The Immortal Circus: Final Act (Cirque des Immortels) (14 page)

“Join us,” she says. “Play with your sister. Empty yourself, and we will fill you. You want to run away. We can sense it. Let us help you. Let us take away the pain.”

“No,” I say. No conviction. No point. My forearm spasms with pain. Zal writhes like he’s stuck in a tornado. The music is loud, so loud, almost deafening, but I still hear it, in the back of the din: Kingston’s screams. Kingston, yelling at me to run.

My feet take another step forward, toward the glowing path.

“If you won’t do it, we’ll do it for you. It’s only fair. And then you’ll be free. Free from the guilt of what you did to her.” Claire’s voice becomes her own. My heart rips and bleeds. “Free of the guilt of what you did to me. I thought you loved me, Vivienne. I thought you said you’d protect me forever.”

Run.

The voice isn’t mine, and I’m not sure it’s Kingston’s. But it grips me, seizes my terrified muscles. It spurs me forward.

I want to stay. I want to get Claire out of here. Everything in my mind and heart fight against the impulse in my bones, the urge that leads me toward the glowing path. I barely even notice the burn against my thigh as Claire slashes at me with the knife. I’m running. Running against my free will, barging past the dead children with their dead eyes and screaming lips. Running down the path and all I can think is,
Claire, Claire, I’m so sorry.

Then the light of the path grows bright, and the sound of music burns everything else away.

Somewhere between light and dark, there’s a change to the music. What was once a din is now a carol, a jaunty jig spurring me onward. The forest changes, too. Dark trees grow warm and brown, their boughs filling with leaves the color of emeralds and dusty jade. But the main change is the children; they’re gone. No little bodies follow me through the forest. No screams or knives are hurled at my back. The only trace they left is the slash bleeding red down my thigh. The cut isn’t deep, and it doesn’t hurt as much the farther I jog, but it’s a reminder that the encounter was real. Claire was real.

And something in her remembered what I did to her, all those months ago. Something dark will never let her, or me, forget.

I don’t even realize there are still tears in my eyes until a voice calls out from the branches of a willow.

“Girl, why do you cry?”

I slow my jog and stare up at the voice. There, in the branches, is a faerie. A real, bona fide, Disney-style faerie, with butterfly wings and a pink petal dress and a lithe figure no bigger than my hand.

“What are you?” I ask. She’s too cute to look like a threat, but that might just make her more dangerous.

“I am a pixie,” she says. She flutters down from the branches and hovers in front of me, swaying back and forth like a hummingbird. “And my name is Meadowsweet.”

“Meadowsweet, right. Of course it is.”

She cocks her head to the side. “You are not like the other humans. You know of us.”

“Understatement of the year,” I say. I wipe the tears from my eyes and check my pocket. The vials are still there. Mission is still a go.

Her tiny blue eyes look down at my leg. Her gasp is like a flute.

“Oh no! You’re injured.”

She darts over to me in the blink of an eye. I try to swat her away, but she’s already reaching out with her hands, a warm yellow light blooming from her thumbnail-sized palms. When she darts away again a second later, the wound on my thigh is perfectly healed.

“I didn’t ask for that,” I say. “I know how you faeries work. You’re not getting anything in return.”

Her features are small, but it’s easy to see she’s crestfallen.

“Who has done this to you?” she asks.

I glance at my leg.

“My sister,” I say. “In a sense.”

“Not your wound,” she says. “Who has tainted your heart? Who has twisted your innocence and joy?”

I chuckle mirthlessly, forcing the weakness from moments ago into the deepest shadows of myself. “Innocence and joy aren’t exactly words I associate with anymore.” I shake my head. I don’t have time for this conversation. Austin’s still in Lilith’s clutches; the demons are still readying for war. Kingston is still awaiting my rescue, and this Tinkerbell is just getting in the way. The music in the background is distant again, barely a whisper in the breeze. But it’s there, inviting me deeper into this sunlit world. “I need to get going,” I say.

“But where will you go?” she says. “This is the only part of Faerie you need to be. Everywhere else is dangerous. Scary.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes dangerous and scary are part of the job.” I start walking the direction I was going—annoying though she is, there’s no way I’m letting this pixie turn me back to the way I came. Those freaky children could be anywhere.

“You’ll be lost forever,” she says. This makes me pause. “The land of Tír na nÓg has no paths or exits. It simply exists where one needs faith.”

Tír na nÓg? What fresh hell is this?

“I don’t need faith,” I say. “I need to rescue my ex’s corpse before demons burn down my show.”

Words I definitely never expected to leave my lips.

“Oh but you do,” she says. She sounds so hurt by it, like admitting my flaw reflects her own failings as a faerie. “Otherwise, Tír na nÓg would never have opened its doors to you. Perhaps it is faith in the goodness of your heart. Or in love. Yes. I think you must remember the goodness of love.”

I scoff.

“Love? Listen bitch, I’m not here to be lectured about love. I have a job to do, and you’re either helping me or getting in the way. Right now, it’s the latter, so you better use those little faerie wings of yours to show
me
the way out, or I’m going to show
you
why they called me the assassin.”

I don’t know where the confidence comes from. Maybe it’s sheer exhaustion—physical and mental. I’m tired of being dicked around. I want to get in to Summer, get Kingston, and get this over with. Now that there’s a chance of having a real life, I want it more than anything else.

Another flute-like gasp from Meadowsweet. “That is
no
way to speak to the princess of the Honey Court.”

I laugh. I can’t help myself.

Hate her though I do, I’ll take Mab and her icy kingdom over this fluffy faerie bullshit any day.

“Good-bye, princess. And fuck you very much.”

I keep walking. I may not have the path, but I still have Zal—he’ll guide me back to Kingston come hell or high water. The tattoo glares up at me, like it, too, is upset I’ve pissed off royalty.
Get over it,
I think.

The branches around me shiver. And between one footstep and the next, every leaf from every branch falls off in a rustling avalanche. The warm sky turns cloudy.

“Oh, that simply will
not
do,” says Meadowsweet. She flutters around and hovers in front of me, arms crossed over her chest. “One does not insult the royalty of the Honey Court. But I am not like your Queen Mab. I am loving. I am
generous.
” She says it like she’s hurling a spear. When she smiles, there’s a wicked twist to it, one I’ve seen on Mab and Oberon more times than I can count. For the first time in this entire interaction, I have a fleeting glimpse of what madness I’m truly dealing with. “I will not kick you out, no, even though you deny my aid. I will open you to the heart of Tír na nÓg. I will grant you every hospitality. Stay as long as you wish, Vivienne. Stay forever. I dare say, after Tír na nÓg has shown you its truth, you will never want to leave at all.”

Then, with another flick of her wings, she vanishes in a puff of glitter.

“Weirdo,” I mutter. My wrist gives a throb and I look down: Zal is twisting like mad again, and in the back of my mind I hear a voice. I’m not certain if it’s Kingston or Zal screaming, “
You idiot!
”

A step later, I figure out why they were yelling.

The forest stops being a forest.

I’m in the kitchen making coffee. The walls are a pale robin’s-egg blue I'm still trying to get used to, even though we repainted last month, and copper pots and pans hang from pegs along one wall. Everything is immaculate and lovely, as if for a
Better Homes and Gardens
cover shoot. There’s even a pile of biscuits on the counter, half draped by a clean white towel.

I turn around. No forest—just another wall and an open door leading into a living room as cozy and quaint as the kitchen.
Why would there be a forest in my kitchen?
Clearly I haven’t had my first cup of coffee.

“You’re up early,” says a voice from behind me. I jump.

He’s no longer the boy I fell for freshman year of high school. But when Austin strides up to me wearing only a pair of sweatpants, his shaggy brown hair still mussed from sleep and stubble on his jaw, I know he's still the boy I fell in love with. The ring on his left hand, the lazy smile on his lips. My heart warms. Every inch the man I married.

“Morning honey,” I say, wrapping my arms around his waist and pulling him in for a kiss. He chuckles and pulls away.

“I have morning breath,” he says.

“I don’t care.”

He relents with another laugh and kisses me, hard, then pulls back and yawns. “Sorry. Still not a morning person.”

He walks over to the counter and pours two cups of coffee. I look behind me, the tingle of memory hidden in the corners of the curtains. What was I looking for earlier? I wipe my hands on my apron and watch him work for a moment before going back to making breakfast.

“I was thinking,” I say as I whisk the eggs, “maybe we could go out for dinner with the Richardsons later tonight.”

“Great idea,” he says. He walks over and kisses me on the back of the neck, reaching one hand around to set my coffee on the counter. I glance down. It’s not coffee after all. It’s a black box roughly the size of a checkbook.

“What’s this?” I ask. “It’s not our anniversary.”

“Just a present,” he says. “Open it.”

I open the box. Inside is a necklace, resting atop a plane ticket.

“Prague?” I ask. The word catches in my throat.

“For a start,” he says. “They call it the Winter Wonderland tour. Seven days and seven nights in Prague and Amsterdam and a few other places in between. You always said you wanted to see a European winter market.”

I pick up the necklace with shaking hands; it’s a snowflake of silver and diamonds.

“This is too much,” I say.

“No,” he replies. He reaches around my waist and pulls me tight, kisses me on top of the head. “It’s not enough. I don’t think it will ever be enough to show just how much I love you.”

My lip quivers into a smile, the warmth in my chest expanding a thousandfold.

“You don’t need to do anything,” I say. I loop the necklace around my neck. He helps with the clasp. “Just having you is enough.”

“Actually,” he begins, his voice purring in his chest. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“What?” I ask. The contentment from the gifts begins to melt.

“This is a big house, Viv. And I’m starting to think that you and I aren’t enough to fill it, not anymore.”

I turn around, look up into his eyes.

“I want to start a family,” he says. “I know we talked about it before, but I think it’s time. Are you game?”

I laugh.
Are you game?
So like him.

“Of course,” I whisper. I wrap my arms around him, nuzzle my head against my chest. “Let’s make a family.”

He wraps his arms around me and chuckles. “Then let’s start immediately.”

Then, with a smile playing across his lips, he lifts me up and brings me to the bedroom. We pass through the door…

And the kitchen is gone.

“What the hell?” I whisper. There’s an ache in my chest that wasn’t there before, a heaviness that seems scraped from the bottom of my being.

“Tír na nÓg has shown you your heart’s desire,” comes a voice. I glance up to see Meadowsweet sitting in the branches of a tree. “Tír na nÓg knows what you want most in this world, and we can give that to you. Here, you can always live your dream.”

“What are you talking about?” But I know. I try to shake the image of Austin out of my mind. If I don’t, if I don’t focus on saving Kingston and ending the demons…I think of Austin’s kiss, the familiarity and warmth. The promise of a family. It takes everything in me not to turn around. I clench my hands at my sides and force myself to stay facing forward. “I don’t want an illusion,” I say, trying to steel my voice and the pang in my heart that longs for that life. “I just want to get out of here. I don’t have time for weakness.”

She shakes her head sadly. “So much bitterness. But Tír na nÓg will show you. You don’t want to leave, not yet. All you need to do is stay.”

“I don’t have time for this. Just show me how to get out of here and you can focus on someone who actually needs saving.”

“Oh, but I am guiding you,” she says. “Your path is ahead.”

She points to the ground below her, to the path of rose petals at my feet. Sunset burns through the arch of branches at the far end.

“Thanks,” I say. But try as I might, I can’t find the will to walk. My feet don’t want to move.
You could stay,
Austin’s voice whispers in my mind.
You could stay with me forever.

But that would just be an illusion, and if I don’t stop the demons, forever is going to be a very short time.

I force my feet forward.

“You almost ready, V?”

I turn from the mirror and look at Kingston, my Kingston, still as hot and youthful as the first day I met him, thirty years ago. I wink and return to my reflection, adjust the top hat to just the right angle. To be fair, I’m still as hot and young as I was back then, too. It’s Tapis Noir tonight, but that’s not the only reason tonight’s a show to remember. My diamond-studded corset glistens like a black sky of stars, the sheer silk gloves and tights the color of dark dreams. Kingston steps up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist—not that I can really feel the embrace through the boning and layers of the corset. His stubble tickles the base of my neck, and I have to swat him away when the nuzzle becomes a nibble.

“Patience, tiger,” I say. I turn around and pull him close, my hands tight on his hips. “There will be plenty of time to play tonight.”

He whines against my lips as I kiss him. His mocha eyes close in pleasure.

“But you’ll be distracted by the other pretty boys and girls,” he finally whines.

“Says you,” I say. “I’ll get one we can both play with. Promise. It’s our anniversary, after all.”

“Thirty scandalously perfect years,” he says. I kiss him again.

“Do you ever wonder what it would be like?” I ask. “To be out there, with normal jobs and normal lives?”

He laughs.

“Utterly boring. People like you and me don’t handle
normal.
We need the thrill of the limelight, the glory of applause. The promise of ridiculously hot sex under a big top.” I purr as he bites my neck again, just above the collarbone. Screw it—if he leaves a mark, I’ve got plenty of concealer. “Besides,” he continues, “we’ve got everything we need here. I mean, you’re happy, right?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” I say.

“Good. Because tonight I’m going to make you even happier.” He winks. “I’ve got a few new tricks up my sleeve.”

Before I can ask what he’s talking about—not that I really want to spoil the surprise or pop the bubble of excitement in my chest—he takes me by the arm and pulls me from the dressing room. The tent lights blind as we step out the door.

And I stumble to the ground, my feet catching on a log. Dry leaves scrape against my skin and bits of ice and snow flake over my fingers. When did it get so cold?