Carousel Read online

  Caroline spun around and sprinted toward the gate. She didn’t know whether it was still locked, but if so, the scrollwork was climbable. Or she could find somewhere to hide until people arrived so she could leave in a group, in public, so no one could make a scene.

  She reeled back.

  No way. No fucking way. Impossible.

  Madoc leaned against one of the gate doors, one leg crossed over the other. The other side was open. The padlock dangled from his fingers.

  “I am what Kitty said I am,” Madoc said. “You must forgive me. Like most of my kind, I have a bit of a mischievous streak. I like you, Caroline, I really do. I never would have entrusted my carousel to your care if I didn’t.”

  “I have to go,” Caroline said. “Look, I’ll just walk away. You don’t have to pay me or anything. You can shred the contract. We can pretend it never happened.”

  Madoc gestured out of the open gate door. “You can leave. But you’ll have to come back before two.”

  “No, you don’t understand, I’m not—”

  “It’s not the paper contract, my dear,” Madoc said. “If it were just the paper contract, it would be as easy as you say. A paper shredder and enforced silence, no one the wiser of the promise broken. But it was the paper contract that was the sham of a formality. You promised yourself to Arcanium and the carousel for a year.”

  “With a wish? Look, just because you’re certifiable doesn’t mean—”

  “When you were seven,” he interrupted, “you asked for a kitten for Christmas. Instead, you got a betta fish and a cat stuffed animal, and you cried in your room for over thirty minutes. You couldn’t understand yet what it meant for your mother to be allergic to cats.”

  “How did you— How could you know that?”

  “Your father thinks you probably lost your virginity to your boyfriend from freshman year in college, but you hope he never figures out you had your first awkward but nice encounter a few weeks after your sixteenth birthday.”

  “Stop.”

  “You tried cocaine with your friend Lisa and her boyfriend, Paul. You had such a bad experience that you still haven’t spoken to either of them, because they assured you it was fun.”

  “Stop.”

  Caroline didn’t know how he knew these things, because these things were impossible for him to know. It was conceivable, although unlikely, that he could have figured out one of them—she’d mentioned the cat story on a Facebook post a few years ago. But it was impossible for him to have learned about all of them.

  The open half of the gate slammed closed. She couldn’t blame a gust of wind. She supposed that he could have attached a near invisible string to the iron and triggered some mechanism to pull it closed. But he would have had to rig it up, and he’d had even less time to do that than to get there as fast as he had.

  “I’m not locking it, because you can still leave, as long as you come back in time to fulfill your duty to Arcanium,” Madoc said. “I am standing between you and the gate, however, because the only reason you want to leave right now is to run. Maya learned the hard way not to run, and I let her. It was the only way she would learn.

  “But you’re not like Maya, and you don’t have the same restrictions she had. She was wished into Arcanium against her will. She couldn’t step over the boundary of the circus or try to escape during travel without excruciating pain, followed by the Ringmaster’s punishment. You wouldn’t experience the pain if you tried to run, because you’re here of your own will.

  “But you don’t want the Ringmaster to track you down and drag you back for his punishment, not least because he will be angry he had to retrieve you. His punishments are severe enough when he is simply doing what he enjoys doing. Piss him off…?” Madoc clicked his tongue. “Our voluntary humans don’t have many opportunities to be punished, but when they are, it’s never good.”

  “What kind of punishment?” Caroline asked.

  “The Ringmaster is partial to his whip,” Madoc replied. He pushed off from the gate and slowly stepped toward her. “I think you’re the kind of girl who doesn’t want or need to be punished in order to avoid doing things you shouldn’t. So, are you going to run from me? Because the Ringmaster will find you. A demon knows how to find his prey.”

  “And if I hide in a church?” Caroline asked.

  “For the rest of your life?” Madoc asked in return. “Even if a church lets you stay within its walls after it closes, you’ll find that the walls of sacred ground do not deter us. We work within the balance, not against it.”

  “I don’t understand what that means,” she said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I can’t believe I’m even saying this. I must be losing my mind too. But if wishing got me in here, can’t I just wish myself out?”

  “All you have to do is ask some of the other humans of Arcanium. They will tell you that is a very bad idea. There are some circumstances under which I would allow it. But leaving impulsively out of fear before you’ve even begun to grant my circus your service…”

  Madoc was close enough to her now to brush her hair away from her face where it had fallen against her forehead and cheeks after she’d stopped running. “I can guarantee you that your wish will not go the way you want it to.”

  “It’s true,” Maya said, walking up behind her. “Don’t wish to leave just because you’re scared. And don’t wish to lose weight.”

  “Did you wish those things?” Caroline asked.

  “No. But there’s a wish I made when I shouldn’t have.”

  “If you say so, golam,” Madoc said.

  Maya went on as though Madoc hadn’t spoken, “And wishing to lose weight just pisses him off. He hears it day in and day out, and he’s not likely to grant it well.”

  “So the Human Skeleton…?” Caroline asked.

  “I thought the same thing,” Maya said. “But she’s a voluntary oddity. No, Christina’s the one here who was unlucky enough to wish to lose weight in front of Bell.”

  “Which one is Christina?”

  “The Human Torso.”

  “Oh my God,” Caroline gasped, stumbling back. “You mean he lopped off…?”

  “My reasons are my own,” Madoc interrupted. “Arcanium has many purposes. It will not be a hell for you just because some of our oddities and performers are demons and I am jinn. Especially for you, because your will brought you here, not your error. Don’t make that grave error so soon by trying to escape when you promised me a year.”

  “Come on,” Maya said, putting a hand on Caroline’s shoulder. “Things will look better when you get some food in you. You can meet some of the people who are a part of Arcanium. Even the ones who aren’t here on purpose, they may not agree with Bell’s granting of their accidental wish, but many of them have found a way to make the best of this life. It’ll help that you have freedom that some of them don’t.”

  “And an expiration date to your service,” Madoc added. “I was generous, Caroline. Never forget that I was generous.”

  Maya gave him a peculiar look. He shook his head in response to her unspoken question, kissing Maya’s forehead.

  “Will you come?” Maya asked gently. “It’s going to be okay. I’m not going to tell you there’s nothing to be afraid of. Kitty didn’t put that really well, but then most of the demons like her as much as the rest of us do, so she’s at the least risk. But most of the things that you’re afraid of right now, those you don’t have to be afraid of. It doesn’t have to be bad just because some of us are sometimes dark. Give us a chance.”

  “Do I have a choice?” Caroline asked Madoc.

  “You always have a choice, my dear,” Madoc said. “All those choices have consequences.”

  Caroline gazed at the gate, closed but unlocked. She didn’t think Madoc or Maya would stop her. She could get a head start.

  Then she remembered the dangerous emptiness in the Ringmaster’s expression and the fire behind the steel traps of his dark eyes. If sh
e never had to see his eyes again, it would be too soon. In the ring, he had clutched the whip in his hand the whole performance. It had been more of an accessory at the time. He hadn’t used it against anyone. But his grip had molded to the handle as though it had been made for him.

  She thought of that emptiness and replaced it with anger, his powerful body driving the whip over her naked back.

  Caroline lowered her head, but she let Madoc and Maya take her away. She didn’t scream for help. Nor did her appetite suffer.

  Chapter Five

  The music made getting through the day easier—repetitive, creepy, music box notes strumming loudly above her over and over and over, the horses going round her over and over and over. It was as though she was hypnotizing herself.

  You’re getting very sleepy. Just relax. You are safe as long as you hear the music. Just relaaaaaax. Nothing’s going to hurt you here.

  And nothing had. After breakfast, the cast had dispersed. Even the strange-looking demons acted like any person Caroline had ever seen. The ones she’d determined to be human were actually stranger, maybe because they’d had more to overcome.

  But she wasn’t afraid of the humans, no matter how strange they were. She was afraid of what the demons concealed under their normal. What was Madoc hiding behind those pretty, strong features? What did the Ringmaster’s insanely attractive but dangerous appearance cover? What was beneath Lord Mikhail and Lady Sasha’s mesmerizing, deadly sexy camouflage?

  Caroline didn’t fear strangeness that she could see. She feared the danger that she couldn’t, because that made it all the more dangerous, like bear traps in a dark forest.

  With people laughing and shouting around her, it was hard to keep believing that Arcanium was a circus of monsters—and she wasn’t talking about the freaks, no matter what some of the riders said when they thought the engineer couldn’t hear. The carousel soundtrack constantly reminded her, though.

  Then the tall and short man would walk among the crowd, the short man on the tall man’s shoulder, both of them posing for pictures with the circus goers.

  Then Kitty would walk by, not so surreptitiously checking on her. Then Lennon, who wasn’t an oddity and probably had most of the day to himself. Then the clowns, when they weren’t performing in their makeshift arena. The tall man, short man and Lennon didn’t pay her any attention.

  Most of the riders ignored her too, maybe because she’d gone with the same kind of black clothes that the staff wore. But the clowns sometimes rode the carousel with the customers, and the happy clown and sad clown would glance over as they rose up and down around her. Caroline clutched the brake in case of emergency, but all they ever did was stare. Caroline didn’t think she’d seen them open their mouths once. She couldn’t figure out why they were just looking at her or why they were there at all. They weren’t posing for pictures with the riders, and they went away after two rides, not speaking a word. They didn’t even pass her a note explaining what it was about her that mortally offended their sensibilities.

  For lunch, she asked Geoff to get her some sweetcorn and water. After that morning, it was hard enough to keep her sausage and eggs down. She wasn’t exactly stomach-growling hungry either.

  In the evening, after the riders had trickled to a handful, she checked her phone. It was almost time for the big circus performance to start.

  Caroline didn’t think she could stand attending again, seeing those people and knowing that some of them were there because Madoc had given them their deformities, that some of them had actually chosen to be a part of this place, that some of them were demons. And that the inexplicable, raw arousal she’d felt last night was because Lord Mikhail and Lady Sasha had made her feel that way.

  She shut down the carousel, leaving only the emergency lights on, then went down into her pod to turn on the air conditioning and get the room cool for the night. Somehow it had managed to avoid becoming stuffy, so there had to be something that allowed the interior of the carousel to breathe. Caroline supposed anything was possible when the creator was a demon or jinn or whatever the man said he was.

  Every time she thought the words ‘demon’, ‘magic’, ‘jinn’, or ‘cursed’, she couldn’t shake off the last frayed threads of disbelief. It was funny, because she believed in God and miracles. These things weren’t God and miracles—far from them—but they were still in the realm of supernatural, which she’d believed was possible—in theory.

  When the magic was right in front of her, though, it seemed so unreal. It wasn’t like she’d been inundated with the supernatural all her life. They’d only been in stories of the past or in fiction, so it was no wonder she didn’t—couldn’t—associate it with her life in the now. A life of Wi-Fi and megapixels and Photoshop, where Snopes debunked chain letters, TV shows debunked myths, and bloggers debunked everything else.

  She could still hear the carousel music in her ears, even though she’d shut the sound off. It was like tinnitus, insidious ear worms in her brain, a constant reminder of what Arcanium was—discordant, dissonant, dark and above all, entertaining.

  Her aunt had always said the entertainment industry was of the devil. Maybe she was right.

  Caroline bought a pretzel, corn dog and a large Diet Coke from one of the food vendors and sat inside Kitty’s tent outside the big top. The lights were on around the vanity mirror, illuminating a messy dresser cluttered with makeup and hair kits. The portable air conditioning unit rumbled, almost drowning out the sound of symphonic metal coming from the ring. She could pretend it was someone’s mp3 player they’d forgotten to turn off. She could pretend for a while that she was alone, and that the carousel wasn’t her new prison.

  She wished she could call her dad.

  But even worse than a ‘What were you thinking?’ or ‘You’re grounded, young lady’ as though she was still twelve, Caroline couldn’t stop herself seeing the Ringmaster in her house—a baleful figure in the dark, at the foot of her bed with a whip in his hand, come to take her away.

  As soon as the music stopped, the applause became more than a rush of water in her ears. She left the boudoir before Kitty could return.

  Caroline fled fleet-footed away from the oddity tents and big top to her carousel. This time, there were no clowns in her way, but when she closed and locked the door behind her, she didn’t feel the safety that she had the night before. Any excitement that might have fluttered in her abdomen then had dissolved into the gnawing acid of quiet but persistent fear.

  She pulled out her tablet. Her father hadn’t replied to her email, which didn’t surprise her. He was as prone to using silent treatment as she was. But she wouldn’t contact him to bring her home, no matter how much she wanted to. If her father came, who knew what would happen to him if he tried to take Caroline away.

  Caroline clicked out of her email account before she was tempted to do something she’d regret. She went to the search engine instead. She couldn’t look up demons—there were demons in almost every culture, with different motivations, origins and weaknesses. She doubted she’d find anything helpful, especially with all the superstition, conspiracy theories and fiction mixed in with potentially legitimate information.

  Instead, she looked up jinn.

  What she found didn’t make her feel any better than she did about demons. Powerful beings created from the fire, capricious, sometimes wicked, sometimes downright evil. They had free will, which meant they didn’t have to be evil. However, according to some of the mythology, the jinn basically functioned as demons, some more powerful than others, some no more than nuisances.

  Madoc had already proved himself powerful, with the capacity to do what jinn were best known for—grant wishes.

  But jinn weren’t all like the jinni from the Aladdin story—that one was bound to a lamp, but Madoc didn’t appear to be bound to anything but the circus, which he himself had created. It was his playground, not his prison.

  Caroline doubted she had the capacity to trap him in a lamp or a
rock or something that would free her from Arcanium. He’d probably stop her before she even tried. Attempting to sneak up and hurt someone who could read minds was an exercise in futility. Hell, he probably knew what she was researching right now.

  There was no way around it as far as she could tell. She had made her wish, and he had granted it to tie her to the carousel. She couldn’t know why he’d done it. He was jinn. Like demons, his motivations weren’t human. It was like trying to understand animals. Or God.

  Not that Madoc was God. But for all intents and purposes, here in the world that he created, he might as well be.

  * * * *

  Once again, Caroline twitched awake.

  She’d been so wired while she was researching the nature of her new employers, she’d been sure she would never be able to sleep again. The promise that none of the demons would be allowed to hurt her wasn’t reassuring. Knowing they existed scared her enough.

  Now she just wondered what other things lurked in the dark of the night and even in the bright light of day that she ought to be afraid of.

  It was almost a repeat from the previous night when she jerked up, tangled once more in her blankets. This time she wasn’t as unsure about what woke her. Perhaps her subconscious, in its infinite wisdom, had decided she had enough mystery in her life and was giving her a more straightforward dream.

  Except this felt less like a dream than the last one. In fact, if she didn’t know any better, Caroline would say she was wide awake, her fight-or-flight response heightened by the revelation of the real Arcanium, although her eyes were a little blurry and sticky from sleep. She rubbed them clear then carefully moved over to the door. She’d forgotten to ask Madoc for a weapon—not that she’d know what to do with it against a demon.

  Still, if this was just another dream like last night, she wouldn’t need a weapon. She hoped it was a dream. She could use a good dream, especially after feeling the effects of those damn sex demons despite her distance from the ring during the evening performance. It hadn’t been as strong this time, but there’d been arousal—arousal without actual desire, just the physical reaction heavy in the cradle of her pelvis.