Smoke, Mirrors and Demons (The Carnival Society Book 1)

by Kat Cotton

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  SMOKE, MIRRORS AND DEMONS

  First edition. September 7, 2018.

  Copyright © 2018 Kat Cotton.

  ISBN: 978-1386064213

  Written by Kat Cotton.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 1

  I HAD A PLAN. A FOOLPROOF plan.

  My boss Larry had told me to go to an audition for this carnival troupe position. He wanted someone in there undercover.

  I’d refused. For the first time in my career, I’d refused a case. Larry had stared at me, open mouthed. I never refused cases. I never argued with Larry. I never stepped over any line. The rest of the team mocked me behind my back. “By the book Jayne” they called me. Which might be true but it wasn’t a very catchy nickname.

  Surely I could refuse one case. I had my reasons and Larry didn’t need to know about them. There was no way I’d tell him that the thought of going near a circus, even a hipster carnival troupe like this one, made me want to shit myself.

  “Just the audition,” he’d said. “Nothing else.”

  But I knew Larry. If I got through the audition, he’d want more. Normally, that wouldn’t be an issue but there was no way in hell I could work in a circus act. Arguing with Larry did you no good though. The last officer to refuse a case from him got shifted to doing inventories of contraband in a back office. He surfaced once in a while, covered in cobwebs and dust. Federal law enforcement might not hand out traffic tickets like local cops but there was still a long list of joyless tasks to be done—and they’d be done by the person who pissed Larry off the most.

  As the youngest, freshest member of the team — and the only female, I had a lot to prove.

  So, I’d come up with this plan. A perfect compromise. I’d do the audition like Larry asked and save my butt at work but I’d fail this audition so badly that Larry would never be able to make me take the case. My name would be the by-word in incompetence and failure when it came to carnival acts.

  It was a good plan in theory but, as I sat in my car trying to arrive late, I realized that when it came to slacking off, I was a rank amateur. I checked my watch. Five minutes before the auditions started and no one else had even arrived yet.

  I strummed my fingers on the steering wheel, wishing other people would hurry about being late.

  Since joining the federal police, I’d been held at gunpoint by drug lords, threatened by crime bosses and had fought for my life in hand to hand combat on more than one occasion. None of those things got my heart pounding like the thought of turning up late. On purpose.

  Wait, was that girl going into the audition? I slunk down in the driver’s seat like I was on a stake out and watched her. Yep, she’d definitely gone in the door.

  How many people would turn up for an audition like this anyway? The reason for the vacancy would put off a lot of hopefuls.

  I’d read through the case file a few times. Gretchen Turner. Murdered. Brutally. At 21.16, she’d gone off stage after finishing her fire-eating act to the dressing room at the back of the theater. A few people had seen her walk into the dressing room. At 21.25, she was supposed to reappear as the target girl in the knife throwing act. When she didn’t show, another member of the troupe filled in for her. One of the backstage crew checked the dressing room and found her body.

  Not just murdered but drained of all her blood. A ritual style killing. That pointed to a serial killer or something much more sinister. A human killer would need to have some well-honed skills to drain a body that fast. She’d been hacked up but there’d been nowhere near the mess you’d expect. The killer had taken her blood with him.

  I wasn’t here to investigate her murder in particular. This troupe – Sequins & Daggers – had been under suspicion for a while. They traveled the country performing and it seemed that places where they performed just happened to be places where people turned up brutally murdered. Coincidence or not?

  These audition hopefuls didn’t know about that but the Gretchen Turner murder had been all over the news along with the Sequins & Dagger name.

  The more gruesome details of the murder hadn’t been released to the press, like the mark drawn in her blood on the wall, but enough details had gotten out to make this audition very unappealing.

  Who’d want to replace a girl who’d been brutally slain?

  Another two girls went into the warehouse. I guess there were a few people desperate enough to take the risk.

  I hadn’t mentioned my demon theory to my boss because mentioning something like that would just get you written off as a loon. Larry didn’t even like theories of the more mundane kind, and he didn’t like supposition; he liked hard facts and evidence. The mention of a paranormal killer would put you so far over his line that there’d be no coming back.

  I checked my watch again. Only five minutes after the hour. Was that late enough?

  As a couple of stragglers entered the warehouse, I assumed not late enough. I grabbed my water bottle out of the console and took a swig. I’d have to wait another five or ten minutes at least.

  Finally, it got late enough for me to enter. If I’d been doing this for real, I’d have turned tail. Turning up half an hour later is worse than not turning up at all. But I wasn’t doing this for reals. Plan to fail, that’s what I had to remember.

  The only thing to signify I’d reached the right place was a tiny Sequins & Daggers logo on the roughhewn door of an inner-city warehouse. I knocked but no one answered. I tried the handle. It wasn’t locked so I walked in.

  Inside, the dusty warehouse smell combined with the strong odor of turpentine. Other, more aromatic, scents lingered in the air too, like someone had entered this doorway recently wearing a particularly pungent perfume.

  I walked up a few steps then around a partition into a large open space.

  This place might look like some shabby warehouse but inner-city spaces like this didn’t come cheap. From my research, this troupe wouldn’t be pulling in enough cash to cover the rent. That meant someone involved had a juicy source of income coming from somewhere else. I made a mental note of that.

  Follow the money, that always was the best course of action although I’m sure that Larry had someone on that already.

  It was a decent sized performance space, too. I did a quick sweep of the place. No obvious clues stood out. Not many people put up signs saying “we’re psychotic killers” but sometimes they give themselves away in small ways.

  The three troupe members sat on chairs at one
end of the room. I couldn’t get a good look from here but I’d size them up later.

  There was a sign saying “resumes” so I added mine to the pile on a stool near them.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, about to go into an explanation about why I was late but the three of them ignored me.

  Auditions hadn’t started yet. Damn, I wasn’t late enough.

  At the other end of the room, about half a dozen girls warmed up. A couple of them stretched out on floor mats. One of them wound themselves around a pole. She let out a grunt then changed position. Another did star jumps so I got on the mat near her and joined in. Star jumps were something I could manage easily.

  Then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be managing easily so fumbled my movements.

  The other girls wore outfits with various degrees of spangle. I had on yoga pants and a t-shirt. This was only an audition and I owned no spangles. They had on heavy makeup and had their hair done. I’d tied my hair back in a ponytail and had slapped on moisturizer.

  I smiled with satisfaction. Any one of these girls would be a better candidate than me.

  Posters from previous shows covered one wall. Equipment and props littered the edges. A half-painted background with a jungle theme leaned against the wall.

  An atrium ran along the right side of the room. I couldn’t see up there except to notice the blue glow from a laptop on the desk. That was the area I needed to scope out but that would be the hardest place to access. I didn’t want to draw suspicion to myself. A regular auditionee wouldn’t even think of getting near the office. Industrial stairs ran up to the atrium but the troupe sat in front of them, as though guarding that area from intruders.

  Just get the broad picture Larry had told me, but I wanted to get more than that. If I could solve this case today there’d be no more nagging about really joining the troupe. But I couldn’t see any way of doing that without creating a pretty major distraction.

  The area under the atrium was closed in with sliding doors blocking it from the main part of the warehouse. Since the sliding doors closest to me weren’t fully closed, I could see boxes overflowing with glittering fabric. Painted props leaned against the walls. A unicycle even hung from the ceiling. Store room, obviously.

  Judging from the exposed pipes leading into the other end of that space, it held a kitchen and/or bathroom area. The practical side of me tsked at the idea of having props and costumes so close to a water source. Didn’t they have the sense to realize one broken pipe would ruin everything?

  Long, narrow windows ran along the other side of the room, shining stripes of light across the polished concrete floor. Mats covered the central space of that floor, defining the audition area. Rafters crisscrossed the ceiling in an intricate pattern dotted with spotlights. A few more props hung from those rafters.

  Was that an aerial hoop up there? Jeepers.

  Nothing in the files mentioned that they did aerial acts but that was definitely a hoop I saw. My favorite toy. A secret desire to play that had been curled up in the back of my brain started screaming for attention. I had flashes of how much I’d loved that thing once upon a time.

  But, no. This was no time for that.

  For starters, it’d been raised up out of the way, obviously unused for a long time. I wasn’t even sure if it was safely anchored. And then there was the whole part about me only being here to check the place out. I didn’t need to show off and I didn’t need to make a good impression.

  I would not think about that hoop. Failing to plan is planning to fail but I had a plan and that plan was all about failure. If I got through this audition and had to join the troupe, it might well kill me. Literally.

  Chapter 2

  TEN YEARS AGO, I MADE a choice. See, I have these powers. I mean, I had powers.

  I used to be able to judge a person’s worth, whether they were good or bad, just by touching them. And visions, boy, were they the worst. I’m stronger than I should be and I killed demons just by talking at them but I was never sure if that was really me or just some freaky thing using me as a vessel.

  Those powers definitely weren’t fun and games. They drew all kinds of weird shit to me. Seems if you can kill demons, they start hunting you. Rather than kill them, I’d much preferred they left me the hell alone.

  And rather than knowing what was inside a person’s heart, give me silence on their emotions any time.

  Even growing up in a circus, I’d known these powers weren’t normal. Folding your body up into a tiny box or shooting yourself out of a cannon, that was normal. Fighting demons, not so much.

  Then shit got beyond real. I needed out of there fast. I ran away. I lived on the streets with a belly full of despair.

  Ten years ago, I met my foster dad, Buzz. One of the greatest guys in this world. He gave me a home and a family and he gave me a choice: develop my powers or bury them.

  I didn’t even have to think about that. Bury them. Bury them deep.

  I wanted a life without drama and without all the creepy stuff. Things are connected in this life.

  But, even back then, at fifteen years old, I’d known those powers wouldn’t stay buried forever. One day they’d resurface and I’d have to deal with the consequences. But, at fifteen, who thinks that far into the future?

  With Buzz, with my powers sealed away, I could sleep safe in my bed at night – even if it was all on borrowed time.

  Still, there were things I missed from my old life. And that hoop up there was one of them. I used to be able to soar through the air where nothing mattered but how I could move my body. Of all the things I’d sacrificed to stay safe, the acrobat side was what I missed most.

  And that was exactly why I should not have been at this audition.

  One of the troupe stood up. Duke, I assumed. Everything about this guy said he was the leader. He stood with natural authority, as though he didn’t have a single doubt that all attention would be on him. Even though he wasn’t on stage, he sparkled with showmanship.

  He wore a vintage velvet suit with a ruffled dress shirt.

  And his mustache...

  That mustache annoyed me so much. Too over the top. Too hipster. And too damn smug. It’d tickle like hell if he kissed you. Not that I had any intention of testing that out.

  Stupid mustache. I bet he’d grown it just to annoy people. It seemed like a purposely annoying mustache, and that made me even more annoyed, like I’d fallen into a trap.

  I wondered how much time he spent waxing that mustache.

  “Are we ready to start?” he asked.

  His voice reminded me of an aged whiskey, all rolling Rs and rumbling in your ears. That voice annoyed me, too.

  “I want you to dazzle me,” he continued. “I want you to prove that you are good enough to be part of Sequins & Daggers. We need a new member but we’re not willing to take any but the best.”

  He didn’t introduce himself or the others as though they were such big stars, everyone would know who they were. He struck me as the type who was never not on. He wouldn’t go home, put on his sweats and sit on the sofa scratching his nuts while watching a ball game on TV, that’s for sure.

  He strode across the space and picked up the resumes, leafing through them starting from the bottom.

  My attention turned to the two who’d been sitting either side of him. The girl on his left was Lilly, the burlesque dancer. She reminded me of a cat, one of those fancy breeds. She wore a vintage dress that showed off her hourglass figure and one of those ‘40s style hats with a veil obscuring most of her face but emphasizing her blood red lips. She slumped to the side as though she’d rather be napping than watching these auditions. Even slumped over like that, everything about her screamed sex. I guess for the burlesque type acts, that’s what you needed.

  The guy on his left was Nuno. I had less information on Nuno than the other two. He played piano accordion and I think that unicycle was part of his act. He also juggled. That was as much as I knew. His long hair flopped onto
his face. He sat with one leg folded up, his arms wrapped around it. Bare feet. Vacant expression.

  All three had little information on their files that went back further than the troupe’s formation almost a year ago. It was as though they all just appeared from nowhere. That definitely raised suspicions. Assumed names and assumed identities could only hide so much. Your best bet was to never draw attention to yourself so that no one had any interest in diving deeper. Being part of a performing troupe was the exact opposite of not calling attention to yourself, and being connected to a string of murders sure didn’t help either. Still, all our searching had pulled up little. There was no social security information, no health records. No fingerprints on file, no dental records.

  “Brindley Jones,” Duke called out. “You may begin.”

  One of the girls sitting on the sofa got up. She grabbed a hula hoop that had been resting against the side of the sofa and moved to the mats. She smiled and bowed to the troupe then turned and bowed to us on the sofa. A standard move but it seemed trite and tired the way she did it, like someone had told her it was the best way to start but she lacked the conviction to back it up.

  She put on her music and began her routine. I’d judge her as average at best. She had some skills but no stage presence. She wouldn’t be around long.

  Duke stood and clapped his hands, one loud clap. “We’re seen enough.”

  “But I’m just getting started,” the girl said.

  My heart sunk for her. Arguing would only put her further down the list. This was an audition, if you didn’t wow them to start with, you had no hope.

  “We’ve seen enough, I said.” Duke didn’t even look at her. “We have your contact details.”

  The girl snorted, grabbed her jacket off the sofa and stormed out with her hoop around her neck while Duke called another name.

  Lilly didn’t even look up as the second girl ran through her dance routine. She stiffened a little at one point as though stifling a yawn.

  After the third girl auditioned we had a break. My chance to snoop a little. I asked where the bathroom was. I approached Nuno since he seemed the least intimidating of the three but he ignored me. Maybe he wasn’t as friendly as he looked. He obviously thought he was too cool to talk to someone here for an audition.