Sleight (25 page)

“Gemma, get back!” Ted holered at me. I ignored him.

“Ted, get them out!”

Ted motioned for Ash, and slowly, he and Summer stood, their backs sucked against the tent wal as they slid closer and closer to the door.

“Gemma, we didn’t do anything. There’s something up with her, man, seriously. This isn’t safe,” Ash said as he scooted behind me.

“Get them out of here before I let Gert out of her fence.” As soon as Ash and Summer were clear of the tent, it ended.

Gertrude stopped, instantly quiet. I didn’t dare take my eyes away from hers, the chocolaty brown of her irises ringed with the white of her eyebal. That only happened when she was realy freaked out about something. I stepped closer, hand out, cooing to her that she was okay. She settled, extended her trunk to me. We made contact.

I managed to get to the fence before Jiminy came tumbling out of his corner. I stroked Gertrude’s forehead, then Jiminy’s, talking in my softest, quietest voice, the one I saved for only them.

“My sweet babies…it’s okay…” Jiminy shoved his trunk through the bars and sniffed my pockets. “No, Jims, I don’t have anything. Are you hungry? Did that mean, nasty Summer scare your mommy?” Gertrude snorted, as if in answer to my question.

“I’l go get you guys some apples. It’s okay. I’l be right back.” I turned on the hose for their water trough before stepping outside the tent. Jiminy made quick work of dropping his trunk into the water and splashing al over his mom.

As I walked out, Ted was just walking away from Ash and Summer in the courtyard. I wanted to know what the hel had just gone down.

“What were you doing in there? You know the menagerie is off-limits to guests,” I gave Summer a dirty look.

“I was just giving Summer the tour and your stupid elephant freaked out.”

“Maybe she didn’t like the company,” I snarled. “Did you touch Jiminy? Did you try to climb into the enclosure? What, Ash? What did you do? Gertrude doesn’t go off like that for nothing.”

“Gemma, I’m realy sorry,” Summer said. “Nothing happened, I swear. Ash didn’t do anything. We just went in to see them—I only wanted to see them in real life, you know, up close, after you did those pictures.” She sounded almost apologetic. “It was my fault, I think. Maybe because I’m new around here or something. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah…it’s fine. Whatever. Just don’t go back in there. She’s realy wigged out.” I felt sorta bad for being rude to Summer. She was probably shaken after having almost been trampled by 13,000

pounds of angry elephant momma.

I took a step closer to Ash and turned so Summer couldn’t directly see my face. “Don’t bring your girlfriends into my elephants’

enclosure ever again.”

“What, you’re the only one who can have friends over to play?” Not the reaction I was expecting.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Like you’re the only person alowed to have friends over at the circus? I’ve seen Dmitri here a lot lately,” he said, his voice low, “so don’t start teling me who I can and can’t invite over.”

“That was different. He was here because I was…sick.” Ash looked up at the stitches on my forehead. “Yeah. Sick.

Speaking of, tel me…how did Boy Wonder know you were hurt in the first place?” The cadence of his speech was harsh, even accusatory. It made my heart pound.

“Shut up. I’m not going to talk about this with you, especialy not in front of company,” I said, nodding my head at Summer. She was looking at the toe of her boot, twisting a divot in the sawdust. We were making her uncomfortable.

“No, Gemma, for reals. I want to know what happened.

Marlene thought that Junie caled Henry to tel him about your accident, but Junie doesn’t have Henry’s number.”

“Can we talk about this later?”

He grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the western edge of the courtyard. His grip pinched my skin and I struggled against him, but he was strong and held fast.

“No, we’re going to talk about this now. How did he know, Gemma? Weren’t you unconscious? So you couldn’t have caled Prince Charming yourself—” He hissed the last part of the word.

“This is none of your damn business. Why are you doing this?” I tried again to yank my arm free, but he squeezed harder.

“How did he know you were hurt?” Ash enunciated every sylable, his face inches from mine. I didn’t say anything. “I don’t want you hanging around with Henry Dmitri.”

I laughed out loud and threw my head back. “Are you for real?

Who are you, my father?”

“No. You don’t have one of those, as I recal.” I glared at him, my eyes burning at the causticity of his comment.

“Wow, Ash…realy?”

He released my arm. “Henry is a total creep. And he’s a bad influence on you. Cutting classes, leaving school grounds. Don’t you think that’s a little out of character for you? Everyone has something weird to say about the Dmitris. They’re not like us—”

“Right, because living in a trailer at the fairgrounds where we earn a living performing for pennies doesn’t make us freaks at al, does it?”

“Wil you just listen to me? Are you realy that dumb? The Dmitris don’t care about you, or any of us. They’re rich, untouchable puppet masters. And Henry has found an easy target in you, Gemma Flannery. You’re al too wiling to let him pul your strings,” Ash said.

I rubbed my biceps where I could stil feel his fingers digging into my flesh. “You know nothing about Henry, or the Dmitris, except what that new slut of yours has told you. And if you believe a word of the shit she pukes up about everyone, you’re a lot dumber than I thought.”

“Yeah, wel, I’m not going to warn you again.” Ash backed away from me, extending his arm and pointing his finger for one final admonition before rejoining Summer. “I won’t be there to put you back together when he’s done with you.”

“Say it isn’t so. Woe is me,” I said, the back of my hand on my forehead, “what wil I do without Ash to make it al better?” He paused, looked down at the ground, a smirk wide across his face. He opened his mouth to say something but instead laughed and shook his head.

“Go to hel,” I said and stormed away, toward the meal tent to grab a few apples and make good on my promise to Jiminy.

I was vibrating with anger. Since when did Ash have the right to dictate my life to me? Ash, who only paid attention to me when it suited him, when it filed some gap in his opportunistic agenda? Ash and his moody, tough-guy act, who was realy nothing more than an insecure little boy who would never be as talented as his sister or parents? Whatever he was hearing about Henry, it was al coming from that bitch Summer. It was Ash who should be more careful about whom he was spending his time with. He alowed that little trol into our world—brought her here, to our home, where she pissed off my elephants and spread her acid about Henry. I wanted to go up and punch her stupid pierced face.

When I got back into the elephants’ tent, I rushed to turn the hose off as the trough was overflowing. Jiminy stomped in the puddle next to it, making a muddy mess. I grabbed some hay from the bale stal and climbed over the bar to cover up some of the goop.

“Jiminy, naughty. Stop it,” I said. He nosed around my pockets.

“Here you go.” I held out a green apple for him. He scooped it with his tongue and bit down, the juice from the apple dribbling out the side of his mouth. Gertrude stepped closer and wrapped her trunk around my head. While she was gentle with me, the sheer strength of her trunk was a little rough on my head wound.

“You’re al right, girl…it’s okay.” How I wished I could hear their thoughts. I wanted to know what it was that sent them into such a frenzy—Gertrude was protective of her baby, but I’d never seen her get so nutzoid around someone new. Never.

It was Summer. They didn’t like her.

“You’re a good judge of character, aren’t ya, Gert?” She snorted again. I gave her the last apple and climbed back over the bar of their fence.

“I’l be back in a bit. Homework.” Jiminy tossed a trunk ful of straw at me. “Hey, take it up with Ted. This school stuff wasn’t my idea.”

Once in the trailer, I flopped down at the table and skimmed the mouse pad to bring my computer around. The email program remained quiet—no new messages. Henry’s radio silence chafed me even more. I wanted to hear from him, to have someone to whom I could vent my frustrations. I wanted the distraction of hearing about the evening with the Dmitri grandparents, anything to reaffirm in my mind that Henry was not a rich, untouchable puppet master, or whatever it was that Ash had caled him, but that he might actualy care about me. The fact that I sought this reassurance in the first place, when it should’ve been something I was solid in, made me feel worse. Ash knew what he was doing when he pissed on my parade. I hated him for it.

Ash only brought Summer here to try and make me jealous. In his own twisted little way, he was trying to show me how he was feeling. Since Henry and I had started hanging out, Ash had been a total D-bag. He was pissed that I had someone in my life al of a sudden who might be interested in me for who I was rather than for what I could do for him. I had always been Ash’s backup plan.

He’d always known that little Gemma had a raging crush on him, from the time we were little, after I’d moved in with the Cinzios permanently. Ash had kept me close enough so I’d be there to stroke his long-suffering ego.

But since we’d started at Eaglefern, he’d shared none of the companionship he’d promised that night before our first day. He was on the prowl for a bigger, better deal, someone who knew nothing about his failures or affinity for meanness. And Summer Day had given him exactly what he was looking for. She was everything I wasn’t, her waggling tongue licking the line between admiration and stalkerdom.

I got up to look out the window. The unfamiliar car in the lot, that had to be Summer’s. I wasn’t going out of the trailer again until I was certain she’d gone. I turned the heat down—my anger was making me sweat. I noticed Delia’s box stil had not been moved, and though I’d resolved to do it myself, I was reluctant to go outside and risk another run-in with Ash.

Open it.

It’s not like there’d be anything in it now that would shock me.

True to form, Delia had already had the last word. What was left to be afraid of?

Open it, Gemma.

I stared at the box for a few seconds, hands clammy, stomach fluttering. It couldn’t be that bad. And since Henry had been coming around, the box hadn’t whispered to me. I was forgetting her…

already. A pang of guilt squeezed my throat.

I found a box-cutter in the junk drawer and sliced through the tape seal. Inside were the usual suspects: charcoal pencils, a set of ivory hairclips, a few pieces of worthless jewelry, her ratty red sweater (it smeled like her—an unexpected moment of comfort), a notebook filed with sketches, a makeup bag covered in the green dust of a crushed pastel, and a smaler book wrapped in the brown paper of a grocery bag. Delia had sketched the book’s title across the front: La Una.

I plucked it from the box and thumbed through the pages. Delia hadn’t just been reading La Una, she was dissecting it, making copious notes in the margins, some of them angry. She didn’t like what Cailum Tridin had to say—crazy or not, at least she’d been lucid enough to recognize bulshit when she saw it. I opened to her bookmark, a folded announcement for a La Una reading group at New Horizons. The page title read “The Evil of Medicomagical Healers and the Breeding of Ignorance Amongst the Masses.” On it, Delia had written a single line: You will burn in hell, L.D.

On the other pages were scribbled random words—“traitor,”

“blasphemer,” “Judas”—the urban-style handwriting similar to that found on the pages on her seven letters. She wrote the initials L.D.—it had to be Lucian Dmitri. Did she know he was the book’s author? How would she have known this? I hadn’t even talked to Marlene or Ted about it yet; I didn’t even know if they realized the extent of Lucian’s evil. My thoughts raced as new unanswered questions sprouted from old.

Someone was crying. A woman, nearby. I tossed the book onto my bunk and moved toward the sound, my heart pounding that someone or something was going to pop out and scare the hel out of me. It was something I never got used to.

The sound seemed to be coming from the bathroom, but when I opened the door, there was nothing. Just the mournful cries seeping through the wals.

I slipped on my shoes and went outside, around to the front end of the trailer, folowing the audible trail. No bodies hung around, alive or otherwise, the grounds eerily quiet considering the time of day. Where was everyone?

As I rounded the corner, I saw her. Or, rather, I saw her back.

She was faced away from me, her shoulders quaking with emotion.

Her head and upper body were wrapped in a red knitted shawl, and her feet weren’t touching the ground. I was stil uncomfortable with the idea of speaking to the shades, but this one seemed very upset. I couldn’t just ignore her.

“Helo? Are you okay?”

She didn’t turn around.

“Tel my boy I love him,” she said. I knew her voice…

“Alicia…?”

“Tel him, Gemma. Tel Henry I love him.”

“Okay. Of course, I’l tel him,” I said, moving closer to her.

“Alicia, why can’t you tel him yourself?”

I was within a foot, close enough to reach out and touch her, if she’d been anything more than vapor.

“Get the book to my father. Get it away from Lucian. Please…

hurry…,” she pleaded. I raised my arm toward her shoulder.

She spun around in a blast of light, her form rushing at and through me before I could take a breath in. The force of her raw energy was painful, wrapping me in an instant blanket of holow despair. The impact of her body against my humanness pushed me backward and I slammed to the ground.

Scrambling to my feet, I ran around the end of the trailer and back inside, slamming and locking the door behind me. A drop of blood landed on my arm. My hand instantly went to the sutures in my forehead, but it was my nose that was bleeding. Another day, more of my blood spiled. This was becoming an al-too-familiar theme.