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

to the tabs on her paper for emphasis. “I tried to get a tape recorder, but I’d forgotten to get fucking batteries. I thought I might be able to get the notes down on the guitar, so I hauled this into the studio. The weird thing is that when Melissa came to relieve me at ten, the song was gone.”

Jason ran his hands through his hair. “It can’t be.”

“Can’t be what?” Lara put the Fender back in its cradle. “What is it?”

“Peter.” He lowered his eyes. “You’ve been hounding me since Todd split, asking me all the time about Peter Beaumont. Well, if you heard that song, then you heard Peter Beaumont. We didn’t record that song, Lara. That song lives only in my memories.” He pointed to his temple. “At least it did.” Jason shot up and pulled a copy of Tending from the record library. “Was this the album?” There were multiple copies around the studio, but she’d specifically used that library copy.

Lara nodded.

“You sure?” He tapped the album cover frantically.

“I always grab the library copy, never your personal one.”

He walked over to the spare turntable that sat in their office. This set had a smaller channel mixer hooked up to it, nothing like the elaborate one in the studio. She watched her father flip the turntable dial into cue and place the record on the platter. He guided the arm over track three, pulled the lever to lower it, then pushed the START button, stopping the record as the beginnings of a song formed. Twisting the record slowly, he began to rewind it on the turntable.

The room was quiet as they both waited to hear.

Lara didn’t know what to expect. She didn’t know if she wanted the song to be there as proof that she hadn’t—hadn’t what? Made it up? But a part of her didn’t want it to be there, either. That would mean a dead man was speaking through an album.

The familiar sound of warbled, heavy chords came through the speakers. Jason stared at the turntable, blinking.

Something stirred in Lara. She got up, placed the Fender on her desk, and walked over to the turntable. Jason moved away to let her at the controls. Touching the vinyl disk at the twelve o’clock position, Lara began to spin it counterclockwise. Before she even heard the first chord strum, she knew the song was there, beneath her fingers. Unwinding the record, spinning it, she found what she knew was the proper tempo. The melody flowed through her as if she were weaving it from the fabric of memory and history. She stopped, knowing what she had was not a full song, but a tasting of something, clipped from time.

She turned to find her father looking at her like he’d seen a ghost.

He stood and walked over to his collection of guitars that were hung on walls and scattered around displayed on stands. Leaning down, he carefully selected the oldest, most battered maple-neck Fender Sunburst in his collection. Pulling a cord from another guitar, he plugged the Fender into the small amp. Jason quickly tuned the battered Sunburst by ear, adjusting old strings that sounded to Lara like they hadn’t been played for thirty years.

“It should be played on this,” said Jason. He started on the first chord but shook his head, stopped, and started the first few chords again. Knowing the confidence that her father had when combining chords and notes for his songs and set, Lara could tell this song was one he hadn’t played in a very long time. His fingers fumbled chord changes, and his voice broke. Shivers ran up her arms and the back of her neck as Lara recognized it as the song she’d heard haunting the Tending album.

“I’m sorry,” she said after she’d finished.

“After all these years, I waited for a sign—anything from him.”

“Why now?”

“I’ll be damned if I have any idea.” He avoided her eyes. “And why you?” Jason walked over and put the Sunburst back on the wall.

Lara felt terrible. He’d been so animated fifteen minutes ago, excited about the show. And now he had that look, like he was seeing her for the first time. It unnerved her. She shouldn’t have said anything. This revealed something magical, and Audrey had always cautioned her to hide it. Now she understood. Her father looked at her like she was a stranger.

“I’m going to go,” he said, nodding toward the door and grabbing his keys.

“Yeah,” said Lara. “Get some sleep; you’ve been on the road.” She smiled, hoping to lighten up the conversation.

He walked toward the door and didn’t look back, not even bothering to shut it behind him.

While Jason had asked why it was Lara who got the message, she didn’t question this. He’d never known about her magic. Like a strange rite of passage, Lara felt as though Todd’s disappearance had set certain events in motion and she was now a conduit to strange happenings. Things were swirling around her and she couldn’t connect them yet, but she had a feeling that nothing was a coincidence—her magic, the disappearances of Todd and Peter. She just didn’t know how all these pieces fit together.

Rattled, she went home and took a long, hot bath, then slid into her sheets. Perched on the edge of her nightstand was Cecile Cabot’s journal, almost beckoning to her. Instinctively, she knew that this diary wasn’t just a random gift. Maybe it held some answers. She reached for it and flipped it open to page one.

The Journal of Cecile Cabot—Book One

April 3, 1925

Had our mother lived, I know things would have been different. A photo of her sits in the circus’s wardrobe office. It’s a side profile of her, a stage still, but I can tell from it that she has blue eyes like Esmé and me. Her coiled platinum hair resembles mine—a mixture of snow and silver. I cannot tell you how much I cling to this small detail that