In this, the brave new world, Bell liked to keep ahead of the amateur videos that popped up on social media. Recordings weren’t encouraged, but he didn’t discourage them either. The accessibility of their performances pushed them to try new things constantly, and that distinguished Arcanium from other circuses of performers who actually had to learn the skills and risk life and limb to do their stunts.
When skill and risk weren’t issues, Arcanium could move ahead of the pack, though it didn’t try to compete with the scope of those other circuses. Arcanium was best as a relatively intimate venue that stayed under the radar from the wrong attention while still attracting all the right attention. Part circus, part freak show, part carnival, Arcanium was somehow a niche outfit with broad appeal. And Valorie helped him ensure that in the ring.
But Seth and Lars didn’t need her much anymore. Occasionally Lord Mikhail and Lady Sasha requested that she choreograph an act for them when they wanted to work together. Those routines were more difficult for her, since she couldn’t direct them through touch. Even gloves didn’t save her from the impact of their power.
All Valorie really had to occupy her downtime now was teaching Victor, and since Lennon was still the star of that particular routine, he could take care of most of the direction until Victor decided he wanted to be something other than a launch pad. For now, he still seemed happy in the supporting role.
The rest of the cast didn’t require choreography or did their own. For instance, the clowns had never asked Valorie for help with their raunchy, comedic pantomime. Carlo and Christina worked more with Lennon or as living props for the Ringmaster when he was dominating the big cats. Troy worked with Misha, whose skill set was beyond Valorie’s knowledge. And Maya worked with Bell, whose vision was just as astute as Valorie’s. He liked letting Valorie take over some of those tasks for him with other members of the cast, but not with Maya. Valorie had helped her with a few tightrope tricks. Otherwise, Bell handled it just fine.
She had much less to do during the week than she used to, even though she was doing solo performances again. If she thought staying away from Arcanium more would help her find some kind of outlet, she’d do it. But while Kitty and Victor got a galvanizing charge from interacting with the outside and spending some of their nights with new people, Valorie couldn’t find it in her to do the same casual stranger sex thing. It wasn’t pregnancy or disease she was worried about. Even if she caught something on the outside, it would wither and die inside her as soon as she stepped over the Arcanium threshold. It was just that she’d always had someone to come back to in the past.
John wasn’t the same. Coming home to a pet couldn’t beat coming home to a man, as far as she remembered, and she tried not to encourage him too much. Sex every night would have been entirely too much gravy. If she was going to teach him that his climaxes were completely at her disposal and dispensation, she had to deny him. Unfortunately, that meant denying herself, not that she was feeling up to it other than the usual physical imperative. And if Kitty could handle several weeks of such an imperative when she wasn’t boning an outsider or the Ringmaster, Valorie could handle a few days here and there between the days the circus was open and the sex demons dialed their magic up to ten.
If it sounded like Valorie played the ‘anything you can do, I can do better’ game, it was because she did. Competition was one of the only things she had left. It might occasionally make her homicidal, but it also helped her make Arcanium and her place in it what it was today. She’d made her mark.
The question, she thought as she waited for another day, another crowd, to start, is whether that’s the only mark I’ll ever make.
The question is whether I’m over.
Valorie couldn’t remember the last time she’d experienced this kind of discontent, and those who spent the most incidental time with her noticed, including John. They didn’t comment because they had a good sense of self-preservation, and Bell had already decided to leave her to her conflict. But Valorie was acutely aware of their awareness.
She couldn’t help but think that if she was this unhappy in Arcanium, it was truly time to leave. She had lovers instead of love, colleagues instead of friends and demons instead of humans. If she had at least one of those things she needed, perhaps the strands attaching her to the massive spiderweb that made up Arcanium could still keep her tied on.
She wanted Bell, but she couldn’t have him. John wasn’t the incentive she needed. He was weight holding her down, but he wasn’t a tie, no matter how earnest he was. That was the magic and the guilt talking. Even free will couldn’t be trusted sometimes. He’d latched onto Valorie because someone had let him latch. Simple as that. He would have taken anyone.
Valorie had just been convenient because she’d been the one to open her legs. And John was just as convenient to her.
Not exactly the stuff ties that bind were made of.
* * * *
She had to admit, walking on her hands and rocking her body across booth partitions got some good reactions from circus-goers, but they responded even better when two cast members interacted with each other as well as the crowd.
In addition, when she was with John, the crowd was much less likely to touch her unsolicited.
Valorie sometimes extended a foot or a hand to tap someone on the shoulder, tousle their hair or play with a hat or sunglasses. People loved that. But when she was that close to other people, especially twisted up the way she was, she was also more likely to have to slap off someone else’s hand. And when she was knotted, she couldn’t always move in the right direction to do so. A few times, other patrons had a conscience and did it for her. But most of the time, she had to just deal with it and move away from them as soon as she could.
When she was with John, using him as a human platform and giving him instructions to stand or kneel so that she could move her act to his shoulders or even to his head, she was more protected—with a big, strong man right there with her.
It made her mad, but she couldn’t voice that frustration to all the bastards around her who only kept their distance because she was visibly possessed by another man. Her tone was dominant, and she never released the leash with which she led him around Arcanium, but the fact he took the submissive role didn’t seem to make a difference.
At one area, she might let the leash out and direct him to do some of his simpler routines, which usually consisted of a box of matches and his bare hands, sometimes torches that he juggled or thinner sticks that he deep-throated. At another part of the circus, she’d make him kneel so she could do a few of her simpler routines, improvising on the spot most of the time. The usual contortionist suspects were fixed in her muscle memory by now, as easy as walking. In some ways, Valorie knew her simple repertoire was more impressive than the usual contortionist because of her long-limbed frame. She should have looked more ungainly, even when flexible. Thank Bell for magical favors, she surpassed expectations.
They’d done this routine many times now, and it always garnered a good crowd. Looked like John was going to be popular in the winter months—like gathering around a campfire. Valorie also reaped those benefits, although Lady Sasha’s leather kept heat in during winter as well as it breathed during the summer.
In white leather trousers and a black lace overlay on her cotton tube top, Valorie wasn’t nearly as pure as Lady Sasha’s dirt-resistant clothing suggested. She jerked John forward and led him around to face her.
“Kneel before your Queen, dragon,” she declared loudly enough for the casual observers to hear—enough for them to become less casual in their observation. “Show whom you serve.”
“I think you enjoy that a little too much,” John muttered, but as he bowed his head, his scarred lips curved in a smile that most of the crowd wouldn’t be able to see.
“Nothing wrong with a woman enjoying herself,” she muttered back, resting her hands on his shoulders to urge him down onto his hands and knees.
John nuzzled her t
high, a mostly innocuous gesture to those around them, although she was sure it sparked the same arousal in a few others as it did in her. He did that to her when she was naked too, showed her thighs appreciation for leading him to her pussy.
Valorie stroked his head as though he had fur—or scales. Then she secured the leash around her wrist and cartwheeled into a handstand onto his back.
People holding cotton candy, cups of hot chocolate or hot coffee, cinnamon-roasted nuts and fresh funnel cakes gradually gathered around them.
There was a hierarchy to the crowd. Every crowd settled into it after a few minutes.
Children and shorter teens were ushered to the front. Sometimes parents lowered themselves to their children’s level if there was a particularly large audience so that more people behind them could see. Shorter adults not afraid to elbow their way in would do so without too much resistance, although sometimes younger adults or groups of teenagers could either be oblivious or deliberately deny access. Others in the crowd compensated for the jerks. In the end, almost everyone in the circle for several rows was happy. And if they’d already seen the show, they were unlikely to stick around for a long time during the next one, so they wouldn’t hog the real estate.
Such a hierarchy was one of those few small victories of humanity, as opposed to one of the myriad of ways that everyone on the planet needed to die in a fire.
Valorie had one foot on the small of John’s back, both hands on his smooth skull, and her other leg slowly lifting behind her. Anticipation was the word. The more slowly she could raise her leg—each inch eliminating someone from the crowd who couldn’t reach as far back—the more engaged the crowd was with her.
Her raised leg reached the eleven o’clock position, and she leaned her head back, preparing to bend her knee as she continued its trajectory. That was when she saw him.
He was older. Of course he was older. She didn’t know why she’d expected him to be the way she’d left him. She wasn’t sure whether he was taller than she remembered or whether she’d just shortened him in her memory. She had changed in a few ways, but height wasn’t one of them.
There was gray in the close small knots of his hair and in his goatee and mustache. He hadn’t changed the trim, which was part of the reason she was able to recognize him in spite of the spots on his face, the crow’s feet and lines bracketing his nose, the rimless glasses. He didn’t used to look like a professor, didn’t used to look like a grown-up. When they’d parted, neither of them had felt like adults, but damn if they hadn’t wanted everyone else to see them that way.
His parents had believed they’d been going into the engagement too quickly. Her parents had wondered why it had taken them so long, but they’d certainly not wanted their little girl to be living with him before they were married. He hadn’t listened to his parents. Valorie hadn’t listened to hers. As far as they’d been concerned, the wedding was a technicality. They’d already been husband and wife.
She knew that face and frame. His abdomen hadn’t used to push against his waistband, and he hadn’t needed a belt to hold up his trousers. She’d had to fight to get him in the dress shoes he was wearing at the moment, and for some reason, he’d seen fit to wear them to a circus that planted itself on grass, dirt and sawdust. He hadn’t needed the glasses back then. Those threw her for a second.
But he was unmistakable.
The man with his hands on the shoulders of a little girl of around seven or eight years old, standing next to a mid-teenage boy and a woman with natural curls and a headband… This man had been her fiancé when Bell had stolen her away. This man was Charles Grable.
And the years had done nothing to lessen the love that swelled up like hot springs inside her.
She shook, her balance hit by the earthquake of past meeting present, as disorienting as déjà vu. John tensed underneath her. She literally couldn’t fall by accident, but John was no fool. Valorie had been doing this long enough that her experience had finally coincided with the level of skill she’d been given by Bell to begin with. Valorie didn’t wobble, especially not while in such a standard position. It wasn’t like she was balanced on only one hand or one toe or one finger. She had solid footing.
She shouldn’t have shaken.
Even worse, she shouldn’t have stared.
An Arcanium cast member needed to perform for the whole audience. They could give personalized attention in little gestures, but they quickly learned that too much of a good thing led to unwanted attention in return. By staring, Valorie made herself noticed as a person rather than a performer. And damn, it meant that Charles started staring back.
Valorie continued with her routine, touching her toe to the top of her forehead. She tried to pretend that she hadn’t been caught, but she also kept glancing over at the man in case she’d been wrong. She wanted to make sure. And every time she did it, he caught her doing it.
Somewhere between making a circle with her body on the small of John’s back and planking with her arms holding herself up from John’s body, recognition suffused his entire expression. With that recognition came shock—and horror.
She didn’t blame him.
But she couldn’t respond. She couldn’t acknowledge what had occurred to him or the dread that had settled like one of the icicle lights turned real in her stomach. God, she needed to talk to Bell right the fuck now, but she couldn’t hurry or else he’d know why.
She went through the rest of her routine, irrationally inclined to be demure instead of spreading her legs like a seaside whore, but she forced herself to do what she always did anyway. She angled it away from him and his family as best as she could, but it was hard to hide her body when she was in the middle of a crowd gathered to see it in a costume meant to display it.
Once she was finished, she vaulted off John and bowed with him before tugging him with her. The small crowd parted opposite of her ex-fiancé to let them through.
“What’s going on?” John asked.
“Quiet,” she whispered.
“Did I do something wrong?” John asked, stopping abruptly and pulling her up short. Valorie held the leash, but he was like a big dog with a little girl. If he didn’t want to move, he could easily refuse.
Valorie could play the stubbornness game too, though. She jerked the leash toward her. He stumbled forward then dug his heels in.
“It’s not all about you,” she whispered, glaring up at him.
“No. It’s all about you, isn’t it?”
Damn it, she still couldn’t tell whether he meant what he said when he talked like that.
“Yes, it is,” Valorie said. “And when I tell you it’s none of your business, you forget it ever happened. You forget you were ever curious in the first place.”
She unlatched the leash from his collar. “Now go. Do your thing. I’m not going to need you again today, so you’ve got to fill the time by yourself.”
Before she could leave, John grabbed her by the wrist. It was the first semi aggressive thing he’d done to her that she hadn’t asked for. And while she relished his strength when she asked for it, a jolt of adrenaline forked through her, like mainlining espresso straight into the heart. It was all she could do not to slap him again, this time soundly across the cheeks. She couldn’t do that in broad daylight among people who thought their act was just that—only an act.
He wasn’t hurting her. She had no reason to lash out for everyone to see if he wasn’t doing something grossly awful. And Bell handled things if someone on the inside did any real harm.
Valorie was the one seriously courting Bell’s retribution right now, not John.
She hissed at him like a snake, baring her teeth. John literally reeled back and released her.
“I told you what you need to do, fire-eater,” she said. The harshness of her whispered words attracted the attention of some of the patrons around her, if the hiss hadn’t already done that. “The rest doesn’t concern you.”
“What’s wrong?” John insist
ed.
“It. Doesn’t. Concern. You.” Valorie emphasized every word just in case he was having trouble with comprehension. She wrapped the leash around her wrist and latched the clasp to the handle. It had become a regular accessory lately. “Go. Away.”
“But—”
“I swear, boy, it’s like you’re asking for a punishment that doesn’t end happy.”
John held his hands up, palms forward, as he took a step back. “I was just worried,” he said softly. “I worry about you.”
“I don’t need your worry, your concern or your damn pity. I just need your obedience,” Valorie said.
“You need it?”
“Figure of speech,” she replied. When she turned on her heel and strode to her tent, he didn’t come after her.
But she didn’t stop at her tent. She doubled around Oddity Row and returned to the midway booths where she’d been performing. In spite of her better judgment, she surreptitiously searched for Charles, trying to get a direct look at him while he couldn’t see her.
When she couldn’t find him there, she crept on the outside of the midway, looking for his wife. His son. His daughter. Anyone that could lead her to him for confirmation. It just couldn’t be. She’d seen what she’d wanted to see in the surprise of the moment. It wasn’t possible that after all this time she’d cross paths with him, now or ever.
He hadn’t wanted to go to the circus that day. He didn’t like them, especially the freak shows. There was no reason for him to come to one now, twenty years later. He’d probably become more conservative rather than less, age and parenthood making him cautious and protective. He’d always been protective of her. Valorie had been more daring, the one who wanted him to take her places she’d never been, even though he’d have been content to staycation the rest of his life. Because she’d always come home to him, eager and loving, he’d never minded if she went off and did things on her own. He’d had his mini man cave—she’d had her mini road trips. Sometimes with her girlfriends. Sometimes by herself.
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