by Ann Charles
“Bullshit. I’ve been drunk before. What you did to me was different. The sex was different.”
“The sex was nice.” I tried to sound apathetic about it. “But I’m not really your type, Bruno.”
I could feel his gaze burning into me, but refused to meet his dark eyes. “You’re right.” He stepped back, giving me some much needed breathing room. “You’re not my type, Electra. I don’t like lying purebreds.”
That stung, even though I deserved the slight right then. “We’re back to name calling, are we?”
“For tonight we are.” He walked toward the curtains, pausing to frown back at me. “Tomorrow, we’ll start working together. Don’t think you can run off and hide from me again, because I’m not leaving the circus until I figure out what you’re hiding, and if it has anything to do with Clint’s death.”
Without another word, he left.
Trembling, I waited, my breath held in hopes that he’d return to bust down my barriers and make me his again. But he didn’t. I heard his footsteps moving farther away.
Blowing out a breath of relief mixed with pent-up need, I pulled out Ol’ Blue from the lock box. Somehow, I needed to find out who killed Clint pronto. If Bruno stood that close to me again tomorrow, I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep my hands to myself.
The orb came to life as soon as I cleared my thoughts and touched my fingertips to it.
“Who killed the clown?” I whispered, peering down into the ball as the blue light and smoke swirled. After several seconds, through a thick haze, I saw myself laying out the cards for Lolli again.
Why was Ol’ Blue showing me that?
I opened my mouth to ask the same question again, but then heard a scuffling sound in my waiting room. “Who’s there?” I asked, stuffing Ol’ Blue back in its box.
The curtains parted. “Hi, Electra.”
Lolli was back. Was that what Ol’ Blue had been trying to tell me? “I need to talk to you.”
“What now, Lolli?”
“I’m not Lolli. I’m Lemon.”
“Of course. Sorry about that. I’m so tired tonight I can’t tell you two apart.” Not that I ever could, even in broad daylight with a cup of coffee in me. “What can I do for you?”
“I think my sister is sleeping with my boyfriend,” she started.
I groaned and pulled out my deck of cards again. If I had my way, the next time Tom shape-shifted into an alley cat, I was going to drug him, take him to a local vet, and have him neutered, damn it.
Chapter Three
In the light of day, my predicament with Bruno didn’t seem so dire.
Earlier, I’d climbed out of bed long enough to face the rising sun and chant the greeting my grandmother had taught me, then I’d fallen back onto my soft bed and slept another hour until I’d woken to the scent of coffee in the air.
Being a Shifter with a keen sense of smell had its advantages and drawbacks. A sniff of my armpits made me grimace, emphasizing a drawback of having a good nose.
A quick trip to the shared females’ shower tent washed away the rank of yesterday’s plights and last night’s worries. I’d stopped at the monkey brothers’ food stand on the way back to my tent, ordering a large cup of coffee to lubricate the grinding gears in my head. The morning air had warmed about fifteen degrees since I’d greeted the sun, requiring only my thigh-length robe and slippers to keep warm.
When I returned to my tent, I found I had a visitor waiting for me. Actually, he was more like a snooper.
“You could have waited outside,” I told Bruno, glaring at him. He’d breached my fortune-teller parlor and was checking out the array of knickknacks on my chest of drawers, trinkets I’d acquired here and there during my months with the circus.
How long had he been in here? The whole time I was showering? How much had he poked around? Had he found my secret stash?
When he looked my way, his eyes got stuck on my bare legs. I set my coffee down on the parlor table next to Ol’ Blue’s stand.
“What are you wearing under that robe?” he asked.
“Why? Are we going to start this morning with a patdown? I can assure you I have no weapons hidden anywhere.”
“I disagree. I’ve seen your breasts.” He cocked his head. “At least I think I have.” He shrugged. “Even if it’s just a fantasy, I have an idea what you have under there and it’s definitely a weapon.”
“Why, Bruno Maska, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“I’m sure I said plenty of nice things during sex.”
I turned away, the memories he was inspiring warming me like the morning sun. “There was a lot of grunting,” I said, trying to erect a roadblock on the direction this conversation was heading.
“I don’t grunt during sex.”
My smirk ran into his hard squint. “You do when you’re drunk.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Frowning, he picked up a picture of me kissing the cheek of a Bigfoot statue. Clint had taken that photo when we were doing a series of shows in Northern California. The laughs we’d shared still echoed in my head.
“Believe what you want,” I said flippantly. “I was the more sober of the two of us.”
He put the picture back and nailed me with a heated stare. “Why did you come back to my tent with me that night?” He rammed right through my roadblock attempt.
Damn it, why couldn’t I have walked away that night and left things as they were—him hating my guts in plain sight and me lusting for him from the shadows?
I shrugged, pretending sex with him was no big deal. “We weren’t fighting for once. Why not finish the night with some fun, right?”
“You don’t like me.”
Wrong. “That’s not entirely true.”
“You’ve called me a lot of names over the last several months, most of them not very nice.”
“That’s because you make me mad with your purebred bias.” Not to mention his doubt about my abilities as a psychic, but one issue at a time here. “Besides, you’ve called me a lot of names, too.”
He came around the table, his eyes on my mouth. “Yeah, but I didn’t mean them.”
“Now who’s the liar?” I held my ground as he closed the distance.
“Okay, maybe I meant one or two of them.” He took me by the shoulders and pushed me back a couple of steps until my legs bumped against the edge of my chair. “But only when you were looking down your nose at me.”
“I have never looked down my nose at you.” I dropped onto the padded chair, glaring up at him.
His hands gripped the chair arms, imprisoning me. “The first time we met, you did.”
I knew exactly where this was going. We’d rehashed it several times in our short but turbulent past. “No. You baited me with your damned questions as soon as you found out what I was and then purposely misinterpreted my responses.”
“I distinctly remember the words that came out of your lips.” His gaze iced over. “You said that mixed breeds are a testament to nature. That they defy description.”
I huffed in his face. “That was meant as a good thing.”
“Good? How?”
“You excel where I’m deficient due to my genetic lack of diversity.”
His eyes drifted down over my robe. “You’re not lacking in anything, Electra. Trust me.”
“That’s not the song you were singing the time you called me a liar and a fake in front of Clint and Eugene.”
He stepped back, giving me breathing room. “I was referring to something else and you know it.”
“Referring to what?”
“Us. This thing we have going on between us.”
“We don’t have anything,” I lied.
“See, there you go again.” He clenched his fists. “I’ll give you this, though, I was wrong about the fake part. I may not remember much about the night we had sex, but I know there was no faking on your part. I can still feel your body clenching around me.”
I stood and smoothed my robe over my thighs, remembering that moment with a flurry of stomach flutters. “Now you’re just being crass.” I tried to sound dismissive.
He rushed me, grasping my lapels, and hauled me against him. “I’m being honest.” His lips came down on mine, taking out his anger on my mouth. I closed my eyes and waited out his frustration, holding myself wooden in spite of the urge to bury my fingers in his hair and give him a taste of what I needed from him.
“Kiss me,” he ordered against my lips.
“Why?”
His lips left mine, trailing down my neck. “Because I missed you,” he whispered when he reached my collarbone.
The pain and hunger in his response burned deep, searing my core. “Bruno,” I said, gripping his shoulders as he pressed against me, making my head spin. “We can’t do this again.”
“Why not?” His mouth had reached my cleavage, his hands skimming up the back of my thighs.
“Because we have a murder to solve.”
“This will only take a few minutes.” His hand slipped under my robe, cupping my hip. “Jesus, you smell like molasses cookies fresh out of the oven, my favorite kind.” His mouth slid along the upper curve of my breast. “I want to bite your inner thigh.”
God, no! If he bit me, I was toast. There was no way I could shield him even a little if he sank his teeth into me. A love bite from a soul mate sealed the deal for life. I needed to put a stop to this, but …
“Electra!” a voice I’d grown to loathe called from the other side of the curtain.
“Fuck,” I heard Bruno grumble, and then I was free.
I tugged my robe together, making myself decent again, and then pointed at the curtain that divided my parlor room from my bedchamber.
Bruno nodded and disappeared through the curtain.
“Come on through,” I called, wishing I had taken the time to dress after my morning shower.
Ming angled through the beaded curtain, carrying a big box. She nudged Ol’ Blue’s stand aside with the box and then set it down on my table.
“I’m supposed to leave this here.”
“Says who?” I asked.
“Runash said Bruno requested I bring it to your tent.”
“My tent?” Why my tent? Was he planning on staying here with me? Is that what this morning’s attempt to sex me up was all about? If so, that was going to be a problem—a big, throbbing uncomfortable problem for both of us, but mainly me.
She sniffed the air. “I smell Bruno. Where is he?”
Dang her nose!
When Ming shifted, she was part Chinese Crested Dog and part Chihuahua, which made her loyal, tiny, and vicious. Since her loyalty was tied to her blog, which she used to promote AC’s various branches of the circus, her viciousness came through on the page.
Rumor was that Ming had been sent to our freakshow division once AC saw her shape-shift. The petite blond Barbie doll—minus the big boobs—morphed into a nearly hairless, tiny crossbreed with a few scraggly white-blond locks around her ears and needle-like sharp teeth. Kenneth, the master of ceremonies and Ming’s lover, had recently let it slip that she was saving up for yet another round of plastic surgery after her last go with some magical hair tonic that had left her with hairy moles on her skin when she shifted.
I would have felt sorry for Ming if she wasn’t such a little bitch. It seemed she had no morals when it came to writing, and her initial coverage on Clint’s death was taken off the circus’s website only after enough of us signed a petition to have it removed. Her second article almost caused several of us to walk away from the show, but Kenneth had come to his senses and forced her to take that one down as well. Now she was back for a third try, claiming this would be an uplifting epitaph, but my gut didn’t trust her one bit.
“Bruno was here earlier,” I explained. “He stepped out to grab something to eat.” I opened the box lid. “What is this stuff?”
“It’s Clint’s remains. Well, not his remains, but the things from his tent. After he died, we packed them up and set it all aside in case any relatives came looking for his belongings.”
From the box, I pulled out an alarm clock with an ugly goat version of a chupacabra on it and felt a sob rise in my throat. I’d bought Clint the clock as a joke because he kept showing up late to our morning coffee date. Clint started my days with a smile, always turning up with his clown makeup in place, making funny faces while drinking across from me. How could someone have laid a hand on him, dammit? The world needed more happy clowns these days, not fewer.
The clock wasn’t moving. The batteries must have died. I set it aside and rifled through the rest of the box’s contents. His metal skates still had the clown shoes attached to them. Eugene should probably keep those along with the skate key. Under the shoes was a mix of everyday clothes, a couple of razors, his wallet, a tin cup from Mt. Rushmore, and a collection of what looked like flotsam and jetsam, washed in from the sea.
Suddenly aware of my audience, I closed the lid and hid my pain behind a tight smile. “I’ll be sure to give this to Bruno.”
“Is he back to stay?” she asked.
“I’m not sure, why?” Did she want to write about that in her fucking blog?
She shrugged. “He’s nice to have around. Easy on the eyes, you know.”
Yeah, I knew. It was my turn to shrug. “Sure, if you like his type.”
“Oh, I do,” she said, licking her lips.
As if I needed another reason not to like the little bitch. “You know about his condition, right?”
“What condition?”
I covered my mouth. “Oh, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about that. Forget I mentioned it.”
Her eyes sparkled with curiosity. “You can tell me. I won’t write about it, I swear.”
I opened my mouth like I was going to blab, but then pinched my lips together. “No, I promised I wouldn’t tell a soul. He’d kill me if I told anyone.” I walked over and held one of the curtains back. “Thanks for bringing this. If we find out anything about Clint’s murder, Bruno will be sure to let you know.”
Ming paused next to me on her way out. “You’re helping him?”
I didn’t think that was a secret, not if Bruno had told someone to have Clint’s box brought to my tent. “Yes. AC ordered Bruno to deputize me on this case.”
She made a funny face that sort of resembled a frown, but thanks to her last Botox injection, it looked more like the circus’s vet had shoved a thermometer up her ass. “But Bruno thinks you’re a fake.”
A fire lit in my belly. Maybe I should tell Ming that Bruno, the big butthead, had the mange. Better yet, heartworms. I took a breath, reining in my temper. “AC believes in me, though, and you know what we say in the circus, what AC wants …”
“AC gets, no matter who she has to mow down in the process,” Ming finished.
Well, something like that. “Exactly. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get dressed.” I ushered her toward the waiting room.
Ming made it as far as the outer tent flap. “Oh, one more thing, Electra.”
“What’s that?”
“What do you know about the Gone Were program?”
I flinched, hiding my reaction with a fake sneeze. “Damned allergies,” I said, dabbing under my nose. “Gone Were program? What’s that?”
“It was a program Clint was part of, I hear. No biggie if you haven’t.” She smiled, but there was something ugly in her kohl-lined eyes. “Give Bruno a hug for me and tell him I’ve missed him around here this last month.”
I glared poison darts after her as she walked away. When I turned back to my parlor room, Bruno stood behind my chair with his arms crossed.
“My condition?” A muscle ticked in his jaw.
I grinned sheepishly. “Sorry about that, but you don’t need her hanging on you.”
“Why not?”
“She’s trouble.”
“And you’re not?”
I walked over a
nd picked up the alarm clock, flipping it over. “I’m a good girl.”
He moved to the table next to me, opening the box of Clint’s belongings. “You’re part right on that one.”
While Bruno fished through the box, I used my thumbnail to unscrew the back cover of the clock. I had batteries around here somewhere.
“What are you doing with that?” he asked.
“Making it work again.”
“Why?” He set the roller skates on the floor.
“Because I want to keep it.”
“Why?” he asked again.
I shot him a frown. “Because it reminds me of Clint.”
The back popped off and a piece of folded paper fell out onto the floor. I set the clock down and bent to pick it up, figuring it for the instructions. When I unfolded it, my whole body went rigid. A small squeak escaped my lips. A vision flashed before my eyes, violent and bloody, filled with screams of pain. Pieces of flesh were everywhere. Something was missing, though, something taken from the scene after Clint stopped moving. I could feel it.
“Do you think …” Bruno started to say and then stopped. His hand warmed my shoulder a second later. “Electra, what is it?”
When I didn’t answer, he took the paper from my hand, reading it.
I stumbled over to my chair and fell into it, my legs trembling.
Holy shit!
Stars swam around the edge of my vision. I lowered my head between my knees, taking several deep breaths.
“Electra,” Bruno said, kneeling in front of me. “Talk to me.”
“That’s a contract.”
“I know.”
“On Clint’s head.”
“Yes.”
I looked up at him. “How was Clint killed?”
He hesitated, searching my eyes. “I told you he was sliced to pieces.”
“Yes, but you left something out, didn’t you?”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “Listen, Electra.”
“Just tell me, dammit!”
“I don’t think—”
“Which piece of him was missing?”
Bruno reared, his mouth open. “How do you know about that?”
Because I knew all about bounty hunters and their fucked-up tricks. Before I’d been placed at the circus by the Gone Were program, they’d trained us on how to detect a bounty hunter kill from a regular murder. “Which piece?” I asked again.
