THE BEAST ─ five hargreeves

[ 042 ] zara joins the circus (no surprise there!)

XLII.

z a r a j o i n s
t h e c i r c u s
( n o s u r p r i s e
t h e r e ! )

SIX MONTHS EARLIER

—ALL HER LIFE, Zara had never been what you'd call a romantic.

The Handler used to say that her "nonexistent emotional gradient" would've made her a stellar assassin. Lila said she supposed she could forgive her sister for passing on every round of Bang, Marry, Kill. But then, when Zara made up her mind to stop aging at fifteen—to reject the very idea of growing up—they started to understand the nonexistent emotional gradient thing.

She liked boys, sure. She liked how they looked, and how they talked, and how much money they had in their bank accounts. Nothing more, nothing less.

Zara wasn't a romantic.

And that was precisely the problem.

. . .

—IT WAS A FINE summer morning when a burning blue vortex opened up over a little alleyway in the middle of nowhere and spat Zara out of it.

She tumbled down onto the solid concrete. All at once, there was a pop inside her head, exactly like the kind you hear when you're in an airplane and the pressure changes suddenly.

Her eyes were closed. For a moment, she didn't dare open them. The dark field in her eyelids turned red, and there was warmth on her skin. It was sunlight. No doubt about that. There was a faint smell of leather and tobacco smoke. As her senses returned to her, the smell moved up the olfactory scale from barely there to actively hitting her in the nose. There was no doubt about that, either.

Zara opened her eyes.

She was no longer in the Icarus Theatre. She was no longer in the shaking building with the broken skylight. Although she most definitely had been indoors when Five did his crazy time-travel circle thing, she was now outside. She was sitting on crumbling, dirty cement.

She got quickly to her feet. Surrounding the alley were tall brick apartment buildings, with whitish-grey smoke pouring from tall chimneys on the rooftops. And it was hot. She looked at the sky—cloudless. And suddenly Zara had a horrible revelation.

The vortex had vanished. No way back. She felt a surge of panic.

A sudden blur of white feathers smacked her directly across the face. She gasped—partly from the blow, mostly from fright.

"Pop goes the weasel!" said a familiar voice, and relief washed over Zara.

"Kiki!" said the girl with a grin. "It's good to see you, at least! How's the wing?"

"Put the kettle on," returned Kiki cheerfully, and flew from the ground to her shoulder.

"Alright, Kiki," Zara said, feeling better at once, "this isn't that bad. We just need to go find help. Yes, that's it. We need to go find a—a—police station, maybe. It'll be okay. Five will get us back. Don't you worry."

"Don't you worry," agreed Kiki.

Zara ruffled the parrot's soft head. She lifted her left foot, put it down, and felt a step. Her panic eased.