Lenka’s careful poise shattered. “Because I’m sick, you self-centered jerks. Because if I don’t get treatment, I’m going to die and take my special high-energy tasty blood with me.”
She’d startled them, which was a minor triumph in itself. Madam Oksana’s glance darted to Hector, who shook his head ruefully.
Rima, astonishingly, laughed.
“Oh, let her join us. She won’t forget anything she already knows, after all, and we can get new ideas for our acts off YouTube.”
“It would be a shame to waste her blood,” Kazimir said. “Perhaps she can come up with some way to preserve it?”
Lenka was shaking, possibly with relief, possibly with horror: She felt both. Also sick and weak and in need of something more to eat than the Fritos and jelly babies she’d been living off for three days.
“Sure — why not? There’s a bunch of things I want to do before I. turn. I need to work on a triple act for the cube rig, for one. And find someone to make us new costumes.”
Madam Oksana stood up and stretched. “Well, that is decided. Good. I will come to the office now and look at the YouTube.”
Lenka shook her head. “Unless you want me to die ahead of schedule, you’ll get me something to eat and let me go to bed. You can watch YouTube tomorrow.”
Joska and Mariana Kubatov joined the line of eager customers waiting for the house to open for the eight-o’clock show of the Cirque des Chauve-souris in San Francisco.
An Asian girl approached them. “Mr. and Mrs. Kubatov? Please follow me.”
Lenka’s mother saw that the tent had been painted and regilded, the faded murals artfully touched up, the brass lamps polished. The girl — the unicyclist — showed them to a booth. Two glasses of red wine sat on the table.
“Lenka said to tell you she can’t come out now, but she’ll see you after the show. Please, enjoy.” And she glided away.
Papa laid his hand on Mama’s. “You must not be disappointed. You know how frightened she is before a show.”
“Frightened I will scold her, you mean.” Mama turned her hand and squeezed. “I’m fine, Joska.”
They sipped their wine and looked around them.
The organ had been repaired, and the player’s repertoire now included old-timey arrangements of popular songs. The opening charivari was the same, but the acts themselves had been — not modernized, exactly. Polished, sharpened, refurbished.
Like the tent. Like the costumes, which were modest but sexy, well made, theatrical.
The Kubatovs smiled and applauded and waited for Lenka to appear.
Battina had acquired a new cat — a seal brown shorthair that rode a miniature flying trapeze from one upholstered platform to another, her tail sticking straight out behind her like a rudder.
“That is cruelty,” Papa murmured.
Mama patted his hand.
At the end of the first half, the steam organ began to play “She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage.” A cube fashioned of shining golden bars was winched smoothly into the spotlight. Three girls appeared, dressed in silk kimonos painted with bats: the Asian girl, the dark-haired contortionist, and finally, finally, Lenka, almost unrecognizable in a Dutch-boy bob, heavy eye shadow, and circles of rouge on her cheekbones.
The girls backflipped down the ramp, shedding their kimonos, posed a moment under the cube to show off their coy ribboned bloomers and white silk corsets. Lenka stepped lightly onto her partners’ linked hands and vaulted into the cube as if she were flying, then caught the Asian girl, creating a human chain up which the contortionist swarmed.
It was a breathtaking act. The three girls wound through all the cube’s dimensions, hanging from its bars and one another, folding and unfolding their bodies through a complex geometry. Their last trick was a subtle slip-off, Lenka seeming to slide through the contortionist’s hands headfirst in an uncontrolled fall. The audience gasped. Even Lenka’s mother, who knew how the trick was done, covered her mouth with her hands, then laughed with relief when the contortionist caught Lenka and swung her, impossibly, up and out and back into the cube again, where she seemed to float for a heartbeat in midair, hovering, trapped, like a white bird in a glittering cage.
The show was over. The audience had departed, drunk on alcohol and circus magic. Lenka’s parents sat in their booth behind their empty glasses and waited for their daughter to come to them.
“I’m not going to cry,” Mama announced.
“There is no reason for crying,” Papa agreed.
Lenka appeared on the other side of the table. She’d changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, but her face was still masked with the garish doll paint.
“Mama,” she said. “Papa. I’m glad you came.”
She sounded less glad than polite. Her father hesitated a moment, then slid out of the booth and hugged her hugely. “Princess mine,” he said. “Berusko. You have become a great artist.” He held her out at arm’s length. “You are well? Your hands are very cold. There is so much to say. You will come eat with us?”
Lenka looked at him gravely. “I can’t, Papa. I’m sorry. I’m on a special diet — it wouldn’t be any fun for any of us.”
Mama joined them. She opened her mouth to scold, to question, her arms half raised to gather her daughter to her. But when Lenka turned to her, smoke eyed, solemn, self-contained, she dropped her arms and said crossly, “We were worried, Lenka.”
“I know, Mama. I’m sorry.”
“And your health?”
A smile flitted over the painted lips. “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been.”
“And happy?” Papa asked.
“Yes,” she said evenly. “Very happy.”
A calico cat leapt up onto the table and meowed.
“I’m sorry,” Lenka repeated.
Her mother nodded once, shortly. “You have duties. Go. We will come again tomorrow.”
“It’s the same show,” Lenka said.
“Even so,” her father said.
The calico meowed again, flowed through the air to her shoulder, and settled around her neck like a furry scarf. Girl and cat looked at the Kubatovs, amber eyes and dark equally calm and disinterested. Then Lenka smiled, a bright performer’s smile, turned, walked through the stage curtain, and was gone.
Vampire Weather
by GARTH NIX
“You be home by five, Amos,” said his mother. “I saw Theodore on my way back, and he says it’s going to be vampire weather.”
Amos nodded and fingered the chain of crosses he wore around his neck. Eleven small silver-washed iron crosses, spread two finger widths apart on a leather thong, so they went all the way around. His great-uncle told him once that they’d used to only wear crosses at the front, till a vampire took to biting the backs of people’s necks, like a dog worrying at a rat.
He took his hat from the stand near the door. It was made of heavy black felt, and the rim was wound with silver thread. He looked at his coat and thought about not wearing it, because the day was still warm, even if Theodore said there was going to be a fog later, and Theodore always knew.
“And wear your bracers and coat!” shouted his mother from the kitchen, even though she couldn’t see him.
Amos sighed and slipped on the heavy leather wrist bracers, pulling the straps tight with his teeth. Then he put on his coat. It was even heavier than it looked, because there were silver dollars sewn into the cuffs and shoulders. It was all right in winter, but any other time all that weight of wool and silver was just too hot.
Amos had never even seen a vampire. But he knew they were out there. His own father had narrowly escaped one, before Amos was born. His great-uncle Old Franz had a terrible tangle of white scars across his hand, the mark of the burning pitch that he had desperately flung at a vampire in a vain attempt to save his first wife and oldest daughter.