by Ari Marmell
Short. I dunno why that was my first impression of her, especially since she was behind a kiosk, and sittin’ on a stool to boot, but it was. Dusky skin, Mediterranean if I wasn’t totally daffy, dark eyes, black hair tied up in something between a normal scarf and a babushka. She also wore heavy kohl around her eyes, lipstick so bright it looked like she’d smooched a wet stop sign, and enough gaudy rings I was amazed she could bend her fingers.
She was also a lot younger’n she was tryin’ to look, and pretty behind that mask of showmanship; surprisingly so, the sorta pretty that sneaks up on you, takes a second look to notice but then won’t let you forget it.
“Come!” she called, once she’d seen her pitch’d snagged my attention. “Come and let Madame Tsura impart her visdom. You… you…”
Her lips kept movin’ but the only sound was a tiny squeak. Cheap brass clattered and gouged furrows into the wood of the kiosk as she clutched at it to keep from toppling over.
Me, my shoulders went tight as a snare drum. Oh, yeah, I knew that expression. I’d seen it before, most recently on Gina’s face a few months back. And I was startin’ to get downright irritable about how many people in this friggin’ town knew I was more’n just some average Joe.
Muttering under my breath, I made my way over.
The kiosk was even gaudier than she was, painted in bright colors and designs meant to look exotic without actually meaning anything about anything. It was only just starting to peel, too. The curtains were velveteen, a sorta pinkish-purple, I guess intended to enhance the idea that “Madame Tsura” could see into the fuchsia.
I’m so sorry I even said that. Too much time hangin’ around with Pete.
“All right, toots.” I leaned in, elbows on the counter where the cards or crystal ball would normally go. “Spin me a tale.”
“I don’t… I’ve never seen anything like…”
“Is this part of the act? Does it cost extra for punctuation or somethin’?”
“Who are you? What are you?”
“Careful, doll. Your accent’s slipping.”
Somehow, despite her shock and behind her stage makeup, she blushed.
“I’m not actually a gypsy,” she admitted.
“No kidding. The Roma would laugh at you.”
“Yeah. It’s embarrassing, really, but…” She shrugged.
“But it’s what the rubes expect.”
“Something like that.”
I studied her, lookin’ past the makeup, not that I had to. I could taste the tang of history around her, the weight of civilization.
“Greek?”
She didn’t seem surprised.
“Guessin’ your real name ain’t ‘Tsura,’ then. Madame or otherwise.”
No doubt about it now. She blushed redder than the rouge on her cheeks.
“I just go by Tsura these days.”
“Uh-uh. You’re the one who—”
“Hey! You! Yeah, you, pal!”
I sighed, pretty much for her benefit.
“Speaking of rubes… Excuse me a minute.”
Then I turned to face the gink who’d shouted at me. He was a burly fellow, round-faced and red-haired, with two equally round-faced and red-haired brats. Each of ’em clung to one of his hands with one of their own, stuffing wads of cotton candy into their traps with the other.
“Speed it up, would ya?” he demanded. “My kids wanna get their fortunes told already!”
I stared at him. Down at the kids. Back up at him. Finally back down at the boy, pushing a sliver of power through his blinkers and into his thoughts, just enough to give an extra nudge of motivation to what would probably’ve gotten him all riled up anyway.
And then I said, “Isn’t your sister’s cotton candy bigger than yours?”
When they finally faded from sight in the crowd, dad—his coat now well-smeared with sugary strands—was still strugglin’ to drag both of them along while also straight-arming ’em enough that neither could reach the other, and going hoarse trying to shout over the boy’s banshee-esque screeching, the girl’s wails, and the roar of the throng around ’em. Poor sap didn’t even have the effort to spare to glare back at me.
“Right. Where were we?”
Tsura, or whatever her name was, was doin’ the “jaw-gaping” thing again, so she probably wasn’t gonna be much help answering that question.
It was weird. She obviously knew I’d done something more’n just talked to the kid, but she just as obviously didn’t have a good grasp of what. Awareness, maybe even power, but not a lotta knowledge. The hell was I dealin’ with here?
And why’d it have to crop up now, when I had seven-hundred-and-four other things to worry about?
“Oh, yeah. You’re the one called me over here,” I reminded her. “Why’d you pick me?”
“It wasn’t… I just call to people in the crowd.”
“Nope. Ain’t that simple. Never is, with me. Why?”
“I just… felt I should. That’s usually how it wor— I mean, how I do it. Something about you called to me.”
“Great. Calling all around, then. Point is, I’m here ’cause you wanted me here. So your name ain’t too much to ask, is it?”
“Fedora,” she mumbled, apparently to her feet more’n to me.
“Okay.”
Oh, now she was lookin’ at me again.
“No jokes? No wise-ass comments?”
“It’s a perfectly good Greek name. Pretty traditional, ain’t it?”
“I could kiss you! Nobody here knows that! My parents named me soon after they passed through Ellis Island, long before they actually assimilated. They had no idea—”
“That it was a hat?”
“Well, yeah.”
This was takin’ too long. I kept smiling, but it felt stiff.
“So, look, Fedora—”
“I still prefer Tsura, though.”
Oh, for… “Fine. Tsura. You need to spill. Why’d you pick me? How’d you know there’s somethin’ different about me?”
“I told you, though!” She waved her arms, catching the curtains with a dull flump. “I just get hunches. Almost whims.”
Well, I sure couldn’t cast the first stone where that sin was concerned.
“And I just… know things,” she continued. “That’s gonna have to do you. It’s a long story you wouldn’t believe anyway.”
Yeah, I wouldn’t be too sure of that, sister. She wasn’t wrong, though. It was gonna have to do me; I’d already spent way too much time, gotten off-track. I was gonna have to dig into this dame, no question, but I couldn’t afford to burn any more daylight on it now.
“Well, I appreciate the chin-wagging, Tsura. I don’t think my future’s any clearer’n it was when we started, but it’s certainly five minutes closer. You have a good afternoon, now.”
“Wait!”
I stopped but didn’t turn back. “Yeah?”
“What’s your name?” She sounded more intense, more intent, than I’d yet heard her.
And I gotta say, for a minute I wasn’t real inclined to tell her. I had no good reason for it, didn’t suddenly mistrust her or suspect her of anything. But I didn’t know who, what, she was, what she knew or how she knew it. And it felt… heavy. Like the question was way more important than it sounded, and once it was answered, there was no goin’ back, for good or ill.
But in the end, I couldn’t come up with a solid answer to “Why not?” And it ain’t as though my identity’s some big secret.
“Oberon. Mick Oberon.”
Then I did look back, my attention snagged by a sudden clatter. Soon as she’d gotten my name outta me, she’d ducked back inside, closing off the kiosk with a wooden shutter that had “Back Soon” scrawled across it in cheap paint.
That sorta reaction didn’t exactly make me feel any better about having answered her question.
Much as I wanted to know where she was dusting off to in such a rush, though, Tsura still wasn’t my priority. So, muttering to
myself again and maybe not so worried anymore about seeming all casual and inconspicuous, I resumed my interrupted trudge toward the funhouse.
* * *
Wasn’t difficult to find the place, and it wouldn’t have been even without the half-dozen signs and a couple of bandage-wrapped dummies or scarecrows pointing the way. It was the biggest structure on the fairground that wasn’t either a tent or obviously a ride of some sort. They’d put up cheap wooden siding to make the thing appear to be an actual building, rather’n a collection of large tractor trailers pushed together. Then of course they’d tried to make it look Egyptian, with a few haphazard obelisks, a pyramidal top that didn’t remotely match the lower floors, and an even cheaper fake stone facing over that cheap wooden siding. The “hieroglyphics” were random scribbles and sketches, and the sphinx was a plaster lion with a crooked headdress and his snout sanded off.
On the square, I was tempted to turn around and walk away. If someone’d dug me up from my eternal rest to stick my carcass in a decrepit embarrassment of a joke like this, I’d want someone to come and steal me, and I don’t figure I’d much care who.
And yet, there was a whole line of people waiting to get in, snaking along the path, around and between some of the other kiosks. Kids whined over how long they’d been standin’ there; some of the supposed adults did, too. None of them cared how chintzy the place looked, or how goofy its attempts to even evoke, much less resemble, the real thing were. Nope. All they knew was that, inside, there were rides, and displays to spook ’em, and somewhere in the midst of it all a guy who’d been dead longer’n their religion had been alive.
You know you’re all insane, right? Scrambled noggins, the lot of you. Dead body’s a dead body. You got a million of ’em within spitting distance, and if someone dug one of them up and put it on display, you’d be screaming your guts out and callin’ the cops. Let someone else unearth it, though, from far enough away, and as long as it don’t stink anymore, it’s a friggin’ ornament.
Freaks.
But since I still didn’t know why certain people wanted this particular ornament, or what power it held…
I wasn’t about to stand around for an hour waitin’ to get in, of course. Made a beeline for the door, figuring I’d play the “PI on a case” card—and if that didn’t work, assuming the looming bad luck didn’t kick too hard, I could always head-whammy whoever was workin’ the door.
“Hello, Mick.”
Assuming, of course, I’d reached the door.
“Hey, Ramona.”
“You’re looking good.”
“You’re lookin’ better.” Least that got a smile outta her.
I wasn’t sure where she’d come from, not that it mattered much. She’d put herself between me’n the funhouse, loitering on the edge of the path—far enough to the side for passersby to, uh, pass by, but still clearly in my way. She wore a deep green number that set off her crimson hair and really, let’s say, emphasized what she wore it over. Even if she’d just been a normal broad, she’d have gotten more’n her share of appreciative looks.
Not that Ramona was a normal anything. And it was ’cause I already knew that, and was braced for it, that I wasn’t totally steamrollered by what came next.
Everything I’d ever felt for her, every sappy thought and dizzy moment, flooded back over me at once. The fiery passion of a first love; the old comfort of a romance longer’n any human lifetime; the need to possess and the urge to protect, the pounding heart and the rising… pulse. Trust. Affection. Yearning. Lust. The primal core of the ultimate connection between two souls and two bodies, distilled into a wave of emotion.
I dunno if Ramona was just better at it, or if it was because of our past connection, but nothin’ McCall had thrown at me could possibly compare. And I ain’t just puffing myself up when I say that there aren’t a lotta folks, human or Fae, who coulda stared into the face of it and not been swept away.
But I been here before, see? I knew what this was, knew what she could do. I knew how it felt, ’cause I had felt it—maybe not all at once like this, but heavy enough. And this was what I’d been bracin’ myself for since the minute I knew Ramona was mixed up in whatever was going on, to say nothin’ of how on guard I’d been since arriving here at the carnival.
So I let it wash over me, let myself feel it just around the edges so that I wasn’t pushing back against the entire weight of that tide. And then I walked right through it.
“Not this time, dollface. Not anymore.”
Maybe she coulda thrown more into it. I dunno; I got no notion of exactly how far she can push it. Then again, I still had my wand. If she wanted to escalate this, well, I could escalate right along with her.
Whether she chose not to or ran outta gas, though, she didn’t. She actually smiled, and it looked genuine enough; the emotion tasted genuine enough. The smile, and the touch of sorrow underlying it.
“Is that all we are now, Mick? Rivals?”
“You’re the one who tried to Mickey Finn me in the brain, Ramona.”
“Not everything you just felt was artificial, you know.”
I hadda smile back at that point.
“Been living with it for months, so yeah, I know. But if I can’t quite tell how much, ain’t sure I can trust it, whose fault is that?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Makes two of us.”
Felt weird having this chat in public, but nobody was hearin’ us too well over the noise of the carnival, or makin’ much sense out of any of it if they did.
After a few long seconds of silence, she said, “I wouldn’t have tried to make you do anything you wouldn’t have approved of.”
“Uh-huh. That’s why you just asked nicely first, before you tried to—”
“I know. I said I was sorry.”
“Yeah, you did.”
It’s funny, I don’t think most of you woulda even noticed the change. Wasn’t in her expression, wasn’t in her posture, wasn’t really in anything. But even before her tone changed, I knew the moment she went all business, clear as if she’d run up a flag that said so.
“What are you doing here, Mick?”
“Lookin’ for you, kitten.”
I hadn’t yet decided if I wanted to tell her straight out about her “sister” hiring me, holding Adalina over me, or if I wanted to deal with this ostensible mummy caper first, but either way I figured I could be square with her about that much.
Now she did tense, a real fight-or-flight hunch of the shoulders and raising of her mitts.
“I can’t let you stop me, Mick.”
“Uh…”
“Christ, why do you even want to stop me? What’s your stake in any of this?”
Now we were startin’ to draw some interested peepers. People are always so damn eager for a show, even if it’s two people they don’t know arguin’ about something they don’t understand.
Keepin’ my voice down as much as I could while staying sure she could hear me, I said, “Ramona, there’s power in there. I got no clue what kind, or how much, but it looks like it’s enough to make things tough for me all the way across town. You bet your keister I’m gonna be real careful who I let get their paws on somethin’ like that, and I still got no idea who you work for.”
“I told you, he’s a collector. That’s all.”
“To what end? With what goals? Sorry, babe. Ain’t good enough, not by a long shot.”
And with that, she smiled that sad smile again. Gotta admit, I didn’t expect that.
“Is it always gonna be this way with us? Hunting for the same thing but on opposite sides?”
“Well, this ain’t exactly like the Spear of Lugh thing, but… I dunno, Ramona. I hope not. Long as you’re playing fetch for whoever it is got you running errands, I don’t see it changing—but I hope not.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” Her sigh was the sound of that smile, weak as it was, sliding completely off her lips. “I’m sorry, Mick. I really am. I just… I want you to kn
ow I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t sure they couldn’t truly hurt you.”
Well, shit. That didn’t sound good. I lunged for her, not knowing what stunt she was about to pull, just knowing I’d better stop her before she did it. Problem was, not only was I not fast enough—I got plenty of swift, but not that much—but jumpin’ at her that way played right into her hands.
She retreated back onto the grass; for some reason I clearly remember the sound of it folding and crunching under her heels. Her step had a hitch in it, a sudden stagger—an act for the cheap seats. She pointed at me, screaming for help.
And I felt it again, a goddamn explosion of emotion: lust, desire, the need to possess, to protect. Oh, especially to protect.
I felt it, but only as it flowed by me, ’cause it wasn’t aimed at me.
Wasn’t the entire crowd crashed down on me like a flesh-and-bone avalanche. Didn’t include the younger kids, and a handful of adults who, for whatever reason, just didn’t respond to the sorta signals Ramona was broadcastin’, even with the extra magical oomph. They sure were the minority, though.
Parents dropped their children’s hands, lovers took their arms off each other’s shoulders, everyone forgot about everythin’ other’n beating every last bit of stuffing outta yours truly. Nearly all the men and not a few of the women came at me, jostling and shoving over who’d get their paws on me first.
Wasn’t anywhere to run; I was surrounded before I could make tracks. Nothin’ mystical I could do; I’d be pounded into hamburger before I could get into more’n a couple of minds or draw more’n a few shreds of fortune outta the air.
Damn, but this was gonna hurt.
First few weren’t too tough to handle. I caught the first punch on a forearm easy enough, grabbed and twisted, launching the guy into one of the others comin’ up behind me. The third went down when I swept his ankles; the fourth caught my knee in her stomach and then, as she was doubling over, got neatly shoved into an oncoming pack of three. If they’d kept comin’ at me that way—or if I’d been more willing to actually hurt ’em, break bones, dislocate joints, risk rupturing organs—I might even have come out ahead, despite being outnumbered dozens and dozens to one.
I didn’t wanna do ’em any real injury, though, and damn Ramona for knowing that. And yeah, I may be faster, stronger, and a hell of a lot better trained than these mooks, but I still gotta have room to move.