Free The Immortal Circus: Act Two by A. R. Kahler

going to continue like this,” I say. I’m not going
to wait for him to grow a pair. I’ve been through too much to put up with this.
“If you want to start ignoring me, fine. But at least man up and admit it.”
    He sighs into his coffee and puts one hand on my thigh.
    “It’s not that,” he says. “I don’t want to ignore you. It’s
just …” He looks at me then, and his brown eyes seem lost. “I’m waiting for you
to wake up and remember you care about him more. That you miss him or that you
regret leaving him.”
    His hand actually trembles. The coffee in his cup ripples.
    I want to tell him that won’t happen. After all, Melody was
right: I’m part of the show now. I’m here for life. Even if I did have feelings
for Austin, it wouldn’t mean anything. I couldn’t go after him even if I wanted
to.
    But that doesn’t promise anything. Because if I do wake up
some morning with forgotten longing, I’ll have two choices: I remember and suck
it up and say nothing and suffer, or I ask Kingston to erase it, and he lives
with the knowledge that I needed him to make me forget I loved someone else.
    Being in my shoes sucks, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to
be in his either.
    “Do you know anything about him?” I ask.
    Kingston shakes his head. “I didn’t even know he existed.
When I erased you from the world, it was a mass-effect sort of spell. One
casting and you were supposed to be plucked from the minds of everyone who knew
you. It’s not my favorite spell, but Mab forces me to use it every once in a
while, when her performers are on the run.” He pauses and looks into his
coffee. “I’ve never had someone break through it before.”
    “So what did you say to him?” I ask. “To make him leave. Did
you pluck me from his mind again?”
    “No,” he says. “I just told him you weren’t feeling well. It
was weird. He looked like he was sleepwalking. When Mab showed up and asked him
to leave, he asked who you were and if you were going to be okay.”
    For some reason, that’s a stab in the gut. I know I don’t
remember him, but … a small part of me was hoping that he was still out there,
thinking of me. Even though I locked it away, it was comforting to think that I
still had a lifeline to my past.
    “I’m sorry, Viv,” he says. He squeezes my thigh. “For all of
this.”
    “It’s not important,” I say. Even though a part of me is
screaming that it is important, that I shouldn’t let myself forget
again. My head swims a little, and the ache in my temples throbs. “We’ve got
bigger things to worry about.”
    “Like what?” comes a voice from the bleachers. My heart
drops into my stomach.
    I turn, slowly, to where Lilith sits. She’s on the top
bleacher, in the shadows. And I have no idea how long she’s been there.
    The moment we spot her, she begins clambering down the
bleachers, crawling over them like a child on a jungle gym. It makes her look
like something from that horror movie The Ring . Her black hair is in
pink ribbons, and she’s wearing a baby-doll dress that makes her look
positively cherubic. Which, given her fiery interior, is even more terrifying.
    “Heard you,” she says as she moves, “heard you talking. Came
to see.” When she reaches us, she stands a few feet away, her glossy shoes
scuffed and dusty in the ring. “You think we’re going to die.”
    The last sentence, the somberness of it, makes my hair stand
on end.
    She’s still locked up, I try to convince myself. Kassia
can’t escape.
    “What are you doing here, Lilith?” Kingston asks. He tries
to keep his voice light, but there’s an edge to it. “You know Mab doesn’t like
you eavesdropping.”
    “Auntie Mab dislikes many things,” she says. Her voice keeps
that eerily sane quality, the tone that makes me think she’s about to flip out.
“She dislikes secrets most of all.” She cocks her head to the side. Her green
eyes bore into mine. “You’re keeping secrets. So many secrets.