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Who the fuck is she, and why am I seeing her so clearly?
I want to call out, but I don’t make a peep to alert the others around me in case the connection breaks. I feel as if I am being torn in two, with the woman in my vision and my cot at the circus.
Cirque Obscurum is a unique creature, and she never stops searching for freaks and outcasts. The cirque feeds on the pain and trauma that comes with being different. When we join the cirque, we swear a blood oath to her, promising to defend her and keep her going. As a child, I’d only known the magic of it, but as an adult, I recognize the danger.
What must be fed must always be fed.
The cards are an extension of that hunger, tied to our souls with the blood oath, so this feeling will have gone out to every one of us here. No doubt the others are gagging on the agony at this very moment, feeling confused and horrified by the deep anguish being pushed to us. Can they see her too? Can they taste her blood as I do?
I’m the ringmaster, so my oath is heavier than most, which means there’s a chance I’m the only one who feels just how strong this call is. Whoever the woman is, she needs us now. Moreover, she belongs here.
I force myself out of my tent, stumbling under the strength of the call as I seek the other tents. Spade, Heart, and Club will have felt it, each of them as important as I am to the cirque, but as to their level of feeling, that’s debatable.
When I stumble into Spade’s tent, I realize I misjudged just how strong this is. I find him kneeling on the floor with tears running down his face as the emotions overwhelm him. I pull him to his feet and thrust a blade into his hand.
“Go get the others,” I command, gasping around the pressure in my chest that only seems to double as I move. She’s running out of time. “It’s time to go hunting.”
Spade supports himself against the tent poles before he stumbles out of the tent to gather Heart and Club. I watch him go, and when he’s gone, I let some of my anguish out. A tear falls, and I hastily wipe it away so they won’t see.
This card is different. Cirque Obscurum wants her badly.
This isn’t something we can ignore.
We answer the call of the damned.
“We’re coming, baby,” I murmur, stepping out of the tent to meet the others. “It’s time to bring her home.”
Chapter
Four
Iwake to the sound of the front door slamming closed, the foundation rattling with the force of his lingering anger. I thank whatever deity for the reprieve, for the opportunity to rest before he comes home and continues his abuse. I listen for the sound of his car starting, the garish thing he insisted he needed as a statement of his success rumbling to life a second later. When the sound of the familiar engine fades, I try to move but I can’t.
I can barely breathe.
There’s no way to know just how many bones are broken right now. I know my ribs have suffered, and judging by how painful it is to breathe, that might be what ultimately kills me. It’s not as if I can go to the doctor, not when the only one around for miles is the one who caused the pain.
There’s something wrong with my leg too, but that pain is nowhere near as severe as my head. I gingerly press my fingers to my skull, feeling the bumps and bruises there. My face is swollen, my eyes refuse to open, my lips are split in multiple places, and there are cuts all over my face. I’m pretty sure my nose is broken. There’s pain in my neck that worries me, but at least I stopped bleeding so severely. As I slept, I bled all over the attic floor. Now it’s dry, making my dress stiff and uncomfortable. I try to reach for the numbness, if only to dull the pain, but it doesn’t work. I’m cursed to feel every ache and bite of agony. Every time I try to sit up, my ribs scream at me and I collapse back to the wooden floor.
I still try. I won’t die here. I refuse to die meekly. This attic won’t be my coffin.
I try over and over, splitting wounds anew and making them bleed again. I don’t know how much blood I have left to lose, but I don’t care. I have to get out. I have to run. I have to escape.
My body is a traitor, though, and no matter how much I try to move, it’s determined to stop me.
I collapse back to the wooden floor for the hundredth time, panting from my attempts and sweating with the exertion. I can’t. Fuck, I can’t.
As I lie here and stare up at the ceiling, the sun shines mockingly through the tiny window. I watch as dust motes dance through the rays, stirred by my movements. It almost looks like snow, like the bliss of a winter morning. I watch them dance across the light and yearn for something bigger. I gave my life to Roger, and he’ll take all that I am if I stay. My body, my freedom, and my life hasn’t been mine since my father died—not since I gave in and married to save my mother.
My existence has been a long line of disappointments.
As I clutch the joker card in my fingers, I realize I’ve been searching for the feeling the circus gave me all my life. The excitement and wonder have eluded me, and the strange child I was grew into a woman who bent to the whims of others when she should have fought.
Now, I’ll pay for it with my life.
I don’t cry. Instead, I recall that time of happiness, when I’d been carefree and my father had let me run through the tents. I return to the feeling of having my face painted, the wet brush moving across my skin as it smeared paint in a perfect design. I refused to remove the face paint for days. My mother was embarrassed by it at the grocery store when the other mothers stopped and stared. I remember the boy and the way his dark eyes caught mine and held. I remember the fortune teller, her words echoing in my mind.
Life will not be kind to you.
