Chapter 9

No one knows where the greater specters called ‘clowns' originate from. They're so different from the average poltergeist in manner and appearance. Are they built of lost souls that never made their way to the Nothing? Are they spirits on the run from the god Death? What makes them so powerful, mischievous, and playful remains a mystery to us all. What we do know is that they make their home at the Castleway Circus and are only ever drawn out from its tents by two things: an outpouring of great magic and the raucous laughter of happy children. Clowns favor little ones, especially foundlings. As tempting as it is to classify them as good, I fear we know too little about them to put our trust in the beings fully. Exercise caution around them always.

-A Witch's Guide to the Arcane

Quiet

Looking myself over, I'd say my body had become about seven years old, give or take. I swam in my dress. My hat kept sliding down my brow, falling over my eyes until I could feel the top of my hair pushing against the void inside it. I couldn't keep my sleeves rolled back long enough to lift the teacup to my lips so I could please the specter who'd done this to me.

With great difficulty, I shoved back my hat and sipped more tepid water, fighting down the urge to grimace.

"Sugar?" Rorick asked. He looked to be about nine or so, with long, scrawny limbs and a mop of black hair. His fangs were smaller now, but they were just a bit too big for his mouth and they gave him a slight lisp. If I hadn't been so irritated with him for getting us into this mess, I'd have been tempted to think the child vampire was precious.

"Two lumps, please," I said, pushing my cup toward him.

He opened an empty jar and scooped out two imaginary lumps of sugar. Rorick made the plopping sounds with his lips as he dropped them into my cup. Then he stirred it for me.

I drank.

"Delicious," I told him, and it was. I could taste the imaginary sweetness.

The clown squeezed his nose. It made a honking sound that brought a smile to my face. He reached across the table and pinched my nose. It made a chime like the bell on a bicycle. Rorick and I giggled.

The clown squeezed Rorick's nose next, and it let out a loud fart. I fell to pieces, roaring with laughter. This pleased the clown so much he climbed onto the table and gave a dramatic bow, as though he were an actor in a great theater performance.

The clown vanished after that.

"What should we do now?" I asked Rorick. It was hard to get used to the strange, higher pitch of my young voice. I couldn't remember ever sounding so little.

Rorick shrugged his thin shoulders. "Beats me. I suppose we could get back to the case until the clown returns or the spell wears off."

It wasn't a bad idea. I took my glowing moth with me, and I searched under the tables for the face of my lost sister. Then I flattened myself on the carpet and crawled under the big leather chairs, checking for faces beneath them. I found nothing, and I had carpet burns on my knees for all my trouble.

It felt like I'd been searching for ages already. I returned to Rorick. He was seated at the table with his uncle's journal and a fountain pen in his hand. The tea set had vanished when the clown had.

"Did you find your cousin's face?" I asked.

"No, but I found something even better," Rorick said with his light lisp. He reached inside the inner pocket of his waistcoat, lifting out a small bag which he dropped on the table between us. The contents clattered together like spilled marbles.

I blinked at it. "Lemon drops?"

"That's right." He fished one out and popped it into his mouth between his small fangs, sucking in his cheeks around the hard candy.

"But you can't eat solid food. You'll get a tummy ache," I reminded him.

"I can drink liquids just fine," he said. "And if you suck on these long enough, they're liquids."

"Oh? Well then, you're right. That is better than finding faces." I wish I could find some candy.

I asked my moth to help me locate Penance. Antenna flickering, he wouldn't even get up off my shoulder, but that might have been because now all I really wanted were those lemon drops. And the only lemon drops in the castle were right there. It flustered me that I couldn't get my moth to just do as I said, whatever my complicated feelings were, and I stomped my foot hard on the floor.

"Is your moth broken?" Rorick asked, popping another lemon drop into his mouth. The candies tinged his tongue yellow. He opened the bag to me.

I took three and ate them. "I don't know," I said with my mouth full. The candy was tart, and I sucked in my cheeks. I pouted for a moment before I decided I really liked the look of the settee in the corner by a shorter bookcase. The settee was broad and cushioned and would fit me nicely. And there was a soft throw over the arm I could cuddle up with.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I'm tired and feeling a bit cross. And I'm trapped in this seven-year-old body," I said, throwing my hands up in my oversized sleeves. "I think I need a nap. What are you doing?"

"Well," he said, pinning down the side of his journal with an elbow so it wouldn't keep flopping shut on him. "I was going to take notes on the case, but now I'm drawing pictures instead." He beamed at me.

I rounded the table, stepping all over my skirt in the process, to peer over his shoulder. He'd drawn a stick figure of a boy with fangs playing in the woods with a little stick-figure girl who had a pointy witch hat on her head.

"You're right," I said, "that is a better idea. Hm. But it's missing something."

I took off my floppy hat and buried my arm inside. Rorick watched me with interest. I pulled out a kit of watercolors and laid it next to him.

His lavender eyes went big and round with delight. "Perfect!" he cheered.

"Come on, moth," I said to my chunky little assistant, eager to get over to the settee to have a nice lie-down.

"He needs a proper name, don't you think?" Rorick said.

He was just full of brilliant ideas today.

"Good point." I tapped on my pointed chin. "I've always wanted a dog named Gilbert. But they don't let you have dogs at the Home for Foundlings."

Rorick stared hard at the moth, putting a small wrinkle between his brows with the effort of his thought. "Yes, I think you're on to something. He does look like a Gilbert."

"Come on, Gilbert," I said, and the moth flapped into the air, turning a tight circle before landing in my outstretched hand. I giggled, the sound like ringing bells in my young voice. "Did you see that? I think he likes it."

"Who wouldn't? It's a great name. I'd like to be called Gilbert. Much better than Liam," he said with a curl to his lip. "Liam feels like half of a name. It's no good."

"What was I doing again?" I asked, scratching at my scalp. "Oh, right, come on, Gilbert. We're looking for Penance."

I meant to search for her face some more, but I got distracted by a book with bright paintings of flowers on the front cover. I hauled the heavy book onto the settee with me and curled up under the throw blanket. Gilbert and I looked at the pictures together. He kept trying to land on the flowers, searching for nectar. I giggled every time he thumped his body against another page, dusting it in luminescent powder. We flipped through that for a long while before it occurred to me to check on Rorick again.

Gilbert had me giggling so much I made my way back to the table shaking with hiccups.

"This is for you." Rorick handed me the picture he'd painted with watercolors from a page he'd torn out of his journal.

It was a cartoon of sorts. In the first square, the witch girl and the vampire boy played together happily. In the next one, the witchling was bleeding and crying, drops of red paint on her neck and drops of blue spattering her cheeks. The vampire boy looked sad with his little red-stained fangs.

In the final square, the boy presented a flower to the little girl, a daisy. I'm sorry was written at the top in large colorful letters, and the witchling was smiling again.

"Aw," I cooed, squeezing the picture to my chest, joy bursting in my heart. "It's the loveliest thing I've ever seen. No painting in the whole wide world is better."

"It's not bad, I guess," he said, ruffling his hair impishly.

I kissed his cheek. He smelled like apples and lemon drops. We drew more pictures together and painted them, making cartoons of the strange cases we'd worked on when we were partners. We weren't anymore, and that seemed odd to me. We worked so well together, after all. He should have been my dearest friend. I thought about him so often, he had to be.

There were so many stick figure drawings of dead bodies and murders that by the time we were through, our bloody art blanketed the table. We played tag between the bookshelves next. Rorick's legs were longer, and his vampire speed gave him a huge advantage. It occurred to me that he must be moving slowly on purpose at times because I won most of the rounds.

When I tired of that, I made my way back to the settee. I wanted to watch Gilbert thump his head against the pages of the book of flowers some more. I crawled under the throw and heaved the heavy book open to the picture of the gardenias. Based on his enthusiasm, those were his favorites.

Eventually, I fell asleep, buried in the blanket, the book lying over my face.

* * *

When I awoke, I gasped for air like I was surfacing after being submerged in a lake. The book of flowers slid onto the floor, coated in luminescent dust and a bit of drool. I clutched at my chest, then patted myself down. My body was full-grown, thank the goddess. I was me again, but it was hard to trust that it was real and not some clown trick, so I continued touching all over myself. My arms, my face, my hair, my legs.

My braid was a frizzy disaster. I loosened my hair and fought at the knots with my fingers before re-braiding it.

Rorick was full-grown too and seated in a wingback he must have dragged from across the room to place beside my settee. In his lap was one of the detective novels he'd shown me earlier, The Mystery of the Shrew, open across his knee to save his place.

"How long was I asleep?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," Rorick said, pointing to the clock that hung over the doors. It was running backwards and had no numbers or lines, just phases of the moon. "That's no help, and I've only been me for about an hour, maybe?"

"Damn clowns," I groused.

When I stood, Rorick followed. Gilbert swooped in overhead, shining his blue light along the carpet. I paced the room, trying to think what to do next, stopping by the table covered in our childish, macabre drawings. The painting of the vampire boy and witchling stood out to me. I reached for it, touching the page to straighten it along the edge of the table. It had meant so much to me while I was my inner child. Now, it just made me feel confused and it put a rock in my stomach.

A clatter from the foyer stole my attention. Rorick hung back a moment, but he caught up to me with his vampire speed when I reached the doors. We hurried to the banister. Many hours must have passed since we'd entered the library. The scar-weaver spiders had made elaborate webs between the railings.

I touched one as I leaned over to see about the commotion below. The familiar silk was a comfort to me.

The clown stood on the ground floor next to the sideboard. It was no longer upside down. He'd righted it. When he saw me staring, he honked his nose and waggled his fingers in his puffy gloves at me.

Rorick and I waved back, appeasing the specter, and the ghost vanished.

"The corpse-eater," I said, a thought barreling into my head so suddenly I had to reach out and grab Rorick's arm to steady myself. "Do you remember?"

"She tried to eat me. Yes, of course I remember." His brow puckered. "What are you going on about?"

"The sideboard. She lingered near the sideboard. She was trying to tell me something. And now the clown, too. He's set it to rights. They were both trying to tell me about it, but I just didn't understand their language." I took off like a shot, barreling down the stairs.

Rorick passed me in a blur of movement. He reached the foyer first and circled the entryway, probably checking for more trouble, before coming to a standstill at my side. The rot that coated the space where the entrance once stood was pungent, the darkness scaly and dripping. It looked alive. When I stared at it too hard, the flesh appeared to be pulsing. Bile rose in my throat.

The sideboard was built of three connected cabinets with a soft wooden top. It was dinged and dented now, and one of the far doors hung crooked off its hinges.

I dropped to my knees before the middle cabinet. My fingers shook as I reached for the brass latches. The door was damaged. It stuck as I ripped it open.

And there she was.

"Penance," I whispered, and she opened her eyes. In the darkness, all I could see was her face, her peach skin and brilliant blue gaze and that familiar sweet smile. The shadows around her made it not so strange that the rest of her wasn't there, like she'd wrapped herself in a cowl.

But then her expression crumpled. Her ocean eyes filled with tears. "Oh, Quiet. I'm so glad it's you who's come for me."

"Penance," I choked. For a moment, her name was all I could manage.

Rorick sank down next to me, and I was glad for his steady presence at my hip.

"There isn't much time," Penance said, sucking in a breath. "Please, Quiet, for me, tell Prim—tell all of them—how dreadfully sorry I am."

"What could you possibly have to be sorry about?" I said, swiping at a tear that had leaked from the corner of my eye. "Something terrible was done to you. You aren't the one—"

"Hear me, Quiet," she said, voice breaking on a stifled sob, "I am the one at fault here. Alex and I both. What we did . . . well, you'll know more soon enough. Do you have my hat?"

I nodded and cleared my throat. "I have it."

"Good. My journal's inside it. You have my permission to make use of my void as you see fit. Alex didn't want me keeping written logs, but we're witches—we're researchers first and foremost. There must be logs."

"We are." I sniffled. "We can't help ourselves . . . Penance, where is your wand?"

Her smile vanished. "Isn't it around my neck?"

"It's not," I said with great sympathy. Being separated from my wand would stress me completely, alive or dead. I'd rather lose my hand than my wand. "Please try to think on it. Where could it have gone? What do you remember?"

Her delicate brows furrowed. "I . . . I don't know. I can faintly remember hearing strange music, and that's it. Then everything was dark."

"Strange like at the circus?"

She nodded. "Yes. Just like that."

And then my eyes were stinging so fiercely I nearly lost my resolve. My throat clotted.

She gave me a watery smile. "Oh, my dear Quiet, please try not to judge me too harshly over what you read in my journal." Her eyes shut tight for a moment before fluttering back open again. "I loved that man, and when you love someone that much . . . I'm not proud of how it all turned out." She looked right at Rorick next. "I'm so very sorry for what we did to you."

I stared at the side of Rorick's face, watched him work his throat. He didn't respond.

Penance's urgent tone called me back to her. "Read it and know that I did it for all of us. To make a better world for our coven. You and Prim and Goose and Astor and—everyone. I love you."

But I didn't care about any of that right now. She was my sister, and she deserved justice. "Tell me who did this to you!" I begged.

Penance's next cry came as a wail. A death knell so similar to that of a ghost who had lost their way, I knew she wouldn't be lucid much longer. "Penance, please! Who did this to you? Tell me what you remember!"

"It was poison," she said, "but I don't know who. I can remember Alex saying his head hurt. Then he was so confused. He couldn't remember how he'd even got to the table. Then when he started coughing and choking, I knew it was the end. I could feel the headache coming on for me next. I hadn't drunk as much wine as he had, and I cast the Last Breath as quickly as I could."

Relief rocked me. I thought I'd lost her, but she was still with me. "Who would want to poison you? You have to give me more, Penance!"

"We made a lot of enemies, Alex and I," she said, and all I could think as she spoke was what a shock it was that she was tangled up with Alexander Harker at all. "We made promises to important people to further our mission, and then we couldn't deliver. They were angry and sending us threats, more and more all the time. It had to be one of them."

My brow furrowed. I put a hand on the edge of the cabinet, squeezing the wood hard, willing her to stay with me longer, but she was already fading. Color bled from her face. Her bright eyes were turning icy and gray, and she was wailing again.

"What promises?" I reached inside the cabinet and cupped her cheek. She was so cold, but that little touch of warmth brought her back to me once more.

"Immortality." Her dead eyes met mine. "In exchange for great favors to make the world better for us all, we promised them eternal life. But we couldn't deliver. We tried and tried, and nothing was working."

And then she wept, tears leaking down her face and over my fingers. Her pain tore at me like it was my own. I cried with her.

"Hush now," I cooed, stroking her cheek. "I know crying doesn't feel nice, but it's good for the soul, isn't it? You feel better now . . . That's right, all better. Go and rest my friend, and know you'll be deeply and dearly missed."

"I'm so s-sorry," she wept, nose dribbling.

"Don't linger here, Penance," I whispered. "Not in this terrible place. Stay away from the darkness, and be at peace. All will be well. Go rest and leave all this pain far behind you. Everything is in good hands now. Sleep well, my sweet."

She sucked back her tears, and her expression smoothed.

"Goodbye, my dear Quiet," Penance said, and her words tied my heart into one of the knots she was so skilled at making. The knot squeezed so hard around the organ, I thought it might deflate in my breast because I knew those were the last words I'd ever hear from her.

And then she was gone, faded from the wood like she'd never been there, nothing but the damp of her tears to mark her presence. I swiped at my eyes and rubbed my nose. Rorick handed me a kerchief from his pocket.

"Thank you," I said, voice watery. I dabbed my cheeks clean, clutching the satin between my fingers.

Rorick helped me to my feet, steady at my side but silent. I was glad he was there and relieved he wasn't talking. I gave the kerchief back, not in the mood for words.

Then I marched for the dining room. He trailed me. The room was so dark I summoned more lightning beetles to illuminate the space. The rot with its fruity undertone was thick enough to choke me.

Penance's body remained beside her love, laid out on the table the way we'd left them. The darkness crept toward them, climbing the wooden legs, turning the timber black and scaly, but it hadn't reached them yet. The way it climbed, it confirmed another fear I had. It wanted them, wanted to devour them.

The Last Breath enchantment complete, Penance's face had returned to her corpse. I rushed to her, careful not to step near the darkness, and I closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, then her feet at the ankles. My next breath was shallow.

I pulled off my hat and spoke into the opening. "Friends," I said, lungs hitching, "we have a lot of work to do."

I wouldn't let the darkness consume her or Alex as its next meal to fuel whatever evil trial or attempt at murdering us it might have planned. Scar-weaver spiders poured from my hat. They dropped from the ceiling and floated in from the foyer, carried by garlic moths. The spiders set to work immediately, doing what they did best. They spun healing silk, covering Penance and Alex, and though I hadn't asked them to do it, they bound them together side by side with their webbing.

I hoped Penance liked that.

When we left the dining room, they'd already covered the couple up to their waists.

"We have a lot to talk about," I told Rorick. "The way Penance apologized to you directly. You must know—"

"I know," he said, his voice thick with an emotion I couldn't place. "I'll tell you but not yet."

We made it to the stairs. I rested a hand on the railing and stopped to consider him. "Why not now? Just get it over with. You know all I care about is getting us out of here and protecting my coven. I'm not going to use the information to hurt you. Why would I?"

He shook his head firmly. "I can feel the sun coming. It'll be here soon. That's not a conversation I want to be in the middle of when the slumber hits me."

I couldn't argue with that, but I wanted to. I wanted to turn him upside down and shake him by his ankles until all his secrets fell out. The man was full of them, up to his fangs in mysteries—and not the fun kind like in his favorite detective novels.

We returned to our safe room, a place the darkness didn't touch, and it seemed even brighter every time we entered. The second we were safely inside, I made myself comfortable in the armchair and searched the void in my pocket for Penance's hat.

The flattering blue color sparked a memory of her smiling at me from across the room at some convention I hadn't wanted to go to because big crowds exhausted me. But she'd been there, and my sisters, so I tolerated it.

I reached inside her hat, felt the cold void open to me reluctantly, and I called her journal to me, picturing the small, familiar, beat-up old volume with the reaping hook symbol on the side. The leather spine grazed my fingers. I grabbed hold and fished it out.

It looked newer than I remembered. More pristine.

Before I opened it, I gave myself a moment to breathe. Whatever was in these pages would shock me, I was sure. She was doing something she wasn't proud of, something that could forever change my opinion of her.

I cracked it open to a random page.

It was blank, so I searched for another.

But page after page after page—they were all blank. Frustrated, I snapped the journal shut and tossed it over the side of the chair.

"Something wrong?" Rorick asked. He was making the bed, righting the blankets so they were spread evenly.

"That journal was supposed to have all the answers in it." I crossed my arms over my chest, trying not to pout. "It's blank."

"Blank?"

"That's what I said." I shouldn't have snapped at him. He didn't deserve it this time, but I was too proud to apologize for my mood.

Although I'd had quite the nap, whatever spell the specter had cast over us had really taken it out of me. Seeing Penance hadn't helped. I was beat, so I readied for bed with Rorick.

I stripped to my shift, glad to be rid of all the heavy, magic-laden layers, and then I felt eyes on me, and when I turned, Rorick was watching from his position by the armchair, his waistcoat and shirt open, expression unreadable.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" I asked, climbing into the big bed. I had to use the footstool for a boost up.

He frowned. "I'm trying to figure out the best way to ask you how you are."

"Oh . . ." I slid under the covers and pulled them up to my chin. "I'm as fine as anyone can be given the circumstances."

He undressed to his linen shirt and under-breeches, then joined me beneath the covers. "I know how important she was to you. You spoke of her often enough . . ." Rorick cleared his throat, looking uneasy. "Do you need, perhaps, a hug or something?"

I blinked at him. "Have you met me?"

"Unfortunately, yes," he said, but there was no bite to his words, not this time. His tone was teasing, almost like he was trying to be affectionate, but that couldn't be right.

If I hadn't already known that the Fair Folk only traded changelings for children, I'd have believed the Rorick before me was an imposter. Someone had stolen my cynical vampire and traded him out with a double. A kind, teasing double who treated me with affection instead of fathomless irritation. He must have felt deeply sorry for me right then. That was the only explanation—not that he'd never been kind to me before, of course he had, but not like this. This felt different in a way I couldn't contemplate.

"No hugs," I insisted, and my cheeks heated. "I got plenty of those against my will last night."

His eyes snapped to mine. "What are you talking about?"

I felt a flush creeping up toward my hairline. "You're like a starved anaconda when you sleep. And I'm the deer who couldn't get away from the watering hole fast enough before you sprang."

Rorick's head fell back, hitting the pillows. He cackled at the ceiling, a deep full-bodied laugh that shook the mattress and inspired my own chortling. "Is that what happened that had you acting like you'd aided a bank robbery earlier? Your face turned three shades of red." He was so overtaken he wiped a mirthful tear from his eye. "I wish I could remember any of it."

"Just imagine me thrashing like a dolphin caught in a net while your arms turn into octopus tentacles." I sucked in my cheeks, fighting down a grin.

"It's winter, and I get cold easily," he protested with a smirk that proved he felt no remorse. "I can't help it. You're warm, and you're right there."

"Don't I know it! You're a blasted icicle with floppy hair. So no, I don't need any more of your barnacle-like hugs. Please keep your limbs to yourself."

"I'll do my best, but I make no promises." He chuckled.

"And thank you," I added softly. "You're right. Penance was important to me. I'm glad we found her. And . . ." I hesitated. His lavender gaze bore into me and made me feel brave. "And I'm glad you were there with me for all that."

Whatever he was about to say was lost. Rorick's expression turned placid, and his body went slack as the sun slumber took him. I added a small fire to the hearth, nothing big enough to make the castle rumble, then I covered the blankets in warm lightning beetles so he kept to his end of the bed. I rolled onto my side, pondering his offer of a hug. I needed a friend just then, but I didn't have any with me in the castle.

A partner would just have to do.

I scooted in closer and laid my arm beside his. He curled around the heat of it just as I hoped he would. I fell asleep, arm in arm with a vampire.