The clown hit me with enough mojo to send any normal supe or human flying into the next county. Luckily, I wasn’t normal. His power fizzled when it should have hit me, not even slowing my forward motion. As his eyes widened in confusion, I lifted the gun and shot the clown in the forehead.
As his body crumpled to the ground, I dropped the gun to help Shar with the mirror. We lumbered forward just as an oily black smoke began to rise from the dead clown.
“Trap it!” I shouted, heaving the mirror, smoky surface first, onto the gaki. The black smoke disappeared under its square bulk as it slammed onto the floor of the tent. I panted, my arm muscles singing, as I stared in trepidation at the slick steel of the mirror’s back. Then I crouched on my hands and knees, pressing my cheek against the dirt as I carefully raised the mirror a crack.
Rather than merely squished under the mirror, as I’d feared, the oily smoke was inside of it. As it started to reach out, a tendril escaping the mirror, I let the heavy steel fall back onto the floor.
“Smash it, Moo!” I shouted at my tired friend. She struggled to her feet, raising her arm as if it weighed a ton. With one last burst of power, Moo destroyed the mirror. It broke with a resounding crack, shattering into hundreds of tiny pieces.
“Guys,” Shar said urgently, and we raised our eyes from the mirror to see the orbs around us dissolving. I swore, fearing the worst, till I saw that many of the bright lights were darting into the people still sitting in the risers. I heard various moans, coughs, and mumbles of “What the fuck?” and then they all started moving.
“Oh, thank God,” I said, relief flooding through me. I hoped their orbs had found the other people, from all the other towns.
I especially hoped Vince’s sister’s orb had found her, or he’d probably have us murdered in our beds. But we could worry about Vince later, as right now we had work to do. The humans whose orbs had hit them earlier were huddled in groups throughout the tent, peering at us like we were the monsters, and those only now coming to were quickly becoming agitated.
“Sit still!” Shar called out, her powerful glamour-skillz hitting the humans like a truck. They all sat back down quietly while we figured out what to do.
“We’ll have to wipe their memories,” Moo said. She sounded exhausted, and I knew only part of that was because of the firefight she’d had with the gaki.
“Yup,” I said. But first I gave the girls a fierce hug.
After that, we did what needed to be done, sending all the humans back home with a vague memory of a fun time at a local fair. They’d never remember the soul-eating clown or the women who’d saved them.
When they were all gone, and we’d set the circus tent alight with the body of the unfortunate possessed human inside of it, we stood to watch it blaze to the ground.
“You okay?” I asked Moo. Shar acted like she couldn’t hear our exchange, bless her.
“I’ll be all right,” she said, affecting Alfar coldness.
“I know you will. But if you ever want to talk . . .”
Moo shrugged.
“In the meantime,” I said, knowing I’d said enough, “I think I have something that will cheer you up. One of those guys we just set free is a rapist. I saw it in his memories.”
Moo turned to me, dark eyes flashing. “Really?”
“Yup. And I bet we can find him in a town this small.”
She grinned. It was a vicious, frightening grin.
“Excellent. Shall we?”
I nodded. “Shar?”
“You know I love a little vigilante justice,” Shar said, clapping Moo on the shoulder. We strolled off as the sun rose, arm in arm.
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About the Author
NICOLE PEELER received an undergraduate degree in English literature from Boston University and a PhD in English literature from the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. She’s lived abroad in both Spain and the UK, and all over the United States. Currently she resides outside Pittsburgh, teaching in Seton Hill University’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program. When she’s not in the classroom infecting young minds with her madness, she’s writing the Jane True series for Orbit Books and manga for Yen Press, and taking pleasure in what means most to her: family, friends, food, and travel. Visit her online at www.NicolePeeler.com and @NicolePeeler.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Nicole Peeler
Originally published in the Gallery Books anthology titled Carniepunk.
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First Pocket Star Books ebook edition January 2015
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Interior design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco
Cover illustration by Tony Mauro
ISBN 978-1-4767-9362-7
The Inside Man Page 4