Given an hour to wander before she had to meet Margeurite, Marie kept herself occupied. She darted off to change - it wouldn't do to wander the streets in her muddy skirt - and set off into the city.
The area immediately around the Cirque's grounds was all a-bustle - she lingered at a few street vendor's stalls, turning over books she could not read and odd little trinkets and scarves in her hands so that she could listen to the conversations drifting past. "An accident, I'm sure," one gentleman said reassuringly to his wife, who tutted in a very ladylike way. "It was that scientist woman... Really, I can't imagine what came over her, a lady in such a dangerous and unwomanly trade..." said another, lips pursed thinly. Marie watched him pass out of the corner of her eyes, and directed a rude gesture at his back.
But there were more promising whispers floating. "Oh, the show's goin' on," she heard someone reassure a friend. "By the time I ran by just now they'd got it all cleaned up and there were a couple'a girls turning tumbles and jugglers playin' for coins and sellin' tickets, merry as you please." Marie smiled - leave it to the other acrobats to keep the crowds amused while the ringleader and her confidants spun their plots.
"Horrible thing, that," the vendor said conversationally. "Heard it all the way from here." Marie looked up from examining his wares with a sweet smile.
"Oh, it was awful," she said breathlessly. "No one hurt, though, and the show goes on." She glanced over her shoulder, and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper: "I hear that other circus did it, you know."
When she turned to leave for the church with a friendly wave, she had one of the penny pies the man was selling slipped in her pocket unnoticed, and the vendor re-telling the story, with great embellishment, to a curious bystander.
She finished her supper on the church steps, and accompanied Marguerite on her odd errands. The drama of the afternoon's events hadn't reached quite so far out into the wealthier districts of the city, but Marie amused herself watching the odd exchange with the priest - she particularly liked the description of Marguerite as "the woman with the abominations" - and it seemed that altogether the outing was a success. She couldn't make heads nor tails of what the ingredients they'd sought were, but Marguerite seemed please enough, and Marie let her attention wander on the way back to the circus grounds.
When they arrived back, Marie hurried off on her next errands - animals and pouches. She shuddered once out of Marguerite's sight; though some of the animals were cute and even affectionate, they were mostly wild and bloody unnatural. Pouches first, then. It seemed like the sort of thing Alexandra might have, so she strolled in that direction, but the fortune teller's door was shut.
The tent was heavy enough to be relatively soundproof, to afford privacy to Alexandra's clients, but Marie knew there was a spot in the side where the fabric didn't quite reach the ground, and couldn't resist settling down by it to wait. Marie hadn't had her fortune told by Alexandra since their initial encounter years ago - she took it serious enough to not ask for anything trivial - but she liked to listen to the stories Alexandra spun for the everyday concerns of the circusgoers.
"...warn Colette?" she heard Alexandra say distantly from inside the tent. Marie gasped and leaned closer - that hardly sounded everyday at all.
"Yes..." a man's voice, slightly familiar, said. He spoke softly enough that she could only catch words: "...warn... don't know... Colette... trusts me... be warned... something terrible."
Alexandra said something, and there was silence and shuffling, and Marie quickly darted away from her less-than-sneaky spot crouched beside the tent before the mysterious gentleman left. She longed to find some way to see who he was, but when she came out from behind the tent, all she saw was the back of his coat and hat, already mixing in with the crowd. She let herself dither with worry for a moment, then shook her head as if to clear it.
By the time she had finished her dithering, Alexandra had left her tent anyway. Marie dithered a bit more, this time about rummaging through someone else's property, but eventually found a few little fabric pouches - decorated with fancy tea names in fancy writing, but now empty except for a few stray leaves - and hurried to find where the animals had been stowed after the explosion.
"Hello, little abominations," she said when she found them, and set to work, handling the creatures gingerly when tiny hooves and claws scratched harmlessly at her hands. She picked the gentlest and most intelligent little beasts - both seeming like needed traits for whatever Asmodeus had in mind - but they still gave her the willies, and they knew it. She wanted to dwell on what she'd overheard. There seemed to be a great deal of warning against this Jacques they were about to provoke... but the creatures demanded her full attention, and she gave up trying to piece things together. She finished her task and set them back in the baskets, and hurried off to find Asmodeus.
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