By a Charm and a Curse(43)

“I mean you won’t really leave, will you? What about you and Audrey?”

Sidney jerks to a halt and narrows his eyes at me. “What about me and Audrey?”

The wind hurtles down the alley we’re in, strong enough to buffet against my body like it’s a hollow reed. There’s no tickle across my skin, but my body feels cooler, and I wrap my cold arms around me, as if that’s going to do anything. “Come on. Ben punched you, and you let him. You and Audrey had a thing forever ago—” I hold up my hand to keep him from talking because I can already see that he has a rebuttal at the ready. “Don’t bother, Ben already told me. And even if he hadn’t, I’ve seen the way you make googly eyes at her.”

His mouth flops open in indignation, like a fish gasping for air. “I do not make googly eyes at Audrey.”

“Of course you don’t,” I say in the faux-condescending way that says I completely think he does.

“Fine. I make googly eyes at Audrey. But I think this will get Leslie to turn the carnival around. So come on,” Sidney says as he continues on toward Leslie’s trailer, snagging a soda from a cart passing in the opposite direction.

I think about what Ben said, and the way the twins looked as they channeled their spooky grandmother. I think about getting rid of the curse and feeling alive again. I think about being able to kiss Ben. I think about Whiskey and how small she looked as Duncan carried her away.

I hurry to catch up.

…

“Liar,” Leslie says as she drops down into the booth of her kitchenette. It’s so quiet I can hear Sidney swallow.

“Excuse me?” Sidney asks.

“You heard me,” Leslie says. “I called you a liar.” She reaches behind her and finds an orange. Sidney snatches it from her, forcing Leslie to grab another for herself. “What do you really want?”

“To go home,” Sidney says stubbornly. “I have family there. During summer vacation, I’d visit them, and spend whole days walking along the river, eating beignets. There was this one time that I was almost mugged—”

“Shut it, Sidney.” Leslie places her half-peeled orange on the table and stands on the seat of the booth to reach a compartment over her head. From it, she takes a rust-colored leather-bound book.

The pages are old and yellowed, the edges crumbling. The handwriting is small and cramped at first, then sloping and curly, and finally blocky and precise. Leslie flips back through the sloping handwriting until she finds the page she’s looking for. She runs her finger down the columns and stops.

“Sidney Parker,” she says, glancing up at him. Sidney winces, and something gnawing at my brain tells me that our hastily put together plan is going to die on the pages of that book. “Born, 1949 in Portland, Oregon. Joined as a laborer in June, 1968. Recipient of the curse, July 1968, passed on from Katherine Carlisle.” From over Leslie’s shoulder, I can see that the printing has changed, and now it’s the blockier handwriting from later in the book. “Parents, Nellie and Charles Parker, deceased, 1983. No next of kin.”

Sidney stares at the dingy tile of the trailer. When he glances up at Leslie he’s like a wounded, cornered animal. And damn it all to hell but I actually feel sorry for the bastard. Again.

Leslie’s voice goes softer, as does the look in her eyes. I get the feeling she wouldn’t have taken the same approach if it had been me sitting across from her, spinning a yarn about New Orleans. She understands her employees—no, her people—and that means knowing Sidney needs a firm hand. “We keep a record of everyone who joins our carnival, a fact I’m guessing you either forgot or were never made aware of. So, Sidney, do you really want to go to New Orleans?”

This is what we had prepared for on our walk over, and I want to feel as though I’m on surer footing, but the vision Leslie painted of Sidney’s broken family tree is too bright in my head. As much as I hate what he did to me, he was tricked once, too, and had to leave a family behind just like I did. I hate the idea of him all alone in the world.

“I want to go to New Orleans,” Sidney says with cool precision. “There’s not much more for me to show Emma anyway, and what is left I can take care of before we hit Louisiana.”

“Bullshit,” Leslie says, slamming the book closed. “The two of you are going to tell me what you’re planning, or Sidney, so help me, I will drag your ass around this whole carnival until we find Audrey and I make her tell us what’s going on. Because do you know how I know you’re lying? Audrey. If we dropped you off in New Orleans, Audrey will still be with this carnival, and I would lay it all down, every last game and ride and trailer—any piece of this carnival that’s mine to bet—that until the day you die, you will always be found within five hundred feet of Audrey Singer. You think I don’t know that you were biding your time in that box?”

All the blood has drained out of Sidney’s face.

“You put on a good show, Sidney.” Leslie’s cheeks are pink with anger; her hair is a halo of curls. Valkyries have nothing on her. “But I know people and I know why you stuck around all those years. Even when Audrey was gone and you were too depressed to even get in the booth and try to pass on the curse, you stayed, hoping, knowing she’d come back. So do not belittle my intelligence and expect me to believe that you are going to leave Audrey behind. If you expect me to change course at the drop of a hat you will give me a good, truthful reason or it’s not happening.”