Ringmaster

by Aurelia T. Evans

  She didn’t resist as he drew her down to lay on top of him, her legs straddling his hips. She rested her hair and her head on the rise and fall of his chest. He wrapped his arms around her. His natural heat surrounded her naked body so that even in the cold, she didn’t shiver, and in spite of the lingering pain that he’d left behind on her body, he had been better than any whiskey bottle. Sleep swept her under at her surrender.

  Chapter Nine

  A knock on the boards jolted Kitty awake. Disoriented, Kitty pushed herself upright, unsure where she was and who she’d been sleeping on top of.

  Guilt shot through her stomach before she could convince herself there was nothing about last night that she should feel guilty about. She couldn’t stop the flush of shame over her cheeks and chest when she whipped her head around, her hair fanning out around her shoulders, to see Bell leaning over the partition counter. His default smirk tugged at his lips—the subtle arch of his eyebrow told her he wasn’t just amused.

  Underneath her, the Ringmaster hadn’t risen from the ground, but there was fury like dark fire in his eyes as he stared up at Bell.

  “The both of you need to vacate the booth,” Bell said. “The golems are frustrated that your presence won’t allow them to prepare for the day and sanitize everything you’ve touched. You have a brief window of opportunity to remain unseen. I suggest you take it. Clean up the mess you’ve made.”

  That last statement seemed to be directed at her more than the Ringmaster.

  Bell placed the partially used potion bottle on the partition as well as a large blanket. “You’ll want these,” he said. “Now, scurry.”

  He walked away without any further commentary. Knowing Bell, it was probably torture for him to hold his tongue like this when pushing pressure points was where his pleasures lay.

  Kitty clambered up, grabbed the potion bottle and her corset then wrapped the blanket around her. She didn’t bother going around the back way. The golems were going to have to clean the partition anyway. She climbed over it to the other side.

  The Ringmaster was less frantic in his motions, pulling on his leather in spite of the layer of dirt that had turned the back side of his body a dull, dusty brown dotted with tan bits of grass. Lady Sasha would be able to clean the leather, and he clearly wasn’t prepared to traipse through the circus naked like she was. Then again, since he’d torn her panties and her skirt, there wasn’t much she could do about that. The corset wouldn’t have been sufficient cover for a stripper.

  “No sentimental declarations?” the Ringmaster asked. That voice. That dark, decadent voice.

  “Why? Did you have a few to share?” Kitty shot back. She snagged the remains of her skirt, which she still might be able to salvage, but she couldn’t find her underwear. She wrote it off as a loss that the golems would take care of.

  “You’re a stupid woman,” the Ringmaster said.

  “It’s been known to happen,” she replied, but the harshness in her voice softened whether she wanted it to or not.

  “You should have told me to stop,” he said.

  Kitty stopped bustling. She leaned over her forearms on the partition and stared up at him. “Why? Because you really have a burning desire for a human to tell a demon what to do or because a demon like you shouldn’t be giving a human what she wants? I shouldn’t have to tell you to stop if stopping is what you truly want. It’s your choice too. There’s no point in blaming me, or is that just what all the men are doing this year?”

  Then she ran in her sandals down the midway to her tent to find something to change into. There was a much faster turnaround after breakfast during the Halloween season, and she needed to be in costume as soon as she got out of the shower.

  Kitty batted the tent flap out of the way. She drew up short when she saw that the tent was occupied. Maya sat on the vanity stool, putting eye makeup on. Kitty checked the atomic clock on her vanity. Damn, it was later than she’d thought.

  Maya set down the eye shadow and peered at Kitty through the mirror.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever see you taking the Walk of Shame,” Maya said.

  Kitty tied her tent closed to deter the rest of the cast from getting in while she tried to make herself relatively presentable for walking to her RV.

  “I can’t discuss this right now. I need to take a shower,” Kitty said. She let the blanket drop on her bed and grabbed her robe from one of the rolling hangers that she used as a wardrobe.

  “I’m not blind,” Maya said, turning around in the chair. “And I know you don’t like talking about the people you have sex with. No kiss and tell. I usually respect that.”

  “Because you don’t want me prying into all the things you get up to with Bell,” Kitty finished for her, digging through her wardrobe to find today’s costume.

  “You’re private. That, I’m used to. But you’re not evasive. And when you come back after sex, you’re normally not taking the Walk of Shame,” Maya said. “Could it be because the one you were with wasn’t Victor?”

  Kitty stopped checking through the rack and closed her eyes. “I don’t have time for this, Maya. What does Victor have to do with it anyway?”

  “You don’t bring men back here,” Maya said. “I heard about his lapse in judgment, but you looked happy with him when he wasn’t being an idiot. He seems like a good guy all around. He’s in his adjustment period, but he was pretty enthusiastic before reality hit him, so I assume he’ll be pretty enthusiastic again. And he’s crazy about you.”

  “I never said I wasn’t happy with him,” Kitty said.

  “Then why the Walk?” Maya asked.

  “I’m not ashamed,” Kitty exclaimed. She selected her corset and skirt and folded them over the arm of her robe. “I just don’t want to discuss it. It’s no one else’s business.”

  Right before she unlatched her tent flap, Maya said, “You just have to hope that other people aren’t intrigued enough to go through some basic math and logic to figure out the only one you could have possibly been with.”

  Kitty straightened up. “What has Bell told you?”

  “Only what he’s said in front of you,” Maya replied, “which wasn’t enough to figure it out. Really, I only put it together this morning when I saw who was at breakfast. And who wasn’t. I think you’d be more ashamed if you’d been in the camel pit, so I’m pretty sure I know who it is.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kitty said. “You’re not going to say anything, whether you’re right or wrong, and I need to go. We can talk about this later—or never. Never works for me too.”

  “You have to be careful, Kitty,” Maya said.

  “This from someone who’s fucked nearly every demon in Arcanium that consorts with humans, and who’s been with half the men,” Kitty snapped.

  She regretted saying it as soon as she did. Enjoying sex had never been a crime in Arcanium, since everyone who could have sex did as much as possible. It was an Arcanium imperative. Kitty wasn’t immune to it either. As the stricken expression on Maya’s face rapidly turned to hurt anger, Kitty wished she could take it back.

  “You didn’t seem to mind when you were the only woman riding this ride,” Maya said, crossing her arms over her abdomen in a gesture she probably hated, defensive as it was.

  “I’m sorry, Maya,” Kitty said. “I just really don’t have the time for this. I’m kind of wired, and I have a lot on my mind.”

  “Besides, I wasn’t talking about the one you don’t want to talk about,” Maya said. It was clear that Kitty’s apology wasn’t nearly enough. “I was talking about the fragile one Bell made into stone. When you deal with demons, their hearts might as well be stone. But Victor’s heart is still made of easily breakable flesh. He’s a nice guy, not the kind that calls himself a nice guy, but an actual nice guy when he’s more himself—at least, that’s the vibe I got.”

  “He and I talked about this,” Kitty said. “He knew coming in that he wasn’t the only one.”

  “Maybe that w
as okay with all parties when you only saw him every time you were in town. But now he’s here all the time, in no small part because of you, whether he knows how deep that goes or not,” Maya said. “Clearly deeper than he thought, since he decided to punch out the first other guy you slept with.”

  “He wasn’t himself,” Kitty replied.

  “He was a version of himself,” Maya said. “All I’m saying is that you have to be careful. This isn’t about keeping your heart open in all matters except the heart, like you’ve always tried to do. It’s no wonder that was your way of handling this life, long as you’ve been in it.”

  “Can I go now?” Kitty asked, hand on her hip. “I’d like breakfast and coffee before the customers come in.”

  Maya turned back to the mirror and started applying eyeliner. “You do all the looking out for everyone else,” Maya said softly before Kitty could leave. “I was just returning the favor, because no one’s looking out for you. And like most people, you have a blind spot in that area. It’s hard to do with everything constantly moving around you, but I think you need to stop and think about what the hell you’re doing so that you don’t fuck things up more than they have to get fucked up.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kitty asked.

  “It means that things tend to go as spectacularly wrong in Arcanium as they go spectacularly right,” Maya said. She set down the eyeliner and picked up a tube of dark red lipstick. “Or didn’t you notice?”

  * * * *

  Kitty knitted in her exhibition tent, her half-finished hot coffee sitting on the small table next to her, her hair still wet but braided. She’d wait until the caffeine hit before she did her usual walkabout.

  Her ass hurt. She’d covered the scratches and wood-burn with Bell’s potion, and she’d massaged her throat with it to help the slight swelling recover, but she hadn’t applied it to the bruises on her buttocks, even though they’d been dark and florid in her hand mirror.

  She’d also applied some of the potion internally, where she had been particularly sore. She didn’t think the Ringmaster had irreparably damaged anything, but the potion had settled the ache that had made her feel like she was walking with her legs too wide apart.

  She’d left the bruises alone. No one could see them. If anyone noticed she shifted a lot on her seat, they could make whatever assumptions they wanted. She doubted they’d come up with the right answer.

  It wasn’t a terrible thing for her to be taking some me-time on a Saturday morning when customers were already thick through Oddity Row. Kitty could show off her oddity just fine while ignoring everyone, maybe looking up now and then at a particularly eager exclamation from a child and offering a smile—as though there was a pane of glass between them and she couldn’t hear most of them talking about her. The crowds often acted as though that was the case anyway, given the things she heard them talking about.

  As long as they kept buying the merchandise and leaving quarters and singles in her tip jar, they could say whatever they wanted. The people who tipped with pennies, however, especially ones they’d just found on the ground, could stick their hands in the clowns’ mouths, for they deserved the deepest, pettiest circle of hell. Tips went to the circus at large like everything else and were probably distributed into everyone’s accounts, paychecks or cash payouts equally, but it was the principle of the thing.

  “Hello, pretty lady.”

  Victor leaned on the tent’s curtain stake, attracting a few appreciative glances from the male-loving subsection of her small audience. He wore a face Kitty thought was appropriately contrite—sincere rather than the manipulative, fake, sad puppy eyes that some people wore when they just wanted the argument over.

  Kitty looked back at him over her knitting, but the needles didn’t stop clicking.

  “I’ll recite a sonnet if that will get a pretty lady such as yourself to accompany a man like me on a walk this fine afternoon,” Victor said.

  Some of the audience smiled indulgently. There was a small group in the back who clapped in encouragement.

  Kitty set her knitting into its bag, stored it on the armchair and put her placard up. Then she accepted Victor’s help climbing down from the stage. The smattering of clapping turned into a proper applause. She curtsied to them. A few people slipped dollars and coins into her tip jar for the brief show—everyone liked a work romance—and they moved on to Joanne and Jane’s text next to hers.

  “You are such a smartass,” she murmured, smiling. Not quite an ear-to-ear grin, but the air between them felt much more relaxed.

  “I know,” Victor replied. He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow like a gentleman. They must have been quite an unusual sight together—a hairy woman in evil queen garb and a man who wouldn’t be out of place in the cliffside of a waterfall, despite wearing leather trousers as well as leather cuffs at his wrists that Kitty hadn’t seen before. They reminded her of Maya’s, but Kitty doubted Victor wore them for the same reason.

  “You think we can have a few minutes alone without being asked to take pictures with people?” Victor asked.

  “In the big top. We can’t take too long, though, or else we’ll be interrupted, and Bell will not be pleased that he had to interrupt us,” Kitty answered.

  “Yeah, I got that impression,” Victor said. “Come on.”

  As soon as they’d slipped backstage, Victor once again acted the gentleman, this time without an audience. He pulled out a chaise longue that Lord Mikhail and Lady Sasha sometimes used as a prop when they performed together—and other times used by other cast members for more private performances.

  It was best not to think about what kinds of fluids the golems had cleaned out of these cushions. The golems were effective cleaners. She was pretty sure they had magic on their side.

  Victor sat down next to Kitty.

  “I wanted to formally apologize, no pussy-footing around—no offense meant.”

  “None taken,” Kitty said.

  “It would be really easy to just try to forget it happened without admitting that I was a royal ass about everything, but I’m not going to do that. You deserve more from me than an unspoken promise it won’t happen again,” Victor said.

  “That’s very mature of you,” Kitty replied.

  He snorted. “I know, right? After what happened yesterday, I know I seem real mature right now.”

  He ran a hand over his smooth head. “Seeing the obituary. That’s when it started. Once I was dead—once I’d been confirmed dead—my parents identifying the body, the funeral, the wake… It all became real. I thought about the decision endlessly between when I left Arcanium and contacted you. I did everything right, I think. But nothing could have prepared me for realizing that there was no going back, that I could never ever see them again. Even if it happened by accident, they wouldn’t recognize me anyway, and I couldn’t acknowledge them. I’ve had things in my life that I couldn’t undo—or that I thought I couldn’t undo, I guess. But this was the first decision that couldn’t be undone, and…”

  “You felt helpless,” Kitty murmured. She leaned forward with her elbows on her thighs. It took some of the pressure off her aching ass.

  “And because I’m a jerk, I decided to go after the closest target I could find.”

  “Me. Because I was the one who brought you here,” Kitty said. “Believe me, I get it.”

  “I know you get it. But I have to say this,” Victor said. “It’s important for me to admit this out loud to myself. To make it real. To make me accountable. Do you follow?”

  Kitty nodded.

  “I was up almost all night thinking about this. It’s been buzzing around in my brain since I read about my death. But that whipping, much as I hate the very idea of it, gave me some clarity,” Victor said.

  She nodded again, encouraging him to continue.

  “I blamed you for my family’s and my friends’ pain—for my pain. I was mourning myself, you see. I felt myself dying. Literally, that’s what it
felt like. I looked in the mirror, and I didn’t see myself anymore,” he said. “My sense of who I used to be—a certain kind of man, a man with cystic fibrosis, a man who exercised to live a few years longer and was losing the battle, a man who interacted with these kinds of people and did this kind of activity, a man whose routine went like this or that—it all started slipping away. I wondered whether I was even me anymore, whether there was anything left of before.”

  Victor stroked a line down the buckled straps decorating the front of her dark purple and black lace costume corset.

  “You were the one constant that I could put a finger on,” he muttered. “You were there before, and here you were now. And after tricking me into selling my soul to that jinni, fooling me into giving up my friends and my family, you retreated from me and left me alone like…what’s that French word for a tease that’s prettier than the alternative? A coquette.

  “I know now and I knew then that it was all bullshit. I was the one who told you to leave me alone then I got mad at you for doing it. You made it clear in no uncertain terms that there hadn’t been, and would continue to be, no exclusivity between us, but things had changed. Before, you weren’t always so close, and how much more convenient would it be for us to stay together all the time now? After all, we have chemistry. We still do. Yet we move to another place, and off you go, looking elsewhere and laughing at having fooled me into Arcanium.”

  He tightened his hand into a fist against his leg. Kitty didn’t think he noticed he was doing it.

  “I didn’t know what Bell was going to do to me, so that was one thing that I couldn’t prepare for when I did all my thinking,” Victor said.

  “You hadn’t thought about what it’s like to be an exhibit, not a person,” Kitty said.

  “How’d you guess?” he asked.

  “The things you said while you were ranting at me and James,” she replied. “I don’t doubt that some of it was your experience as a curiosity chaser yourself, I’m sure.”