The Immortal Circus: Act Two Read Free Page B

Lilith says.
Her voice is deeper and burns with brimstone. It sends chills down my spine.
“Your demons will always find you. Always.”
    Poe leaps from her arms and twines around my feet. His touch makes my
skin tingle and burn. I can’t help but watch the dead cat as it prowls away,
toward a body lying broken on a cold tile floor, the linoleum stained with
smears of blue. A girl with curly brown hair and lifeless eyes. A girl whose
faded laugh rings through my head and stains my heart.
    “Claire,” I whisper. The word is a dagger for reasons I can’t even
grasp.
    Mab’s hands clench my shoulders. She whispers in my ear.
    “You can’t run away forever,” she says. Her fingers dig deeper, and
the dream explodes in the screams of stars.

Chapter Two
Wonderland
    I’m nursing a cup of coffee in
my hands and watching my reflection waver in its black mirror. My hazel eyes
are bleary and ringed with dark shadows, my long blonde hair pulled back in a
wayward ponytail. I look like I’ve been run over by one of the giant semis that
carries the tent. I feel like it too. Something’s itching in the back of my
brain, but I can’t put my finger on why my instinct tells me I should be
freaking out. It feels like I haven’t slept in a week.
    Kingston
never showed up. I try not to dwell on it. I tell myself I’m a big girl, and it
doesn’t matter that my boyfriend didn’t sneak into bed in the middle of the
night to curl up next to me. Like he had every other night. But as I sit and
look at my coffee and try to remember why my dreams feel like a clusterfuck,
assuring myself of anything positive is impossible. Especially at 6 a.m.
    I hate jump
days.
    The rest of
the troupe is milling around at about the same pace as me. I glance up and
watch the Shifters crowded around the coffee table. They’re in leather and
denim and ripped plaid shirts, like some punk-rock Hell’s Angels. Almost all of
them are covered in tattoos and piercings, and at least half of them have
dreadlocks and multicolored hair. They look like the type of people you’d run
away from in a dark alley, which, appearances being what they are, means
they’re most likely precisely the type of people you’d want to run into
in a dark alley.
    I realize
I’m staring when one of the new guys catches my eye and winks. He’s got a pink
Mohawk and a septum piercing. He reminds me a lot of Roman, the old leader of
the Shifters, although the new guy is a bit more squat. The thought of Roman
makes my stomach clench. It’s hard to forget the last time I saw him, impaled
on his swords and bleeding in the morning sun. Memory stirs, but then the guy
looks away and it’s gone.
    “Hey,” Kingston
says. He sidles up behind me and twines his hands over my shoulders, giving me
a light massage. I glance up at him. There are dark clouds under his eyes, and
he’s definitely wearing the same sleeveless shirt he wore yesterday. I clearly
wasn’t the only one who didn’t sleep for shit. “How are you?”
    “Where were
you last night?” I ask. I don’t want it to sound as accusatory as it does; I
try to tell myself it’s because I want to know what’s going on, and not because
I’m bitter that he didn’t come back. I set the coffee down on the picnic table.
    Kingston
doesn’t answer at first. He looks away, toward the trailers. Toward Mab’s
office.
    “Searching,”
he says.
    “For?”
    He shrugs
and reaches for my coffee, taking a long sip. When he returns it, there’s only
a tiny bit left. I glare at him, and he waves his hand over the mug; it fills
itself back up with dark heaven. I take a slow sip. Generally speaking,
Kingston likes his coffee a bit stronger than the rest of us. I can’t
tell if I’m glad or disappointed that there’s no magical booze in this one.
    “Just
glorified guard duty, double-checking contracts and all that,” he says. He’s
not speaking very loudly, which tells me more than enough: Mab doesn’t want
this becoming common