Wicked as They Come

“I’ve never been so covered up,” I said. “Is it always this way?”

“If you’re a smart little Pinky, yes,” said Criminy. “You’ll get used to it.”

He led me out the door and down the steps. People had finally started to appear around the wagons, and it was very hard not to stare, because they were very strange people doing very strange things.

Closest to us, a taut rope hung between two posts, and a bored young woman painted like a marionette was riding a unicycle back and forth. Her costume was made of lurid purple leather with yellow harlequin diamonds, laced at the neck, wrists, and ankles, with a flouncy leather tutu. With all that lacing, she had to be human. A Pinky, like me. Spotting us, she perked up.

“Good day, Master Stain,” she called. “Who’s the new girl?”

Criminy nodded politely but didn’t answer.

Underneath her tightrope stood a young man with a nest of wavy auburn hair, his blouse undone to show a hairless bird chest. A big-nosed puppet drooped around his neck on invisible strings. Several other puppets were strewn over a trunk nearby. The man’s gloves were scarlet, and he was so focused on the cyclist above that he didn’t even acknowledge us as we passed.

“He’s in love with her,” Criminy whispered, his breath tickling the curls that hung in the tender spot behind my ear. “He keeps hoping she’ll fall and break her neck, so that he can turn her without guilt and be her knight in shining armor.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. In the vampire stories I’d read, the vampire usually just did whatever he wanted and damn the consequences. There was an odd balance of power at play in this world, if the blood drinker spent his life gazing longingly at a bored girl on a unicycle.

The next car was an aquarium. Behind the thick, wavy glass, floating in crystal-blue water and framed by softly waving water plants, was a mermaid.

I had to look twice to confirm it. Yep, a mermaid, complete with silvery blue tail.

Beautiful blond hair billowed around her head, and she had white clamshells over her breasts. Her eyes were dark with kohl and pinned to Criminy. When we were right in front of her, she swam up to the glass and kissed it with a saucy wink at my escort.

“Sirena,” Criminy said. “The mermaid. Bit of a trollop. Tried to teach her magic once, but she didn’t get on at all.” She was waving madly, so he waved back with a bored smile, saying, “Yes, yes, we see you. Get on with it.”

The mermaid scowled at us and did a backflip, slapping the surface of the water with her tail. I shrieked as cold droplets sprinkled over me, and Criminy pulled me a little closer. My heart sped up as he gently dabbed at my face with a bright red handkerchief.

“Missed a drop,” he said, voice quiet and husky. “Just there.”

His lips barely brushed mine. I wanted to push him away. I should have turned my head and slapped him for taking advantage of me. But I was too busy keeping my knees from buckling and melting into a puddle at his feet. The touch was brief and searing, and it was all I could do to pull back and clear my throat. Criminy didn’t apologize. He just grinned.

Sirena smacked the glass with her hand and went to sulk behind a water plant. Before I could ask if she was fake or real or really magic, Criminy steered me to the next wagon and the strong man, Torno. He was almost a giant, with huge muscles and a waxed black mustache with curled tips. He wore a tan leather suit that extended up his neck into the oddest top hat I had ever seen, molded tightly around his ears and chin. I couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable and sweaty it had to be inside his costume.

As he did squats, he held a red velvet fainting couch over his head. Seated primly on it was a two-headed boy of fourteen or so. Both heads had scraggly hair the color of nothing and dark eyes that were crafty and sullen. The open collars told me that they were Bludmen, and I watched as each hand lifted a teacup to a different mouth, which slurped and sucked as only a teenager can. When the cups returned to the saucers, the lips were painted with blood. Both heads grinned luridly at me, showing red-stained teeth. I shuddered, and Criminy yanked me forward, saying, “It’s rude to stare unless you’ve paid, pet. They were born that way.”

“I wasn’t staring at their heads,” I said. “I was staring at the bloody teeth.”

“You get used to it.”

Just then, a strange woman walking past us caught my attention. She was actually swallowing a python head-first as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Her skin was a deep indigo black, and her hair fell in braids to her waist. She wore nothing but a shiny corset, bloomers, and snakeskin boots that came to her knees.

“I can’t tell,” I whispered to Criminy when she had walked past. “What is she?”

“Veruca Lindenfain, Abyssinian swallower of swords, fire, and snakes,” he said. “Abyssinians are human, but their blood is so powerful that nothing will drink it. Not even a bludrat wants to go blind and mad. Makes a pretty penny for us, you know, draws a huge crowd wherever we go. Not a lot of her type around, able to walk both worlds and swallow fire, too.”

Next was the lizard boy, stretched out on a log, asleep. He seemed like a perfectly normal teenager who happened to be covered in scales of a sickly pale green. A long forked tongue flapped as he snored.

“He needs sunlight,” said Criminy. “So he says. I think he’s just a lazy bugger.”

The trailer beside the lizard boy was painted purple and pink. I smiled at the two pretty girls whispering on the roof. Even when doing handstands on chairs ten feet off the ground, they just seemed so innocent and girlish and happy.

“Cherie and Demi. The Twisty Sisters,” Criminy mused with a fond wave. The girls waved back—while standing on one hand each. “Don’t worry—they’re both bludded, so even if they fall, they’ll be fine. I found Cherie in a London orphanage, and Demi was a Stranger, bleeding on the moor. Now they’re as close as real sisters and the finest contortionists I’ve ever met. I’ve a bit of luck about me, you know.”

“Maybe it’s not luck,” I said.

“Perhaps,” he murmured, but I could tell that he was pleased with himself and took an almost fatherly pride in his strange carnivalleros. There was more magic about Criminy Stain than what he pulled out of his hat.

More and more people emerged from the caravan to practice, but we stopped in front of a lonely light blue wagon that showed a bit of wear. Painted words had been scraped off recently and violently. Criminy removed a ring of skeleton keys from another of the mysterious pockets of his coat, selected one, and worked the door open. It was musty and dark inside, with broken furniture jumbled about. There was a distinct smell of dog. My nose wrinkled.

“Sorry, love,” he said. “The wolfboy left it a bit of a mess before he ran off.”

He led me inside and pushed a button on the wall. A series of lamps buzzed into life, bathing the dark room in flickering orange light and revealing old wallpaper with black velvet stripes over shiny silver.

“It’s considered a good size,” he said, “for someone just cutting her teeth. We’ll beat the rugs, wash the linen, fix the furniture. Good as new by bedtime. Will it suit you?”

I walked around, touching things. A dainty chair had been reduced to a pile of kindling, and the stuffing was popping out of a silk couch in parallel rips. It was going to take a lot of work to make it livable, but I wasn’t going to mention my doubts about his powers as a magician or a taskmaster. Everyone we’d passed on our walk had bowed or curtsied with deep and somewhat fearful respect. Criminy Stain was a man who made things happen.

“So long as I have a safe place to sleep, I’ll be fine,” I said. “Please tell me pajamas here don’t lace up to the neck.”

“The door locks from the inside,” he said, pointing out four different types of locks on the front door. “And that’s the only entrance. No windows. Made for Pinkies, you see. But we’ll get you a clockwork as soon as possible, too, to stand guard.”

His eyes traveled over my dress like those of a dog looking in the window of a butcher shop. “You can sleep in whatever you like,” he muttered.

I blushed and pretended to inspect a painting in a gilt frame. It showed a herd of elephants trampling a lion.

He cleared his throat. “Now that we’re alone, I’d like you to try glancing,” he said. “As your employer, I need to know what you can do.”

“I don’t know how,” I admitted. “It was more something that happened to me, not something I did on purpose. I didn’t mean to touch her.”

“Try,” he said, and he took my left hand, the one with the compass stained on the palm. He looked into my eyes as he slowly unbuttoned the three buttons and pulled each finger of my glove to loosen it. I just stood there, mesmerized and breathing faster. With a sly smile that made my legs feel like jelly, he brought the glove to his mouth and gently bit the tip of the middle finger. As he held my wrist in one hand, he slowly removed the glove with his teeth. I have no idea how I managed to remain standing, as it was possibly the sexiest thing that had ever happened to me. And our skin hadn’t even touched.

The glove dropped to the floor, and he guided my bare hand to the open neck of his shirt. He closed his eyes just before I touched him, his head falling back.

And then the jolt.

In a second, I saw it, the image filling my mind and threatening to burst out of me. I gasped and fell to my knees. He followed me to the floor and held me by the shoulders as if I was going to fly apart.

“What? What is it? Letitia, are you all right? What did you see?” he said, searching my face as I blinked with wide eyes.

“Nothing,” I whispered.

“You’re lying,” he said.

I was silent. He lifted me back to my unsteady feet, and we stared at each other, another contest of wills.

He raised his eyebrows. I wasn’t getting out of this one so easily.

“I can’t tell you what I saw,” I finally admitted. “I just can’t.”