by Rachel Caine
Vince shuffled, obviously uncomfortable. It took me a second to recognize that he was scared, and so not used to being scared he didn’t know how to express it. But whatever he’d heard or seen about this “event” freaked him right out.
“In each location there was at least one person who was physically immobile. One guy was in traction with a broken neck. Another lady was so fat, she’d have to take a wall out of her house to leave. People like that, who could not physically leave their premises, told us what happened. They also told us they tried.”
“Tried to what?” I asked. Vince’s lack of detail was frustrating. I knew he was a badass, used to getting anything he wanted done without question, but we needed something, anything, to investigate this farce.
“They tried to follow this . . . call. They say they suddenly knew they had to be somewhere. And they did try, even though there was no way they could. The guy in traction nearly killed himself, and the fat lady actually clawed at her walls with a hammer.”
“A really strong glamour could call people like that,” I said. I really wanted this to be a normal case.
This wasn’t going to be a normal case.
Vince’s lips stretched around his three rows of teeth in a horrible grimace of pain. He truly grieved for his sister, psychopath or not.
“My sister, even though I love her, she hates me. Or hated me. She hated everything I did, everything I worked for. She wanted nothing to do with me even though I was always generous. Now she doesn’t care. She let me move her into my house. Her and her family. She wouldn’t let me within fifteen feet of her children before. Now they are in my guest bedrooms, watching reality television. All day. Reality television.”
We three marveled at that.
“Okay,” I said, “we’ll look into this. But it’s going to cost you.” Vince may be psycho, but he also knew the value of appearing to be a good businessman.
“I’ll pay,” he said. “Anything. Just find out what happened to my sister.”
I perked up at the “anything.”
“We have a deal,” I said, reaching out for his paw. “We need to know where you went and what you found out in each place, to try to anticipate where this ‘event’ will strike next.”
Vince nodded, waving at one of his goons posted by the door. As we got to work, I hoped this case would be pretty open-and-shut—a siren with delusions of grandeur, or some wayward Alfar with a god complex.
But while “anything” in the way of money goes a long way in my book, it didn’t take much in the way of facts to dent my confidence. Actually, all it took was a highlighted sentence in the notes of a flunky sent to investigate the event.
The line read, “Fat lady heard music, like from a circus.”
A circus?
—
“IS IT REALLY going to be this easy?” Shar asked, a pair of night scope binoculars obscuring her Middle Eastern features. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her peering through the window of our Jeep. She looked like Aladdin’s Jasmine had decided to become either a spy or a supervillain, what with her soft, rounded body encased in the leather catsuit she’d insisted on wearing.
“I doubt it,” I said.
Moo grunted from the backseat, her power stretching out in her own version of radar. If anything used magic near us, she’d know. After all, Moo’s father may have been an asshole, but he did pass on to his daughter a tremendous amount of power.
“It will come to this town,” Moo said, absentmindedly touching the map at her side. “Our event is predictable.”
We had decided to call it “the event.” We weren’t sure if the fat lady was right, after all, in calling the event a circus.
And I, for one, really didn’t want it to be a circus.
“Every thirty-three miles,” Shar said, repeating the pattern we’d discovered when we’d studied Vince the Shark’s notes.
“And Harmony is exactly thirty-three miles from the last site,” Moo said. I reached over for the binoculars, nudging Shar when she didn’t notice. After she’d handed them over, I took a look through them at Harmony. The town wasn’t much: a small main street with a few shops, two half-assed attempts at tiny strip malls, and a clustering of houses that might once have been grand. Well, grand-ish. There were more people than just this in the town, of course—farmers were scattered around in their houses across the countryside. From what we could make out from Vince’s notes, the “call” for the event seemed to affect people in a five-mile radius.
“I’d raise shields,” I said to Moo, eyeing the clock on our dash, which read 11:30 p.m. The Alfar halfling rolled her eyes at me, but her power boomed out in a palpable barrier that brushed over my skin. Her shields were nigh on impenetrable when she put her back into it, so I wasn’t worried. Plus, we hadn’t seen any evidence of supernaturals being affected by the event. Not that the lack of supernatural victims really meant anything. After all, not a lot of supes went in for living in Podunk towns, so there may have been no supernatural creatures to victimize. Except for Vince’s sister, of course, but she was practically human.
“So what are we going to do if it comes?” Shar asked. We’d not had much time to go over a plan. Vince wanted us on the case pronto, so we’d figured out the trajectory of the event as we drove south from Borealis. Then we spent the day driving, keeping our feelers out for anything or anyone with a lot of power and taking every possible route between Harmony and the town it had just attacked. That town was eerily quiet, its inhabitants shuffling around like asylum inmates on too much lithium.
“I still don’t know how we could have missed anything,” I said grumpily. Moo’s sensors could feel if an incubus so much as got an erection within a hundred-mile radius. How could something capable of sucking the personality out of an entire town sneak past her?
“They would have to be strong to hide from me,” Moo said, echoing my concerns.
“You couldn’t have missed it,” Shar said. “So whatever this thing is, either it can fly or it can pop up out of the ground.”
“Or it can apparate,” said Moo, and I shivered.
Apparating, the ability to magically move objects or people, meant old magic, and old magic was the real reason we’d earned our reputation and ended up on Vince’s radar. Basically, the cases we’d solved that had made Triptych infamous had involved old magic. Old magic wasn’t elemental magic, like what my friends and I wielded. It was something older, something darker, and something a hell of a lot more powerful. We publicly attributed our success at dealing with cases that involved old magic to our teamwork and Moo’s Alfar power. But that wasn’t the whole truth.
I looked mixed-race but, like my friends, I was really a half-ling—my mom was a nice Jewish human and my dad a nahual, or shape-shifter, whose human form looked like an African-American male. My genetic cocktail had given me a lovely complexion the color of demerara and fantastically huge hair, but very little elemental magic. Compared to Moo with her nuclear force, I was a Swiss army knife. But—and we kept this on the down low—my genes had given me something in exchange for my dud powers: immunity to old magic.
I could face the biggest, baddest elemental being, one with power that could knock even Moo’s head off. But anything it sent at me would fizzle, like I had some kind of natural dampening field around me.
That said, even though I was immune to old magic didn’t mean I wasn’t scared to death of the ancient creatures that wielded it. Especially because they tended to be huge, Godzilla-esque monsters. Being immune to their magic didn’t mean a hoot when one tore you apart limb from limb.
“If it’s old magic, we’ll deal with it,” I said, sounding braver than I felt. “And our plan for tonight is reconnaissance. We need to find out what we’re dealing with. Don’t engage unless we have to.”
“Have you ever heard of anything like what happened to those people?” Shar asked. The victims we’d run into hadn’t been overtly sick or anything. But they had no affect. Nothing we did raised
anything but a polite, disinterested response—not even Shar flashing her boobs (her favorite trick) or Moo calling fire to dance in the air.
“My people told stories about an ancient race of soul suckers. Creatures that would trap your soul, eating your memories like candy,” Moo said.
I shuddered at that image. “Why memories?”
“We are our memories. So much of who we are and who we think we are is created by how we interpret our lives. I suppose such a creature would eat our memories as a way of consuming our souls, bit by bit.”
Shar whimpered, “Gross, Moo. Do these things really exist?”
I watched Moo shrug in my rearview mirror. “I never encountered such a creature. And the evidence was never firsthand, so I do not know.” Moo fell silent for a bit, and when I looked in the rearview mirror again, she was wearing her thinking face. “All the stories did have one thing in common, though, when I think about it.”
“And that is?”
“Once a person’s soul was trapped, the only way to free them was to free the souls. Killing the one that had trapped it or destroying the vessel holding the soul would only destroy that which it contained.”
“Huh,” I said. “Good to know. But we can’t rely on legends. We have to see what pops up— Holy shit!”
That last part was screamed, as I jumped in the driver’s seat so high, I knocked my knee hard on the steering wheel.
“What the fuck!” I shouted again, my skin crawling like I was covered in maggots. For in front of us stood my worst nightmare:
A clown.
He was right there, right in front of our car, with a white-painted face and red paint smeared around his eyes and mouth. He wore a big red wig and a green, blue, and yellow romper with white pom-poms flopping down the front.
The red paint around his eyes emphasized the fact that they were a solid black that sucked in the light. They had no pupils, no iris, no sclera. Just an empty, eerie black.
I screamed bloody fucking murder.
I’m really only afraid of two things: my hair losing its volume, and clowns. I’ve always hated clowns. But who doesn’t? So I hadn’t made a big deal about the whole circus thing, as who in their right mind actually likes clowns? I assumed Moo and Shar were equally freaked out by all things circus and are equally loath to admit it.
But I was the only one in that car freaking out; at least, I realized that about ten seconds after my last scream died in the air. Shar and Moo sat there watching the clown with impassive expressions as if pop-up clowns were totally normal in parking lots these days.
“Moo, what is it?” I whispered, using my own sad little feelers to try to tell what we were dealing with. My magic came up with nothing, so I physically turned to my friend when she didn’t answer.
“Moo, what is . . . ?” My voice trailed off when I saw Moo’s expression. She was normally calm, but this wasn’t “calm.” This was a total lack of expression, like Moo wasn’t home.
Shar was no better when I turned to her. She, too, was staring at the clown, and she didn’t blink when I waved a hand in front of her face.
“Guys?” I asked, trying to keep one eye on the clown and one on my friends. Meanwhile, I beefed up my skimpy shields and my attempts to read the clown. But I still felt absolutely nothing.
I groaned inwardly, then groaned outwardly as the clown raised a gloved white hand. He beckoned, his thickly painted lips rising in a creepy smile. Shaking my head, I told him “Nuh-uh” even as I locked the doors of the Jeep and started her up. I was just about to drive away when Moo did finally move. I saw her fist coming at the back of my head a split second before it connected. I didn’t even have time to swear before I was out cold.
—
I CAME TO slumped over in the front seat, the car still running. My friends were long gone. The girls had put the Jeep in park before leaving me stranded, but I could tell from the fuel gauge that I’d lost at least an hour.
“Shit,” I said, shutting down the car and getting out. It took a few minutes to regain my sea legs, and I took that time to check out the damage to my head.
I’d live, though I’d have a knot. My hand didn’t come away bloody or anything. I wondered what Moo had hit me with, and then I saw our gun lying where she’d been sitting. You never knew when good old-fashioned brute force would be necessary in a case, so we kept the revolver handy. That said, we rarely used it with Moo’s mojo in our arsenal.
“No chances,” I mumbled, picking up the gun and tucking it in my waistband at the small of my back. It felt cold but comforting.
Since I had no idea where the damned clown had led my friends, the first thing I did was shift into something with a better sense of smell. Had I had my dad’s shape-shifting abilities, I could have changed into a bloodhound. But with my own more modest talents, I had to keep my too-tall human frame, although I did manage a good long snout and some slightly bigger ears to catch any sounds.
I wore my hair natural, and huge, and I know my Afro looked good. But probably not as good when coupled with a hound’s snout and an ass’s ears. All topping a voluptuous woman’s body. I undoubtedly looked heinous to anyone outside of a furry convention, but that didn’t matter. I only cared about getting my friends back.
Testing the wind, I lowered my nose to the ground. I could smell where Moo and Shar had alighted from the car. Then they’d walked east, parallel to the town.
Every once in a while I’d see their sneaker imprints in a patch of soft dirt. Inevitably, they were framing another set of enormous shoe prints.
Clown shoe prints.
Following their scent, I ran as hard as my legs and the trail would allow. The surrounding streets were ominously quiet, with no signs of animal or human life. I passed a few houses, the doors hanging open as if the inhabitants had just walked out. Remembering Moo and Shar’s behavior, I knew they’d done just that, answering the call of that damned clown. I reckoned we’d gotten a personal visit due to Moo’s power. She wasn’t the only thing that could sense the deep mojo, after all.
Why did it have to be a clown?
I whined through my long muzzle, but—clown or no clown—didn’t slacken my pace. It wasn’t till I was approaching what had to be the local high school that I slowed.
My ears picked up the music first. Faint strains that grew into the blaring horns and bashing cymbals of King’s circus anthem “Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite.”
And then I saw it.
Pitched right in the center of the high school’s football field stood a huge Victorian-looking tent, replete with pennants and banners. Except the tent was solid black, as were the pennants and banners, advertising nothing. The music played from old-fashioned loudspeakers set high on black poles.
Crouching low, I scuttled forward. Expecting all sorts of circusy things like animals, performers, and more scary clowns, I was surprised to neither see nor hear any activity. I could smell people—lots of people—but I couldn’t hear anything besides the music playing over the loudspeakers.
Finally I was at the mouth of the tent, where one panel was folded back, another large empty black banner unfurled over it where you’d expect to find the name of the circus. I peered in, squatting low in case there were guards at eye level. But there was no one watching the door, nor could I see or hear any activity from inside the tent. After a few more seconds of nothing, I raised myself into a low crouch, poking my head through the flap.
There was still nothing, although I could see more of the interior of the tent. Risers were set up to the right and the left, but the light was so dim, it took me a second to see the legs. There were at least a hundred people in the room staring silently at something in front of them, only the backs of their legs visible between the riser slats.
I slipped into the tent, tiptoeing forward till I could see around one of the risers. When I did, it took everything in me not to do a heebie-jeebie dance.
The clown was standing just to the left of an enormous slab of mirror that st
ood on two silver legs. I watched as the clown’s upraised arms adjusted the mirror so it was tilted ever so slightly upward. He kept his arms up and his head thrown back as he glared up at the ceiling with those eerie black eyes. But he never moved a muscle, nor did anyone else in the audience. They all sat rigidly in their seats, staring toward the mirror. I couldn’t make out my friends in the gloom, but I knew they were there.
Meanwhile, everyone watched the mirror. But “mirror” wasn’t quite the right word. Gray smoke swirled over its surface, and an occasional flash, like lightning bursting, seemed to illuminate it from the inside out.
My brain scrambled trying to figure out what to do next, when the clown finally moved. He lowered his gloved hands, exhaling hard as he did so. Then, on the inhale, he raised his hands again in a wide movement, as if summoning great power. To my horror, sparkling orbs of light rose out of the foreheads of the entranced audience. The clown swept his hands around again, this time bringing them in close to his chest. He smiled, a grimacing leer that brought cold to my bones as the orbs followed his command, bobbing toward him like obedient little dogs.
The orbs formed a line as they floated forward. I stifled a gasp as the first one hit the mirror, only to be swallowed up by that oily surface. Narrowing my eyes, I focused on the people in the audience. One by one they slumped over like puppets whose strings had been cut. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together.
The clown was collecting their souls or spirits—whatever made them them—in his mirror.
Moo’s words came back to me about how killing the trapper would destroy the souls, as would destroying its trap. I wasn’t sure if we were dealing with the same creature she’d heard about, but its MO seemed to fit.
Which meant I had to get the souls out before I took on the clown.
I focused back on him again. He was still exaggeratedly gesturing, his arm movements expansive. Eventually he flung his arms wide, and as he did so, his whole hand plunged into the surface of the smoky mirror.
Only it didn’t hit anything. Like the orbs, his hand went straight through. That wasn’t a mirror; it was a portal.