“She and her friend had a fight,” Sidney says. “Should be easy to pass off as a runaway.”
I want to argue, to tell him that I didn’t fight with Jules, we just don’t remember how to be friends yet, not like we used to. But I can’t move my tongue. I can’t feel my arms or my legs. The fire in my arms dulls down to nothing as I lose control of my limbs, but I’d rather be in pain ten times worse than this if it meant that I’d be able to wiggle my fingers. What the hell is happening to me?
“Why’s it got to be like this?” Lars asks. The realization that he must have known Sidney’s intent all along makes my stomach churn.
“It is what it is,” the woman answers. The tips of her boots knock into my side as the creeping sensation crawls up my neck, and I barely feel it. “What’s her name?”
I want to scream at her, to beg her to make it stop, but my tongue won’t work, I can’t even make my eyes blink. Tears roll down my cheeks unhindered, and they burn against my skin.
“Emmaline,” Sidney says, resignation clear in his voice.
“That’s her true name?” she asks. Sidney answers with a tiny nod.
She crouches down beside me, and my vision is filled with her and her curls. “Emmaline,” she croons. “The transition is hard, but it’s almost over. Right now, I need you to give Sidney a kiss before we can set him free. You can do that, can’t you, Emmaline?”
I couldn’t argue even if I wanted to. Sidney kneels down in the dirt beside me. Sweat beads on his forehead, and a line of it trickles down the side of his face, taking a trace of the black powder from his brow with it. Feverishly hot fingers cradle the back of my neck as he leans in, and as his lips mold around mine, my fingers begin to twitch.
Chapter Four
Benjamin
I am plotting my way toward freedom across a weathered old map when I hear the screaming.
I roll off the couches that make up my bed, ready to see what’s going on, ready to help. The icy linoleum shocks my bare feet as I grab for the jacket I wore earlier. The accordion door at the other end of the Airstream camper trailer rattles, and my mother swears, so I know that she’s heard the yelling, too. Just to be safe, I cram my map into the crack between the benches and the wall; if my mother had any idea I was thinking of leaving, she’d have a meltdown.
We reach the narrow door at the same time, and she doesn’t seem fazed at all, as if there’s a disturbance like this every night.
We step into the crisp air, ready to do something. Our carnival is so small, so self-sufficient, that the urge to help is hardwired into all of us. The source of the yelling—a pale girl between the more familiar figures of Leslie and Lars—comes into view. A dozen or so others rush in from between the parked campers, likely drawn from cleaning up the day’s detritus and shuttering the booths.
Whiskey sidles up next to me. She must have grabbed her dad’s boots as she ran out because the ones she has on are so big that they almost hit her knees. She’s pulled a pair of jeans on over her glittering riding costume, the frilly ruffles tufting over the waistband, and her hair is pulled into a messy knot on top of her head. She’s small and slight for fourteen, but she’s a stunner on a horse, and she has an exceptionally foul mouth.
“Now that—” Whiskey pauses as we watch them get closer, and I don’t know if it’s for drama or to make a better assessment—“is fucked up.”
Lars and Leslie are helping a girl who can’t seem to walk on her own down the alley. It’s like the packed dirt beneath her feet is ice, and her legs twist and jerk out from under her. Without warning, her arm convulses in Lars’s grip, and it seems as though her shoulder should be jerked out of the socket, but it isn’t. Her black hair falls into her eyes, and she tries to shake it out of the way, but this only elicits an angry shriek and another stream of curses.
“I had to do it,” Sidney says, following after them in the trailers’ slanting shadows. “Had to. You’ll see. Not now, but you’ll see.” As he steps into a square of light from an open trailer door, I see a flush to his cheeks that’s not artificial, a fluidity to his movements suggesting something close to grace, something the girl is severely lacking.
Her head whips up, eyes glassy and feverish as she stares at those of us who came to help but are stunned into immobility. Her gaze darts from face to face, and something like worry or embarrassment arches her eyebrows high. Then she sees me. I can’t quite get a read on the frustrated twist of her lips or the furrow grooved deep between her eyes as we stare at each other.
And then her leg jerks from beneath her. The girl collides into Leslie, her arm slipping from Lars’s grip, and the two women crash into the side of Mrs. Potter’s trailer, setting off a chorus of muffled barking. The red glass lantern hanging from a hook beside the door sways wildly. The crash is as sharp as the ruby shards sparkling among the weeds and grass. It’s been years since I’ve heard the sound, and it reverberates in my ears.
With a jolt that buzzes up my spine, I realize this is the girl I saw earlier this evening. Without thinking, I dart across the alleyway, ready to help Lars lift her up. I wrap my hands around her upper arm, and at first, it doesn’t register. Then I feel it. She’s cold. It’s not the kind of surface chill that comes from being outside too long on a cool night. No, even though I’m only holding her arm, I can tell she’s cold down to the bone, so much so that my fingers are beginning to ache with it.
My hand lingers a little too long, and suddenly I feel the girl’s gaze boring into me. Her full lips are twisted into a frown, and her glare could probably incinerate me if I let it. If she were a painting, she’d be an avenging angel, the kind whose fury could level cities.
“Thanks, Ben,” Leslie says, tapping me on the shoulder. “I’ll take it from here.” Before I can offer to help them to, well, wherever it is they’re going, Leslie slips the girl’s arm around her shoulders and they shamble on down the alley.
I watch them as they walk away, and when I finally tear my gaze from them my mother is giving me a stare that could wither lesser men. Luckily, I’ve been on the receiving end too often for it to have much of an impact. Her words, on the other hand, can always sting. “She’s none of our concern,” Mom says.
My brows furrow up. Why did we rush out here, if not to help? “I kind of think she is.”
Everyone working the carnival knows the story. The person in the box is at the center of the charm and the curse that holds us together. This person is the reason all of us living and working for the carnival are charmed with an unnaturally lucky existence and long lives. We don’t fall. We don’t get hurt. Sometime after twenty, we stop aging—at least outwardly. And our performers can pull off stunts and tricks other carnies only wish they could do.