by Leanne Leeds
“This is the paranormal community, Charlotte. No one expects privacy here. There’s always a bit of magic or a nearby telepath to expose people’s deepest, darkest secrets.”
“You would think people would stop killing each other considering that little fact. And yet they don’t.”
Fortuna’s eyes widened, and she tilted her head.
“They don’t, do they?” Fortuna agreed. “But why would you do that at a festival where so many people are in such close proximity to each other? There are more telepaths here than just you and I. Doing something like this here? You’re almost guaranteed to be discovered. Someone would hear the crime in your mind.”
“Unless you could block a telepath.”
“Only two types of paranormals can do that, Charlotte. Elves…”
“And witches.”
Great, you figured it out. Could you both stop talking and let me sleep now?
You’re really failing as my familiar, Samson.
Guardian. I’m failing as your guardian. And like I said, you’re still breathing, so shut up and let me get some sleep. If someone tries to kill you, give me a shout. You know where to find me.
5
Gunther and I walked all over the Werebear Jamboree for two hours, but no matter where we looked, Wayland was nowhere to be found. After asking at campsite after campsite and being lucky to get any answer at all from the angry festival goers, I was growing frustrated.
“I’m getting hungry,” I told Gunther. It was almost lunchtime, and despite the shade from the tree canopy, the air felt sticky in the summer heat. I needed my magical air conditioning.
“Let’s head back to your house and grab some food. We can start again after lunch.”
As we walked into the living room of my yurt, I screamed.
Wayland’s face glowed red from the firelight. Fire? This guy I didn’t know came into my yurt and built a fire in the fireplace in the middle of summer?
With security like the Larry brothers, I didn’t actually need conspiracies to put my life in peril.
“Girly, you seem a little jumpy for a ringmaster,” Wayland told me as he sipped a sparkling can of… something alcoholic judging by the smell that hit me from across the room. “I thought ringmasters were supposed to be the steady hand that steered all the rest of us away from the rocks. Or some bull like that.”
“I wasn't expecting anyone to be in here since no one is supposed to be in here without my having invited them,” I told the confident cyclops as I walked in.
“Your magic isn’t worth much, then, is it?” Wayland burped. “Haven’t you heard of wards?”
Glancing to look back at Gunther, I was surprised when he said nothing to Wayland. Considering they knew each other, I would have thought Gunther would at least say hello.
I turned back to the somewhat relaxed Wayland. “We trust each other at the Magical Midway, so we don’t need them.”
We trust each other? Since when?
Right now I don’t even trust you. How come you didn’t tell me he was here?
He’s not mumbling about killing you. Besides, he made it toasty warm in here, and I wanted it to last a little longer.
Stupid cat.
“Anyway, why are you in my house?”
“I heard you were looking for me. I knew that you two would be coming back here, and frankly, I wanted to ask some questions. Privately. As you no doubt want to ask me as well.” The rotund man slammed the can he was drinking on the coffee table with a clunk and leaned forward.
“Okay, shoot.”
“Why are you really here, girly? I mean, really here? And don’t give me the same bull song and dance your bears told Chase,” he snapped.
“Don't talk to Charlotte that way. She came here for no other reason than the reason she said. She just wanted to get to know the community and have the werebear community get to know her. She didn’t do anything to your friend.” Gunther stepped forward.
“Boy, you ain't the ringmaster here. Don't you give me an order as if you are. Daddy ain't here to help you.”
Wayland stood up
If that statement was designed to tick Gunther off, it worked.
The two men stared at one another across the room, muscles flexing and testosterone raging. I cast my eyes between them and worried. Sure, everyone was a little bit testy, but what on earth had been said between them that caused a reaction like this?
Gunther was only about six feet tall while Wayland had at least another foot on him. The cyclops was all hard muscle covered in blubbery fat, making a potential punch from him devastating considering the weight he could put behind it. Gunther was muscular but lithe, so maybe he was fast enough to avoid the big man's strike should it come to that.
With the looks on both of their faces turning to fury so quickly, I was not entirely sure at this point it wouldn't come to that. I interjected myself back into their silent confrontation.
“Guys, I realize this is a highly emotional time, and everyone is really on edge, but the two of you fighting isn’t going to help anyone.”
Wayland turned his single eye toward me, and I smiled.
“Just an observation.”
“Girly, right now I only know two things. One is that my friend Chase is dead. Two is that everybody walkin’ this festival seems to think that you did it. I don’t know the truth of nothin’, but what I do know is the son of my ringmaster is standing next to the person accused of murdering my best friend.”
“You and I have had our issues, Wayland, but I’m telling you Charlotte didn’t kill Chase.” Gunther's fists balled against his hips and his face grew red and splotchy as he struggled to contain his anger. “She doesn’t have a cruel bone in her body. Unlike you.”
I stepped back.
“Yeah, whatever, boy. You believe whatever you want to believe about your little girlfriend and me over there. I don’t know her from a hole in the ground. I do know that since she showed up, we’ve had nothing but problems and nothing but trouble.”
The cyclops sneered at me as he gulped his drink again. The words and accusations coming out of his mouth would indicate that he could be a suspect in his friend's murder, and was just attacking to throw off suspicion. He was angry, and there was apparently something else going on here.
I stretched my senses out cautiously to get a measure of him with my intuition. His thoughts and emotions, though, confirmed what Fortuna had told me. This man was grieving. It may be tough guy mourning, but it was fueled by deep pain and regret over Chase’s loss all the same.
“You asked me why I was here. My original explanation was absolutely the truth. Now I'm here to make sure that your friend’s murderer is caught. I know it’s not me. Granted, I don’t want to go to jail for something that I didn’t do, but more than that, I don’t want to see someone get away with murder.”
“Just words, little girl. You seem to forget something. You got no power here,” Wayland said as he pointed his fat finger at me.
“I have more power than you think,” I bragged to the big man with total confidence. Confidence that was a lie.
Wayland was more right than I was. The accusations against me had hamstrung all my lawgiver powers, and my ringmaster powers only functioned fully on the grounds of the Magical Midway. That limitation was no secret, and whoever killed Chase would likely know that.
“To keep yourself from getting stomped like a squeeze doll prize, sure. But not for much else. If you really are here to save us like some great witch savior or something, save your effort. I'll deal with it. I always do. I got a plan.” Wayland's one eye fixed itself on Gunther as the big man's chubby face sneered through his beard. “I don't need you.”
“What kind of plan?” I asked.
Wayland stared at me with his one eye and crossed his arms.
“Wayland, come on,” Gunther said. “We’re trying to help.”
Silence.
“Who are you staying with while you’re here, Wayland?” I asked.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m staying in Chase’s cabin. He invited me to come and bunk with him, and that’s where I’m staying.”
“I bet that’s gone over with Scout really well,” I murmured to Gunther.
“I don’t care what goes over with that kid,” Wayland sneered. “I’m warning you both, though. Stay out of my way. I owe my friend, and I’ll run right over both of you if you interfere.”
“If you tell us what you’re planning, we’d be much less likely to interfere.”
“Ha. Nice try, girly. You’re a slick one.”
Throwing his empty cup on the floor, he stomped out of my yurt.
Once Wayland left, I prepared two sandwiches while Gunther extinguished the fire turning my yurt into a sauna.
“What was the deal with the fire?”
“Cyclops blacksmiths love heat,” he answered as he poked around the remnants of the fire to ensure all the embers were cool. “I think he keeps his cabin at one hundred and twenty degrees year round. It certainly helps to keep any meetings with him short and to the point. I think this is out.”
“He’s not going to be any help at all, is he?” I asked as I grabbed the plates and headed toward the table.
“Wayland sober and calm can be a tough nut to crack,” Gunther replied. “Now? Probably not.”
With a hand wave and a surge of energy, Gunther blew a cool breeze through the tent to clear the remaining oven-like air. The temperature dropped at least twenty degrees by the time Gunther’s hand fell back to his side.
“That would have been really useful to know during Texas summers,” I told him as I handed him a plate.
“You had the ability all along. I’m really surprised your parents didn’t teach you some of the basic survival stuff,” Gunther said as he sat down. “I mean, we have the ability to do all this more or less out of the womb so educating control is important. What if you had gotten really angry at someone and slammed them with a lightning bolt accidentally?”
“That never happened. Maybe my parents did something to me so it wouldn’t,” I shrugged and took a bite. “I don’t know. I never asked.”
“Why not?”
“Before I was a ringmaster, I didn’t really know to ask, I guess. Even visiting the Magical Midway as a kid, there weren’t any other witches around besides my uncle, and I just assumed all of his crazy supernatural powers came from the circus. It just never dawned on me I could do any of it without his powers.”
“Did you have a boyfriend?”
The question was so out of left field that my eyes shot up to stare at my friend in surprise. In the months that Gunther and I had known each other, we rarely talked about my old human life. Certainly not that part of my human life.
Okay, to be fair, that was never a part of my human life, so there wasn’t much to talk about.
“It’s hard to have an intimate relationship with someone when you can read people the way I can read people, and it’s even harder when you can read them and can’t tell them. I did have a fake boyfriend for a while,” I told Gunther, and he choked on his pickle.
“A fake boyfriend? What’s a fake boyfriend?”
“Aidan Parker. My friend, Tabitha, fixed me up with him. The first night we went on a date, I knew he was gay,” I told Gunther, watching him closely. “His best friend Bobby is… was my friend Tabitha’s fiancé. We were both kind of notorious for not dating. Obviously, we each had our reasons.”
“What was his reason?”
“No one knew he was gay. He hadn’t come out yet, and he was concerned that Bobby would reject him because of it. So he pretended to be straight.”
“You two had something in common, then.”
“I’m not gay!” I told him, shocked. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“No, I mean you both had something you were hiding from the world about yourselves.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah, I guess. Only he admitted his secret to me.”
“But you never told him yours.”
I shook my head no. “I may not have known much about being a witch, but I always knew about that rule. In any case, we realized that Tabitha was fixing us up because she wanted us to do the double date thing, and so we would have dates to her wedding. We also realized that by pretending to be involved, we could enjoy a social life with our best friends. And we’d get them off our backs. No more blind dates.”
“How’d that work out?”
“Great, for a while,” I told him, pausing to take a bite out of my sandwich. After I swallowed, I continued. “But then Bobby found out Aiden was gay. He exploded and went ranting and raving to Tabitha. She came over to comfort me because in her mind, my heart was about to be broken and she felt guilty for fixing us up…”
“You told her the truth, didn’t you?”
“I did and admitted I’d known from the first night he and I met. She was furious with me. She felt I violated her trust, like everything in our friendship for six months had been a lie.”
I winced as I remembered Tabitha’s face. The anger and hurt that twisted her features were physically painful to recall. When I came up with the plan with Aiden, I thought it would make her happy, even if it wasn’t precisely accurate. And I told her the truth so she wouldn’t feel guilty.”
“She couldn’t forgive you?”
By the time everything was said and done, our little foursome exploded. Tabitha and Bobby called off their wedding because Tabitha was shocked at how judgmental her intended husband was. Bobby and Aiden stopped being friends because Bobby was the homophobic jerk Aiden had been worried he was. Tabitha and I stopped speaking because Tabitha was furious that I had lied to her for so long. And Aiden, who felt responsible for the pain everyone was going through, withdrew.
“Yep. It happened a little over a month before I became ringmaster. So, maybe she would have forgiven me, eventually,” I told him after taking a big gulp of iced tea. “I wasn’t around anymore, though, to try and patch things up.”
“Didn’t you have any other friends that could have talked to her for you?”
“I didn’t have any other friends at all,” I told him as I got up to clear the plates. “Tabitha was a lucky find in college. People are remarkably honest about who they are in the privacy of their own minds, and they’re almost never exactly who they present themselves to be. She was, though. She was guileless. I guess that’s why she was so angry, though. She just couldn’t understand what I had done because she never would have done it.”
“You cared about her a great deal.”
“I did,” I told him as I washed the dishes. “I do. I don’t know what I was thinking, not telling her. I’ll always regret hurting her. She didn’t deserve it.”
“I’m sorry that you lost your friend, Charlotte.”
“Two friends,” I snapped. “Aiden was a lucky find, too. We may have faked a romantic relationship, but he and I were just as close as Tabitha and I were. And it was me that suggested the plan that blew our lives apart.”
Tears ran down my face as I scrubbed the plates in my sink so hard that I thought the golden engravings would come off. I hadn’t thought about Tabitha and Aiden in months, and the memories of them came rushing back over me in a waterfall of fond memories wrapped in pain. I sniffled.
“Charlotte,” Gunther asked softly. “Are you alright?”
I cleared my throat. “I’m fine. Just give me a minute.”
My head felt suddenly thick, and my eyes grew blurry. I shook my head to clear it, but the sparkling fog remained fixed before my eyes. “I’m not crying,” I mumbled, dropping the plates and wiping my face with the soapy water. Now my eyes stung, and the fog continued to thicken.
“Need… towel… face funny…”
It was at that point everything went black.
6
“Did you want elven tea?” Bolt asked as I blinked up at him. My head felt as though it was wrapped in layers of wet gauze, and my body felt heavy.<
br />
“I… what? Where am I?”
“You’re with me, of course,” Bolt smiled. “Don’t you remember?”
I remembered nothing.
The last thing that was clear in my mind was washing dishes in my yurt after Gunther and I ate lunch. He asked me about my life before the Magical Midway, and I told him about the awful situation with Aiden and Tabitha. Then my head got fuzzy…
“You glamorrred me,” I slurred.
“I did no such thing, Charlotte,” Bolt said as he handed me a china cup of tea. “You simply wanted to speak to me about the investigation that was going on. I think you may have drunk a bit too much of your human wine with that Makepeace at lunch. You must have fallen asleep when we came in here. Falling asleep, of course, is a polite term for passing out.”
What Bolt said was impossible.
One protection the Magical Midway placed upon me was that alcohol of any kind did not affect me. Unfortunately, that same protection did not extend to poison. Wait a minute—how could that work for booze but not be possible for poison?
I should probably worry about that later.
I played along. I knew what Bolt was saying was impossible, but apparently he didn’t know that. I remembered enough from college drinking to fake drunk if my mind cleared.
“Where’s here?”
“We’re in the Sticky Walls ride, of course. It’s in elven mode, so we should be quite safe from the outside world while we talk,” he said cordially as he sat down. “Though you may wish to sober up before we do so. Clearly, you are still inebriated.”
Another wave of dizziness hit me, and I grabbed onto the rail to steady myself. Which was odd since I was sitting down.
Samson? Samson!
My guardian familiar cat didn’t answer.
Uncle Phil?
Silence.
Since I was on the Magical Midway grounds, I knew that my powers were accessible. My defenses, too. The dizziness and vertigo made me loathe to try any magic, though, and I knew I needed help. The fear I had killed Chase with a misplaced tree was too fresh in my mind.