by Leanne Leeds
Oh, thank goodness.
“Stupid ringmaster. She real ringmaster. Stupid shield,” the first creature muttered as he slumped. “You tell boss?”
“I tell boss,” one of the creatures behind him said, his gigantic sword dragging on the ground as he shuffled away murmuring. “Would rather chop her up. Stupid ringmaster.”
“While we’re waiting, could you tell me—what are you?”
“Gargoyle. Stupid ringmaster not see gargoyle before? You not have gargoyles at you circus?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Our security unit is lares guards.”
“Gargoyles can beat lares guards,” the first gargoyle said proudly.
“What’s your name?”
“Ambom,” Ambom answered, studying me with curiosity. He pointed to the gargoyle standing behind him. “That Irum.” Irum stared at me wide-eyed.
“It’s nice to meet you both. Like I said, I’m Charlotte,” I told him as I held out my hand hoping ringmaster diplomacy could help decrease the tension. Ambom looked at my extended hand with bewilderment, his flaming eyes fading to a dull orange hue. He shifted his head one way, and then another way as he considered it. Then he raised his eyes. “You shake it. Just take my hand, and pump it up and down gently once. It’s a greeting. It means we intend to be friends.”
“Never touch ringmaster,” Ambom shook his head. “Against orders. Bad things happen. Terrible things.”
“I touch half-breed once,” Irum said while nodding. “Ringmaster very furious.”
“What happens when your ringmaster gets mad?”
“Charlotte? What are you doing here?” Gunther asked as he walked toward me. His face looked pale and strained as if he hadn’t relaxed in days. It was a significant transformation from the happy, casual attitude of a few days ago when he came for my magic lesson.
“Official business, really,” I called as I stepped toward him. “Mark Botsworth is being kept on your grounds in a barn by someone named Deo. I came here to bring him home.”
“You must be mistaken.”
“I'm afraid not.”
“Are you sure? I have heard nothing about this.” Gunther asked, shocked. I sensed the confusion was genuine, and nodded that I was sure.
“I am. I also know you guys got a visit from the Witches’ Council. I thought this might be something we need to talk about.”
I skipped mentioning I knew Gunther was half-human. I didn’t know enough about the Makepeace Circus, Roland, or Gunther’s relationship with his father to poke at that just yet. It was clear from what I saw last night there was tension around Gunther’s origins. I didn’t know enough about anything to wade into that confusion, and my immediate worry was Mark. For the moment, anyway.
“Do you know what barn Mark’s supposed to be in?” Gunther said as he gestured for me to follow him. “I can’t believe any of our people would be involved in that, but Deo… well, he’s kind of arrogant. I hope you’re wrong.”
“I’m not. I wish I was, though.”
As we walked through the main thoroughfare, I felt eyes peering out from behind gleaming festival stands. The Makepeace Circus was as spotless, bright, and new in reality as it looked through the blue rose haze. Nothing about it seemed used or old. Compared to the Magical Midway, Makepeace appeared wholly contemporary, and we appeared totally old-fashioned. Even the path we walked on was graded and neatly graveled.
“That one!” I told him, pointing at a large gray barn. “I’m almost positive it’s that one.”
Gunther and I raced to the outbuilding and tugged on the door, but we were both unable to open it. “It’s… locked somehow. But there’s no lock on these doors. I mean, they shouldn’t even be able to lock. It’s just feed.” Gunther rattled the massive doors further, tugging harder, but they would not open.
Stepping backward, Gunther narrowed his eyes and flashed his palms toward the door. With a shower of pink fire, the door blew open with a crash. I jumped.
“Hello?” Mark called from within. Running into the barn, I found him where I had left him the night before. “Nice to see you again, Charlotte!” Mark smiled. “I was guessing you had gotten held up. Or forgot about me.”
“Not a chance, Botsworth,” I told him as Gunther cast spells to remove Mark’s irons. “Can you stand?”
“I think so,” he said and supported himself against the wall unsteadily.
“Wait here,” I told Gunther. “I need to get him back to our circus.”
“You can't leave, my Dad will want to find out how this happened! We need to talk to him. He'll want to talk to Mark, I'm sure.”
“I get it. But no.”
“Charlotte—”
“No offense, Gunther, but I can’t be hurt here. He can be. I’m not leaving him here another second for any reason when we do not understand how he’s here or why he was taken.”
I could see Gunther wanted to argue with me, but he finally nodded and stepped back. “Come right back. I’ll be right here.”
It was remarkably simple to just pop back to the Magical Midway with another person in tow. Though my mind was distracted with everything I’d learned in the last day, I had a job to do, and it felt like I was getting better at it.
“Mark!” Serena sobbed as we emerged in my yurt. The calm and elegant lion shifter raced across the room to seize her missing partner. My uncle, Samson, Fiona, and Ningul jumped up from their seats and followed her. “Oh my, oh my Mark!” The couple wrapped their arms around one another.
“I’m okay, I’m here. Serena, it will be okay.”
“It will not be okay!” Serena wailed, her face hidden in his chest. “I cannot lose you. I don’t care what regulations the Witches’ Council claims we have broken. I will kill them before I allow them to take you.” Mark, still unsteady on his feet, folded her tighter in his arms and caressed her head as she sobbed. Mark raised his tormented eyes to meet mine but spoke nothing.
“I need to get back there,” I told the group. “We still don’t know why he was taken.”
“Did you find out whether the Makepeaces knew about Mark?” Fiona said. “Surely, they knew Mark was at their circus. I mean, how could they not?”
“I don’t know that’s the case,” I disagreed. “When I first showed up last night, Roland was speaking to their people. I sensed nothing from him, or from Gunther, that showed they knew what was going on. I didn’t sense they took part in taking Mark.”
“How do you not know what is going on in your own circus as a ringmaster?”
“We have less all-knowing superpowers than you think we do, Fiona. I mean, I didn’t know about Dergal, and Uncle Phil over here knew so little that he gulped down his own death. Anyway, Gunther seemed astounded when we located him, and he helped get Mark unshackled.”
“It’s true,” Mark said.
“Yeah, well, that’s Gunther. That’s not Roland.” Ningul rubbed Fiona’s back to pacify my indignant friend. I had to give him points for trying, but once you wound Fiona up she pretty much just went. “That Roland is the most—”
“He’s a ringmaster. And he has as much to fear from the Witches’ Council as we do.”
“I hardly believe that to be true.”
“Remember, Gunther is half-human. If he cares about his son’s life at all, he does,” I told Ningul.
The room fell silent.
“I wonder how many over at their circus know about him?” Uncle Phil asked me.
“It seems like it may be an open secret over at the Makepeace Circus. Roland seemed defensive about it. What do you know about Gunther’s mother, Uncle Phil?”
The Witches’ Council killed her, Samson told me. The all-knowing cat told me what he knew about my friend’s family, and the deal Roland Makepeace struck with the Witches’ Council to keep his son, my friend, alive.
Gunther sat in the barn waiting just where he said he would be.
Nothing about Gunther screamed the tragedy he had been through. Did he know what his father had
done to save his life? What he had given up to ensure his son would have a future? I didn’t know. For the moment, though, I needed to focus on Mark’s kidnapping and the showdown with the Council.
“Is there any possibility your father has a hand in Mark being kidnapped? Would he have helped the Witches’ Council?” I asked.
Gunther paused for a moment and then nodded slowly.
“My father is not like your Uncle Phil. He’s not like you.” Gunther pointed toward a bale of hay and gestured for me to go sit down. “I love my father. I do. But... I’m not proud of a lot of the things he does, though. Or the way he treats the people that live here.”
“What do you mean?” I sat down and tucked my feet up beneath me. Gunther sat a small distance away.
“This is a fiefdom to him. I mean, both of the circuses are fiefdoms, really,” he smiled, reminding me of my omnipotence. “But my father treats it like one. He looks at himself like a feudal lord and all the people that live here like peasants obligated to him. Dad is the worst combination of witchcraft elitism and ringmaster control. It’s crazy.”
“I see.” My mind flashed on moments with the people of the Magical Midway that concerned me. Ningul’s panic I would slaughter all of the centaurs when Dergal tried to poison me. Avalon’s fear I would withdraw protection from the weredeers. Perhaps their apprehensive attitude toward me came from memory, not paranoia. “Is he just rude, or does he run roughshod over these people?”
“Dad has the power of death and banishment over everyone at the Makepeace Circus. He uses it. Sometimes unfairly, sometimes when a lesser punishment would have gotten the point across. It’s happened two or three times that I remember. But his willingness to use it impacts people.”
“Why do you think he’s so strict?” I told him.
“A few of the older residents told me he wasn’t always this way. A gorgon killed my mother, and it devastated him. My father decided that paranormals needed a ‘strong hand’ to control them after that, and so he took one. He blamed himself for her death, maybe. I don’t think he ever got over it.”
Gunther didn’t seem to know that the Witches’ Council may have had a hand in the death of his mother. I contemplated telling him what I had just discovered but remained silent. I didn’t understand what it all meant yet. Instead, I resolved to address the half-human elephant in the room.
“Your mother was human?” Gunther’s eyes grew wide with shock.
“How did you know?”
“I heard what happened last night at the meeting,” I told him without getting into the specifics of how I heard it.
Gunther shifted in his chair and rubbed his eyes. He nodded again.
“Yes, I’m half-human.” Gunther got up and looked down at me. “Go ahead. Get it out.”
“Get what out?” I asked, confused.
“Whatever snide remark you’re going to say. I’m used to it. I know full-blooded witches despise people like me. Hell, I’m not even supposed to exist, so I should be grateful you all allow me to breathe, right?”
I should have expected it after what Samson told me, but I didn’t.
It was a shock. Painful. For three months, we had talked of our lives, laughed over jokes, and ducked flying items together. Did Gunther believe that I thought less of him because of who his mother was?
“Gunther… I’m not like all those full-blooded witches. Come on. I don’t care who your Mom was. I don’t think any differently of you now than I did two days ago. Heck, you should be more like them. You went to the Witches Academy. I’m curious, though—how did you go to the Witches Academy? Didn’t you glow?”
I felt like a jerk manipulating his story from him as if I didn’t already know.
“Yep,” he blew his breath out slowly. “Like a star atop a Christmas tree.”
I pictured a young Gunther attending school with young, immature versions of Mina, Mabel, and Mercy. If young witches were anything like their adult judgmental counterparts, school must’ve been absolutely miserable for Gunther. “Gunther, I’m so sorry…”
“You didn’t push me into a magic chest every day,” he smiled.
“Still. You were a child. That must have been really hard for you.”
“My mother hated it, and fought it,” Gunther sighed, staring off into the distance. “But she died. My father decided after her death it would toughen me up, being subjected to the derision of the witch community. Schooling with the elite of the elites. Not everyone was horrible. The mean students always seem to take the lead, though. No one wanted to be next, so no one stuck up for me. I learned to grin and bear it.”
“It seems to be like that everywhere,” I admitted. “I was kind of an outcast in school, too, but I didn’t glow to advertise it to everybody. It’s like The Scarlet Letter for kids.”
“What’s The Scarlet Letter?”
“Never mind. It’s not important.” My own father was determined that my upbringing take place far from the paranormal community, and my mother never fought him particularly hard on the idea. There weren’t all that many witches left in the world—a few hundred at best, and so I never felt like I missed out on much.
The more I found out about my fellow witches, the more I was grateful for my father’s decisions. I’d rather have a rough start as ringmaster than grow up with the elitist prejudices that the witch community seemed to demand.
“Charlotte?” I shook off my thoughts and focused back on Gunther. “You looked a million miles away there for a second.”
“I was just thinking. I just wonder how any group winds up so… corrupted, I guess. It just makes me sad that the paranormal world is like this. The more I find out about it, the more I’m just… it’s just sad, that’s all.”
“Well, not the whole paranormal world. The Magical Midway isn’t like this. And we have our moments here, too, you know. It's not all bad. So, we're still here. We're not gone yet.”
“Not yet,” I agreed, then sighed. “If the Witches’ Council has its way, we will be. Let’s go talk to your Dad.”
“You don’t want to talk to Deo first?”
“This isn’t my circus,” I told him. “Your Dad’s the ringmaster here. I think I should talk to him first before I go poking around his fiefdom.”
10
Roland Makepeace’s cottage would not have looked out of place at an upscale ski lodge. The timber’s rich brown color shined as if it had been waxed, and the deck wrapped around the width of the massive structure. Homey rocking chairs were strewn around next to side tables. The coziness of the decor seemed at odds with Roland’s stormy temperament.
“My Mom,” Gunther said upon seeing my confusion. “Dad changed nothing she did.”
Gunther knocked on the door and called out to his father. He then opened the door without waiting for a response. “Dad, Charlotte Astley is here to talk to you. We’re coming in.”
“Is this situation not tense enough without your little girlfriend coming to muddle it up even more?” Roland’s angry voice thundered from somewhere above. I looked up to see the haggard man descending the stairs. His boots stomped loudly as he clomped down to the living room.
“Mr. Makepeace, it’s good to see you again,” I greeted him as he stepped into the expansive living area. “You have a lovely home.”
“It’s a mausoleum,” he snapped and hiccuped. I noticed that he was unstable on his feet, eyes glassy. “A monument I haunt every single day, girl. I’d pass on your compliments to my wife,” he sneered as he slammed down on a couch. “But she’s dead.” He pulled out a flask and guzzled from it.
Gunther remained silent.
“You seem a little unsteady on your feet, Mr. Makepeace. Are you drinking? I only ask because when I drink, I can’t even get tipsy,” I told him, sitting down beside him. I smiled at the troubled man as I tried to engage him in friendly conversation. “How do you manage that? The drinking, I mean?”
“You Astleys, you always had a stick up your tail about playing it safe. We
Makepeaces had no such worry.” Roland hiccuped again and took another guzzle. “We’ve been drinking for generations, and nothing bad has ever taken place.”
Gunther dropped his eyes to a picture next to Roland of a beautiful blonde woman holding a cheerful three-year-old, and his eyes shined with unshed tears.
“Mr. Makepeace, I wanted to talk to you about some of the things that have been going on. Well, two things, really. I rescued Mark Botsworth from your feed barn. A member of your community, Deo, kidnapped him. I’d like your permission to talk to Deo to see if I can determine why he was taken.”
“Talk to him,” Roland waved at me without commenting on Mark's kidnapping. “Take him. What do I care? We’re all doomed, anyway.” Gunther’s father hiccuped again and swallowed more of the flask. “Your elevation has brought the Witches’ Council down upon us all!”
“Dad, come on.” Gunther moved to sit on the other side of his father. “It’s not Charlotte’s fault.”
“Says the halfling,” Roland mumbled. The big man removed his hat and threw it at Gunther. “Go on, take it. See if it fits, boy. I failed my Gerda, no doubt I will fail you, my son.” Roland’s head fell back on the couch, and he let out a loud snore. Even in his boozy sleep, I could feel the intense emotional pain and frustration swimming through his drunken dreams.
“I’m sorry,” Gunther said as we sat and watched his unconscious father between us.
“Don’t apologize. I’m just… I’m just surprised, that’s all. Between your father’s condescending attempt at buying my circus and his speech last night, I wouldn’t have pictured… well, this,” I motioned to his inebriated father. “Your father is in an extraordinary amount of pain. It’s coming off him in waves.”
Gunther sighed. “I know. I mean, I can’t sense it like you can. But I have eyes. My father’s not a happy man.”
“That may be the understatement of the year,” I told him and then bit my lip. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be flippant about it. Sometimes this all strikes me as so ridiculously dramatic it all seems like a joke or a comedy of errors I can’t escape from. But it’s not. This isn’t a joke, and I’m sorry. This can’t be easy for you.”
