by Leanne Leeds
“What does he have to do?” I asked confused.
“Samson is going to have to implement an illusion designed to fool the humans,” Uncle Phil explained.
“Isn’t that what we do more or less all the time, though?”
“Not precisely. For example, the centaur village has never been seen by a human. It’s never been seen by a human wandering around the circus because the magic persuades humans not to go there. During an investigation, it’s highly unlikely that the magic will not arouse suspicion.”
Police officers and detectives are much more methodical when looking for clues, Samson explained. If “search the blue tent” is on a list they have of things to accomplish, that no one searches the blue tent will eventually arouse suspicion.
“Detectives also tend to have a heightened intuition. On a daily basis, they look for clues and subtleties that normal people might dismiss,” Uncle Phil added. “Our risk of discovery is much higher if we are the subject of an investigation. So, we have a mode that we can go into that will present a tangible, touchable truth to the detectives without arousing any suspicion.”
However, I must maintain that illusion. It takes an incredible amount of energy, and I’ll glow with it. Literally. That means I must stay out of sight the entire time.
“Why can’t we just change everything for the duration of the stay here?”
“We don’t have enough room to house everyone. Behind the illusion in a place that humans will be unable to cross, the living spaces and support for the paranormals will continue to be maintained. The police will simply have no access to it. Likewise, most paranormals will be unable to come out.”
“Okay, so how do we do this? The police are going to be here any minute.”
“First, you’ll need to broadcast to everyone at the Magical Midway. I hate using the broadcast system because of how impersonal it is, but in this case, the situation calls for it.”
Then, you let me know that you want me to put the illusion in place, Samson says. In this case, Charlotte, the magic is not yours. The magic is mine.
“What else can you do that I don’t know about?”
Is this really the conversation you want to have right now?
“No, no, you’re right,” I said. “Okay, let’s tell everyone what’s going on and then get this done. I want to get back up to the house, so I’m there when the police arrived.”
“Good idea,” Uncle Phil said.
I projected my voice into the ear of everyone at the Magical Midway. I wished after the announcement I had brought my mother down here to project calm because when I was done, it sounded like a thundering herd of cattle as everyone raced to hide.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Samson glowed.
2
Despite having expanded my yurt, Devana and Ethel Elkins rarely came to the common area. Both had been locked in Ms. Elkins’s room for the past few days. Since I hadn’t formally bound them to the midway, I was concerned about whether they had heard the announcement and understood what was going on.
I knocked on Ethel store.
“We heard you!” the old woman screeched and I winced. “Go away! The huntress witch and I are busy!”
“I just wanted to make sure that you knew about the police, and what was going on,” I told her. “Glad you heard me.”
“I hear everything!” the old woman snapped.
“Charlotte, we’re just fine, and we are aware of the situation,” Devana told me without opening the door. “We both appreciate you coming to check on us, but we’re fine. We’ll stay in Ms. Elkins room until you let us know the situation in the human world has been dealt with.”
“Okay, thanks, Devana,” I called.
Silence.
“I feel like I should know what’s going on inside there,” I said to no one in particular.
“I’m sure you’ll find out just as soon as they decide that you should know. Likely, they’ll tell you at the most inconvenient moment,” Gunther said as he stepped out of his bedroom. “I doubt those two could do anything else, really.”
“Aren’t you worried that they’ve been locked in there for over a day now?”
“Honestly, I’m more worried about the police investigation,” Gunther said frowning. “Even I’m kind of suspicious that we showed up, and less than two hours later someone’s dead a hundred feet from our fairgrounds.”
“From our fairgrounds?” Gunther seemed to feel terribly possessive over my Magical Midway. We weren’t even officially together a week yet.
“Oh come on Charlotte you know what I mean,” Gunther said as he poured himself some tea. “I just got you to admit that you like me as more than a friend. We just decided to give a relationship a try. I’m not pushing my luck. It took me long enough to get you to this point.”
“Har har har.”
“You laugh, but I’m not kidding,” Gunther said as he brought me a cup of tea. “Anyway, here, some of that tea you like. I thought you’d be back over at your parent's house by now?”
“I was just about to head over there,” I told him as I sipped from the steaming cup. “I want to see if I can figure out how the police are looking at this and whether I need to be concerned that they’re going to look at us. I have to admit, I’m a little freaked out, too, that someone got killed before the sun even set on our arrival.”
“She’s not a paranormal, though, right?”
“No, she was doing volunteer work here. She committed a human crime against an animal, and the judge sentenced her to do volunteer work here,” I told Gunther. “That sometimes happens in our world.”
“In the paranormal world or the human world?”
“Sorry, the human world.”
“You still think of it as your world?” Gunther asked.
“Yeah, I guess I do. I spent almost 30 years of my life living in it. I guess I still think like a human first in a lot of ways.”
“While you’re up at the main house, I’m going to head back over to Ningul's. Fiona and I have been making some progress on understanding some of the things we can affect at the Witches' Council meeting.”
“Why not just work here?”
“We, um… we wanted to make sure we had some privacy,” Gunther said as his eyes darted over to Ethel Elkin’s door.
“The older one or the younger one?” I asked as I got up.
“Yes,” Gunther answered with a smile. He walked over and embraced me, carefully kissing my cheek. “We’ll stay out of your way. We have plenty to do to keep us busy, and Fiona and I both figured you would want to spend time with your family.”
“Yeah, just won’t be in the way I hoped,” I told him, kissing him back. “I’ll try to be back for dinner.”
“Remember the sundown rule,” Gunther called after me.
For some reason, planetary energy played some kind of role in my tie to the Magical Midway. If I left the fairgrounds once the sun came out, I had to be back on the fairgrounds by the time the sun would set or I couldn’t return until the following day. Although I’d followed it in the months since I’d come to the Magical Midway, I never really understood why.
At some point, hopefully, I would have spare time to examine the reasoning behind some of these rules.
Today, however, wasn’t that day.
The house was bustling with activity.
My parents sat on the couch in the living room while a tall man about my age sat on a chair to the right. I could see his badge as his hand moved across his notepad. His hair was dark, as were his eyes, and there was something vaguely familiar about him.
“Charlotte,” the man said politely, looking up. “It’s been a long time. I haven’t seen you since high school.”
Squinting, I tried to place his face, but I just couldn’t recall anyone as cute as this guy knowing who I was in high school. I didn’t exactly have a peer group back then, and I suspected most of the other students graduated having no clue who I was. The man was built like a footb
all player, meaty and thick and muscular and handsome.
I was really sure the football players didn’t know who I was.
“I’m sorry, I’m not sure that I remember your name,” I told him as I stepped toward the couch. “I was kind of shy in high school, though, so I’m surprised anyone that went to Liberty High remembers me.”
“I remember you quite well, actually,” he said standing up to extend his hand. “You sat in front of me in Ms. Green’s world history class. I spent my junior year staring at the back of your head.”
“Sorry about that,” I said as we shook. “I hope my changing hairstyles kept you entertained, at least. I think that was my multicolored year.”
“Detective Kyle Roberts.”
“Detective, nice to meet you again,” I said as he towered over me. “I think I’m starting to remember you now. You were on the football team, weren’t you?”
“I was. I even got to play some football in college until my knee blew out,” Detective Roberts said as he gestured down and shrugged. “Since fame, fortune, and fast cars were no longer in my future, I decided to come back to Mickwac and put my college degree to use.”
“What did you major in?”
“Criminology.”
“That sounds… creepy,” I told him.
“It can be at times,” he smiled and then turned back to my parents. “Unfortunately, there is a need for someone to understand why people do bad things.”
“Charlotte, Detective Roberts was just asking about the circus,” my father told me nonchalantly. “We didn’t have too much information about it beyond the basics, so maybe you can help answer some of his questions.”
“Sure, no problem,” I told him as I sat down next to my father. “What kind of questions do you have?”
“When did you arrive and set up?” Detective Roberts asked as he sat back down in the chair.
“This morning, actually,” I told him, breathing deep. I felt my mother waterfall calmness over me as if I was standing beneath a magical Niagara Falls. “I hadn’t been home in a while, and we didn’t have any other dates we needed to make, so I thought we’d head here for a bit to visit my parents. It’s been busy since I took over from my uncle.”
“You brought your entire circus just to visit your parents?” Kyle Roberts asked evenly. “That seems like a costly side trip. Where were you before this?”
“At Big Bear Mesa,” I told him.
“Big Bear? As in California?”
“I think so,” I told him and cursed to myself as soon as the words left my lips.
“You think so?”
Since I didn’t have many friends and the few friends I had exploded in anger and recriminations right before I took over the circus, I had absolutely no practice answering personal questions posed by a human about my paranormal life. With no preparation or skill with deception, I hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to answer the simplest of questions.
I had spoken with the humans on our midway multiple times and never had a problem, so I assumed I would be fine. But someone that knew me? Someone who wanted me to account for my whereabouts? This was far harder than I expected it to be.
“It was California. I’m sorry, we’re a traveling circus. Because we travel so much, it’s sometimes tough to keep track of what town or even what state you’re in. We’re just on the move all the time,” I explained.
The detective stared at me for a few moments and then nodded.
I wondered if Kyle Roberts was satisfied with my answer, or if he just wanted me to think he was satisfied with my answer. My mother was throwing so many buckets of calm over me I could barely wiggle my own power through it to take the measure of the detective.
“And where are you going to after this?”
“Louisiana,” I answered quickly. It was the only thing I could think of that could explain why going from California to Texas to visit my parents made sense.
“And you stopped here why?”
Didn’t I just tell him that?
“To see my parents, but also to be able to do some maintenance on the rides and joints. We keep some of our larger machinery here to save on gas as we travel around,” I told him calmly, clearly getting the hang of this lying thing on the fly.
I made a mental note to create a machinery storage building on the edge of the Magical Midway the moment I was back.
“Did you know the deceased?”
“No, I didn’t,” I told him.
“You didn’t meet her this morning when you arrived?”
“No. The first time I saw her was when our family ran to the kennels because the dogs were going crazy,” I responded. “That’s when we found her on the floor.”
“Do you have any problem with us questioning your employees, Charlotte?” the detective asked.
“I don’t think so,” I told him.
“You don’t think so?”
“That’s what I said.”
“What would cause you to think that you might have a problem with me questioning your employees?” he asked me. His tone was growing slightly less friendly as he shifted forward.
“Carnies tend to have a lot of mistrust for the police,” I told him, leaning forward as well. “I absolutely want to help you in any way that I can, and I’m sure that my folks feel the same. Circuses have just had a long history of local police wariness, and I don’t want to cause my folks anymore discomfort than I have to.”
“Have you ever thought that maybe your people mistrust the police because they’ve done bad things and they don’t want to get caught?”
“No,” I told him flatly as we stared each other in the eyes.
Detective Kyle Roberts watched me a few moments longer and then nodded again to himself like he was engaged in a conversation I wasn’t privy to. “I’m going to head out to the kennels so that we can take Miss Drake’s body back to the morgue. Mr. Astley, we are sure all the dogs are secure?”
“Yes, Detective, absolutely sure. I can’t promise that they’ll be quiet, but I can promise they won’t get out.”
“Thank you, sir,” he nodded and walked toward the back door. “Oh, and one more thing. Charlotte?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t leave town, okay? Not just you. Let’s make sure the circus hangs around until we fully understand what happened here. That shouldn’t be a problem for you since you were coming for a visit. Okay?”
I nodded as the rest of the police officers followed Detective Roberts out the door.
“Well, I guess that answers the question as to whether our being here is causing any suspicion,” I told my parents.
“Maybe we should have had Charlotte leave,” my mom told my dad.
“Too late now,” he said. “But so far, all the police have done is ask questions. That’s what they’re supposed to do. There is no indication that they have any particular suspicion about the circus.”
“They are police, Dad. Police are always suspicious of carnies.”
“Did you get any sense of what he was thinking, Charlotte?”
“No. Mom was throwing so much of her power at me to keep me calm that I couldn’t really use my own talent,” I told him.
“For now, let’s just be a little cautious, but I don’t think there’s any reason for concern just yet,” Dad said. “I understand the girl has quite a colorful history. No doubt Detective Roberts will be looking into that first.”
“I was a little shocked to see him,” I told Gunther back at Ningul's. “Actually, I wasn’t shocked to see him because I didn’t recognize him. I was pretty surprised that he recognized me right away.”
“Well, this is the Astley Animal Shelter,” Gunther pointed out as he shuffled papers on the dining room table. “Since he is a detective, he probably knew about the place and your association with it before he even showed up.”
“Remember, Charlotte, before your father and uncle entered into this ridiculous rivalry, the circus used to winter here on this land,” Fiona remin
ded me. “All that was many years ago before my time, but the humans tend to like recording their history. The circus stopping back by shouldn’t be that odd of an occurrence.”
“You have a problem,” Uncle Phil said as he stomped into Ningul’s cabin uninvited.
“I always have a problem,” I told Uncle Phil and shrugged. “Is this a new problem or a problem I already know I have?”
“I don’t know if you’re aware of this problem, Charlotte. Considering how little you check with me, I’m continually surprised that I know anything at all happening on the Magical Midway anymore.”
“Geesh, what’s gotten into you?”
Uncle Phil sighed and sat down at the big, wooden dining table. Swallowing, he rubbed his scraggly face with his hands and shook his head back and forth as if to clear it.
“I apologize,” my uncle said as he looked up. “That actually was very uncalled for. I don’t like dealing with the human world, or the human law enforcement people. It puts me out of sorts.”
“It’s okay, Uncle Phil, I get it,” I told him as I placed my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I got questioned by a detective when I went up to the house, and even with my mother helping to keep me calm, I was pretty nervous myself.”
“Anyway, to the problems,” Uncle Phil said patting my hand. “Between the huntress witch taking up residence in our circus, the murder that took place at the Astley Animal Shelter, and the shift into protection mode, the residents here are quite concerned.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing, Uncle Phil. Until the police get done with their investigation, we do have some risk of exposure. Maybe it’s better that people are more nervous than comfortable. You know what I mean?”
“Yes, well, as long as they don’t panic, Charlotte, that may be true. If they panic, it could put us at greater risk than if they are calm, especially with the police poking around.”
“If they get really scared, most of the shifters will shift,” Fiona pointed out. “If that happens, there won’t be enough human looking people left at the circus for the police to make sense of this place. It will look like our people ran and scattered to the wind. That could make them look closer at us, which we don’t want.”