The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(54)
Not many stirred outside their cabins yet, but those who did inhabited the world as if they were creatures from a fairy tale come to life. A man with a twirled mustache tromped the ground on three-foot stilts, towering over a wagon to stow sleeping gear atop the roof. On the far side of the green a tattooed woman stoked the flames of a cook fire, while a young girl did a backbend in the grass with a boa constrictor draped around her middle. The woman smiled approvingly while spreading honey on bread for her breakfast.
Elena’s stomach clenched at the sight of the food, but even hunger couldn’t distract her from the specter of a clown passed out drunk under a wagon wheel. His white face paint had smeared in the dewy grass, creating a grotesque swirl of mouth, nose, and eyes. Whatever whimsy he’d worn the night before, the morning had unmasked a ghoulish face lurking beneath. He roused to stare bleary-eyed at her.
“What’re you looking at?” He raised a gin bottle to his lips. Finding it empty, he tossed the bottle into the grass, grumbled, and rolled over.
“Don’t mind him,” Yvette said with a flip of her hand as they stood over his prone body. “Jacques might look a mess now, but he’ll be sober by showtime and smelling like a daisy again. He’s a lovable Pierrot when he’s on his feet. A regular Doctor Jekyll and Monsieur Hyde, that one.”
Two beings living inside one body. Elena had to shrug off the convulsive shiver that followed, recalling her cramped view from behind the toad’s eyes.
Yvette nudged the clown’s foot with her shoe to get his attention again. “Which way’s Rackham’s trailer?”
“What you want with that shriveled old prune?”
“He’s got some books we need to borrow.”
Jacques growled animallike deep in his throat. “Got a whole fucking library, but he ain’t never cured my headache.”
Elena lifted an eyebrow at him. “Try massaging the bottom of your left foot just below the third and fifth toe. And drink a few cups of willow bark tea. Your head will clear soon enough.”
“She one of your lot?” he asked with a chin-thrust aimed at Yvette. She nodded, and he shrank back a fair few inches behind the wagon wheel. “He’s on the back end by the snake charmer,” he said and then crawled off in the other direction.
Yvette pulled Elena aside by the arm. “Listen, don’t do that with Rackham. Best if you play it dumb with him. He knows what a piss-poor witch I am, but that’s why he helps me. He likes being all superior and reminding me how much I don’t know.”
“So you’re saying he’s a man?”
Yvette smirked. “Right, and the way to get what you want from him is to keep his bread buttered on the right side, if you know what I mean.”
Elena knew what she meant and agreed to slather him with just enough praise to distract him from her motives.
THE AMAZING PROFESSOR RACKHAM, SEER OF THE OTHER WORLD! The hand-painted lettering on the side of the wagon shimmered in gold. The paint had been magicked, of course. At night, under the flickering torchlight, it would shine like an electric sign in the city, drawing the lovelorn, the forlorn, and the simply curious like moths. The entire spectacle had a tawdry commercial quality that had Elena doubting this Professor Rackham was a real witch. The “third eye” painted above the door practically winked at her as they climbed the stairs.
Yvette knocked on the door bordered, naturally, in the requisite astrological symbols.
“Matinees begin at ten,” replied a male voice. “You may come back then.”
“It’s Yvette, Professor. My friend and I need your help with something. You know, magic.” This last part she said in a hushed, secretive tone, like honeyed bait.
A man wearing a shimmering green-and-gold robe and matching turban opened the door. Hawkish eyes rimmed in black kohl stared out under a pair of pasted-on eyebrows that shot up in devilish exaggeration. The glue adhering the similarly pointed mustache and cone-shaped goatee in place oozed out below his bottom lip. He stood back and held the door open. “Of course. I’m always available for students of the craft requiring professional assistance. Come in.”
Elena took a seat beside Yvette on the built-in sofa as instructed, while Rackham reclined in a plush velvet wingback chair and crossed his legs. The scent of ambergris, fragrant yet animalistic, stirred in the cozy space, awakening in her an odd sense of déjà vu. She knew better than to ignore the feeling, but she found nothing about the wagon familiar. Well, except for the nature of the furnishings. Rackham did indeed own an entire library. Old books. New books. Some bound in leather, some in cloth, and one or two wrapped in the scaly skin of some long-dead sea creature. They filled the shelves behind his chair. And where there weren’t books there were herbs, charms, a scrying mirror, and tiny soft-bellied frogs bottled up in formaldehyde displayed in built-in nooks. And in the center of it all, propped up by a pair of golden hands, sat an expensive crystal ball atop a small mahogany table. A touch out of reach for a carnival psychic, she thought, but perhaps he was better at his art than his sham stagecraft would imply.
Rackham seemed to absorb her appreciation of his things, showing the bare minimum of a smile when her eyes met his. “Terribly rude of me to bring it up, I know,” he said, turning to Yvette, “but aren’t you supposed to be incarcerated?”
Yvette pushed her mask up on her forehead. “Got out early on account of my good behavior.”