by Kat Cotton
Lilly ran from the kitchen, plunging the demon in the chest.
He stumbled and fell as I jumped from his back. For a moment, he writhed on the floor. Then the writhing stopped.
“Is he dead?” Lilly asked.
I kicked him. “Seems so.”
“He might just be knocked out.”
“True. Maybe we need more salt. Something a bit more substantial than the sachets.”
She ran back out with a handful of the little packets. “Sachets is all we’ve got.”
I sighed and began tearing them open. We couldn’t leave this guy just lying around. Lilly came back with an olive jar.
“I’m not sure if these will work but they sure are salty.”
She tipped the olive brine over the demon as I poured salt on him. Eventually he sizzled away enough that we could declare him officially dead.
“Well, that was fun,” Lilly said. She popped one of the olives in her mouth.
I sighed. “We’ll need to do something about the door,” I said. The demon had ripped it off the hinges.
Lilly screwed up her face. “You think anyone will wanna come in here? This place is beyond trashed. I say leave it for Duke to deal with when he gets back?”
“We can’t do that!”
“You wanna explain demon guts and us breaking in to a locksmith?”
I shook my head.
“Don’t fret,” she said. “I’ll get Nuno to come over later and sort things out.”
I followed her out, not entire sure that she was telling the truth about Nuno.
When we arrived at the rehearsal space, a strange man stood in the middle of the space talking to Nuno. He barely came up to Nuno’s shoulder and, with the way his waistcoat strained at the buttons over his rotund belly and his bald head shone in the lights, he could’ve been a first cousin to a garden gnome. A very pompous garden gnome.
“Earnest?” Lilly asked.
Earnest? She hadn’t mentioned anything about an Earnest.
He turned to greet her, his smile beaming but not reaching his eyes. Lilly didn’t seem to notice anything odd about him and shook his hand when he extended to her. Then she introduced me.
As I shook his hand, I repressed the shiver of repulsion that went through me. It wasn’t just that his hand was clammy, it went way beyond that. This Earnest guy had a clamminess that went right to his core.
I needed to get a surname and details. The boys back at the office could do a full background check on this guy even though I suspected his background would be just as vague as the rest of the troupes.
“Earnest is filling in for Duke,” Lilly said.
“Huh? I didn’t know we were getting a fill in.”
Lilly’s laugh tinkled like raindrops on a window. “Of course we are. We can’t do the show with just the three of us. Nuno can’t be MC and if I did it, it’d ruin the mystique of my act. And you can’t, of course. So we’ve got Earnest.”
I’d spent the whole day with Lilly and she hadn’t mentioned anything to me about getting a replacement for Duke. I swallowed hard but didn’t break eye contact with Lilly.
I’d thought I was part of this troupe. I thought the three of us would work together to keep things going until Duke returned and that we’d share the responsibility.
Maybe I’d been stupid to think of Lilly and Nuno as my friends. I’d joined this troupe for one reason, and one reason only, to investigate them. I had to keep sight of that. If they choose to get in a replacement without even discussing the matter with me, it didn’t matter one bit.
Earnest stared at me. I didn’t like him. I didn’t like his clamminess or the uneasy feeling in my belly when he looked at me but I’d play along and work with him. I didn’t have any other choice.
Chapter 3
I WENT TO THE BATHROOM to get changed. I needed to rehearse and I didn’t want to be around Lilly or Earnest. Nuno must’ve been on this decision too but he didn’t seem as culpable.
Lilly and Nuno came into the kitchen while I was changing. Even though I’d have preferred to stay out of their way for the moment, I had to come out to rehearse.
Lilly had the kettle on and Duke’s expensive tea on the counter. The tea he always told her not to touch. Nuno filled up his water bottle at the sink.
“Who is this guy?” I asked Lilly.
“I told you, he’s filling in for Duke.”
“Don’t we need to hold auditions?” I asked. I’d needed to audition for my spot in the troupe. “How do we know he’s any good? He doesn’t look right...”
“This is different. We can’t just hold open auditions for the MC spot. It’s the pivotal part of the troupe. We need someone with the right skills so the Society sent us someone—”
Nuno didn’t say anything but his eyes blinked rapidly like some kind of warning system. Lilly had said something she shouldn’t and I bet that something was mentioning the society. The Society. Maybe it was some kind of carnival troupe society. I filed that away as something I’d get the guys back at the office to research.
I narrowed my eyes. “This all seems odd. Do we know anything about this guy?”
Before Lilly could answer, Earnest came into the kitchen area.
“Oh, a bit early for a tea break, isn’t it?” he said then chuckled like he’d made a great joke.
Lilly smiled at him and offered him a cup of tea.
“Oh, I can make it. Jayne, would you like a cup of tea?”
Despite his creepy smile, I nodded. It was nice of him to offer. Maybe he was a good guy. He couldn’t help that he was Duke’s replacement.
While we stood around drinking tea, Nuno left the kitchen to begin packing the equipment. We’d hired a luggage trailer to hold all the gear for this tour. We had two days of traveling then three nights of performing. Our first shows were in Brisbane. Second stop and those after, I didn’t know yet. Without Duke around to take control, all the details like that had become fuzzy.
Lilly and Nuno said they didn’t plan that far ahead. I’d been around performers long enough to know that wasn’t true. A circus normally planned had a specific circuit they toured while freelance troupes like Sequins & Daggers tried to get as many bookings as possible, especially over the summer. Sure, fill in spots could happen but an established troupe should have bookings for a few months out. You’d starve to death relying on fill in spots.
But I wasn’t here to tell them how to run their business.
I walked out onto the floor and lowered the hoop.
While I waited for Nuno to come back in to raise the hoop, two little dogs ran across the rehearsal space, one black and one white Scottie dog. I thought they were lost until Earnest whistled and the black dog flipped in the air.
I smiled and sat on the hoop to see if the dogs would do more. The white one ran towards me then bounded up, through my hoop to land on the mats the other side.
I clapped my hands and the little white dog ran over and sniffed at the foot I had anchored on the ground.
“Animal acts are out of favor nowadays,” Earnest said to me. “And I can understand when they involve wild animals never intended for captivity, but my dogs love performing.”
He picked up the black dog, cradling it in his arms while the dog licked his face. I’d never spent much time with dogs but that didn’t look hygienic. Still, if these little dogs loved Earnest, maybe he couldn’t be as bad as I suspected. Dogs are supposed to be good judges of character.
“This is Sooty,” he said. “The other one is Snowy. It’s not very original but when you’ve owned dogs as long as I have, you run out of names.”
I scooped Snowy up in my arms, not sure if I was holding him the right way. I’d never had a pet dog and hadn’t had much to do with them but these guys were so cute.
Snowy snuffled his cold nose against my neck. It tickled but that was a good thing, I assumed.
“You’re made a friend,” Earnest said. “He likes you.”
Earnest chuckled again. That s
ound annoyed me. And I wondered if Snowy actually liked me too much when that nose started investigating my cleavage. I pulled him away from my chest and Earnest scooped him out of my arms.
“We need to practice if we’re going to be ready to perform,” he said. “It doesn’t take long for the act to get rusty.”
Nuno had returned and stood by the winch, waiting for me to give him the go ahead. Even though I wanted to keep watching the puppies go through their routine, I needed to work.
Once I’d finished rehearsal, I’d help Nuno with the packing but I wanted to do one final run through before we left. I’d never got the chance to do my act properly onstage and that worried me.
Without Duke around, rehearsal became easier but a whole lot less satisfying. He pushed me, always trying to get me to go beyond my limits. On my own, I stuck to my comfortable routine. I could push myself but I didn’t have the creative vision Duke did. I’d be pushing for the sake of pushing, not to improve the performance. I needed someone who could see the big picture, the way the act worked from an audience perspective. I doubted Earnest could do that.
I’d planned to run through both acts one more time when Earnest called for me.
“You need to help Nuno pack the trailer,” he said. “It’s too much work for one person.”
I knew that but I didn’t like to be ordered around and I didn’t like the way he implied I’d been slacking off while Nuno did all the work.
“Why can’t Lilly?” I asked.
“Lilly has important things to do,” he said.
Like I didn’t. I couldn’t say that, though. I didn’t mind helping Nuno but I didn’t see why my act was seen as less valuable than anyone else’s.
Nuno dragged one of the bigger crates across the floor. I ran over and took the other end. As we moved it out, Lilly kept singing and Earnest dog’s yapped. The idea of us being a team seemed to be disintegrating around me.
“What else do we have to move?” I asked Nuno when we went back inside.
He took me into the store room and indicated a bunch of black cases. Then he motioned for me to wait where I was while he ran off. I sat down on the floor amongst the cases, stretching out my hamstrings. They’d been getting tight lately so I stretched them every chance I got.
A voice interrupted me. Earnest. I sat upright, thinking he spoke to me but he was on the phone.
“Who is this girl?” he asked. “She’s not one of us.”
He meant me, of course. I ducked back down, embarrassed to be caught eavesdropping even if it was unintentional.
The phone crackled but I couldn’t hear what the person on the other end said.
“We can’t just get some performer off the street. We need specialist skills. You know that.”
I had specialist skills. I’d like to see Earnest get up on that hoop. I got the feeling that Earnest didn’t like acrobats. That was nothing unusual. Performers tended to form clichés and sometimes acrobats can be a little elitist but there was no reason to judge me for that.
“Say what you like,” he continued. “As soon as it’s reasonable, I’m getting rid of her. We need our own people around, not outsiders. I have targets to meet and no one is going to interfere with that.”
Earnest hung up and went back to his dogs.
My chest tightened. He’d just been nice to me. I’d played with his dogs and I thought we’d made some progress but that had obviously just been a front. The whole time he’d been plotting to throw me out.
That settled it. Earnest could not be trusted. I’d had a bad feeling about him from the first.
Even though Earnest walked off, I stayed on the floor until Nuno came back.
Did no one ever dust in this store room? The floor was a mess. And why did we need all these chests? I’d put everything I needed, my equipment and costumes in one and then filled it with all the assorted production and safety equipment we needed.
Nuno had a couple of trunks with all his equipment including his unicycle.
I squirmed around to check the wardrobe trunks. Half a dozen of them had Lilly’s name written in swirling cursive writing on the side. That seemed like overkill even if she did need some bulky props in her act. The rest of the trunks were Earnest’s. I had no idea what he needed all that for either.
Nuno came back in and the two of us loaded most of the trunks into the trailer. We came back in to see what else needed to be packs.
The two of us got most of the trunks into the trailer then went back to see what else needed to be packed.
Duke’s Wheel of Death.
Shit. I hadn’t considered the knife act. Having Duke throwing knifes at me — or around me, as he liked to stress — was one thing but would Earnest be doing the same act?
That didn’t make me happy. In fact, I was as far away from happy as you could get. Especially with him talking about “getting rid” of me. Yikes.
“Is Earnest doing the knife act?” I asked Nuno.
Nuno shook his head. Then he grinned. I grinned back, happy that my personal safety wasn’t at risk. I totally got what he meant. I’d gotten better at interpreting what Nuno wanted to say after being with him for the past few weeks.
“You want to take the Wheel in case Duke returns?” I asked.
Nuno nodded.
I felt the same too. If we left the Wheel behind, it’d be like acknowledging that Duke wouldn’t be back any time soon.
“That won’t be necessary,” Earnest said. He’d sneaked up behind us.
“Why not?” I asked. “We have no idea where Duke is and we have no idea when he’ll return.”
No one had mentioned what would happen with Earnest when Duke returned.
“I’m here now and I’ll see the interstate tour out with you. There’s no point carrying a heavy and unwieldy piece of equipment with us when it won’t be used.”
Lilly sauntered across the floor in full burlesque costume. Sometimes, talking to her when she was made up like that made me feel awkward. She became something different in costume. Still Lilly but more extreme, parts of her amplified three times over. The walk became more sexual, her voice more husky and her attitude more haughty. And her eyelashes were so long, I wasn’t sure how she moved her eyelids.
“What’s up?” she said, folding her arms. She looked from Nuno to Earnest to the Wheel. “Aha, I see.”
“We can fit it in,” I said. “We should take it.”
Earnest folded his arms. “I said no.”
Lilly stood quietly by, not entering into the conversation. Then I noticed her doing eye signals to Nuno. I wasn’t sure what they meant but, if I had to guess, she was telling him to disregard Earnest and pack the Wheel. Maybe Lilly and Nuno weren’t as quick to accept Earnest as I’d first thought.
Chapter 4
WE MEET UP THE NEXT morning before the sun had even risen. Nuno and Lilly wanted to get out of the city before the peak hour traffic started. I met them at the warehouse with only a small bag. Everything else I needed was in the trailer. Getting from Melbourne to Brisbane would take us two days. We’d talked about trying to do it in one to save on hotel costs but that would’ve been pushing it in the van with the trailer attached.
Earnest wasn’t traveling in the van with us.
“Not with the dogs,” he’d said. “They need frequent breaks and they can bark a lot. I’ll see you at the hotel when you get there.”
That suited me fine. Two days in a confined space with Earnest might be more than I could handle. Without him around, I could pump Lilly for information about him.
Nuno drove and Lilly sat beside him, leaving me with the back seat.
“So, this Earnest, where did he come from?” I asked once we got out of the city.
“An agent. We needed to replace Duke fast so we called around.”
Lilly didn’t turn to face me when she said that. She kept looking straight ahead. I tried to see her face in the rear vision mirror but couldn’t get a good look at it. She was totally hiding something.
“You mentioned the society? Are they an agent?”
Lilly still didn’t turn around.
“Yes, that’s right,” she said.
“Sweet. Do you have their contact details? I need an agent myself.”
She shut the glove box then played with the music on the car stereo.
“I’ll find the details later,” she said. “Right now, I want to catch up on some sleep.” With that, she curled in her seat and closed her eyes.
Well, that shut up any probing I wanted to do but she couldn’t sleep the whole way. She’d have to be awake and talking some time.
I read my book until I dropped off to sleep too. I didn’t wake up until Nuno stopped the van. I sat up and looked around. We’d pulled into a truck stop. Nuno grinned at me through the window then opened the van door, as if to say get out and stretch my legs. That seemed like a good plan, and a toilet break would really be handy too.
Lilly stirred and muttered but didn’t wake up.
I headed across the dusty concourse to the rest rooms. The smell that hit me when I opened the door almost changed my mind but we’d be on the road a long time and I had to make the most of this break. I held my nose and went into the first cubicle — then backed out. I wasn’t that desperate. I moved to the second one. It looked cleaner but the toilet lid was down and I imagined all kinds of nasty surprises waiting for me when I opened it. Before I got to the final cubicle, the door opened and Lilly came in.
She fished a packet out of her bag. “Disinfectant wipes,” she said, ripping one off and handing it to me. “You need them on the road.” Then she gave me a mini pack of tissues. “If you can’t hover, cover the toilet seat.”
“Hovering is fine with me,” I said. “What kind of person makes a mess like that anyway?”
Lilly shrugged. “There are some dirty bitches in this world, that’s for sure. I’ve met hell beasts with higher cleanliness standards. I’ll give you some hand disinfectant when you come out.”
