Lilith Saintcrow - Fresh Circus

“I really hope you don’t mean that,” she muttered, but she let it go.

It wasn’t like her not to get the last word in, so I left it at that. Saul finished his tea, I got a few more odds and ends, and we left her up in her kitchen, tracing the ring of spilled tea from the bottom of her cup, drawing it on the table like it might give her an answer.

Of course they would settle near the trainyards, far north of my warehouse and on the fringes of the industrial section. A cold night wind came off the river, laden with flat iron-chemical scent. It was usually a space of empty, weed-strewn lots, a few squares of concrete left over from trailers or something, and a festooning of hypodermics and debris from when it used to be a shackville. The homeless were rousted out during a huge urban renewal drive five years ago, but the drive petered out and the fencing around the lots turned that bleached color everything gets after a winter or two in the desert.

Now it was cleaned up, the fencing was taken down in some parts, replaced in others, and it was starred with lights.

Everyone who told me about the Cirque was right. It does look bigger than its sorry little caravan would ever lead you to dream of. It sprawled like a blowsy drunk on a tattered divan, cheap paste jewels glittering.

Cirque de Charnu, the painted boards on the fence barked. The bigtop was up, canvas daubed with leering clown faces and swirls of watery glitter. Faint music rode the flat, whispering wind. The smell of fried food mixed uneasily with the blood-tang of the river, and I caught the undertone of sweat and animal manure too. Shouts and laughter, and a Ferris wheel I would have sworn wasn’t part of the caravan spun like a confection of whipped cream and glass. Its winking lights were sterile eyes, and it shuddered as the wind changed. One pair of lights winked out, and I heard the faint ghost of a scream before it righted itself and went whirling merrily on.

We sat in the car overlooking the spectacle; there was a footpath down the embankment leading to the temporary parking lot, already full of vehicles. Little dust devils danced between the neat rows. The fringes of contamination and corruption were thin flabby fingers poking at each tire and dashboard.

Saul was smoking again, cherry tobacco smoke drifting out his window. The tiny bottle of holy water on a chain around his neck swirled with faint blue. “Smells like a trap,” he finally said.

“It is.” A trap for the weak or unwary. Or just for those who don’t care anymore. “You sure you want to come with me?”

A shadow crossed his face. He tapped the ash from the cigarette with a quick, angry motion.

I glanced quickly away, over the carnival. The Ferris wheel halted, its cars swinging and trembling slightly, like leaves in a soft breeze. Its gaunt gantry looked hungry, and a couple lights flickered on the verge of going out.

“I haven’t changed my mind yet.” He took another drag. His face settled against itself.

I’m not so sure about that. But I didn’t say it. “You realize we can’t interfere down there. Once we step through the gate—”

“I know the rules. You repeated ’em twice. I’m not stupid, Jill.”

“You’re right, you’re not stupid. But maybe I am.” I eyed the layout again. The alleys between the tents looked regular and even, but they also ran like ink on wet paper in the corner of my vision. I had the idea that if I looked away they would move, and snap back together in a different configuration once my gaze returned.

The music halted as the wind veered, then started again. Calliope music, faint and cheery, with screaming underneath. It sounded like a cartoon. The Ferris wheel shuddered again, and another light blinked out. It restarted, creaking, and the music swallowed any sound that might have made its way out.

I blew out between my teeth. Measured off a space on the steering wheel between two index fingers, tapped them both rapidly, a tattoo of dissatisfaction. Time’s wasting, Jill. Get moving.

When I reached for the door-handle he did too. The Pontiac sat in shadows, her paint job glistening dully. It was a cleaner gleam than the cars in the lot below, or the bright winking lures beyond.

The music struggled up to us as we made our way down the hill, my bootheels occasionally ringing against a stone, Saul silent and graceful. Between the rows of cars, windshields already filmed with dust, gravel shifting under our feet. There was no need to be quiet.

There wasn’t much of a crowd milling around the ticket booth. The scattered people were mostly normal, and they looked dazed. I kept my mouth shut, watching for a few moments as a round brunette in her mid-thirties tilted her head, listening. The calliope music sharpened, predatory glee running under its surface, and she finally stepped up to the booth and handed over a fistful of something. It looked like wet pennies, and the Trader manning the booth—female, heart-shaped face and short black Bettie Page bangs, big dark eyes, and a pair of needle-sharp fangs dimpling her candy-red lower lip—made a complex gesture, then stamped the woman’s hand and waved her past.

Saul let out a short sigh. We strode through the confused, each of them averting their eyes like we were some sort of plague. A couple Traders milled with the normals, uncertainly. Most of them flinched and drew into the shadows when they saw me.

The Trader in the booth studied us. She opened her mouth, and I saw all her teeth were sharp and pointed, not just the fangs.

I beat her to the punch. “I’m here on business, Trader. Where’s the Ringmaster?”

She shrugged slim, bare flour-white shoulders, her rhinestone-studded Lycra top moving supple over high, perky breasts. Visibly reconsidered when I didn’t respond. “Around and about. Probably in the bigtop. Want your hand stamped?”

I snorted. “Of course not. Come on, Saul.” I took two steps to the side, heading for the turnstile.

Her sloe eyes narrowed. “Just what are you—” The words died as I stared at her. The corruption blooming over her was strong, and I’d bet diamonds she had weapons under the sightline of the flimsy booth. She tried again. “You can come in. But I’m not so sure he can.” She actually pointed at Saul with one lacquered-yellow fingernail. It was amazing—I wondered how she wiped herself with claws that long.

Oh, yeah? Quit pointing at my Were, bitch. “He’s with me. Go back to seducing suicides,” I snapped. We strode past, through the clicking turnstile. Each separate bar of the stile ended in a cheap chrome ram’s head, lips drawn back and blunt teeth blackened with grime. The Trader didn’t say anything else, but the swirl of corruption lying over the entire complex of canvas and wood tightened.

The spider knows the fly’s home.

I didn’t like that thought. I also didn’t like how the air was suddenly close and warm, almost balmy with a slight edge of humidity. It even smelled wrong—no clean tang of dry desert, no metallic ring from the river or any of the hundred other little components that make up a subconscious map of my city. You spend enough time breathing a place and it’ll get into your bones—and when it isn’t what it should be, that’s when the uneasiness starts right below the hackles.

It was also—surprise, surprise—more crowded inside than out. There wasn’t a crush, but it was work threading my way through. The flat shine of the dusted on Trader irises, dazed incomprehension on the shuffling normals, rubbing shoulders and shuffling feet. I saw men in pajamas, a woman in filmy lingerie with her hair in pink curlers, a fiftyish man in work clothes carrying a dripping-wet hammer and wandering walleyed and fishmouthed like he was six again.