By a Charm and a Curse(39)



It’s already soaked through with red.





Chapter Sixteen


Benjamin


Racing toward Happy the Clown’s trailer is a blur of yelling and too many bodies clustered too close together. Happy takes one look at the bunch of us and pushes Duncan, who still holds Whiskey in his arms, inside. He slams the door shut behind him. Moments later Duncan is back outside with us, wild-eyed and sputtering for words.

There isn’t enough air in the world to fill my lungs. I take in a big breath, and then another, until my heart begins to slow.

“Pia,” Emma says, startling the both of us. “Go find Mr. and Mrs. Connelly.” Pia nods, her eyes saucer-wide. “Duncan, go find Gin. Ben and I will wait for news.”

The twins take off, and it’s not until their backs are turned that I feel like I can slump down against the trailer. Never in my life have I seen so much blood. You never know how you feel about something until its existence is threatened. You hold something in your hands, never realizing that the glass sphere is actually a soap bubble, fragile and precious.

“Are you okay?”

“Whiskey doesn’t fall,” I say. I know it doesn’t answer her question, but it’s the only thought left in my head.

Emma’s perfectly shaped brows arch prettily. “I know she’s good, Ben, but everyone falls.”

I shake my head. “In the entire time I’ve been at the carnival,” I say, “I’ve never been hurt.” Even as I say it, I feel the lie. I got the cut on my hand just a few weeks ago and I saw the freakish way that red lantern had fallen to the ground on Emma’s first night here. But a cut and some broken glass aren’t the same things as a dog breaking its neck or Whiskey hitting her head. Are they? “When I started working as my mom’s apprentice, I never once cut myself on a blade or hit my own fingers with a hammer. None of the stupid but inevitable stuff that happens when you’re working as a laborer ever happened to me. The Morettis should have broken their necks a hundred times over by now. And Gin and Whiskey…

“The girls are—always—flawless. I’ve seen Whiskey pull that same stunt a hundred times on the back of a living, breathing, unpredictable horse. To do the same on a carousel horse that’s slowly bobbing up and down was something she could have done in her sleep.”

I’ve heard it said a thousand times—we’re held together by a charm and a curse. The curse appears to be firmly in place. Emma’s skin is still petrified, her movements still jerky. So what is going on with the charm?

“I think the charm is wearing off and—” I pause, having a hard time even forming the words, wanting to hope but knowing it’s too much of a dream come true. “And do you think, maybe, the curse might be wearing off, too?”

I hold my breath, the way you do while contemplating the wish to be made as you blow out birthday candles. The air burns in my chest, still and stagnant, while I wait for Emma to answer. Her eyes are wide with horror and pity and anger all mixed together, and when she ducks her head away, shifting her gaze to the weeds at our feet, my breath explodes out of me as if she punched me.

“No, Benjamin,” she finally says, a fine tremor in her voice. “I am still just as screwed today as I was yesterday. You might have gotten a splinter, but me?” She slams her arm into the corner of Happy’s trailer, a move that would have shattered the bone inside if she weren’t cursed. But there isn’t even a smudge of dirt marking the impact on her arm.

“You’re right,” I say, reaching for her hands. They’re cold, and when I twine my fingers through hers, they dig into my flesh and bump against my bones. But I hold on. “I’m sorry. It was wishful thinking on my part.”

Emma doesn’t say anything after that, but she does squeeze her stiff fingers around mine, gently. I busy myself by tracing my thumb over the flat plane of her palm, hoping that Happy remembers some of his old medical training. Despite having a medical degree, Happy came here to be a clown after having seen too much blood and horror out in the field. A clown is all I’ve ever known him to be, and I hope he knows what the hell he’s doing.

I stare at the backs of my fingers, at Whiskey’s blood caked into the grooves. My fingerprints show through the rusty grime in pale relief. My mind refuses to process what just happened. Seeing Whiskey’s blood pulse out from the gash on her head. Seeing her limp and helpless, like a puppet with the strings cut.

Gin, followed closely by Marcel and Duncan, storms up the steps into the trailer. There’s a commotion inside—Gin’s muffled squeak, many footsteps, Happy’s soothing voice—and then they’re all outside again. They couldn’t have been in there for more than thirty seconds.

She’s a silvery flurry of motion when she’s back outside again, pacing so fast that her blond hair can’t keep up. It floats in streamers behind her. When she sees us, really sees us, she stops. There’s an intensity in her gray eyes like I’ve never seen before. They match the storm clouds gathering above us.

“What the hell happened?” Her hair swirls around her in the breeze, giving her a wild look, like the elements are just as angry as she is. “Duncan said she fell, but we don’t fall, we don’t.”

“She fell, Gin,” I said. “She just…fell.”

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