by Rachel Caine
“Ms. Sarkis.” The voice came from beside her, precise and loud enough that her name sounded like an announcement rather than a greeting. It was a voice cultivated to make itself heard. And the person speaking—a slim man with rich brown eyes and black hair styled to wave just so over his forehead—was meant to be seen.
In the old days, he would have been the face of the carnival. The barker, walking the streets of a town, his melodious voice sliding under doorways and through cracked windows, beckoning all to come, come see the wonderment.
Aside from the phone clipped to his waist, he seemed to belong to a bygone era as well. Black tuxedo trousers draped his long legs, and dove-gray suspenders intersected a band-collared white shirt. His hands were long fingered, his lips so red they appeared stained.
“Olivia.” She offered her hand, smiling when he took it. With olive and gold undertones to his skin, and thick, dark lashes, it was like he’d walked out of her earthly homeland.
“I’m Damon. August asked me to take you to the storage trailers.”
“You got here quick.”
“Trying to entice people to spend money on a fortune-teller who’s been on a drinking binge gets old in a hurry.” His gaze locked with hers, and his voice turned slightly suggestive. “I’m happy for the distraction.”
“Lead the way.” She glanced back. The crowd had been so loud, so messy, before they reached the midway. Now the people hovered in still, sinuous queues. Damon touched her elbow, steering her through the throng. She was tall. He was close to a head higher than anyone else.
“Where are you from?” he asked as he led her between a pair of long booths, pointing a warning at a thick swath of cords crossing their path. “I noticed your accent.”
“Greece. The economy has been so bad that I figured I’d have a better chance to put my engineering degree to use here.”
“You must miss it.” He turned back to her. In the small space she could feel the heat of his body. “I’ve never been myself, but my grandparents told me all kinds of stories. About the food. All those terraced hills and stone temples. The smell of the sea.”
Nostalgia tightened her chest and her head went light, filling with that insistent buzz. The shell rattled, pulling against its moorings until a tiny, essential stitch tore. At her back the sensation surrounding the machines revealed itself in a surge, but it didn’t feel hostile.
It felt like sadness.
“You all right, sweetheart?” Damon asked, dropping his chin and peering at her. Above them, a blue electric light clicked and hummed to life.
“Fine. I’ve got bad night vision,” Olivia said, rubbing her eyes while fighting to maintain control. She was here for an inspection, not to be drawn into trouble, not to lose herself in front of so many people. “So the machine’s disassembled. Has anyone been out to look at it?”
Damon ushered her onto another path, this one nearly deserted. Without the screen of a crowd it looked shabby, all peeling paint and bored young vendors bent over their phones.
“It’s twenty years old, so it’s not like there’s a warranty. The mechanics declared it dead, so we packed it up. Figured we’d scavenge parts when we had time.”
“So, were you in Birmingham when it collapsed?” The claim report hadn’t specified where the equipment had broken down, but upon her arrival at the office, August Kimball had proudly recited their progress from Tucson and across Texas and the South before they turned for Louisville.
“Shreveport,” Damon said, stopping before five corrugated metal shipping containers. The boxes looked as if they’d been fighting a battle against battery and graffiti for aeons. They hadn’t been winning.
“Isn’t that where Melanie Kimball passed away?”
“It is.” He pulled a fat ring of keys from his pocket. A couple of coins dropped to the tamped-down grass. “You’re investigating that too? I thought it wasn’t an insurance thing.”
“Oh, no. Car accidents after-hours aren’t my concern,” Olivia said in a rush, intrigued by the naked emotion in his face. He had known the old owner, well and possibly intimately. Olivia leaned back against the box. “I just read about it. In the file.”
“You read about her in a file,” Damon repeated flatly. Grief painted new and terrible faces on men, but he didn’t wear an expression of grief. Or, not of grief alone.
The phone at his waist chirped. He glanced down, then silenced it. When he raised his head, his good humor had returned. He gestured toward the next container in the line. “That’s the one. It might take a moment to find the right key.”
It’s the tarnished silver one, Melanie thinks with a smile. Remnants of green paint cling to the raised lettering from a temporary office girl’s attempt to organize. She frowns, lifts the lock from where it hangs loose. The door screeches when she pulls it open. Her eyes begin to water as smoke billows out. Her stomach falls. What are you doing in there?
Olivia backed away, resisting the urge to brush her shoulder as if that would remove the stark, sour tang of the recollection. Memories were normally fragmented, often occluded by other thoughts. This vision was distinct, the voice and imagery clear. Maybe it wasn’t this place that was tripping her power but rather its temporary occupants.
A wink of light in the grass caught her eye. She crouched and plucked up a penny. Her fingers drifted along the back, catching on a small tool mark. It had been rubbed smooth, and the letters E–M were scored in the back. A love token. How quaint.
She jerked to her feet when the door creaked open. Damon gestured toward the dark interior. “Here we are.”
Olivia pulled a flashlight from her jacket pocket and switched it on, glad for the mundane task. Red-painted aluminum beams were stacked in the front, and green double-occupancy cars blocked the back half of the box. It looked like Christmas in a land of metal giants.
“I think you dropped this,” she said, handing Damon the penny.
His fingers dragged across her palm. “Ah. Wouldn’t want to lose that.”
The flashlight beam wobbled when Olivia stepped into the container. Shadows flitted across the ceiling and walls, rearranging themselves behind the fallen machine.
“It’s a Jump-Start,” she said, sliding past a large joint oozing brown grease. The air in the trailer was stale and coppery, and her voice echoed slightly, her accent stronger in the reflection. “Any idea what happened?”
“Old Man Kimball got it used off a seaside fair in Southern California. The salt in the air corroded it worse than he thought. A bunch of bolts went, and the holes were being eaten away. We fixed what we could, but when the cables snapped . . .” He raised his hands, then let them fall limp against his legs. “Time to cut our losses.”
She sucked in her stomach as she rounded a bar, pressing her hand to the hinge to keep it from touching her shirt. The grease clung to her palm. She stopped. It was warm, and infused with the same sadness she had sensed earlier. Whispers filled her head.
“You okay there, sweetheart?” Damon moved toward her, blocking the light. “Get stuck on something?”
“No,” she said quickly. Her hand slipped, and grease slid up to her wrist in a hot lick. Focus. “Was there any incident where it was damaged suddenly? That might be covered.”
“Not that I remember.” Damon steadied her when she rolled her foot over some debris on the floor.
“Not that you remember?” Olivia asked, her voice airy as her mind shuddered.
She still doesn’t understand. Damon can see it in her eyes. The stupid woman, believing that everything will work itself out. She’s missed payroll repeatedly and left a swath of bounced checks across the Southwest. And now, after he’s gone to so much trouble for her and this business that bears her name, she dares to tell him to stop. Nobody will miss the girls. Phoenix. Las Cruces. Lubbock. And . . . where was Melanie from? “Em,” he asks, “where were you born?” She thrashes, a gurgle dying in her crushed throat. He pets her hair, and his hand comes away warm with blood. “That won�
�t do, Em. The carnival needs this to stay alive. Isn’t that what we always talked about, what it would take to make this place thrive?”
“Miss Sarkis?” he said, in the same voice as the memory. The human part of her recoiled, out of shock and fear. The shell of her binding teetered, fell, and . . . cracked. She gasped.
“Damon.”
“Olivia?” Satisfaction in his tone, thinking she was breathless for a very different reason.
“She loved you,” Olivia whispered. “How could you do this to her?”
“What . . . what did you say?”
Melanie Kimball. Em. He’d killed her, and others. His hand tightened, fingers biting flesh. He still held the penny, and the ridged edge burned against her arm.
Olivia snapped up the fist holding the flashlight, catching him under his jaw. He reeled back, crashing against a beam, and she ran from the trailer.
She fled the desolate back side of the grounds, seeking safety in the crowd. And now she saw, truly saw, what had looked so odd before. The humans, yammering and excited, eagerly shoved their money into the ticket sellers’ hands, then lined up beneath the machines. As they did so, they ceased talking, dropped what they were eating, and stared straight ahead, docile as livestock.
She trawled them, wisps of newly released power moving like a net through rich waters. They would spend and ride until they ran out of money or the carnival moved on, fat with profit. There was no need for new attractions or better help. Damon had created something, a compulsion built from human greed and Olympian power. It was unnatural, familiar, and chaotic, and it was what had climbed into her head and torn her binding apart.
Screams fell from the sky as a spinning metal cage plummeted down. It caught and swooped away at the last moment. The machine moaned, and two men stepped around the fence beneath it, dark eyes narrowing on her. Damon was the barker, charming and commanding. He didn’t always need divine intervention to get others to do his bidding.
She bolted into the center of the path. The throng folded around her, tugging at her clothes, snagging the ends of her long hair. The men split up, having lost sight of her. She didn’t see Damon, who would be taller than the crowd. He might not be steady enough to pursue her, but he’d been able to call for help. Her head pounded as her essence slithered out, overloading her human mind.
She needed to withdraw to a quiet place where she could unfold the shell, gently dismantle it so that it didn’t wash away her own tender memories. She tripped. Her hands scraped the pavement before she regained her feet, and urgency filled her with new strength. Damon had killed Melanie Kimball and was engaged in something far more sinister. He would not allow Olivia to walk away with that knowledge. August would be able to do something. He stood on the periphery of the carnival, over Damon, and no sane man would let his mother’s murderer go free. She just had to hold herself together a little longer.
A man lurched out in front of Olivia, the whites showing all around his kohl-lined eyes, his wide mouth stretched into a macabre grin. The momentum of the crowd propelled her into his arms, and his bony hands closed around hers.
“Darling, we can dance if you want to.” His breath stank of hard liquor and tooth rot, and he emitted the sound of jangling metal as he moved.
“Release,” she hissed, pushing him away. His hands flopped at his sides.
“I know what you are,” he called after her, his voice full of wounded pride. “I’m Edwin the All-Seeing! I know.”
She reached the office trailer. Shaking, she dragged herself up the grated metal steps and shouldered through the door. It was dark except for a reading light on August Kimball’s desk. He dropped a clutch of papers.
“Miss Sarkis! Are you all right?”
She opened her mouth, then hesitated. Telling him one of his people had killed his mother would result in paralysis. She required action. “It’s come to my attention that Damon has hurt some of your customers. Do you have security people?”
He closed his eyes but, to his credit, he responded immediately. “Of course. At the gates.” He picked up his phone, weighing it in his right hand. “You’re sure about this?”
“Yes.”
August nodded, eyes unfocused. “I knew this would come back to bite us.”
Olivia stilled. “You knew what would bite you?” She crossed the trailer and leaned on the desk, barely able to stay upright as her natures clashed inside her. “You knew about this and did nothing?”
“We had a few mentions of sexual harassment. Nothing formal . . .”
“I’m not talking about feeling up employees. I’m talking about murder.” And about something far worse.
“Murder?” His thumb hovered over the call button. “Did you . . . did you see a body?”
A body. The carnival moved every other week. There wouldn’t be any bodies, which would render human law enforcement impotent.
She could enact justice, or something like it. If Damon fled, she would forget her purpose as she pursued him. For the goddess she’d been, a giver and consumer of memory, the world was a place of swarming distraction. She needed him close when she completed her transformation.
“He’s dangerous, Augie. I have proof.” It wasn’t quite a lie.
He hit the call button and raised the phone to his ear; then a series of lines drove across his forehead. His pale blue eyes rounded. His lips pursed.
“What did you call me?” he asked.
“Augie!” Damon’s voice filled the room. Olivia jumped, the corner of the desk gouging her hip when she spun.
“Your mother’s pet name for you, her autumnal child.” Damon stood in the doorway, his hair wild, hands braced on either side of the doorjamb. “You know, I never would have expected an insurance company to send a mind reader.”
“I’m not a mind reader.” Walls collapsed inside her head.
Damon’s dark eyes glittered. He walked slowly forward, grinning without humor. “Look, Augie, we’ve won ourselves a prize.”
“You said you’d take care of her,” Kimball huffed, his earlier hesitation gone. Stalling. He’d been stalling, keeping her there. “What are we supposed to do with her?”
“You can’t do anything to me,” she said. “My employer knows I’m here.”
“Jesus!” Kimball clasped his hands to either side of his head. “I’m not hearing this! Get her out of here, Damon. Just . . . take care of things.”
“I’ve been taking care of things for your family for years, August. When’s the last time you contributed to this enterprise?” Damon clasped his hands before him and manufactured a mask of regret. “You’re a contractor, Olivia, and freelancers are notoriously unreliable. It’s such a shame you never showed.”
The light leapt and spun just before the lamp slammed against the back of her head. Olivia collapsed.
—
HER SHIRT SMELLED of honeysuckle and wax, and the poorly sewn seams chafed her sides. It did not belong to her. She sat cross-legged on a low bench in a small room. The walls and ceiling were draped in dusty black velvet. The cuff encircling her left ankle was attached by a locked chain to a hook behind the curtain. It wasn’t the lock that bothered her; it was the cuff. She toyed with it, fingertips tracing the hinge as she wondered at the energy that sprang off of it, stinging nips that warned of large teeth. She had large teeth, too, but she hadn’t used them in a long time and they were forbidden in this place.
A couple pushed through the curtain and blinked in the dim light. Sweat marks rusted the man’s white shirt beneath his arms, and his dark hair plugs hadn’t yet settled the way the clinic had promised. The woman had a heart-shaped face and soft, ash-blond hair. She crept forward in ballet flats and perched on the edge of the tall baroque chair.
“So you’re the fortune-teller.” The man sneered. “Olivia the All-Seeing?”
Olivia. The name wasn’t quite right, but it didn’t matter. She had a job to do and this was part of it. “Yes,” she said. “Please, sit.” She gestured, the bangles
on her wrist chiming, disguising the sound of the chain as she slipped her legs beneath the table. The man flopped back in the other throne and tapped his foot.
“How does this work?” the woman asked.
“Ask your questions.” Olivia smiled. The man’s leg stopped moving and his gaze roved her upper body.
The woman cleared her throat. “Well, our son James—”
“No need to tell her his name.” The man forced a chuckle. “She knows it already.”
“Oh, don’t mind him.” The woman’s smile was acidic. Olivia tilted her head and sifted through memories: action in the periphery, overheard telephone conversations, the things the couple saw clearly but chose to decipher in a way that did not threaten the lives they’d built.
“You wonder if he’s using drugs.” The couple shared an uneasy look. Olivia delved further, sampling other memories. “James occasionally smokes marijuana with his friends. It’s a matter of fitting in, not of addiction. You should be more concerned with his treatment of the two boys who live at the end of the block.” The scenes took shape, and a name crystallized on her tongue. “The McGilroys.”
The man lurched upright. “This is bullshit.” His teeth ground together. “You’ve phished us or something.”
His face grew redder as his voice rose. A vein protruded on the side of his forehead. Spittle flew from his mouth. The woman bowed her head and systematically assembled a mental shopping list for Tuesday’s luncheon. Olivia wondered what day it was, if it was not Tuesday. She was supposed to be somewhere. Nashville on Wednesday, Louisville on Thursday. Back to Phoenix in the morning. Phoenix, such a name for a town.
Damon slipped through the curtains, sleek as a dagger. He had a warm smile for the woman, a concerned furrowing of the brow for the man. He captured their attention, commiserated, then pacified them. They went away after a while.
Olivia’s eyelids grew heavy and she lay back on the soft pillows. Her mind bobbed idly, a drifting vessel. Damon returned and stood over her, silent for several minutes.