The witch seemed to fade in the starlight. “Go now, then. The constable will search the town more thoroughly come daybreak.”

  “But where will we go?” Hugo asked. “Without knowing how to find the circus—”

  “Gimmeldingen,” said the witch. “Thirty miles or so to the northwest.”

  “You knew where they’d made their camp?” Yvette said.

  “There’s a dark magic in Le Circus Furneaux. At least one child is dead. Such witchery is an affront to all I believe, and if people begin to see weird women like myself as akin to child murderers, dangerous to me as well. I did not know where they were when I met Hugo earlier, but I took it upon myself to acquire that knowledge.”

  The weight of the words implied more witchcraft, but Yvette had heard enough of magic for tonight, and they had the information they sought.

  “We must go,” she said to Hugo, as she rushed to gather her few things. “Now.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “I want to be miles from here before sunrise.”

  A rustle of cloth made Yvette turn once more toward the window—toward the witch—but all that remained in the room with them was a splash of starlight and scattered drops of their mingled blood.

  8

  Somehow, Hugo had become a horse thief. A suspect in two deaths—perhaps genuinely the cause of the first—and engaged in acts of witchery, he had become a fugitive. Slipping out of the inn under cover of night, hand in hand with Yvette, his heart pounding with the fear of discovery, he had rushed through the village with only one thought echoing in his mind. Thirty miles. Le Circus Furneaux was thirty miles away, and if they had Oskar—if his little brother had not been murdered like the poor child the constable had shown him that day—he had to get there before the circus packed up their tent and moved on.

  Which was how he’d become a horse thief. He had only stolen one horse—a beast more familiar with drawing a farmer’s cart than being ridden by anyone, let alone any two—but the other option had been to steal a horse and a mule, and even a carthorse was quicker and more reliable than a mule.

  Yvette had burst with relieved laughter the moment they rode into the forest, the village far enough behind them now and dawn still a ways off. He had saddled the horse, but the saddle had been made for a single rider, and so it was wildly uncomfortable for the two of them, with her in front and Hugo straddling the beast behind her, his arms around her to hold the reins. Of course she wanted to hold the reins herself. She’d proven herself resilient and courageous, wild and willful, but Yvette had little experience with horses, as she proved when he relented and handed her the reins. They both laughed then, getting all of the fear and madness out of their hearts.

  Hours had passed since then. The sun had risen but it could barely be called daylight. Clouds hung thick and low, black with the threat of imminent rain, though the storm had not yet come.

  Morning had brought a new sobriety. The words of the witch haunted them both. Elfriede believed someone traveling with Le Circus Furneaux engaged in the darkest magics, and had murdered the boy Hugo had been accused of killing. He and Yvette had no business laughing. The snare they had entered seemed to be tightening, yet without discovering if darkness truly lay at the heart of the circus, they could not prove their innocence—if it could be called innocence, when Hugo had thrown that man off the bridge into the river. Yvette called it self-defense, and perhaps that was so. He had only been defending her, and himself, but Willi was no less dead for all of that. Scoundrel he might have been, but he’d had people who loved him, one presumed.

  Just as Oskar had Hugo, who loved him. Hugo, who should not have been enjoying a single moment of any of this horror. He told himself there would be no more laughter. As the morning sun slid across the sky, however, he found himself growing keenly aware of Yvette sharing the saddle with him. Her back lay against his chest. She rocked against him as they rode and he often found her hair in his face, and he would complain and she would laugh, and he would tell himself that the scent of her hair should not distract him so.

  The day wore on. They stopped half a dozen times to rest the horse, to let it eat grass and drink water at the riverside. As the hours passed, Yvette relaxed against him more fully, but their conversation faltered, partly because they were exhausted, but also—he surmised—because neither of them knew how to address this strange intimacy between them.

  And so they did not.

  They ate apples from an orchard. Drank from the river. Hugo killed a rabbit late in the afternoon and they took the time to build a fire and roast the animal, because it had been too long since they’d eaten and neither wanted to go into the circus distracted by hunger.

  It was after dark when they arrived on the outskirts of Gimmeldingen, where they set the horse free. Hugo hoped it would find its way back to its master, but he intended to return one day and repay the man for both the horse and the damage it would do to his business not to be able to draw his cart to market.

  Laughter greeted them as they walked up the road into Gimmeldingen, a small town of stone and wood, narrow streets of shops, cottages out of a fairy tale, window boxes full of flowers, and a church on a hill that seemed to stand sentry over the people rather than sitting in judgment, as so many churches did.

  “How long until they catch up with us?” Yvette asked, casting a sidelong glance at him in the splash of light from a lantern that hung outside a tavern.

  Hugo had been wondering the same. “Not tonight, at least.”

  “I saw no sign of the circus as we rode up,” she said. “Do you think... Have we missed it?”

  He saw the pain hidden in the shadows on her face. The memory of her body resting against his throughout that day remained and he felt tempted to take her in his arms to comfort her—and to comfort himself—but he told himself such feelings were only an illusion created by the danger and magic of the previous night and the long day sharing a saddle, and he pushed such temptations aside.

  Hugo gestured to the tavern. “Let’s inquire. We’ve several hours before the finale, if indeed the circus is nearby, but I’d rather not wait another day and give our pursuers time to bring word to the local constable about the accusations against us.”

  “What of money?” Yvette said. “If we can find Claude, we should be all right, but if we must attend the performance, how will we manage to get into the tent?”

  “I have a few coins, but if it isn’t enough...well, I’m a thief already today.”

  She frowned, but Hugo meant what he’d said. Nothing would stop him from searching for Oskar.

  The tavern door opened. A tittering, drunken couple spilled out.

  “Pardon me, sir,” Hugo began. “Would you mind—”

  “Get away,” the man snarled.

  Yvette blocked their path, put her hand firmly on the man’s shoulder, and he glanced up in startled wonder and affront.

  “Who do you think—”

  “Sir. We merely wish to ask if the circus is here. Le Circus Furneaux. We were told—”

  The man knocked her hand away and began to curse them both, but his female companion shushed him and smiled at Hugo and Yvette.

  “We’re going there now ourselves,” she said, pointing up the street, beyond the church. “Just along this way. Bottom of the hill and past the Behymer farm. If you listen, you can hear the music from here.”

  Yvette thanked her. Hugo stood with her and watched the drunken couple saunter off past the church. He strained to hear the music and just when he thought she must be imagining it, the breeze shifted and he caught the sound of warped trumpets and what might have been a screeching harpsichord.

  Hugo shivered at the sound. Others might find it amusing, but now it felt sinister to him, as if each note were a drop of poison in his veins.

  “Come,” Yvette said, nodding to him. “Let’s find our brothers.”

  She knew quite well that their quests had abruptly diverged. She sought a brother she believed alive and free and happy, while Hugo feared the worst for Oskar. Yvette quickened her pace in joyful anticipation. Hugo kept up with her, even urged her to walk faster, but in his heart there was only dread.

  Dread, and that mischievous, discordant, ugly music.

  Yvette tried to be patient with Hugo, but her eagerness to find her brother began to overwhelm her. The circus at night seemed a strange pantomime of daytime. People wandered outside the main tent, couples kissing, finding secret places to do more than kiss. They saw a man and woman beside one of the menagerie wagons, her skirts hiked up around her waist, the pale frills at the hem gleaming in the dark while all else was lost in shadows. The smell of roasting chestnuts filled the air, as if flung aloft by the jaunty music lifting from the main tent.

  Perhaps during the day the threadbare fabric of the tents and the thinning paint on the wagons might have made the panorama more mundane, but in the moonlight, and with lamps burning on posts all about the grounds, it felt to Yvette as if she had stepped into a fairy story—the dangerous sort. Her father had raised a girl with a mind of her own and been proud of her love for books, for drama. She had read Shakespeare, and tonight she felt she had walked into the unknown menace of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  “The elephant grounds were to the west the last time,” Hugo said, scanning the tents and wagons. “He wanted to go, but I told him the circus folk wouldn’t like that. Instead, we got a bag of peanuts for him to eat. I could see in his eyes that he secretly planned to throw them to the elephants later, but he had this smile...I couldn’t refuse him.”

  Hugo fell silent. Yvette’s heart broke for him.

  “We...We went in to watch the acrobats for a little while,” he went on. “I saw that Oskar was tired, but I had promised we could stay for the Finale. Honestly, I was just as eager as he to view that spectacle, since it might be a lifetime before we had another chance to see a circus.”

  Hugo started toward the little stand where a man stood selling popcorn by torchlight.

  Yvette took his hand, stopping him. He hesitated before he turned to face her, his eyes full of something that might have been hope, or hopelessness. Somewhere, an elephant blew a triumphant call. The music crescendoed inside the tent and the audience cheered for something they, out here in the shadows and the torchlight, could not see. It felt as if they had been exiled into darkness, but the rich aromas on the breeze, the distant music, and the patches of quiet amidst the cacophony, Yvette suddenly felt as if she would rather be here in the shadows with Hugo than anywhere else. For a moment, their search didn’t matter. Whatever happened next would shatter the bond they’d forged in the past few days.

  Yet they must.

  “Listen to me,” she urged, searching his eyes, lowering her voice. “If some malign force is at work here, whether human or witchcraft, taking us through every step of your night at the circus with Oskar will not aid our purpose. Someone might remember you. If you ask questions all around, certainly that will draw the wrong attention. Oskar was taken during the Finale. That will be our best chance to see how it might have been done, and to confront those who might have done it.”

  “It’s nearly an hour from now,” Hugo argued. Now that they’d caught up with Le Circus Furneaux, she could see the fury in him, the burning need to find the truth. To find Oskar.

  “Yes. And we should use that time to find Claude. He must be in the clowns’ tent.”

  “They won’t like to be interrupted. All I know of clowns is that they have a tribal air about them. We may not be welcome.”

  Yvette squeezed his hands. “He’s my older brother. The only family I have left. He will allow no harm to come to me.”

  Hugo studied her eyes as if to ask if Yvette trusted her brother, if she was sure of him. The thought had crossed her mind, but if there were some kind of darkness at work here, if someone at the circus had murdered that little boy, had taken Oskar, Claude would see justice done.

  “All right,” he said.

  Yvette smiled, her heart surging at the imminent reunion. She took his hand and led him away from the peanut seller as if he were her betrothed and not a fugitive wanted for murder.

  The layout of the circus grounds seemed haphazard at first, but Hugo had been amongst them once before. The key was the presentation of the entrance to the main tent. It had been pitched to face arriving audiences, which meant that those arriving by foot or in carts or carriages found themselves on a clear path up to the tent. To the left of the main tent were animal wagons and cages, while to the right were small tents set up for games and the booths for peanut sellers and other merchants. Around the back were the workers’ wagons and the tents and wagons for performers.

  Yvette and Hugo strolled amongst the game tents and past a merchant selling sweets. A loud, boisterous call broke her reverie. A stream of filthy invective in rough Italian filled the air, followed by laughter and racing feet. Yvette led Hugo between two of the smaller tents and then paused in the deeper darkness there to watch a quintet of hideously painted clowns caper and tumble past them as if still performing inside the big tent. The leader seemed to be the whiteface clown, his skin covered in greasepaint, over which he had drawn elegant lines to emphasize his features. His spangled costume seemed the cleanest among them as well. The others apparently had little care for their appearance. In the guttering light of the torches that lined the path to their tent, set up between a pair of wagons that must also belong to this strange coterie, they seemed almost like a wolf pack.

  One had an enormous white-painted nose and bright colors around his eyes and mouth, but the rest of his face seemed to have no greasepaint at all. Two of the men were either twins or made up to appear as such, right down to the ring of dyed, curly hair around their otherwise bald pates and the red, flowing costumes they wore. But it was the last of them that drew Yvette’s focus. He’d painted only his face white, his neck untouched. His lips were an exaggerated red and his brows had been stenciled dark black. He wore white gloves and though he danced and gestured to his fellows, he did not laugh or make any other sound. Yvette had heard about the different sorts of clowns from Claude, how they each specialized in a type of character that required specific training. This was a mime clown, though apparently he remained in character despite the act having finished.

  He was also her brother.

  She found herself unable to breathe. What she felt might have been joy, but it worked on her like shock. A cascade of memories swept through her, the times Claude had laughed at her, or with her, teased her as well as hugged her. Without their mother, and with Father always working so hard and always so worried, she had needed someone to love her, to be gentle, and Claude had done those things. As they had grown older, he had been even kinder, and yet his gaze had often been distant, until at last he had announced his plans to seek out Le Circus Furneaux and try to build his future with them. It had been a dream for years, but one day he had seen Yvette as a young woman instead of a little girl who needed his protection, and he had gone out searching for that dream.

  Now here it was, and for a moment she was loath to shatter it.

  There was Oskar to think of, though, and she had made promises to Hugo, sworn that Claude would help.

  Even so, something made her hesitate a moment longer. Something about the venom in the clowns’ laughter, about the almost bestial way they danced and laughed together. One of the twins smashed the other in the back of the head. His brother hit the ground, but bounded back up quickly and bared his teeth like a dog, his red suit flouncing. The rest of the clowns froze, watching as if to discover whether blood might be shed. The whiteface clown muttered something Yvette couldn’t hear, but it broke the tension. Grumbling, no longer capering, they hurried toward their shared tent, where they would dress and don their makeup for each performance.

  Yvette could not stop herself. She rushed from the deeper shadows, hurrying toward the torchlit path. She’d hesitated long enough that the whiteface and one of the twins were already entering the tent. The mime slumped tiredly after them and she lifted a hand, waving to him as she called out.

  “Claude!” she cried. Something brushed against her back. At the root of her thoughts she knew it had to be Hugo, trying to dissuade her, but she was committed to her course. “Claude, brother. I’m so relieved. So happy to...”

  Hugo got hold of the back of her coat and brought her up short, just as she saw the mime go into the tent, following the others. Had Claude flinched upon hearing his name? Had he recognized that voice, known it was she, and kept walking?

  The Auguste clown and the second red-clad twin entered the tent, leaving Yvette and Hugo alone on that torchlit path, off to the side of the main tent. Music blatted and clanged within and the crowd roared, but it all seemed muffled, fading, as if either the circus were vanishing down a bottomless well, or Yvette herself must be.

  “He heard me,” she said. “He must have.”

  Hugo took her by the shoulders and gazed at her firmly until she looked him in the eye.

  “Something is amiss here, Yvette. Never mind what the witch said. Never mind the tale I told you of the strong man and my Oskar, and the performers who fell upon me and left me cast aside in the wake of my brother’s disappearance. Never mind any of that, because you don’t need any of that knowledge to feel the wrongness here. It’s in the air, in the music, even in the slump of the clowns’ shoulders. I’m not going in there after them. I’m here to find Oskar, not join him.”

  Yvette stared at him, shock nesting in her heart, taking fast root, and turning to anger. She understood his fear for his brother, but could he not see that she had come all this way with him to find her brother and now she had done so? Here was Claude, twenty yards away. No tattered tent flaps were going to keep her out.

  She turned from him and marched toward the clowns’ tent. “Claude! It’s Yvette, brother. I must speak with you. It’s...It’s about Father.”