The Sixteen Burdens (9 page)

“You don’t understand. He knows who you are now. He’ll hunt you down.”

“You seem to be controlling him just fine.”

“Beauty is a cheap trick,” she said. “And it never lasts long.”

They had only taken five or six steps when Atlas took one bound that closed the gap between them.

“Must you go?” he asked.

“Yes. We must leave right now.”

“Then I will follow,” he said. “Anywhere you go.”

Gray stole a glance at Atlas. His whole expression had changed; he looked like a dumb, lovestruck schoolboy.

“If you want to please me, let me be,” Pickford said.

“I do want to please you,” Atlas said. “But leaving you is the one thing I can’t do.”

Pickford sighed.

“This is why I can’t go out in public.”

She picked up Gray’s hat and dusted it off. She then stepped behind Gray and put it on his head before resting her hands on his shoulders.

“You need to go,” she whispered to him. “Veiled or unveiled, he’s not going to let me leave.”

Pickford gently petted the back of his neck. Her touch, too, felt electric on his skin.

Gray turned around to face her, careful to look away from her face.

“What about you?” he asked.

“I’m the very least of the sixteen,” she said. “What happens to me doesn’t matter.”

Then she leaned in and pulled him toward her.

“I ain’t supposed to touch anyone—”

She hugged him tightly. It was a warm embrace, full of the scent of gardenia. Her breath was hot against his ear. Her golden hair brushed his face. Gray flushed. His arms found their way up and around her to return the embrace. It was a foreign feeling, and yet completely natural.

It was, as far as Gray could recall, the first time he had ever been hugged.

“You really are my ma, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

In that one hug, everything was forgiven. Fifteen years had been erased.

Gray looked up to see a woman charging them from the far side of the ring. She was dark skinned with close-cropped hair and wore a sleeveless, flapper-style dress. Gray recognized her as the woman from the newspaper ad.

Sugar, the fastest knife thrower west of the Mississippi.

He pointed her out just as Sugar was removing a dagger from her belt.

“I can control men,” Pickford said, “but usually not women. Quickly, go with Charlie. He’s one of us. Possibly the girl, too.”

Pickford turned and shot at Sugar with her remaining bullets. Sugar ducked and rolled, taking refuge behind a barrel.

She’s fast.

“Get the Eye,” Pickford whispered. “That’s what he really wants. Under no circumstances can you let him have it!”

Pickford glowered at Atlas, who stood just feet from them. She pulled Gray closer.

“Go where you can walk among the stars,” she said quietly. “A merry heart withers under candor. Repeat that.”

“A merry heart withers under candor?”

“Yes!”

Sugar was on her feet again. A dagger flew at Gray’s face. Pickford jumped in front of him with her hands out, and the knife caught her in the forearm. She cried out. The dagger pierced straight through her forearm and stuck there.

“You must leave, Gray!” Pickford cried out. “For me!”

Sugar picked up a steel rod from Atlas’s act. Gray saw her coming from the corner of his eye.

“Go with Charlie,” Gray said. “Get the Eye. Then what?”

“Run!” Pickford said. She pushed Gray toward the edge of the ring as the steel bar came swinging down upon her. There was a sickening crunch as it hit the top of Pickford’s head. She crumpled to the floor in a black, motionless heap.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

G
RAY
DOVE
THROUGH
the empty bleachers, hearing the
thunk
of daggers in wood as he wriggled underneath the benches.

He stood up and ran right past Elsie, who was crouched underneath the bleachers in fear. He wriggled his way out under the loose canvas and was twenty yards ahead when he heard her yell.

“Wait for me!”

Elsie wriggled with difficulty under the heavy tent fabric.

“Come on!” Gray yelled, wiping his brow. “Hurry!”

She took two bounding steps and tripped hard, falling face down in a mud puddle. Gray
looked back and saw Sugar’s silhouette appear inside the tent; the woman began slashing at the canvas to get through.

He was about to leave Elsie. She wasn’t his problem. But he remembered Pickford’s words.

Charlie’s one of us. Possibly the girl, too.

Gray ran back and held out his hand.

“Give me your hand.”

Elsie reached out and took it. The space between their palms was warm. As soon as they touched, it was as if a circuit was completed. Energy flowed through Gray, into Elsie.

“Leaping lizards!” Elsie exclaimed. “What’s that?”

He pulled her up.

“I don’t know. We gotta go.”

They stumbled toward a dirt parking lot criss-crossed with abandoned cars. In the melee after Mary’s shooting, frantic drivers had jammed the exits. They ran to the side of a green Packard. Gray grabbed Elsie’s hand to pull her down, and motioned for her to be quiet.

Soft, agile footsteps ran up and down the aisles, quietly at first but then louder as they got closer. Gray tried to control his breathing but under the silent night sky it felt as loud as a steam whistle.

There was a soft thud behind the back bumper. Then another. Gray leaned toward the sound and saw something small land in the dirt right in front of him. It was a star-shaped piece of metal—a tiny knife with six pointed sides.

Gray heard Elsie yelp.

He turned around and saw Sugar with one of the metal stars poking into Elsie’s neck.

“They’re Chinese throwing stars.” Her voice had the cadence of someone raised in the Caribbean. “Not the sharpest knives I got but they’ll slit a throat just fine.”

“We’ll take your word for it,” Gray said.

The woman was lean and muscular, a natural runner’s body.

“You’ll tell me where Newton’s Eye is,” she said. Sugar grabbed a wad of Elsie’s hair to keep her head in place.

“We don’t know where Newton’s eye is,” Gray said. “Or Newton’s ear or foot, neither.”

Gray hoped he could keep her talking long enough for help to arrive. But help from whom?

Ain’t nobody looking out for you. You wanna survive, you got only yourself to rely on.

“The Pickford lady whispered something to you back there,” Sugar said. “What was it?”

“She told me to wash behind my ears,” Gray said.

Sugar yanked on Elsie’s hair, revealing her bare neck to the night sky. Elsie grabbed the woman’s arm but Sugar was stronger.

“You think I’m not serious,” Sugar said. “Darko, he been searching for that woman for years. This won’t be the first blood spilled for him. Not the youngest or prettiest either.”

Sugar moved the throwing star to the far side of Elsie’s throat. She was preparing to drag it across. Gray had no doubt she would do it. A swirl of energy appeared around Elsie again, but this time it was black.

“Don’t scream, little lady,” Sugar said to her. “It only makes the blood spatter.”

Gray felt helpless. He wasn’t particularly strong, and his street smarts wouldn’t do anything to get them out of this situation.

Sugar pressed the star into the side of Elsie’s throat, puncturing the skin. Elsie screamed out. The cloud of black energy concentrated in Elsie’s hands, and then surged up Sugar’s arms and whirled about her.

Suddenly Sugar screamed out too, as if mimicking Elsie. Her eyes shot wide and her body froze. There was the soft thud of something falling to the ground. The Chinese throwing star.

The woman sat frozen as if in rigor mortis. She made small sharp breathing sounds. Gray didn’t waste time to find out why; he grabbed Elsie’s hand and pulled her away. Little bits of black energy still orbited around the woman.

“What’s wrong with her?” Elsie said.

“I think she’s paralyzed with fear.”

“Did you do that?” Elsie asked.

“No. I think
you
did.”

They ran for the parking lot entrance, unsure of where to go. A sedan roared at them, screeching to a halt mere inches before hitting them. It was Pickford’s Buick. The man she had been with stuck his head out the window.

“I’m lucky I didn’t run you down,” the man said. “Get in!”

“Mr. Chaplin!” Elsie said, opening the door.

Charlie Chaplin?

“Where is she? Mary!”

“He took her,” Gray said. “She gave herself up so I could escape.”

Chaplin slammed his hand on the steering wheel.

“Foolish woman,” he said. “I told her it was too dangerous. Too unplanned.”

He looked at Gray, seeming to take him in for the first time.

“Don’t dawdle.”

He got into the back seat next to Elsie.

“Are we going back to get her?” Gray said.

“No,” he said. “We’re getting you to safety.”

“Then let me out. I gotta help her.”

A crashing sound came from the big top. Screams echoed from a few automobiles with people still inside. The cars parked closest to the tent launched up into the air, spinning one by one before smashing back down to the ground. Someone was flipping them as if they were toy cars. Someone was looking for something. Searching for them.

“He’s coming!” Elsie said.

Gray could now see the eight-foot-tall man making his way toward the Buick. He walked through the traffic jam, making a path as easy as if he were wading through a wheat field.

Chaplin hit the gas as hard as he could. The Buick sideswiped a parked Model A, jumped over a curb, and narrowly missed a fire hydrant before landing in the street.

“We can’t help her right now,” he said. “You don’t take on that man unprepared.”

He turned the car north and sped toward Beverly Hills.

“Then when?” Gray asked.

“When we’re ready. When
you’re
ready.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

G
RAY
AWOKE
GASPING
for air. He was in his bunk bed, he thought, being choked by Farrell. But when he opened his eyes he found himself just inches from the face of Charlie Chaplin.

Gray realized it was only his nose through which he couldn’t breath. He reached up and pulled two miniature pickles out of his nostrils. Chaplin snickered.

“Why’d you do that?” Gray asked.

“Because you’re the most boring house guest I’ve ever had. And that’s including Upton Sinclair. ‘
Blah
blah
meat packing industry.
Blah
blah
socialism.’”

Chaplin stood. He was dressed in a neat blue suit, a distinguished looking man of about fifty who had just stuck pickles up someone else’s nose.

Gray was still tired from last night. He remembered the ride home, and how he could barely keep his eyes open. It was as if someone had slipped him a Mickey Finn. He had only the vaguest memory of dropping Elsie off somewhere in Hollywood.

“It’s after ten o’clock,” Chaplin said. “Is this what you do in the orphanage all day long—just lie about? No wonder you never got adopted. You’re about as interesting as a pet turtle.”

Gray had to wade through a pile of fluffy blankets to sit up. They were soft and white, like sea foam washing over him. The bedroom was half the size of the entire dormitory at the home. It was decorated in deepening shades of blue, like layers of the ocean. Like someone had nothing better to do than sit around all day matching colors.

“This your bedroom?” Gray asked.

“This closet? This is the smallest bedroom in the house!”

The furniture looked brand new, as if it had been purchased last night just for Gray. Sunlight streamed in through French doors, which opened to a balcony. The wrought-iron bars were shaped into delicate vines, like plants frozen in time.

They made Gray think of the steel rod Atlas had shaped into a flower. The rest of the night came flooding back to him.

“Mrs. Pickford. Where is she?”

“We’re not sure,” Chaplin said. “There’s a bit of a complication.”

He threw the morning’s newspaper onto the bed. The top headline read “BIG PANIC UNDER BIG TOP.” It recounted the shots fired at the circus from a mysterious woman in black. The eyewitness stories from there diverged wildly, but the police couldn’t find anyone from the show to question. The circus had abruptly pulled up stakes, leaving town days earlier than it had advertised.

“We have some time,” Chaplin said. “Atlas won’t kill her until he gets what he wants from her. She’s a strong-willed woman, and far from helpless. Don’t worry just yet.”

“I ain’t worried. Just curious.”

Last night Chaplin had to practically lock the car doors to keep Gray from running back to the tent. But that was last night, when he was all worked up. In the calm of morning, it was easier to remember the strange woman who had dropped him off on the front steps of the boys’ home with all the ceremony of an empty milk bottle. And yet, that same woman had also stepped into the ring last night and sacrificed herself so that Gray could escape.

“Don’t be too quick to judge her,” Chaplin said. “She made great sacrifices to keep you close. You’re the reason she went into hiding.”

Gray recalled Pickford’s face, and the beauty that had completely transfixed Atlas.

“Those rumors of a botched surgery are bull.”

“Spread by her, of course,” Chaplin said. “To mislead people. By the time you were born, her beauty had become unmanageable. The rest of us were luckier.”

“The rest of you?”

“You think she’s the only talented one?” Chaplin said. “I’ll have you know, my comedies outsold your mother’s dramas nearly two to one.”

“So she’s pretty,” Gray said, “and you’re funny?”

Chaplin opened his mouth in mock offense.

“I thought the pickles made that self-evident.”

Gray got out of bed and slipped into his pants. They had been washed and pressed, which helped the dirt but only made the holes more conspicuous. When he slipped on his jacket, he got a whiff of Pickford’s perfume from when she had embraced him.

“Thanks for the bed.”

“Going so soon?” Chaplin asked. “How about some breakfast first?”

He nodded to the pedestal table near the door, where a tray was loaded with eggs, bacon, muffins, pancakes, oatmeal, fruit, and a full tea set.

Gray shook his head even as his stomach rumbled.

“I gotta see a man about a dog.”

Favors were like gifts wrapped in twine. They were great to receive but they always came with strings.

“Not even some tea? Every proper gentleman drinks tea.”

“I ain’t proper. Or a gentleman.”

Gray grabbed his fedora. It was dusty and stained with his blood on the inside rim. He stepped out of the room and looked both ways down a long hall.

“I could tell you about your father,” Chaplin said, pouring himself a cup of tea.

Gray stopped. It was bait, clear as a squirming worm on a fishing line. But he couldn’t resist a nibble.

“Harry,” Gray said.

“Yes. Harry Houdini.”

Chaplin added a big splash of cream to his cup. Gray’s mouth dropped low enough to drive a Chevrolet into it.

“Houdini—the magician?”

“The very one. Handcuffs, straightjackets, disappearing elephants.”

Chaplin took a swig of the tea.

“Harry was a friend and a mentor of sorts. He tried to organize us, and we rebelled. It cost him his life.”

A woman in a brightly colored bath robe popped her head in. She had sleek raven hair that cascaded around her high cheek bones. Her eyes locked on Gray.

“Who’s this?”

“A friend in need,” Chaplin said. “A friend indeed.”

“We have enough friends. Most of them want our money. Get rid of him.”

“Your hospitality, Paulette, is truly legendary.”

The woman gave Chaplin a contemptuous smile, then was gone as quickly as she had appeared.

“Never mind Paulette,” Chaplin said. “She’s a talented actress, though she can’t seem to master the role of wife.”

Chaplin hopped up and checked his pocket watch.

“Now, you can leave if you want,” Chaplin said. “Or you can stay and help me find your mother. We have a lot to do before we can face Atlas.”

He was giving his watch a few turns when he suddenly looked up.

“Speaking of. When Mary shot Atlas, did she wound him?”

Gray remembered the gunshots, the bullets flying into Atlas’s chest, and the crystalline barrier over the man’s flesh that glowed with energy when he and Gray made contact.

“The bullets hit him,” Gray said. “But they didn’t take.”

“Didn’t take?”

“They bounced off him.”

Chaplin closed his watch and pocketed it.

“That’s discouraging.”

“How so?”

“Atlas has always been tough,” Chaplin said. “But around you, he appears to be indestructible.”