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

and searched for her lipstick, she kept picking up the printout to read over and over, looking for any similarity between the description and the man she’d known. Vain? Absolutely. Flowing hair? Check. But it was the line… amber eyes that he often covers with sunglasses when walking among mortals due to the permanent state of his horizontal pupils—an underworld trait that cannot be masked that left her cold.

Of everything she’d read, this line felt like a concrete detail describing him. This begged the question: If a major daemon was visiting her, what did he want? At some point, he’d said, he would call on her. She took a seat and found her legs were trembling. Was this the source of her magic? Was he the reason Audrey insisted they hide their abilities?

After opening locks and emptying her grandfather’s candy jars, Lara had graduated to copying her mother’s signature and enchanting the phone to sound like anyone she wanted. As she got older, those skills were helpful when she wanted to get permission to go on a field trip. As she got better at it, she could match her friends’ mothers’ voices easily and so stay out later while Audrey thought she was safely tucked at home with Caren.

It was Caren’s mom who inadvertently busted her. Caren and Lara were both allergy sufferers requiring weekly shots. At the doctor’s office one spring, Mrs. Jackson, in passing, thanked Audrey for allowing Caren to stay over so much. In actuality, the two girls had sneaked out and gone to all-night bowling. Lara had always been careful to never let Caren hear her make the phone calls, not wanting her friend to have culpability. As Mrs. Jackson presented a thorough accounting of Audrey’s generosity in lodging her daughter, Lara closed her eyes with dread.

It was the firm tug on the checkbook from Audrey’s hand that served as the tell as Dr. Mulligan’s check for $3 was ripped free.

“You have no idea what it is like to grow up without a mother because she went crazy from magic.” Audrey had been silent until they’d turned into their winding drive. “I’ve spared you that knowledge. Sure, it’s fun to have old equipment in your backyard, but you’ve never been taunted by your friends that you’re a freak because you work at the circus. I have. You think it’s cute and it’s fun, but drawing attention to yourself is dangerous.”

When Lara returned home, the punishment had been swift yet quiet. Since the phone had been the source of the problem, Audrey enchanted it so Lara couldn’t call anyone for a week. Interestingly, her mother never mentioned to Jason what Lara had done, nor the punishment she’d doled out. Only then did Lara understand that Audrey had kept both of their abilities from her father. Magic was a shameful secret.

Shutting down her computer, she looked at her watch. It was almost time for Audrey to pick her up for the circus. Folding up the paper with Althacazur’s entry, she placed it deep in her handbag.

For two weeks each June, the Rivoli Circus from Montreal settled in one of the open fields near the highway, the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains peering over the big top at sunset. The stop at Kerrigan Falls was an act of respect for Le Cirque Margot, many of the performers having sought jobs with the Canadian troupe when the circus closed. Loyalties ran deep with these families, and even the children of many members who had died still recalled the stories. The Montreal troupe had picked up most of Le Cirque Margot’s old stops, so the two companies’ histories were richly entwined.

After kicking off the season, the Rivoli Circus would perform in twelve towns in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi before heading to the Southwest for the winter and then retooling the show back in Canada for the following year’s performances.

Tickets were hard to come by, but Audrey always managed to get premium seats from the Rivoli family. The legacy between the families was something that her mother endured more than celebrated, but the horses were some of the most stunning animals in the ring. For that reason, Audrey always made sure they were front and center.

The trademark moss-green-and-blue-striped tents were strung together into a connected bazaar. As Lara and Audrey walked through the grand entrance, food stands and other carnival attractions like fortune-tellers, T-shirt sellers, and arcade games lined the avenue to the entrance to the big top.

Inside the main tent, the night air was cool. Above them an elaborate green-and-blue chandelier, resembling a Chihuly creation, dangled heavily from the center. From the props to the sound and concessions, Lara admired their attention to detail. The performance was always elegant and sophisticated, unlike some two-bit carnival that made its way through each fall, giving kids rides on rusted Ferris wheels and serving watered-down Coca-Colas.

On cue, the tent went dark and the light show flashed blue and green, like something out of Las Vegas. This was one of the rare circuses that still traveled with a full orchestra. There was a dark, dramatic pause. Somewhere in the audience a man coughed, then a child wailed. A small spotlight appeared at the top of the tent—where the form of a blond girl dressed in a chartreuse sequined leotard descended, lowering herself smoothly on a fabric rope, coiling then uncoiling herself down its length. As she moved, the fabrics twisted with and then against her body, giving her the illusion of winding and then letting go of the line before catching herself in a dramatically staged free fall. From the orchestra below, a lone singer crooned a melody in French, a set of electric strings accompanying her.

That a performer would fall was not out of consideration at the circus. Ropes ripped, hands slipped, but precision and practice as well as luck and talent stacked the odds in favor of tonight’s seasoned performer, now twirling from a rope gripped in her teeth. While there