Flesh Circus - 4

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Yeah, sometimes when you go into Micky’s around dawn, you get what the cooks think you should eat instead of anything on the menu. It’s always good, and you should never look a Were’s gift in the mouth, so to speak.

  I shook my head, silver clicking in my hair, and headed for the girls’ room. I’d probably feel better about all this once I was a little cleaner.

  Then again, I thought, clutching the washrags, maybe I won’t.

  Saul slid the file across the table at me and tucked into his fried-eggs-and-ham. I took a long pull off a bottle of microbrew Theron had slung on the table and eyed the steak-and-eggs combo, hash browns cremated the way I like them, extra bacon, and toast slathered with butter. It probably had enough calories in it to keep me fueled through a long night of chasing evil. I wondered if it would fuel my brain enough for me to figure out the pattern behind the murders.

  Once I started eating, I realized how hungry I was. This led to a good quarter-hour spent in silence, just the clinking of forks on plates and an occasional slurp. I finished my beer and another arrived. So did more toast. Amalia simply plunked down a fresh plate of it and raised an eyebrow—about the closest she’d get to telling me I’d better eat it all.

  Weres. It’s only one of the ways they show they care.

  I cut a strip of steak, sliced it up, and was grateful it wasn’t rare. Now that the first edge of hunger was past I could slow down and enjoy the taste. There had to have been at least five eggs on the plate.

  Fighting off the undead and Hell’s citizens all night does work up a girl’s appetite. Sorcery can only do so much, and I wasn’t as young as I used to be. I used to be able to go for days without eating, running from one thing to the next, writing checks my body cashed without complaining too much.

  Not anymore.

  Go figure.

  I finally looked up from my plate to find Saul chewing slowly, watching me. His eyes were dark and fathomless.

  I swallowed a mouthful of steak, glad Micky’s was empty. My skin twitched under the sensory overload from the unveiled scar, every noise and photon amped up exponentially. “Hi,” I said finally. “Good to see you.”

  A small smile lifted the corner of his chiseled mouth. “Hi, kitten. Nice to see you, too.” Is it? Or are you just saying that? “This is looking like a huge problem.”

  “Isn’t it always.” But his tone was reflective and amused, faintly sarcastic. “You think it’s connected?” One lifted eyebrow could have meant that he agreed, or that he wanted to give me a chance to get my thoughts in order.

  I ticked them off on my fingers. “Those bugs. Each with a red spot. The green smoke. Voodoo practitioners dead, zombies everywhere, possessed people that shouldn’t be, one of them ending up as a zombie, and Zamba missing. The Cirque’s hostage attacked, and another Cirque performer dead. Both Zamba and Lorelei had something cooking on their stoves…”

  “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck—”

  “—it’s certainly not a zebra,” I finished. “So, they’re more than likely connected, all these things. I just don’t know how yet.” I forked up another load of eggs. “What possible connection could the Cirque have with any voodoo practitioner?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I took another long swallow of beer. It went down nice and easy. Wrestling zombies gives you a powerful thirst. “Voodoo and hellbreed don’t tangle. It’s just one of those things.”

  “They must mix sometimes,” he pointed out practically.

  I shook my head. Silver shifted and chimed, and some of my curls were stiff with gunk. “The loa are jealous, and hellspawn don’t like anything interfering with their games either.”

  “What about…”

  I watched him, fork paused in midair, but he merely shrugged.

  “No,” he finally amended. “I got nothing.”

  “And then there’s this.” I yanked the plastic-shrouded straight razor out of my pocket, laid it on the table. Next out was the enamel cup.

  Put together, they looked shoddy. The straight razor crouched in its swaddling, and the cup’s chipped sides reflected fluorescent light.

  “A razor? And a cup.” He set his fork down. “Huh.”

  “Yeah. My instincts are all tingling, but I don’t know what they’re saying.”

  “Tingling instincts?” He might have looked bland and interested, except for the wicked twinkle in his eyes. “I hear they have creams for that.”

  A chuckle caught me off-guard. “They’re not burning. Just tingling. Anyway, and then there’s zombies. It takes work and effort to create one with voodoo. Now all of a sudden they’re crawling around everywhere—and the Twins are taking an active interest in everything.” It was a huge pileup of events. The more I sat back and considered, the more it seemed like one thing.

  “What?” Saul speared a piece of fried ham. “You look like you just thought of something.”

  “I did.” I applied myself to clearing my plate, but I also hooked the file a little closer and flipped it open. There might not be anything in it, but it was best to check.

  “Well?” He didn’t quite fidget, but he did shift on his side of the table, his long legs stretched out until his boot-toe touched my calf.

  “Nothing solid yet, catkin. Let me think.” I scanned the file, flipping past Xeroxed pages and paperwork filled in with Avery’s neat scrawl. Lucky boy, our first victim, Mr. Ricardo. A green card and everything. Avery, bless his little heart, had even pulled the application for me. I’d bet anything Juan Rujillo, our local FBI contact, had facilitated that little search as a favor. Dear old Juan, a joy to work with. Not like the last Feeb we had.

  Hmm. That’s interesting.

  Ricardo even had a sponsor. The little click of a puzzle piece sliding home sounded in the middle of my head, and I took a long draft of beer. “Hey, Saul. Guess what? Ricardo had a green card.”

  “Mmmh.” He had a full mouth. He was busy slathering even more green Tabasco on the remainder of his ham. “Mmmmh?”

  “Guess who his sponsor was.”

  “Mrph?” He jabbed at his plate and shrugged.

  “Lorelei.” I slapped the file closed as his chewing stopped and his eyebrows went back up in surprise. “As soon as we finish here, we’re heading for Galina’s. I’ll bet your ham and my entire plate she knows something about this, and she’s had a chance to go through her diaries by now.” 18

  D awn came up in gray streaks, followed by rose and gold. Once the sun heaved itself up over the rim of the world, I let out a half-conscious sigh of relief. My pager stayed quiet, and—true to my guess—Galina had spent all night with not only her own diaries but the records of the Sanctuary before her. Huge leather-bound books, each cover stamped with the seal of the Order, stood in stacks on her butcher-block table.

  She was covered in dust, her hair held back with a red kerchief, and as ill-tempered as I’d ever seen her. Which was still pretty damn polite.

  “Lorelei’s dead?” A line etched itself between her winged eyebrows. She swiped at a smudge on her cheek. “And zombies at Zamba’s? Christ. Try saying that ten times in a row.”

  “Tell me about it. No, wait. Never mind. Tell me about the problem Sloane had with the Cirque.” I folded my arms and leaned against the wall. Saul was fiddling with the kettle and her stove.

  Gray dawn filtered through the skylight and the big box window, touching his shorn hair and wide shoulders.

  “I’ve been going back through the records.” She spread her hands. “I was wrong. It wasn’t Arthur Gregory. The trouble started with Sam.”

  “Rosehip tea?” The kettle started to chirp, and Saul looked over his shoulder.

  “Oh, yes. Yes indeed.” Galina dropped into a straight-backed wooden chair, swept the kerchief off. Her marcel waves were disarranged.

  “Coming right up.” Saul didn’t ask if I wanted tea.

  I stifled a burp. Now that I’d eaten, I was beginning to realize how tired I was.
>
  No rest for the wicked, though. “Sam?” I prompted.

  “Samuel Gregory. Arthur’s younger brother. Arthur came to Sloane needing help—his brother had disappeared. The Cirque was in town, and Sloane suspected them, but he couldn’t find the boy. Arthur kept following Sloane around, pestering him. He didn’t get what he wanted, so he went elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere?” It could mean just about anything.

  “He apparently decided that since Sloane couldn’t help him, he’d make a deal with someone who would.”

  Not too bright of him. But sometimes civilians make that sort of mistake. “Hellbreed?” She shook her head. Her earrings—little peridots in marcasite—swung. “Voodoo. Or so I heard.

  Sloane suspected Lorelei. She wasn’t Lorelei then, she was Abigail Figueroa. It was in the seventies that she switched over to—”

  “Hold on.” This may be connected, but how? I dropped down into a chair myself, my brain buzzing. “This Arthur. He had a hard-on for the Cirque?”

  “I don’t know. I do know Sloane suspected that was where Samuel disappeared to, and dug pretty hard to find him. Arthur disappeared, and Sloane went looking for him too. He came across some of the Cirque folk running a game on the side—something to do with child-slaves, I think, though he never said—and put them out of commission. He tried to find either of the Gregory boys, but neither of them ever showed up. He was still working that case, off and on, when the outbreak happened.”

  Yeah, that would put a dent in working a case or two. “So it never got wrapped up. And it’s only vanishingly likely it’s connected to what we have going on now. Was there any proof at all that this Arthur kid went to voodoo? Or did Sloane just suspect?”

  Of course, a hunter’s suspicion is sometimes good as gold. But you can’t move without proof, or you turn into what you’re hunting. It’s just one of those things.

  “The last place Arthur was seen was going into Lorelei’s old shop. She used to be down near Plaskény Square instead of on Greenlea; I can’t believe I’d forgotten that. Anyway, Sloane had a witness who placed him there before he disappeared. There was something else. People who knew the boys turned up dead.”

  “Like who?”

  “Their father, for one. A real winner—the kind who likes to use the strap. He ended up torn in pieces and scattered around his rooming house cot, blood all over the walls. Another man—he’d apparently been their mother’s other pimp.” She glanced at me, then swiftly back at the table. “It was a different world then, Jill.”

  I wondered what my face was saying. “Not so different. So the ‘father’ was a husband, and she had another pimp?” I knew that game, I’d seen it played before, up close. A woman desperate for any kind of attention, selling herself to and for the man who promised to protect her while she nursed bruises from the other man—and when the first one beat her again, she’d go back to the second. It was a vicious cycle.

  “Bounced back and forth between them. Poor kids.” Galina’s eyes were dark and troubled.

  “There were others. A few police detectives—ones on the take, Sloane said—and a schoolkid who hung out with the Gregory boys, was apparently a bit of a bully.”

  “That’s a high body count. They can’t have been unrelated.”

  “Life was cheap back then, Jill. This was a mining town and a riverport. I remember when you didn’t dare go outside at night if you were a respectable female. At least, not without a man and a gun.” For a moment she looked much older, her mouth pulled down and her cheeks sucked in.

  “Anyway, the deaths were all the same. Torn into tiny pieces, lots of blood.” Life is still cheap around here, Galina. At least, if you’re brown-skinned or poor. Gold leached in through the skylight, taking on the tenor of daylight.

  I rolled my shoulders back in their sockets, trying to ease a persistent ache. “Huh. I wonder… I should still have some of Sloane’s records. Can you write down the dates for me?”

  “I can do that.” She looked, in fact, relieved to be given a concrete task. I didn’t blame her.

  Digging through old records can be deadly boring, and for a Sanctuary it was probably even more so. They drive their roots in deep and live a long time, but the things they trade for it… you don’t make a bargain like that without wondering if it’s worth it.

  Or at least, that’s what I think about every bargain. The world keeps asking you to peel bits of yourself away, just to keep breathing.

  The kettle whistled, Saul flicked the stove off and poured. And as usual, he asked the right question. “So is someone settling scores?”

  I stared at the leather-bound books. She must have been excavating all night. “Possible. But why try to kill the hostage? That won’t damage the Cirque. It will remove the constraints that make them behave. And Helene…”

  I hate that feeling—when you think you have a lead, and all you get is more questions.

  “It was a long time ago,” Galina said softly. “Long and long.”

  “Do we have any pictures of either of the Gregorys?” There wasn’t much hope.

  She sighed, a flicker of irritation crossing her round face. It wasn’t with me—although heaven knows Galina usually has enough reason. “No, unfortunately. This is so frustrating. I feel like there’s something I should be remembering.” She stared at the books as Saul handed her a mug.

  I blew out a long breath. “Well, it was almost a century ago, Galina. It’s not like forgetting what you had for lunch yesterday.”

  “It kind of is, though. This is important. It’s just on the tip of my brain. But I should have noted it, and I’ve been all through my official diary and the private one. It feels unfinished.”

  “Life is full of unfinished things.” I glanced at Saul, who stretched his long legs out. This is all very historical and interesting, but it sounds like a dead end. There’s nothing to tie an old case to what’s going on now, unless it’s Lorelei. And she had her fingers in so many nasty pies, it’s not very likely she was just now killed for something that happened almost a hundred years ago. No, the connection’s probably elsewhere. Which means I’m right back where I started—except I have a missing voodoo queen, zombies, dead hellbreed, and a situation that could get Very Messy Indeed. The exhaustion came back, circling like a shark.

  Prioritize, Jill.

  I took it out loud, so I could think it through better. “The attack on the hostage was voodoo.

  Perry’s supposed to stay and make sure the hostage doesn’t bite it. In any case, it’ll be nightfall before someone can try again.” One problem that doesn’t have to be solved immediately. I stared at the leather-bound books heaped on the table, breathed in deeply. Galina blew across the top of her tea. “I’ve got voodoo practitioners dropping like flies, spirits in people who shouldn’t have them—though if they’re believers, it changes the equation a little—and one of them came down with a bad case of zombie. And Zamba’s missing in action. She could quite possibly be needing protection, or she’s part of this. Either of which is equally unprepossessing. I’ve got Forensics collecting evidence, and Sullivan and the Badger doing some digging.” It took me a couple more seconds to piece everything together.

  “What’s up next?” Saul, as usual, gave the right question.

  “Going home and getting cleaned up,” I decided. “Figuring out what to do about that kid. Then the next step.”

  “Which is? And what kid?” Galina took a gulp of her tea. Maybe she needed it to wash the taste of history and dust out of her mouth.

  “The kid who’s been following me around. And the next step is visiting some botanicas. Zamba wasn’t the only game in town, just the biggest one.” I pushed myself up to my feet and almost regretted it. Aches and pains twinged all over my body.

  “An apprentice?” The Sanc looked at me like I’d just expressed a desire to take off my clothes and howl naked in the street. “When did this happen?”

  “It hasn’t happened yet.” I pushed my chair in. The sunli
ght strengthened. It looked like another beautiful day. “Right now I just want him kept out of trouble.”

  “That’s funny.” Galina’s tone suggested it wasn’t funny at all. “That’s just what Sloane said about Arthur Gregory. I remember that much, at least.”

  For once, I observed the speed limit. Saul turned the radio’s volume knob and lit a Charvil, and dawn traffic was light. Santa Luz sometimes looks washed out, the sun bleaching buildings and dirt, the dust haze putting everything in soft focus. The greens are pale sage, the whites turn taupe and buff, and any dab of brightness gets covered with a thin film before long.

  It’s different in the barrio. Bright blocks of primary color are a little more cheerful in the daylight—but a little more carnivorous at night. Even well-tended lawns look anemic under the first assault of morning light. It isn’t until the richness of twilight that things take on that mellow gold tinge, like waking up from a siesta with the world scrubbed clean and a little brighter.

  It could just be me. But things seem tired in the morning. The day has risen, wearily, from the bowl of night. It’s when I get to go home, because the nasty things mostly stick to darkness to do their dirtiness.

  They don’t call it the nightside for nothing.

  And this morning seemed a little darker than usual. The windows were down and the radio was off, early coolness rising from the river and a promise of scorching later, but I thought I heard something else under the purring engine and the rushing air. The scar had been uncovered almost all night, and the sensory acuity was beginning to seem normal. The noise resolved itself into notes from a steam-driven calliope in the distance.

  A bright, cheery tune. That “Camptown Races” thing again, but with a darker edge. And the shadows were wrong this morning. Just by a millimeter or two, but they were at strange angles, and darker than the usual knife-sharp morning shadows. Gleams flickered through them—pairs of colorless gleams, low and slinking.