there.”
That got a chuckle out of a few people.
She spun the bottle in her fingers again. “It’s told me something I think everyone has the right to know before you decide whether this place is out to hurt us or not. We are all—every single one of us—murderers. Either we’ve killed people before we came here, or we were going to become killers if we didn’t come here. In my other future, I was going to kill Duncan before eating the”—she stammered and forced herself to finish the sentence—“before eating the end of a pistol.”
“And I was going to murder my entire family, including my young children, and paint a masterpiece from the pigment I distilled from their blood that would then inspire a cult to worship me after my inevitable execution,” Simon added in cheerily. “Damn loss, I say.”
Silence.
“You might not believe me,” Cora continued. “I don’t blame you. I didn’t want to believe it either. But when I really looked hard into myself…and really thought about whether I had it in me to do that—I realized that I did.”
A murmur went through the crowd. She didn’t look up from her beer bottle. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this—whatever this is—but I know I believe Harrow Faire is worth saving. That we deserve to be on this Earth. That it, and all of you, are worth more than the damage we might cause. That what we take from people to keep living is no worse, and may even be better, than what they take from each other every day of their lives.”
Rubbing the back of her neck, she shut her eyes. “You’ve become my friends in this short time. I want to get to know you all better. I want to belong somewhere—to matter somewhere. And I never did before coming here.”
“What are you?” Louis asked. He had Elena tucked close to his side, as if Cora were a threat to them. That hurt her more than anything else.
She cringed. She felt like she’d been slapped. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to hurt any of you.”
“Except Turk.” That time it was Donna, the Flyer. “What about Amanda and Jack? What about anybody who sides with Ringmaster if he loses the vote?”
She shook her head. “Ringmaster…kinda has to die for any of this to work. But for anybody who sides with him? I get it. I really do. Nobody else gets hurt. Nobody else has to die. I won’t put anyone in the tower. Not even after what they helped Turk do.” She rubbed at her collarbone again. “If people want to be set free? Fine. But not unless they ask.”
“But what are you?” Louis insisted. “I saw your eyes when you got mad. They were…they were gone. What have you become?”
“Something in between.” She looked up at the ceiling of the tent to keep from crying. She realized she was bouncing her leg nervously and forced herself to stop. “I had to become this… thing. Either I give up a part of myself, or I would spend the next year—or however long we have to live—locked in that tower, listening to Simon scream in pain. I couldn’t get him down. I couldn’t save him, or myself…I had to do something. So I let it in.”
“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing. And that’s not at all what we are.”
She glared at the phantom of Lazarus next to her. “If you think you can explain it better, do it yourself.”
Lazarus went wide-eyed and stared at her in shock. “Me? No. No. On second thought, you did just fine.”
“You’re hiding,” she accused, pointing at him. “You were right there in the park next to me. Are you too shy to come say hi?” She could hear the group murmuring to each other. She must look nuts, talking to thin air.
“No.” He held his head high. But his gaze flickered. “Maybe. They…don’t like me, Cora.”
“You don’t know that. Who knows? You might win them over. You might show them we all deserve to live. Besides, you said you wanted to be one of us.” She held out her hand to him. “So be one of us.”
Laz waivered. Hesitated. And then placed his hand into hers.
Fascinating.
Simon watched as “Clown”—or at least, Harrow Faire wearing the face of the deceased Lazarus Harrow—appeared from thin air. The gathered Family yelped in surprise and recoiled in their seats.
It made him laugh. He stifled it into the neck