Flesh Circus

by Lilith Saintcrow

  There was only one thing to do. And it wasn’t going by the Cirque, thank God, or standing around yelling at Saul. I looked up, but the bookshop was deserted. Nothing but empty aisles faced with stuffed-full bookshelves, boxes on the floor, the antique cash register sitting stolidly, gathering dust. “Saul?” The word quivered. Was he gone?

  Oh, fuck. I stood there with my hand on the phone, my hip against Hutch’s desk, and my heart twisting itself like a contortionist inside my chest. “Saul?”

  I checked the kitchen and the EMPLOYEES ONLY room. I even checked the goddamn bathroom.

  He was gone. I hadn’t even heard him leave.

  God. I swallowed something hot and nasty, paced through the entire shop one more time. Blinked several times. My cheeks were wet.

  This is one less thing for you to worry about. Get back up on the horse, Jill. Do your job.

  It was time for me to visit Melendez.

  22

  If Zamba was the reigning voodoo queen, Melendez was the court jester. Don’t get me wrong—anyone who bargains with an inhuman intelligence is suspect, and just because I hadn’t heard of Melendez doing anything even faintly homicidal or icky didn’t mean he didn’t dabble.

  But it didn’t mean the little butterball was harmless, either. Any more than the mark on my wrist meant I was a Trader.

  Only I was, if you thought about it a certain way. And while Melendez didn’t go in for the theatrical horror and power games Zamba did, he also didn’t go out of his way to make things easier on people. Live and let die, that was probably the closest thing to a motto he would ever have.

  Saul had left me the car. Awful nice of him. I told the sharp spearing ache in my heart to go away and made time through midmorning traffic, brakes squealing and tires chirping. The shadows leapt and cavorted in my peripheral vision until I began ignoring them, even the colorless crystal eyes and the glass-twinkle teeth. I caught the flow of traffic like a pinball down a greased slide, all the way across town to the northern fringe of the Riverhurst section.

  A nice address, all things considered, clinging to rich respectability like cactus clings to any breath of moisture. The houses are old, full of creaks, fake adobes and some improbable Cape Cods. They had bigger yards than anything other than the rest of Riverhurst, and most of them were drenched green. I even saw some sprinklers running, spouting rainbows under the heaving, cringe-inducing glare of dusty sunlight.

  Melendez didn’t hold his gatherings in his home. He owned a storefront on the edge of the barrio, with a trim white sign out front announcing the Holy Church of St. Barbara, nonprofit and legitimate under a 501(c)(3). His own private little joke, I guess. Seven nights a week you can find drumming, dancing, and weird shit happening on the little strip of concrete that had pretensions of being Pararrayos Avenue.

  Mornings, though, he could be found here. It’s a good thing the streets are wide even on the edge of Riverhurst, because his followers usually come out for consultations, filling up his driveway and the street for a block or two. Quarter-hour increments, donations optional—nobody leaves without paying something—and results guaranteed.

  You don’t last long in that business unless you have the cash to back the flash.

  Today, though, the street was clear and I parked right near the front door. Melendez’s faux-adobe hacienda sat behind its round concrete driveway with the brick bank in the middle, holding still-blooming rosebushes, a monkey puzzle tree, and a bank of silvery-green rue. Lemon balm tried its best to choke everything else in the bed, but aggressive pruning had turned it into a bank of sweetness.

  I was relieved to see his tiny garden was tiptop. The fountain—a cute little chubby-cheeked cherub shooting water from his tiny wang—was going full-bore. I wondered if there was a homeowners’ association in this part of town, and what they thought of his choice in lawn decorations. Not that there was much lawn to speak of. The largest part of his lot was out back with the pool.

  The heat was oppressive, a bowl of haze lying over the city. A brown smudge of smog touched downtown’s skyscrapers, and high white horsetail clouds lingered over the mountains. I couldn’t wait for the autumn rains to move up the river and flash-flood us, just for a change of pace. Hunters are largely immune to temperature differentials, it’s right up there with the silence, one of the first things an apprentice learns.

  I winced at the thought of apprentices, opened the car door and stood for a few seconds, looking across the Pontiac’s roof, sizing up the place. My smart eye caught nothing but the usual stirrings and flickers, an active febrile etheric petri dish.

  I wonder if I’m not his first visitor today. Well, no time like the present to find out.

  The wrought-iron gate was open, as usual. The courtyard was just as lush as it ever was, smelling of mineral hosewater and the sweet orange tang of Florida water. The splashes across the threshold, where the concrete stopped and the red-brick paving began, were still wet.

  Well, Melendez. You’ve been keeping your house neat and clean, haven’t you. I stepped over the barrier, a brief tingle passing over my body. The silver in my hair sparked and chimed, oddly muted. I wanted to touch a gun butt, kept my fingers away with an effort.

  He had a fountain in the middle of the courtyard too, a big seashell with a spire rising from the middle of it. It was bone-dry. Masses of feverfew, more rue, a bank of bindweed… and the red-painted front door, open just a crack.

  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.”

  “Es verdad. Me and the Twins, we have a wager. They think their little puta is a match for the devils and for you. She pay them well, she always have.”

  I’ll bet she does. There’s all sorts of death lately she’s been paying them with. “Payment isn’t everything. There’s more at stake here than just revenge. What does Arthur Gregory want?”

  “I tell you what, bruja. Mi hijo here, he tell you all he know. In return, you owe me una bala. He lie, or he tell you nothing useful—and you put that bala through his cabeza, eh?”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Why should I strike a bargain with you?”

  The thing inhabiting Melendez’s body laughed, a chortle that struck every exposed, shivering surface and blew my hair back. I smelled ozone, and rum. And cigar smoke, drifting across my sensitive nose. My eyes stung, smart and dumb alike.

  “Because otherwise, mi sobrina, you ain’t never gonna find that tick dug itself into the city’s skin. She gonna bloat up with blood and strike the one she aimin’ for, and you can’t let that happen, can you? No. And this little caballo of mine know not just the who but the why. That what you wantin’. You just like every other macizo; you always sayin’ por que, por que?”

  It chuckled, moving Melendez’s lips like ripples on the surface of a pond. “So what you say, bruja grande de Santa Luz? Una bala, por la razon, for the great por que.”

  Jesus Christ. It always comes down to this, doesn’t it. What part of myself am I willing to mortgage to get this case over and dealt with? “Deal.” The word was ash in my mouth. Cigar ash. “But if you double-deal me, señor, this caballo is wormfood and you’re on the outs within the borders of my city.”

  A good threat. I couldn’t bar a loa from the city, of course—but I could make it hell on his followers. If I had to.

  If it became necessary.

  It laughed again. Chuckled long and hard, Melendez’s hands jerking like brown paper puppets on strings. “We like you, bruja. Mi hermano Ogoun and me, we got a wager on you too. We be watching.”

  And just like that, it winked out. Melendez sagged, coughing, in his chair. A long jet of smoke spluttered through his lips, and his face hit the desktop with a solid thump.

  It looked painful. He coughed, and more smoke billowed up. I swallowed a sarcastic little laugh. If this turns into a case of spontaneous combustion, we’re going to have a problem.

  Yeah, just add it to all my other problems. I stayed where I was as Melendez hacked, and the smoke gradually thinned.

  When his bloodshot eyes swiveled up and he pushed himself upright, I sank my weight into my back foot, prepared to go any direction.

  “Kismet.” He coughed again, but without the smoke.

  “Melendez.” I sank down, coiling into myself like a spring. Just in case.

  “I need a beer,” he muttered. “Then I tell you todo.”

  “Sounds good.” I didn’t relax. “Does Chango smoke every time he rides you?”

  “C
hingada, no.” Amazingly enough, the round little man laughed. “Only when he mad, bruja. Only when he really fucking mad.”

  23

  I left his quiet little house a half hour later. I paused only once, standing on his threshold, to look back at the courtyard and the dry fountain. I was cold, and not even the white-yellow eye of the sun could warm me.

  It was the damndest thing, but the Cirque’s dogs didn’t come up Melendez’s driveway. Instead, they clustered up and down the street, each piece of knife-edged morning shadow full of writhing slender shapes and winking colorless-glowing eyes.

  The Pontiac’s door slammed and I stared at the steering wheel. Measured off a slice of it between my index fingers, bitten-down nails ragged, my apprentice-ring gleaming on my left third finger. Tendons stood out on the back of my scrawny hands, calloused from fighting and sparring, capable work-roughened hands.

  Jesus.

  When all else fails and you’re looking at a huge clusterfuck, sometimes you just need a moment to sit and collect yourself before you start running the next lap toward the inevitable.

  What came next?

  The Cirque. Get out there and take a look at the newest body. Chances are you’ll be able to triangulate her position from the traces, now that you know what she’s doing and how they’re linked. If you can get to her before she gets what she wants—

  But there was another consideration. If Mama Zamba, nee Arthur Gregory, was out for vengeance against the Cirque, she had a right. Sloane had been working the case, which meant it fell to me to tie up loose ends and finish the job.

  Helene took the brother in, and the fortuneteller—Moragh—had something to do with it. The Ringmaster too. That’s who Zamba blames, at least. Reasonable as far as I can see.

  But what about Ikaros? Why does she want to kill the hostage?

  I reached over, grabbed Sloane’s file from the passenger seat. Saul should have been there with me. He would be looking at me right now, his head tilted slightly and his eyes soft and deep.