“Anyone complains about you, out you go,” Squat said, like he was trying to regain ground.
“We will be as polite as your granny,” Danny said. “Thank you, gentlemen. Have a lovely day.”
The thugs backed off to what seemed like a safe distance, and they walked through the gates, and onto the carnival grounds proper. Ellen felt the ley line fade as they moved away, and pushed the last lingering bits of current back into her core. The tingling in her skin faded, and she made an involuntary but heartfelt noise that sounded a lot like “ugh.”
“I don’t know what the hell you did back there, but you did good,” he said.
“I don’t know what I did back there either,” she admitted. “Can I not have to do it again?”
Danny wasn’t a Talent. He couldn’t understand – it wasn’t just that the visions were painful, or that she was tired of death aiming for her like cupid with his bow – she was a Storm-Seer, according to everyone, and it was like being an epileptic or color blind or something, just a thing you dealt with and adapted for and she got that she really did, but-
“I don’t want to know that much about other people. I don’t want to know what’s going to happen to them. It’s too much.” She could still see it in her head, even though she’d tried not to look, tried not to notice anything, but it was all there. Death called the most strongly, limned itself with fire and frost, but every end result of every act and inaction was still there, hanging in the current around everyone.
And then Danny’s hand was on her arm, curved around the crook of her elbow, and the fire dampened, the frost melted, and all Ellen felt was tired.
“Come on, Shadow,” he said. “Time to be eye candy while I do some work.”
That was just ridiculous enough to make her laugh.
oOo
My quip had covered up hell of a lot of uncertainty. I wasn’t quite sure what the hell had happened back there at the gate: everything I’d ever heard of Storm-Seers, which admittedly wasn’t a hell of a lot except what Bonnie had told me after Ellen showed up on the scene, said that they were only able to read the future randomly, when the current spikes were strong enough, and never in a particularly directed manner, the way she just had, by touching them.
I had a passing thought that maybe she’d made it up – I mean, who the hell would know – but I knew the signs of current-exhaustion well enough. Whatever had gone on, it had drained her significantly. And she looked unhappy enough for it to be real. There were folk who could fake me out, but Shadow wasn’t anywhere in their league.
The sun had finally gotten up high enough that the overnight lights were flicking off, and people were up and moving. The livestock areas were bustling – horses and bears and whatever else they had there didn’t like to wait until a decent hour for their breakfast, I supposed. But while their handlers might be the most awake, I didn’t think that was the best place to start, since they’d also be the most distracted, and probably armed.
Sometimes, distraction was good, it got you information they didn’t want to give, either verbally or through body language. But trying to wrangle a large-ish animal meant that any distraction could get someone hurt. I didn’t want to risk that, when we had other options.
The midway, with its games of chance, was still shut down; it wouldn’t come to life until mid-afternoon, when the gates opened to the public. And I wasn’t quite ready to go barging into the living areas…not yet, anyway. Not unless we had cause to.
“Are you picking up anything else?”
“No. Just… we’re in the right place. This is what I saw. But I don’t, I can’t See anything else.”
“All right.” I was getting soft, relying on her visions, anyway. Time to prove I deserved my license.
“Hey!” I raised my voice, and called out to a figure up ahead, carrying a long pole with what looked like a lash at the end. “C’mere a minute.”
The boy turned and looked at us, and then with a shrug that clearly said whatthehell, walked toward us. He was in his late teens, sullen-faced and muscled in a way that suggested he didn’t spend most of his day in front of the television – or a book, for that matter.
“You cops?”
Oh, the suspicious mind of a migrant worker. “If we were cops, we wouldn’t have gotten this far.”
The boy grunted, and gave Ellen a once-over. Her chin went up and she stared him back. His gaze dropped first. Whatever issues Shadow had, giving the other gender shit for sexism clearly wasn’t on the list.
“We’re supposed to find someone, figured you might know where they are.”
“Maybe.” Sullen didn’t sound hopeful. “What’s their name?”
“Don’t know,” I admitted cheerfully. “Don’t know where they’ve been assigned, either. But they’re mer.” As I spoke I pulled my cap off and ran my hand through my hair.
It was a risk – this kid was human, not even Talent, and he might be a pure Null for all I could tell. But the fact that two fatae had been assigned gatekeepers meant the probability that this was an integrated crew was high.
“Mer?”
Bingo. The boy was playing dumb but his body language gave him away: he was ready to sprint in the opposite direction if I made one wrong move.
I spent most of my days passing – cross-breeds were rare enough that the fact that I’d lived as human my entire life trumped the obvious fatae aspects of my appearance. But I knew how to switch that out, at-need. I’d never look wholly faun, but there was no doubt that I was fatae.
Especially to a teenaged kid who – despite his sullen act – was no fool. His gaze flicked from my eyes to my horns, and then did a quick once-over, skimming along my body as though he were trying to adjust his initial perception. Then his gaze came back to my face, and I smiled. It wasn’t, I admit, a pretty smile. In fact, I’d spent a lot of time practicing it to display just the right amount of arrogant shit.
“Mer,” I said again. Two girls and a boy, teenagers.”
There was a flicker, an awareness, and then something fell behind his eyes, and he took a step back. “I’m sorry. I don’t know anyone like that here. Not too many of your folk around here, and none of ‘em my age.”
“Never said they were your age,” I said softly. “Just teenaged. Wide range, there.” I could have been wrong, it could just have been the normal teen ego assuming everything revolved around them. But I didn’t think so.
“Mister I swear, I don’t know anything. There’s nobody like that working here now.”
“But there was, before?” I could feel Ellen tense beside me, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the kid to check on her. Some of the fatae, they could wring the truth out of you, like it or not. That wasn’t my skillset. My glamour was hail-fellow-well-met, and it wasn’t effective once they’d gotten skittish.
“Lots of kids come through. They think it’s a glee, an easy gig for the summer. That they can drink all night and sleep all day and make money and then go home again when the summer’s done. Most of ‘em don’t last a week. Mer wouldn’t last a day, unless they were working the dunktank.”
He wasn’t wrong. But we also weren’t looking for someone who was working here. Not willingly, anyway.
“Who does the hiring and firing?”
Passing the buck, Sullen could do. “Perkins. His office is back of the back, the one with the flags flying, that means he’s in. I can go now? I gotta get to work.”
“Yeah, go,” I said, and he was halfway across the lot before I’d gotten the second word out of my mouth.
Ellen had seen me dead, too. And maybe dead here, or at least in danger, here, with a gun.
“How much control do you have?” It was way too goddamned late for me to be asking that.
She licked her lips, and rubbed the bridge of her nose, like it itched. “More than I did six months ago.”
Not much of an answer.
“The first thing Genevieve did was teach me defensive spells. She said there were enough peop
le eyeballing her and Sergei, I had to be ready to duck and cover without her worrying about me, just in case.”
That was a better answer. I reached around under my jacket, and pulled out my Glock. I hadn’t needed to use it even for show in almost a year, and I didn’t think I’d need it here… but the moment you weren’t ready was the second you’d need it. And if she was seeing a gun, I’d rather it be mine than someone else’s.
The grip was warm and familiar in my palm, my fingers curling around it as easy as clicking a mouse. I’d had the damn thing since I was in the academy, same as the boots on my feet. The boots had seen more use.
I checked the chamber, then reholstered the pistol. “Can you Translocate?”
She shook her head.
“Damn. Would have been useful. All right. Stay low and quiet.”
I should send her back to the car, but that probably would be worse – I didn’t trust the goons out back not to be stupid again, if they saw her alone.
oOo
The trailer was as advertised – four flags hanging limp over the roof: one American flag, one MIA, and two I didn’t recognize. The door was open, a concrete brick holding it ajar. I knocked anyway.
“Yo, in.”
The thing you learn, after a few years, is that most stereotypes and clichés become stereotypes and clichés for a reason. Perkins might’ve singlehandledly created the cliché of the stogie-smoking, scowl-faced carnie owner. I hadn’t expected him to be Korean, but that was a minor dissonance in the cluttered, dingy office that also looked like the cliché of every carnie office, right down to the three generations out-of-date computer and the pile of fast food wrappers.
Perkins had a thing for Arby’s.
“What can I do for ya?” He looked me up and down professionally, and I returned the favor. “Cop? Not local. Who’re you looking for? I don’t hire runaways, they’re more trouble than they’re worth.”
I believed him. That didn’t mean I trusted him.
“Not a cop. Private citizen.” If he asked, I’d show him my I.D. but not unless he asked. He didn’t. “Looking for three teenagers, traveling together. They came through here, we know that already so don’t waste my time denying it. I want to know where they went.”
There was a sound behind me, and Ellen stepped forward, not quite stepping in front of me, but fully visible. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her hands moving, a palms-up gesture that would have looked like a peace offering if you didn’t know she was Talent. If you did, it looked an awful lot like she was gathering current. Perkin‘s gaze went to her hands, then to her face, and he let out a curse in a language I didn’t know. Then, without warning, he broke.
“Bad crowd. Damned bad crowd. But the locals, they like their cut, and they’re going to get it somehow, and a man’s got to make ends meet, so I lease them space, every year.” He scowled at me like it was all my fault, and a few things suddenly made sense.
“Cost of doing business,” was all I said, though. Whatever deals he’d made with the locals, cops or criminals, human or otherwise, wasn’t my business except if and as it led me to my targets.
“Yeah.” His expression was sour, but his voice was as matter-of-fact as mine. Cost of doing business. When both cops and criminals require payoffs, what’s a businessman to do?
“I threw them out, mid-season. Got to be too much, no matter how much money it brought in.” He was sulky, not apologetic. I suspected they’d tried to undercut him, or something had gotten too expensive to pay off to cover up.
“So, my kids were with these people you didn’t want hanging around your show. What were they doing?” The list of things a legit carny owner would spit at was pretty short, and matched with my expectation of where this case was going, but I wanted to put him on the burn, just a little
“I don’t know. I didn’t go into their tent. I didn’t want to know.” His body language flashed from annoyed to distinctly uncomfortable, and back to annoyed again.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell?” Ellen said, not really a question. “You knew something bad was happening, and you looked away.”
There was something dark in her voice that hadn’t been there before, not even when the current was flooding her system, speaking through her. My skin prickled, and I felt the urge to step away.
“El…” I said. Not a warning, not a question, just a reminder. We were in an enclosed space, a metal enclosed space, and she’d admitted that she didn’t have all that much control yet.
“I saw them. I Saw them. And he looked away.” She took a step forward, now ahead of me, standing between me and Perkins, and things had suddenly gone from in control to not in control.
“Where did they go?” I willed the idiot to answer me, and in detail. As much as I didn’t want to cause a fuss here, I wasn’t sure I’d be willing to get between a pissed-off Talent and her target, either, especially since she had a damned good point. If I thought it would do any good at all, I’d take him outside for a little come-to-Jesus myself.
“I don’t know.” His eyes shifted to the left, and I coughed. “I swear. But they’ve got winter quarters outside town. An old warehouse. I’ve never been there, ever wanted to go there, but it’s all I got.”
“Thanks ever so much for your help.” The darkness was still in her voice, but it was tinged now with a note of snark that was pure Sergei Didier. Wren might be Ellen’s mentor, but her partner was leaving his mark, too.
That was both reassuring, and unnerving as hell.
9
Whatever I’d been expecting to find at the warehouse, this hadn’t been on the list.
“A sideshow?”
“A freak show.” I considered the neon sign, leaning against the car and crossing my arms against my chest, aware that – in my boots and baseball cap and leather jacket – I probably looked as disreputable as the building I was studying. Ellen was next to me, trying to mimic my pose and failing. It looked easy, but took years of practice.
“You think they have them there….” She looked puzzled. “Maybe… a front for prostitution? Or drug-running?”
“Maybe.” I’d be surprised as hell if there wasn’t some of both of that going on here. “But they’ve got an interesting cover. Freak shows are better suited to carnivals, not somewhere like this, where you don’t get a lot of casual traffic. Even if they wanted to set themselves up for off-season customers, why not somewhere closer to a tourist area, where you get casual traffic? God knows, I doubt zoning laws would get in their way, if they’re able to throw money around.”
Ellen tilted her head, and made a face, understanding that this was a test. “Because there’s something about this location that’s important. Or they want to stay under the radar, here.”
“And how do we find out?”
“We go in.”
She didn’t sound thrilled. I understood: when you’re a freak yourself – and we both were, to the rest of the world – you were cautious about gawking at other freaks. Never mind that this was probably no different than any other Barnum-inspired funhouse with Fiji mermaids and mummified monkeys, and maybe a down on their luck fatae flashing a little wing or tail for the Nullbies.
“Seventeen bucks. There had better at least be an egress,” I muttered. Ellen have me a confused look, but the woman taking our cash almost-smiled. I do appreciate a woman who knows the classics.
The first few rooms were the basics, the expected mummified monkeys, and what I was pretty sure was a piskie skeleton mislabeled as a tooth fairy. The thought of one of those kewpie-troll-doll menaces acting as tooth fairy was almost worth the $17 right there.
“Is that…” Ellen poked one finger at a glass case leaning over it to see better. “Is that a serpent’s skin, like the one we talked to?”
“Yeah. They shed on a regular basis, when they’re young. Might have washed up on the beach, or even been traded for something. Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Prettier than when it’s on it,” Ellen said. She wasn’t wrong: in th
e artificial light, the old skin glinted with a definite iridescent shimmer that the sea water had muted.
There was a scattering of other people walking through the rooms, one group of teenagers gathering around one case, giggling nervously, a father and daughter pair, dad making sure to keep her smaller hand in his, no matter how she tugged to rush ahead, and an older couple, moving slowly, with evident pleasure, through the exhibits. And a woman, leaning against the far wall, near a sign that did, indeed, say “This way to the egress.”
The employee saw me looking, and smiled. It was a carny smile. I sighed, and put on my best dumb mark expression.
“You like our exhibit?” she asked as I wandered over in her direction. Her nametag said she was Kerry, and she was good, mixing her professional shiller mode with an undercurrent of bored-with-this-job and a hint of actual physical interest. Just the thing to hook a male mark who needed his ego stroked by a little casual flirtation.
“It’s okay.” Casual, playing it cool, too cool to give in but definitely interested, even though I was there with someone. She wasn’t human. She thought I was, though. “None of it’s real, though, obviously.”
“Yeah?”
“Please.” I invested the word with male dismissive behavior, guaranteed to irk any female with a brain.
Ellen wandered up slowly, hanging back like she wasn’t sure that she was welcome to join. I had a bad feeling that she wasn’t playing – that she really was that unsure of her place, even now – but it worked too well for me to wave her closer yet. I’d apologize and explain later.
“You want to see something that’ll really blow your world away?” Kerry said, her tone a come-on and a challenge, paired with one raised eyebrow.
I narrowed my eyes at her and cocked my head, playing the overly-confident rube. “And how much is it gonna cost me?”
She laughed, leaning in like she was going to tell me a secret. “High-rollers pay thousands, because they’re suckers. For you?” She gave me another once-over, not even trying to be subtle. “For you, ten bucks more, that’s all. Another ten dollars for the stuff tourists don’t get to see.”
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