The Immortal Circus: Act Two Read Online Free PDF Page B

messing around when I’m technically on
duty. But no one’s coming in, and the show’s been over for at least ten
minutes. Stragglers are unusual, especially this late in the game.
    Besides, if
someone comes it, it will just make me look more authentically dedicated to my
craft. Or something like that.
    No one told
me how to read the cards or how to deal them. I just started shuffling one afternoon
and followed my gut. So when instinct tells me to stop shuffling, I do. I flip
a few cards facedown on the table in a triangle shape, for no particular reason
beyond that the shape makes me think of the tent. I set the deck aside, next to
the hokey crystal ball and obsidian pendulum I’ve never used and hopefully
never will. Then I flip the cards over one by one.
    The
Tower. Ten of Swords. The Emperor.
    Something
settles in the pit of my stomach. It’s the same sensation I had when I first
saw Sabina, posed and bleeding on her contortion pedestal. The same feeling I
had when we found Roman impaled on six bloody swords. The same as the haphazard
visions I shouldn’t be having.
    I feel the
end.
    “I hope
that’s not about us,” comes a voice.
    I glance up.
It’s Sheena.
    We both look
down to the cards in front of me.
    “I didn’t
know you read,” I say quietly. She’d read my tea leaves once, but I learned
quickly that psychic gifts tend to pick and choose their outlet.
    “I dabble,”
she says. She sits down across from me.
    Sheena’s
hair is purple and short, and she’s got a wispy sort of appearance that makes
her always seem like she’s trying to fade into the background. Which, oddly
enough, she’s able to do in spite of the hair. She’s one of the few people
hired on full-time as a concessionaire, although, as I learned after Roman’s
death, that’s not the real reason Mab keeps her around.
    I take a
deep breath.
    “What do you
think it means?” I ask. Which is silly, as I’m the one who’s meant to be doing
the readings.
    She presses
a finger to her lips and looks at the cards intently. Did she always have so
many rings in her bottom lip, or are they new? I need to start paying better
attention to my surroundings.
    “I think you
know exactly what it means,” she says. She peers up at me. Her light-gray eyes
sparkle purple. She points to The Emperor . “Oberon is coming. He’s
angry; Mab has wronged him greatly. The Blood Autumn Treaty has been broken.
Now, he won’t stop until his son and his honor are avenged, or until we’re all
dead.”
    That’s what
I was hoping wasn’t the case.
    Instead, I
say what many of my clients have said: “You can tell all that from the cards?”
    “No,” she
says. She goes back to looking at the cards. Her jaw tightens as she bites her
lip. “I know that because he’s told me.”
    “He … told
you?” I stare at her. I knew she defected from the Summer Court, but I had no
clue she was still in contact. How was that even possible? I thought she was
trying to hide from them.
    “Do you
remember when Mab asked me to speak to Roman?” she asks, her voice light as a
whisper.
    “Of
course,” I reply. How could I forget?
    “Then you
remember what I do,” she says. “I speak for the dead.”
    I nod.
Here, I thought my own talents—what I knew of them, at least—were strange. But
to channel the recently deceased? I shiver at the thought. I’m still not
getting used to so many dead things. I kind of don’t want to.
    “Well,
Oberon knows this.” She looks up at me, and the haunted look is back in her
eyes. Suddenly, she looks tired, older, as though the full weight of her
situation is finally bleeding through. “And he’s been sending … messengers to
try to get in touch with me.”
    “Why?” I
ask.
    She takes a
deep, shaky breath.
    “For you,”
she says. “He wants to speak with you.”

Chapter Three
Haunted
    Something
bubbles in my chest, a note of fear.
    “Me?” I ask. My voice shakes against my will. “What would he want with
me?”
    I had