Chapter Two

 

 

 

For a trip that probably shouldn’t have happened, they didn’t get home until dinnertime.

After Elizabeth put the baby to bed in the nursery next to her own bedroom, she helped Maggie wash up and brush her teeth. They eventually wound up in Todd’s room, where Maggie preferred to listen to the big kid books Todd had Elizabeth to read to him—books that nurtured his curiosity and kept his interest, so usually books about dinosaurs, bugs, boy detectives or adventures. Elizabeth much preferred the boy detectives or adventures, but after the circus, he had it in his mind to hear about bugs. Elizabeth muscled through the book while trying not to shudder at the pictures.

“Did you two have fun today?” Elizabeth asked, rocking Maggie in her lap.

“Yeah!” Todd was using his inside shouting voice this time. Hard to fault a boy for enthusiasm, as long as he wasn’t enthusiastic right in her ear.

“Yeah? What was your favorite part?”

“The Rotting Man. Did you see his boils? They were seeping puuuuus.” Todd made a delightfully grossed-out face. “The haunted funhouse, too. That was so cool. All the blood hit the walls like blam!”

“I’m beginning to sense a theme here,” Elizabeth said, her gross-out less delightful.

“And I liked the snake lady and the lady who let us take a picture with the snake. That snake was bigger than me! And the bug tent, with the tarantulas and hissing cockroaches and ants and moths and butterflies.”

“Ah yes,” Elizabeth said. “All the things that stopped my heart were things you liked. You really want my youngest sister as your new nanny, don’t you?” She tickled Todd until he squirmed in his usual ‘no more’ way. “What about you, Miss Mags? What did you like?”

“Elephant! Merry-go-round horsies was fun.” Maggie was still working on her verb tenses, but she matched Todd’s enthusiasm in an excellent bit of mimicry that showed her absolute love for her big brother.

“I’ll bet they ‘was’,” Elizabeth said. “What about Kitty?”

“Kitty!” Maggie threw her hands into the air and grasped at Elizabeth’s head scarf, but she’d already learned to only grasp, not pull. “Kitty twirls.”

“Yes, Kitty twirled you around and twirled her skirt and her hair and gave you little braids.” Elizabeth tugged where she’d removed the small braided pigtails Kitty had done for the little girl.

“I’m glad you let us walk Oddity Row,” Sharona said in the doorway. She wore pajamas, even though it wasn’t close to her bedtime. “I thought it was going to be just another freak show, and it kind of was, but they weren’t just on display, where I’d wonder whether they were some kind of fake. They were walking around, interacting, doing little mini-performances. Wish we could have gone to the show, though, even under the threat of killer clownage.”

Elizabeth beckoned Sharona into Todd’s room. She came in and sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed, her phone in her hands.

“I’m sure your parents would prefer you in one piece. Did you go through your pictures?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yeah, although the half-nakedness doesn’t seem so bad in context anymore,” Sharona said. “I guess you wouldn’t agree, but I barely noticed the woman’s bikini with all those snakes around her.”

“And I suppose you didn’t notice the strongman’s short leather pants showing off all the muscles… Oh wait,” Elizabeth said with a grin. Sharona had nearly drooled at the sight of the oiled-up strongman. Elizabeth had been tempted, too, but she had much more practice than Sharona in the art of self-denial.

“Why was no one wearing much clothes anyway?” Todd asked.

“That’s your cue, Mother Superior,” Sharona said.

Elizabeth had no interest in giving the little monster the satisfaction of religious condemnation. “Circuses are kind of like gymnastics or ballet. It’s easier to see the skill when there’s less in the way to cover it. And some of the circus people there wouldn’t be able to show off how they’re different from us if they were covered up. For instance, you’ve never noticed my massive hunchback, have you?”

“You don’t have a hunchback,” Todd said, giggling.

“But you wouldn’t know, because of all my clothes,” Elizabeth said.

“Yeah, anything could be under there. How can we be sure she’s even human?” Sharona tickled Todd’s toes. “She could be a giant millipede.”

“It’s not true,” Elizabeth assured Maggie, who had started poking Elizabeth through her clothing to make sure she didn’t feel little legs under all the layers. “Probably. So today wasn’t a total waste, Sharona?”

“Are you kidding? It was nice to go someplace that wasn’t just little kid stuff. Even the actual little kid stuff was cool. Did you know you could ride wooden people on the carousel?”

“I rode the squid,” Todd said, raising his hand.

“I approve,” Elizabeth replied. “Well, all right, kiddos. With visions of boils, spiders and snakes dancing in your head, it’s time to go to sleep. You got a bit of a sunburn today, didn’t you, Miss Mags? Let’s go put some aloe lotion on that.”

Elizabeth tucked Todd in and kissed him on the forehead before leading Maggie back to the bathroom to find the soothing lotion. “See? I’ll put some on with you. My cheeks feel flushed. Can you help me put some on?” She laughed as Maggie slathered it over her cheeks. Then she gathered Maggie in her arms and rocketed her to her room. Her chandelier had already been dampened into a nightlight. Just as Elizabeth turned on the princess lamp for an additional nightlight, thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Hey, kiddo, I’ll be just across the hall in my room if the storm gets scary tonight, okay?”

But Maggie was a brave little princess. She’d stopped joining Elizabeth in bed during storms already, while Todd had taken a lot longer. Elizabeth was almost sad at Maggie’s strength. It reminded her all the more of her own weakness. Her mother had never let her in bed during storms. She’d hidden under covers and nearly smothered herself with the corner of the quilt to keep her whimpers from waking anyone else in the household. She wished she had been more like Maggie. She couldn’t help but imagine all the things that the tiny toddler was going to be able to do when she grew up.

“Love you, sweetie,” she whispered against Maggie’s forehead after her good night kiss.

Before she went down the hall to her bedroom, she ducked into Sharona’s. Sharona had turned on her flat-screen, but her attention was fixed on her phone as she texted.

“Thanks for helping me with your brother and sisters today.”

“No problem.” Sharona didn’t look up, but the fact that she hadn’t said anything insulting or snarky was still an improvement on some nights.

“Waffles tomorrow morning? Or for lunch, depending on when you wake up?” Elizabeth asked.

This time Sharona glanced up with a grin. “Sure. Thanks.”

Sometimes monsters were okay.

Elizabeth stopped by the baby’s room again to check that she was well into sleep before slipping into her own room and locking the door behind her. A locked door wouldn’t delay her more than a few seconds than an unlocked one in case of emergency, but it would more than delay anyone trying to get to her—long enough for her to hide what she needed to.

The first thing Elizabeth did was remove her head covering. The pores on her scalp opened to the air conditioning—in January!—like a parched tongue to water. She shook her head to loosen the clumps of her hair, then shimmied out of the black shirt and skirt, leaving them on the floor next to the hamper. She brought her flip phone and the baby monitor into the bathroom with her.

The bathroom accommodations were as luxurious as those in the rest of the house—marble countertops, custom vanity, porcelain soaking tub, shower the size of a New York apartment. The rooms had been planned as a mother-in-law suite until Mrs. Bishop had convinced the mister that a Petrosian nanny would be much better for the kids and her nerves.

Outside the shower, she removed her bra and underwear—plain, cotton, dark—and avoided the mirrors as she stepped across the stone barrier into the shower. She liked this better than the glass doors to the other showers in the house, because she didn’t have to see herself in the bathroom mirrors. She could close her eyes and feel her way by touch while in the shower. Outside of it, a black robe waited for her.

Once wrapped in terrycloth, Elizabeth took a moment to check whether her hair still covered her head and neck. It would cover her better when it was dried.

Her mother called Elizabeth while she was in the middle of drying it.

How does she always seem to know? Elizabeth set down the hairdryer. She probably wasn’t going to use it for the rest of the night, so she took the baby monitor and phone back to her room—bigger than Sharona’s but smaller than the master, with ceilings and paneling that belonged in a centuries-old library, practically palatial for a humble Petrosian saint who lived in a nun-like cell when she was at home. Other than the laundry, the room barely appeared lived in. She was hardly one to collect possessions, and she was the third Wu daughter who had stayed in the suite. It was no more permanent than a hotel room, whether it took ten months or another ten years for the Bishops to request her to check out.

“Hello, Mother.”

“I don’t approve of your tone.”

“Sorry, Mother. It’s been a very long day.”

“You always sound ironic. It’s very disrespectful,” Charity said.

“You know I don’t mean it. How’s everything at home?”

“Your sister Ruth is pregnant again.”

“Baby number four?” Elizabeth asked.

“Don’t you remember all your nieces and nephews?”

“At the end of a day like this, sometimes I forget I have parents.”

“If you don’t stop using that tone, I’m going to put your dad on,” Charity said.

Elizabeth swallowed. Anything she could say would turn nasty, and none of the words would help the roiling in her stomach.

“Yes, Ruth’s having her fourth baby, due in June.”

“How’s Amy?” She’d been the last Wu daughter to sleep on the very bed on which Elizabeth was sitting and, from Elizabeth’s perspective, Charity’s favorite daughter—the consummate woman from top to bottom, cheerful, submissive, passive, sweet and an excellent mother and wife. And all of it seemed so frustratingly effortless on Amy’s part.

Five of the seven Wu daughters had married before age thirty. All the Wu daughters who’d married already had at least two children. Elizabeth would have been considered a complete failure if she weren’t working for the Bishops, taking a single woman’s position as a caretaker for parents who needed help. Her only other option had been playing Cinderella in either her mother’s household or any of her sisters’, and none of them had really wanted her underfoot, especially her sisters. They hadn’t considered the presence of another sister conducive to forging familial bonds, and none of them trusted her to nanny for their children. Non-Petrosian children weren’t at quite the same risk. Even a once-lapsed Petrosian was considered an excellent role model, as long as the lapse was never mentioned.

Charity waxed lyrical about Amy and mentioned a few more things about Ruth and Miriam before asking, “Are you behaving? Following your commandments?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“It doesn’t sound like you are.”

“How can I sound more obedient?” She said that, yet she could hear Charity shaking her head.

“The laws are more than laws, Elizabeth. They are the way we respect God, making an effort toward purity we can never attain. It’s a sacred calling. I thought you understood that.”

“I do.” Elizabeth rubbed her forehead, hunched over her knees. “Believe me, I do. I’m doing the best I can. If I hadn’t been prepared to do that, I wouldn’t have come back. I wouldn’t have stayed with the Bishops for as long as I have. I would have stopped taking your calls.”

“Obedience is a discipline, but it’s meant to bring us closer to Him. That’s all I want for you. That’s all your father wants for you. He says he can start looking for a husband for you whenever you want to leave the Bishops. Your years are slipping by. Soon, marriage will no longer be available to you, with no possibility for children.”

“I thought I’d made myself clear, Mother. I’m going to be taking care of the Bishops’ children until they all grow up and move out. Then you can send me to another family. That’s just how it has to be. As your least desirable daughter, I’m sure Father’s wiping sweat off his holy brow.”

“Elizabeth…”

“Forgive me.”

“We always forgive you when you ask. Go to sleep now. It’s late. And remember to say your prayers.”

“Goodnight, Mother.”

Elizabeth tossed her phone onto the nightstand and continued to massage her head, knowing full well that nothing she did would dull the knitting needle making its way from temple to temple. Part of it was from overheating most of the afternoon, part of it from handling four children and part of it from dealing with her mother, even for a few minutes. Forgiveness was divine, but Charity made no effort to hide how much Elizabeth was her disappointment. Being dutifully single was all well and good, but it would have represented her family better to be dutifully married. She’d thrown away that opportunity when she’d left the fold. Returning didn’t give her that opportunity back, no matter what weight Father had within the community.

Elizabeth leaned over and pulled the chest out from under the bed. Her eyes barely open, she unlatched the chest to retrieve the bottle of whiskey she kept inside it. She took three deep swallows in succession straight from the bottle, screwing her face against the burn. She took two more swallows then put it back in the chest and kicked the chest under her bed.

Petrosians were teetotalers. Not even wine was permitted. There was plenty of biblical precedent for the drinking of wine, of course, but for all the damage alcohol could do to a family—Noah and his sons, Lot and his daughters—Petrosians believed there was no need to tempt those around them who might more easily stumble. Elizabeth would have stuck with a good high-content wine if she could, but she didn’t like drinking a whole bottle, and she couldn’t very well keep a partially used one in the Bishops’ refrigerator without someone knowing she’d fallen pretty far off the church wagon.

She already had everything planned out for any emergency during the night, because once she’d had her whiskey, she certainly couldn’t drive. If it was bad enough, she’d have Sharona take the wheel. If it was too bad for that, someone probably needed an ambulance. She didn’t drink enough for a hangover or to get properly drunk—just enough to take the edge off.

While avoiding the full-length mirror by the window again and also avoiding looking down at herself, she pulled on a pair of black pajama pants and a long-sleeved turtleneck baggy enough on her slight frame to give her skin room to breathe while still keeping her covered. It wasn’t the nightgown prescribed in the admonition that she dress like a woman, but this was one of the few areas in which her mother, her mother’s husband and her father had agreed not to battle. The attire in which she slept away from the eyes of others was such a minor detail. They’d only fought back on long pants during the day, when she would be in the public eye. She’d acquiesced as a teenager but had thoroughly rebelled against the plethora of wardrobe strictures after leaving the Petrosian fold.

Yes, Elizabeth Wu was one of the movement’s greatest embarrassments on many levels, her embarrassments well outweighing those of Father—which must have filled him with as much relief as righteousness.

Elizabeth had been given her mother’s husband’s surname. He’d agreed to marry Charity, despite her getting pregnant by another man. Oh, how they had labored over Mary analogies while Charity had grown larger and larger with Elizabeth inside her.

All of Thomas Petros’ other children were given greater honor among the rest, sons and daughters of a reluctant prophet, although Thomas made no effort to ensure preferential treatment. His sons and daughters also withstood more scrutiny. Such scrutiny became more malicious upon the bastard daughter of an adulterous union.

“Even prophets sinned,” Thomas said often to his congregation. “There was only one who did not sin, and he spent all of his time among the worst of the worst.” The important thing was to never sin again, and he didn’t. Not another bastard was born from him or from Charity.

But Elizabeth had still come forth in that magnified sin, a constant reminder through her more European features that she was not like her sisters, who all bore a purer Chinese heritage proudly upon their faces.

Much had been made of those years when she had cut ties from the Petrosian saints, with frequent comparisons to Jesus’ parable of the shepherd and of the prodigal son. When she’d returned, Thomas had preached of Mary Magdalene—not the woman who would have been stoned for adultery, who had never been named in the Gospels, but the woman freed of demons and among Jesus’ favored women. How Thomas and Charity and the rest of the community had celebrated her return—too loudly and not without a generous helping of virtuous forgiveness. Still, despite the warm welcome, the few proposals of marriage from before she’d left quickly dried up, and they’d had to wait for someone outside the fold to take her as a nanny.

And ever since she’d returned, it wasn’t just the community’s behavior that had changed. Elizabeth knelt before her bed and clasped her hands, but she still couldn’t pray. Not honestly. She waited as long as she could stand, then wrapped her night scarf around her head and neck and crawled between her sheets to the sound of close thunder and rain pattering upon the giant windows across from her bed. The curtains covered them, but they didn’t muffle enough the storm sounds from outside. That’s how she liked it. Her headache subsided under the heat of the whiskey and the peaceful percussion of the rain.

 

* * * *

 

When she woke up, she wasn’t sure what had done it. There was rain, yes, and thunder, but she’d slept through worse. No whine from the baby monitor or chirrup of a text message had startled her from sleep. Usually there was nothing unusual to waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water, but Elizabeth couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong in her room.

Rain blew against her face as the curtains billowed inward.

Elizabeth jerked up. There was no way she had left the window open. There were multiple latches on each window, and they were difficult to push up. Besides, she would never have opened the windows during a storm, especially when that storm was bringing the cold back, tightening her skin until it was like stone, even under the blankets and all her clothes.

“Hello, Elizabeth.”

The voice came out of the darkness between the flapping curtains. The storm illuminated him in strobe flashes, but she couldn’t tell who he was, except that the relief of his silhouette seemed all the stranger cut against brief but stark lightning.

“Don’t scream.”

He must have known she would do just that, this mysterious figure made of weird angles and gentle, menacing, familiar voice, because she tried. She tried to scream loud enough to wake the baby, wake Sharona, wake the dead.

But nothing came out. Nothing but a thin hiss of air where a scream should have been.

“Once, I would have stolen you straight from your children at the moment of the wish, my dear. Without you, the children might have wandered the circus until afterhours when my clowns could have taken them. They are quite irritated that I denied them such a treat, especially since children are so hard for them to come by these days. You should thank me for waiting.”

The man darted forward. Elizabeth tried to run, but her legs tangled in her blankets—or the blankets tangled around her legs. Part of her still believed she was dreaming, which would explain everything—the way nothing came out of her mouth when she screamed, the way her blankets seemed to pull her more deeply under her covers to bind her down, the way the man remained shrouded in darkness though her eyes had adjusted and fear had sharpened her sight. His feet made no sound as he approached her, but there were footsteps coming from the other side of the bed, another figure emerging from the corner of her room.

She twisted under the covers, rolling until she was wrapped into a cocoon. She wriggled and fought against the hands that grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her out from under the coverlet, sheets and all. The new man’s grip was firm as he lifted her over his shoulder. If her skin was like marble from the cold, this man’s body was like a boulder.

“Is this really necessary? Can’t you just—”

“I can, but I won’t. Earn your favor, Victor, and follow. Bring her to me.”

“Why didn’t you just let the Creature do it for you?” the man carrying her asked.

“You know why.” The strange man gave no further explanation, merely stepped back into the obscurity of the curtains. When their billowing subsided, he had disappeared, although Elizabeth’s room was on the second story—not that logistics had prevented her abductors from coming into her room through locked windows.

“I’m sorry,” the man carrying her said. “I know you’re scared, but I don’t have a choice.”

With her bundled over his shoulder, the man vaulted through the window without effort. He ran down the slanted roof, then launched from the gutter to the lawn. When his feet struck the grass, he crouched to absorb the momentum, but he should have cried out in pain. Some bone should have broken after jumping from such a height.

The man brought her to a worn blue truck that could generously be called vintage or quaint. He jumped with her into the bed, pulled the back shut and covered them both with tarpaulin against the rain. Two strikes against the back of the cab signaled the truck to pull away from the curb.

She cried silently into the metallic water that lined the truck bed, panic stealing her breath like the storm had stolen her screams. Gray mist clouded her vision. The man next to her rubbed her back, his empty apologies echoing in her ears.

 

* * * *

 

She woke up again, and this time it wasn’t to her dark, cold room with rain on her face.

Elizabeth hadn’t gone in because the kids were too young, but there was no mistaking that she was in a circus ring under the big top tent. The spotlight was fixed upon her, illuminating to the wooden dividers that marked the ring’s edge. Someone had put a blanket on the sawdusty floor for her. She couldn’t see much beyond the ring, but she sensed there were people in the darkness watching her—like some kind of black market auction or underground show, the kind of show that abducted people from their homes and stuck them in the middle of a circus ring. Not a single possibility rang hopeful in her head.

“Hello again.”

Now that she was in the circus, Elizabeth placed the voice.

“You’re the fortune teller… Bell.” She lifted a hand to shield her eyes against the spotlight’s glare.

“Amazing, isn’t it, the clarity that follows when fear falls away?”

“The only thing that’s clear to me is you’re a fucking lunatic.” Elizabeth struggled to her hands and knees. “I swear to God, if anyone comes near me, I’m going to fuck you up so badly, your grandchildren will still be wincing. No… You won’t even be able to have grandchildren to wince.”

“How lovely that I have the fortune of meeting the real Elizabeth. I was hoping to encounter her sooner rather than later.”

Elizabeth squinted into the light, nonplussed, until she realized what she’d just said—more importantly, how she’d said it. “God will forgive me. I wasn’t thinking.”

She touched her fingers to her head. They struck fabric, and, despite the circumstances, Elizabeth could briefly breathe again. She was still covered. A sex trafficking auction wouldn’t have let her keep on all her layers.

“Such a shame for this farce to continue.” Bell stood from where he had been sitting on the edge of the ring. She could have sworn he hadn’t been there when she’d scanned the darkness. “There’s no need for it. I know your every thought. I know your future, your present, your past. I know why you maintain this charade that you’re still devout, why you cling to your origins like an infant to her blanket.”

“You know nothing about me, you sick—” Elizabeth literally bit her tongue to keep the filth from passing between the prison of her teeth.

He laughed quietly, remaining on the edge of the light without crossing into it as he circled her. “You still don’t believe in me. For a woman who believes divination to be a sin worthy of fear, you seem reluctant enough to believe anyone has the power for it.”

“I have faith, sir. I’m not weak-willed enough to pay to be conned.”

“You let your children enjoy our midway readily enough,” Bell said.

“You took someone with kids?” someone asked from the darkness, dismayed.

“Isn’t that an invitation to greater scrutiny?” another woman asked, her voice tight with something that was either anger or frustration. “This isn’t how you operate. You steal people without ties, remove them seamlessly from their lives. Dealing with loving families is a bit harder to manage, isn’t it?”

“I’ve done it before.” Bell shared a mutual understanding with Elizabeth before saying, “Besides, they’re not her children. She’s not the mother, only the nanny. She’s never been a mother, never going to be a mother. She accepted the position of a glorified babysitter because it was the closest she was ever going to get to loving her own.”

“What did you say?” Her knees protested as she stood, but she was used to that by now, and it barely slowed her down.

“I said many things, and I’ll say more. Your mother truly believes you’re contrite, but though you kneel beside your bed and clasp your hands where no one can see you, you don’t pray. I know you haven’t been able to pray since you left the community, that you can’t even convince your lips to say the word ‘amen’, although you clearly can convince them to say all sorts of other things. I know the closest thing you have to devotion is the booze you keep under your bed.”

The man stepped partially into the light, as fey and mysterious in the contrast between darkness and light as he had been under an afternoon sun. In nothing but leather trousers that showed no sign of damage from the storm raging beyond the tent canvas, his bare skin somehow made him appear more dangerous to her than if he had been as clothed as she was. “What do I have to say to convince you that you cannot hide what you are from me?”

“You’re the psychic, right? You figure it out. You’re certainly enjoying all this grandstanding, playing the enigma, when what it comes down to is that you’re a sadistic, sick fu— man. I don’t know what you intend to do to me, but I’m going to—”

Bell continued to smile his cat-like smile, knowing and amused because of it. “I’m an entertainer. I love to hear myself talk. And if there’s one thing a carnie knows deep in his bones, it’s to stretch out tension as long as he can before revealing the wonder. But let’s dispense with pageantry, shall we? You seem to have lost patience for it.”

“I lost patience when you had your man take me from my bedroom and bring me here for…for what? Why am I here?”

“Bell, stop savoring.” Maya, sans serpent, stepped into the light, her dress more corseted and frilly than the one Elizabeth had seen her in before—all silk and lace and petticoats, which suggested she was more than a psychic’s assistant. “I get that you like doing things your way, but this is cruel, even for you, teasing someone who just made a wish at the wrong time to the wrong person. You did the same thing to me, and I’d like to stay special, thank you.”

“You’ll always be special to me, love.” Bell kissed her neck. Though Maya still showed obvious concern for Elizabeth, the woman couldn’t suppress a shiver, closing her eyes and baring her neck for him.

Elizabeth swallowed against the spasm of nausea, forced herself to release the tightness in her shoulders and adopt a more submissive, apologetic posture—something to make a dangerous man feel powerful.

“Look, sir. I don’t know what’s going on, but I won’t call the police or tell anyone. I’m not even a hundred percent sure this is happening. Just let me go. I just want to go home. Please.”

The effort she made to appear unthreatening stopped being an act. She fell to her knees, and though pain shot up her legs, it was the least of her concerns. Even with a sex trafficking ring likely off the table, something was going on here, and it clearly wasn’t something good. Whatever this Bell person was, the others had been cowed into acquiescence. They weren’t going to interfere, or else they would have already.

“Please, I want to go home. Let me go home.” The words sounded like they belonged to a little girl instead of a grown woman. As nauseated as she had been, groveling made it worse, but still she clasped her hands in supplication.

“That’s not your home any more than those were your children,” Bell murmured against Maya’s skin before returning his attention to Elizabeth. “I was under the impression that home is the place you’ve been trying to run from since you were seventeen…unless you’d really like to return to Thomas Petros’ weak effort at an urban commune, genuflecting under your mother’s roof in constant apology for her mistake, patronized by Father and Daddy dearest alike. Is that where you’d have me return you?”

Blood drained from her face. “How do you—?”

“How long did you really think you could hide in the midst of saints, Lizzie? But you can’t hide from me. I know all your dirty little secrets. Besides, my dear, I have no intention of letting you go, not when you’ve given me such a lovely wish to play with.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Have you been stalking— Can someone please tell me what’s going on? Please.”

Bell stroked Maya’s corset with his knuckles, subtly urging her back into the darkness, and she allowed herself to be urged. Then it was just Elizabeth and Bell and the brief reflections in the darkness that meant other people were watching. He stepped fully into the light. When she focused her eyes upon him, she could no longer see anything in the shadows, not even a suggestion.

“You’re not leaving this circus for a good long while. You’re never going to see your family again. And you’ll never see the children again.”

“Tell me you didn’t hurt the kids. They haven’t done anything to you except be kids, and I swear, if you did anything to them…”

“They wished for not a thing in my presence. The children are safe from me and my circus. Forget them. Fade them from your mind, these half-pint surrogates that were nothing but fine sand in your desperate grip. They were never yours. None of it was ever yours.”

He crouched down in front of her, heedless of any restriction that his trousers should have given him. The worst part was that his pale eyes showed tenderness, empathy, yet he didn’t stop.

“All that is yours you hide beneath the rags you wear in the name of righteousness, but we both know piety merely masks fear—fear that has gnarled its festering roots through every part of you, every inch of your skin. It’s no wonder I couldn’t allow the Creature to take you from the house as he requested. I may never have gotten you back.”

When he stretched his long fingers to her cheek, Elizabeth flinched. No one was supposed to touch her, not with the kind of intent a man like Bell would have.

“You can’t fool me,” he said, gazing at her with chilling intensity. “And it’s time to stop fooling yourself. It’s time to make you mine.”

Elizabeth reeled away. She scrabbled at the blanket to scramble back.

“Oh, not that way. I’m quite content with Maya in my bed. But you’ve bound yourself to me—mine as the circus is mine, mine as its inhabitants are mine. Mine like everything you see before you. Now, take off your head covering.”

“Stay away from me.”

“I’m not going to harm you, Elizabeth. I’ll do many things to you, but I won’t harm you. And you’ll remove that head covering on your own, because modesty has nothing to do with why you wear it. When I’m through with you, no one will recognize you enough to point and decry your blasphemy. Please…” Bell flexed his fingers in a way somehow graceful and threatening at the same time, as though his beauty itself was the trap. “Remove the scarf.”

Elizabeth couldn’t slow her breathing. Once she got started, she rarely could. Her head swam and her vision tilted, but she brought her hand to her scarf once more, this time to untuck it from around her neck. Still meeting Bell’s eyes, as though to gauge whether or not he was really serious about his command, she slid the covering away from her hair. Her quickened breath trembled as she let it fall to the blanket.

“There. Was that so difficult?” Bell beckoned to the scarf. It lifted from the blanket like a rehearsed magic trick. As it slid across his palm, he closed his fist around it, nothing there when he flourished his hand open again. “Everyone here barely sees what you were trying to hide. Now, remove the rest.”

“What?” Elizabeth clamored to her knees again. Waiting until she found an opening to escape was starting to feel like a luxury she couldn’t afford. “I thought you said—”

“There are few people in this tent today who haven’t been caught in various states of undress, sometimes even during the course of our performances. Either you remove your clothes or they’ll end up removing themselves. I’d prefer it if you would bare yourself, my dear. Shedding your old skin will make what you will become so much easier.”

“Why should I care what’s easier for you, you bastard?”

He smiled. Beautiful though he was, why did he have to seem so normal? “Oh, it’s not easier for me. But as a psychic, I’m not partial to people who lie, and those garments of your religion are lies. Show me the truth, Elizabeth. You have no need for your clothes. Remove them. Show me everywhere you let Dez ply his craft upon you. Every last inch.”

“How do you know that?” Elizabeth clutched at the loose turtleneck, holding the large shirt against her chest as though it were a shield.

Bell must have thought her question didn’t merit an answer. He simply stood above her with his legs parted and his hands by his thighs like a gunslinger, the light unflinching and honest over the planes of his lean strength.

Not one person—no man, woman, child, not even a doctor—had ever seen under her clothes since she’d returned to the Petrosian community. Religious exemption gave her all the excuse she needed. Petrosian Christianity wasn’t exactly Christian Science, but the modesty rules, especially those for women, made doctor visits and other assorted inspections voluntary rather than mandatory, and as an unmarried woman, no one else ever had any reason to see what her clothes concealed.

Elizabeth traced the shape of the wooden cross she wore over her sleep shirt. Then she tucked it under the loose turtleneck and swallowed against the stone in her throat as she crossed her arms to take off her shirt. With her shirt over her face, she closed her eyes and kept them shut as she peeled sleeves down her arms and discarded it. Humiliation flushed her cheeks and boiled hot behind her eyes. Shame cut through her, tiny shards of glass flowing in her veins. Then she stood, the spotlight hot upon her bare skin, and pushed her pajama pants down to her ankles.

“All of it. Keep the jewelry, if you like.”

No matter how tightly she clenched her eyes shut, she couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her cheeks.

“Bell…” Maya began.

He must have done something to quiet her, because she didn’t protest again.

“Please,” Elizabeth whispered.

“It’ll make things easier for you. All of it.”

Elizabeth pushed her underwear down to join her pants. Whether her clothes had been worn in righteousness or fear, she’d worn them almost constantly for over ten years. Revealing even the slightest bit of skin felt as naked to her as entering a church while wearing a bikini. In losing every last vestige of protection, she felt flayed—not just naked but stripped down to what was beneath her skin.

But it was her skin Bell had wanted to see. Every inch of her previously unexposed skin that she’d hidden from her mother, from both her fathers—from any man who had asked for her hand because he couldn’t get anyone younger or prettier or with a purer history, and she’d been serviceable enough for the purpose of procreation and raising children.

A man had seen it before, though. In the seven years she’d spent running from the Petrosian community, many men had seen her bare, but only one man had seen all the ink that had been poured into her, because he’d been the one to put it there.

The only sounds in the tent were the whispers of Bell’s bare feet on the sawdust as he resumed circling her and the choking gasps that escaped from her as she tried so hard to hold it in.

“Remarkable.”

Elizabeth jumped at the brush of his fingertips over the blades of her shoulders.

“A nearly exhaustive catalogue of all the things you fear.” He released her from the agony of his gentle touch. “Needles are apparently one of the few exceptions.”

The tattoos covered all the skin that she normally concealed, from ankles to wrists, up her neck, under her hair, vining over her scalp under the long growth she’d cultivated over the years since her return.

“Bell, that is quite enough.” The protest came from the Bearded Lady, Kitty, her warm voice unmistakable and jarring. It was hard to believe that such a sweet, kind woman could have anything to do with this, but she hadn’t stepped in until now, which meant any number of disquieting things. “She wished herself in by accident. She’s done nothing to offend you, nothing to hurt us. Can’t you see what you’re doing to her?”

“No one appreciates fine art anymore,” Bell muttered near her ear, though she hadn’t been warned of his proximity by heat, which made Elizabeth jump again. But his voice was farther from her once more when he continued. “The purpose of this exercise was purely practical. Birth is a painful process—rebirth, even more so. I needed to see my palette, and she would have ended up disrobed either way in the end.”

“You didn’t have to do this so publicly,” Kitty replied.

“You didn’t have to come. And humiliation wasn’t my intent.”

“No, but you’re enjoying it anyway,” Kitty said.

“An artist should enjoy his work, especially with a wish such as this. I have to tell you, Lizzie. I’ve been waiting for you for ages.” This time his heat hit her like a furnace. Before she could flinch away again, he stroked through her tangled hair. “I want you to understand that what I told Kitty is true. Your humiliation, your shame, your pain… None of it is what I want from you. But you will have to suffer through them. Hold on to your fear, Lizzie. I’ll give it something real to cling to.”

With the next pass of his hand over her hair, the cool breeze through the ring struck bare skin, followed by the slither of her hair over her shoulders and back to strike the blanket in a hushed fall. Her hair fell out in clumps under the movement of his palm. The sensation of air on her scalp was like a ghost.

“I promised no one would recognize you,” Bell said softly.

“I don’t understand.” Elizabeth shuddered and shivered—not cold, beyond fear, shrouded so completely in humiliation she didn’t think she’d ever be cold again. “I don’t know what you’re doing. How you’re doing it. Why you’re doing it. Just stop. Please stop. Please. Someone stop him. I can’t do this again. I can’t—” The fast breathing shifted seamlessly into hyperventilation, mucus blocking her nose and thickening in her throat.

He brushed the last strands of hair from her head, leaving her bald, naked and trembling in the middle of the ring, as though he’d stripped years from her as well as clothes and hair. The only thing he’d let her keep was the wooden cross on its leather cord. It felt sacrilegious against her sternum. She covered her breasts with her arms and kept her legs tightly closed, but it wasn’t enough to cover every story inked over the rest of her.

Seven years under Dez’s needle. If the body was a temple, she’d spent seven years outside the Petrosian community defiling it, like spray-painting graffiti over the exterior of a Gothic cathedral. The snakebite, tongue piercing and the ear holes had filled in on their own, but there had been nothing to do about the tattoos except endure them and make sure that her mother and Petros never saw them. Charity would have never let her out of the house if she’d known. Elizabeth would have become the secret once more, the spinster in the attic, with nothing but a Bible and the constant atonement for a sin she couldn’t erase, a desecration she couldn’t deny—and so many others that no one could see and that she’d never, ever share.

“I just want you to know, Elizabeth, nothing that’s happened to you is your fault. And this won’t hurt, but it will feel quite strange.”