away, want to rip apart the howls inside my skull. I can’t get rid of the visions, can’t make the sounds of fire and death disappear. I can’t fight it, just like I couldn’t fight the other visions. I’ve seen everything, everything, and I never want to see it again. There are things no one should see. No one should see. No one should ever know. I’ve seen it. I know.

And worse, I know in that blinding light that I’m the only one who can stop it.

And I will fail.

Claire isn’t fighting anymore. She never fought. Never would. I was the fighter, the older sister. I was the one who had to protect us: from Dad, from Mom, from this. I couldn’t. I failed. I tried so hard and I failed her, and now this is the only way to keep her safe. She’s flat on the floor and her eyes are searching mine, her mouth trying to voice the words I’ve already seen her say. I know how this ends. I’ve always known. There’s no escaping the visions. There’s no changing what I’ve seen myself do.

“Why?” she gasps.

“I’m saving you,” I say, sobbing, as I slide the knife in once more, this time between her ribs. She gasps, her eyes wince shut, and my whole body is shaking as I try to hold the light in. She’ll never understand, she’ll never run. She’d never escape what I’ve seen, the fire and brimstone and burning blood. She’d never escape a death worse than this. I lean down and press my head against her chest. Her blood pools against my lips as I whisper into her silent heart.

“I’m saving you from what’s to come.”