I swallow and stare at her and can’t help but wonder just how many other Shifters were killed by their own parents by mistake.
“What was it like in Mab’s Court?” I ask. I want to steer the subject as far away from murder as possible. After last night, the idea of Mab’s nightmarish home is both intriguing and terrifying. I can’t imagine someone like Penelope, someone clearly more comfortable in posh digs, growing up surrounded by such lecherous monsters. Maybe that’s why she pretty much keeps to herself. Ignorance is bliss.
I should know.
“It was so long ago,” Penelope begins, and I expect her to wave the question away. She doesn’t. “But Mab’s Court isn’t something one can simply forget. She made sure of it.”
“What do you mean?”
Penelope rustles around in the nightstand beside her bed and pulls out a necklace. It’s a simple silver chain, and on it hangs a diamond that glints as black as night. She loops the chain in one palm and holds it out to me.
“This,” she says.
It’s the second time in twenty-four hours that someone’s handed me something without explanation.
“It won’t hurt you,” she says with a small smile. “One of Mab’s jewelers made it for me. It’s hewn from the very walls of her castle.”
I still don’t move.
“What’s it do?” I ask.
“So suspicious,” she says, though the smile doesn’t fade. “It’s a memory stone. It allows me to record and recollect my history. Otherwise, I’d have trailers and trailers of diaries.”
“You sure you want me to know all that?”
She laughs.
“It will only show you what I want it to.”
She motions her hand once more. I take a deep breath. Hopefully she’s never been to the Tapis Noir…
The stone drops into my palm. It’s warm and tingling and as the heat spreads up my arm, the world grows black.
A few blinks and my vision clears. The light is dim and pale blue, like all the light is diffusing through blocks of snow. Penelope is standing beside me, but she’s barely there, just a flicker of a figure. When I glance down, my hands are just as ghostlike. We’re in a hall made of arching black stone. Blue flames flicker along the wall, the fires contained within giant crystals. Plush white carpet lines the hallway, and although the air is as warm as the trailer, everything looks frozen, from the glossy walls to the way the carpet piles like freshly fallen snow.
“This was the main hall,” Penelope says. Her voice is clear, but seems to be coming from far away. I look at her apparition as she talks. Her lips don’t move.
I blink, and now she’s standing a few feet away. Another blink, and she’s even farther. I move to catch up. The motion is jerky, like I’m a character in a broken film reel. I only see the hall blink past in flashes.
Moments later we stand before a large set of doors. They spread from wall to ceiling to floor, made of dark black wood inlaid with silver in curling thorned filigree. She pauses, one hand pressed to the door. She looks at me.
“Would you like to see the birth of the circus?”
I can’t imagine any other reason to be here, so I respond with a muted, “Yeah.”
She looks back to the door, a staccato flicker of her head.
Then she’s gone.
I look at the door that stands easily three times my height. I put a hand to the wood. I push.
I’m inside.
If the hall was large, this room is beyond comprehension. To say it’s a cavern is an understatement, but that’s the only thing my mind can connect it to. The ceiling domes up, way up, hundreds of feet above. The entire thing is illuminated by crystals and flickering lights that zip around like fireflies. The light falls like snow, dusting down to the floor and fading into the white carpet. Stalactites and stalagmites reach down and up like teeth on all sides, their surfaces carved and inset with silver like the doors. More tiny lights flicker around the formations. And there, sitting right in the center amid a wall of silver stalagmites, is a throne the height of a house. The actual seat rests a good twenty feet from the ground, sitting atop a disturbingly thin spire of stone. The chair back is silver and crystal, the arms ebony and ice. Mab sits there in a dress of white silk and fur. A crown of black ice sits atop her head.
“Your Majesty?” a young girl asks. She stands at the foot of Mab’s throne. A few steps closer and I can see her clearly. It’s a younger Penelope, with the same blazing red hair and porcelain features. There’s a doll in her hand, one with wings and glittering green eyes. Then the doll twists its head toward me, and I jump back.
“We have traveled the world together, yes? And you’ve enjoyed it?” Mab asks. I can’t help but stare in awe at this incarnation of Mab. She looks every inch a regal queen, from the crown on her head to the hem of her dress that dangles ten feet below the edge of her throne. She is nothing like the debaucherous Mab I know, but there’s a power they both share, a presence that tells me they are without question one and the same.
“I have, my Lady,” Penelope says. Her voice is perfectly composed — not a hint of fear or doubt.
“But you’ve grown lonely,” Mab purrs. “You desire friends.” She seems to regard the doll in Penelope’s hand. “Real friends.”
The young Penelope pauses. Apparently, even at an early age, she knew Mab’s offers usually had a hook. Or twenty.
“Yes, my Lady.”
“Then perhaps I have a solution.”
Mab waves a hand and the carpet at the young Penelope’s feet ripples, as though the floor is trying to push its way through. Peaks form and colors melt across the fabric as the carpet becomes a series of tents in blue and black. Tiny shadows move about the tents, and I can hear the sound of applause.
“What is it?” the young Penelope asks.
“Your new home,” Mab replies. “I have decided our show is too informal. My scouts in the mortal realm have confirmed that Philip Astley’s show is a great success, and I feel it is in our best interest to follow suit. We are creating a circus.”
The young Penelope leans in to examine the tents.
“Imagine it,” Mab says. She floats down from her throne and kneels down opposite Penelope. “An entire show filled with people like yourself — fey and mortals and divinities. Every act a sensation, every performer a new friend.”
As I listen, I can’t help but wonder if this softer side of Mab still exists, or if it’s been hardened over the years. Could she really have created an entire show for Penelope? Or was that only a ruse to make Penelope feel better about being forced to join?
A voice calls out from the corner of the room.
“I hate it.”
I jerk up and see her striding toward us. She’s in a lacy purple dress and her black hair is tied with ribbons, but there’s no mistaking her face. It hasn’t changed a single bit. And there, prowling from the shadows, is her familiar.
Lilith and Poe.
She walks straight to the circus and stomps on one of the tents. The tents fade instantly. So, too, does the vision.
I blink and we’re back in the trailer. “What was…what was
Penelope reaches over and plucks the necklace from my hand, returning it to her nightstand before replying.
“Lilith has been with Mab for many, many years. I was the first to tour the world with her, but Lilith existed within Mab’s court long before I did.”
