Wicked After Midnight(5)

“Hmmph.” She shook a finger in my face. “The things I do for you.”

I just smiled. It was going to be fantastic. She would see.

* * *

Everyone in the caravan had some piece of advice for our trip to Franchia.

“Speak softly and carry a big knife!” Torno the strongman roared. “These city men, they will take advantage of a sweet girl like you. You must be careful, ma donna. And you must take a man with you. For protection.”

I snorted and shook my head. “No way. That’s the whole point.”

“If you were my daughter . . .” Torno’s face went even redder than usual under his tight hat.

I patted the stretched leather over his bulging bicep. “If I were your daughter, you would have a lot of explaining to do.”

He choked and turned puce, opting to dive into his trailer rather than continue to blush in my presence. Eblick laughed from where he lay on a log beside Torno’s weights, his forked tongue flapping against pebbled green skin.

“You ever been to Franchia?” I asked him. For once, he didn’t flinch or cower from me.

“Only home and the caravan, mistress. But I chose the caravan.”

“Don’t you ever wish for adventure?”

He sat up and looked over the hills, his strange eyes following the twin lines the caravan train had cut through the moor grasses. We’d been near Dover last week, and he’d been especially quiet in sight of the sea cliffs. He’d gone out one day for a swim and returned with skin an odd combination of red and black that had earned him more coppers than usual in the freak tent. No one in the caravan knew where he had come from or where he had gone, but the sea made him noticeably melancholy.

“Caravan’s all the adventure I need. But I understand better than most why you need to leave.”

I couldn’t touch him—no one ever did. But I bowed my head slightly before walking on. “Thanks, Eblick.”

I passed Veruca the Abyssinian sword swallower next, and she leaned on her scimitar and eyed me thoughtfully. She was possibly the only person in the caravan more standoffish than Eblick, and I had no idea where she was from, either. Refusing to follow either Bludman or Pinky fashion, she sweet-talked the costumer into making tight leather outfits for her that showcased her muscles and revealed her dark brown skin. She always smelled like almond oil and spice to me, and one of Criminy’s first warnings had been never to drink from an Abyssinian. Their blood would make a Bludman go mad and then die; the way he described it, it was a lot like instant rabies combined with LSD.

“You remind me of a jaguar,” she finally said.

I stopped and grinned. “Lithe and dangerous as a jungle cat?”

“They fall asleep in the trees, thinking they are safe. A savvy hunter need only yank them down by the tail for a fancy new jacket. So I say to you, Demi: don’t let anyone yank your tail.”

With a curt nod, I was dismissed. I didn’t really want to keep walking, though. I could already see Charlie Dregs sitting, distant and forlorn, by his puppets. Mr. Punch sagged over an arm as Charlie retied the hideous little man’s strings. When Charlie’s eyes caught me, I stopped, very much against my will. He always looked so sad and hopeful to me, like one of the Beatles crossed with a basset hound. I’d heard stories that he’d loved a girl once and lost her, a Stranger like me. Something drew me toward him against my will.

“So it’s true, then, Demi. You’re leaving?”

I mustered up a smile. “Yep.”

“Need an escort?”

“I’m a big girl.”

“Even big girls can find bad ends, lass. Promise me you’ll take care.”

“I promise.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, and his mournful eyes focused on my wrist before squeezing shut as if in pain. He patted my hand with his red glove. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Demi. I really do.”

That’s what finally drove home the sadness: realizing that it might be the last time I would see Charlie Dregs. I’d never really looked at him as a man—more like a fixture, a dedicated dog, a cousin, maybe. I’d never seen him as a man, but now, for a moment, I could see the boy he had once been.

“What was her name, Charlie?”

He looked down, rubbed a heart tattooed on his wrist. “Lydia.”

He was gone in a flash, his shirt a spot of white against the moors. I didn’t want to be like him, a pitied cog in the grand machinery of the caravan, joyless and ageless and never smiling, following Emerlie the tightrope walker around like an unwanted guard dog that never received even the stingiest pat on the head. Seeing that moment of grief in him hardened my heart further. I would get to Paris, somehow.