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

Lara was stunned by the change in their appearance. The Oorang Airedales were double their normal sizes. She had seen them stalking prey before, but nothing like this. As they paced, they continued to grow, gazing at Marla hungrily. Lara could hear their claws scraping as they moved.

“You’ve got hellhounds, Audrey? You have two fucking hellhounds?”

“I always hated magic.” Audrey smiled. “But animals. That’s a different story. Althacazur gave them to me as a gift when I was a child. He’d heard I wanted a pony.” Audrey raised her eyebrows, suggesting it was a curious gift on his part. “These two are my pride and joy.” In a flash Audrey moved and with her hand out drove Marla back over Todd Sutton’s grave, radiating a power Lara wasn’t aware her mother possessed. Oddjob and Moneypenny each grabbed one of Marla’s arms, and Lara thought they just might rip her in two.

Lara scrambled up next to her mother and saw, for the first time, the remains of Todd Sutton in the shallow grave beneath her. He’d been buried like a pet. Anger welled up, and she turned to Marla. “Enough, Esmé. I’ve grown so bored by your antics. And I hate to be bored.”

Marla looked at her with fury, for she knew the source of Lara’s help. The words that she’d just spoken hadn’t come from Lara or Cecile. Lara placed both hands on Marla’s face. “I’m sorry, I take no joy in this.” These were the last words from Lara before Althacazur fed her the incantation she needed.

Incante delibre

Vos femante del tontier

“My daughter. I was wrong, but now it’s time you came home.” Lara pressed her forehead to Marla’s. As she connected with Marla, she felt Cecile pulling out of her body and fusing with her sister.

“No. No. Father. Noooooo,” Marla screamed just as a lawn mower powered up across the street, drowning out her cries.

Audrey had loosened Ben’s wrists, and now he was removing the electrical tape from his mouth. His face registered horror as his former wife stood there with a pitchfork through her chest. She began to deflate like a pool float at the end of summer, nearly folding over. As she did, Lara felt her strength increase and then she began to choke, doubling over gagging and coughing. Cecile had left her. The two sisters—were gone.

It is finished. Lara said the words that she knew came from Althacazur. While he had not been permitted to interfere directly, through Lara he’d placed his hand on the scales and had tipped them in their favor.

And yet, it wasn’t finished, not by far.

Standing there, under the giant twisted oak tree at the top of Cabot Farms, Lara watched as Ben shoveled the final dirt over the graves, patting it down. This was a part of the farm where no one ever ventured, but to be safe, they’d purchased sod to blend in with the existing grass as much as possible.

It had taken Lara, Audrey, and Ben two weeks to move the remains of Desmond Bennett, Peter Beaumont, and Todd Sutton here for a proper burial. The three were resolute that they could never admit the true story about what had happened to these three men to anyone.

Who would believe them anyway?

While Lara had always believed in magic, everything Ben thought he knew had been challenged. While his concussion had healed and his bruises were faded, there was a light that had gone out in Ben. The logic that he believed ran the world had all been an illusion. The idea that a one-hundred-year-old daughter of a daemon had been making sacrifices of young men every thirty years would have sounded crazy—until he’d seen the things he had over the last month. And yet, he never suspected that he was married to her. He’d never picked up a thing, so sure was he that the world was a place of order. Of course, this manifested itself in long silences and extra Jamesons. He and Lara sat silently at the bar at Delilah’s, content just to be near each other.

They’d moved Todd’s body first, because he was the most recent and there were still gruesome details about him—pieces of his hair were still intact and rotting clothes still hung on his skeletal corpse. Ben and Audrey buried him without Lara. She stood at the bottom of the hill and heard the scrapes of the shovel and then a heavy thud that she knew was Todd being returned to the ground.

Next they found Desmond Bennett’s body buried under a mature azalea bush, his old wallet barely holding together, but the dog tags from his stint in the army still tucked in the billfold. A week later, after digging in the night, they’d found the remains of Peter Beaumont. While Lara and Ben had offered to bury Peter, Audrey had wanted to help, so the three of them put his bones next to those of the other two men.

“Lara.” It was Ben who was the first to notice something curious in one of Cabot Farms’ fields.

She looked up to see the land waver and something open up. It was a familiar sight in the field and yet she had a deep dread. She’d known this time was coming, the reckoning with the devil. A trio appeared—a man flanked by two women—elaborately costumed like they were dressed to greet someone at the train. As the three came closer, Lara saw that Margot was dressed in a beautiful 1940s-style pink dress with cat’s-eye sunglasses and victory rolls in her blond hair. Oddly, she held a square pink pocketbook. Cecile, with waves of platinum hair flowing down her back, was dressed as a flapper in a dress with a plunging back.

Lara was brushing dirt off her pants but stopped when she saw them. She walked toward them. “I didn’t think I’d see you so soon.”

“Well, we are rather attached to this