she glared at Simon with the last few words, he just smiled sweetly at her in response.
“What happened, sweetheart?” Aaron scooted forward in his seat as he talked. “Can you tell us what you remember?”
She had a choice.
Lie—protect herself from the chaos that would ensue, but carry around the guilt of having lied to people she hoped would become her friends someday soon, if they weren’t already.
Tell the truth—wind up potentially hanging from her ankles in a tower while Ringmaster and Mr. Harrow tried to figure out how to rip the power out of her. Upend the Faire as a whole, and probably pitch it into chaos. But her honor would be intact.
Sadly, it was a pretty clear choice.
Lying, it was.
Well, okay, maybe not entirely a lie, but definitely not the whole truth, either.
“Clown wanted me to go with him. He took me to the pier. We sat down on the edge of it, and he took my hand. Then…everything just kind of went black. I saw flashes of something, but—I can’t make sense of any of it. It was just a blur. When I came around, I was back in my boxcar. Simon told me Clown had died…I. I really don’t know what happened, or how. If I did it—I had no control over it.”
“I even had her try to kill me,” Simon prompted. “To see if she now owned Clown’s gift. But she couldn’t.”
The table was silent. Ringmaster let out a long, heavy sigh. “I need to speak to Mr. Harrow about this.”
So do I.
Turk studied her for a long time. “Do you really remember nothing else?”
She shook her head. “Nothing that makes any sense at all.” That was the truth. None of this—from day one—made a goddamn lick of sense. Therefore, what she saw, what she heard, what she had been told was all madness. “I don’t understand any of this.”
Turk sighed. “If you remember anything else—any detail, anything you might even feel could have happened, please tell me.”
She nodded, poking at her food. “Would it be too much to ask for everything to just be normal?”
Bertha snorted loudly. “Oh, honey, welcome to Harrow Faire.” She sipped her beer. “Well, I for one am just glad you’re all right. And that Simon here hasn’t done anything terrible to you.”
“That you know of.” Simon grinned wickedly then let out an “oof” as Cora smacked him hard in the chest. “Ow.” He rubbed the spot where she had hit him. “I am utterly abused. Oh!” He reached into his inside coat pocket and procured a metal flask with A.F. etched on it. He offered it to Aaron. “Here. Before this eats through my clothing like battery acid.”
Aaron took it and gave it a shake, hearing the contents swish around. “Did it work?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Simon picked up his bottle of beer and muttered into the mouth of it, “After I poured it up her nose.”
“You what?” Aaron looked at her. “Oh. Oh, sweetheart. Oh, I’m so sorry.” He cringed. “That had to smart.”
“It burned. But it got the job done. And I healed.” She rubbed her nose with the phantom memory of the searing. “I don’t recommend it, though.”
The table laughed. Even Turk joined in, although he looked troubled and lost in thought. The conversation wandered. Clown had already been cremated on the lake and put to rest. They were now down two Family members—a Strongman and a Clown—and Harrow Faire had only just Inverted. It would be a long time before they were whole again.
She listened to them talk through their subjects as she ate her food. Simon chipped in occasionally, mostly to make a snarky comment. But she wasn’t really fully paying attention. And she didn’t have much to say. It was after she had finished eating that she reached under the table to find Simon’s hand. She took it and held it, needing to feel like she had ground to stand on.
I need to talk to Mr. Harrow.
I need to understand what’s happened to me and why.
She laced her fingers between Simon’s and squeezed. He squeezed back, even if he didn’t miss a beat in explaining to Jack exactly what kind of a moron he was.
All the while, Ringmaster watched her. It made her nervous. It was one of those situations where she was certain he knew she wasn’t telling him the whole story but couldn’t call her out on it. She wanted to hide under the table.
But through it all, at least Simon