by Leanne Leeds
“I told you, Circus School. Well, some of it was from Circus School. All of my kind can sense the abilities of witches. I suspect this was an evolutionary thing that developed during the thousands of years kelpies and witches were enemies. If we could sense you, we could avoid you.”
“Do you guys share that information with anyone? What you sense and certain witches?”
“Ay, no. Why would we? It’s our talent, right? If you weren’t the ringmaster, I wouldn’t be telling you.”
“This whole paranormal species thing is way more complicated than I expected it would be,” I mumbled as I reached for the glass sitting on my uncles writing table and brought it toward my lips.
“No!” Samson and my uncle shouted in my mind as Fiona leaped from the bed and forcefully knocked the glass out of my hand before it reached my lips. The glass flew across the tent and shattered against the wall just above my uncle’s potted herb garden. Drops of liquid sprayed the tiny plants below.
We all watched in horror as each herb withered, blackened, and died.
5
Uncle Phil, Fiona, Samson and I were relieved that the death of the herb plants had taken place instead of the end of me. A quick check with my uncle confirmed that the cup had been sitting on his desk since the night he died. The container contained his daily magical sleeping-draught, an elixir Uncle Phil downed nightly after his evening constitutional. As far as he could remember, the cup was waiting on his writing desk as it always was.
“Who normally prepares the cup, Uncle Phil?”
“Jeannie from Jeannie’s Snack Shop. She’s been preparing it for me for over two years now. Every night.”
“Would she have any reason to hurt you or want you dead?”
“I should think not!” Uncle Phil boomed as little red fireworks sparked around the image of the body he used to have. “Jeannie positively adores me!”
“Who got him the drink?” Fiona asked as she tried to keep up with the conversation by following my side.
“Jeannie from the snack shop?”
“She’s an awfully lovely genie. I just can’t see her poisoning anyone, though she would have the ability. I wonder if your uncle did something manlike to hurt her feelings. While she’s a nice lady, dating a djinn can be a dangerous thing when you tick them off.”
“Wait, she is a genie or her name is Jeannie?”
“Both. She was also your uncle’s girlfriend.”
Uncle Phil squinted up at the ceiling and began silently whistling. With no air, he just appeared kind of silly.
“Okay, wait, let’s back up a second. Fiona, you said that you and the other kelpies could sense additional witches when they come onto the Magical Midway. On the night Uncle Phil was killed, did you sense anyone at the Midway? Before we start looking at other people, I’d like to figure out if there’s any possibility the WCW killed my uncle.”
“I did not, and none of the other kelpies mention sensing anything other than Phil’s death. We felt the distinct sudden absence of any witch on the grounds.”
“So the WCW couldn’t have sent someone here to kill Uncle Phil.”
“That’s not necessarily the case,” Uncle Phil said, and I held up a hand to silence Fiona so I could hear him. “We are dealing with powerful witches. Just because the kelpies can sense a witch under normal circumstances does not mean that the Witches’ Council didn’t have a magical means to block the kelpies. The Council is aware of what magical creatures live and travel with the Magical Midway through the Paranormal Census. If they had tried to off me, they could have utilized magical means to hide from discovery. They have much knowledge we do not. They could know about the kelpies’ ability.”
I repeated Uncle Phil’s observation to Fiona, and she reluctantly agreed that while it was likely the kelpies would’ve sensed a witch, it was not impossible that their senses could have been blocked.
“So, it could have been the WCW, but the kelpies would’ve sensed them, but the kelpies may not have sensed them if they were using magic. The drink was prepared by Jeannie, so Jeannie had the opportunity to put poison in the cup for Uncle Phil to drink,” I told them both. “We have two suspects at this point.”
Three, Samson interjected. I turned to the the cat. That quiet mentalist man from the Langdon Circus. I saw him near this tent on that night.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
My job is to prevent catastrophes. Once the calamity has taken place, I don’t need to worry about it anymore, do I?
“I swear, this whole place and everyone in it has a bizarre aversion to examining how something happened.”
Samson lifted his head open his eyes and turned his sharp gaze to me. With his eyes narrowing he said, No place is perfect. The small black cat laid his head back down on his paws and sighed.
“Who is the mentalist?” I asked Uncle Phil and Fiona.
“He is actually a telepath, a human one. His name is Mark Botsworth. He came to us looking for a place after the Langdon Circus closed down. He seemed a pleasant enough fellow, and Chloe Langdon spoke highly of him when I called her for a reference,” Uncle Phil said.
“Paranormals get references?”
“Yes, but even with them he gives me the creeps,” Fiona told me. I raised my eyebrow. “He slinks around the Midway. Doesn’t talk to anyone, doesn’t seem to have any friends.”
“Mark cannot read the minds of paranormals,” Uncle Phil told me as I turned toward him and away from Fiona. “I imagine that for a human that can read other human minds, living here and getting to know new people that you can’t read must be challenging for him.”
I sat down on the bed and thought about the various suspects in situations surrounding Uncle Phil in the Magical Midway. Everything seemed like a possibility, and yet nothing jumped out at me as the answer.
The Witches’ Council seemed like the most likely suspect, though admittedly I suspected them because they were jerks. Had they killed Uncle Phil, though, would they have shown up here the next day?
It seemed like quite a risk to step onto the Midway and be so openly hostile to a ringmaster just a day after the murder of one.
On the other hand, if they were the law and they broke the law was there anyone that would hold them to account?
With three suspects already and over a hundred paranormals and humans calling the Magical Midway home, this would not be easy to figure out.
I had to unravel it, though. And fast.
It was lunchtime, and I was getting hungry.
The three of us left Uncle Phil’s yurt and stepped out into the late morning sunlight while Sampson remained behind to snooze. I could not believe that only twelve normal hours had passed since I had been teleported to this clearing.
The private yurts were set up in the southwestern corner of the Magical Midway tucked behind several carnival games. It was called the backyard in carnival lingo, an area of the grounds that patrons could not visit with all the residential areas like yurts and food tents.
The northern entry point was squeezed behind the carousel, and the southern entry point right behind the security station. To the west of the yurts was a football field of space with a shimmering border at the edge that only paranormals could see. This boundary encircled the Midway like a dome and protected all of its inhabitants from both harm and human discovery.
A human standing outside the boundary could look toward the Magical Midway and see nothing that would cause him or her alarm or concern. If a paranormal stood outside the perimeter and checked out the Midway, they would know without a doubt they had found others of their kind.
The magic that protected this place and enabled it to move was complicated, and I didn’t understand it yet. I knew that these things—the shimmering boundary that obfuscated what we were, the yurts that housed the paranormals that were bigger on the inside, the power to lift and instantly relocate the entire Magical Midway—was now anchored somehow within me.
Any of these paranormals could
have left the Magical Midway at any time and taken up residence in one of a couple dozen paranormal towns, but they didn’t. I knew that many people had been here with my family for generations. Fiona’s family had been part of the Magical Midway since the late 1800s performing an enchanting and awe-inspiring horse show.
With only two paranormal traveling fairs left, those that preferred this nomadic lifestyle had few options. They now depended on me to safeguard their home and their way of life. A way of life I barely understood.
No pressure.
Kat Riddle fixed her eyes on us as we passed between her Guess Your Weight game and the Milk Bottle game on our way to Jeannie’s Snack Shop. The golden blonde woman with the striking metallic eyes lifted her hand and waved us over. I waved back and kept walking.
“You have to stop, niece,” Uncle Phil told me as I sighed with impatience. “You are the new ringmaster, and many will want to connect with you. Especially those that do not already know you well. It’s part of the job, dear girl.”
“Hello, Charlotte Astley, the great circus heir,” Kat called almost musically as she grabbed my two hands. “I welcome our new leader to this paranormal fair! I am so sorry about your Uncle Phil’s demise, but I am sure in choosing you he was nothing but wise.”
“I… um… thank you,” I sputtered as the woman’s rhymes confused me. “I don’t think we’ve ever formally met before. If it’s not too rude of me, what type of paranormal creature are you?”
“Why, I am a sphinx (of which there are few). Here at the Midway, I am but one of two. My husband Ari also lives in this place, but he left to get ice cream instead of cleaning our space,” Kat told me with some frustration as she waived her cleaning rag in front of her. “I would love to move our stand away from temptation before my dear husband becomes more aggravation.”
“I thought sphinxes only spoke in riddles?”
“We have evolved over time to speak answers that rhyme.” Kat smiled and squeezed my hands. “I do not wish to take up too much of your time.”
“No, it’s no problem at all. I want to meet and get to know everyone here. It just may take me a while.”
“I just wanted you to know we welcome this new paradigm. Come by for dinner soon! We have wonderful wine,” the golden woman nodded as she gave a little bow and stepped back up to her Midway game.
Once we were far enough away that Kat Riddle couldn’t overhear, I asked Fiona if Kat and her husband always talked like that. Fiona confirmed that every conversation with the sphinxes involved riddles or rhymes, and I was lucky that I got no riddle.
“If they decide to fling a riddle at ya, just run. Trust me. If you get far enough away from them before they get to the end of the riddle, you don’t feel compelled to solve it,” Fiona advised.
Good to know.
As we continued on our way, I hoped that I wouldn’t have any need to interview Kat or her husband about my uncle’s murder. I might need to take a preemptive aspirin just to get through it.
We crossed the main corridor of the Magical Midway, and I spotted Jeannie’s Snack Shop just a few feet away. The windows were shuttered, and the interior of the small yellow building was dark. We walked around toward the back and knocked on the door to see if anyone was inside.
Minutes later, an older woman peeked out between the crack of the slowly opening door. I could hear the sniffling before she spoke, but once her raspy voice answered there could be no doubt she had been crying. “Yes?”
“Hi, Jeannie? You might remember me, I’m Charlotte Astley, Phil Astley’s niece.”
At the mention of Uncle Phil’s name, the brunette with shocks of gray in her messy hair wailed. She flung the door open in a grief-stricken version of a welcome and covered her face with her hands as she turned her back and shuffled back inside.
“Oh, that poor, poor dear,” Uncle Phil said as he watched her disappear into the darkness. “Now, Charlotte, you be kind to that woman. I know that you have some suspicions that she murdered me or some such nonsense, but I cared about her very much. Don’t you go all gangbusters on her, dear girl. I will be quite put out with you.”
Uncle Phil, just because you cared about her doesn’t mean she cared about you. I’m just trying to cover all the bases. You were poisoned by her drink, I thought to my uncle.
“Poppycock,” Uncle Phil grumbled. “That woman wouldn’t hurt a fly. In fact, she traps flies and releases them over by the were-elephant enclosure.”
I’m sure you’re right. Let’s make sure.
Fiona and I stepped up into the snack shop and closed the door gently behind us. The interior of the shop was dark, and though some fans were circulating air, the building felt stifling and stuffy. It was as if Jeannie’s tears had escalated the humidity beyond what the small space could comfortably tolerate.
Jeannie hunched back toward a chair that leaned against what I assumed was her cooking counter. On the stand, a single white candle burned next to one pink, and one purple rose.
“I am sorry,” Jeannie sniffled as she sat down turned in our direction. “I just loved your uncle so very much. He was a very kind man and a lovely boyfriend. On the night that he died, he took me on a boat ride under the full moon. He was so romantic…” Jeannie coughed and sniffled, but her tears grew thicker as they dripped down her sad face.
“Did you leave the Midway that night? Where was this boat ride?”
“No, we stayed at the Midway. We were all alone on the Charybdis Boat Ride, and he made sparkling colors in the water just for me. All pink and purple roses. Such a dear, dear man,” she cried.
“You see? There’s no way she could’ve killed me,” Uncle Phil pronounced with finality.
Why? Because she’s telling me what a remarkable man you are?
“Well, yes. You don’t kill someone that you like. Why would anyone kill someone that made flowers of light in the water on a boat ride? That would be preposterous!” Uncle Phil exclaimed.
I sighed and closed my eyes. All the complaints my father had over the years about paranormals and their disconnect from reality came into perfect clarity. These people didn’t just live in a different world. These people lived in a lollipops and cotton candy world where everyone was honest, and nothing terrible ever happened to anyone. If something bad happened just move on from it and then it was like it never happened.
Granted, the Witches’ Council didn’t have this worldview.
Perhaps it was just circus people that were utterly naive and total idiots about human… er, paranormal nature. Maybe all the death-defying tricks that everyone did created some filter bubble of positivity that permeated these people’s brains.
I stopped myself. I knew it was just frustration, and I wasn't being entirely fair. Jeannie also clearly hadn’t moved on from it. She was visibly grieving over losing Uncle Phil, and while I sensed it was genuine, I didn’t think her grief meant she had no answers. I pushed, but as gently as I could.
“Jeannie, did you prepare Uncle Phil’s sleepy time drink that night?”
“Sleepy time drink? What am I, twelve?” Uncle Phil asked, offended.
Be quiet. I need to listen.
Jeannie rubbed her eyes with a dish towel and nodded as Fiona stood beside the woman and rubbed her back. “I made it for him every night. It was just easier for me to do it than for Hildegaard to do it. The ingredients were so specific, and I didn’t need to use them.”
“What do you mean? How do you make something without ingredients?”
“I am a djinn. Nothing that I make here at the snack shop is actually made. I simply grant wishes. Someone comes to my counter and wishes for a specific food or drink, and I grant their wish. Well, technically, I sell them their wish. For a modest price.”
“Can genies actually sell wishes? I mean, is that legal? Doesn’t it violate some wish granting ethic or something?”
Jeannie’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and I quickly changed the subject.
“Sorry, off-topic. So, you just gra
nted my uncle’s wish each night and manifested his sleepy time drink magically?”
“Stop calling it that! It’s an evening draught. It’s a slumber potion. It’s a restful refreshment. It’s a lullaby libation. It is not a sleepy time drink!” Uncle Phil protested vehemently.
I told you to hush.
“Yes, though I liked to think the drink was my wish. If I could have made a wish to myself, I would have wished to ensure that Phil had a wonderful sleep and would wake cheerful and happy in the morning,” Jeannie said. Suddenly, her head snapped up, and she eyed me suspiciously. “Why are you asking me all these questions about his sleepy time drink?”
“Now you have her doing it!” Uncle Phil bellowed while waving his arms.
“Charlotte is just asking because it seems that her uncle’s sleepy time drink was the thing that poisoned him,” Fiona told her softly as she continued slowly rubbing the genie’s back.
“That’s impossible!” Jeannie shouted as her face fell in horror. “I had the exact ingredients! I wished for those exact ingredients! There was nothing in the sleepy time drink that shouldn’t have been in there!”
“Is there any possibility at all that the wish could’ve gone wrong?” I held my hands up before Jeannie could take offense to my suggestion. “I mean any kind of possibility. You were sick, or you had a headache, or you had drunk a little bit earlier in the evening, and perhaps your mind was slightly clouded. Is there any possibility whatsoever that the drink you manifested could have accidentally had poison in it?”
“None,” she insisted. “Genies cannot cause harm with our powers. It’s a limitation on our wish granting ability. We can only do good and make people happy. Nothing in our magic is capable of being destructive. If I even tried to harm another, I would wish myself out of existence.”