Freedom was right there in front of her. But it felt like it was a universe away.
She was so close.
She could see her car. But the rest of the parking lot was empty. The park was closed now. She must have been at it for hours. Everyone had left. Everyone had left her there. The realization that a whole park’s worth of people had walked right past her while she was desperate for help settled on her like a bag of bricks.
Cora doubled over, put her head in her hands, and wept.
She’d never had a mental breakdown or a panic attack before, but here she was. And she was pretty damn sure she was having both at the same time.
A hand settled on her shoulder. “C’mon, toots. It’s not worth all this.”
“Don’t touch me!” She shoved Aaron away.
“Okay, okay.” He took another step back and raised his hands. “But come on, let’s get you inside, make you some hot tea, and—”
“Leave me alone.” She put her head down and laced her fingers into her hair, shutting her eyes tight. “I just want to go home, please…please let me go.”
“I wish I could, Cora. But I can’t. Nobody can. Not even Mr. Harrow. Once he or the Faire makes a choice…that’s that. There’s no going back. C’mon now, get up off the ground. Let’s take you to your boxcar, and you can get some sleep.”
“I’m not going anywhere with any of you.” She lifted her head to glare at him. She realized he wasn’t alone. Ten paces behind him was a small crowd. She blinked and looked at them all in astonishment. She recognized Jack, Ludwig, and Turk. She saw the old fortune teller, Maggie, and the bearded woman, Bertha. Everyone else was new to her. There must have been almost twenty of them.
They were a rainbow of bizarre oddities. Each one seemed to be strange in a unique way. They ran the gamut. There was a short, dark-haired woman standing next to the beautiful blonde woman Cora had seen performing on the metal hoop. Both of them were wearing bedazzled leotards. The short woman had a man next to her, who had an arm around her waist.
She saw a man and a woman who were standing very close to each other. It took her a second to realize they were literally joined at the hip and the shoulder. Which was messed up, because she knew that wasn’t how conjoined twins worked. But there they were anyway.
Another man smiled brightly at her, his teeth white against dark skin. He was shirtless and covered in tattoos and piercings. An unlit torch hung at his side.
A clown with the painted face of a crying skull watched her, his face twisted into an overblown frown.
A beautiful woman with a long silk gown was looking at her with all the compassion of a statue.
A man with strange, somewhat blunted features watched her through eyes that caught the light very oddly. There was something feral about him, but she couldn’t put her finger on what was exactly wrong with him, either.
There was one person missing. Simon.
More small favors.
It was all too much. “Go away…all of you. Leave me alone.” She wanted to scream at them. She wanted to sound firm. Instead, her voice sounded small, broken, and afraid.
Aaron started walking toward the pack of people and gestured with both arms for them to turn around and go the other way. “Shoo. All of you. Let’s go. We can all introduce ourselves later. Give the girl some space to breathe. She’s had an absolutely shit week, and she’s not going anywhere.”
Everyone obeyed, murmuring quietly to each other while they broke off and began walking away. All except the Ringmaster, who patted Aaron on the shoulder as he passed. When everyone else had gone, Turk walked up to her but kept a respectful distance.
“Let me go,” she begged him. He seemed like the guy in charge. He had to know how to let her out. “Please.”
“I can’t, my dear. You were chosen for this the moment you walked through the gate. It was only a matter of time. But you’re safe. No one is going to hurt you anymore.”
“Simon was going to eat me, or whatever the fuck he was trying to do.”
“That was then, and now things have changed.” He sighed and took off his top hat to run his hand over his slick black hair. “Simon can’t hurt you now without hurting himself, and he’s very keen on keeping himself in one piece. He’s the most valuable thing in his life.”
“Why can’t I leave? I don’t understand.” She was shaking. She was exhausted, she was starving, and her shoulder felt like it was on fire from bashing into the invisible barrier so many times. “This isn’t possible.”
“You’ve really taken a left turn out of all the things you think are possible, Cora. I hate to break it to you, but…well.” He gestured at the gate. “That world is gone to you now. And you’re gone from it.”
“I need to use your phone. I need to call the police.”
“The only phone we have won’t work for you unless the Faire lets it. The same reason you’re not allowed outside. The Faire takes who it wants, and it keeps who it takes. It doesn’t trust you yet.”
“I don’t know how much you paid Trent to pretend he didn’t know me.”
“We didn’t do a thing. You don’t exist in that world anymore. Every trace of you is gone. Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you. They don’t know you…no one will. You’re one of us now, Cora, and this is your home. There is no going back.”
“This can’t be real.” Tears welled in her eyes again, and she let them fall. Whatever. “Please, make it stop.”
“I wish I could. I really do wish I could.” He shook his head sadly. “Take as much time as you need to get your thoughts together. When you have questions, come talk to me.”
And with that, he turned and left.
She wanted to get up and try climbing the gates. Maybe she could find a forklift and drive it through the wooden barrier. Fuck “magic,” she was going to get out of here. But she felt small, she felt weak, and she felt exhausted. Whatever had happened to her—whatever the Ringmaster had done to her—it had already left her in a heap.
She knew she should keep fighting.
Maybe the fact that she couldn’t bring herself to do any of those things made her weak. She didn’t know.
She hung her head and cried.
It was another twenty minutes of that when the world decided it wanted to officially make her night even worse. The skies opened up, and rain began pouring down on her. Instantly, she was soaked.
She looked up at the dark skies over head. “Oh, fuck you!”
She had officially devolved into yelling at the sky. Great. She really was losing her mind. She lowered her head again and was glad at least she didn’t have to bother crying anymore. The world was doing that for her.
What was she supposed to do? Get up and keep fighting? She had thrown herself against an invisible barrier until she couldn’t stand anymore. Was she supposed to give up? Claw out her eyes with her car keys? Go find somebody and threaten to slit their throat until they found a way to set her free?
Nobody seemed to be thrilled she was there. Every face in that crowd was looking at her with a mix of curiosity, pity, and sadness. It was like they all felt bad for her. Like they didn’t want this to happen, either.
But why? What had they done to her? She had no answers to anything. All she knew was that through the rain she could see her car, but it might as well have been a mirage on the desert sands.