Ringmaster

by Aurelia T. Evans

  “It’s really hard to explain without explaining everything,” Kitty said. She wrapped the chains back around the center of the gate and snapped the padlock in place.

  “Did they have these gates the last time I came here?” Victor asked. He traced the gothic scrollwork, admiring the artistry.

  “As long as I’ve been here.”

  “How long have you been here exactly?” Victor asked.

  “I joined when I was twenty-eight. I’ve been here…almost sixteen years,” Kitty said. After a while, the years all melded together like wax under a summer sun.

  Victor’s hand paused at the sharp end of an iron flourish. “You are not forty-four.”

  “I don’t look forty-four,” she corrected him.

  “You look younger than me. You always have,” Victor said. “Next you’re going to tell me this place keeps you young.”

  “I’ve looked the same for the last sixteen years,” Kitty replied evenly. “Except for my hair and nails. Those keep growing. I still have to trim and cut like crazy. Follow me.”

  Victor stared after Kitty for a moment. Then he jogged up behind her. “You haven’t changed at all since we first met. I figured it was good skin and a barrel’s worth of hair dye once the grays started coming in.”

  “I have a few gray hairs. The same gray hairs all these years,” Kitty said.

  “I can’t believe this,” he said, shaking his head firmly, as though trying to convince himself.

  “You don’t have to,” she replied. “After all, I could be a pathological liar. Aren’t all circus folk scammers?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know it wasn’t. It would be an interesting scam, though—me lying so that I can give you donations.”

  Victor relaxed a little when Kitty reached out to take his hand again. “That would be the best kind of scam,” Victor said.

  “I know, right?”

  They crossed past the big top tent. Kitty could smell the breakfast burritos the crew had made for the cast.

  “Stay here,” Kitty said. She arranged him outside the entrance, slightly out of sight so he wouldn’t be noticed right away by anyone leaving out of the front.

  “Why?” Victor asked. “Ashamed of bringing someone normal home to Daddy?”

  She playfully punched his shoulder. “No. But normal can be a target outside of circus hours. Bell will know we’re coming, so he’ll have told the clowns, but the rest of the cast could make things difficult.”

  “What about the clowns? Wait, difficult how?”

  “They haven’t had many good experiences with outsiders when the circus isn’t open. It helps that it’s daytime, so you’re probably not here to make trouble, but they might poke at you to see if you’ll squeal until Bell can get there,” Kitty said.

  “When you say ‘poke’…”

  “I mean that literally, not figuratively.”

  “Good?”

  “Just wait for me to check if Bell’s in,” Kitty said.

  “He’s a fortune teller. Wouldn’t he know where you are and where you want him to be?” Victor asked.

  “He’s also jinn. He might want me to search for him, because he’s dramatic that way,” Kitty said.

  “So jinn are dramatic?”

  “Powerful beings are dramatic. Bell is powerful. And he created Arcanium. I think ‘dramatic’ is an understatement. Don’t you?” Kitty said. “It’s not an inherent jinn quality, though. Arcanium is all flash by nature, but I bet you couldn’t correctly point out which cast members are demons and which are human on your first try. And you can’t tell the demons and jinn outside Arcanium at all.”

  “Touché. This is just too weird, talking about this shit as though it’s real.”

  “If it blows your mind too much, sometimes it helps to talk about it as though it isn’t real, like it’s in a book or a movie,” Kitty said.

  Victor looked her over as though seeing her for the first time. He didn’t often get to see her in broad daylight. In a lot of ways, maybe it was his first time. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

  “What? Recruited?”

  “Had to talk someone through getting used to being here,” he said.

  Kitty shrugged one shoulder. “We don’t have a lot of turnover. Maybe one new person a year. It’s usually a difficult transition.”

  Victor grabbed her arm to stop her from leaving. “When you were talking about…making the W-word, you said it would make things better if I offered to join the circus. That implies that sometimes he makes things worse.”

  “It’s a demonic circus run by a jinni who’s capricious at best,” Kitty said. “What did you expect?”

  “Then why are you here?” he asked.

  “Because it’s my home,” she replied. She pulled out of his grip and stepped toward the entrance. “If you want to leave, I’m not stopping you.”

  Victor backed up against the tent canvas and crossed his arms over his chest with a troubled frown.

  Kitty entered the big top, trusting him to be there when she returned, but also prepared for it if he wasn’t. She ducked through the large red curtain that separated the ring from backstage, but Bell wasn’t anywhere to be found.

  “Of course he’s not here,” she muttered. She sat on the bench next to Maya. “Did Bell just leave?”

  Maya nodded and pointed out the back exit, her mouth full. She swallowed and said, “He’s been smirking all morning and not because of me, so something’s going on. What’s up?”

  “If it’s something worth knowing, you’ll know about it soon,” Kitty said.

  Maya’s expression turned into one she usually reserved for Bell at his most cryptic.

  “Don’t worry. It’s nothing bad,” Kitty said. “Just no point in telling if there’s nothing to tell.”

  “The fact that you’re not telling me means there’s something to tell,” Maya replied. “But since everyone here is entitled to keep some things to themselves, I’ll leave it alone—for now.”

  “You’re a beautiful person,” Kitty said.

  “Damn straight.”

  With Bell’s head start, he was probably already in his tent. Kitty headed out of the front instead of the back.

  And not a moment too soon, because Lennon, one of Arcanium’s tumblers, was up in Victor’s face.

  “You know, if you’re not one of us or one of those dead-inside little gremlins, you’re not supposed to be here, mate,” Lennon said, his shoulder-length black hair swinging as he pushed into Victor’s space. Victor wasn’t the tallest man, but neither was Lennon. They were practically eye to eye.

  “I’m not trespassing,” Victor insisted, leaning away as though Lennon’s breath stank. Knowing Lennon’s morning routine, it might have. “I was invited.”

  “Oh, a normal like you was invited in? The doors just opened like magic and locked behind you, did they?” Lennon asked. He grasped Victor’s shirt at the shoulders, not quite ready to fight, but building up to it.

  “The golems opened it for us,” Kitty said.

  Lennon immediately released Victor’s shirt and stepped back, as though scolded by a nun.

  “I invited him.”

  “Bloke should have a visitor’s pass or a sign around his neck saying he’s golden,” Lennon said. He backed away with a disarming smile.

  Kitty wasn’t worried or threatened. He couldn’t do much more damage than what Victor could do right back to him, except that Lennon sometimes had sharper teeth.

  “Or if a man’s just waiting outside a tent in the middle of the day instead of skulking about, perhaps it’s reasonable to assume he’s there on purpose?” Kitty suggested.

  “The rules are the rules. If he’s an invite of yours, you better keep the piece close,” Lennon said, “else someone might think he’s fair game.”

  “It’s not afterhours. It’s before hours. We don’t randomly attack people before hours.”

  “Do you randomly attack people afterhours?�
� Victor asked.

  Lennon’s perfect, white smile broadened a little too wide. “Not randomly,” he said.

  “Afterhours no one is ever up to any good,” Kitty said. She grabbed Victor’s shoulders and turned him away from Lennon. “Come on. He’s mostly harmless.”

  “Oi!” Lennon shouted. But he didn’t come after them, just chuckled to himself as he headed in the other direction.

  “Aside from sounding like some limey Brit, he seemed completely normal until he…” Victor gestured toward his face like an explosion.

  “Arcanium folk are suspicious of outsiders when the circus isn’t open. That’s not unique to us. Circus folk have to be suspicious.”

  “Why?”

  “The population likes us when we’re entertaining them. When we’re not, they take us personally. I doubt even they know why,” Kitty said.

  “Do you?” he asked.

  “Because we’re different and we don’t hide it. Must mean we want a fist in the face. Weren’t you ever bullied as a kid?” Kitty asked.

  “Some. Because I was short and coughed a lot. But not much.”

  “It’s nonsensical, the idea that being short and coughing are legitimate reasons to hurt someone,” Kitty said.

  “It’s human nature. It’s animal nature. Sucky animal nature. Preying on the weak.”

  “But differences aren’t guarantees of weakness. Our Tattooed Man regularly sticks needles into his body almost to the bone or has other people do it where he can’t reach, yet people think that because he’s inked all over, that shows weakness? It’s not preying on the weak,” Kitty said. “It’s violent socialization. When they see someone different, they have this deep urge to correct it, which sometimes means destroying it—like popping a pimple.”

  “I’d say you were being cynical, but I get the feeling you have a better perspective on this than me,” Victor said.

  “You’re a smart man,” Bell said, coming up behind them without even a crackle of the grass.

  Kitty didn’t jump, since she’d been half-expecting him to pull such a stunt. Victor did, though. Then he coughed. He managed to get this one under control before it became too alarming. He reached in his pocket.

  Bell opened his hand with a subtle flourish. A prescription spray bottle lay in his palm.

  “Hey, how did you—? Never mind,” Victor said. He accepted his medication and took it while Bell watched him without a word.

  “Victor Lazlo, this is Bell Madoc, fortune teller, illusionist, owner of Arcanium,” Kitty said.

  Bell turned his open hand to offer it to Victor, who shook it warily. If Victor was in any way disturbed by being stared at with such intensity by a somewhat pretty but masculine man who was bare-chested and wearing a pair of thin, ivory cotton pants, he managed to keep it to himself.

  “Please, step into my office,” Bell said, gesturing to his tent.

  He held the flap open for both Kitty and Victor.

  The inside of the tent contained the usual fortune-telling paraphernalia. There were three delicate wooden chairs and a small table with a deck of tarot cards next to a velvet runner for palm reading. Candles, idols and raw crystals decorated a wooden shelving unit behind the table, a crystal ball partially hidden behind one of the fatter candles and a crystal skull hiding behind an idol. Beaded chains, filmy scarves and suncatchers hung from leather cords tied to the ceiling. A large fan pointed at the table and chairs for when the afternoon became too hot.

  There was a smaller fan in the corner next to a short armchair where Maya sometimes sat during the day—as an apprentice, she and Bell would say. Kitty wouldn’t be surprised if Bell gave Maya her own fortune teller’s tent in a few years if it struck her fancy to join the trade in addition to working the high wire and being his magician’s assistant.

  It was surprisingly comfortable instead of stuffy or overscented. Bell didn’t need many creature comforts, but what he did need, he made sure he had it.

  “Interesting office décor,” Victor said.

  “Have a seat,” Bell responded. “You don’t have to offer me your palms, I already know why you’re here.”

  “Why am I here?” Victor asked.

  “Because the lady asked you to come. And as a gentleman, you couldn’t refuse, if just to humor her,” Bell said.

  Victor couldn’t help glancing over at Kitty, who had taken the seat next to him while Bell sat across. She gave him a small, encouraging nod.

  “That wasn’t the only reason I came,” Victor said, choosing his words with deliberate care.

  “Ah, a test. I never get those,” Bell said dryly.

  “Hazard of the job, don’t you think? You’re the one with something to prove,” Victor said.

  “True.” Bell leaned back in his chair and gave Victor a slow onceover, drawing it out.

  Victor clutched his thigh near his knee to keep from fidgeting.

  “Bell, you already know everything. You don’t need to make him squirm,” Kitty said.

  “I don’t need to, but I enjoy it.” Bell toyed with the beaded tassel that hung from the end of his leather belt. “He’s got it all boiled down to its most basic principles, doesn’t he? You’re either lying, crazy or telling the truth. That’s what all extraordinary claims come down to, although it’s a bit simplistic, don’t you think? There are other possibilities.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I and many of my cast could be lying to her and others. Like she could be misinterpreting her situation entirely. That doesn’t make her an intentional liar or delusional—just misguided,” Bell said. “But Kitty doesn’t strike you as a woman easily duped. It’s true. She doesn’t have single thread of telepathy worming through her brain, but she has the uncanny ability to see through my half-truths.”

  “So you admit you lie to her,” Victor said.

  “You’re hardly one to throw stones, friend. I play with the truth because it amuses me and because there are things that are mine to protect,” Bell continued. “The latter is the reason she lies to others, although she cannot lie to me. It’s the reason why you lied to her.”

  Victor narrowed his eyes. “She called you while I was asleep, explained everything.”

  “You can check her outgoing phone calls, if you’re that kind of man, Victor,” Bell replied, waving his hand at Kitty. “I could go intimate and personal and tell you the details of every last encounter you’ve had with every woman you’ve ever made love to, but that would just make you defensive and utterly ruin this exercise. So let me just spell this situation out for you. You’re dying. You’re at the age when people like you tend to die. Do you want me to tell you when you’ll die if you don’t join us?”

  “How would I be able to believe you?” Victor asked.

  “The only sure-fire way to confirm it is to walk away and wait. Most people don’t know their expiration date. Some people get one from their doctors, but that sort of prognostication is scientific and, thus, inexact. I can give you inexact, a sweeping generality of a number. I can also tell you the date, time and cause of your death, if you want it, though most people live too hard or live in fear when they know their death day,” Bell said.

  “I don’t want it,” Victor said quickly. There were dark circles under his eyes from the lack of sleep that he and Kitty had had last night, but they seemed deeper now—as though fear of mortality could make a man look like death. Or maybe Kitty was finally seeing him for the first time, too, in the harsh light of day.

  Bell smiled. “You’d only deny me if you were afraid I could really give it to you. That’s good. It means you’re taking me seriously. You don’t believe all the way, but you believe it’s possible.”

  “You saw my medication when you pickpocketed it,” Victor said. “You made an assumption.”

  “I only know what that medicine is for because you know it. The name means nothing to me,” Bell responded. “I’m no doctor. I’ve never even seen one—professionally. I’ve given readings to quite a few.”
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  “What do you want from me?” Victor asked, standing. His forearms bulged as he clenched his hands into tight fists.

  Kitty recognized that kind of anger. Victor was totally freaked out.

  “It’s not about what I want from you, Victor. It’s what you want from me. That’s why you’re here, not because I asked you to come.”

  “Do you not want me here?” Victor asked.

  “At the moment, I’m having fun. I’m ambivalent about you being here. What matters now is what you get out of it,” Bell replied.

  “You’re one fucked-up dude,” Victor muttered, but he slowly sat down again.

  Kitty just watched the men display their peacock plumage and waited for one of them to bite. She’d witnessed Bell bat people around with his particular brand of mysterious, abrasive charm long enough that it didn’t amuse her like it used to. But she had done her part. The rest of it was up to Victor, and unless he asked, her input wasn’t relevant.

  Bell spread his arms. “Helps not to be human. Now, we all know you’re dying and that Kitty brought you here because I could do something for you…for the right price.”

  “She didn’t say anything about money,” Victor said.

  “I don’t want your money. I have plenty of money,” Bell said. “But she suggested I’d be more willing to cure you if you offered me something in return, yes?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Bell just raised an eyebrow and slouched in his seat, somehow looking like some kind of elven prince instead of a sullen teenager while doing so.

  “Fine. Yes, she said that you’d be more likely to help me if I offered to join the circus in return. Hypothetically speaking—”

  Bell raised an eyebrow in interest, smiling, somehow pleased that Kitty had told Victor the magic words for lawyers and wish-granting jinn alike to suspend retribution. His amber hazel eyes gleamed.

  “Hypothetically speaking, if I were to just wish for you to cure me and not in exchange for joining the circus, what would you do?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Bell replied. “Hypothetically speaking, there are any number of things that I could do to you that would make your wish not end the way you’d like it to. Everyone thinks they know what they want. They idly wish it out loud. Yours would be a deliberate wish, which means you might be able to control how I manipulate it, but no man is clever enough to completely circumvent my whim. I will always find a way to get what I want. In fact, if you wished for a cure on its own, I could force you into Arcanium anyway as a magical condition of that cure.”