by Leanne Leeds
“Have you told him yet?”
“That I’m running away to the circus?” Aidan asked. I nodded, and he shook his head no. “I figured this scenario would come to a close at some point. I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell him. I don’t want to lie to him about why am going, but it’s not like I can tell Kyle the truth.”
“Well, we’ll be here another week, maybe two,” I told him. “You have some time to figure it out. I did really want to spend some time with my parents, and we have to figure out what’s going on with Tiffany Drake. I wonder if she’s moved on now that her murder’s been solved?”
“Is that why she was there?” Gunther asked.
“I have no idea. I don’t know why ghosts do what they do.”
Kyle Roberts walked across the cul-de-sac looking as depressed and forlorn as I had ever seen him. As he approached us, he nodded.
“Are you okay?” Aidan asked him. Kyle nodded again and gazed back at the house.
“I just want to get out of here,” he told Aidan. “We never did get dinner. At this point, I could eat a horse.”
Gunther winced.
“Anybody feel like heading back to my parents’ house? We could pick up some Costco pizzas on the way home, I think they’re open for another half an hour.”
“That sounds good. I can let my parents know that this is all over and they shouldn’t have any problems. This was never about them, or the animal shelter.”
“Great, you going to follow us?” I asked him pushing myself off Aidan’s car.
“I’ll leave the SUV here. One of the guys can drive it back to the station. Aidan can drive me by to pick up my car later,” he smiled.
“Let’s do it,” Aidan said as he clapped Kyle on the back.
We went to pick up real Costco pizza, and I wondered if it would taste different than the magical slices that Jeannie manifested for me at the Magical Midway.
Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.
The four of us sat on the back porch of my parent's house drinking iced tea and slurping down the ultimate cheesy pizza slices on the planet. Lights flickered from the Magical Midway, and I felt a pang of loneliness being cut off for another eight hours.
“I just don’t want to talk about it,” Kyle said in response to Gunther’s question about Michael Hayden and the new crime organization in town. “I’m so tired of going in circles and never getting anywhere. This wasn’t why I became a cop.”
“I get it,” Gunther said.
“Hey, does someone want to show me the circus?” Kyle asked. “I never actually got to see it when we were here before. I was at the immediate crime scene almost exclusively. I’ve never gotten to walk around a circus when it’s closed. It just seems kind of cool.”
“I… um, I…”
“I can take you,” Aidan said as he pushed his chair out. “Charlotte did come to visit with her parents, and she’s barely seen them since you got here because of all this. Besides, we have some things to talk about.”
“Are you dumping me?” Kyle asked as he stood up. “Because, frankly, if you’re dumping me, I’d rather not have that done while walking around a circus. You would totally ruin the cool factor if you dumped me while I was getting to do something that not a lot of people get to do.”
“Just come on,” Aidan laughed. “So suspicious!”
“Aspect of the job, bean counter.”
The two laughed affectionately as they walked down the back stairs and out into the dark night.
“Heck of a day,” Gunther said as he moved his chair closer so he could take my hand. “Are you okay? I know that you weren’t in any danger, but I can’t believe that experience was easy.”
“No, it wasn’t, but yeah, I’m okay.”
“Good. It was frustrating for me. I want to help.”
“You did help. It helped just knowing you were there. That I could count on you to keep those other people out of the house and safe.”
“That’s good, I’m glad,” he said, and he squeezed my hand.
We sat quietly and listened to the sounds of owls hooting and cicadas humming. A warm breeze rustled the cedar trees beneath the clear sky.
“I love you,” I whispered to Gunther without turning to face him. I felt his hand gently brush my hair back from my face. “I just wanted you to know.”
“Why was that so hard for you?” he asked me quietly.
“I don’t know.”
The wind continued to wrestle the leaves. The owls hooted. The silence was full and heavy.
“Thank you,” he said after a few minutes.
“For what? For telling you?”
“That, yes,” he said as he moved his chair even closer and put his arm around me. “Mostly for loving me. That’s a sacred thing, Charlotte. I don’t take it lightly.” Gunther leaned in, and I could feel the energy in the air.
“Don’t,” I told him as I pulled back. “Remember what happened the last time you tried to kiss me. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’ll chance it,” he chuckled, still leaning in.
“I made you bleed last time!”
“Charlotte,” he whispered as he placed his hands on either side of my face and gently turned me to him. “It’ll be fine. I promise.”
I closed my eyes and held still as he leaned in. I felt a feathery touch on my lips, and light pressure. It was the most gentle and most chaste of kisses, but my stomach fluttered and jumped.
“You see?” he said as he pulled back. “One kiss, no bruises, and no blood. I’m fine, so are you.”
“Ummm hmm,” I mumbled, shivers still running down my spine. My head was a little dizzy. I could see stars exploding in the darkness behind my eyelids.
“Charlotte?”
“Ummm hmm?” I said.
You can open your eyes now, he said in my head.
I opened them, and as my eyes cleared, Gunther’s face came into focus. His expression was gentle and loving. A little amused. I wanted nothing more than to jump into his arms and kiss him. It was like an ache.
Maybe someday, he thought.
“You promised you wouldn’t read my mind,” I whispered to him.
“I promised no such thing. In fact, I promised you that I probably would read your mind because I was so new to telepathic communication,” he pointed out.
“You’re not new anymore.”
“No, I guess I’m not. But I’m still not going to promise you that.”
“Charlotte! Come quick!”
Gunther was instantly alert. “Was that Aidan?”
“I think so!”
“Charlotte!” Aidan’s voice screeched louder. “Something’s happened to Kyle, you have to come quick!”
“Oh my gosh, what now?” I asked Gunther as we jumped up from the table and ran down the stairs.
“Explain to me what the hell is happening to me!” Kyle shouted as he stomped his hooves and bucked.
Oh my.
“Charlotte will be able to, Kyle, but you have to calm down!”
I ran toward Aidan and the four-legged Kyle only to smash headfirst into an invisible wall that felt as solid as concrete. A great clang echoed from the collision, and I landed with force on my rear end.
“What was that? What was that? What is happening? Why do I have hooves? Am I on drugs?” Kyle asked as he reared up in a panic. “I’ve lost my mind, haven’t I? All the years on the police force have finally broken my sanity in two. That has to be it.”
As the newly shifted centaur paced nervously just within the borders of the Magical Midway, Aidan stood beside him looking baffled.
“I’m going to go get Ningul,” Gunther told me as he ran toward Aidan. “Can you keep him calm?”
Aidan nodded as Gunther raced deeper into the fairgrounds.
“I look like a horse. I look like a freakin’ horse!”
“You don’t look like a horse, exactly,” Aidan told him as he walked forward with his hands up. “I mean, yes, the bottom part
of you is horse-like, but from the waist up you’re still the same guy you always were.”
“What is this? What am I? What did you do to me?”
“You’re a centaur, brother,” Ningul said as he galloped up with Fiona on his back. “This midway shows people who they really are, who they could be if they choose.”
“Oh my God. You’re a horse,” Kyle whispered.
“I’m not, and neither is he,” Fiona said as she slid down off her boyfriend’s back. “Calm yourself down there, copper. It could have been worse. You could have been a leprechaun.”
“I heard that!” one leprechaun shouted from within a nearby yurt.
“I must be insane. I’m losing my mind,” Kyle said over and over to himself as members of the Magical Midway moved by ones and twos toward the drama. “You’re all… It’s like you walked out of a storybook… What are you people?”
“We’re paranormals, Kyle,” I told him as I stood up and brushed the dust off my derrière. “We’re all paranormals, and so are you.”
Samson just asked if he can take down the illusion, Gunther asked.
Yep.
Good. I’ll tell him.
In the blink of an eye, the Magical Midway return to normal. A cheer went up across the fairground.
“Oh my God, how many of you are there?” Kyle choked after the cheer. Gunther came racing back to the clearing.
“Kyle,” Aidan said as he walked closer. He held out his hand to his boyfriend and simply stood two feet from him, waiting. “I promise you that everything will be okay. Just take my hand and relax. We’ll explain everything to you, and it will all be okay.”
Kyle stepped back and forth, side to side the way any nervous horse would in a situation where they were unsure. After a few moments, Kyle’s chest heaved with a great deep breath, and he walked forward slowly to grab Aidan’s hand.
“Good, that’s good,” Aidan told him. “Now, relax and simply decide you want to be in your human form again. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and see yourself as you’ve always known yourself to be.”
Kyle shimmered and returned to his human form.
Those watching clapped.
“Guys, come on, go back to your tents and yurts,” I told them. “He’s a friend, let us help him through this. He doesn’t need an audience.”
“Yeah, but we want to watch,” Rhodia, a slightly obnoxious werewolf, complained.
“Guys, have some respect.”
“We would if you were on this side of the boundary,” Rhodia smarted off.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning. You really want to be the first thing I have to deal with when I come back? After the days I’ve had?”
“Our ringmaster jumped in front of a bullet to save a human!” Grog, the head of the goblin family, bragged.
“I heard she killed a gangster with her bare hands! Tore ‘em to pieces, she did,” Luca of the satyrs said proudly.
“None of that happened, and I think we're getting really off-topic here,” I said as I crossed my arms. “Guys, let us help Kyle. Go. Shoo.”
“Well, that was rude,” Grog mumbled as he and the others turned to walk away.
Kyle looked around at the assorted creatures, back to me, back to Aidan. Then he turned and stared at Ningul still in centaur form. The confident detective raised his hand toward the centaur, pointed a finger up in the air and then…
His eyes rolled back in his head as he collapsed, unconscious, to the ground.
“This is one of your human lawgivers?” Fiona asked with a raised eyebrow. “Not very tough if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you,” I told her.
15
“So I’m a centaur?” Kyle asked as we sat across from each other on the ground.
“Yes,” I told him again for the tenth time. “Again, I understand that this is very difficult for you to comprehend. You’re going to have to make a decision, though, about whether you want to be a paranormal or whether you want me to make it so you just go back to being human. You know, the way you were before.”
“It’s entirely up to you, Kyle,” Aidan told him for the ninth time. Or maybe it was ten times. Or perhaps we had all been sitting out here on our rumps in the dirt at the Magical Midway border for days and days and days, and we were never ever going to get to the end of this conversation…
Okay, that’s just what it felt like.
“It is challenging for our kind to function in the human world, Kyle,” Ningul told him again. “I would strongly recommend to you as the leader of the centaurs at the Magical Midway that you join us. At least join us for a time.”
“You want to figure out what you are before you give it up, don’t you?” Fiona asked him.
“None of this makes any sense to me,” Kyle told Fiona.
“Yeah, Charlotte had that deer in the path of a hungry lion look to her when she first became ringmaster, too,” Fiona told him as she patted him on the shoulder.
“I did not.”
“You kind of did.”
“Anyway, I can’t do anything until tomorrow, Kyle, so you have all night to think about it. Talk to Aidan. He pretty much just went through this a few days ago so he might be better to chat with than me.”
“How did you make your decision?” Kyle asked him.
“My situation was a little bit different,” Aidan told him as he shifted on the ground. “I have a pretty important role to play in the paranormal world. If I decided not to stay, it’s possible some pretty bad things would’ve happened. It wasn’t a hard decision for me because it wasn’t really about what I wanted.”
“If it had only been about what you wanted, would you have stayed a paranormal? Or would you have changed back?”
“I would’ve stayed a paranormal even if I wasn’t important,” Aidan told him with a wide smile. “There’s so much magic in the world. It’s amazing to me how much was there that I just never saw. I might go back to the human world someday, but if I do it will be with a much greater appreciation of how precious and sacred the world is.”
“Should I go get the boys with the drum circle? Are we going to all start praying now?” Fiona asked sarcastically. “You all have super pretty words and all, but you’re making this all sounds way more romantic than it really is. We are basically in the middle of a paranormal war, here. This isn’t all unicorns and sparkles.”
“If you came from the human world and all of this was mythological to you, Fiona, you would understand what Aidan is saying,” Gunther said.
“Oh, I totally understand what Aidan is saying. What I’m saying is no one should romanticize the decision that boy is about to make,” Fiona disagreed. She stood up and looked down upon the group seated in a semicircle on the earth. “We are in a precarious situation. Picking up new paranormals that don’t know the first thing about any of this stuff… Frankly, it’s a complication.”
“Fiona, you are my heart and my soul, and I understand what you’re saying,” Ningul told her gently. “But he is of my blood. He is Centaur. It is his choice and his choice alone. It is not about our convenience. We will do what we must to protect him. Whatever he chooses. It is my duty to do so.”
Fiona’s eyes shined with unshed tears. She nodded.
“Hey, now, I realize that I’m a little blown away by all the things that are happening here, but I don’t need anyone to protect me,” Kyle told Ningul defensively. “In the human world, I’m a cop. I’m a damn good one. If I decide to stay and be a horse man no one’s going to need to take care of me, thanks.”
“If you decide to stay and be a horse man?” Fiona asked.
“Yes?”
“Don’t ever say horse man again,” Fiona told him crossing her arms.
Kyle swallowed and stared at the fearsome Fiona.
“Understood,” he said quietly.
My mother ran down the pathway toward the back of the property where the Magical Midway sat.
“Mom? It’s two o’clock in the morning, what on e
arth are you doing up?”
Her bare feet were dusty as she pulled an old terrycloth robe around her more tightly and nodded to the assembled group. “That hideous man is in my bedroom,” my mother told me. “He’s looking for his daughter, and I can’t explain to him… Well, frankly, I’m explaining it to him just fine. He’s just not listening. Do you have any ringmaster powers that can banish a ghost? At least from my bedroom? It’s been a long day.”
“Argh! I cannot juggle one more thing right now!” I complained. My mother raised her eyebrow at me. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m just tired, too. Can’t you just make him happy with your power and make him go away?”
“No one could make that man happy, Charlotte,” my mother responded. “I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“Well, you know what they say,” Kyle said with a laugh. We all looked at him.
“Everyone is supposed to go for the juggler!”
We all stared at the overtired police officer with the punny repertoire.
“Oh, come on. No one’s heard that joke? It’s a circus joke! No?”
Silence.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to wipe your memory?” I asked him.
As we trudged up the path and into the house, no one raced. Everyone was tired and emotionally drained from the events of the last few days. I also suspected that absolutely no one wanted to talk to or help Anthony Drake’s ghost. His daughter had been bad enough, but him? The man was such a horrible human being in life. I doubted that death improved on him.
“This is your fault,” the gruff, sparkling man hissed at me as I walked into my parent’s bedroom. My father was sitting up in bed with his head leaning on his hand.
“I tried to explain, but—”
“I don’t need lessons on life and death from the dogcatcher,” Drake bellowed while pointing at my father. Dad shrugged and held up his hands in defeat. “This is your fault, and you’re going to fix it.”
“Dude, there is very little that happened in your life or the lives of those people around you that wasn’t directly your responsibility or your fault,” I told him as I flopped down on a chair at the foot of my mother’s bed. “There is no fixing dead. Get out of my parent's bedroom. Go explore. I mean, you haunted people throughout your life. Why don’t you give it a rest? Try something new for a change?”
