I knew all these places.
My memories … the visions … they weren’t lies.
Zach’s breath hissed. “Look up. There’s … quite a view.” His voice was light, but it shook. He pointed toward the tops of the trees.
Houses were nestled in the treetops. Bird men and bird women soared between them, their lithe bodies twisting between the branches. I remembered that the acrobats had performed in those branches, or ones like them. And the boy in the golden shirt had watched them. Later, we had chased him through the woods—the Magician, the Storyteller, and me. The Magician had carried me. I hadn’t been fast enough on my own, and the boy had been fast. We caught him anyway.
“Keep going?” Zach asked.
“Yes,” I said.
Again, we walked through the silver—and we walked out into a city plaza made of gray paving stones. Skyscrapers towered around us. Again, I knew this place. I had been carried through here at night. That time, we had been the ones being chased. “We can’t stay here either,” I said.
A trio of people strode toward us. They wore matching blue uniforms. Their faces were streaked with fur and scales, and they had batons at their hips.
“But the carnival could be …” His voice died as he saw a woman with wings on her back. Another had antlers on his head. And still others … each a medley of human and animal. At last I saw him notice the trio of officials closing in on us. “Guess it’s moved on.”
Zach and I scrambled back into the silver. I grasped for another memory—and I thought of a pier, the Ferris wheel rising high above the water, kids laughing as loud as gulls.
The mirror melted around us, and we emerged beside an ocean. Or not an ocean. A harbor. Sailboats were parked in their slips, their white hulls gleaming. Fishing boats with crates and ropes and cranes with nets were tied to a dock. Between them, a woman with green skin hauled herself out of the water to bask on a buoy.
“This looks nicer,” Zach observed.
Several brick buildings jutted out onto piers. The wood pillars supporting them were coated in green threads and roughened with barnacles. A glass sculpture reflected the harbor on its surface. Above, the sky was brilliant blue.
“Eve, look.” Zach pointed behind me.
I turned and saw another dock. On it, tent posts without tents rose into the air, like skeletons without flesh. At its tip, a Ferris wheel was empty and motionless. A fence cut across the entrance to the dock. The fence was covered in photos and little pieces of paper, stuck into the links. Below the photos was a pile of wilted flowers, melted candles, and stacks of seashells.
I was walking toward the dock before I even decided to move, and then I was running. Skirting the fence, I entered the abandoned carnival. Gulls circled overhead, and water lapped at the pillars of the dock, but other than that, it was silent. I remembered this place flooded with people—cries of laughter, the call of the barkers, the music of the carousel.
A few of the rides remained, only the shell of a balloon ride that had lifted people to a floating roller coaster made out of clouds. The coaster was gone, swept away by the wind, but the balloon baskets and the ropes remained. The baskets were covered in graffiti.
I walked to an empty booth. There had been a pyramid of brightly colored balls at this booth that sang as they flew through the air. I remembered the face of the man who had run this game. He’d had a beard and sunken eyes. I didn’t remember his name. I didn’t know if I’d ever known it.
Zach stood behind me. “What happened? The other sites were empty. Why did they leave all this behind here?”
I didn’t know. For the first time, I was worried about the Storyteller and the Magician, which was crazy— they were at the heart of my nightmares. “I need to find them.”
“We,” Zach corrected. “There’s a term for the first person plural. Not for the second person plural, unfortunately. Closest we have for that is ‘you guys,’ which sounds like 1980s New Jersey, or ‘y’all,’ which sounds too affected southern for anyone who isn’t really southern.”
Gulls cawed at one another. One dove sharply down, snatched a piece of paper from the chain-link fence, and rose back up to the sky. I continued through the abandoned carnival until I found a darkened patch on the wood dock that matched the size of the wagon.
“I think we came here often.” I looked out over the water and saw peaks—they weren’t buoys or islands. They were the tips of underwater buildings. The city extended out under the harbor. I used to watch the selkies swim. “It was part of our regular circuit. But sometimes we’d do extra performances.”
It shouldn’t have been abandoned like this. It should have been dismantled and packed in wagons. No one should have defaced our site. And I started moving, fast, toward the fence and the papers that the gull had been pecking, certain that it would hold a clue. Zach jogged after me. I tugged one of the photos through the link and stared at it. A teenage girl with light-green skin and brilliant-blue hair pinned by shells …
“Who died?” Zach asked.
I looked at him.
“It’s a memorial. At least, it looks like one.”
I dropped the photo as if it had burned me. I didn’t know that girl. She wasn’t in my memories, and her photo wasn’t on Malcolm’s tablet.
“He’s killing again,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-One
I knelt behind the memorial on the carnival side of the fence.
“He must have been careless,” I said. “Her death must have been traced to the carnival. They must have all fled.” The flowers were half wilted, their blossoms closed or drooped. Leaves hung limp on the stems. A few were roses, their petals wide open. Others were flowers that I didn’t recognize, tight clumps of purple petals with spikes of white in their hearts and teacup-like delicate blooms of pale yellow.
“You don’t know any of that for certain,” Zach said. “She could have fallen from the Ferris wheel or choked to death on popcorn or—”
“Aunt Nicki and Malcolm said that he’d started again. If it’s true, then we’re walking straight into the danger that they tried so hard to protect me from.”
I felt his hand on my shoulder, a comforting weight. “If it’s true, then he doesn’t stand a chance against you,” Zach said. “Together, we wield more power than a dozen superheroes.”
I faced the memorial again, all the notes and the photos. One wreath of flowers had the word “sister” pinned to it. Another said “beloved daughter.” I thought of the antlered girl, Victoria’s sister, and all the other faces on the bulletin board. “Do you really think I can stop him?”
“Yes. And I think Lou wants you to.”
“
“I know.” He squeezed my hand, and I looked at him. He didn’t look resigned or afraid or angry. He looked … proud and pleased. I wondered if he’d had this in mind all along … if he’d come for that reason … if the agency had encouraged him to come or even forced him. I wondered if he was manipulating me too, and then I pushed that thought down as hard as I could. It was
A voice came from the other side of the dock. “Hey, what are you kids doing?”
I spun, looking for the speaker.
“Just paying our respects!” Zach called.
Softly I said, “I don’t see …”
Zach pointed to a man off the side of the pier, half in and half out of the water, bobbing with the waves. Shortly, several more mermen drifted to join the first man.
I stood up and dusted my knees. “Let’s go.”
