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  A marina—we’re going to be near the water. I hope we get a moment to feel the Mediterranean sand in our toes.

  Charlene exits a huge roundabout and pulls into a rear lot behind a tall, light-blue concrete building. She puts the van in park, and then she and Xavier exchange polite kisses on each other’s cheeks. “See you soon, orphans,” she says, pushing a button on the dash that opens the van’s sliding door.

  Xavier hops out, throws his pack over his shoulder, and gestures us onward. The van drives away as we follow Xavier toward the building. He enters a security code, and then we’re inside, to the stairwell, and up four flights. The carpet runner in the hall we land in looks like it’s seen better days; every other apartment door leaks a new smell, a different blast from music or a TV up too loud. And it’s barely seven in the morning. I can’t imagine how loud this place is going to be when everyone’s awake.

  Xavier stops at the last apartment on the right and unlocks the scuffed black metal door. After ushering us in, he sticks his head out and looks up and then down the hallway before locking three dead bolts. He clicks on a pendant lamp over a short bar that separates a small kitchen from the living room. The main seating area hosts a well-worn plaid couch with two mismatched chairs, a lopsided bookshelf with a bunch of paperbacks shoved into it, windows covered in tired blue drapes, and a coffee table with initials carved into its top. The dingy white-tile floor needs a good scrubbing.

  But pulling back the drapes, it’s the view that sells this place. Overlooking a marina, and what I assume is our venue, judging by the festive circus colors of the pointed tent roof and the spire flags flapping above long, ornate locked gates. Beyond is a hint of the glistening Mediterranean stretching toward the horizon.

  A circus and an ocean? How long can we stay?

  “Bedrooms down the hall—take the one with two beds.” Xavier nods toward a short hallway. He drops his pack and pulls his cell from the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. He then proceeds to crack a window so he can smoke.

  “How long will we be staying here?” I ask.

  “I don’t know yet,” Xavier says. “Put your packs down and have a seat.” He points at the rickety wooden dining table that looks older than Delia.

  Once Xavier has finished his cigarette, he digs into his pack and pulls out a mesh-covered cylinder that looks like a speaker. He turns it on, but no music comes out. Another sound-masking device?

  “Charlene is La Vérité but she does not know who you are or what you’re truly doing here. No one does. Let’s keep it that way,” Xavier says. “I have made contact with the first Guardian. I am working out the details of our meeting. Once we collect the item we need, we’re off to our next stop.”

  “How long? Until we meet the Guardian?” I ask.

  “I will tell you when I have an answer,” he says, spinning his silver lighter on the tabletop. “In the meantime, you will be working.”

  “In what capacity?” Henry asks.

  “In whatever capacity Charlene says.”

  “What about our packs?” I ask. “We can’t wear them while we’re working. That would look too obvious.”

  Xavier lights another cigarette and blows the smoke toward a yellowed ceiling. “It is not ideal, but I have a secure trunk in the room where you will be sleeping. Opens to my thumbprint only. Would I prefer you have the items on you at all times? Of course. But that is not practical, or smart. Now, please get ready to work. I have to make a phone call.”

  Xavier stands and rummages through his pack once again, this time pulling out a satellite phone.

  “If that’s Croix-Mare, please ask about Baby.”

  Xavier nods and turns away to dial. Henry wraps an arm around my shoulders and kisses the side of my head as he directs me down the hall. In the room with two lumpy twin beds covered in rough wool blankets, there are dark-green, long-sleeved shirts with the Circ’s logo, one for each of us folded on the pillows. We also find Xavier’s secure trunk, pull what we need from our packs, and stash them within. We turn away from one another long enough to change our shirts.

  “We’ve not even been gone two days, and already someone has died,” I say.

  The bed squeaks as Henry sits. “Thierry was doing his job, Gen. He was a good and brave man who served the people and the cause he loved.”

  The words sound pretty, but they do nothing to relieve the guilt and grief.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do if the Etemmu keeps finding me. I don’t know what they think it’ll achieve to keep torturing me like this.”

  “Same thing they’ve always done. Same thing they did to your mother,” Henry says, his voice barely above a whisper. “They want to break you down.”

  “I can’t be responsible for more people dying. I can’t stop worrying about it getting to you.”

  “Don’t find things to worry about, Genevieve. I can’t see it—whatever magic is keeping it from me is clearly still in place—but if it happens, we’ll fight it. Together.”

  He clasps my hand in his and kisses the back of my fingers.

  Xavier whistles from down the hall.

  “That’s our cue,” I say, a deep breath in to prepare for whatever is coming once we step foot outside this crappy apartment.

  “Let’s go make friends and influence people,” Henry teases, standing and then pulling me to my feet.

  “Let’s concentrate on staying alive until bedtime.”

  Henry offers his gloved fist for a bump. “Solid plan.”

  16

  CIRC DE L’ANELL D’ORO IS ADORABLE.

  The flat-faced entry tent is separated from the wide concrete-brick walkway by a short picket fence and held steady by thick gray guy-wires anchored to the ground. Its canvas is in deep shades of red, purple, yellow, and green, the circus’s name huge, painted in gold across the façade. The eggshell-colored awning flags wave good morning in the early breeze. Converted, old-time train cars stretch out three to each side of the main entry, light strings in red, green, and purple hanging from their curved black tar paper roofs. Tall palm trees provide shade, chilly right now but it probably feels awesome when the sun is on full blast. A low, decorative retaining wall mosaicked in rainbow-colored tile provides an inviting entry into a public space that will likely be full of tourists in a few hours.

  As we walk through the front gate, people dressed in forest-green shirts with the Circ de l’Anell d’Oro logo turn to look at us, almost all waving at Xavier. The main entry opens into a wide tented space with wooden support pillars and dark-red carpet underfoot. More converted train cars, three to each side, offer everything from stuffed animals to boxed meals. Xavier doesn’t stop or slow to let us take it all in—I wish I had Baby’s phone with me so I could sneak photos for Vi and Ash.

  Xavier takes us into the main performance tent. It’s an intimate tension-frame tent with gallery-in-the-round seating, again with the string lights extending from the cupola and fanning out over the audience. The single dirt-floor ring is big enough to accommodate a decent number of performers, but my Gertrude would never fit.

  God, I miss them so much.

  I elbow Henry just before he steps into the ring. “Remember—right foot first. For luck,” I remind him.

  We follow Xavier toward the rear of the ring, bordered by a detailed wooden set piece that holds the weighted curtains separating performance area from backstage. Xavier holds the curtain aside, and we walk through—I’m surprised at how much space there is to move around back here! Way more than what we had in our two-ring tent, before the three-ring behemoth that Triad Partners brought in.

  The circus is shutting down. Everything is falling apart, Vi said in her text. How can I ever fix this?

  Xavier turns quickly and looks back and forth between us. “Talk as little as possible.”

  “Buenos dias!” Charlene says, standing with a man probably around Ted’s age who looks like he’s never heard of sunscreen. But when he smiles, it’s wide and friendly. “Excellent. Yo
u found your shirts. Diana, you will be with me today”—I’m confused for a beat before remembering I have a new name—“We will be cleaning out the costume trailer because it’s a mess. Jack, you’re going to be with Damon to work with the grounds crew. We’re close to the ocean, and the city, so there’s always bird poop to be scrubbed and floors to be swept. Come!”

  I turn to Xavier. “Where will you be?”

  “I’m always near.” And then he’s off.

  I follow Charlene out into a partial-grass courtyard bordered by more converted train cars. The one marked VESTUARIO—inside, I’m not surprised to find it just as messy as she promised. I’ve cleaned out the costume department at Cinzio many times. Today it’s a lot of cleaning out stuff crammed into overhead compartments, sweeping out cobwebs (and hoping they’re empty), washing handprints and lipstick marks from counters and cupboard fronts, and organizing costumes. This show employs a lot of acrobats and contortionists, judging by the outfits.

  Charlene is not chatty. She’s not unfriendly, but she gives me a job and I set to it, hearing Xavier’s words in my head to say as little as possible. And working gives me some quiet time where my hands and joints don’t burn with electricity, where I can almost forget why we’re here.

  But it also gives me time to think about Thierry, and his family, if he has one, and the loss to Nutesh and Hélène. Because of me. Because of the Etemmu.

  And what about Baby? Xavier didn’t say anything about him after his call. Does this mean the news is bad?

  Once we’re done in the costume trailer, we break for paella and tapas in the courtyard area. Henry and I inhale our food—seriously, some of the best I’ve ever eaten—but the thing that might make me move to Spain forever: churros dipped in chocolate.

  And then we’re back at work, repeating the cleaning spree in the makeup department, washing more mirrors and purging drawers, more hands-and-knees scrubbing of the old vinyl floor, more organizing of grease paints and makeup. They use a lot of feathers and glue-on sequins here . . . Delia would’ve fit right in.

  I’m cleaning underneath one of the makeup counters when I hear the commotion outside. I wait for a second, my heart pounding as the voices get closer, and louder. Setting my scrub brush aside, I look out the window just as two men plus Henry carry an obviously injured fourth man into the courtyard, lying him gingerly on top of one of the picnic-style tables. Within a few seconds, blood dribbles onto the white tablecloth that hosted our lunch just a few hours ago.

  I run down the three trailer steps, alongside a dozen other people responding to the hollers in Spanish.

  “¡Necesitamos ayuda! ¡Ayúdanos! Help!”

  Charlene flies out an adjoining trailer, her face a mix of panic and confusion. Henry stands off to the side, eyes wide. All of the men have blood on their boots.

  “What happened?” Charlene yells. One of the men, covered in muscles and tattoos and a black beard that reaches his sternum, rattles off whatever has befallen the young man in the Circ uniform now motionless and bleeding on the table.

  I can help him.

  I yank off my cleaning gloves, just as the whiff of burned rubber fills my nose, and step over to the unconscious man. Hands on his head, I feel that the back of his skull has caved in; there’s a central hole about an inch and a half across, like he fell from higher up and landed on something pointed—a rock? A guy-wire bolt? I don’t feel brain matter yet—a lot of blood making his hair sticky—but two fingers to his throat show he still has a pulse.

  I can save him.

  “Diana, get back!” Charlene tries to push me aside. I yank away without making eye contact.

  “I can help him!” I say, my eyes on the man’s as-yet-pink face, the star in my head charging as I get ready to lay my hands against his broken skull.

  And then Xavier grips my shoulder and whispers gruffly, close to my ear. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop. Step away.”

  I whirl on him. “And just let him die?” I know it’s a risk, but I can’t walk away. Not when I can help.

  He tries to pull me back, but my bloodstained hands are charged like resuscitation paddles. Henry must see what’s about to happen because he rushes over just as I grab Xavier’s bare wrist and deliver a jolt that puts him on his knees, teeth gritted.

  “Stop!” Henry shouts, grabbing my upper arm so my grip releases. Xavier falls forward onto his hands, gasping. I’ll deal with him after I save this man’s life.

  Charlene barks commands in Spanish, and the bearded guy has another employee’s shirt pushed against the back of the injured man’s head to try and control the bleeding.

  “Please,” I say to Charlene, my eyes boring into hers. “I can save him, I swear.”

  And without waiting for her response, I step next to the table again, slide my hands under his head to cradle it in my palms, and close my eyes, shutting out the yells and questions coming from the people circled around the courtyard.

  The sear of white-hot healing energy shoots out of the star in my head, racing down my arms and through my fingers, clenching my jaw with migraine-level pain. It feels stronger than ever before—is this the marriage of the healing ability with the new electricity? I really am a sideshow freak now.

  I envision stitching the fragments back together, the skull bone growing to cover the hole, the brain calming itself so it doesn’t swell from the trauma, the skin smoothing over, the pain leaving this man’s body and melting into the table-top like a forgotten snow cone.

  The longer I go, the weaker I get, but I can feel the hole shrinking; I can feel this man’s pulse strengthening through the contact between us. When the stink of burned hair wafts upward, I know it’s time to stop.

  I open my eyes, and the man lying on the table stares back up at me, blinking and confused—but alive.

  And then I notice how painfully quiet it has become. A lot of stunned faces looking at me, mouths agape, just as my knees buckle and I stagger to the ground.

  Henry is there is an instant, and he shoves a lemon-lime soda into my hand. “Drink,” he says, popping the top and holding it against my lips. “Drink.”

  I swallow a few gulps, grateful as the sugar works through my system and the twinkly lights in my peripheral vision retreat.

  “Deep breaths . . . keep drinking,” Henry says. “Nice work. You saved him.”

  I smile, eyes still focused on my feet stretched out in front of me as I wait for the spinny feeling to stop.

  But then Xavier is there, and he hoists me to my feet. “That was a very dangerous thing you just did.”

  I find the strength to pull out of his grip. “I couldn’t just let him die.” What I don’t say: Too many people are dying around me and I can’t do anything to save them. This one, I could.

  I turn to look at the young man, now sitting up on the picnic table rubbing the back of his head, wiping blood from his face and neck onto the shirt the bearded man was using just a few moments ago. A low murmur sweeps through the crowd, but everyone is looking at me.

  Charlene steps close, her hands out in front of her, but she stops before making contact. “I should’ve known. You have your mother’s eyes,” she says.

  She pivots on her heel, and as she does, almost everyone gathered digs under their shirts and pulls out a key hanging from a chain. They all drop to one knee, their heads bowed.

  “Welcome to La Vérité, Genevieve,” Charlene says.

  17

  XAVIER’S GRIP ON MY ARM IS PAINFUL AS HE DRAGS ME BACK ACROSS THE wide busy street toward our apartment building. Henry is behind us, struggling to keep up.

  “Let go of me,” I growl.

  “Not a chance,” he says. “And don’t even think about zapping me again. Keep those damn gloves on.”

  Xavier practically chases us up the four flights of stairs—I guess there’s no such thing as an elevator here?—and down the hall to the apartment. Once we’re inside, he dead-bolts the door and turns the sound mask on again.

  “What the
hell were you thinking? Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “I saved a man’s life. The ambulance wouldn’t have arrived in time, he would’ve bled out there on that table, or worse, his brain would’ve swollen through the hole and he’d end up with a permanent brain injury and be useless to his family.”

  Xavier lights a cigarette, pacing between me near the kitchen bar and the shoddy plaid couch, and slams his silver lighter onto the counter.

  “Wonderful! You’re a hero! Bravo!”

  The fire in my chest flares; I clench and unclench my fists.

  “I swear to Hades, if you even think about touching me with those hands again, I will cut them off,” he says, rubbing his wrist. It’s red—I burned him.

  Good.

  “Can we just calm down here for a moment? Take a breath to figure out what has happened?” Henry says.

  “What has happened is she just outed you. Everyone now knows that Diana is not Diana at all—a lot of these people knew your mother, or at least they knew of her.”

  “Why is that a bad thing? You saw them—they all dropped to one knee. They were all wearing the keys,” I say, pulling my own vérité key out from under my shirt.

  “It’s terrific you’re ready to hold hands and sing songs, but the reality is, we don’t always know who is on Team Genevieve. The people without La Vérité membership—the Circ people who have no idea what is going on, other than the fact that they just witnessed a miracle—don’t you think those people are tweeting their little hearts out right now? It’s only going to take one photograph or video of you standing there with that man who should’ve met his god today. ‘Young circus worker miraculously heals coworker with her bare hands.’” He bites out his fake headline. “Did you miss the part about international law enforcement looking for you both? Or about Lucian having allies all over the world who would love to get in his good favor by bringing back your heads alongside two of the most precious artifacts ever created in human history? You just made Lucian’s job so much easier!”