Dace's palm had been glued to the base of her throat for an hour as she waited outside the door to carriage eleven. As the audience's cheers for the finale were reduced to a faint ringing in the back of her ears Dace knew that what Eliot had said was impossible: she could feel her own heartbeat, of course she could! Her skin was warm, and her breath was steady. There was always the chance she was imagining her own pulse, but Dace forced this conclusion aside.

"I am alive." She repeated to herself, "Of course I am."

The Ringleader looked up at her over the brim of his hat. "You are not alive. But, if it is any kind of compensation, you are not quite dead either."

"That's impossible."

"Yes." The Ringleader turned to her stiffly, wiping perspiration from his brow. Was she imagining it, or was the slightest trace of anxiety creeping into his tone?

"You and Matt—Mathilda. Are you friends?"

"In a sense. Your face is bleeding," The Ringleader pulled back her hair indifferently, eyes drawn to the mark left by Eliot's knife.

Her stomach flipped at his touch, and she flinched away. "It's nothing. According to you, it doesn't matter—it's not like I'm gonna bleed to death."

"Wounds can still become infected." The Ringleader slid off his left glove, revealing a cut that stretched between the base of his thumb and the knuckle of his ring finger. Around the scab his fair skin had been smeared with greens and browns, and the wound itself looked almost septic.

"Ew."

"See? I'll ask Ambrose for a first aid kit."

They sat in silence on the bench in the hallway with Dace leaning forwards as he dabbed at the cut on her cheek with antiseptic-soaked cotton wool.  The space between them was so scarce that she could see every unkempt whisker on his face and take in the scent of fresh air that clung to his sleeves.  He was, she realised, a lot younger than she'd first assumed—he couldn't have been far past the age of twenty.  It was weird, she thought, that he was tending to the cut on her cheek so diligently when he'd ripped a hole through a guy barely two hours ago. Not that this wasn't painful— the antiseptic stung like a burn and Dace could barely suppress a pathetic hiss.

"Is it bad?" The Ringleader didn't sound very empathetic.

"Not as bad as..." Dace gestured to the infirmary door. "Will Matt be okay?"

"She's been through worse than this."

"I don't understand what happened," Dace continued in a flat tone as a bandage was pressed to her cheek, "Did you know Eliot was really like that?"

The Ringleader narrowed his eyes. "I suspected."

Dace shivered involuntarily as she recalled his creepy smile. "He didn't seem—he seemed like a nice guy. I wasn't expecting him to—to..."

"What happened, exactly?"

Dace froze up. The spear—Matt's spear—had come into her possession thanks to Eliot's manipulation. Like an idiot, she hadn't checked whether the door to carriage twelve was locked before 'forcing' it open and feeling that immense power crash through her like a tidal wave—or like a drug, she forced herself to admit. Now Dace's reasons for lingering around carriage 12 were ripe for exposure, and the callous side of her was forced to reign.

Her voice wavered, and the ice of the Ringleader's eyes melted to water as Dace allowed herself to tear up; with her vision blurred he was little more than an abstract composition of red and black brushstrokes. She was aware of him opening his mouth, as if to say something comforting, but all that came out was a clinical: "Calm down."

"You don't talk much, do you?" Dace remarked somewhat crossly, rubbing at her eyes with her sleeve. "I'd like to know what's going on with this circus, if you don't mind. Which performing arts school taught a girl how to throw fireballs? Why the hell is your clown a manipulative sicko, and what the hell do you mean, I'm dead? I have a family, you know! Parents, who'll be wondering where I am! What about them, can I ever see them again—"

She might have broken out into hysterical sobs there and then, if the medic hadn't shuffled out from the infirmary to address the Ringleader.

"Sir."

They were a stern-faced, androgynous twenty-something who wore deep purple shadows beneath their eyes and an apron that, once upon a time, probably wasn't dyed a permanent red.

"Well, she's awake, poor girl." Their voice was low, almost painfully strained as if they were clinging to consciousness by a thread, "I stitched up what hadn't healed already, but I'm afraid you're short a fighter for a week or so."

"As long as Mathilda recovers." The Ringleader dipped his hat in thanks. "Ambrose, we would be lost without you."

"Which is why you will assign someone else my kitchen duties for next month."

"Fine." The Ringleader nodded sharply. "Livigin, you ought to rest."

He marched back down the train and Dace swore she saw a flicker of rage in his empty features. She knew exactly where he was going.

Ambrose's heavy eyes rolled over to Dace before she had the chance to leave. "You're Miss Livigin, right?"

"Yes?"

"Livigin. Is that Irish?" The medic asked. "It's lucky you were there to hold off her attacker."

Dace shook her head, eyes locked on the ground. "I did nothing useful."

"But you did something good, right?" The medic shrugged, seeming to stifle a yawn. "You didn't have to run after Eliot Moone—there was a high chance you could have ended up in just as bad a predicament. But no; you drew his attention away from that poor girl and stopped him from finishing her off for good."

"I'm a bad person," Dace said dryly as she remembered that hurt look in Matt's eyes earlier that day, "It's my fault she was even there in the first place."

The medic shoved their hands in the pockets of their wool cardigan and shrugged. "Good. Bad. Those never felt like real words to me. It's always far more complicated than that. But hey, by getting in there before it was too late you made my life a bit easier."

Dace returned to her room in a state of shock—little had really changed for her in these past twenty four hours.

Good.

Bad.

Dace relayed the twin words through her head over and over again, until they no longer resembled anything meaningful, and she began to string together an apology to Mathilda Wisely.

***

A familiar rage tore at his innards like it was trying to see daylight but the Ringleader ignored it, as usual.

Mathilda would be fine. No amount of fretting would cease her suffering, in the meantime.

As he swept down the train the performers parted to let him pass, but the looks of awe he received—from the showgirls in their lycra costumes and the technicians in their plain shirts and even from the powerful few who served as hunters within the circus—were never something he delighted in.

He heard guttural screaming as he neared carriage seventeen and wondered briefly if, instead of a dull nothingness, satisfaction should be creeping through him.

The dark haired knife-thrower—Miss Song—stood on tiptoe beside the weak form of Eliot Moone. She had a bucket of knives beside her, and was shoving them in the flesh between the clown's joints with frankly concerning enthusiasm. The Ringleader caught the last of a hissed threat:

"...And worst of all, you prick, there's blood all over the props now, which is going to go down great with our family-friendly routine..."

"There is nothing—family-friendly—about throwing knives at your girlfriend—agh!"

"What did you just say you piece of—oh, Ringleader." Miss Song's head snapped in his direction and her expression shifted from that of a ruthless predator to a fluffy house-cat, eyes wide and frown innocent. "This is what you wanted, right?"

The clown was pinned to the wall by blades that lacerated every muscle. The arms splayed out either side of him were lost beneath a small armoury; escape, if possible, would be tainted with indescribable pain and permanent loss of limb.  "Exactly what I wanted. You may leave."

Miss Song nodded, marched towards the door, but hesitated at the last second. "Sir. Vanity and I were on duty tonight, but throughout the entire performance we saw no signs of trouble. No wolf, no wolfspawn for the first show in years. Should we be worried about that?"

"You should," Moone piped up jovially, "it's a sign of doooooom..."

Heart burning, the Ringleader didn't stop himself from grabbing onto the boy's red curls and slamming his head back against the wall. "Shut up."

With a flick of the hand he dismissed Miss Song and focused on the clown. "You have a lot to answer for."

Moone's neck had dropped beneath his shoulders, and he was panting like a dog from the pain of his injuries, but he still managed to laugh. "Stole my line, Ringo." With a hacking cough, he spilled blood onto the ground, and continued in a strained wheeze. "Can I call you Ringo?"

"You may not."

"Ringleader is such a mouthful, though, and you won't tell anyone your real name. Dark mysterious types with no real name are sort of overrated, you know. I bet it's something embarrassing. Is it Terrence?"

"Why did you hurt Miss Wisely and Miss Livigin?"

"What?"

The Ringleader twisted the staff still lodged in his chest, and the clown's jaw clenched with agony. "You wanted something from Mathilda, that much is clear, but why manipulate Miss Livigin?"

"You know why, Ringo." Moone's eyes glinted.

If his obnoxious attitude was supposed to irritate the Ringleader, it was a useless manoeuvre. "What was the purpose of your stunt tonight? What made you think you could get away with it?"

"I have gotten away with it—I'm exactly where I want to be, dear Ringleader. I'm just waiting, is all."

As the Ringleader watched a bead of sweat—or perhaps a tear of pain—streak down the boy's face, the truth finally occurred to him. "You can see the future."

Moone nodded eagerly and his eyes shone like green wildfire. "The intricate tapestry of fate is mine to pick apart! Every human soul on this damned train is just a convoluted cluster of what ifs and maybes and probably nots. Every human soul—except yours."

The Ringleader stiffened. "Excuse me?"

"Well—some of it's there. But it's like there's something...something about you impervious to my trick. As if you're not human enough to decipher."

The grim interior of the storage car was smothered by silence, and the Ringleader was made even more aware of the godawful stench of blood. So, Eliot Moone suspected. That was worth making a note of.

"Or maybe I'm just not as talented as I thought I was." The clown smiled self-depreciatingly. "Who knows?"

"You will remain here," The Ringleader sighed, rubbing his temple, "Isolated in the back of the storage car. Guards will be assigned, but I can assure you that trying to escape—"

"...Will end with my suffering, yeah, yeah." Eliot sighed, "I'm not going anywhere; I want to see how all this plays out. Letting Dace Livigin aboard was the biggest mistake of your afterlife, Ringleader."

The clown broke into a mad giggle that escalated into a howl of laughter, and blood seeped from the piercings in his body as he shook. 

"Okay, I'm bored of you." The Ringleader muttered, pulling his staff back through Moone's chest. The hole began to flood profusely with nothing to plug it, and the clown's face grew almost translucent.

"It'll be about five minutes until you pass out from blood loss, ten until you begin to regenerate tissue and another three after that before you lose the energy to heal and faint again. The whole grim cycle should take around fifteen minutes and, quite frankly, I hope you can't bear it."

In one swift move he flicked blood from his staff and strutted from the room. Eliot Moone coughed out his parting words:

"By the way, Ringleader, Sir, that thing you're afraid of..."

"The White Wolf? You think something like that—"

"No, the other thing."

The circus master hesitated. "Yes?"

"It's happening. Very soon. I hope you're ready for it." Moone grinned at him through all the blood, before his eyes rolled back and he gave in to unconsciousness.  

Fear wasn't something he experienced often and even now his innards were as still as the winds on a calm sea, but the Ringleader's mind raced with activity.

"Joy," He addressed the stout green-haired woman who had been awaiting his orders outside the storage car, "Would you take this back to my quarters?"

His assistant held the dripping red weapon at arm's length, her lips pulled back into an unimpressed sneer. "Do you want it cleaned?"

The Ringleader shook his head. "I'll do that when I return."

"Yessir."

"Jocelyn?"

She poked her emerald head back around the doorway. "Hm?"

"Carriage 12..."

The woman's lined face darkened and she dropped her tone. "What about it?"

The Ringleader felt his fingers curl up instinctively. "The door needs repairing. Perhaps a more heavy-duty material would be necessary. And, of course—"

"Keep it between us." She finished his sentence and retreated back into the warmth of the train. The Ringleader sucked in a breath of the crisp night air and broke into a sprint. He ran until the wind felt like shards of glass against his bare skin, until the world around him blurred and a rush of adrenaline pulsed through his veins. He unfurled his wings and the wind trapped beneath them launched him into the sky.

Twisting onto his back to look up at the stars the Ringleader felt his humanity fall behind him as he gave up his mind to the simplicity of the night.

Being alone up here cleared his head, which was just as well. The heavens might have been clear, but a storm was brewing on the ground beneath them.