By a Charm and a Curse(68)
“Emma!” He leans over the brightly painted spider in front of him, and it wobbles dangerously. I hear a dozen intakes of breath, feel the crowd shift back to a safer distance. “Emmaline, darling, did I ever tell you I was sorry? And, when I say that, I mean did I tell you I was sorry and mean it? I don’t think I did, so I’m going to say it now.”
He hasn’t said that he’s sorry, but right now, I don’t care. If he has to say it, I want him to say it while he’s on the ground, where I can hit him for being stupid enough to be drunk and walking on top of a falling-apart shack. His dark brows furrow into worried triangles. “I am so sorry, Emma. I’m sorry that I dragged you into this, and I’m sorry that I’m too chicken to take the curse back, and I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”
“It’s okay, Sidney,” I yell. “I forgive you, all right? Just come down.”
“You”—he points at me with a hand that’s wrapped around a big green bottle—“don’t get to order me around.”
“Regardless, it’s a damn fine suggestion, son,” Lars says. Oh thank God. Lars. He is a giant by my side, a figure to be listened to, but if height makes you an authority figure, then Sidney is the boss of us all.
That is, until Audrey Singer bursts out of the crowd to my right.
Her eyes are wide, a shocked swath of white surrounding the blue. A pink flush creeps up her cheeks, and her chest heaves like she ran to get here.
“Sid! Get down here, you moron.” Each word has to wait for a frantic gasp of air to be sucked in before it has its turn. Long, calloused fingers grip at the stitch in her side.
“No, no, Audrey,” Sidney says. “Not when I’ve got your full attention for once.”
Sidney begins to pace the narrow ledge between the giant spider he had been lounging against and the snarling hellhound on the opposite side.
“Do you have any idea how long I have loved you, Audrey?”
Audrey’s breath marks the seconds in bright little puffs. “Can we talk about this down here? I’ll talk about anything you want as long as you come down.”
Off to the side, Leslie directs someone to ease a ladder against the haunted house, but the tension gathered in my chest only coils tighter. Something big is happening here. I can feel it in my bones. I edge toward the ride, hoping to do something, though I don’t know what.
Sidney takes a swig from his bottle, never breaking eye contact with Audrey. From the rubbery way his legs almost give out beneath him and the loose way his arms swing about, I know this is not his first drink of the night. “You don’t want to take a stab at it? Not even a little guess?”
Tears tremor in Audrey’s eyes but don’t fall. “Years. I know it was years. The same…” She takes in a big gasp of air. “The same as me. I love you, you giant idiot.”
Sidney stops pacing long enough to see he’s gotten Audrey well and truly upset. And if I’ve learned anything here at the carnival, it’s that Sidney can’t bear to see Audrey upset. A look passes between the two of them, and if I didn’t know it before, I know it now, as does anyone else standing there—when it comes to the two of them, what Audrey Singer wants, Audrey Singer gets. And I think that finally, Audrey knows that, too. The hard line of her brow softens, and her frown has been replaced with a hopeful lift of the lips.
And even though this woman hates me, something joyful swells in my heart. Maybe they can be okay.
Sidney smiles, slow and somehow heartbreakingly sad. “I love you, too, Boss Lady.” Audrey gives a strangled half laugh when she hears the nickname. “Always will.”
At that moment the roustabout Leslie sent up the ladder hefts himself on top of the haunted house, and Sidney, startled, whirls about to face him. The scuffed soles of his shoes slip on the rain-slicked surface, and before the man can reach him…
Sidney falls.
For one long second, Sidney hangs in the air, the copy of the marionette boy on the card he gave me a million years ago. There’s a crunch and a squelch as his head hits the metal rail that borders the ramp to the entrance, and when he crumples on the ground, he doesn’t move.
No one dares to breathe. Maybe if everyone is very, very still he will get up. But the wind howls down the alleys and a broken sob comes from somewhere to my left and Sidney doesn’t get up. No. It’s Sidney. He’s a jerk and he’s my friend and if there’s anything he does well, it’s survive. I have to see; I have to check.
Lars makes a grab for my coat sleeve as I dart toward Sidney, but I pull away. My fingers clench into hard fists. Why? Why isn’t anyone checking on him? He’s one of theirs, don’t they care? He carried the curse for them, or did they forget?
Audrey pushes her way in front of me, but she freezes at the foot of the ramp. “I can’t look,” she says, her voice barely more than a whisper. She doesn’t ask me to do this for her, but I hear the request anyway. I walk up the ramp.
Sidney’s blood drips down the plywood platform, falling with a soft pat, pat, pat onto the trampled grass below. I realize that seconds are precious, but I can’t seem to make my feet go up the ramp.
I know he’s gone the moment I see his body. His blank eyes stare into the dark square entrance of the haunted house, hollow and glassy. If he were conscious, even a little part of him, those eyes would be searching for Audrey. More blood pools under his head, the lights playing across the slowly spreading surface. His dark curls are matted with it. I crouch beside him, struggling to reconcile this Sidney with the exuberant one who had been pacing above us just a moment ago. With the trickster who charmed me into taking the curse. I reach out and for once, my fingers are steady. I gently press his eyelids closed. When I raise my head to look for Audrey, I realize that she’s standing beside me. For once all the hate she has for me has disappeared, replaced with something I had never seen in her eyes—desperation. I give her the smallest shake of my head.