Two hours later, with eggs and toast and tea in their bellies, bathed and in clean clothes that had been left behind a generation past, they sat around a small table with a rickety third leg and the priest’s demeanor had changed dramatically. His home was a quaint cottage, warm and full of the scents of herbs and fresh paint, as Father Nicolas considered himself something of an artist.

  “It really is lovely,” Yvette said, studying a framed image of the old church. In the painting it was surrounded by colorful flowers and several young women in ornate dresses approached its open door, heads hung in proper penitence. “A vision of the past?”

  Hugo flinched, hoping Father Nicolas did not take umbrage, but the older man only shook his head in sadness.

  “It’s the way I’ve always viewed my church. But it’s never been as beautiful or as full as the painting implies.” The priest sighed. “But you didn’t come here to talk about my art. You’re seeking your dear brother, and I’ve taken enough of your time.”

  “Father, you’ve been remarkably generous,” Hugo said. “Truly, we couldn’t have dared to pray for such intervention. A fresh breakfast, a bath, and clean clothes. Your church thrives, sir, far more than you realize.”

  “Kind of you,” Father Nicolas said. “But now there are a couple of things I must tell you. First, if you plan to stay another night in the village, it can’t be under my roof, nor the church’s. I can’t risk the possibility you’re not brother and sister as you claim—”

  “Father—” Yvette began.

  “Hush, dear,” he said, his face flushing red again, though not with anger. “I’ve never seen a brother or sister sneaking the sorts of curious glances you two do at one another. I’d wager neither of you knows the other as well as you claim, or as well as you might like to, come to that.”

  Hugo thought it wise to say nothing, and Yvette seemed to agree.

  “You’d best perfect your ruse if you hope to share a room at some inn or another,” Father Nicolas went on. “But it’s the other point that may trouble you more. Just yesterday morning, the body of a young boy was discovered at the edge of the forest, up on the hill overlooking the village. The constable wasn’t able to identify him—a stranger to us, this boy. I fear, my friends, that he may not be a stranger to you.”

  Hugo shot to his feet. “What?” His stomach roiled with a breakfast it now wanted to reject. Anger knotted his hands into fists. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”

  Father Nicolas began to clear the breakfast plates from the rickety little table. “Would it have changed anything? You needed a bath and a meal. If the boy isn’t your brother, you’re no nearer to finding him. If he is, your search is over.”

  Shaking with grief and fear and anger, Hugo grabbed the worn leather travel case the priest had given him, and into which he’d shoved his dirty clothing. He tried to speak, to thank the man, but he could not get the words out.

  Yvette picked up her own bag. “If you were lonely, you could simply have asked us to join you for breakfast.”

  “Oh, but I did,” Father Nicolas said. “And now you’re off. Safe travels, my friends.”

  They rushed out, leaving the old man in his little cottage, staring at the picture he’d painted of a dream.

  The thing had once been a child. Hugo could not deny that, and yet it seemed little more than a husk, like a wasp’s nest in the shape of a boy. He stared at it, thinking he ought to weep at the sheer awfulness of the sight, but horror kept his eyes dry.

  “It’s not him,” Hugo said with a shudder.

  “How can you be sure?” the constable asked, smoothing his mustache in a way that seemed habitual, as it punctuated nearly everything he said.

  Hugo stared at him. “Aside from the age of the remains?”

  The constable pondered this. He glanced at Dr. Magnusson, who had stood more or less quietly in the corner of the room, painfully thin, like a spider lurking in his web, waiting for an unsuspecting fly.

  “Despite appearances, I assure you the death is quite recent,” the doctor said. “I can’t explain the condition of the child’s body, but an examination of the brain and other organs shows trauma, and a catastrophic atrophying that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. But the boy had only been dead a day or two when he was discovered.”

  “Dear God,” Hugo whispered, grateful that they hadn’t allowed Yvette into the room. She seemed made of stern stuff, but this moment would haunt his nightmares, he felt sure. “Still, it’s not Oskar. The hair is much too dark.”

  “Well, small blessings then,” said the constable, stroking his mustache again. His eyes were narrowed, though, and now he studied Hugo with a renewed interest that seemed unflattering at best. “Where did you say you were from? You and your sister, and your missing young man?”

  Hugo glanced at Dr. Magnusson, wondering where this sudden suspicion arose.

  “I’ve told you—” he began.

  The door banged open. Hugo turned, expecting some sort of attack, but instead the figure that shambled into the room belonged to a stooped, elderly woman, her skin leathern and cracked, her eyes rheumy but glimmering with a spark that stopped him in his tracks.

  “Horst Fischer, you are the most frustrating man,” the newcomer wheezed.

  The constable—Mr. Fischer—seemed startled and unnerved by her presence. “Elfriede. I was going to come out to see you this afternoon.”

  The old woman gestured at the dead child stretched on the doctor’s table, her arthritic fingers bent and swollen. “Oh, I’m sure you were. I heard you had this child in here and thought I would save you the stroll.”

  “Elfriede,” the doctor said, “really, you oughtn’t be here.”

  “Agreed,” the crone sniffed. She glanced at Hugo as if in frank appraisal, and one wiry, wild eyebrow lifted. “Hello, dear. You’re far from home.”

  The constable cleared his throat. “Elfriede—”

  “Oh, stop saying my name as if its some incantation that will get rid of me.” She pointed at the body. “Quite a sight. Breaks my heart to see. But it’s not my doing.”

  The doctor and the constable exchanged a glance.

  “Then it’s not...” the doctor began.

  “Witchcraft?” She grinned. “Oh, indeed it is. Magic, anyway, and the darkest sort. But it’s not my magic, you damned fools. I love children, as you both know well.”

  The witch Elfriede rolled her eyes. “Idiots,” she said, and turned to stride from the room.

  In the quiet aftermath of her departure, Hugo shifted awkwardly and glanced at the constable.

  “It seems my sister and I must keep searching. We’ll sleep tonight at the inn and depart in the morning, following the path of Le Circus Furneaux. They can’t be more than a couple of days ahead of us now, and they’ll stop to perform again eventually.”

  The constable, Mr. Fischer, nodded without looking at him. “I’d tell you to sleep well, young man, but I don’t think any of us will sleep well for quite some time.”

  7

  Yvette slept fitfully, every creaking timber and rattling window enough to bring her near to wakefulness. Though the bedclothes were freshly laundered, thick, and warm, and though Hugo had been nothing but a gentleman, she felt vulnerable in the room with him. They might be masquerading as brother and sister, but that did not lessen her acute awareness of him. Prior to the last few days, she had never spent the night in such close quarters with a man not her relative, nor even imagined it. Hugo had graciously foregone any claim to the room’s small bed and instead begged an extra blanket from the innkeeper with which he curled himself at the foot of the bed like a faithful hound.

  Still, his presence there made her heart beat faster and her thoughts race. Even her dreams were unquiet, evicting her from sleep time and again. It was not the stirring of love or the romantic flutter spoken of in songs and poems, but the sheer strangeness of the unknown. Hugo was kind, at least, and they shared a purpose. They were allies, comrades in arms, and thus she told herself the foreignness of their forced intimacy would pass.

  Once more she exhaled deeply and found herself cradled in the gray sea of possibility between sleep and waking. She could hear Hugo’s gentle snore and feel the warmth of the blanket swaddled round her, but could not be certain if these things were real or dreamt. Thus, when a floorboard creaked and a rustle of cloth disturbed the dust in the corner to her left, only the fear that raced through her suggested she might not be dreaming after all. As if floating, a figure moved into her peripheral vision and she dared not tilt her head for a better vantage, or widen her eyes to see better in the dark. If this were indeed an intruder, she would not give herself away.

  “I know you’re awake, dear,” a voice whispered, and cloth rustled again. “Another evening I’d cherish playing this game with you, but there’s no time tonight.”

  Yvette shifted backward with such ferocity that she struck her crown on the headboard. Profanity she’d never uttered burst from her lips and she sat up, clasping a hand over her mouth, startled by her own words as much as by the wrinkled old woman who stood only feet away. Bent with age, silver hair unkempt, eyes yellowed, she nevertheless laughed quietly at Yvette’s expression before she shook her head. It was that little chuckle that confirmed the reality of it all.

  “Get dressed, girl,” the old woman said. “You’ve got to run.”

  A second figure loomed in the darkness at the end of the bed and Yvette remained so startled that it took a moment for her to remember Hugo. He’d risen quietly and now he rubbed at his eyes, yawning, and stared at the old woman as if he’d half-expected to find her sharing the room with them.

  “Elfriede?” he rasped. “What in God’s name—”

  The witch, Yvette thought. Of course it had to be. Hugo had told her about the woman, but in the dark, half-asleep, logic had not caught up with events.

  “Not in God’s name,” the witch Elfriede interrupted. She cocked her head, a deep frown creasing her forehead, visible even in the wan starlight that kept the room from utter blackness. “They’re coming. You have minutes, at best. Get your things and...”

  Before she could continue, they all heard the heavy tread on the stairs outside the door. Several people were coming up from the first floor of the inn, though it had to be past two in the morning. They moved slowly but methodically, perhaps attempting a stealth the old boards did not allow. A muffled voice reached them.

  In the gloom, Yvette and Hugo both looked to the witch. Elfriede seemed as if she regretted coming to them, but she huffed in exasperation and beckoned silently, gesturing for them to hurry. She moved into the corner of the room and they hastened to join her, though Yvette had no idea what she hoped to accomplish. The floor outside the chamber door breathed with the burden of those sneaking about the inn at night.

  Elfriede reached long, gnarled fingers into the cuff of her sleeve and withdrew a small, slender blade that glinted in starlight as if the gleam had been drawn to that metal. She sliced the blade across her wrinkled palm, adding a crosshatch to the many scars already there. Swiftly, she turned to Yvette, grabbed her wrist, and made a small incision there before doing the same to Hugo.

  From the heavy door came the scrape of an old metal key upon the lock.

  The witch took the fingers of her right hand—her uncut hand—and scooped up smears of blood from both Yvette and Hugo, then mixed it with the dark crimson pooling in her own left hand. Teeth bared, she muttered words in a language Yvette did not know, in a guttural voice full of hatred or disgust or pain, or perhaps all three. If this was magic, it seemed to give her no pleasure.

  With a downward sweep of her hand, Elfriede spattered a few drops of their mixed blood onto the wooden floorboards. Her ugly chanting continued as the tumblers of the lock turned and she reached out left and right and took them each by a hand before she fell silent.

  The door swung inward. Yvette held her breath.

  The first man across the threshold was the innkeeper. He crept inside, peering into the darkness as if expecting wolves lying in wait. She’d never seen the second man before, but recognized the third immediately as the real wolf in the room. He’d been the butcher’s boy in the village where she and Hugo had met.

  “Gerhardt,” she breathed.

  The innkeeper frowned and glanced up and she nearly screamed, because of course they had heard. Of course they would see the three people standing in the corner. But the man only shivered as though a ghost had brushed past him.

  The unfamiliar man went to the wardrobe and flung open its doors while Gerhardt went onto his hands and knees to search under the bed. The innkeeper looked flummoxed.

  “You said this was their room,” the unknown man said.

  “I swear to you, constable, this is the room they took. If they’ve somehow managed to slip out without being seen...well, I don’t know how they’d do it. I’ve still two men drinking downstairs, as you’ve seen yourself. I can’t imagine—”

  “Doesn’t matter what you imagine, does it?” Gerhardt sneered. “You’ve let the killers get away.”

  “Killers?” the constable said. “I’ve told you, boy, there’s no evidence the young man and his sister were involved in the death of the child we found, and only your suggestion they had something to with this fellow you say drowned in the river in your own town.”

  “Are you a fool, Constable Fischer?” Gerhardt said, practically spitting the words. He threw his arms wide to take in the empty chamber. “If they’re so innocent, where’ve they gone? And trust me, they’re no more siblings than you and I. They were perfect strangers when they met on that bridge, and the scoundrel hurled my cousin Willi to his death in the river.”

  Yvette felt all the air rush from her lungs. Had the man really died? Yes, he’d been one of her attackers, would have raped her, perhaps killed her, and Hugo had only come to her defense. Still, to think they might be responsible troubled her.

  The witch squeezed her hand, squelching more blood between their palms. It dripped to the floor and a needle of pain shot up Yvette’s arm, so that she glanced at the witch and saw the disapproval in the woman’s eyes. Did she know, somehow? Did she understand all that had transpired? It surely seemed so, given the dark admonition in her gaze.

  “Regardless,” the innkeeper said, “as you can see, they’re not here now. Your hunt will have to continue elsewhere. If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to lay my head down for the night before the sun comes up.”

  The constable frowned, clearly trying to puzzle out the apparently empty room, but then he nodded and ushered a protesting Gerhardt from the room.

  When the door had closed—the innkeeper did not bother to lock it—Elfriede exhaled loudly, muttered something again in that strange tongue, and released their hands.

  “I...I don’t know how you did that, but...” Yvette began.

  “Thank you,” Hugo finished for her. But his heart was not in the sentiment. He shook his head, eyes distant, as if peering back through time. “If Gerhardt has witnesses, if they can connect us with this cousin who died, they might take us in for the dead child, no matter what we have or haven’t done.”

  Even as Hugo spoke, Yvette shuddered and moved a step away from the witch. Her palm stung from the woman’s little blade, which seemed to have vanished back up her sleeve at some point. The smell of their mingled blood lingered in the room, yet another thing the witch’s hex had hidden from the intruders. Hugo’s blanket pooled at the foot of the bed, and the bedclothes upon the bed itself were a rumpled mess, as if something untoward had taken place, but none of this made Yvette as uneasy as the dawning realization that she had just seen witchcraft performed. She shivered, feeling unclean, as the truth struck her. She had not only seen it...she had taken part, with her own blood and for her own benefit.

  Elfriede’s eyes narrowed, her gaze almost scorching as it fell upon Yvette.

  “I feel what you feel, girl. You have nothing to fear from me.”

  Hugo went to Yvette, who shied away, not wishing to be so close to him, clad only in her nightdress. It felt sheer, and once more her vulnerability haunted her. She thought of the little knife the witch kept with her and knew she should own one—knew she could use one. Yvette could fight back if she had to. She trusted Hugo, but she would not feel safe until she found Claude. Once she had reunited with her brother, once they were together, she would not be so afraid. But this...witchcraft...

  If Claude knew, would he disapprove? Would he cast her aside?

  “Was it...Was that black magic?” she asked, hopeful she might find comfort in the answer.

  In the space between breaths, the witch appeared beside her, so close that her scent filled Yvette’s lungs and she felt the crone’s hair brush her cheek. Those rheumy yellow eyes seemed bright now, the color of an autumn moon. She tried to draw back and the witch grabbed her skull in both hands.

  “Listen, girl,” she said, her voice strangely youthful, without the rasp of age it had held before. “Hear me. There is nothing of darkness or light in magic. Only intent. If the heart’s purpose be dark, then magic is black as that same heart.”

  Yvette tore herself away from the witch, but as she stumbled toward the door, fear leeched from her. She’d felt the truth in the crone’s words, and her intent had been clear. This was twice now she had aided them.

  “Why are you helping us?” she asked.

  “You each seek a brother,” the witch replied. In the light from the window, for just a moment, she seemed somehow younger. Even beautiful, as if the starlight erased the years from her face. Then she turned toward Hugo and she was only herself again, old and bent and withered, but suffused with power beneath her haggard countenance. “Our blood is joined. I can feel it now, the longing in you, and I sense your path is true. The circus has them both.”

  “No,” Yvette said, new fear being born. “The circus is only the circus. I’ve had letters from Claude. He’s in no danger.”

  Hugo went to her, took her hand, his sliced palm against hers, and the sting of fresh pain reminded her that their blood had mingled as well. “Whatever the case, we must find them.”