by Leanne Leeds
“Why is that?”
“Whatever side of the barrier she’s on as the sun sets or rises, that’s the side that she’ll be on for the entire night or day.”
“Right, of course,” Aidan nodded as if information within his mind was suddenly clarified. “It is unlikely that the Magical Midway would face any threat from the Witches' Council during this time—if that’s a primary concern. With the police attention, they wouldn’t dare make a move.”
“That’s a good point,” I told Gunther. “Even if I can’t get back on the fairgrounds themselves, we can just sleep in the main house. My parents have plenty of extra room.”
It will be fine. Just go.
Samson?
The sooner you solve this, the sooner we leave, and the sooner I can stop this. Do whatever you must do. I will handle it here. Just go.
“Samson says he can handle protecting the Magical Midway if I can’t get back, which is likely.”
“I have my car, so I’ll be happy to drive. I can also swing by my apartment and get clothing and items that I’ll need when we leave,” Aidan volunteered.
“When we leave?” Gunther asked, confused.
“Yes, I’ll be coming with you when the Magical Midway moves on to its next destination,” Aidan told him. “I could explain all the reasons for that, prophecy this and future that and knowing the past blah blah blah, but in reality, I’m kind of excited for reasons apart from any magical ones.”
“You seem to have adjusted awfully quickly to your new life,” Gunther observed. His words were tinged with just a shade of suspicion.
“It’s a side effect of my magical ability,” Aidan told him and smiled. “When my powers were fully awakened, I had access to my own past in a way that I never had before. Self-awareness came more quickly than I ever would’ve expected. I feel a little silly struggling all those years with who I am. Now it all seems so clear.”
“That must be nice,” Gunther said wryly.
“You’re closer than you think,” Aidan responded kindly. “You’re struggling far too much with…”
Aidan stopped short and glanced at me.
“My apologies, Gunther, I didn’t mean to offer advice when it wasn’t asked for, and I shouldn’t have said anything in front of another without your permission. Please know that I am here for all of you, not just Charlotte. I would be happy to talk to you about your story whenever you wish.”
“Maybe let’s leave the self-examination until after we solved Tiffany’s murder,” Gunther told him. “I for one would really love for that girl to move on. I’ve met unpleasant creatures in my lifetime, but she really takes the cake.”
“Is there cake? Oh, awesome, I want some cake!” Bob Larry called excitedly as he walked into the yurt. “I timed this just right! Oh, hey! Who are you, now?”
My Roman hippie guard casually strolled in twirling his spear as if it were a baton. The handsome, goofy lares eyed Aidan with interest as he waited to be introduced.
“Bob, this is my friend Aidan, and he’s going to be staying with us from now on,” I told him. “Aidan, this is Bob. He’s one of five lares guards that we have at the Magical Midway. They’re Roman—”
“I can read his story, Charlotte,” Aidan said without taking his eyes off of Bob. “No need to explain to me. What an incredibly unique story it is…”
“That’s me, Aidan, super unique! All the strength and fierceness of a Roman warrior wrapped in that cuddly exterior of an impish kitten,” Bob said proudly. “I can promise you that you’ll never meet another lar like me.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so,” Aidan answered.
My eyes traveled back and forth between Aidan and Bob as the two men stared at one another and my intuition lit up like a Christmas tree. Wait, was Bob gay? I thought back to the conversations we had, and I could never recall him saying he liked anyone romantically one way or another. Not a man, not a woman, not even a species.
I shrugged. With Aidan’s new power, he was more than capable of figuring out whether Bob was or wasn’t someone he should be attracted to. I looked over at Gunther. He looked back at me, amused.
“Anyway, what did you need, Bob?”
“Anya wanted me to let you know that she and Avalon are handling the deer herd, and though they’re doing okay, they are getting a bit nervous. Fortuna and Fiona have gone over there to help her since Fortuna can sense how fearful they are, and Fiona… well, she really just likes to be in the middle of things, doesn’t she?”
I chuckled.
“Everything else is kind of steady as she goes,” Bob said with a haphazard bow. “Anything else I can do for you, Charlotte, you just let me know. Unless it has to do with that old woman in there,” Bob whispered as he jutted his chin in Ethel Elkins general direction. “That old lady scares me.”
“I heard that!” a screech exploded from behind the closed door.
“See? That ain’t normal,” Bob said as he shook his head.
“Just to let you know, Bob, Gunther and I are going to be leaving the grounds. There’s a good chance we won’t be back by sundown, but Samson’s assured me that everything will be fine overnight. We’ll sleep up at the main house and be back in the morning.”
“You going to leave handsome down here with me to keep me company?” Bob smiled mischievously at Aidan and wiggled his eyebrows. Aidan laughed and struggled not to blush.
“Handsome is coming with us,” I told him. “He’s got a car, and we need to pick up some things for him so he can move in.”
“So, tell me about Bob,” Aidan said as his eyes scanned the empty rural highway. The blue sedan traveled right at the speed limit as I sat in the passenger side and Gunther looked out onto the Texas prairie from the backseat. I chuckled partially at his question and partially at his conservative car driving right within the rules. “Have you known him long?”
“Since I was a girl and first came to the Magical Midway,” I answered fiddling with the radio. “Why are you asking me about Bob, Aidan? Can’t you, like, read his whole story and tell everything about him?”
“Not precisely,” he said as we came upon a slow tractor driving ten miles an hour to get from one field to another. Flipping on his blinker even though there wasn’t a car behind us for miles, Aidan slid us into the passing lane. “I can see things that happened, images and information, but it’s very dry. Almost academic. It doesn’t tell me who he is, not really.”
“It seemed to tell you who Ethel Elkins was,” Gunther observed. “I mean, whatever you saw in your head certainly seem to inform what you told her. It seemed personal to me.”
“That was a little different,” Aidan told him as he glanced in the rearview mirror. “Ethel Elkins is in charge of the future from her perspective, and I hold the key to understanding the past. To some extent, these roles are always tugging on one another trying to pull the balance right.”
“Interesting,” Gunther said, though it didn’t sound like he thought it was interesting.
“So why do you want to know about Bob, Aidan?” I teased.
“I was just curious, that’s all,” he replied as nonchalantly as he could. “Charlotte, have you talked to Tabitha since you left?”
“Wouldn’t you know?” I asked him, confused.
“It doesn’t seem like you have, but frankly, I’m not entirely sure that I can see absolutely everything, especially if something happens that didn’t really have a consequence. So let’s just assume that if I’m asking a question you don’t have to counter with asking whether I should know or not.”
“Well, what it seems like is what it is. I wanted to give her some space, and then I left. Actually, I think I told you that already.”
Aidan’s face tense for a moment and then he nodded. “This is harder than I thought,” he said in a voice so low I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or talking to himself.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s just a lot of information, and I’m starting to have trouble sep
arating what I know because I experienced it and what I know because of the psychic access I have to people’s timelines. The memories that are my own are starting to… just mix in with everything else.”
“Are you going to be okay?” Gunther asked, concerned. “Should we pull over and have Charlotte drive?”
“I don’t think so,” Aidan answered after a few moments. “I don’t think I’ll lose skills that I’ve learned. At least, at the moment I don’t think I will. I’m fine to drive.”
“Isn’t that it?” I pointed to the exit that would head toward the college. Sorority Circle was located a few blocks away from the college. It was a small college, outside of Austin proper, and from what I remembered there were only five sororities on the campus. I explained to Gunther how each house lined a cul-de-sac at the end of fraternity row.
“So there are these five houses, like five competing covens, and they all live on the same circled street next to one another?”
“Wait, we have covens?”
“Of course we do,” Gunther told me. “Well, we are circus people, so we don’t. But there are dozens of covens in Impy.”
“What about the other towns?”
“Covens are only allowed in Impy, and only after being chartered by the Witches' Council.”
“Of course. Why did I even ask? In any case, to answer your previous question, yes, the sororities all live next to each other. They’re not really supposed to be rivals, though. I mean, they are, but it’s supposed to be friendly.”
“Someone kidnapped and killed a dog,” Gunther murmured as civilization moved past the window. “That doesn’t sound like a friendly rivalry to me.”
“The dog’s death was not intentional,” Aidan said without looking away from the traffic. “I do agree that Ms. Drake’s personality has been warped by her father’s… unique view of morality. She kidnapped the dog and displayed it outside in the outfit of her own sororities’ mascot.”
“Which was?”
“An owl,” he said. “The costume, however, was not really a costume. It was a rubber encasement. The dog suffocated within an hour.”
“How do you know that the dog’s death wasn’t intentional?”
“I have the memory of the discussion to pull the prank,” Aidan said. “She did not perform this prank alone, but she did take the fall for the others that were involved.”
“Could one of them have killed her?”
“She was kicked out of the college, I saw that on the court papers,” I told Gunther as our eyes met in the mirror. “How many other people were involved?”
“Two other sorority sisters that I saw,” Aidan said.
“Would you recognize them if you saw them?”
“Yes, definitely.”
“So we need to visit both sorority houses,” I said.
“And we now have two houses full of suspects,” Gunther said.
“Two houses full of sorority girls,” Aidan pointed out as he pulled the car into the sorority house cul-de-sac. Gazing at the old houses, he turned back and sighed. “If those girls are anything like Tiffany Drake, this may take us a while.”
If those girls are anything like Tiffany Drake, any of them could’ve killed her.
11
We climbed the ramp in front of the Alpha Omicron Kappa house slowly. The slope was a gentle, zigzagging pattern and clearly designed more for the comfort of those pushing a wheelchair than those who could walk up. There were no stairs to bypass the three sloping levels that led to the house’s front door.
“Don’t climb over that,” I told Aidan as he threw his leg over one of the handrails.
“Why not?” he asked me, confused.
“I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem right somehow,” I told him, biting my lower lip. “I mean, they could’ve made stairs. They didn’t. So just go up the ramp the way they laid it out.”
“Um, okay, Charlotte,” Aidan said as he lowered his leg. “I was just trying to save a couple of seconds.”
“I get it,” I nodded.
I wasn’t sure why Aidan sprinting over the barriers didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it was something about the fact that many girls that lived in this house couldn’t, and so jumping over the handrails seem disrespectful somehow. It felt impatient. Entitled, even.
Tiffany Drake’s attitude was getting to me.
When we reached the top, I rang the doorbell, and a cheerful chime echoed from behind the door.
“Hello? Can I help you?” someone called from within the house.
“Hi, we were hoping to talk to someone about the animal abuse that took place a couple of months ago? Is the person that owned the dog in?”
The door opened, and as it slowly widened, a dark-haired girl in a wheelchair stared out at us from behind black-rimmed glasses. “Who are you?” she asked suspiciously.
“I work for the police department, ma’am,” Aidan jumped in pulling out a badge that may or may not have been real for all I knew. “A couple of days ago, a Tiffany Drake was murdered. We just wanted to swing around and ask a few questions just in case what happened to her had anything to do with what happened to the dog.”
“The dog’s name was Destiny,” the girl said quietly as tears filled her eyes. “And she wasn’t the dog. She was my dog.”
“I’m so terribly sorry,” I told her as the girl's wave of grief and pain and loss flowed over me. I felt guilty for provoking it. “The loss of a pet is always excruciating, and this must’ve been much worse than that for you.”
“Because the person that was supposed to watch out for me is the one that killed her?” the girl snapped.
“Supposed to watch out for you?” I asked. The young woman directly stared back at me for a long time. Then she sighed and rolled backward making room for us.
“Why don’t you just come in? It doesn’t seem like you really know much about what happened here. That doesn’t really surprise me,” the girl said as she will backward to allow us room to come in. “Tiffany always managed to get out of everything and hide the truth from everyone. Not sure why this would be any different.”
“Melissa, are you okay?” A beautiful blonde girl asked as she came down the stairs.
“Yeah, I’m fine. These folks want to talk about what happened with Destiny. Apparently, someone killed Tiffany a couple of days ago,” Melissa told her as she wheeled into the central sitting area off the hallway. The young woman’s words brought her friend to a stop as her jaw dropped.
“Wow, are you kidding? She’s dead? Someone actually killed her?” the blond made a quick sign of the cross.
“Yep. Not kidding. At least I’m not unless they are,” Melissa said as she gestured to us.
“No, it’s been all over the news,” I told her. “I’m surprised you didn’t already know.”
“We’re both taking summer classes,” Melissa responded as she shrugged. “We’re lucky we remember to eat, honestly.”
No one so far seemed remotely broken up about the fact that a young woman close to their age had been murdered. No one asked why, neither of these girls looked sad at all. There wasn’t even a rampant set of rumors or gossip about her death. For a moment I felt a twinge of sympathy for Tiffany, so disliked that no one seemed to care too much she was dead.
Tiffany killed this girl’s dog, Gunther thought. I don’t know that I’d be very broken up about it, either, if I were her.
He had a point.
“Let me know if you need anything, okay?” The blonde girl said.
“No problem, I’m good,” Melissa told her as we all sat down.
“Is she, um…” Gunther’s voice trailed off as he watched the able-bodied blonde girl walk on her own power out of the room. I winced as Melissa’s eyes narrowed. Everyone realized what he was about to say all at the same moment.
The same moment he realized it was probably not a question he should be asking.
“Where is she broken, you mean? You must’ve met Tiffany before she died,” Melissa told
Gunther with an edge to her voice. “Our sorority is full of idiots, rejects, and retards, right? I’m sure that’s what you were told.”
“I don’t think that’s what he meant,” Aidan interjected. “We had been told, however, that this was a sorority for those with disabilities of all types. One of the first sororities of its kind, in fact.”
“Yeah, no, that’s not exactly it,” Melissa said. “This is a sorority like any other sorority. You have to be of good moral character to join, you have to be smart, you have to get good grades. All of the normal sorority stuff. The only difference is that our sorority doesn’t exclude people just because they’re disabled. So there are able-bodied people here, and there are disabled people here. And frankly, a lot of the time you won’t be able to tell who is who.”
“That still goes on? The exclusion, I mean,” I asked her. “Isn’t that against the law somehow?”
“Officially? Of course it doesn’t go on,” Melissa said as she rolled her eyes. “Lawsuits and all, right? Unofficially? Pledge week was designed to weed out the undesirables. It’s effortless to make sure that someone is unable to complete the challenges of pledge week because they’re disabled. If that’s what you want to do, anyway. And most sororities and fraternities do.”
“I’m sincerely sorry if I offended with my almost-question,” Gunther told her. “I realized as soon as my mouth started moving that it was an insulting thing to say.”
“Apology accepted,” she nodded.
Gunther looked relieved. My boyfriend really was considerate but unfamiliar with navigating this human terrain. Every time I brought him near my human life or even talked about it, it’s like I would knock him off his game. All this was a lot to handle, and I never even prepared him for human etiquette.
Well, not much.
“So, what is it you think we’re unclear on? I really would like to know the story,” I told Melissa. “Even if it doesn’t help us figure out who might’ve killed Tiffany, my parents run the animal shelter that she volunteered at. She was a… strange girl. I guess I’m kind of curious how she got that way.”
