The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels)

“Auntie Mab,” she calls out, a mocking imitation of her usual childlike tone, “It’s time we talked.”

In the blink of an eye she’s there, standing right in front of us. The flames around her are gone, but she still radiates heat. Inside the shell of flickering heat waves, Lilith floats, somehow transformed. Her skin is grey, her eyes are red, her ripped dress hovers over her body like a cloud. When she smiles, it cracks her skin like fissures on pavement, small lines of red light streaming out.

“You thought you could hold me,” she says. “You thought I’d be your prisoner.”

Mab stands her ground.

“I protected you,” she says. “You would have been killed.”

“No,” Lilith hisses, the grass under her feet igniting. “I cannot be killed. Not until every faerie has died for what they did.”

“I will give you one more chance,” Mab says, her voice calm. “Relinquish this battle and serve me, and you may live.”

“Never.”

“Then you leave me no choice.” Mab takes a deep breath. “Vivienne,” she says, and I jerk my glance back to her. No, no, I don’t know what you — “Line 13.”

Light fills me. Brilliant, shimmering white light that makes my skin dance. I can’t see, can only feel the blaze of radiance that pulses in my blood, the light that is blood. My hands are fire, celestial fire, and all I hear is a single word, Lilith’s word — Kassia’s word — and that is no.

Kassia screams and is on me, her hands burning, reaching toward my throat. Deep in her eyes, I see hell blazing, feel its heat digging into my bones as she screams and tries to burn me, tries to tear me apart. But the light inside is brighter, brighter, and that’s when I realize my hands are on Kassia, too. My hands are locked on her shoulders, and I’m flipping her over, pinning her to the ground, the grass below her burning and flickering in our combined light, and she’s screaming, struggling as the light grows brighter, as it burns us both. And then I’m screaming, too. I can’t stop it, can’t stop the pulse and flare of the stars that rush through my veins, out from my fingers and into her skin. The world goes bright, bright, whiter than light.

White, white, then black.

Chapter Nineteen: Alive Again

Death hurts.

It’s not the release everyone says it is, not the light at the end of the tunnel. Death is falling down a staircase in the dark while covered in thumbtacks.

I open my eyes and try not to wince at the faint light that sears into my brain. A few blinks and I realize the cool blue light is from candles. Candles in crystal skull sconces. Death is classy.

“So,” Death says, her voice smoke and grave dirt. “The dreamer awakens.”

I push myself up, numb in spite of the needles shivering under my skin. A fine Oriental rug is below me. Very classy.

“Where am I?”

Death appears at my side as a shadow. Her eyes are jade, her lips crimson, her face pale gravestone.

“Where do you think?”

And then I see the desk, the bookshelf, all plucking themselves out of the blackness in puffs of fog. I see the chairs, and the open book.

I’m not dead after all.

Mab reaches down and I take her hand, let her help me up to standing. She leads me over to the desk and gently helps me into the chair. Then she sits opposite me. She wears only smoke, though her whip is coiled on the desk beside the book of contracts. The tip is covered in shining golden blood.

“I’m alive,” I say. My voice feels strange in my throat, like I’m using someone else’s lungs.

“For now,” Mab says. She leans back in the chair. “What do you remember?”

I think back. I remember the battle, the tent burning. Oberos. Lilith. And I remember white, white light streaming from my hands…

“What did you do to me?” I whisper.

She just chuckles.

“I told you your gifts would flourish in time,” she says.

“What gifts?”

“Hmm, I’m afraid I can’t say.” She leans forward and points to the page. My name is at the top. “After all, you were the one who requested not to know.”

I make to lean closer but she pulls the book back.

“No spoilers,” she says, and closes the book shut. It rises from her hand and inserts itself back onto the shelf.

“Trust me,” she says, twisting her words like she’d twist the coil of her whip, “you don’t want to know the specifics. You locked that part away for a reason.”

I try to ignore the shiver that wants to race up my spine, the eerily familiar tingle in my fingers — the touch that destroyed the fey and somehow subdued Kassia. Who is she protecting from my past? Me, or herself?

“Does this mean…does this mean I’m one of you? Fey?”

She shakes her head. “You asked never to know the specifics, and I refuse to break your contract. There’s been far too much of that lately for my liking.” She says it like we’ve just been stealing cookies from a cookie jar, rather than dying because of Penelope’s interference.

“I need some sort of answer,” I say. I look to my hands. “I know I’m not normal. Normal people can’t do… whatever it was I did.” Oracle, the Night Terror had called me. What did that entail?

“Normal is a horribly overrated word,” she says. She leans across the table as though she’s going to take my hand. She doesn’t, just looks at me closely. “You aren’t quite human,” she says. “I can tell you that much. And your abilities — which you fervently requested I hide from you — are more than just seeing glimpses of the future. You have much, much more power than that. But until you are ready to use it, your contract expressly forbids we speak of it.”

Not for the first time, I wonder what horrible power is resting inside of me, what past is lingering behind me. What could I possibly have wanted locked away forever? I push the question away and try to focus on the things I can get an answer for.

“What happened? With Lilith? Everything?”

She just smiles. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, either. Let’s just say that you’ve lived to see a side of our dear Lilith that very few have. Your abilities allowed you to face that side. And win.”

“Did I kill her?” I ask, remembering her screams, her darkened, cracking face.

“Of course not,” she says. “Lilith is far too dear to me to allow for it. You merely helped restrain her.”

“So she’s still out there,” I say. I begin to push myself from my chair, heart doing double-time. “She’s still killing — ”

“Sit,” she commands. I do. “Lilith is no longer a problem. She has been dealt with. You are both safe.”

“But Oberos, the Summer Fey — we’re under attack.”

“Love, you try my patience.” She sighs and examines her nails. “If we were under attack, do you think I’d be here right now? No. Oberos has fallen, and our Lilith has made sure that no Summer Fey has lived to tell their king what happened. You and I, we are the few who remember.”

“But Oberon…he’ll come back. He’ll try to take over again.”

She just shrugs and looks at me over her nails. She smiles. “The Summer King and I will always be at war. That’s what makes this so much fun.”

* * *

Kingston and Melody are standing outside of the trailer when Mab lets me go. I barely step out the door before both of them leap on top of me, crushing me in their hugs and jabbering nonstop. It’s only after they’ve both kissed me on the cheeks a dozen times that they pull back and let me breathe. Melody looks livelier than ever,