He stares at me for a second, to make sure I’m not screwing with him. With a dejected “Bitch,” he shoves his hands into his jacket pockets and huffs off.
Even from where I stand more than a dozen feet away I can still hear Lorenzo say, “What the hell?” He grips the guardrail of the ride platform and swings over, landing gracefully in the dirt. I don’t want to deal with him, hear him berate me for screwing up when I had my prey exactly where I wanted him.
So I run.
The carnival is a blur as I race back to my wagon. The door is ajar, a line of pale light outlining its curve in the dark shadow that is the wagon.
When I climb inside, Benjamin is there, propped up against the pile of pillows and reading a book. He takes one long look at me, from the shaking that rocks me from head to toe to the empty bottle of wine that’s still clutched in my hand. His eyes linger there for a good long while, and a tentative smile creeps across his mouth.
“You changed your mind?” He’s good at hiding it, but there’s a glimmer of hope peeking out of that question.
I hadn’t thought of what it would be like to tell him that I wanted to pass off the curse instead of break it. And I definitely hadn’t thought of what I’d say if I failed. Will he think I’m weak? A coward? A horrible person? All those things?
“There was this boy.” I pause, unsure how to phrase the horrible part, the part that comes next. Turns out, I don’t have to. He looks at me and my shaking and the bottle and understanding clicks on his face.
We have no words for each other. Ben slides off the pillow he’d been sitting on and quietly moves past me to slip out the door, the budding smile trampled into a frown. I want to—no, need to—say something, but there’s nothing in me that isn’t a lie.
But there is anger.
“Don’t run away from this argument like you do with your mother!” I yell as I follow him into the night air. Ben stops, still within the circle of the light spilling from my wagon. The muscles of his back and arms ripple as he clenches and unclenches his hands into fists. I expect him to keep going, though I hope he won’t. Finally, he turns.
“Why shouldn’t I when you seem to trust me about as much as she does?”
He turns away again as I sink to sit on the steps. He heads not for camp but for the smudge of trees in the distance. I watch him until he’s a dark shadow indistinguishable from the others crowding the night.
Fuck.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Benjamin
I sit near the white slatted fence bordering the edge of Katarina’s property, cypress trees dripping in Spanish moss just beyond. The cool, damp ground is trying its hardest to make me the same temperature. The carnival is far behind me, the lights gone out a long time ago.
So when I hear clumsy steps behind me, I’m a little surprised.
“I know what’s bumming me out,” Sidney says, “but what about you?” His voice has the slippery slur of one drink before complete drunkenness and one after good sense. When he drops down onto the grass beside me, I can smell the warm yeasty scent of his beer before I see the bottle glinting in the sparse light.
I don’t answer. I’ve learned that if you leave space in a conversation, people like Sidney, people who love the sound of their own voice and their self-important stories, will fill it for you.
“Not feeling particularly chatty this evening?” he asks. “That’s fine. Let me take a stab at it.” He tips his head back to take a swig from his bottle. “We’re here on Katarina Marx’s property, and that, my not-quite-friend, isn’t a coincidence. I know Emma wants to break the curse, and I know Katarina knows how.”
My head whips toward him. He has to see my bewilderment because I’ve had no time to hide it. Sidney is not supposed to be this knowing or this astute.
“That’s right, Audrey Jr.” He points at me with one hand still wrapped around the bottle. It’s like he has that thing surgically attached. “Now. I know what you’re thinking. How does good old Sidney—”
“I was using different adjectives in front of Sidney,” I interject. He’s drunk enough to go on without me, sober enough to start talking louder in case I decide to be a smart-ass again.
“How does good old Sidney know that Katarina is the key to breaking the curse?”
He is the last person I want to be playing this game with. I start to stand up, and that hurries him along. His voice has lost the singsongy quality, and many of the unnecessary S’s that slide in between words disappear.
“I tried to break it, too, that’s how I know.” He stares off at the moving clouds, at the glimpses of white moon that filter through them. “After your mother grew tired of watching me fail night after night after night and left, I didn’t care. I went through the motions but didn’t really try. Leslie pitied me. She convinced me to come here, to see what Katarina might know.”
“And when she told me what had to happen, that—” He pauses here and holds his beer bottle up to the moonlight like it’s a cherished thing, like a lover. “That it had to be my one true love willing to make the sacrifice…” He laughs, a mean, coarse noise so unlike anything I’ve ever heard from him that it’s startling. “I’ve never, ever loved anyone like I loved Audrey—hope this isn’t creeping you out, hearing me talk about your mom like this, because I’m doing it anyway—and I knew, I knew that she would come back.”
He gestures grandly toward the empty field. “And lo, she came back, widowed and with you in tow. Shit, but that hurt. You were a cute kid, don’t get me wrong, but that was not how I saw things happening. But. Her coming back only confirmed to my stupid, hopeful self that I was right, that the curse could be broken and that Audrey and I would be the ones to do it.
“So I waited. I was respectful, downright gentlemanly. It took about a year and a half for her to talk to me again. She was guarded, but that was to be expected. And I just kept waiting. Because she was supposed to be my soul mate; it was meant to be. So every day I looked for a sign that she was willing. And that sign never came.
“For a while, I thought it was because of you. That she didn’t want to risk almost dying while she had a child who still had trouble tying his own shoes. But you got older and she still didn’t want to do it. Finally, I approached her, I don’t know, five months ago. You’re grown, you could take her place as carpenter for this damned carnival if she wanted you to, and she still turned me down. She still said no.”
My insides go cold as I begin to see the shape of his argument like a distant island off a dark shore.