Free The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels) by A. R. Kahler

of house. I don’t stop until I catch
sight of the blond-haired guy who was sitting across from me. He didn’t make it
hard; he’s standing at the concessions booth right in front of the tent,
looking over our DVDs with the mildest amount of interest. He’s tall and thin —
taller than me — in a grey pinstripe suit that makes him even more angular. I stand on the other side of the promenade and watch from the popcorn
queue. The man keeps glancing around, but he doesn’t seem to notice me noticing
him.
    Mab comes out
from the crowd before I reach the cashier. The man in the suit puts down the
brochure he was pretending to read and smiles, but it's not even close to
friendly — it's the grin of a man looking forward to a conflict. Mab doesn’t
even return the forced affection. She strides right over to the blond guy with a
grim look on her perfectly painted face. A few people stop and stare and make
like they’re about to approach her for an autograph, but there’s a darkness to
her presence, something that radiates don’t fuck with me. And the whip
at her waist only pushes that point home.
    The two share
a look, but I don’t see their lips move. Instead, she turns and escorts him
away from the booth, behind the picket fence separating backstage from the
front. I know that following her would be suicide, but something in me can’t
resist the temptation. I don’t know why the hero thing has taken over, but the
very thought that this guy might be the one trying to hurt someone in my troupe
— my home — makes my blood boil. No one messes with my family. In
that moment, I realize it doesn't matter that I've felt like I'm still on the
edge of this place. These people took me in. If nothing else, I'm indebted.
    I watch her
take him away from the chapiteau — not toward the backstage tent and not toward
the trailers. I grin in spite of myself. She’s taking him to the freak show.
    Without
hesitating, I head toward the makeshift wooden sign and enter the tunnel of
freaks.

C HAPTER F IVE : F REAK S HOW
    O n my second
night in the troupe, I was gathered around a bonfire with Kingston and Melody
and a few others, listening to stories of past shows and the wild adventures
people had experienced off-site. Some had gone skinny-dipping in the Arctic.
Others reminisced about buying out an entire town’s stock of glazed donuts.
Kingston sat next to me, our arms brushing as he laughed. He kept waving his
hand over the thermos being passed around, magically refilling it with unknown
booze. I hadn’t really grasped that at the time. There were mostly Shifters
with us, and they could hold their drink. Most of them, anyway.
    That’s when
they started playing Outfreak the Freak.
    It was
Melody’s idea, probably because I’d just asked her why members of the tent crew
were called Shifters.
    It started by
her daring Stephanie to turn into Mab, which made the girl crow with laughter
and ask which incarnation ? Mel just smiled, said, “Present .”
    Stephanie
stood up, brushed herself off, and cleared her throat.
    “Presenting,”
she said, “the most feared faerie in history. The one, the only, Mab!” With
that, her features melted and stretched, melding into a perfect likeness of
Mab. If not for the fact that Stephanie was wearing shorts and a hoodie — something
I doubt Mab would ever get caught dead wearing — she pulled it off
spectacularly.
    “Fail!”
Melody yelled.
    Mab/Stephanie
glared at her.
    “Mab’s eyes
are more hunter green. I’d call yours mint.”
    Stephanie
kicked sand in Mel’s face and sat down, promptly shifting back into her normal
pink-haired Goth self.
    “Let me try,”
said Heath, a heavily tattooed man with thick round glasses. He stood up and
gave himself a shake as his blond hair turned black and wild, his features
angling up into a vision of Mab that was frighteningly realistic. Minus two
things.
    “Boobs are
way, way too big,” Roman said.
    “Not big
enough,” countered another