Wicked as They Come Read online

  He released me, but not before his black-gloved hand caressed my face. I could feel him in the shadows of my tent, tense and lurking behind me. “Get on with it, love,” he whispered.

  I focused on Casper. His poet’s blouse was open, revealing a tanned chest with some sparse golden hairs. His hair was brushed to a wavy sheen and pulled back, and he had silver rings in one of his ears, like a pirate. Those long, beautiful fingers were held out to me as if we were going to go on a picnic in a magical meadow. For just a moment, I forgot all about the possessive Bludman behind me. I took Casper’s outstretched hand.

  There. The jolt, like sunrise piercing the clouds.

  Interesting. Such a secret he had, this boy. And now I had one, too.

  I had to keep control. I struggled to keep my voice even. I fought to smile, wondering if it came out as more of a grimace.

  “You’ve found what you were looking for,” I said. “Your future is long and filled with greatness. You’ll find one heart’s desire and lose another. Loss will be your salvation. Happiness lies over the rainbow.”

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “A mystic, baffling wonder,” I answered softly.

  “All truths wait in all things, and you like Whitman. Tell me more,” he said, leaning closer, blue eyes bright. His other hand grasped our already clasped hands, bare skin wrapped around my fingers, and it felt so intimate an embrace that I blushed and dropped my eyes.

  “Pay her and get on,” Criminy growled. “Your fortune’s been told, boy.”

  Casper laughed softly, his fingers subtly stroking mine as he released me. “So it has, Master Stain,” he said as he stood and dropped a coin onto the table. “But things can always change.”

  “Not glances, lad,” Criminy said from the darkness.

  “I hope we can talk more soon. When we’re alone,” Casper said with a pointed look and a disarming smile before ducking out of the tent.

  I watched him walk away, back proud and hair blowing softly in the breeze. I’d keep his secret, and he’d never know mine. I picked up his coin, a simple copper, rubbing it between my bare fingers before tucking it into my blouse. It was the same one I’d seen dancing over his knuckles. This one I wanted to keep for myself.

  Then the bearded lady appeared, blocking my view. I pasted my smile back on and reached for her hand. In the hazy distance, I heard someone playing “Somewhere over the Rainbow” tenderly on a harpsichord.

  An hour later, I was almost through the line. I’d seen secrets, hopes, dreams, crises, tragedies, and a few strange comedies. Most people seemed to want the same things—love, sex, power, riches, beauty. I supposed it was the same in any world.

  The next person in line was Veruca, the Abyssinian. Most people had approached me with either fear or disdain, but she seemed completely ambiguous. I couldn’t read her. I hoped a real glance would come, because otherwise, the only thing I would know to say was that she was fearless and unique, which I was betting she already knew.

  She wasn’t wearing gloves, and it was hard not to stare at the dark, oiled skin of her exposed body. She held out her hand without a word. I took it.

  There.

  That was odd.

  “You have everything you wish,” I said quietly. “But still you will have more. You will always find what you seek, and you will perform a great service. But your end will be a grisly one.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” she demanded. Her voice was high and guttural, and her tongue was pierced.

  “There will be a tall, dark stranger,” I said. “And something involving a bee.”

  She chuckled. “That’s cryptic,” she said. Then she looked over my shoulder at Criminy and said, “I like her.”

  She tossed a coin onto the table and left.

  As I considered the strange and colorful future I had glanced for Veruca, I felt Criminy tense behind me. A small, stiff man hesitated before my tent. His face was scrunched up in disgust under a green velvet bowler hat that extended in faded leather down his throat and buckled under his chin with shiny brass. It was too tight, and his chin bulged with fat wrinkles underneath.

  Although every Pinky I’d seen other than Casper kept his skin covered, this man took it to the extreme, with straps, buckles, and flaps crisscrossing his body. I imagined that if he were chopped open, he would have concentric rings of old leather, like a tree.

  “I fail to understand why this unholy foolishness is necessary,” the man said.

  “Because I say it is,” Criminy said darkly. “Lose the glove.”

  “No offense, lady,” he said, failing entirely to meet my eyes. “But I was raised to believe that glancing was irreligious tomfoolery. I think you’re a charlatan and a bride of the devil. I do not wish to participate.”

  “You owe me a debt, Elvis,” Criminy growled. “And I don’t care if you believe her or not, but you’ll play along, just like everyone else.”

  The man fumed, and I could hear his teeth grinding. With jerky, angry movements, he removed a thin cloth glove. Underneath it was a leather glove, and when he finally managed to yank it off his hand, I could smell his skin. I really didn’t want to touch that foul, sweaty hand.

  But if he had to, I had to.

  As I reached out, he drew back and looked away as if I were going to slap him across the face. The second our skin touched, I felt the jolt.

  Oh, this was going to be bad.

  Now I remembered where I had heard his name before.

  Instead of letting the glance speak through me this time, I fought it. Now my own teeth were grinding, and my hand clutched his in a death grip.

  “Say it, love,” Criminy whispered. “Don’t fight the glance.”

  “You killed her,” I said softly. “While she was dancing in the woods. But she couldn’t help what she was. You think it’s your holy mission, but you’re just a small-minded coward. You want to kill Criminy, too. There will be a reckoning.”

  “You’re a lying bitch!” he screamed, spit flying from his dry lips.

  “You’re a murderer,” I said.

  Criminy flashed past me. His hand settled around the man’s throat, his arm rigid and his face feral as he lifted the leather-wrapped body from the ground with more strength than I would have imagined. My hand ripped free of his grasp, and I wiped it off on my skirt.

  I hadn’t glanced this part, just the aftermath.

  “Say her name,” he growled.

  “Who, me?” I squeaked.

  “No. Him. I want him to say her name.”

  “Never,” Elvis said. “She was unclean. She deserved worse than anything I could have done.”

  The hand squeezed tighter. “Say it.”

  Elvis’s face was turning purple. I felt detached from the violence, as far away and uninvolved as someone watching a lion killing an antelope on TV. I had seen what would happen, and I calmly accepted it as fact. He deserved it, and the only justice to be had in Sang was of the vigilante sort.

  “Belleen,” Elvis whispered.

  Criminy dropped him, and the man choked and gurgled as he struggled back to his feet, reaching frantically for his glove. As he shoved his hand back into the safety of leather, the words tumbled from his mouth, staccato and cruel.

  “Belleen the immoral temptress, the evil demoness. She preyed on men’s souls, flaunted her vile body in depraved gyrations. And then she drank their blood. And they liked it, paid her for the privilege. I caught her in the woods, dancing naked for the moon, and I cut out her heart and burned it. I threw her body in the swamp, watched the crocagators nudge her foul flesh until it sank below the surface.”

  Criminy watched the confession, silent, his expression unreadable.

  Since Criminy made no move against him, Elvis began to shout, his voice filled with an ugly, prideful righteousness. “The gods speak through me. I am their instrument. The Coppers are taking too long. The Bludmen must be destroyed, the earth scoured of their pestilence. Only man is pure, only man can retu
rn Sang to the glory of eternity.”

  “Are you done yet?” Criminy asked.

  Everyone nearby had stopped to stare, crowding around my wagon. I could hear whispers and chittering, but I couldn’t tell if the crowd was hungry for blood or just entertainment.

  “I will never be finished,” Elvis said, his voice rising and gaining force like that of a preacher on a roll. “For my path is righteous, and I am protected by a greater power than your vile spirits of blood. And you can’t kill me because there are witnesses.”

  “Fine. You’re righteous and special and on a mission,” Criminy said, a wicked and sweet smile spreading across his face. He pulled Pemberly from his shoulder and whispered into the monkey’s shiny ear. She darted down to the ground and loped along the line of wagons.

  Elvis didn’t know how to respond to that. He just nodded once as if accepting fealty.

  Criminy crossed his arms and rocked back on his boots, humming to himself. “Oh, it’ll just be a moment,” he said. “But please believe that I’m entirely understanding. Your feelings have been taken into account, and your path is perfectly reasonable.”

  The crowd twittered. There were a few giggles. Elvis deflated a little and began to cast around for support.

  There was a flash of copper, and Pemberly was again on Criminy’s shoulder, her tail wrapped around his arm. Criminy took something from her little black hand.

  It was the jar of powder from Mrs. Cleavers’s trailer, wrapped in his handkerchief. The poison.

  “Here’s the thing, though, Elvis,” Criminy said. “I’ve been thinking that you deserve a promotion in the caravan. You’ve been dusting off the clockworks and running the locomotive for years, and it’s your turn to take center stage.”

  “I don’t believe—”

  “I’m sure you don’t,” Criminy said, cutting off Elvis. “But you will. You see, I’ve been thinking we need a clown. A good, old-fashioned Pierrot. And you’re going to do your makeup all by yourself. We’ll start with pure white, just like your soul.”

  Elvis took a step back, and the color drained from his face. His mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out.

  Criminy unscrewed the top of the glass jar and held it out to Elvis. The terrified man turned to run, but Catarrh and Quincy appeared and held him by the arms. They were stronger than they looked. The crowd stepped in closer, a solid wall of bodies. Half of them were angry, half were curious, but none showed even a hint of sympathy.

  “You can’t do this!” Elvis shouted. “It’s murder! It’s against the laws! You’ll lose your license! My human brethren will see you punished!”

  “Murder?” Criminy said, drawing back in feigned confusion. “My dear sir, I’m giving you a promotion. It’s just powder. A simple bit of makeup. Mrs. Cleavers uses it on everyone. Why on earth would you be frightened of powder?”

  The crowd had made a tight circle around them by now, and I had a front-row seat from behind my crystal ball. Mrs. Cleavers pinned Elvis with her darkest glare and bared her teeth.

  “I use it myself, you silly man,” she said. “There’s nothing to fear from powder.”

  Elvis struggled, but there was no escape.

  Criminy held out the jar again and said, “Go on. Paint your face, clown. Unless you’d like to tell your friends and coworkers anything special?”

  Elvis looked at the powder, then at the crowd. He hung his head, apparently realizing that the Bludmen would end him, one way or another, now that they knew what he had done.

  He dipped a gloved finger into the powder and looked at it sadly. He drew a stripe from his forehead down to his chin, then reached for another finger full and drew a line from cheek to cheek. With a cross drawn on his pallid face, he looked up at the crowd.

  “I regret nothing,” he said, and blood spilled from his mouth. He fell to the ground, eyes open. Dead.

  Emerlie screamed, but one of her friends clapped a hand over her mouth. The bearded lady fainted into Torno’s arms. One small man just as leathery as Elvis crept forward to close the dead man’s eyes with an apologetic nod to Criminy. Shocked whispers and fierce glares darted across the crowd, yet no one seemed all that surprised. I couldn’t tell if that was because they knew Elvis was a bad seed or because Criminy’s word was accepted as law.

  Criminy pulled a long black silk sheet from inside his coat as easily as if it were a handkerchief. He stepped forward to drape it over the still form in the dust, and the whispering reached a frenzy.

  “Everybody stop!” Criminy shouted.

  The carnivalleros immediately quieted and stilled.

  “This is a family, and we take care of our own. Crimes will be punished accordingly. Belleen has been avenged. Now, get on with it.” His voice rang with confidence and finality.

  The carnivalleros drifted off. The show was over.

  13

  The pale, lemony sun lingered at the horizon as I watched the caravan come alive for the first time. Barely refreshed by a few quiet hours alone in my wagon, I was now back in my fake tent in front of my fake crystal ball wearing my fake turban while providing one-hundred-percent real fortune-telling.

  Strange double-decker vehicles appeared, first as three distant spots spewing smoke. Then their heavy chugging carried over the hills, and finally they arrived, parking a respectful distance away. They were like a cross between English sightseeing buses and tanks, and their treads left ugly scars across the serene green of the moors. City people apparently took safety very seriously on their country jaunts.

  Each bus was accompanied by two Coppers, who galloped ahead on feisty bludmares to check our paperwork with Mrs. Cleavers. In addition to the caravan’s license and certificates, every carnivallero was required to have papers, and mine had been freshly forged and magically aged earlier in the morning. I was officially Lady Letitia Paisley. I had argued in favor of my last name, but Criminy had explained that Everett was neither a surname nor a word in Sang and might draw questions, so we had gone with the much more common Paisley. I couldn’t think of a single argument that wouldn’t expose what I’d seen when glancing on his book, so Paisley it was.

  I tried to focus on my breathing and ambience. My biggest criticism from the day’s customers had been that I seemed perky but shy until I touched them, when I instantly became somber and mysterious. I needed to maintain that same exotic aura consistently instead of depending on the glancing.

  My car was between Emerlie and Veruca’s and Torno’s, and the wagons had been circled to separate the public and private spaces of the caravan. Clockworks inhabited the spaces between the wagons, doing their tricks and ensuring that no outsiders ventured into the circle within. The juggling polanda bear and dancing leoparth on either side of my wagon were more than a little daunting.

  To my left, Emerlie rode her unicycle and juggled plates, looking more bored than ever. Her really dangerous stunts wouldn’t begin until the crowd was excited and gathered like a flock of leather sheep by Criminy’s hawking. Just beyond her, Veruca stood in a booth painted to look like a lush jungle and practiced swallowing a sword. On my right, Torno lifted big blocks of stone and giant barbells, also warming up for his more impressive show later on.

  I had asked Criminy why there wasn’t a big top, a giant tent with bleachers for the main show.

  “They used to have those,” he said, thoughtful. “A couple of hundred years ago, before so many were bludded. But in today’s world, herding a bunch of Pinkies into a place with only one exit would be like inviting a flock of geese into a cage with a leoparth. Even if you could keep them safe, they’d never relax. The people of Sang need to see what’s coming, make sure nothing is sneaking up behind them.”

  It was also the reasoning behind our circled wagons. It was like fighting back to back, making sure that we were all on the lookout for whatever might be coming. We needed a space of our own. They were a little scared of us, but we were also a little scared of them. I had to admit that the bulk of my own wagon behind me was
reassuring. I closed my eyes and leaned back against it, wishing the glancing was already over and I could try the charmed sleep Criminy had promised me.

  “Ready for your first show, my lady?”

  I startled. As I pushed up my slipping turban, I found Casper standing before me in a spectacular costume, smiling. He wore a billowing white shirt that laced up to his chin, and over that a sequined waistcoat of sky blue dancing with black music notes. His breeches were black, his boots were polished, and his hair was plaited and tied with a bow.

  “You look like Mr. Knightley,” I said. “With maybe a little bit of Elton John thrown in.”

  “That might be the nicest compliment I’ve ever received, and that includes the time the queen of England told me I played like an angel,” he replied, flashing even more dimple.

  As hard as it was to look elsewhere, I peeked over his shoulder, to where the tanks were parking. I fidgeted with my turban some more.

  “You’re scared, aren’t you?” he said. “Not used to performing?”

  “Not at all,” I admitted. “And I’m scared of what I’m going to see, too.”

  “Ah, yes. The glancing.” He sat on the stool across from me, the one reserved for customers, and looked around to check that we were alone. “Speaking of which, you know my secret now, don’t you?”

  “It’s really clever,” I had to admit. “Drinking a drop from every Bludman you meet so they don’t want to feed on you. Criminy never mentioned that their blud could do that. But why’d you start?”

  “I couldn’t stand the gloves,” he said, flexing his bare hands. “Playing the harpsichord in gloves . . . it’s like making love with your clothes on. You can’t feel the skin under your hands, the electricity. There’s no magic there. What’s the point?”

  Visions of pianos and hands and bodies in candlelight tumbled through my mind, and I had to bite my lip. He definitely had a way with words. It was strange, being a little infatuated with him. Already knowing that he wanted me, having seen it in the glance. Wanting him, too.

  “You should take some blud,” he said. “It’s important to keep yourself safe here.”