“Me? Patient? Never.”
The sudden new voice made her blink in surprise. Simon. He was standing in front of her…and pointing a gun straight at her. It was her .22 from the day before. It might be a glorified pop toy, but it was a glorified pop toy that could kill.
She squeaked in shock. She didn’t get the chance to do much else.
Simon grinned. “Boring!” He pulled the trigger.
Bam.
Pain exploded through her chest. She placed her palm against the spot, and it was instantly hot and wet. Looking down, she saw blood blooming into the fabric of her shirt.
Simon simultaneously snarled in pain and grabbed his own chest, dropping his head and muttering curses.
Ringmaster shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Simon…you damnable idiot.”
Cora collapsed to the ground, feeling her limbs starting to go numb. He had shot her straight in the heart, and everything was getting tingly and strange. Shock was setting in quickly.
He’d killed her.
She was going to die.
Ringmaster knelt at her side and helped her lie on her back. “Lie still, Cora. It’ll be over soon. Just let it pass. I’ll have a glass of gin ready for you when you wake up.”
Wake up?
He had to be kidding.
She was shivering. Shaking. Her body was shutting off her mind from the rest of it. It might take a minute or two before she died, but there was no saving her now.
There was no waking up from—
3
Cora woke up in her bed.
Well, a bed, anyway. It wasn’t her bed in her condo. She could tell by the smell and the feeling of the pillow beneath her head. It was the boxcar. She jolted awake all at once. It wasn’t the groggy kind of transition from awake to asleep that she would have expected if she were in a hospital after being fucking shot in the chest.
It was more like someone flicked the lights back on.
She reached for her chest, trying to find the wound. But someone caught her wrists. “Whoa, whoa, easy now. Easy. You’re okay.” Jack was sitting on the edge of the bed next to her, trying to calm her down.
Screw being calm!
She scrambled to sitting and pressed her back to the wall that served as a headboard. The bed was surrounded on three sides by windows, and the one wall that wasn’t had two shelves and the doorway that led to the bed. She felt the mullion of the window at the back of her head. She was tempted to try climbing out through the glass and escaping that way.
Looking down, she pulled her shirt away from her chest. It wasn’t the one she had been wearing when she’d been shot. There was no hole, or blood.
“Amanda changed you. Don’t worry.” Jack smiled sheepishly again, rubbing the back of the neck. “She kicked all the rest of us out of the room.”
There wasn’t any blood on her anywhere. Simon had shot her. Straight to the heart. She checked down the front of her shirt. And there wasn’t a wound.
“I’m losing my mind…” It was the only explanation. She was going insane. This was all a psychotic break.
“No, Cora. You’re not. That really happened.” Jack reached out and placed his hand on her arm, rubbing it gently. “He shot you. You died. But you just…came back.”
“No, I couldn’t have. People don’t come back from that!” I saw Simon heal. And now I did, too. Tears welled up in her eyes. I can’t be trapped here. I can’t! “It was a squib, or he missed, and I just panicked.”
“I’m a terrible shot, but I’m not that bad.”
She went rigid at the sound of his voice. She looked up and saw Simon leaning against the counter in her kitchenette.
He took a swig from a brown glass bottle and smiled at her. “Welcome back, Cora dear.”
“You shot me!”
“Wait. Did I or didn’t I? Now I’m confused.” He scratched his head with a finger. “You really must make up your mind, cupcake.”
“Why is he in here?” she half-yelled at Jack, who shrank back at her volume.
“I can’t get him to leave. He’s insisting on staying. I don’t know why.”
“Ah—” The Puppeteer lifted his finger to stop Jack in his explanation. “Correction. You didn’t ask me why. You just whined at me about how pissed Cora would be when she woke up and saw me here. You told me to leave. I just refused, is all.”
She shot him a glare, and Jack did the same.
Simon shrugged idly. “Just making a point.” He sipped from the bottle. “As to why? I shot you, dear, to rip off the proverbial bandage. Watching you panic at the gate was adorable, but now I’m done with it. I got bored. I’m here because I wanted to see if my little expedited explanation worked. If not, I have a few more periods”—he held his fingers up like a gun at her and mimed pulling the trigger—“that I can put at the end of the sentence before I have to go reload.”
“Get out,” she ground out through her teeth. “Get the fuck out.”
“Nope.” He smiled sweetly. “I have a vested interest in this.”
“You shot me! You—” Her words caught in her throat, and she put her hand over her heart. She had felt it. She had seen it. I died. I was really dead. “You…you killed me.”
“Mmhm. And now you see it doesn’t quite stick, does it?”
“You said you couldn’t hurt me.”
“I didn’t. I slammed your hand in the proverbial car door. That’s all. You’re better now.” He paused. “If it’s any consolation, it felt like I’d been kicked in the chest by one of Rudy’s horses.” He scratched his shirt over his heart. “I didn’t come out unscathed.”
“It ain’t the same, Simon.” Jack sighed. “You can’t just go around shooting people.”
“I couldn’t stand there and watch Ringmaster pat her on the head like she’s some frightened sheep. She’s the Zero. She’s the Contortionist—and she has a part of me inside her!” Simon snarled and stepped toward them, his mood instantly flicking into anger. He seemed to ride the line between manic amusement and violent fury like the edge of a razor. “And I won’t have any part of me crying in a corner like a child. I have my dignity to maintain.”
Cora moved to the edge of the bed and nudged past Jack. He watched her go with a confused expression but didn’t stop her. She headed to the kitchenette and started fishing through the cabinets.
Simon watched her, equally confused. “What’re you doing?”
She didn’t answer him. Reaching into the cabinet when she finally found her goal, she pulled out a cast-iron skillet. She spun it in her hand, twirling the handle around as she turned it over to get a feel for it. Good. It was nice and heavy.
Simon smiled. “Finally, you’re grateful! Making me something to thank me? Glorious. Oh! How about an eggy in a basket? I haven’t had one of those in years, and I—”
Cora pulled back with the skillet and, with everything she had in her, she swung for the fences. She cracked Simon clean across the face with it. He crumpled to the floor in a heap, holding his face, moaning loudly in agony.
She didn’t feel anything. She looked over to Jack. “He feels my pain, but I don’t feel his?”