You can tell a lot about a carnival by seeing it in daylight, without the motion of crowds and the sound of calliope music to serve as a beautiful distraction. Twilight makes even the shabbiest of shows seem magical and elegant, worthy of your trust and your time. Daylight strips that away, leaving reality behind. The reality of the Spenser and Smith Family Carnival was this: if they weren’t running the red line of bankruptcy, they were close enough to see it on a cloudy day, and they didn’t care, because every penny they got was going right back into the show, tucked into the mended skirting of the dark rides and welded into the shining struts of their kiddie-coaster. The midway games were rigged and the scares were artificial, but they were bought and paid for with good, honest toil, and nothing I saw set off any red flags worth mentioning.
The stranger reached a solid wall of canvas, painted in the red-and-white stripes that have been customary for such things since the 1800s. He gave me a dour look before pulling aside a flap that had been nicely camouflaged by the repeating pattern and slipping inside. I followed him, not willing to let him out of my sight for any longer than necessary.
The air inside smelled like sweat, popcorn, and horses; they had at least one animal act. I inhaled appreciatively before looking around at the collapsible bleachers and the two tall poles holding the artificial sky in place. As expected, they were kitted out for the flying trapeze, with a net stretched out beneath them to catch anyone who misjudged the distances and fell. Any carnival that cared this much about the condition of its equipment would also care about the condition of its people. Not too much, though. The sort of townie who pays to see a carnival trapeze act wants to think there’s the potential for a fall, for blood on the sawdust and screams ringing through the air: that’s why there was only one net, and no trampoline.
No trampoline . . . “Hey,” I said, looking around for the stranger. “When’s the last time you had a trampoline act?”
“No one pays to see somebody bounce up and down like a kid,” he said. I followed his voice to the edge of the bleachers. He’d stripped off his sweater, revealing the top half of what could have been a wrestler’s uniform. It also revealed his back and shoulders, which were muscled in that unique, incredibly appealing carnival-boy way.
“Um,” I said intelligently, before swallowing the surge of hormones (and shaking away the sparks in my fingers) and saying, “A good trampoline act does a lot more than that. But whatever, it’s your show. Where do you want me?”
“How about Minnesota? That would make a good start.” He started wrapping his hands. “I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish. I don’t do the hiring, and if I did, I wouldn’t recommend some weird chick who wandered out of the fields and started harassing me.”
“Maybe you would and maybe you wouldn’t. Either way, I’m here now.” I propped my suitcase against the nearest bit of bleacher and shrugged out of my backpack, looking thoughtfully at the trapeze rig. “You might as well get some use out of me.”
“You can break my fall if I land on you.” He untied his pants.
Under normal circumstances, a man I’d just met getting ready to remove his pants would be greeted with averted eyes, or possibly a kick to the junk. In this case, given what I’d already seen of his uniform, it wasn’t a surprise. He saw me looking and froze. I raised an eyebrow.
“Problem?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, retying the drawstring. “I don’t know you well enough for you to see that much of my ass.”
“Suit yourself,” I said. My own clothes weren’t the best for this sort of thing, but I had leggings under my jeans, and my bra was all-purpose enough that as long as I didn’t do anything overly fancy, I’d be fine. I pulled my sweatshirt off, revealing the tank top beneath, and bent to untie my shoes.
When I looked up, the stranger was watching me again, frowning slightly. He looked confused, like he couldn’t figure out why I was putting up with his crap. Honestly, if I hadn’t known about the Covenant team waiting for me to report back, it wouldn’t have made sense to me either.
“Can I help you?” I asked. I stepped out of my shoes before unbuttoning my jeans.
His eyes widened. “You don’t think we’re going to—I mean, I didn’t bring you here so I could—”
“As good as it is for my self-esteem to have strangers freaking out at the idea that I might be about to attempt having sex with them, no, I don’t think that,” I said, and peeled off my jeans. The dinosaur bones printed on my leggings were startlingly white in the gloomy tent. “I just don’t think denim is the best thing for workouts. How come you get to strip and I don’t?”
“Because I live here,” he said sourly. He turned and stalked toward the net. Lacking anything better to do, I followed him.
He went up the short rope ladder to the net proper. I followed him there, too. He stood, gripping the individual strands of the net with his toes, and glared at me.
“Seriously?”
“I’m your spotter,” I said, spreading my arms for emphasis. I wasn’t sure how he was staying upright; I needed the flats of my feet against the grain, or I would have fallen straight through. “Do something for me to spot.”
He muttered something unintelligible and made for the post that would take him to the trapeze. I followed as far as the net, climbing up and positioning myself on the rope lattice, feet spread, toes gripping hard to give me extra purchase. That was as high as I was planning to go. This carnival didn’t know me. Maybe more importantly, I didn’t know this carnival. Every swing and piece of rope has its own personality, its own quirks and difficulties. I would no more go onto someone else’s trapeze without a proper introduction than I would put on someone else’s underwear. (Actually, the underwear thing is a lot more likely. Bleach can forgive many sins. Gravity forgives nothing.)
The man climbed to the midpoint of the post before unhooking a swing. Not one of the really high, really dangerous ones: the most he could fall would be fifteen feet. Still high enough to snap a neck like a piece of kindling, but a decent height for the first time working with a new spotter. I moved to the side of the net, bracing myself, and prepared for what came next.
What came next was flight. He launched himself into the air, arms ramrod straight, body pointed like an arrow. I’ve seen a lot of flying trapeze in my time, from all sides of the rope, and it was still enough to bring my heart into my throat with delight and wanting. There are so many tricks that can’t be performed with only one person. I wanted to be up there so badly that it hurt.
I’m not Verity, with her singular passion for dance, putting it even above her duty to the family, and I’m not Alex, for whom physical exercise has always been something to support his research. I think she’d be happy if she never had to think about anything ever again, and I think he’d be perfectly content as a brain in a jar. I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m the greedy one. I want it all, right now, and all for me. I wanted to find a way to save my family. I wanted to know that I was doing the right thing by being here. And I wanted to be on that trapeze.
The stranger swung back and forth, flipping and twisting on the swing. His form was perfect, but there was something too tight about his shoulders, like he was holding back.
“Look alive!” I shouted.
He shot me a startled look and let go of the swing, twisting in the air before he grabbed it again and let it carry him back to the pole. He hooked the swing back into place, leaned forward, and shouted, “I’d look a lot more alive if you’d get out of here!”
“Not happening.” I crossed my arms. “Impress me. Or at least show me why you’re up there and I’m down here.”
“I’ll have you know, I—”
“Samuel Coleridge Taylor, what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The stranger—Sam, apparently—blanched. I turned toward the source of the new voice. It belonged to a short, plump woman with p
ale brown hair, wearing a patchwork robe over blue jeans and an old yellow sweater. She wouldn’t have looked out of place in the stands of a derby match, shouting for her granddaughter to throw a couple of elbows already, did she think this was a game. She was striding toward us with remarkable speed, given the length of her legs.
Someone landed beside me in the net. I glanced to the side, confirming that it was Sam, completing an unsafely swift dismount. I couldn’t blame him. I would have dismounted in a hurry if this woman had been yelling at me. Speaking of which . . .
“Young lady, you’d best get down from there this instant. Our insurance doesn’t have a line for stupid townies breaking legs on our equipment.” She came to a halt next to the net, folding her arms and glowering at the two of us.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Sorry, ma’am.” I’ve done my share of graceless dismounts, from my share of equipment. No dismount will ever be as graceless, or as swift, as my dismount from that net. I landed on my feet. That was about all that anyone had any right to ask of me, given the circumstances.
“And you!” Her wrath switched to Sam, who dropped down to stand next to me. “What were you thinking? Oh, no, wait, never mind, you weren’t thinking. Really, Samuel, I expected better from you. This is . . . this is . . . I don’t even have words for what this is!”
“Sorry, Grandma,” said Sam.
Since her attention was on him, I took the opportunity to mouth “Coleridge?” at him, raising my eyebrows.
He glowered at me. ‘Shut up,’ he mouthed.
I grinned.
“As for you,” she said, turning back to me in a motion swift enough to effectively smack the smile off my face, “I don’t know where you’re from, but you can go right back there, and tell your little friends that we don’t need your kind here.”
Wait. Crap. This wasn’t what I’d been trying to accomplish. “No, ma’am, I think I’ve managed to give the wrong impression—”
“I don’t,” said Sam.
“—I’m not a townie. I mean, I’m not from this town. My name’s Timpani. I used to be with the Black Family Carnival. I came here looking for a job.”
The woman stopped for a moment, frowning as she looked at me. Finally, she said, “The Blacks, eh? You don’t have that look to you.”
“I’m a Brown, ma’am. I was a knife-thrower and trampoline artist with the show. I wasn’t there when the accident happened, and it took a while for me to, well . . . there was a little money, and I didn’t feel up to dealing with the road, so I didn’t hurry.”
“But now the money’s running out, and you’re getting tired of having the same roof overhead every night, is that it?” she asked. I nodded. She shook her head. “We can’t help you. We’re a full house, and we don’t have room for wild cards.”
“Please, I’m begging,” I said. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“And I’m telling you I’m sorry, but we can’t help you,” she said. “This isn’t a show for dilettantes. I don’t know what you’ve been doing since your show closed, but whatever it was, you can go back to it. Get out of the business, or wait until someone’s hiring.”
“But—”
“Go.” She pointed an unshaking finger toward my things, waiting abandoned next to the bleachers.
I looked at her bleakly, then turned and started back toward where I’d left my shoes. This was dandy. I didn’t know how the Covenant would react when I told them the carnival wouldn’t have me; I couldn’t imagine it was going to be good, for me or for the show. I could tell them why I was really here, blow my cover and explain the situation, but what if the Covenant was watching? More, what if these people were the reason those kids had disappeared? I could tip them off when they really deserved what was coming to them. Or I could refuse to tell them when they were innocent.
Fieldwork was too damn hard for me. I wanted to go home, put my skates back on, and put all this behind me.
My backpack was lying on its side. The top zipper was open. Not a lot; just a few inches. More than wide enough for an adventurous mouse to have squeezed through. “Shit,” I whispered, opening the zipper wider and sticking my head into the bag. I didn’t see any mice. That didn’t mean much. It was a pretty full backpack. Trying not to look like a crazy townie girl who was talking to her dirty underwear, I whispered, “Hey, are you still in the bag? I need you to show yourselves, because I’m getting kicked out.”
No mice answered the call. There was a distinct lack of mouse-ness from the backpack.
“Excuse me, young lady? I need you to put your clothing on and get out of my carnival.”
I pulled my head out of the backpack, shooting a panicked look at the woman, who was closer now than she’d been a few seconds before. “Er,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow.
I could probably leave and trust the mice to find me: Aeslin mice are remarkably good at tracking down the things that matter to them, like cheese, cake, and members of the family. Or I could gamble on the fact that carnies are carnies the world over, and carnies who don’t know about the cryptids they share the road with are rarer than hen’s teeth. (Since female basilisks are also called “hens,” and most definitely have teeth, that’s pretty damn rare.) There was no way the Covenant had eyes in this tent. They wouldn’t need me if they did. Hell, if I played my cards right, this might save me. I took a breath.
“Just one thing,” I said. “Professor Xavier is a jerk.”
“HAIL!” squeaked two tiny voices, running out of the dark beneath the bleachers. One of them—Mindy—clutched a piece of pink circus popcorn in her front paws. Mork was empty-handed, but had added a piece of bright green ribbon to his evolving ensemble, knotting it twice around his tail before tying it off in a festive bow. They ran straight to me, and then up me, scaling my body as easily as if I were a flat surface.
When they reached my shoulder I straightened. Sam was staring at me. So was the woman.
“You’re a mouse-trainer?” asked Sam, after a momentary silence. “I didn’t know mice could be trained.”
“Hush, Sam,” said the woman. She looked at me, taking a step closer. “Do you know what you have there, girl?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m sorry they left the backpack. They must have felt safe here. They’re used to carnival folk.”
“Oh,” said the woman, in a small voice.
The mice said nothing. Technically, Aeslin mice can’t lie: that’s part of what makes them valuable as a living record. Anything they see or hear, they repeat without modification. Mindy, however, had been training for years to be part of my priesthood, which involved a lot of sharing hotel rooms with the rest of my roller derby team, and thus a lot of keeping her little rodent mouth shut. Mork didn’t share her training, but he’d been surviving in the walls of a Covenant residence without anyone knowing he or his family were there. Both of them knew when to stay quiet. If I was lucky, this woman would take their silence for shyness.
“What are they?” asked Sam.
“Aeslin mice,” I said, meeting his eyes with what I hoped look like a cool lack of concern. “They’re as smart as you or me. Well, as smart as me, anyway. The jury’s out on you.”
His cheeks reddened.
“Please don’t bait my grandson,” said the woman, eyes still on the mice. “He doesn’t do well with being teased.”
“Can we start over, ma’am?” I switched my attention to her. “I really didn’t mean to make any trouble. I just need a place to be, one that’s not out there. I need a carnival.”
“So you do,” she said, and smiled hesitantly. “My name is Emery Spenser. This is my show, as much as it’s anyone’s. You’ve met my grandson, Sam. I can’t offer a place under the big tent without seeing what you can do, but anyone the mice trust is someone we can trust, at least on a trial basis. I . . . I never thought to see their like again. We
lcome to the carnival, Miss Brown.”
I smiled as bright as I could. “Thank you for having me,” I said, and the mice cheered while Sam scowled, and everything seemed right in the world.
Twelve
“A full stomach heals most ills. Except for the ills that leave you without internal organs. Those are harder to heal.”
—Evelyn Baker
The Spenser and Smith Family Carnival mess tent, a little after ten
AS WITH MOST SHOWS, the mess tent was both part of the bone yard and apart from it, tucked to one side where the messy business of living wouldn’t interfere with the equally messy business of feeding the whole shebang. Emery led the way across the deserted midway to the mess, chattering the whole time about where they’d acquired this game or when they’d last repaired that ride. She talked like a dotty aunt trying to introduce her entire swarm of semiferal cats, and I adored her for it. Sam trailed behind us, back in his sweatshirt but still barefoot, with a seemingly permanent scowl on his face. It appeared he didn’t trust me.
It was almost a pity I couldn’t tell him how good his instincts were. They’d serve him well, assuming the show survived my time with it—and its potential future encounter with the Covenant of St. George.
There were people up and moving around when we reached the mess. Two were peeling potatoes; a third was setting up a row of coffee urns that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a Starbucks. From the smell of it, they were all dispensing the same brew: black, hot, and strong enough to strip paint. The urge to get a cup was strong. Jet lag might have gotten me out of bed, but it couldn’t keep me there, and a wave of exhaustion was teetering over me, threatening to bring me crashing to the ground.
“Have you eaten?” asked Emery. She took a seat at one of the long collapsible plastic picnic tables. Sensing that the interview was about to begin, I sat across from her. The mice ran down my arm and sat, primly, in front of me.