by Paul Ruditis
“Stop,” Paige said. “Go back.”
Piper hit the buttons on the remote control, taking the images back several frames, and then hit play. Together, she and Paige watched as a shape entered the darkened tent.
“Who is that?” Piper asked.
It was difficult to see the person on the dark screen. It was clearly a man—or a demon-man. They could tell by the way he carried himself. There was something slightly off about him, though. The shadows of his body seemed odd. It was like he was wearing some kind of disguise to hide his true features. His head seemed too big, and his clothes were too large for his frame.
The man crept silently toward the cage. Piper stood up as the man leaned into the cage and reached in for Zeus. She was transfixed by what she was watching. It was hard enough to make out any details in the darkness, but it was impossible to tell what he was doing to the tiger because his back was to the camera.
If only the camera had been positioned in the opposite direction, they would have gotten a clear shot of the demon illuminated by the red glow. But they were only able to make out his silhouette, since he stood between the light and the camera. Yet there was something oddly familiar about the outline of his overly large body.
After about a minute, the man stood up and backed away from the cage. Piper didn’t have to see the tiger to know that Zeus was dead. When the demon turned to face the camera, he became much easier to identify.
Piper thought it was weird that the man would be in costume in the middle of the night, but it certainly wasn’t the strangest thing she had seen in her ongoing battle with demons. It took a moment to make out his full features, but there was no mistaking the tiny bowler hat on his crazy-wigged head.
They had found their demon.
Chapter 17
“Do you have a photo of Tommy without his makeup?” Phoebe asked as she tried to recover from the shock of her discovery. She didn’t want them to think anything was out of the ordinary since she could never even begin to explain what was going on. The clown in the tiny blue bowler hat was staring back at her from the full-color photo in the program with the name TOMMY BRACE printed underneath.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without makeup on,” Jordan said. He looked to Reed, who shook his head, indicating that he’d never seen the clown’s real face either.
“He’s always in costume?” Phoebe asked.
“Around here, anyway,” Jordan said. “I don’t know how he dresses on his own time. What he chooses to wear after he leaves the circus grounds is his business, as far as I’m concerned.”
“As I said, we take the circus very seriously around here,” Reed added.
Phoebe suspected Tommy’s costume obsession had more to do with the ability to go about unnoticed than dedication to his job. She was mentally kicking herself for not catching on to Tommy earlier. One of her favorite old movies was The Greatest Show on Earth. In it, Jimmy Stewart’s character was wanted for murder, but he managed to hide in plain sight by working as a clown who never removed his makeup.
Phoebe thanked the veterinarian for the information, without letting on just how helpful he had been. As she left the trailer, Reed promised her that the press release about Tasha’s illness would be available soon. Phoebe silently hoped that by the time the document was available she and her sisters would have vanquished the demon and Tasha would be on the road to recovery. To do that, she needed to find her sisters.
Paige had mentioned that she had seen the veterinarian’s trailer back by the tents. That wasn’t a surprise, since he’d want to be as close to the animals as possible. Phoebe had considered asking Jordan for directions in case she wanted to stop by later with some follow-up questions, but she thought it might make Reed suspicious.
Phoebe headed toward the back row of trailers, reading the nameplates as she walked. Either she had missed a nameplate or she had started on the wrong row, because Phoebe reached Tasha’s tent without seeing Jordan’s trailer.
She was just about to turn back and look through the trailers again when she had the feeling that something was out of place. It wasn’t quite a premonition, but she got a strange vibe from the tent. It took her a second, but she soon realized what was amiss. There was a big quarantine sign on the outside of the tent wall, but no sign of any kind of security to keep anyone from entering. Jordan had specifically mentioned a security guard had been posted at the tent.
He had also said that the tent was sealed. Though Phoebe didn’t think that it would be airtight, it was odd that the entryway stood wide open.
Since the circus staff was otherwise occupied, Phoebe took the absence of a security guard as an open invitation to check on Tasha. Even though her inner voice was telling her to find her sisters first, Phoebe didn’t listen. She had a bad feeling that the lack of a guard meant that something was definitely wrong. The sooner she found out what was going on, the better.
Phoebe cautiously entered the tent and found the crazy clown from earlier kneeling on the ground, with his hands on Tasha’s side. He was even less funny now that Phoebe knew he was the Bestiari Demon.
A nearly imperceptible red glow was emanating from his fingers, and his eyes were closed as he stole the life-essence from the pachyderm. Phoebe worried that alone she was no match for such a strong demon, but she couldn’t simply stand back and watch Tasha die. “Hey, Tommy,” she said. “I’ve come to give back your ring.”
The Bestiari Demon’s eyes snapped open. He looked shocked to see her standing there. Phoebe wasn’t sure if that was because he had recognized her as one of the Charmed Ones or if he was just startled at the presence of another person. She hoped that it was the latter. At least that would give her the element of surprise.
The demon’s eyes were glowing red. Clearly, he did not like his work interrupted. He snarled at Phoebe like one of the wild animals he had inside of him. Phoebe followed his gaze as he looked down at Tasha. The elephant’s breathing was labored, but she was still alive.
Phoebe tried to back out of the tent quickly, but the demon was faster than she had anticipated. He bounded over the elephant in a flash, pouncing on Phoebe with the speed and precision of a tiger.
Reacting purely on instinct, Phoebe made a roundhouse kick to the demon’s chest. The demon stumbled back a half step, but was otherwise unaffected.
The Bestiari hissed at Phoebe. She knew that he had the defensive abilities of a wide selection of animals and it occurred to her that he might also be poisonous.
She had no intention of finding out.
Phoebe let loose with a barrage of fists hitting the demon with every move she had learned in her martial arts training. She could have been hitting him with a fly swatter, for all the good she was doing. Apparently the demon realized this, too, as he let loose with a shrill laugh much like a hyena’s.
Knowing she was fighting a losing battle, Phoebe drew back from the demon, looking for an avenue of escape. She didn’t want to turn her back on him, but she knew that backing away wouldn’t give her the speed she needed to get out of his path.
As Phoebe considered her options, the Bestiari Demon lashed out at her with one hand, hitting her squarely in the chest and sending her flying backward out of the tent.
“Cotton candy!” she heard Paige yell from behind her. A half-second later she landed in a pile of plastic bags filled with the pink and blue sugary confection.
“Are you okay?” Piper asked as she and Paige hurried to Phoebe’s side.
“Yeah,” Phoebe said as she pulled herself up. Several of the bags of candy had burst on impact, and strands of cotton candy were clinging to her clothes. “You couldn’t have orbed me onto a pile of foam pillows?”
Paige helped her sister remove the candy from her hair. “I work with what’s available,” she said, pointing to a cotton candy stand nearby. “Next time you go flying in the air, try to do it near an air mattress and we won’t have this kind of problem.”
“I’m guessing you found the demon,�
�� Piper said.
“It’s the clown,” Phoebe replied. She was surprised—and relieved—that he hadn’t followed her out of the tent. “The stupid clown that’s been messing with us all day.”
“We know,” Piper said. “We found the tape. He gave quite a performance. And here we were thinking it was Puck all along.”
“It serves us right for judging a demon by his cover,” Paige said.
“He’s almost done draining Tasha’s life,” Phoebe said as she hurried back toward the tent.
“Phoebe wait,” Piper said as she and Paige followed. “We need to vanquish him together.”
The Charmed Ones locked hands and slowly entered the tent.
“I came up with the spell earlier,” Paige said. “Repeat after—”
“Forget it,” Piper said as her eyes adjusted to the dark tent. “He’s gone.”
Piper was right: Tasha was the only living being in the tent. The space was large and empty, save the untouched hay bales shoved in the corner. Phoebe tentatively checked behind them, but the space was empty. There was nowhere for the demon to hide. He had vanished.
“But how?” Phoebe asked. “We were right outside.”
“There’s your answer,” Paige said, pointing to a large tear in the back of the tent.
“Tasha!” Phoebe said, hurrying to the elephant’s side.
The demon hadn’t been able to finish the job. Phoebe could tell Tasha was still alive by the rapid rise and fall of her torso. Her breathing was still labored, and she looked even worse than she had before. It was clear that if Phoebe hadn’t gone into the tent before she found her sisters, Tasha would already be gone.
“I don’t think the demon has killed in the daytime before,” Phoebe said. “Why now?”
“Maybe he knew we were onto him,” Paige said.
“What the hell are you doing in here…again?” Lane demanded as she came into the tent. She was dressed in her flashy circus costume—a silver sequined jacket over a shiny black body-suit. But she didn’t look like a jovial circus performer. “This area is under quarantine. No one’s supposed to be here.”
“There’s no time to explain,” Phoebe said. “Did you see a clown around here?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Lane asked. “You do realize this is a circus.”
“Tommy,” Phoebe said. “Have you seen Tommy the clown?”
“Tommy?” Piper mumbled. “The demon’s name is Tommy?”
“Not since the show started,” Lane replied.
“No. He didn’t…never mind,” Phoebe said as she grabbed her sisters and hurried out of the tent. “We don’t have time for this.”
“I’m calling security,” Lane called after them.
“Good!” Paige yelled back. “Get the whole force out here, if you can.”
The three sisters stopped outside the tent, scanning the area for the Bestiari Demon.
“We’ve got to find that clown before the others come out of the arena,” Paige said. “Or else it will be like looking for a needle in a clown stack.”
“Too late,” Piper said, pointing to the arena’s side exit.
A dozen clowns were streaming out of the Cow Palace and heading right for the Charmed Ones.
Chapter 18
“Is it just me, or are those clowns headed straight for us?” Phoebe asked as she instinctively took a step back.
“It’s a stampede,” Paige said dryly.
Piper found it unsettling to watch as a swarm of clowns converged on her and her sisters. She wasn’t sure why they were running directly toward the three of them. She checked her watch. They couldn’t possibly be done already—the show was only half over. And this seemed like an odd way to spend their downtime between appearances onstage.
The only explanation for the mass exodus was that Tommy the demon clown had called on his unsuspecting cohorts to protect him. Little did the clowns know they’d be helping the person who was responsible for killing their beloved animal coworkers, closing down the circus, and leaving them all without a job.
“This is not good,” Paige said. “How are we going to find the demon among all these clowns? They’re practically identical.”
“One red nose at a time,” Piper said, bracing herself as the group crowded around them.
Piper wasn’t certain that the Bestiari Demon was hiding among the gaggle of clowns. But he would have blended right in. It would be easy for him to separate the Charmed Ones and take them out one by one while his cronies thought they were just playing some kind of game. It was almost the kind of joke befitting Puck, though the endgame was far more sinister.
“Stick together,” Piper yelled as she tried to reach for her sisters’ hands.
Instead of Phoebe’s hand, Piper felt something cold and wet against her palm. She looked down to find that she was holding what looked to be a dead fish. She dropped it quickly. Even though she was pretty sure it wasn’t a real fish, it still left a slimy residue on her hand. She tried to wipe it off on the nearest clown and wound up pulling off the guy’s tear-away shirt, revealing a chest that had a huge face painted on it. The clown screamed in fake embarrassment, waving his hands wildly in Piper’s face so she couldn’t see.
Piper managed to turn away from him in time to see Paige being pulled away from the crowd by a clown wearing a hat that rose five feet into the air. Paige was struggling to get away from the clown, but it was clear that she didn’t want to hurt the guy. Her struggle proved useless as she was quickly trapped in the center of a ring of five clowns holding hands and skipping around her.
For a moment it looked like Paige was enjoying herself. Piper figured her sister was just playing along so she could get a good look at the clowns and try to identify the Bestiari Demon. Paige was even bouncing on the balls of her feet in rhythm with the clowns as she got a good look at each of their faces.
Piper tried to do the same with the clowns around her, but it was hard to get a positive ID on any of them because they kept moving around wildly. Two of the clowns were obviously female, which made them easy to cross off the list. The third clown was a man dressed up as a woman. He was harder to identify because of his extra layers of padding and stylized makeup. It was especially difficult to see the clowns’ faces when they started tossing streamers at Piper like it was New Year’s Eve.
Of course, all the demon had to do was remove his makeup and then no one would be able to identify him at all, Piper thought.
As Piper worked to free herself from the streamers, she saw that Phoebe was trapped between the giant legs of several stilt-walking clowns who had joined their normal-size brethren. All it would have taken for Phoebe to escape was a few swift kicks to the stilts, but Phoebe would never hurt the innocent clowns like that. It wasn’t their fault they had been tricked into covering for a demon.
Between the clowns, the streamers, and the crazy honking and whistling sounds being made around her, it was like Piper was in the middle ring of the circus, with all the acts performing at once. The clowns were having a grand old time, but Piper could no longer make heads or tails of her surroundings, much less notice if the Bestiari Demon was among the crowd. She threw up her hands and froze the group of clowns.
“Thank you,” Phoebe said with relief as she slipped between the legs of a clown on stilts and helped Piper free herself from the streamers.
“I don’t know…that was kind of fun,” Paige said as she ducked under two clasped hands in the ring of clowns.
Her sisters did not share in her enjoyment.
“Or it would have been,” Paige continued meekly, “if the life of a defenseless animal didn’t hang in the balance.”
Piper decided not to comment on Paige’s statement. “I doubt the Bestiari Demon—”
“Tommy,” Phoebe said.
“I refuse to call the demon ‘Tommy,’” Piper said. “Anyway, I doubt he’s part of this crowd, but let’s give them the once-over.”
Piper and Paige evaluated the nearest demons. Even thou
gh they had only seen the demon clown briefly throughout the day, they had enough of an idea of his body type to know that he wasn’t among their comic attackers. Phoebe levitated herself to check out the clowns on stilts and arrived at the same conclusion.
“Now what?” Paige asked.
“Now we get out of here before the clowns unfreeze,” Piper said.
“But won’t they think it’s weird that we just disappeared?” Paige asked.
“There’s so much going on that they’ll probably think we managed to sneak away in the confusion,” Phoebe said. “Either way, I’m not getting back in the middle of that insanity.”
“Me neither,” Piper said as she led her sisters over to the row of trailers away from the group of entertainers. Looking back at the frozen tableau of wild colors and painted faces, Piper was a little freaked out by the sight. There was just something eerie about the scene. Piper could understand why some people suffered a severe phobia of clowns.
Once she and her sisters were far enough away from the group, Piper quickly unfroze the clowns and watched as they continued their routine. They were all so involved in what they were doing that it took them a moment to realize the women had disappeared. Once they did, they began stretching out their already exaggerated expressions.
For the first time since the clown encounter had begun, Piper actually felt like laughing.
Now that they had lost their audience, the clowns came down a bit from their zany act and slowly started to head back toward the arena. Piper heaved a sigh of relief, but it was premature. One of the female clowns had turned back in their direction and noticed the Charmed Ones poking their heads out from behind the trailer.
A maliciously wide grin spread across the clown’s face as Piper silently willed the woman to leave them alone. Piper knew that she couldn’t freeze time and disappear again. That would be too hard to explain. She could only watch as the clown blew her whistle and the rest of the group stopped walking. When they turned to see what the noise was about, the whistle-blower pointed in the direction of the Charmed Ones.