Flesh Circus

Chapter Twenty-seven

The sun was still a decent distance above the horizon when I goosed my Pontiac through the rows of parked cars under hoods and blankets of sparkling dust, bumped over a temporary speed bump, and got right up near the front gate. The same female Trader working the admissions booth didn’t even glance up. There wasn’t a single, shuffling soul in sight in the wide dusty strip in front of the booth, and a pall of white biscuit-flour dust hung over everything.

The heat was like oil, and I was glad. I’d washed my face at Galina’s, but I was still grimed with dust as soon as I stepped out into the haze. The Trader in the booth stared as I opened the trunk and shrugged into the first bandolier. On went the belt, heavy with more ammo, and the second bandolier. The weight at shoulders and hips was enough to drive home just how fucking tired I was, and my eyes burned. I blinked away fine grit and picked up the black canvas bag, settled the strap diagonally across my body.

Jesus. I’m loaded up like a burro. I also got the flattish cage out of the backseat, thanking God I’d gotten a sedan and not the two-door coupe. If someone wanted to firebomb this car they had their work cut out for them, GM hadn’t believed in fucking around with fiberglass in the ’60s and this was one of the heaviest, widest mothers they ever built. Plus, the price had been right—it was a heap when I picked it up, but a month or two of heavy work and it was a solid, if not cherry, piece of American metal.

The chickens were okay, three balls of white feathers in a wire cage. Piper hadn’t even asked me why I wanted them. “They’re pecking and clucking, and I can’t get rid of them until Monday,” was what she said out loud. Goddammit, take these fucking things away, was the unspoken message.

And then she’d looked at me when I appeared in the door of her office, and said, “Jesus, Jill. You look awful.”

It’s about to get worse, I thought, and slammed the door. Stuffed my keys in their safe pocket, blew a kiss to my baby, and turned on one slick steelshod heel, stamped for the entrance.

“You can’t leave that there!” the Trader called, her fingernails digging into the pasteboard counter. “Hey!”

My left hand had the cage, and my right actually cramped when I snatched it back from a gun butt. Don’t waste ammo on this bitch, the cold clear voice of rationality said. You’re going to need it later.

I didn’t realize I was staring as her until she blundered backward, the spangles on her shirt sending up hard clear darts of light as she spilled right through the back of the little hutch where she crouched, deciding who could go in and get trapped by the Cirque. Must’ve been a helluva cushy job.

But not right now.

She vanished, and sunlight bounced through the empty booth. A flutter of small paper tickets puffed into the air, settled. I uncramped my fingers, shook them out, and took a deep breath.

Cool and calm, Jillybean. That’s the way to do this.

I waited until I felt the little click inside my head, the one that meant I was rising away, disconnected, into the clear cold place where I could do what I had to without counting the cost. The space where murder was just semantics and the only thing that mattered was the task at hand. Anything else—pity, mercy, compassion—just fucked it up, just tangled the clarity of justice and made everything difficult.

It was a good thing Saul wasn’t here. I couldn’t do this with him around. Not with his quiet dark eyes watching me. And that was part of the problem, wasn’t it? It wasn’t him.

It was me.

But right now I hopped the stile, weighted down and maneuvering the wire cages with one hand. The ram’s heads sparked, gathering the late hot sunlight and throwing it back viciously. I could swear I saw one of the blind snouts move, and the stile clicked once as I landed, a dry ominous sound.

Thou who, I thought. Thou who has given me to fight evil, protect me, keep me from harm.

Usually the Hunter’s Prayer calms me. This time, it was no anodyne. It was a complement to the unsteady ball of rage under my ribs. Because I want to be the one dishing out the harm tonight. Some divine help wouldn’t hurt, if this plan’s going to pull itself off.

It was warm and still inside the Cirque. Balmy, even. The whole place was deserted. Maybe the girl in the booth had been an early-warning system, or maybe she didn’t get the memo that everyone was supposed to be gone. Nothing moved except unsecured tent flaps, and the calliope was muted and limping along through a rendition of the “Cuckoo Waltz,” wheezing and popping, straining like a locomotive going uphill.

Dusk was beginning to gather. The shadows had lengthened. I’ve seen a lot, and believe me when I say there is nothing creepier than a carnival at dusk. The midway games were all lit up, but nobody was in the booths. The dust tamped itself down where people’s feet had shuffled. The ghost of cotton candy turned cloying and rotten, haunted the heavy stillness. The breeze mouthed the fringe over the goldfish bowl, whistled through the pegs of the Wheel of Fortune, made the Ring the Bell, Strongman!’s bell make a low hollow sound. I caught a glimpse of a carousel down one long avenue of tents, the horses rising and falling with a clatter. The mirrors ran with soft dead light even through the red glow of approaching sunset, and where the horses shifted into shadow a ripple ran as if their muscles moved. Carved manes tossed, and some of them trickled greasy, black-looking blood from sharptooth mouths.

A mouthful of fried-food scent, old grease gone rancid and clotted, brushed by, and the chickens made soft broody sounds. A single white feather drifted down from the cage. THROW A RING, a hand-lettered sign barked at me, the white-painted words surrounded by leering faces, WIN A PRIZE. The rings chattered softly against the angled spikes, and I could almost see the pegs used to make the spikes impossible to hit.

I penetrated the tangled maze, heading for the bigtop’s bulk. Its pennants flapped as the wind came up the river on its evening exhale, and I heard a distant mutter of thunder behind the calliope’s mournful wrangling. The flat mineral tang of the water swept the fried food, animals, and spoiled candy away from me for a moment, and I was suddenly possessed of the intense urge to set the cages down, shuck all my weaponry, go back to the car, and drive. Somewhere, anywhere. Away from here and the job that had to be done. Away from the job that would kill me one of these days.

The carnival-breath closed around me again, walling away the clean scent of the river. All of a sudden I smelled popcorn and white vinegar, corn dogs and healthy human sweat. The calliope lunged forward into “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and I remembered one of the few good times in my childhood, when my mother was between boyfriends. She had taken me to a Santa Luz Wheelwrights game, and we’d eaten hot dogs and cheered until we were hoarse.

Two weeks after that her new guy put her in the hospital and beat me to a pulp too. I was six.

Memory exploded, calliope music wrapping around me and tapping the inside of my skull, and I had another, deeper urge. To throw down the cage and the weapons, to retrace my steps and find that carousel, and to pick a horse. Any horse, it wouldn’t matter. Though I would like one with tawny sides and dark eyes, and I was sure there would be one there waiting just for me. I could climb up on its back and ride, and one by one every memory I didn’t want to keep would fall away like autumn leaves.

And if the horse shuddered and lurched then, if it grew fangs and the other horses clustered around with hellfire in their eyes and their teeth dripping, I would not care. I would willingly lie down, and it wouldn’t be rough wooden planks that I felt. It would be the killing cold of a snowbank, and I would be back in the snow before Mikhail pulled me out.

Not tonight, little one, he’d said. But even then I’d known it was only a matter of time.

I shivered. The chickens made more soft noises. The tremor passed through me, and the calliope missed a single note.

If I went and got on that carousel, though, I would forget Saul. I would forget the low inquiring purr he used when he was sleepy and I moved against him in the warm nest of our bed. I would forget the way his hair curled, and the depth of his dark eyes. I would forget his hands warm on me, and the soothing when I sobbed and he would hold me, murmuring into my hair.

Even our volcanic fights, when we screamed at each other and the ghosts of my past would rise behind each edged word. Or the silence in Hutch’s bookshop when I realized he was gone, most probably for good, because I didn’t deserve him.

Remembering him would be a double-edged pleasure. But it was one I would hold to me in the dead watches of the night, when I was patrolling and my city was a collection of black and gray. Filth in its corners and the cries of innocents falling on deaf ears.

If I dropped what I was holding and went to the carousel, who would even try to fight for them? And who would remember Saul the way I did?

Trembling had me in its grip like a dog shaking a favorite chew toy. Sweat slicked my skin, ran down the channel of my spine. The chickens were squawking more loudly now, because their cage was jerking back and forth. I came back to myself with a rush, and found the shadows had lengthened. One lay over my boot-toes, and I looked up, confused.

The sun was sinking. How long had I been standing here?

Silver chimed as I shook my head, the charms clattering against each other. My apprentice-ring popped a spark, and the chickens took exception to that. I let out a harsh breath, my pulse hammering like I’d just run a hard mile. Feathers drifted to the ground, and I noticed the dust had swirled around me, streaks against my leather pants up to my thighs.

As if something had been rubbing against my legs.

The calliope surged again, but I couldn’t identify the tune and it didn’t pluck at me. It sounded dissatisfied. I took an experimental step forward, and the chickens calmed down. More thunder sounded, closer now. I checked the deepening bruise of the sky, found no clouds.

I understood more about the Cirque now. Much, much more than I ever wanted to.

My legs stopped trembling after another couple of steps. I swallowed a horrible bitter taste and almost choked on the regret and unsteady anger.

The bigtop wasn’t far. I somehow made my weary legs go faster, and I walked toward it with my head held high.