Lilith Saintcrow - Flesh Circus

Gooseflesh rose hard and cold on my arms and legs. I wished Saul was behind me. Right now he was probably back at the warehouse, packing. Or maybe he’d already blown town. He traveled light, sometimes just a duffel, most times not even that.

Focus, Jill.

I wanted to kick the door open and sweep the house. Instead, I stood on the front step and rang the bell. The sweet tinkling chimes of—I shit you not—the chorus to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” sounded, leaking out through the open door.

The air changed, suddenly full of listening. No matter how many times you get to this point as a hunter, it never gets any easier.

I toed the door open. “Melendez!” I tried to sound nice and cheerful, only succeeded in sounding like Goldilocks saying hello when she walks in the door and smells porridge. “Señor Melendez, una clienta para Usted. ”

The entryway was red tile, full of cool quiet and the smell of incense. Lots of incense, in thick blue veils. My blue eye smarted, filling with hot water. There was a sound of movement, and my hand leapt for the gun, fell away.

“Ola, bruja,” he said at the end of the hall. “Come in. Been expecting you.”

Melendez lowered himself down in a straight-backed leather armchair behind a massive oak desk cluttered with paper and tchotchkes. He called this room his study, and it was full of bookshelves holding leather-bound books—nothing Hutch would get excited over, these were just for decoration—and other, more useful tools of his trade. An empty fireplace, clean as a whistle, seemed just a set piece for the crossed rapiers hung over it. Both fine examples of Toledo steel, and worth more than the house itself and probably the neighbors’ houses as well.

I surveyed the choices available. A padded footstool that would put me below him, literally, like I was a third grader. An overstuffed armchair that would swallow everything up to your neck. A penitent’s chair made of iron, with a faded red horsehair cushion.

I elected to remain standing, and Melendez’s broad brown face split in a yellow-toothed grin. He settled his ample ass deeper in his chair, his potbelly brushing the desk’s edge. “Been a while.”

“No murders traced to any of your followers lately.” I folded my arms.

“You here about Ruth?” His dark eyes gleamed.

Well, there’s either a very lucky guess, or he knows something. Guess which. “I’m here about Arthur Gregory. And the Cirque de Charnu.”

“You here because Mama Zamba is calling in all her favors. She got an old feud against the devils, older than yours.” He steepled his long, chubby brown fingers. In a blue chambray shirt and jeans, a red kerchief tied around his straight black hair, he was in that ageless space between twenty-nine and forty if you went by his round, strangely unlined face. It was only the way he moved, with a little betraying stiffness every once in a while, and the distance in his gaze that gave him away.

The loa can hold off age just like a Trader’s bargain can. They cannot grant immortality, but it gets awful close.

“If she keeps killing Cirque performers there’s going to be trouble. I don’t have a lot of time to dance around.” Impatience boiled under my breastbone. I shelved it. “What do you know?”

“Oh, bruja. ” He laughed. “You need a better question, you gonna expect answers from me.”

The urge to whip out a gun, squeeze off a shot for effect, and put the barrel to his forehead and then expect answers from him leapt up like a flame in the middle of my head. I took in a deep breath, fixed him with my mismatched stare, and told myself firmly I was not going to be shooting anyone unless it was necessary.

The trouble with that is, all of a sudden you can think it’s necessary when it’s not. Especially when you’re deconstructing under severe stress.

“Melendez.” I tried to sound patient. “I’ve got a city that could explode at any moment and a voodoo queen looking to cause a lot of trouble. You fuck around with me and I just might decide to look too hard at this sweet little deal you’ve got going for yourself. Besides, with Zamba out of the picture soon you’re looking at being the reigning king of the scene around here. If, that is, she doesn’t show up and do you like she did the bitch of Greenlea. It didn’t seem like Lorelei had an easy death.”

“Ah, Lorelei. She was Zamba’s godmother. Seems like Zamba cleaning up loose ends.” He looked down at the desktop, ran one blunt finger along a glossy strip of varnish peeking out from behind papers.

“Are you a loose end?” It was worth a shot.

“I belong to Chango.” All jolliness dropped away, and his broad moonface turned solemn. “The Twins, they have no hold on me. My patrón, he whip their asses if they come near me. I in strong with Chango. And you got some help too. Ogoun just waiting for you to come around.”

My mouth was dry as desert sand. “I didn’t think you had any truck with Ogoun.”

He shrugged. “The spirits come when they will. You know. You called on them in the beginning of this. Papa Legba and Ogoun both watching you.”

Well, training in dealing with possession has to take these sorts of things into account. I suppressed a shiver. The first time I’d brushed up against voodoo was during a ceremony devoted to Ogoun, Mikhail by my side. There was a skip, like a needle lifting from a record, and the next thing I knew I had a mouthful of fiery rum, Mikhail watching me very carefully, and the followers were drifting away toward the dinner table. He never would tell me what exactly I’d done when the drums lifted me out of myself. Broken glass had littered the floor of the peristyle, and there were curls of cigar smoke in the air. It had taken me a while to wash the smell of cigars away.

After that, Mikhail was very, very careful to teach me how to build an exorcist’s hard etheric shell. I’d never had that problem again, thank God, but still. You never can tell when dealing with shit like this.

I fished the two Ziploc bags out of my coat. Straight razor and enamelware cup, both of them almost quivering with readiness. “What do these have to do with Zamba?”

He eyed my hands, then went pale under his brownness. “Ay de mi.”

“Are we going to start talking, or are you gonna try yanking me around some more? Because I have to tell you, señor, my temper’s getting a little thin.” Understatement of the year, isn’t it?

He was still staring at my hands. His eyes unfocused, brown irises sheened over as if with cataracts, a thin gray film spilling over his gaze. The air tightened, a breeze from nowhere riffling the papers on his desk, touching the leather-clad spines, and fingering the sheer curtains over the French doors looking onto the backyard’s wide green expanse.

I braced myself.

When he spoke next, it was a different voice. His mouth moved, but the sound came from elsewhere, a mellow deep baritone crackling at the edges. “Ay, mi sobrina. Bienvenidos a mi casa.”

The goose bumps rose again, hot this time instead of cold. My hair stirred, the silver chimes shifting, and my blue eye caught little dark shapes moving through the charged, heavy atmosphere that had suddenly settled inside the study. “Buenos días, señor. Muchas gracias por su atencion.”

Hey, it never hurts to be polite.

Melendez’s face worked itself like rubber, compressing and stretching. His mouth worked wetly. “You come here seeking knowledge, eh? What you give to Papa Chango?”

How about I don’t rip you out of your follower there? How about I leave this place standing instead of burned down as a lesson in not fucking with me? I kept control of my temper, but just barely. It was getting harder and harder. “You wouldn’t ask me if you didn’t have something in mind already.”