Asa had been wrong about the details of our failed relic-smuggling operation. But I wasn’t sure he had been wrong about the rotten core of it. Shallow desires—a nice house, the clinic, the lifestyle, the dream—had put both Ben and me on this path. I mean, yes, they symbolized other things—security, happiness, love, and success. But couldn’t those things be had without the trappings?
I lay awake as the light beyond my closed eyelids turned from pale yellow to dark orange to tar black. I thought about where we were going, and whether I was going to survive what lay ahead. Which begged the question: What was I going to do if I did?
CHAPTER TEN
“Last chance for supplies before we arrive,” Asa announced, jerking me from restless sleep full of fractured dreams. I opened my eyes as we passed a Walmart sign.
“I’m good,” Ben said sleepily, rubbing at his face.
“Yeah?” Asa hit an overhead light. His crooked profile was etched with contempt as he spoke. “You think your bride there would say the same?”
Ben glanced at me. “You need anything?”
My cheeks were hot. “Honestly? Some clothes that fit me. And clean underwear,” I said, then gasped as the shard of pain in my chest flared lava-hot.
Asa winced, and I wondered if he could feel the magic that was tearing me apart inside. “I have to buy a few things for the transaction,” he said to Ben. “If you’re too tired to get up off your ass and get what she needs, I will. But it’ll take longer.” He cut me a sidelong glance and quickly looked away. “Doesn’t seem like a good idea.”
“All right.” Ben slid the passenger door open, got out, and closed it again.
The noise and impact of the slam forced me to stifle a groan, but the sound was gone in an instant, engulfing me in quiet. “You felt the magic just now, didn’t you?” I murmured as Asa reached for his door handle.
He raised his head and stared out the windshield. “Been feeling it for hours.”
“Bad?”
“Definitely not good.” He looked over his shoulder, and I caught the sheen of sweat on his brow. “Try to keep still. We’ll be back in a sec. Gracie will be right here. She’ll eat anyone who tries to bother you.”
“Can you undo her harness?”
I needed softness. Uncomplicated love. A tiny bit of joy. Things that only she could give me right now.
“Yeah.” He reached over and unfastened Gracie from her perch in the front seat, then bent to whisper something in her barely there ears. She whined and licked his stubbly jaw. “Go ahead,” he murmured to her, and then he was gone, shutting the door so gently that the sound was only a soft click.
A moment later she was by my side, licking my hands and laying her large head on my shoulder. I smiled as tears burned my eyes, my fingers curling into the loose skin at her throat. “Thanks, lovely girl,” I whispered.
She raised her head and licked my cheek, and I took a deep breath in an effort not to sob. Gracie’s doggy smell was laced with the scent of Asa, a mix of soap, sweat, something fruity, something deep and green. It reminded me of all the times I had been close to him, how at first it had been terrifying, how by the end it had felt as necessary as breathing, how when I first got home from our strange odyssey I had tried to imagine this exact scent and failed a million times.
Ben had asked me if anything had happened with Asa, and I had known what he meant. Something simple—had I kissed him? (Yes. Well. He kissed me. And I wasn’t really myself at the time. But still. Wow.) Had I wanted him? (Oh, that was complicated.) But when it came to Asa, nothing was as simple as yes or no, black or white, always or never. My feelings for him were raw and terrifying and impossible. They didn’t fit with what I wanted or where I was going. And Asa himself, well, maybe it was just my small-town naïveté, but I had no clue what he would want, what he would demand, what would please him.
“And it’s none of my business, is it?” I whispered.
Gracie whined. Then she growled. As the van’s door slid open, she let out a ferocious snarl.
“Jesus Christ,” yelped Ben.
I laid my hand on Gracie’s back. “It’s okay, girl.”
Gracie growled again, but then she flopped down next to the bench seat. She eyed Ben as he climbed in and sat down, carrying a large Walmart bag. He offered her his hand, which she leaned forward to sniff once before making a doggy harrumph and laying her head on her forepaws.
Ben laughed. “She’s just like her master, isn’t she?” He held up the bag. “Got you some stuff.” He closed the door. “The windows are tinted. You can change.”
I pawed through the bag and fought back my disappointment as I realized that Ben had gotten me size-six everything, which was the size I was supposed to be. Now, though . . .
“Is everything okay? I got exactly what you wanted. I also picked you up some sandals and a bra.” He smiled proudly. “Thirty-two C, right?”
Not anymore. I peered at the lacy cups. “Thanks.” I turned away from him as I shimmied Daria’s loaner panties down my legs, then tore open the underwear package. The panties were loose around my hips, but they were clean, so I wasn’t complaining. I tugged a pair of sweats up my legs next and tied the drawstrings tight to make sure they stayed up.
Ben cleared his throat. “I overheard Asa in the hardware department. He was on the phone haggling with someone about a price.”
I pulled my dress off and reached for the bra. “So?”
“I know you had some kind of experience with him, but what if he plays too rough as he pulls this magic out of you? Asa’s always been out for himself.”
“People love to believe that about him.” My hands pressed the loose cups over my breasts. “But it’s total bull, Ben. How can you of all people say that? The night you broke his nose—the only reason he was there was because he brought you home after finding you in a magic den.”
“That was one night, Mattie. There were several before when that wasn’t how things went. After my dad kicked him out, Asa broke in a few times to steal cash and stuff to sell. He didn’t care that we didn’t have much money in the first place—whatever we had, Asa felt entitled to it.”
“Why did your dad kick him out?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“Dad came home early from work one day and caught Asa fooling around on the couch. With a guy.” Ben snorted. “The kid who edited the school newspaper, actually.”
My shoulders slumped. I had actually suspected something like that. “Poor Asa.” He had been only sixteen or seventeen, and I could picture him, skinny and sensitive and trying to figure out who he was—and having the father who was supposed to love and take care of him descend on him like a ton of bricks.
“Poor Asa? My dad nearly died of a heart attack. If it had been a girl, he might have cheered, but a guy?”
“Who cares, as long as they both wanted to be there?”
“Do you have any idea how old-fashioned my dad was?”
I stared out the window. “So old-fashioned that he kicked his own son out on the streets for the crime of wanting someone who didn’t fit his narrow preconceived ideas?”
Ben chuckled. “I remember being as confused as hell, because the week before, I’d seen Asa making out behind the arcade with some skater girl. And all of a sudden he was gay? Kind of blew my thirteen-year-old mind.”
“I don’t think Asa’s gay.” Like everything about him, Asa’s sexuality seemed complicated. Impossible to categorize or pigeonhole. Now I knew for a fact he’d hooked up with guys, but when we had been together, I could have sworn . . . “This isn’t actually any of our business.”
“You’re the one who wanted to know.”
I rolled my eyes and yanked the T-shirt over my head. The pain was getting worse, and with even that movement I ended up hunched over. Ben tried to help me up, but I screamed when he put pressure on my skin. Gracie leaped to her feet and started to bark, sharp, percussive bursts of noise that ma
de my head pound. I retched, my ears roaring and my blood shrieking through my veins like hurricane-force winds.
“Mattie, Asa’s coming back,” Ben said loudly, over the noise of Gracie’s growls and my whimpers. “I don’t trust him. Just . . . if it comes down to it, we might need to escape quickly, okay?”
I let out a shaky breath as the pain began to subside a little. “Most of Asa’s plans end that way.”
“I mean us, Mattie. We can escape. If we can get away with the relic—”
“No.”
“You have no idea where he’s taking you, Mattie. You have no idea if he intends to get you out alive.”
Gracie barked at Ben, baring her teeth as I turned to him. In the darkness, his eyes glittered with desperation.
“Are you worried about me?” I asked. “Or the money?”
He sat back as if I’d slapped him. “Mattie. I know I’ve screwed up a billion times, but you can’t doubt my feelings. I’ve spent months listening to you moan my brother’s name in your sleep, and I haven’t said a word. Because I love you. Because I get it—you guys did what you did for me, and who was I to complain? I’ve spent this whole time hoping you would come back to me. I’ve worked my ass off to give you the kind of home and life you always said you wanted, all in an attempt to remind you of what we had before I screwed it all up. All of that, everything—I did it for you.”
“Why did you do this to me, then?”
Right then Asa opened the driver’s door and hopped inside. He went still when he saw Ben and me sitting there, our postures tense and our eyes shining with emotion. “Aw. Lovers’ quarrel? You guys need a few minutes?”
“Have some decency, Asa. Can’t you see Mattie’s upset?”
“Yeah, Ben. I see she’s upset. I also see that she’s a big girl who can speak for herself.”
“Shut up, both of you,” I said thickly, fighting the nausea.
“I’m sorry, babe,” Ben mumbled, running his hand down my back. “You okay? You want me to run in and get you some Advil?”
I pulled away from the touch of his hands on my fragile skin as Asa said, “Advil. Good call. Bet that’ll fix her right up.”
“Shut up, Asa,” Ben snapped.
Gracie barked at him, her lips peeled back from her impressive teeth, which were only a foot or so from Ben’s calf. “Can you get her secured up front, please?” he asked Asa. “She seems to think I’m a threat to Mattie.”
Asa stared at his brother, then arched one eyebrow.
Ben cursed. “For the love of God, Asa. I want to get Mattie through this as badly as you do!” In a voice trembling with emotion, he added, “More, in fact.”
Asa’s expression didn’t change, but he pointed to the front passenger seat. “Up here, Gracie.”
She jumped up and obeyed, then sat with her tongue lolling. She eagerly accepted a treat from Asa. “Thanks for holding down the fort, baby girl.” He accepted a lick on the cheek and faced front. “We’ll be there in about an hour. I’ll make sure we’re ready to roll, and then we’ll get this done.”
I shuddered as the reality hit me—if all went as planned, soon I would have to release this magic and let it flow through a conduit and back into the relic. What if it destroyed me on the way out? I wrapped my arms around myself and stared out the window as Asa pulled back onto the road and turned off after a few miles. I’d seen a sign for Williamsburg, so I knew we must be close to the Atlantic Ocean, but I honestly wasn’t an expert in geography. Asa followed one winding gravel road after another. I saw a few signs for a state park, but that was it. Trees thick with late-spring foliage leaned close, and every once in a while the van’s headlights would hit a pair of glowing gold eyes in the distance.
The road got bumpy. Asa drove slowly, but every time the van dipped, I felt as if I were going to shatter. I had one hand braced on the window, and the other clamped over Ben’s knee. He kept muttering for me to breathe, and when we hit a particularly deep pothole and I cried out, he scooted close and held me, trying to mute the impact of the dips and bumps.
“This kind of feels like we’re having a baby,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “At least, this is how I imagined it.”
New tears pricked my eyes. Don’t, I wanted to say. Please don’t bring that up now. Because I had imagined it, too, just another part of my happy little fantasy of how my life would play out, and right now it felt like all of it had been pried away.
“Almost there,” Asa said, his voice devoid of the edge it had carried since he’d first walked back into my life. “It’s just up ahead.”
“Whoa,” Ben said as we passed the trees and found ourselves in a huge clearing surrounded by woods and marked by a faded, splintering sign that said, “Carnival Magia.” “Is this place for real?” His eyes were wide with wonder.
I squinted into the darkness, where I could just make out concentric circles of campers and trailers in the field to our right, the kind you could hook onto a pickup truck. Along either side of the road were shabbily constructed wooden booths, and another sign marked the area as the “Midway and Festival of Freaks.” A few shadowy figures gathered between the booths, watching us as we slowly rolled toward them. On the other side of the midway was a cluster of colorful silk tents lit from inside, their flimsy walls fluttering in the warm night breeze.
“This is amazing,” Ben whispered.
Asa bowed his head, his shoulders shaking. “Bet you’ve never seen anything like this, am I right?”
“What is this place? Why have I never heard of it?”
My brow furrowed. “What are you talking about? This place is—” A dump, straight up.
“That roller coaster is just unbelievable.” Ben was peering up at the black starry sky.
“You see it, Mattie?” asked Asa, his voice strained as he tried not to laugh. “Wanna go for a ride later?”
“See what? There’s nothing there!” I bowed my head as a terrible cracking sensation ran along the front of my chest.
“Aw. I bet you don’t believe in Santa, either—fuck. Hang on, Mattie. Just a few more minutes.” He pulled to an abrupt stop, and a moment later he was kneeling next to me. “Are you gonna be able to walk?”
“Don’t know,” I breathed.
“Ben. Relic.” Asa held out his hand.
But Ben had his nose pressed to the window. “When does this place open in the morning?”
I waved my hand toward Ben’s pants. “It’s in his pocket.”
Asa jammed his hand in Ben’s pocket and came up holding the shining golden locket. Its heavy chain dangled from between his fingers. Ben didn’t seem aware he no longer had possession of it, though. “Mattie! They have bumper boats!”
As Asa rolled his eyes, I finally figured it out. “There’s some sort of Knedas power over this entire place, isn’t there? How is that even possible?”
“They’ve got relics posted on the road starting about a half mile back, and then all over this field, all projecting the same fantasy.”
“Why can’t I see it?” I asked weakly.
“Jacks, baby.” He nudged my chin up so he could look in my eyes. “I think you’re in too much pain to fall for much of anything right now.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.” He turned to Ben. “Get on out, Ben. But stay close. You can explore tomorrow. I’ll buy you some cotton candy and a balloon if you behave.”
“I’ve got my own money for that,” Ben said peevishly as he got out of the van, apparently having forgotten all about me.
With Asa hovering close, I slid along the bench seat and started to stand up, but swayed with dizziness as I caught sight of the ground. Asa guided me out of the vehicle, letting me lean on him to stay upright.
Ben was staring out at the ring of shabby campers, his hands limp at his sides, oblivious as a man and a woman approached from between two of the parked vehicles. The man was wearing a backward red baseball cap and dirty overalls with no shirt underneath. His graying brown hair
stuck out in unwashed clumps above his ears, and his pale eyes were deep set and piercing. The woman wore floral pants and a voluminous blue smock over her wiry body. She had her white hair up in a perfectly round bun at the very top of her head, and on her neck she sported some kind of winding black tattoo.
“Never thought you’d come out this way again,” said the man as he approached Asa, his wide mouth breaking into a snaggletoothed smile that was as ugly as it was uplifting.
“Vernon,” Asa said, holding out his arms and hugging the man. “Never thought I would, either.”
“You gonna be okay here?” asked the woman, eyeing Asa with concern.
That was when I realized his shirt was rapidly soaking through with sweat. “Are you okay?” I whispered.
“Fine,” Asa said, his voice clipped. “Mattie, this is Vernon and Betsy Luben.” Asa waved his hand toward Ben, who was still staring into the distance, in awe of the fictional Carnival Magia. “That’s my brother, Ben. Mattie’s his fiancée. Hey. Hey. Ben!”
Ben started and turned around. “What?”
Asa pulled a water pistol from his thigh pocket and squirted Ben square in the face. Ben spluttered and choked, frantically wiping at the liquid. “Ow! What the hell was that for?”
“Very diluted Strikon juice—to clear your head. Look around.”
Ben obeyed, and cringed in disgust at what he saw. Betsy stiffened at his expression. “We live how we want out here, you get it? Make a good living, too.” Her chin was high, a challenge.