I continued down the sawdust path, taking head counts from the few tents that were still open until I got to the bestiary, where the nonhuman hybrids were on display in a series of vintage circus cage wagons. Ember, the phoenix, was easily my favorite. From her head down, her plumage graduated through shades of red, yellow and orange, ending in long, wide tail feathers that looked like living flames in the bright light thrown from high pole-mounted fixtures. But she could hardly even stretch those tail feathers in the confines of her cage.
Darkness shifted behind the next enclosure, a subtle blending of one shadow into another, and though I heard neither footsteps nor breathing, I knew I was no longer alone.
This isnt fair to them. I tucked my clipboard under one arm and stared up at the phoenix.
I know. Gallagher stepped out of the shadows, yet they seemed to cling to him, giving him a dangerous look that most humans would feel, yet be unable to truly understand. They would blame their instinctive fear on his towering height. On his massive musculature. But they wouldnt really grasp his destructive potential.
If they were lucky.
I got a quote on bigger cages, but considering that our budget is around zero, its not going to happen anytime soon. Three months after our coup, we had yet to come up with a solution for the beasts confinement. Their enclosures were inhumanely small, but much like the lions in any zoo, the chimera, the griffin and the others were all far too dangerous to simply keep on leashes. Were going to have to raise ticket prices.
Gallagher shook his head, and light shone on the red baseball cap covering most of his short, dark hair. The menageries customer base is blue-collar. Theyre already paying more than they can afford. We need to be touring larger venues. Exhibition grounds. Amusement parks.
No. I was already weary of the argument wed been putting off for two months. Bigger venues are too much of a risk.
Eryx brings in five hundred people in every tiny town we visit. Imagine the thousands hed attract in a larger venue. In bigger cities.
I turned to look up at him. The cryptids... Were all still skittish, Gallagher. Most of them are terrified to deal with vendors and carny subcontractors, and with good reason. That would only be worse if we played larger venues, with more inspections and more invasive oversight.
His brows furrowed low over dark eyes. Its September, Delilah. Schools are already back in session, and the county fair circuit will dry up in the next few weeks. If were not prepared to step into the big interior venuesstadiums and concert hallswe wont make it through the winter, because we certainly cant raise funds the way old man Metzger did.
The very thought gave me chills.
During the off-season, when the carnival circuit shrank to virtually nothing, Rudolph Metzger had rented the most exotic of his cryptids to various private collections, where they were exhibited in a more formal setting for high-dollar clientele who wouldnt frequent a sweaty, dirty, outdoor carnival.
Were not renting anyone out, and were not risking larger venues.
In our menagerie, we ran the shows and set our own limits. Except for the required inspections, there was no third-party oversight. Under Gallaghers plan, one suspicious stadium employee could blow our ruse wide-open, and wed all be back in cages. We couldnt take that risk.
Well find another way, I assured him.
Our plan had been to take the entire menagerie south of the border. But when Sultan Bruhiers daughter, Adira, died during the coup, hed closed his borders, leaving us trapped in the United States, where exposure would mean imprisonment, and in many cases, torture.
We could send Bruhier another gift, Gallagher said. I shook my head, but he kept talking. I could call one of the old handlers and offer him a job, then throw him in a cage and ship him down to the sultan.
We gave him Metzger. If gifting him the owner didnt work, sending a mere menagerie employee wont either. And even if I were okay with sending someone else to be tortured to death at the hands of the sultan, it took forever for the encantados to make the old mans family think he ran off with an acrobat. We cant make another person disappear.
We cant let everyone starve to death either.
I know. I cleared my throat and took the pen from my clipboard again. What was the bestiarys head count?
Four hundred sixty.
Are we all set for takedown?
As soon as the gates close.
Good. I turned to head to the hybrids tent, but Gallagher took my hand before I made it two steps.
Delilah. He tugged me closer, and when I looked up at him, I found his eyes shrouded by the shadow of his hat bill, in the light falling from overhead. My oath to protect you includes protecting you from starvation. And from yourself. Buying the incubus nearly bankrupted us.
I couldnt just leave him there
But now were rationing food. Something has to give.
I nodded. I knew that. I have to get a head count from the big top. Ill think of something. I swear.
Gallagher frowned at my choice of words. Swearing meant something different to him than it did to the rest of the world because the fae cant go back on their word.
Nor can they lie.
Ever.
* * *
At eleven fifty, I stepped inside the massive striped tent and watched the big-top finale from the west entrance. Though I saw the show nearly every night, I was still awed by the strength and ingenuity of the performers. By their grace and beauty. By the pride they took in their performances, now that the show was truly theirs.
In the ringwe only assembled one of them, now that our show was smallerZyanya and her brother, Payat, had already completed their live shift into cheetah form. As I watched, Ignis, the draco, breathed fire over the first of two steel rings suspended from a sturdy steel frame, and the audience oohed as the ring burst into flames.
Ignis was a three-foot-long winged serpent whose fire-breathing range had been surgically reduced from over seven feet to a mere eighteen inches years before old man Metzger had bought me for his menagerie. Even with his surgical handicap, Ignis represented the biggest risk we were willing to take in the ring because he was difficult to communicate with and impossible to retrain without using the abusive tactics his previous trainers had employed.
Once Ignis had swooped to light the second steel ring, heralded by a crescendo in the soaring big-top sound track, Zyanya and Payat leapt through the blazing hoops in sync, still in cheetah form, and landed gracefully on the backs of a matching set of thickly muscled centaurspart Belgian horse, part man.
Several minutes later, the orchestral sound track crescendoed with a crash of cymbals signaling the beginning of the finale. Eryx, the minotaur, took thundering steps toward the center of the ring, holding his thick arms out in the most graceful gesture we had managed to teach the former beast of burden. From their positions all around the huge ring, hybrid acrobats flipped and cartwheeled toward him. While I watched, as awed then as Id been on the first night of their revamped performance, the acrobats climbed the minotaur like a tree, then each other like its branches until they stood on each others arms and legs and shoulders. Eryx became the base of a diamond-shaped formation of hybrid and shifter acrobats stacked to within mere feet of the aviary net.
As the minotaur slowly turned, showing off the finale for the 360-degree audience around the ring, two harpies in glittering red costumes soared around the act, dropping steel rings from overhead. They landed around outstretched arms and legs, revolving like hula hoops. From one side of the ring, Zyanyas two young cubs pushed a large heavy ball toward the center with their small feline muzzles. When they had it in place, Eryx stepped up onto the ball, with one foot, then the other, lifting his graceful load as if it weighed no more than a bag of his own feed.
Through it all, Ignis swooped and glided through the air in and around the acrobats limbs, dodging spinning rings and spitting small jets of fire. The music soared and the crowd stood on collapsible risers, stomping and clapping for a show they would credit to a huge staff of human handlers and trainers.
For nearly a minute, the performers remained frozen in their ending pose, breathing hard, basking in applause from spectators who would have run screaming if theyd known the truth about what theyd just seen.
Then the music faded and smoke machines fired a gray mist into the ring. Under the cover of smoke, the performers dismounted and jogged from the ring through a chain-link tunnel toward the back of the tent, while the audience climbed down from the bleachers and headed for marked exits in pairs and small clusters. Children clutched their parents hands, chattering about the massive minotaur and the graceful leopard shifter. Adults recounted their favorite parts, from the berserker in bear form throwing glittering rings for the harpies to catch in their beaks, to the wolf and the cheetahs transforming from man into animal right in front of them.
I stood at my post, thanking them all for coming, directing them toward the main exit, past the closed ticket booth. I shook hands with fathers and high-fived young boys wearing souvenir Metzgers hats with minotaur horns sticking up from the sides and little girls whod bought headbands with cat ears or fake teeth with wolf or cheetah incisors poking into their lower lips.
At exactly midnight, as I was ushering the crowd from the big top, Abraxasone of our three human employeesturned off the calliope music and played a light instrumental intended to signal the nights end. The intercom crackled, then Lenores smooth, siren voice spoke over the music, urging the audience members to make their way to the exit, then proceed directly to their cars.
Id actually taken several steps in the same direction before I rememberedas I struggled to do every nightthat Lenore was responsible for my sudden compulsion to leave the carnival and drive straight home. Even though I no longer had a car. Or a home outside the menagerie and the camper I shared with Gallagher.
Abraxas and Alyrose, our human costume mistress, still had to wear earplugs during the nightly farewell, but Lenores human husband, Kevin, was used to it.
Caught in the sirens pull, the spectators headed for the exit as one, and as I watched, resisting that draw myself, an odd movement caught my eye. One tall man in the crowd had his hand over his ear, not cupped like he was covering it, but as if...hed just put in an earplug. The light was too dim for me to see for sure, but the possibility set me on edge.
Everyone else was with a friend or a date or family, yet this man walked alone, amid the jostle and flow of the crowd. Watching. When his gaze met mine, he smiled, but the expression seemed localized to his lips, one of which was bisected by a thick line of scar tissue that hooked down and over the edge of his chin.
He looked familiar, but I couldnt quite place him, and the mental disconnect hovered on the edge of my thoughts like an itch that couldnt be reached.
When the crowd had gone and the smoke had cleared, Abraxas turned off the sound system. Gallagher locked the gates. All over the menagerie, creatures with scales and horns and tails shed their chains and emerged from their cages like monstrous butterflies from steel cocoons. They shook off the pretense of captivity and stretched muscles stiff from hours in confined spaces.
It was my favorite part of the evening.
Together, we closed things down and set up for the next day, our last night in this small southern town. While I swept the bleachers in the big top, I listened to Zyanya and Payat laughing as they broke down and stored the equipment in the ring. Zyanyas toddlers ran circles around their mother and uncle, and made the occasional mad dash into the stands, playing as children should. As theyd never been allowed to do before the coup.
I couldnt help smiling as I watched them. Even if we accomplished nothing elseeven if we couldnt rescue a single other cryptid from captivitywe had done at least this little bit of good.
Afterward, I joined Gallagher as he fed the last of the beasts and nonhuman hybridsthe menagerie residents we couldnt simply let out of their cages, because of safety concerns.
As he bent to pluck a rabbit from a box of small rodents wed bought at the local pet store that morning, I remembered the first time Id ever seen him, standing beside a cage in the bestiary. Back before I knew what he was. Before either of us knew what I was.
Before he cast off his human disguise and the safety it brought in order to protect me.
Redcaps are fae soldiers from their birthing cries to their dying breath, but the few who survived their brutal civil war each swore to find and serve a noble cause. To fight a battle worthy of the blood they must spill to survive.
Gallagher chose to serve and protect me, an arrangement I still wasnt entirely comfortable with, because when fate saddled me with an inner beast driven to avenge injustice and corruption, it failed to give me a way to defend myself from those very things.
I chose to believe that the universe sent me Gallagher to make up for what it took from me. My friends. My family. My property. My freedom.
Gallaghers oath to protect me at any cost was the driving force in his life. His oath was unbreakable. His word was his honor.
For the rest of my life, he would literally rip my enemies limb from limb to keep me safe.
Sometimes that knowledge felt reassuring. Sometimes it felt overwhelming. Sometimes it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
Those were the days when I truly understood how drastically my life had changed since my days as a bank teller.
Did you see the man with the scar? I asked, as Gallagher opened the feeding hatch on one side of the wendigos cage and tossed a live rabbit inside.
No. Why? Using the two-foot-long steel-clawed grabber, he plucked the last rabbit from the box.
I think I saw him put plugs in his ears during Lenores farewell message. And he was here alone. No one goes to the menagerie alone. I opened the feeding hatch on the adlets cage and Gallagher shoved the rabbit inside. The adleta wolf man stuck in a perpetual in-between stateripped it nearly in half before it even hit the floor of the pen.
You think he suspected something?
Maybe. But obviously we havent heard any police sirens. Im probably imagining it. Id been living under a cloud of paranoia since the moment wed locked Rudolph Metzger in one of his own cages.
Maybe not. Gallagher shrugged. The last time I had a feeling about one of our patrons was when you visited the menagerie, and that changed everything. For all of us. Tell me about this man, he said as he picked up the empty rabbit box. What did his scar look like?