The Magnificent Monsters of Cedar Street by Lauren Oliver

Author:Lauren Oliver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Sometime between the moment the ringmaster directed his henchmen to rope her into an extremely uncomfortable chair, and the moment he directed them to drag her—now trussed up like some enormous Christmas roast—into the very center of the ring, Cordelia decided she hated the circus.

The performance was now long over, and the audience gone. There would be no one to hear her scream. Her only hope was Gregory. Maybe, just maybe, he’d gotten away. . . .

But almost as soon as the idea sparked to life, the ringmaster snuffed it out.

“And now for the final act.” He rubbed his hands together, addressing an invisible crowd. “The extremely final act. For this, we will require two volunteers. . . .”

Hearing a muffled shout, Cordelia turned—at least, she turned as much as she could, given that her hands had been lashed to her small wooden chair. She let out a small cry as one of the massive tattooed men dumped a dazed Gregory onto the chair next to her. A large purple bruise, the exact shape of a giant fist, was visible on his forehead.

“Did they hurt you?” Cordelia whispered.

“I’m all right.” He tried to touch his forehead. One of the giants—Cordelia thought it was the one called Tomaseo, but it was difficult to tell, since even their faces were covered with tattoos—wrenched his arms behind his back and restrained him. “He’s got a wicked left hook.”

Before Cordelia could whisper a word of comfort, the ringmaster trumpeted, “Ladies and gentlemen, step right up, step right up, and don’t be shy.” This he addressed to the circus performers, many of them still in their stage makeup, and sweating paint under the bright lights. “Believe me, you won’t want to miss it.”

At the ringmaster’s bidding, the performers shuffled a little closer. Cordelia knew they must be afraid of him. She read fear in the stoop of an acrobat’s shoulders, and the nervous twitch of a contortionist’s fingers; in the fiddling of the bearded lady with her beard and in the frantic jumping of the sword-swallower’s Adam’s apple.

Still, she wondered whether they weren’t also simply eager to enjoy a show of their own—relieved, at last, to be on the audience side of the performance.

Sweat tickled her lower back. She could hardly breathe. It was as if her chest were full of sawdust. She felt like one of the squelches, nesting among the flames of the old chandelier, or like the lionfish, finning around and around a bathtub.

Thinking of the monsters she had sworn to get back, she felt the stirrings of unease. Were the monsters happy? Or did they, too, feel trapped, imprisoned by Cordelia and her father for their comfort?

“Sergei, sir. We snatched another one.” Another tattooed giant came stomping across the ring, trying to keep his grip on a large, wriggling bundle Cordelia recognized as Icky. “Careful. He tried to chew my hand off.”

“Violent, is he? Here. Hand him over, we’ll show him how we treat troublemakers at Sergei’s World-Famous—ahhhh!”

Sergei had just succeeded in disentangling Icky from his disguise.

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