Page 41
I should be a lot of things. Mad. Irritated. Hateful. But his words resonate with something I’ve felt since arriving. A strange familiarity.
The door opens again, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Tobias enters. Of course it’s him, I’m sure he was waiting just like Kenan was. His blue eyes lock with mine, a storm of emotions roiling within them.
“I should have told you about the necklace,” he says without preamble.
“You could have turned her away. Saved her somehow,” I say bitterly.
“No,” Tobias kneels before me, “no one could. The Carnival takes what it demands.”
“And what does it demand of me?”
“Your soul.” Kenan says from beside me. “But not your death. Not if you accept what’s happening ... what will become of you.”
Tobias takes my free hand. “Last night wasn’t just about desire, Little Bird. It was about connection — between me, you, and Kenan — all three of us together. That’s rare. Special. You made both of us wake up to what we mean to each other. You gave us a reason.”
I look between them, these two men who’ve awakened something in me I never knew existed, even if, at this moment, they piss me off just looking at them. “I need to prepare for tonight’s performance.”
Kenan’s lips quirk up. “That’s our girl.”
“I’m not yours,” I tell him, but there’s less conviction in my voice than before.
“Maybe not,” Tobias says, standing. “But ... we are yours, just as we are each other’s.”
As they leave, I feel The Carnival’s magic humming beneath my skin, stronger now. I didn’t notice it before, probably too lost in my own thoughts on what everything means. My fingers trace the mark on my forearm, feeling it pulse with power. A power that I’m finally realizing means Kenan’s words were true.
“Because everyone at The Carnival has a little magic inside them somewhere.”
Tonight I’ll perform like I never have before, since it might be the last. Tomorrow, I’ll face a final choice, but for Evelyn, I won’t stop until this entire place burns with me.
Chapter 27
I weave through shadows, the flickering candlelight casting illusions upon the walls of my tent, forming shapes that dance and sway. Each flick of my wrist brings forth a new spectacle — a delicate butterfly that flits around in the air, followed by a menagerie of colors that pulse and pop as if it’s alive. The guests crowded inside murmur in awe as they fill up more of the space. Their eager faces think it’s all an act, something they come to see and then leave home happily trying to figure out what the trick was ... never realizing the truth of all this is simply to get one special soul marked. Sometimes The Ringmaster gets a little more greedy, grabbing more ... and some hear the truth of what this place is and join willingly – they become the Patrons.
“Is it real?” A young woman whispers, her fingers reaching toward the illusion.
“What is reality, really?” I ask, my voice carrying that practiced, mysterious lilt that’s become second nature to me now. “The things we see, or the things we feel?”
A phoenix dissolves into a shower of sparks that dance around the audience. I can feel their pulses quickening, their breaths catching, a delicious mix of fear and delight.
“Step closer,” I beckon to a middle-aged man whose eyes betray his skepticism. “Tell me what you see.”
He approaches cautiously and with a turn of my hand, I summon a mirror before him — one of the mirrors that line my walls, designed to reflect not his face but his desires. The same one I showed Emerson and Kenan the first night they saw me. It shows the desires one doesn’t even know they have. It’s how I saw – no, too soon. Things aren’t certain yet. The man in front of me startles, his eyes widening as he sees whatever fantasy I’ve pulled from the depths of his mind.
“How did you —” he starts, but I’m already moving on, maintaining the spectacle for the crowd.
I watch the mirrors lining the walls ripple like the surface of a disturbed pond. I can control them for others, but for me ... they have minds of their own. Feeding off my power much like The Carnival and the Patrons feed off the delight or fear of the guests. It reminds me of things in my rather long life I would like to forget about entirely.
I glance at the rectangular mirror to my right, its black frame absorbing the candlelight rather than reflecting it. There he is — Joshua. Who he was before he became The Ringmaster, when his eyes still held light instead of madness. We were like brothers once. I remember his laughter, genuine and warm, as we practiced new illusions together in a time when things were simple. Fun, even. The mirror shows us sharing wine under starlight as he talks of the girl he’s fallen madly in love with.
“It’s beautiful,” a woman in the front of the crowd says, pulling my attention back to the butterflies made of blue light landing on her outstretched fingers.
“Beauty can often be deceptive,” I reply.
The black-framed mirror shifts as if wanting me to remember, and now I see the night everything changed. Joshua cradles his lover’s broken body. Her blood from her coughing stains his white gloves. I fight a shiver from the reminder of what his anguished scream sounded like, and the unnatural wind that rose as he made the bargain no mortal should even know how to make. I tried to stop him, the mirror shows me grabbing his arm, begging him to let her go, to accept death as a part of life.
“Some things aren’t meant to be cheated.”
“Then I’ll become a fraudster.”
