The arena tilted and filled with sparkles. I swayed, nearly falling over. The clown shoved me upright. The tart apple flavor brightened and leaked through me. The tingles grew until they became electric shocks, and then, unfortunately, the electric shocks turned to pain.
I flinched. “That . . . that hurts.”
“Yeah.” The clown scowled. “Idiot. Of course it hurts. I lied to you.”
I gasped, trying to drag in a breath. But my lungs had filled with the green-apple liquid. They were flooded with it, and I couldn’t draw in any air. I was suffocating. I choked, clawing at my throat. Next to me, Justice dropped to his knees.
The arena slid again, and then the stone, the firelight, and all the people pixelated. They became tiny colorful spots, sliding and shaking, so they looked like sugar cubes gyrating under a microscope. Something in my mind exploded, and I gasped again, and finally, I dragged in a deep breath of air.
My vision cleared, and I drew in another shuddering breath. The air didn’t smell like star jasmine anymore. It smelled like I’d stuck my head into a barrel of crisp green apples and mint leaves.
I shuddered. Justice lunged past me and grabbed the clown by the throat.
“What was that?” he growled. “What did you give us?”
The clown coughed, his feet dangling off the ground. Justice shook him like a terrier shaking a rat.
“You have to let him go,” I said. My head pounded, and I felt horrible.
Justice dropped the clown to the stone bench but kept ahold of his throat. “Talk.”
“Good to see you’re a mirthless, murderous jerk again,” the clown growled. Then he flung his hand to encompass the arena. “Look around. Welcome to hell.”
I turned to where he gestured, taking in the stone arena and the field below.
It was different. Everything had changed.
The people weren’t happy. They weren’t healthy. They weren’t joyful.
Some were emaciated, sallow-skinned, with clumps of hair missing. Others were so large they could barely stand under their own weight. They held plates in their hands, the same china Justice and I had eaten off at the café. But they weren’t eating cakes and tarts; instead, it was . . . raw, rotting, moldy, oozing, black-blooded . . .
I turned to the side and started to gag. I was going to puke. I was going to throw up.
“If you barf, I will shiv you!” the slipshot snarled. “Don’t waste the juice!”
He wasn’t a clown anymore. He was himself. A short, angry slipshot with a too-big nose, dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing the last time I saw him. Just dirtier and ragged.
“Did I eat people?” I asked, a violent nausea churning.
“Nah. They eat creatures from the forest. Giant slugs. Oversized millipedes. Besides, that’s what you’re worried about—what you had for dinner? Idiot. They’re about to slaughter your little friend.”
I frowned.
“What exactly do you mean?” Justice asked. His voice was pitched low. It was the tone he used right before he went out on a job and slaughtered a dozen people.
I looked over at him. His face was hard again, somber and angry. There was no trace of the carefree boyishness left. The juice, elixir—whatever it was—had wiped it away.
He didn’t look at me. Instead, he focused on the slipshot.
If Justice was feeling the same thing I was, he was infused with horror, embarrassment, and a violent need to get out of here.
The people I’d thought were kissing? Sadly, they were not. I won’t describe it. It’s not for pleasure. It’s for pain. It involves blood and screaming. Horrid things that would make even Jagger pause.
The singers? Screaming.
The gymnasts? Contorted in pain.
The laughter. Moans of fear.
