The Puppeteer put his hands up. “I have done nothing wrong, for once.”
Jack took a step forward, his fists clenched. “You’re a lying, evil, manipulative son of a bitch. Get the hell away from her. We’re not going to let you trick another person into one of your sick deals.”
“Is this about Hernandez? Still?” Simon rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. Find another drinking buddy, Jackie boy, and get over yourself. It’s been thirty-eight years! As for the girl, I have not harmed her.”
Aaron looked at her. “Are you all right? We heard screaming.”
She nodded weakly, rubbing her sore shoulder. It was going to be absolute misery tomorrow. “He was helping me. I dislocated my shoulder in the maze when I ran into the wall. He was just putting it back into place. I asked him to do it.”
“See?” Simon pointed at her. “I didn’t do a thing. She asked me to hurt her.” He smiled. “She’s into that kind of thing.” She used her good arm to smack him in the chest. He laughed. She almost smiled. And if it had been a normal day, and she hadn’t just had her friend’s life threatened, and if she hadn’t just been terrorized by a man-eating murder-circus, she might have. She might have even laughed.
“Leave her alone.” Jack was still glaring a hole into Simon. “Get away from her. Now.”
“Oh, my dear, sweet Rigger.” Simon sat in the grass next to Cora and, bending a knee, draped an arm over it. “I would very much like to see you try to make me.”
What happened next Cora didn’t quite understand. Two men, one of whom looked like the kind of muscle-bound a person gets from working with heavy equipment all day, just stared at Simon and…backed away. As if Simon had called their bluff.
Two guys versus one. Sure, Simon had the weird…string thing. But now she was beginning to suspect all the people who “worked” at Harrow Faire were a little more than normal.
But it was fear she saw in Aaron’s and Jack’s faces. Fear of the man who was sitting casually in the grass next to her like they were having a spring picnic.
“Ringmaster will hear about this,” Jack said in an angry hiss.
“Ringmaster already knows.” Simon lay back in the grass and folded his arms behind his head. “We have a deal. But go and ask him yourself if you’re so desperate to see me foiled at every turn.” He gestured a hand to shoo them away. “Go on, now. You’re ruining the mood.”
The two men glanced at Cora before turning and walking away. She was too confused and overwhelmed to really absorb what had just happened. She felt sick. Her shoulder burned like it was on fire. “Simon?”
He sat back up. “Yes, darling?”
She rolled her eyes at his overeager tone. “I could really use a drink.”
“Ah! A perfectly reasonable request. And quite prudent, considering the amount of pain you are clearly in.” He got up, brushed the bits of grass off his suit, and bowed extravagantly. “As the lady commands, so shall I do. I will return shortly. Try not to pine over me too much while I’m gone.”
She rolled her eyes.
He walked away, leaving her there by herself to think. And sulk. Mostly, she was sulking. She pulled her camera around and was glad to see she hadn’t shattered it in her mad dash through the mirror maze. Flicking it on, she only found photos of the maze. None of the weird phenomenon it had shown her inside.
Scooting back until she had her back up against the tree, she sighed. Trent was in serious danger, and she didn’t know how to help him. But it had tried to tell her. She shut her eyes as she tried to picture the images that had been on her camera. The first one, she had already played out.
The mirror had shown her an image of herself that she had barely recognized. Not only because of the weird outfit and the contortionist tricks, but the smile. It had been a real one. A happy one.
Cora couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled like that.
Chronic pain lead to many things. Loss of sleep. Loss of hobbies, and for her, her livelihood. And it also tended to result in things like anxiety and depression. And she had both in spades. But the girl in the mirror had looked unrecognizable to her, not because of the outfit, but because of how much life burned in that version’s gray eyes.
The second photo had been of Simon’s tent.
The third was of a weird caravan, circus train, boxcar looking thing. With a number zero painted on the door.
Does this place want me to make a deal with Simon? Is that what this is about? It wants me to trade something to him in exchange for Trent’s life…She sighed. She wanted to cry again.
“My lady! Alcohol has arrived.”
She jerked in surprise. Looking up, Simon was standing there with two large paper cups with straws sticking out of them. He handed her one. It smelled like lemonade and vodka. She forced herself to smile at him. “Thank you.”
He sat on the grass next to her and sipped his drink. “I thought you might like it. Since you seem to enjoy it made with limes. I will admit that is superior, but we only have the lemonade here.”
“You really were in my dreams last night?”
“Mmhm,” he said through the straw as he sipped it again. He stirred it for a second. “I know this is all a great deal to absorb. What did you see in the hall of mirrors that frightened you so badly?”
“Your fucking shadow.”
“He wasn’t—” He growled. “I have told him inappropriate actions with unsuspecting people is unacceptable.”
She blinked. And then laughed. “No. That’s not what I meant. But that’s also disgusting, and I don’t want to think about it too hard.”
He smiled. “Ah. You meant it as an insult. Forgive me. It’s hard to tell with him sometimes.” Simon sipped the drink. “He is harmless. A good startle and general irritation are all he is capable of mustering.”
“It wasn’t the only thing I saw. I took some photos, but they changed again, like earlier today, and—” Whoops. Oh, well. Cat out of the bag and all that. She sighed.
“What do you mean, earlier?”
Too late now. Might as well spill it. Maybe Simon could actually help her. “I…took photos here yesterday. And when I looked at the photos today, they were all screwed up. It was like the Faire was abandoned again. But there were photos in the mix that I didn’t take. Ones of the hall of mirrors. It was…asking me to go there.”
He was watching her silently, expression unreadable. After a long pause, he spoke. “You didn’t tell me the whole story earlier. You lied to me, Cora girl. You said you only had the poem to lead you there.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“And here I sit, insulted.” He sipped his lemonade and vodka. Something glittered in what she could see of his eyes. Something excited. “What do you think was talking to you, cupcake?”
“I don’t know. The Faire? It sounds like nonsense.”
“Not at all. Believe me.”
She sighed. She pulled her camera off from where it was slung across her neck and under her left arm and put it in her lap. Flicking through the photos, again, it was just of the maze. Nothing strange was there. “Every time I see something weird on here, it goes away.”