The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers (the little red hen ebook TXT) 📕

jumped in the gondola. Althacazur put the safety bar over their laps, which Lara thought was as curious a move as anything she’d seen given that they were in another dimension of sorts. The car descended into what seemed to be the center of the earth. There was a river of shiny black water beneath them.

“Styx,” Althacazur said, pointing. “This is a magnificent view of it, don’t you think?” It meandered past a thick forest of bare white trees that looked like birches. They reminded her of the trees near Wickelow Bend. With the white soil, white trees, and black river, Lara had to admit, it was a magnificent sight.

“That’s the White Forest,” said Althacazur.

Cecile stared at the forest blankly, her jaw tightening.

“This place gets such a horrible reputation as a destination, but I love it… especially in l’hiver. You won’t find me up there working in January.” He pointed up. “So where was I… oh yes. It all was quite messy, and that’s not even getting into the good-and-evil thing. Cecile has the uterus, but she has only one leg and one arm. And only one kidney.”

Lara lurched. She only had one kidney. She was horrified at the accounting that Althacazur was rattling off, but Cecile seemed oblivious to him, still staring with intensity at the White Forest.

“The other twin—Esmé—is missing her arm and is without a uterus, but she has two legs and all of her kidneys. Physically Esmé was the much stronger twin. But you see, cambions are only half human. There was a bit of daemon blood flowing through my creature’s veins, so I could do some things that could never have been done to a non-magical creature. I filled in the gaps, so to speak, with magic. Each girl looked… flawless.”

“You filled in the gaps?”

“I enchanted my fucking circus, so my girls looked beautiful inside of it. They were like dolls. Outside the circus, too, if they didn’t stay out too long. Oh, my beauties were the talk of Paris. Plutard made them costumes like little princesses, but I made a mistake.” He turned to Cecile and put his hand up. “I can admit when I’m wrong.”

Cecile flashed him a rather hateful look. “You were wrong on so many fronts, Father. It’s hard to keep track.”

“Well, yes, I made the mistake of putting the burden of keeping the illusion on Esmé, but she was a brilliant illusionist. Cecile did not fare as well when I separated them, so I decided to wipe her memories clean so she had no recollection of being torn apart from her sister. However, Esmé needed that knowledge to keep up the illusion.”

Lara thought that sounded like an entirely unfair burden to place on a young girl.

“What Father is hinting at but not saying,” said Cecile, interrupting his monologue, “is that to keep his illusion that we were intact inside this circus, Esmé was forced to commit murder as a sacrifice—fealty—to fuel it.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, dismissing her. “She’s so judgy now that she’s dead. Perhaps I felt guilt that Cecile here looked so much like her mother. On her deathbed,” continued Althacazur, unaware of how upset his daughter was becoming at the story, “I’d made promises to my Juno that I would care for the child. Juno was never told the entire story of the birth—that there were two. Never thinking they’d live, of course, I agreed to it, but then she died, and I was bound, you see.” He looked sheepish. “It was a grave mistake as I would learn.”

“You never should have split us. We were happy as we were.” Cecile glared at him.

“Then that painter Émile Giroux fucked everything up,” said Althacazur, ignoring her. “Although Tisdale likes to remind me that I don’t know my own strength and that it was my fault. You see, because I’m an artist myself… I put a little spell on Giroux so that anyone he painted fell in love with him.”

“What you did was unforgivable,” spat Cecile, folding her arms.

Lara knew this from the journals.

“Yes, well, while I may have split you both in two physically, Giroux’s knife was sharper.”

“Thanks to you.” Cecile sank down in her seat and rested her chin on her hand.

Lara was fascinated at this strange familial argument she was witnessing. She tried to muffle a thought she had, much like trying to stifle one of those dry coughs you get at the end of a bad cold, but the thought wouldn’t stay down. This man is a lunatic. We’re placating a lunatic.

As the thought swirled in her, she looked at Mr. Tisdale, who seemed to be able to read her mind. His eyes were now wide with alarm.

The car kept descending under a tunnel. “And as you might guess, both my girls fell in love with Giroux, so when Giroux chose Cecile over Esmé, well, she went a little crazy.”

“She killed him,” said Cecile.

“But not before lovely Cecile here had conceived your… well, I guess it would be your grandmother Margot. I think you saw her riding His Majesty earlier. Marvelous performer she is, much better than Sylvie ever was on a horse.”

Cecile spoke through gritted teeth. “Father is wrong. I fell in love with Émile before he cast the spell. Only Esmé was affected by the spell. Her love for Giroux was never genuine.”

Althacazur made a face that indicated he disagreed with this assessment.

Lara couldn’t speak. This man—this daemon—was fucking nuts. How on earth could she make sense of this? Was this a bad trip of some sort?

“As a result, Esmé has stomped around for decades in a terrible mood over Émile Giroux. She traveled around the world for the first ten years getting into all kinds of trouble. The other daemons were furious. Then she decided to set up a residence in that horrid little town you live in. I think she enjoys killing all of the loves of Cecile’s offspring as payment for Émile Giroux, who, frankly, was dull as dishwater and someone