Rachel Vincent - Spectacle

“And anyway, she was inspected during the intake process. She has no cryptid features. Which is part of the problem.”

“I don’t understand,” she complained. “Even the most benign-looking monsters have an identifiable trait hidden somewhere. How could she have nothing?”

Finally, I made myself sit up and look at the Vandekamps, and the effort that took without the use of my hands was terrifying.

“What are we going to do with her?” Tabitha demanded as she smoothed a strand of brown hair back toward the simple twist it had escaped from. “No one’s going to pay to see that.” She waved one hand at me in disgust. “You’re going to have to figure out what she is. Make her talk.” She shrugged, and her cold gaze chased the last reverberating bolts of fire from my body. “Or I could do it.”

“I’ll figure something out.” He stood and kissed her on the forehead. “Why don’t you go tell the seamstresses what you want for the new costumes?”

She hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. “I do have a few ideas...”

As the door closed behind her, he sat on the front of his desk again. “Wait outside,” he said, and I thought he was talking to me until Bowman turned sharply and headed into the outer office, closing the door at his back. Vandekamp looked down at me, where I still knelt on his rug. “You were the one responsible for the takeover of Metzger’s Menagerie?”

I nodded. The truth was more complicated, but without my voice, I couldn’t explain about the team effort.

“I have some questions for you, and I suggest you answer them while you still can.” He pressed an icon on his remote, and when I felt no pain, I realized he’d given me back my voice.

Vandekamp twisted and lifted another folder from his blotter, then flipped it open. “According to the menagerie’s records, there are two cryptids missing. A werewolf called Claudio and a young marid named Adira. Where are they?”

I cleared my throat and was relieved by the sound that met my ears. “Adira died during the coup. She was shot by the Lot Supervisor. Christopher Ruyle.” We’d sent her body to the sultan so he could bury her.

Vandekamp glanced at the report again. “This Ruyle is also missing.”

“He’s dead. And for the record, he’s the only employee who died in the takeover.”

“And the werewolf?”

I held his gaze. And my silence.

He lifted the remote, drawing my attention to it. “You already know what this can do.”

I exhaled. I didn’t want to betray Claudio, but chances are that they’d never catch him anyway. “He left the menagerie last month.”

“Why would he leave? A werewolf cannot pass for human.”

“But he can live in the woods as long as he likes.” He was looking for Genevieve, the youngest of his children, who had been sold right before the coup. But I wouldn’t tell Vandekamp that no matter how much pain he put me through.

“How did you know about the coup?”

Surprise tugged up on Vandekamp’s left brow. “You haven’t figured out your mistake yet?”

I’d spent my time alone in that concrete cell going over every decision I’d made as the de facto manager of the liberated menagerie, trying to figure out how I’d failed the very people I’d been trying to save. I’d come up with a thousand small mistakes, but nothing I could pinpoint as our downfall.

“I found out from the Metzgers.” Vandekamp watched carefully for my reaction, but I had none to give him, except confusion.

“The Metzgers don’t know.” Raul and Renata had flawlessly covered our tracks with the former owner’s family.

“The Metzgers found out from old man Rudolph himself.”

“But Rudolph Metzger is...” I let my words fade into silence short of a confession.

“Dead,” Vandekamp finished for me. “Which is the inevitable result of dismembering a man and mailing a piece of him to each of his remaining relatives.”

“We didn’t—”

He shook his head, still watching me closely. “No, that didn’t seem like something you would do, after all the trouble you went through to hide the takeover.”

Sultan Bruhier. Adira’s father got his final revenge on us by exposing the coup that had cost his daughter her life. But the sultan couldn’t have shipped pieces of Rudolph Metzger all over the country if I hadn’t given him the old man in the first place.

Vandekamp’s viewing of my reaction seemed part entertainment, part clinical observation. So I swallowed my guilt to deny him the pleasure.

“What did you do with Gallagher?” I demanded, and his fleeting frown made my stomach flip. He didn’t recognize the name.

Gallagher wasn’t at the Spectacle. He’d been sold to someone else or sent to a cryptid prison or—worst-case scenario—given to a research lab.

A cold new fear overtook me. No matter where he was, he would fight to get to me.

I stared at the floor, struggling to control my horror at that thought. Or at least hide it from Vandekamp.

“Until we know what you are, you’re a financial liability,” he said, and I forced myself to focus on his words. “You can enlighten me, or I can let my lovely wife pull the information out of you. But I don’t think that’s what you want.”

No use denying that. Tabitha Vandekamp was scary in a way no thick-fisted roustabout had ever been. But she couldn’t change the facts.

“I’ve told you.” I shrugged, mentally tamping down the fear that he might recognize my half-truth. “Run the test again. The results will be the same, and no amount of torture will change that. I’m human.”

Vandekamp crossed his arms over his shiny blue button-down shirt. “I’ve seen you turn into a monster, Delilah.”

“The two are not mutually exclusive.” I shrugged and held his gaze. “You and I have that in common.”

Willem

Willem Vandekamp watched the office door close behind his latest purchase, and for a moment, he sat lost in his thoughts. After more than twenty years in the cryptobiology field, he’d long been convinced that nothing could surprise him.

Until Delilah.

A cryptid who went to college.

A cryptid who’d taken his seminar.

She understood too much, but the real problem Delilah represented wasn’t how much she knew about him, but how little he knew about her.

Delilah would make the investors nervous. She would terrify his friends in Washington.

Speaking of whom...

Willem glanced at his watch, an obsolete device in the age of cell phones and handheld tablets, but one that gave him comfort in its simplicity. He was two minutes late for the conference call, but had no intention of actually picking up the phone for another three. Punctuality might give those congressional blowhards the mistaken impression that his time was less important than theirs.

What if Tabitha was right? Willem leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head, still staring at the door. What if Delilah was a surrogate? No one had seen a single one of those sadistic little bastards since the government rounded them up nearly thirty years ago. They’d be thirty-five years old now—a full decade older than Delilah—but who knew whether they’d age like humans? Hell, if they were some kind of fae, their glamour could make them look like anything or anyone.

But Delilah wasn’t fae. According to her file, the sheriff who’d originally arrested her had kept her in iron cuffs with no effect.

Willem’s desk phone rang. His direct line. He noted the DC area code on the display and smiled. Then he let it ring two more times before he answered.

“Hello?”

“Vandekamp.” Senator Aaron sounded distinctly displeased. “We had an appointment, unless I’m mistaken?”

“I apologize.” Willem spun in his chair to look out the window at the topiary garden. “It’s been a bit chaotic here, and I’m running on about three hours of sleep.”