Divine woke up making a strangled sound she recognized at once as a scream caught in her throat. She’d woken up like that many times over the years. She used to wake up like that daily, surfacing from nightmares that claimed her while she slept. But they’d waned over the centuries and millennia. She rarely had them anymore. She supposed it was the pain of healing that had brought them back now.
Pushing the dark memories determinedly from her consciousness, Divine concentrated on the here and now instead, taking careful note of the room she was in. It was the same rose-colored room Jackie and Vincent had shown her to before chaining her down so she wouldn’t hurt herself and giving her the bagged blood. The chains were gone now, she noted, probably removed once the worst of the healing had ended.
That was a good sign, she decided. It meant they had no idea she was the Basha Argeneau they were looking for.
Sighing, Divine sat up, pushed the sheets aside and grimaced at her bloodstained clothes. She looked like a two-year-old wearing her last meal. Wrinkling her nose with distaste at the nasty dry stuff, she slid out of bed and then headed for the bathroom Jackie had pointed out earlier. She’d considered showering and stripping then, but it had seemed a waste of time at that point when she knew that the healing would leave her feeling slimy and dirty anyway. It always did as impurities and damaged tissue were broken down and pushed out through the pores.
Jackie and Vincent would probably have to throw out the linens and beds she and Marcus had lain in while healing . . . unless they had really good bed protectors. She hoped they did. She’d hate to think she’d cost them anything. Maybe she should give them money for their trouble, Divine thought as she turned on the shower and stripped off her clothes.
The warm water pounding down on her head and body went a long way toward clearing away the last of the darkness at the corners of her mind. Divine hated the nightmares that occasionally plagued her. It was bad enough to have suffered what she had once; having nightmares about it just seemed to her like her own mind continuing the torture originally visited on her by Leonius Livius. She didn’t deserve that. No one did. That being the case, she’d learned to give the nightmares as little room as possible in her waking mind. On waking, she always pushed them back into an imagined closet in her head and firmly closed the door. To her mind it was the only way to handle it.
Divine felt pretty good after her shower, even better when she walked back out into the bedroom and spotted the clean clothes folded neatly and placed on the end of the bed. The fact that the blankets she’d tossed aside on waking lay half over them told her they’d been there when she’d got up and hadn’t been brought in while she’d showered. Jackie was obviously not only thoughtful, but the organized type, figuring out what needed doing and doing it before it was needed. Divine appreciated that.
Dropping her towel, she picked up the clothes and began to pull them on, surprised to find there were still tags on everything. Pretty pink panties, a matching bra, a flowy skirt in deep red similar to one of her own skirts that had probably gone up in flames, and a white peasant blouse with red stitching along the neckline that suggested it was Mexican in origin. There was a large skirt scarf too, but without the coins that she’d sewn onto her own scarf. There was also a pair of high-heeled, knee-high black boots.
It wasn’t as elaborate as the costumes she usually wore as Madame Divine, but it would do and she appreciated the effort put into the outfit.
Once dressed, Divine grabbed the towel and returned to the bathroom to hang it over the shower door to dry. She then looked around in the drawers and found a brand-new toothbrush in its wrapper, toothpaste, and a brush. She used all three items to make herself more presentable, and then walked back out to strip the bed.
There was a mattress protector, she saw with relief. So only the linens would have to be thrown out. No amount of washing would remove the stench and stains from a healing. After a glance at the windows showed her that it was early evening, the sun just setting, Divine rolled the pillowcases inside the sheets, picked up the bundle, and headed out of the room in search of Marcus and her hosts, sure that if they weren’t already up, they would be soon.
The murmur of voices coming from below as she descended the stairs told her someone was up. Divine followed the sound up the hallway toward the kitchen, but slowed as she reached the door when she heard Marcus ask, “Lucian said he was coming here? Why? We don’t know that she’s Basha.”
“I presume that’s why,” Vincent said, and she could imagine him shrugging as he said it. “To find out if she is.”
There was a brief silence and then Jackie said, “Don’t worry, Marcus. Whether she is Basha or not, there is no way she is in league with Leonius. Lucian will see that. He got the wrong information. She would never be in league with him after the things he did to her.”
“What the hell did he do to her?” Marcus growled, and the frustration in his voice suggested it wasn’t the first time he’d asked the question.
“I told you, that’s not for me to say. You’ll have to ask Divine,” Jackie responded solemnly.
Divine turned slowly away from the door and moved silently back up the hall. She carried the sheets all the way back up to the room she’d woken in, set them on the bed, and then simply stood there for a moment, her mind racing.
Lucian was coming.
The thought terrified her despite Vincent and Jackie’s reassurances to Marcus that everything would be well. The man was as much of a monster as Leonius had been. While Leonius had haunted her nightmares, Lucian had haunted her waking hours. The fear of his finding her, of his killing her and Damian. She’d been hiding from the man for more than two millennia. It was ingrained now and her mind was screaming at her to run and hide. But a lifetime of training kept her from simply running willy-nilly. That rarely led to good results.
Stop, think, plan, Divine told herself. He wasn’t here yet. She had time. She had to do this all carefully, figure out where to run to, and where she could hide.
Carnivals wouldn’t be safe anymore, they’d look for her there. She’d have to give up that life, but then she’d seen the end of that coming anyway. Hoskins was one of a dwindling number of self-owned carnivals left in the industry. Big corporations were moving in, buying them up, and taking them over as they did everything else.
Divine knew that Bob and Madge themselves had been approached twice now about selling. She also knew that they had seriously considered accepting the offer and retiring. They hadn’t said as much, but she’d read it in their minds. The couple were both in their late fifties, carnie life was hard, and the offer got better each time they were approached. The only thing holding them back was the carnies themselves.
Bob and Madge thought of most of their people as family. Many of the carnies had been with them from the start, others for nearly as long. Bob and Madge felt like they’d be betraying kin by retiring, but Divine knew it would take only one bad thing to change their minds, another greenie trying to lure a child away from the midway, or finding out someone they trusted was robbing them. It was why Divine had got in on the hiring and helped clean house when she’d joined the carnival. Well, that and because she had genuinely wanted to help the couple.
Divine glanced to the bundled sheets on the bed and frowned as it suddenly occurred to her that the RV fire might be the one bad thing to change their minds and make them accept that next offer. Certainly it could be if they learned the fire had been deliberately set. She’d smelled the gasoline around the burning RV. Had they? She wasn’t sure if mortals would have been able to, but certainly their fire inspector or whoever it was who investigated such things would be able to tell an accelerant had been used.