More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The circus is a jealous wench. Indeed, that is an understatement. She is a ravening hag who sucks your vitality as a vampire drinks blood… She is all of these things, and yet, I love her as I love nothing else on earth. —Henry Ringling North
“I was someone who had to grow into love. Not that I had to grow to love you. I always loved you, but I didn’t know how to love you, so what you got was the equivalent of an attempt at a work of art from someone who didn’t know how to draw. I said the words, but we both know often they were hollow. At times it was the very absence of you that shaped me. But that’s what it is, isn’t it? Both the presence and the absence of a person. The sum of it all. As a result, I feel it more deeply now. Love. My love for you.”
And what did she think? No one ever had the courage to ask her.
Lara thought how her mother had held her together all these months. While she often rolled her eyes at Audrey’s fussing, her mother had created a safe world for her when everything had fallen to pieces.
She was so focused on the road ahead of her, the life in front of her, that she didn’t stop and absorb that final image of him standing in his driveway. It had been her biggest regret.
“Thinking and wanting are not the same thing, my clever poppet. Wanting comes from your heart, not your head.”
“His name is Althacazur,” said Cecile. “And no good can come from him.”
Damsel and the Demon, the 1884 novel by Andrew Wainwright Collier,
“You’re part of the Devil’s Circus. You’re the key—the one. But you must beware. She knows and she is coming for you. She wants you dead.”
All of the performers in our circus were once famous. They’ve chosen to be here to serve out their punishment. While this circus is a prison for them, from the looks on their faces, they are still grateful, so some prisons must be better than others.
I jumped, and I left the old me on the platform.
And the look on Hugo’s face—and the faces of everyone—was something that I’d never seen directed at me—the look of admiration.
As I took a bow, I finally understood Le Cirque Secret.
I saw the outline of Father standing there. Applauding.
You see, Esmé and I cannot be captured, not in photos, nor in paintings.
But it’s the painters who are bothered the most. They labor, connecting lines into form to create Esmé’s upturned nose, her small cherubic mouth, only to find that by dawn she has faded into the canvas like she was never there at all.
“Like you, I see the world differently, but I cannot discuss it because you wouldn’t understand how I see it.” “You’re a surrealist, then. Your mind is unknowable?” I considered his question. “Not all of me, but yes. What I do is unknowable and mysterious, not unlike you.”
“After seeing your face, Cecile Cabot, I believe I am done with landscapes forever.”
“Why? Are you coming for a visit?” His hair glinted in the morning sun. No one had ever looked at me with such desire.
The surest way to get a ticket to Le Cirque Secret is to wish for it—blowing on birthday candles, wishing on stars, or tossing pennies—those devotions work well.
At the end, when I took my final bow, I could see the outlines of him as he rose to his feet. I was a shadow no more.
“Lovesong” by the Cure (only off the Mixed Up album), “Go Your Own Way” and “I’m So Afraid” by Fleetwood Mac, “When I Was Young” by Eric Burdon and the Animals, “Invisible Sun” by the Police, and “Rumble” by Link Wray.
Her description of the man in this photo had been so accurate that he could have stepped right out of her journal.
While her mother was a reminder of who she was—the daughter of a famous family of circus owners—her father was the catalyst to show her who she could become.
Althacazur had said he’d find her. And it appeared he had.
Toward the end of my sitting our eyes lingered until the end, when we found ourselves sitting in silence simply taking each other in, watching each other breathe.
I realized the idea was to shock or subvert with art.
If Father’s hints were to be believed, this horse was once a particularly randy king who seduced his entire court, so the idea that he is ridden for show is a rather interesting punishment.
I feel that I am in the center of the creation of something brilliant.
“Marvelous,” he said, but he was not looking at the canvas; he was staring at me.
“I wish every one of these paintings were of you.” I felt his presence behind me, then his hand resting softly on the center of my back. “Then I might not miss you as much.”
“In the morning will you disappear?” “Non.” My hand touched his lightly. “Promise?”
It is sad that in this moment of what should be carnal joy, I am aware that we are already doomed.
“I like this form much better, too. You’ve seen me not only as Shane Speer but also as the janitor from Le Cirque de Fragonard.
“Tell me, which one of me do you like best?”
“Forgive me, I should explain because the internet doesn’t do me justice. I am the premier daemon of… well, fun shit.
“Mesdames et messieurs, welcome to Le Cirque Secret—where nothing is as it seems.”
The entire circus was a macabre spectacle of death played out inside a ring.
And yet, Lara knew it was entirely a dance of the damned.
this circus is primarily performed by the dead.”
But Cecile shook her head. “Lara Barnes. I’ve been waiting for you a long, long time.”
“We’ve left her alone in a daemonic circus.”
Sadly, I knew it was impossible for me to forgive him.
“It sounds wonderful,” I lied.
“It is your sister’s doing.” His voice was grave. “For that, I am sorry.”
“You didn’t ask the price,” he called after me. “It’s because I didn’t care,” I replied.
I think she enjoys killing all of the loves of Cecile’s offspring as payment for Émile Giroux, who, frankly, was dull as dishwater and someone she never would have loved of her own volition.”
Esmé killed Émile, Dez, Peter, and Todd. Every man we’ve loved, she’s chosen for revenge.”
“Hold on until we get to the top. Don’t die on us. It would be so anticlimactic.” Althacazur cackled.
“Why, why, Tisdale, is this one so stupid?”
