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Do you remember when it started? I do. I didn’t know it at the time, but that day was the beginning. The last day before Hennessy showed up, the last day before Carmen started chasing us, the last day before you and I lost our chances forever. We were doomed the second I announced the show, weren’t we? We were doomed before I even knew I loved you.
Helen set the pen down. She shook her head at herself. These dramatics really suited her former fellows more than they did her. Maybe they’d rubbed off on her. Maybe even now, months after she’d left them, she could still feel their eyes on her, hear their voices, feel the sense of family settled over them like a blanket.
The entire company was gathered in one room to plan this summer’s grand tour. While wildly successful, HEPCO’s performers were difficult to manage. Capricious, eccentric, and colorful, the cast and crew of the “greatest show on earth” made for an... interesting set of coworkers.
Who was Helen kidding? They were a mess.
Her brother, of course, took the opportunity of a few minutes in a room with others to go on at length about either Owain Glendower or circus management, Helen couldn’t be sure. He was equally passionate about both subjects, and his unlucky conversation partner wore the bored and mildly concerned expression that resulted from hearing about either. Whatever he was talking about, what he wasn’t doing was paying attention to Ronan Lynch, who reverted to his natural state in the absence of Gansey’s oversight, which was brooding, glaring, and petting his ghastly raven, Chainsaw. The girl closest to him, one of the psychics’ innumerable family members and new to the circus, edged nervously away from him. On his other side, completely unbothered, Blue Sargent was sporting the worst fashion choices Helen had ever seen- and that was saying a lot.
The outfit, on top of the mounting noise level in the overcrowded room, contributed to Helen’s headache, although to be fair, the headache had begun when Helen had planned this meeting in anticipation of dealing with her coworkers.
Persephone had turned her unnerving stare on an unsuspecting Adam Parrish, who looked entirely too tired to handle her. And Noah-what was his surname again?- seemed to flicker in and out of existence in a disconcerting and distracting manner. Maura looks up from her quibble with Calla to meet Helen’s gaze over the din. Helen knew from experience that while her unshakeable veneer of calm could fool a room of businessmen, a politician’s office, probably Congress itself, should she choose to test it, but she wasn’t working with businessmen or politicians. She was working with psychics and circus artists, the fringe of society, oddities of another world. Maura saw right through her. The psychic raised her voice.
“I need everyone to sit down!” The room dropped where they stood. Helen sent a grateful look her way. She took a deep breath. “Good morning, everyone.” There were at least three snorts at this opening. Helen ignored them. “As you all are aware, Dead Kings did very well, thanks to the hard work of everyone in the show and in management.” She allowed for a brief smattering of applause.
“We want to create an experience even more extraordinary, even more shocking, immersive, impressive for this year’s audience. The motto of this company is Excelsior, or-” The company spoke in unison with her when she said, “Onward and upward!” Helen continued, “We have acquired new equipment, which Adam and I have spent the last day and a half testing and modifying to suit our needs,” said with a nod to Parrish, who half-raised his hand in recognition, “and the owners have finished this year’s budget, so the costume crew can go shopping at your leisure,” Blue and Persephone gained twin looks of determination; Helen did not want to be around for that venture, “and choreography can start up as soon as possible for the newest attraction, the show everyone wants to see this summer, the best thing since sliced bread-” The room collectively inhaled- “Are y’all ready for DECEPTION?!” Her colleagues ignored her slip into the Virginia accent and cheered as one. A new show meant new opportunities, and the concept of this year’s show was well-known to every member of the company in one way or another. Deception. Ganseys like herself and her brother were practiced in the art, seasoned warriors of the courtroom and the parlor and the circus arena. Lynches like Declan and Ronan deceived by omission, stony silence and icy gazes, obfuscating secrets no one could stay innocent knowing. And the psychics? They saw more truth than anyone, but they told the greatest lies in only revealing parts of the truth. It was a balance, like that between a performer and an audience, an individual and their company, calm and violence. A balance like that between dreams and reality.
Times like these make me want to contact my brother again. His last letter was about that summer, too. I don't know why I was so surprised we had a ghost in our midst. Dick wasn't.
Gansey marked out each performer’s cues with colored flags. Adam’s were red, Ronan’s were green, Blue’s were… well, blue. She’d complained that it was too on the nose. Gansey had countered that it would just be confusing to use them for anyone else. Gansey’s sensibility had won out in the end, as it so often did. This was his place in the company- enforce order over the insignificant. This was his place in his family- a voice of reason for his eccentric father, a pillar of support for his driven mother, Helen’s serious and dependable brother. What was his place in history? His place in the world? Was he to be relegated to the equivalent of furniture forever? He was pulled out of his thoughts by the sense of a heavy gaze on the back of his neck. He looked up. Ronan was staring down from the practice jump as though he could see into Gansey’s thoughts. If he could, he was certainly judging them with no mercy. Ronan didn’t have patience for anything contemplative or self-pitying. Tearing his eyes away from Gansey’s, he flipped backward off the jump, twisting in the air, and landed just shy of the mark.
Next up was Noah. Every one of HEPCO’s performers was trained in the art of vanishing, turning oneself into smoke at a moment’s notice, but Noah was the least corporeal of the team. If you weren’t paying attention, he’d fade out entirely. Gansey was paying attention, though, as he stepped up to the trapeze platform. His leap was perfectly timed, but as his hands hit the bar, unbelievably, they seemed to pass through it. The move didn’t look staged or practiced. Gansey shouted and ran forward as though he’d get there in time to cushion Noah’s fall. Ronan swore, but couldn’t descend from the rings to be of any help. Noah’s body twisted in midair, but he didn’t cry out.
"Helen, you were always the last word on morality in our family. Is it wrong that what I felt wasn’t fear, wasn’t concern, but excitement? That I wasn’t thinking of Noah, but the energy in the room instead?"
“How is your spine not broken? How are you not shattered to shards of bone right now?” Ronan’s voice was harsh, but he looked paler than usual. Gansey looked shocked, like he was replaying the last moments in his mind. When the dust settled, Noah got up, and when he faced the other boys his face seemed different- older and younger and not human all at once. “I told you. I’ve been dead for seven years.” Gansey felt chills run down his spine. Dead for seven years. Wasn’t that how he felt? Wasn’t that the feeling he ran from with every sleepless night, every pointless quest, every sold-out show? Noah’s deadness was easier to accept when it was the first realization since Blue, since Adam, since Ronan to make him feel alive. He reached down to offer Noah his hand, pulling him up into an embrace. Up close, Gansey could see Noah’s shaken expression hiding behind the bravado he always seemed to borrow from Ronan. He cursed himself internally. Noah wasn’t a realization, wasn’t an event, wasn’t a thing. Dead or alive, he was still a performer. Still a kid. Still their friend.
"Noah's big reveal was only the beginning. I should have predicted the rest. A week later Mr. Gray showed up. Then all the others..."
Calla’s still mad I didn’t go with you. I think it’s because she wants fewer mouths to feed in this house, but if I’m honest with myself- honest like you were, and probably still are, you stubborn Gansey, you- she thinks I missed my chance at something better because of my pride. She’s right.
Blue was practicing aerial stunts in the new costume when Gansey reached the training tent. Calla called out, “One foot! Rotate! Right ring, ladder, trapeze, dismount.” Blue flipped through each command easily and swung off the trapeze with an aerial somersault, landing lightly. She looked winded, but confident. “Showoff,” Calla muttered. Turning to Gansey, Blue remarked, “That’s her way of saying ‘good job’.”
“No, it’s my way of saying you’re showing off,” Calla replied cantankerously, shouldering past both teenagers to leave the training course. Once she’d left, Gansey said, “That was impressive, Jane.” Blue quirked an eyebrow and used one of the support ropes to get to the bench with towels and a water bucket. Okay, maybe she was showing off a little. “You should try it.”
“I’m not an acrobat. Not like Ronan and Adam. Not like you.”
“You are like us. You’re too good at acting like you’re not.”
Blue slid off the rope and finished with a flourish on her toes, silently congratulating herself on not immediately falling flat on her face. Orla had laughed at the look of total surprise she’d sported in place of bruises the first time she’d perfected the move. Now, though, she took a sip from the ladle in the water bucket and followed Calla back outside, intent on going over the costume plan with Persephone during lunch. Something caught her eye, though- a tall, well-dressed something, tinged at his edges with an aura of gray. And he was talking to her mother.
Blue strained to hear his words. Whatever he said, it was enough to change Maura's whole demeanor. She smirked. Her smirk was different from Calla’s, which was self-satisfied and certain, and Orla’s, which made one feel the sudden urge to bathe. It was playful, challenging. But it didn’t come out when it was her turn to sell tickets or do a reading. Then she was all business. This was different. She’d sensed something in this man, and she was testing him. The last time she’d done that- well, she’d never done that, to Blue’s recollection. She didn’t engage with men who chased her with their eyes in grocery store lines and offered free drinks that weren’t really free, after all, encumbered as they came with expectations of reward. Maura told Blue that the lot of them together weren’t worth the time it took to flirt back to one of them. She was flirting now.
Her mother. Flirting. With a stranger.
Blue’s world reordered itself.
The man’s eyes met Blue’s over Maura’s shoulder. Blue skittered into the trailer. Persephone was one step ahead of her, laying out sandwich ingredients on the tiny table and sharpening the kitchen knife to slice the bread.
“Already? I need to tell Ronan to stop messing with other people’s knives. All he does is dull them,” Blue snorted as a greeting.
“Have you met Maura’s second heartbreak yet?” Persephone asked in a tiny, distracted voice. Blue’s head snapped up.
“The man outside? What do you mean, ‘heartbreak’? She doesn’t know him.”
“Not yet,” Persephone said sadly.
Maura’s laugh soared through the open window of the trailer, loud and joyous and unrestrained. Blue and Persephone exchanged a look.
“Yet.”