“Crim—” I started, but Tish shook her head and pulled me gently out onto the stairs of their wagon, shutting the door behind us.
It was afternoon, in that pleasant lull between lunch and show time, and the caravan was limned in sunlight and surrounded by the usual gently rolling hills of the Sang version of an English countryside. I couldn’t help frowning. I was sick to death of the usual gently rolling hills.
“Is he mad at me?”
Tish patted me on the arm, and we sat on the bottom step, her wide skirts tumbling over into the lap of my more spare contortionist’s costume.
“He doesn’t want to lose you, Demi. You struck him pretty hard, I think, when you said he wasn’t your father.”
“But he’s not.”
“But he thinks of himself as your guardian. He saved you, and he’s gone to a lot of trouble keeping you safe all these years. This may not be an exciting life to you, but that’s because you’re already living it. To your average Sang girl in a city, trapped behind thick walls, you’re the luckiest girl on the planet.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.” I kind of hated myself for grumbling like the ungrateful teen I resembled. I was twenty-six. I should have been past the theatrics. But that was part of the problem. How was I supposed to grow up when everything always stayed the same?
Tish’s hand landed on my shoulder, and I struggled not to bite it. “Look, Demi. I know you don’t like to talk about it. But before you came here, what did you want out of life?”
“Nggggggh.” I shrugged away from her hand and put my head between my knees. “I wanted to get away from my parents, go to parties, get drunk, and figure out what I wanted out of life.”
“Did you ever figure it out?”
I glared at her and exhaled through my nose. “I was doing shots of Jaeger, and then I woke up here, naked and covered in rabbits and my own blood, with Criminy’s wrist in my mouth. Since then, I’ve been wrapping my body around my best friend while strangers whisper about what freakish monsters we are. I don’t know what I want, but I know this sure as hell ain’t it.”
“Then Franchia is bound to be better, right?”
“I guess.”
Tish stood and turned to face me. She said she had been a nurse back home, and I could see the steel rod up her butt from telling people what to do all day. But I could also see that she wore her heart in her eyes. “Easy things aren’t worth much, and you never have adventures if you stay in one place. So take Criminy’s letter and go to Ruin with Cherie. If it sucks, come back here. What have you got to lose?”
I couldn’t help smirking. “Nothing, I guess. When you put it that way, I sound like a scaredy cat.”
“So don’t be scared.”
“Easy for you to say, considering you won’t get bludded.”
Tish gasped, and I immediately felt like crap.
“I didn’t mean that, I’m just . . .”
Hands on her hips and hat blocking the sun, Tish glared down at me. “If you want to grow up, quit acting like a baby. I didn’t want to be here any more than you do, at first. I fought it every damn step of the way. The only reason I won’t get bludded is that I’m afraid it’ll mean I can’t get back home to be there when my grandmother dies. If you’re unhappy here, do something about it. You’re just lucky Criminy loves you enough to let you go. And you’d better be smart and grateful enough to stay alive, for his sake. The caravan may seem safe and boring, but Sang is scary as hell out there.”
I grinned. “But I’m a predator.”
“And in London, a suffering minority. Franchia could be good for you. New things to learn, new things to see, living among the daimons. But you’re going to have to be careful about those Franchian men. They’re not all lovesick softies like Luc.”
“You knew about that?”
I saw a Bludman’s humor in her smile. “I’m a fortune-teller, Demi. I know everything. Do you remember what I told you the first time I touched your hand?”
It was my turn to grin. “You said, ‘I see feathers, fairies, mortal danger, a handsome stranger, and a trip to hell.’ ”
“I didn’t see those things here in the caravan, honey. You need to go out there and make ’em happen.”
“Even the mortal danger?”
Her fingers went to the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She stared past me as if she could see through the glossy maroon wall of the wagon she shared with Criminy. “A little mortal danger never killed anybody,” she murmured. “At least, not a Bludman.”
“I guess I have to go, then. Maybe I can find that handsome stranger you mentioned.”
She looked down, the spell broken and her eyes crinkled up with humor. “Then go tell Cherie and get packing. I’ll set up the bon voyage party.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, and we both chuckled.
“I’d hug you, honey, but you look hungry.”
“I am hungry.” I sighed. “For so many things.”
I stood and dusted off my breeches and bustle. Only in the caravan could I get away with a style like that, one that would have been outrageous in the cities of Sangland. But the breeches felt like skinny jeans, and I would miss them once I was costumed in fifty pounds of ruffles to blend with the humans for the trip. With a smile and a wave, I headed toward my wagon.
The only problem was that I had lied to Criminy. Cherie had no idea we were going away. And she wasn’t going to like it one bit.
2
“No! I won’t do it! You’re insane!”
In six years of sharing a wagon and often two square feet of space on a very small chair, I had never seen Cherie so furious. I’d seen her homesick, shy, kind, and often prissy. But until that very moment, I had doubted her ability to feel passion of any sort. It brought out her Freesian accent a little more, too.
“But it’s so boring here, Cherie. Nothing ever changes. And you’ve always wanted to see Franchia.”
She paced the train car, skirts snapping. “Not at university! Not sitting still, having numbers drilled into my head. I like the caravan.”
“Then we’ll skip out of Ruin and go to Paris. Be the stars of a cabaret.”
“The caravan is respectable, but the cabaret? I am not some tawdry showgirl!”
I shrugged. “You’re a girl who performs in a show. Same difference.”
She stopped in front of me, shaking a manicured talon in my face. “No. No. No. This is different. The caravan, it’s an art. With Master Criminy, we are safe, cared for. Legitimate. But once you’re in the cabarets . . . you don’t understand. The men, they expect things from the girls there. It is not all dancing and then back into your wagons like good little ducks.”
I sighed and flopped down on the bottom bunk of the bed we shared. “It wouldn’t be like that. We’re Bludmen. Predators. The men will probably be scared of us. But whatever. I’m going.”
“All this time, and still I do not understand this ‘whatever.’ You, who fight against being told what to do all the time—do you not understand that all men are not as good as Master Crim? In Paris, we would be playthings, feathers to be batted about on the wind. It is debauched, dangerous. Bludmen are not so loved. You cannot go out alone.”
She returned to her pacing, her blond curls flouncing in her wake. For a bloodthirsty killer, she looked like a china doll from back home, like Claudia from Interview with a Vampire. Except that she really was as sweet as she looked and swore she’d never drunk from a live human in her entire twenty-five years. Cherie was content in the caravan, happy with what seemed to her an easy life compared with the tiny wagon she’d grown up in, somewhere in a freezing forest. With carnivalleros coming and going over the years, she was sure the perfect man would arrive at the perfect time to sweep her off her slippered feet. Maybe because she’d been born a Bludman, she had a better sense of how very long three hundred years of life could be, how very much time she could give that mysterious man to arrive. Having been born human, I possessed a sense of urgency about life that she couldn’t quite fathom.
I stood and stopped her with firm hands on her slender shoulders. “Cherie, I need something new. I can’t stay here. I can’t do this anymore. I have to leave, with you or without you. But I’d prefer with.”
A battle of wills ensued, a test of friendship spoken only with the eyes.
I felt her deflate and knew then that I had won.
“Fine. But only Ruin. Not Paris. Just promise me that if it’s wretched, we can come back here. Where it’s safe.”
“Of course. We can always come back.”
She drew me into a hug, and I inhaled a cloud of her hair, scented with her favorite shampoo, a soft mix of Freesian pine and vanilla that she splurged on with her carefully saved coppers. Most of her earnings were shipped back to her family in Freesia a few times a year, whenever we were near London and Criminy gathered up the caravan’s post.
“You’re going to love it.” I patted her back and pulled away to look into her eyes, which were as cloudy gray as Criminy’s but balmy and pleasant. Criminy felt like a storm, but Cherie was like a quiet rainy day spent reading by an open window, as different as two Bludmen could be. “We’re going to have an adventure!”
“Hmmph.” She shook a finger in my face. “The things I do for you.”
I just smiled. It was going to be fantastic. She would see.
* * *
Everyone in the caravan had some piece of advice for our trip to Franchia.
“Speak softly and carry a big knife!” Torno the strongman roared. “These city men, they will take advantage of a sweet girl like you. You must be careful, ma donna. And you must take a man with you. For protection.”
I snorted and shook my head. “No way. That’s the whole point.”
“If you were my daughter . . .” Torno’s face went even redder than usual under his tight hat.