I cleared my throat. “Honestly, you’re both infantile. Can we please focus on the poor woman in the tank?”
Blessedly, Jian, Houdini, and Andreas picked that moment to come backstage. Each of them blanched at the sight of the corpse but, to their immense credit, managed to tear their gazes away and not be sick. I noticed Anishaa huddling just behind the curtain with Sebastián and Cassie, on their faces matching expressions of shock and terror.
Harry gave Mephistopheles a steady look. “Everyone’s talkin’ about layin’ low until New York, then leavin’ for good.”
The ringmaster’s face set into a grim expression. He seemed almost resigned to the fact that his dreams were beyond salvaging. Something tugged deep within my center, longing to fix this whole situation. Before Mephistopheles could comment, I stepped forward.
“We’re close to solving the murders,” I said, raising my voice so they’d hear, hoping I sounded much more confident about that fact than I felt. “We’ve already discovered the profession of the girl Lady Crenshaw described in her letter. It shouldn’t take too much longer to connect more pieces.”
I glanced at each performer, then flicked my gaze to Mephistopheles. It was hard to discern anything for certain behind his mask, but I could have sworn I saw gratitude in his eyes.
“The show must go on,” I said. “It’s what you all do. Give the passengers a bit of hope and distraction—they need it, and you—more than ever. Let’s make the finale something worth remembering.”
THIRTY-FOUR
SPECTACULAR SUSPECT
FIRST-CLASS PROMENADE
RMS ETRURIA
7 JANUARY 1889
“No, no, no.” Anishaa shifted my ungloved hand down several inches. “If you hold the baton too close to the flame, you’ll set yourself on fire. The skirts of our costumes are highly flammable with all the tulle. You need to hold it near the end. Good. Now just move it around slowly, pretend you’re painting the sky with flames.”
I quirked a brow. “‘Painting the sky with flames’? Sounds like a dramatic canvas indeed.”
Anishaa slowly cracked a smile. It had only been a few hours since the discovery of Lady Crenshaw’s body, and tensions were still high. “I used to paint back before my life became this.” The grin faded. “My family encouraged my creativity, though they never approved of the circus.”
A few moments of silence passed between us, broken only by the soft crackling of the fire. If I wasn’t holding a torch, I’d give her a hug. “Well, now you’re a living bit of artwork. And that’s an incredible—”
“I read the letter! How are you going to deny it?” Liza’s piercing voice rang out. I briefly closed my eyes, not surprised but dreading the fact my cousin was unleashing herself now. We were so close to New York, if only she could have held off for a bit longer. “This is over, we are over! I do not wish to see or speak to you again!”
“I ain’t been writin’ to no one!”
Liza, her face near burgundy, stomped through the dining saloon, ignoring each attempt Houdini made to halt her procession. Anishaa and I exchanged nervous glances, but kept our mouths shut. I wished to be back on the trapeze with Cassie and Sebastián, far from the fireworks that were happening offstage. One more look in Anishaa’s direction proved she felt the same; the flame eater stared longingly toward the curtains, probably wishing she possessed the escape skills Houdini did.
“Liza, the only woman I write to is my mother! You gotta believe me—”
“No, Harry, I don’t ‘gotta’ do anything!” She marched through the room and threw her mask at his feet. “Take your lies and sell them to someone else. This conversation is over!”
“I swear—”
Mephistopheles strolled into the room with Jian and Andreas, halting when he saw Anishaa and me holding on to our flaming batons and Liza and Harry storming around. “Lovers’ quarrels are not permitted during practice. Please save the added drama for a private show only.”
Liza offered her most withering glare to the ringmaster and lifted her chin. “We’re through here. Make sure he stays far away from me, or you’ll have an entirely new spectacle on your hands.”
With that she slammed the door, rattling the glassware that had already been set up for tomorrow night’s dinner. Harry made to follow after her, but Mephistopheles stopped him with a hand to the chest. “Let her collect herself. It’s never wise to push a person who’s upset.”
“But I ain’t doing anything wrong!”
“Let’s go get ourselves a nice drink.” Mephistopheles wrapped an arm around the escape artist and escorted him around the tables and through to the other side of the room. “We’ve got to stick together now. The show needs you at your best.”
With one look over his shoulder at me, he led the distraught Houdini out.
Anishaa shook her head. “We should probably put these out. I’ve got to get some rest and you need to do the same.” She leaned in and sniffed my hair. “You might want to bathe before morning, your hair smells a little like kerosene now. It’ll be hard to hide that from Thomas or your uncle.”
I absently nodded and followed Anishaa to a bucket of water that had been set up for us, extinguishing my flaming baton with a hiss of steam. Something about Houdini’s insistence of innocence bothered me. He appeared genuine, his face screwed up in pain. Either he was an expert liar, or he’d been telling the truth. Or a version of it.
Which meant there was a strong possibility the ringmaster had crafted yet another illusion. One more lie to add to a list I feared was never-ending with him. Perhaps Houdini wasn’t the one Liza needed to escape from after all.
A few hours later, I slipped from my chamber, hoping that enough time had passed for me to find who I was looking for. He wasn’t lurking near the prow, which meant there were only two more places he’d be at this hour.
I checked over my shoulder, ensuring I was alone, then headed toward the stairwell. I flew down the stairs, the metal biting into the soles of my feet, reminding me of how alive I was, and how fleeting that could be.
I burst into the animal cargo and Mephistopheles jumped a little but quickly recovered. He studied me from the shadows and I replied in kind. His mask was firmly in place, though his shirt was wrinkled and damp. He appeared as horrible as I felt.
“You lied to me.” I watched him closely, searching for any crack in the armor he wore as often as his masks. “About Houdini’s letter. He was writing to his mother, wasn’t he?”
Mephistopheles didn’t so much as blink, his gaze traveling from my eyes to my mouth, smirking a bit when he elicited a scowl. “I didn’t lie, my dear. If you recall that night, I never claimed he’d been writing to a secret lover. Did I?”
“Oh? You didn’t?” I scoffed. “Then I suppose I produced the half-destroyed letter myself and crafted a story to go along with it all on my own.”
He held my gaze, expression wiped clean of humor. “Consider it your first true lesson in sleight of hand, Miss Wadsworth. Sleight of word is also a valuable tool for any magician or showman. Our minds are magnificent conjurers, capable of endless magic. What I said and showed you that night was simply a half-ruined letter. Your mind fabricated a story—it jumped to its own conclusion. I never said he had a secret lover. I never claimed anything other than he writes to someone and sends a letter from each city.”
I shook my head, wishing I could shake the man before me. “But you said he loved her.”
Mephistopheles nodded. “I did. I imagine he loves his mother very much.”
“You claimed that Liza was unaware of the letters or woman. You made me think there was something more going on—you…” I went back to the night of our bargain, stomach sinking with each new memory of our conversation. He hadn’t lied. He just hadn’t been entirely truthful.
“I, what?” he asked. “I laid facts out for you, Miss Wadsworth. You assumed I meant lover. You assumed he was untrustworthy, simply because of our professions. Your prejudice interfered with your ability to inqui
re further, to ask more specific questions, to separate fact from the fiction of your mind. You had the opportunity to clear everything up; I would not have lied to you. That was a choice you made, and did I benefit from it? Of course I did. I make no denial of the fact I’ve used this method on people before, and I will most certainly do so in the future. If you’re angry with anyone, it ought to be yourself as well. You created an illusion of the truth you wanted to see.”
“You’re a terrible person.”
“I’m terribly accurate at reading humanity. Change human behavior, Miss Wadsworth, and I’ll change my tactics.”
“You made me break Liza’s heart for no good reason.”
“Really? Can you think of not one reason that’s positive?” He cocked his head. “Do you truly believe that she belongs with an escape artist in a traveling carnival? Or is it a whim that has dire consequences? You did your cousin a favor, Miss Wadsworth. But sometimes they don’t come in sweet-smelling bouquets. Houdini would have broken her heart eventually, or she would have broken his. The right choice isn’t always the easy one.” He offered a slight bow. “I hope one day you’ll understand that. Good night.”
“Oh, no,” I said, marching after him and tugging him around to face me. “You don’t get to do that.”
“Do what, exactly?”
“Pour kerosene, set it aflame, and walk away when the fire is too hot for your tastes.”
He leaned against the lion’s cage, expression thoughtful. I hoped the lion would decide to have a midnight snack. A foul and wretched thought after knowing the animal had consumed at least part of one victim. A victim we’d yet to identify. I shuddered. Mephistopheles shrugged out of his tailcoat and draped it over my shoulders—the embroidered scarlet velvet reminding me a little too much of blood.
“I use science and study the human mind the same way you do,” he replied calmly. “Don’t be angry you took the boring, traditional route. You could still choose differently, you know. You want to set your world on fire, I’ll give you a matchbox.”
“‘Boring’?” I parroted back. “Pardon me if I do not find amusement in the idea of potentially destroying a life on a whim. Perhaps you ought to stick to crafting pretty costumes.”
“If you’d like to join my midnight carnival permanently and offer up more stellar ideas, you simply need ask.”
“You are completely mad if you think I’d care to join you or your depraved use of ‘science’ and engineering for good. Your acts are violent, savage things. All they show us is how horrid the world can be.” I tossed my hands up when he smiled. “Why is this amusing?”
“I find your vehemence endearing.”
“I find your lack of compassion appalling,” I said. “Are you ever serious?”
“Of course I am. I am seriously the most honest person I know,” he said, his voice frustratingly calm. “Truth is a blade. Brutal and ice cold. It cuts. Sometimes when spoken carelessly it even scars. Our performances expose that fact and make no apology for it. Once again, if you’re upset with anyone, it’s yourself. What truth did you discover while that tank was unveiled tonight?”
“Aside from the body? I discovered that you’re all willing to go too far for a stupid carnival.”
“Is that all?” He smirked. “Did you enjoy it? I’d wager your heart beat a little faster. Your palms dampened with dread and expectation. We are all fascinated by death—it’s the one thing each and every one of us has in common. No matter our station in life, we all must die. And we never know when it’s coming for us. Seeing someone nearly drown in itself isn’t scary or intimidating. It’s the truth and realization of what truly excites us that is most disturbing.”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at.”
“Don’t you, though?” He tilted his head. “Tell me, Miss Wadsworth. Imagine this: When that curtain drops around the tank and the clock starts counting, those seconds ticking loud enough to cause arrhythmia, what is the whisper in your mind between heartbeats? Are you secretly praying that Houdini will make it through? Hoping against seemingly insurmountable odds that he will defeat death? Or are you sitting there, fists clenched below the table, both dreading and anticipating the possibility that you’re about to witness something we all fear? What is most exciting? Most terrifying?”
I swallowed hard, and didn’t answer; I didn’t need to. Even though we’d not gotten a chance to witness the act he spoke of, Mephistopheles already knew what I’d say, anyway.
“That is the truth we offer,” he said. “We are, all of us, desperate for a way to overcome the biggest threat of all: death. At the same time, we’re all hungry when it comes for someone else. You may hate the truth, deny it, curse it, but the fact remains you are equally enchanted by it. Knowing the flames are hot isn’t always a deterrent from playing with fire.”
When I said nothing, he lifted a shoulder, but there was a tightness around his mouth that belied his nonchalance. “Life, like the show, goes on whether we agree with it or not. If we stopped living, ceased to celebrate our existences in the face of death or tragedy, then we might as well tumble into our own graves.”
A thought struck me. “Whose idea was it for the torture cell tonight… yours, Houdini’s, or the captain’s?”
“Let’s call it a mutual agreement.” The lion growled, startling Mephistopheles away from the cage. He straightened his waistcoat. “What did you learn regarding Mrs. Prescott’s death?”
That anyone, including him, might have placed her in that trunk. I shuddered—two women, stuffed into a trunk and a tank. Both horrendous resting places. “We’re going to do a postmortem in the morning. Her husband wished for one night to say goodbye.”
“You’re confident you’ll identify the cause of death, though?” he pressed. I nodded, not ready to admit we’d already discovered that she’d likely been smothered. “Interesting.”
“It’s not really that interesting or hard, once you’ve practiced enough.”
“Some would say the work you do is impossible. Think on it a moment, if you will. You take a body, carve it open, and read clues left behind. Sounds impossible to anyone untrained in your field. Reading the dead? Identifying cause of death by sight, by determining which organ wasn’t functioning properly?” He walked in a circle, hands behind his back. “You have to get your hands messy, though, don’t you? To do something others think is impossible—no matter what the arena or circumstance—your hands will get stained in the process.”
I took an unsteady step backward, nearly losing my footing by the tiger’s cage. There was an air of confession to his words, ones that made the little hairs along my arm stand at attention. I knew nothing of this young man, save for his ability at misdirection.
My heart thundered. Was Mephistopheles using me as a sleight of hand this entire time? These midnight meetings might be his way of distracting Thomas—making him believe there was something clandestine happening between us, forcing him to overlook any other sinister acts he could be committing. Thomas might trust me, but no matter how hard he denied it, he was human. His emotions could be toyed with like any other’s. Just as Liza had warned.
And I’d been equally blinded by Mephistopheles. I was doing exactly what he’d asked because I wanted to help my cousin at all costs. A fact he had noticed straightaway. Magicians were trained to find marks in a crowd, and Mephistopheles was among the best.
He watched me from the shadows, the caged lion prowling back and forth behind him. There was something dark and cunning to Mephistopheles—a cat with a full belly who was deciding if the mouse was worth killing yet. Or saving for another day when he truly hungered for it. I never quite knew which he desired more and which thrilled me most. Perhaps I was as twisted and gnarled on the inside as he was.
He didn’t move closer but managed to fill the space between us anyway. I longed for a clever retort, something to prove how unafraid I was to win at his games, but he glanced down at my hands pointedly. “If you wish to accomplish gre
at things, sometimes you must get your hands dirty on the climb up. But you’ve already done that for your pursuits. It’s a bit odd you don’t allow me the same courtesy.”
I noticed the smudge of dirt on my palms. I rubbed my hands together, but the stain refused to lighten. I must have grabbed onto the bars at some point, though the image of stained hands unnerved me; I’d dipped my hands into blood more times than I could count.
“Thanks to rough water, the captain said we won’t make land for one day now, Miss Wadsworth.” Mephistopheles turned to go, then paused, fingers tapping the doorjamb. “I sincerely hope you solve these murders for both our sakes. I’m not sure the carnival will survive another hit. There’s more than one way to make a man drown.”
THIRTY-FIVE
EIGHT OF SWORDS
AUDREY ROSE’S QUARTERS
RMS ETRURIA
7 JANUARY 1889
I slipped into my room, relieved to find it unoccupied. Liza must have stayed out with the other performers to work out her annoyance, and Mrs. Harvey was likely asleep. No one would be any the wiser about my midnight meeting with the Devil.
“Maddening fool.” I sat on the edge of the bed, absently tracing the orchids stitched onto my silk skirts, Mephistopheles’s words tumbling through my mind. There was most certainly more than one way of killing a man—whoever had been terrorizing the ship was acquainted with that sentiment.
I pulled the playing cards out from my nightstand and set them on top of the blankets. Half were found with bodies, and the other half were found near the crime scenes. Ace of Clubs. Six of Diamonds. Ace of Spades. Five of Hearts. Yet the murders themselves were fashioned after tarot cards and their meanings.
Five of Hearts correlated to jealousy. Ace of Clubs, wealth. Lady Crenshaw was most certainly jealous over some unidentified young woman. The Ace of Clubs had been staked through Miss Prescott on opening night—perhaps her father had been bribed.
I rubbed my temples. None of it made sense. Unless, perhaps, whoever was perpetrating these crimes was indicating he or she was laying their cards out for all to see. It was a stretch, but it might be a good place to start.