Wicked After Midnight (Blud)

  “You have to kick the baby bird out of the nest sometime,” Tish said, and I smiled my thanks.

  “Around here, baby birds that fall without flying get eaten in seconds. The bludbunnies wait underneath the nests all spring, drooling.” Crim waved a hand at me when I tried to interject. “You’re no baby bird, Demi. But Letitia is right. A lone female in the city will generally become a victim. London is out of the question. But I do have contacts in other cities. What about Ruin?”

  I plundered my memory, trying to match the one-off names of Sang to my own world. “Is that in Franchia?”

  “Not too far from Paris but safe enough. There’s a university there. They allow women, although you might be the only Bludman. The daimons aren’t so picky, if you aren’t.”

  I didn’t breathe for a moment. Not too far from Paris. Images from the capital of France in my former life crashed with what I knew of the Paris of Sang like badly shuffled cards. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Notre Dame were the same in existence, if not in name, and much of the history I’d studied in high school and the art I’d studied in college were mirrored in Franchia. I was especially intrigued at the thought of finally seeing the famous paintings that straddled both of our worlds, live and without pesky guards and cameras. Paris called to me in both universes. But the colorful daimons who peopled the closest country across the sea changed the flavor entirely, and I had heard that there, the Green Fairy was more than just a potent drink. London felt safe and exciting, a short jaunt from which Criminy could easily rescue me. Franchia, however, was a different story.

  And I liked that even better.

  “Why Ruin?” I asked.

  “Not too far from Sangland. Civilized, mostly safe. The university has everything a young lass could want—literature, languages, painting. Handsome young scholars. Baggy, unflattering robes.”

  “I thought Bludmen weren’t allowed to go to university.”

  His smile quirked up. “Only in Sangland, ma petite. Can’t have you getting any ideas in that pretty head of yours and trying to eat the Magistrate.” His gaze traveled up and down me, sharp eyebrows cutting down. “I’ll cover matriculation and a stipend. For you and Cherie. I know it’s not the glamorous escape you’ve been hoping for, but will it suffice?”

  “I—”

  I didn’t want to go back to college. Even though I’d been stuck in Sang for years, some small part of me kept expecting that one day, I would collapse, as Tish sometimes did, and wake up in my own world and go back to school as if nothing had ever happened. If I committed to college here, it was not only giving up that pleasant dream but also dooming myself to the same reality that had once brought me nothing but misery and a fatal drinking problem. Even in Franchia, college would be an acquiescence to doom, not a bright future. But if Ruin was near Paris, that meant it was near the famous cabarets. And I could always find a place in the cabarets. I gave a small smile, knowing Criminy would be watching closely.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  He nodded abruptly and turned back to his desk, rummaging in the drawers and pulling out papers and stamps. Tish rose and cocked her chin at the door.

  “Crim—” I started, but Tish shook her head and pulled me gently out onto the stairs of their wagon, shutting the door behind us.

  It was afternoon, in that pleasant lull between lunch and show time, and the caravan was limned in sunlight and surrounded by the usual gently rolling hills of the Sang version of an English countryside. I couldn’t help frowning. I was sick to death of the usual gently rolling hills.

  “Is he mad at me?”

  Tish patted me on the arm, and we sat on the bottom step, her wide skirts tumbling over into the lap of my more spare contortionist’s costume.

  “He doesn’t want to lose you, Demi. You struck him pretty hard, I think, when you said he wasn’t your father.”

  “But he’s not.”

  “But he thinks of himself as your guardian. He saved you, and he’s gone to a lot of trouble keeping you safe all these years. This may not be an exciting life to you, but that’s because you’re already living it. To your average Sang girl in a city, trapped behind thick walls, you’re the luckiest girl on the planet.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it.” I kind of hated myself for grumbling like the ungrateful teen I resembled. I was twenty-six. I should have been past the theatrics. But that was part of the problem. How was I supposed to grow up when everything always stayed the same?

  Tish’s hand landed on my shoulder, and I struggled not to bite it. “Look, Demi. I know you don’t like to talk about it. But before you came here, what did you want out of life?”

  “Nggggggh.” I shrugged away from her hand and put my head between my knees. “I wanted to get away from my parents, go to parties, get drunk, and figure out what I wanted out of life.”

  “Did you ever figure it out?”

  I glared at her and exhaled through my nose. “I was doing shots of Jaeger, and then I woke up here, naked and covered in rabbits and my own blood, with Criminy’s wrist in my mouth. Since then, I’ve been wrapping my body around my best friend while strangers whisper about what freakish monsters we are. I don’t know what I want, but I know this sure as hell ain’t it.”

  “Then Franchia is bound to be better, right?”

  “I guess.”

  Tish stood and turned to face me. She said she had been a nurse back home, and I could see the steel rod up her butt from telling people what to do all day. But I could also see that she wore her heart in her eyes. “Easy things aren’t worth much, and you never have adventures if you stay in one place. So take Criminy’s letter and go to Ruin with Cherie. If it sucks, come back here. What have you got to lose?”

  I couldn’t help smirking. “Nothing, I guess. When you put it that way, I sound like a scaredy cat.”

  “So don’t be scared.”

  “Easy for you to say, considering you won’t get bludded.”

  Tish gasped, and I immediately felt like crap.

  “I didn’t mean that, I’m just . . .”

  Hands on her hips and hat blocking the sun, Tish glared down at me. “If you want to grow up, quit acting like a baby. I didn’t want to be here any more than you do, at first. I fought it every damn step of the way. The only reason I won’t get bludded is that I’m afraid it’ll mean I can’t get back home to be there when my grandmother dies. If you’re unhappy here, do something about it. You’re just lucky Criminy loves you enough to let you go. And you’d better be smart and grateful enough to stay alive, for his sake. The caravan may seem safe and boring, but Sang is scary as hell out there.”

  I grinned. “But I’m a predator.”

  “And in London, a suffering minority. Franchia could be good for you. New things to learn, new things to see, living among the daimons. But you’re going to have to be careful about those Franchian men. They’re not all lovesick softies like Luc.”

  “You knew about that?”

  I saw a Bludman’s humor in her smile. “I’m a fortune-teller, Demi. I know everything. Do you remember what I told you the first time I touched your hand?”

  It was my turn to grin. “You said, ‘I see feathers, fairies, mortal danger, a handsome stranger, and a trip to hell.’ ”

  “I didn’t see those things here in the caravan, honey. You need to go out there and make ’em happen.”

  “Even the mortal danger?”

  Her fingers went to the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She stared past me as if she could see through the glossy maroon wall of the wagon she shared with Criminy. “A little mortal danger never killed anybody,” she murmured. “At least, not a Bludman.”

  “I guess I have to go, then. Maybe I can find that handsome stranger you mentioned.”

  She looked down, the spell broken and her eyes crinkled up with humor. “Then go tell Cherie and get packing. I’ll set up the bon voyage party.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, and we both chuckled.

  “I’d hu
g you, honey, but you look hungry.”

  “I am hungry.” I sighed. “For so many things.”

  I stood and dusted off my breeches and bustle. Only in the caravan could I get away with a style like that, one that would have been outrageous in the cities of Sangland. But the breeches felt like skinny jeans, and I would miss them once I was costumed in fifty pounds of ruffles to blend with the humans for the trip. With a smile and a wave, I headed toward my wagon.

  The only problem was that I had lied to Criminy. Cherie had no idea we were going away. And she wasn’t going to like it one bit.

  2

  “No! I won’t do it! You’re insane!”

  In six years of sharing a wagon and often two square feet of space on a very small chair, I had never seen Cherie so furious. I’d seen her homesick, shy, kind, and often prissy. But until that very moment, I had doubted her ability to feel passion of any sort. It brought out her Freesian accent a little more, too.

  “But it’s so boring here, Cherie. Nothing ever changes. And you’ve always wanted to see Franchia.”

  She paced the train car, skirts snapping. “Not at university! Not sitting still, having numbers drilled into my head. I like the caravan.”

  “Then we’ll skip out of Ruin and go to Paris. Be the stars of a cabaret.”

  “The caravan is respectable, but the cabaret? I am not some tawdry showgirl!”

  I shrugged. “You’re a girl who performs in a show. Same difference.”

  She stopped in front of me, shaking a manicured talon in my face. “No. No. No. This is different. The caravan, it’s an art. With Master Criminy, we are safe, cared for. Legitimate. But once you’re in the cabarets . . . you don’t understand. The men, they expect things from the girls there. It is not all dancing and then back into your wagons like good little ducks.”

  I sighed and flopped down on the bottom bunk of the bed we shared. “It wouldn’t be like that. We’re Bludmen. Predators. The men will probably be scared of us. But whatever. I’m going.”

  “All this time, and still I do not understand this ‘whatever.’ You, who fight against being told what to do all the time—do you not understand that all men are not as good as Master Crim? In Paris, we would be playthings, feathers to be batted about on the wind. It is debauched, dangerous. Bludmen are not so loved. You cannot go out alone.”

  She returned to her pacing, her blond curls flouncing in her wake. For a bloodthirsty killer, she looked like a china doll from back home, like Claudia from Interview with a Vampire. Except that she really was as sweet as she looked and swore she’d never drunk from a live human in her entire twenty-five years. Cherie was content in the caravan, happy with what seemed to her an easy life compared with the tiny wagon she’d grown up in, somewhere in a freezing forest. With carnivalleros coming and going over the years, she was sure the perfect man would arrive at the perfect time to sweep her off her slippered feet. Maybe because she’d been born a Bludman, she had a better sense of how very long three hundred years of life could be, how very much time she could give that mysterious man to arrive. Having been born human, I possessed a sense of urgency about life that she couldn’t quite fathom.

  I stood and stopped her with firm hands on her slender shoulders. “Cherie, I need something new. I can’t stay here. I can’t do this anymore. I have to leave, with you or without you. But I’d prefer with.”

  A battle of wills ensued, a test of friendship spoken only with the eyes.

  I felt her deflate and knew then that I had won.

  “Fine. But only Ruin. Not Paris. Just promise me that if it’s wretched, we can come back here. Where it’s safe.”

  “Of course. We can always come back.”

  She drew me into a hug, and I inhaled a cloud of her hair, scented with her favorite shampoo, a soft mix of Freesian pine and vanilla that she splurged on with her carefully saved coppers. Most of her earnings were shipped back to her family in Freesia a few times a year, whenever we were near London and Criminy gathered up the caravan’s post.

  “You’re going to love it.” I patted her back and pulled away to look into her eyes, which were as cloudy gray as Criminy’s but balmy and pleasant. Criminy felt like a storm, but Cherie was like a quiet rainy day spent reading by an open window, as different as two Bludmen could be. “We’re going to have an adventure!”

  “Hmmph.” She shook a finger in my face. “The things I do for you.”

  I just smiled. It was going to be fantastic. She would see.

  * * *

  Everyone in the caravan had some piece of advice for our trip to Franchia.

  “Speak softly and carry a big knife!” Torno the strongman roared. “These city men, they will take advantage of a sweet girl like you. You must be careful, ma donna. And you must take a man with you. For protection.”

  I snorted and shook my head. “No way. That’s the whole point.”

  “If you were my daughter . . .” Torno’s face went even redder than usual under his tight hat.

  I patted the stretched leather over his bulging bicep. “If I were your daughter, you would have a lot of explaining to do.”

  He choked and turned puce, opting to dive into his trailer rather than continue to blush in my presence. Eblick laughed from where he lay on a log beside Torno’s weights, his forked tongue flapping against pebbled green skin.

  “You ever been to Franchia?” I asked him. For once, he didn’t flinch or cower from me.

  “Only home and the caravan, mistress. But I chose the caravan.”

  “Don’t you ever wish for adventure?”

  He sat up and looked over the hills, his strange eyes following the twin lines the caravan train had cut through the moor grasses. We’d been near Dover last week, and he’d been especially quiet in sight of the sea cliffs. He’d gone out one day for a swim and returned with skin an odd combination of red and black that had earned him more coppers than usual in the freak tent. No one in the caravan knew where he had come from or where he had gone, but the sea made him noticeably melancholy.

  “Caravan’s all the adventure I need. But I understand better than most why you need to leave.”

  I couldn’t touch him—no one ever did. But I bowed my head slightly before walking on. “Thanks, Eblick.”

  I passed Veruca the Abyssinian sword swallower next, and she leaned on her scimitar and eyed me thoughtfully. She was possibly the only person in the caravan more standoffish than Eblick, and I had no idea where she was from, either. Refusing to follow either Bludman or Pinky fashion, she sweet-talked the costumer into making tight leather outfits for her that showcased her muscles and revealed her dark brown skin. She always smelled like almond oil and spice to me, and one of Criminy’s first warnings had been never to drink from an Abyssinian. Their blood would make a Bludman go mad and then die; the way he described it, it was a lot like instant rabies combined with LSD.

  “You remind me of a jaguar,” she finally said.

  I stopped and grinned. “Lithe and dangerous as a jungle cat?”

  “They fall asleep in the trees, thinking they are safe. A savvy hunter need only yank them down by the tail for a fancy new jacket. So I say to you, Demi: don’t let anyone yank your tail.”

  With a curt nod, I was dismissed. I didn’t really want to keep walking, though. I could already see Charlie Dregs sitting, distant and forlorn, by his puppets. Mr. Punch sagged over an arm as Charlie retied the hideous little man’s strings. When Charlie’s eyes caught me, I stopped, very much against my will. He always looked so sad and hopeful to me, like one of the Beatles crossed with a basset hound. I’d heard stories that he’d loved a girl once and lost her, a Stranger like me. Something drew me toward him against my will.

  “So it’s true, then, Demi. You’re leaving?”

  I mustered up a smile. “Yep.”

  “Need an escort?”

  “I’m a big girl.”

  “Even big girls can find bad ends, lass. Promise me you’ll take care.”

&
nbsp; “I promise.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder, and his mournful eyes focused on my wrist before squeezing shut as if in pain. He patted my hand with his red glove. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Demi. I really do.”

  That’s what finally drove home the sadness: realizing that it might be the last time I would see Charlie Dregs. I’d never really looked at him as a man—more like a fixture, a dedicated dog, a cousin, maybe. I’d never seen him as a man, but now, for a moment, I could see the boy he had once been.

  “What was her name, Charlie?”

  He looked down, rubbed a heart tattooed on his wrist. “Lydia.”

  He was gone in a flash, his shirt a spot of white against the moors. I didn’t want to be like him, a pitied cog in the grand machinery of the caravan, joyless and ageless and never smiling, following Emerlie the tightrope walker around like an unwanted guard dog that never received even the stingiest pat on the head. Seeing that moment of grief in him hardened my heart further. I would get to Paris, somehow.

  Looking around at the rest of the carnivalleros who had become family, I gave up and sought refuge in my own car. I didn’t have much to pack in the trunk I shared with Cherie, but the wagon looked pathetically empty without our crap strewn all over it. It reminded me of the way my childhood bedroom had looked after I packed for college. Empty, like a cicada’s husk. Unnaturally tidy. My mom had cried then—a lot. I hadn’t. But I did now.

  At lunchtime, I redid the tear-smudged kohl around my eyes and walked to the dining car. Even without a Bludman’s keen hearing and nose, I would have known that a party waited within. It wasn’t often someone left the caravan—and if they did, they disappeared after dark or were dragged off, shackled in the custody of the Coppers. With a deep breath, I smoothed my bangs and opened the door.

  The entire caravan was there, shouting, “Surprise!”

  I put on my most professional smile and pretended that I wasn’t going to miss them. The jerks.

  * * *

  I was awake and ready before dawn the next morning, prodding Cherie with a foot until she tumbled from the top bunk and landed in a Bludman’s crouch. She hissed at me like an angry cat, and I just poked her in the nose with my toe. With a sigh of resignation, she stood and yawned.