When we were in the eighth grade, I’d used a bully’s insecurity to humiliate her, after she’d accused Shelley of cheating off her on a test, when the opposite was actually true. In college, I’d helped a friend get revenge on a cheating boyfriend by exploiting his rampant lust. And once at the bank, I’d used my boss’s trust in me to get him fired after he cheated on his wife in the vault.
Gallagher might be bigger than the other predators I’d encountered, but as my father always said, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Finding Gallagher’s weakness would be the key to setting myself free.
* * *
Gallagher pounded on the trailer door with his thick right fist, his left still wrapped around my arm in a grip that didn’t actually hurt, but probably couldn’t be broken. My legs ached and my ankles were chafed from walking in iron shackles, and what I’d learned from slowly, awkwardly climbing the steep porch steps in them was that even if I could have pulled free from my captor, I wouldn’t get very far if I tried to run.
The porch light came on over our heads, illuminating the aluminum steps beneath us, the dented metal door, and the mud-splattered white vertical siding of the menagerie’s mobile office—a modular trailer, which could be lifted onto a flatbed truck and hauled from city to city, intact.
Gallagher had called it “the silver wagon,” but neither descriptor fit.
The door was opened by a tall thin man wearing a red satin Metzger’s jacket in spite of the stifling heat of the midsummer night. The name embroidered over his heart was Ruyle, and beneath that his title read Lot Supervisor.
I hated him with every cell in my body, even before Ruyle took one look at me, then snorted. “I can’t believe the old man bought another free-range freak.”
Free-range? Because I hadn’t grown up in captivity?
The supervisor stepped back, and Gallagher tugged me into the cramped one-room office. Inside there was barely enough room to breathe, thanks to two cluttered desks, four lockable filing cabinets, a mini-fridge, and a whiteboard schedule covered with employee names, time slots, and various menagerie act assignments.
The board slid out of focus as I stared at it. I would be listed there soon—not by my name but by my species, or by some number assigned to me on a list of inventory.
“You’d think the old man would have learned a lesson after that free-range dark elf we picked up near Atlanta last year,” Ruyle continued. “That was a real clusterfuck.”
Gallagher only grunted.
Ruyle kicked the door closed and turned to study me. My skin crawled beneath his appraisal.
“What is she?”
Gallagher shrugged. “She doesn’t eat live flesh, read minds, tell the future, shift into an animal, or have an allergy to iron.”
Ruyle made a spinning motion with his index finger, and Gallagher turned me by both shoulders, so the supervisor could finish his assessment. “No horns, hooves, claws, or fangs. Do a thorough check for feathers, scales, and fur when we’re done here.”
“I don’t have any of that.” I tried to turn and appeal to Ruyle directly, but Gallagher stopped me with one heavy hand on my shoulder. “I was examined at the sheriff’s station, and they didn’t find anything.”
“Oh, I think we’re going to want to see for ourselves.” Ruyle’s hand settled on my lower back, then slid low over the curve of my hip. I tried to step away from his touch, but Gallagher’s grip on my shoulder tightened, holding me in place.
Rage blazed beneath my skin like a fever. “Don’t touch me.”
Ruyle stepped into sight again, his disappointed gaze lingering on my mouth. “Not a succubus, then. Damn shame. They would have lined up for miles to be sucked dry by her.”
The mental image made me gag. The supervisor laughed while I swallowed convulsively to keep from vomiting. I loathed him. “What, does that offend your delicate sensibilities?”
I stared straight into his eyes, standing as tall as I could. “If I’d eaten anything tonight, you’d be wearing it. Consider that my official opinion of your business model.”
Gallagher’s grunt actually sounded amused.
Ruyle seized my chin in a brutal grip and I gasped, shocked by the casual cruelty. I tried to pull free, and his hold tightened until my teeth cut into my cheek and I tasted blood.
“Free advice, freak. Just because you can talk doesn’t mean you should.” The supervisor looked up at Gallagher without letting go of me. “If the sign out front read Ruyle’s Menagerie, cutting their tongues out would be an official part of the welcome package.”
Gallagher said nothing, so Ruyle turned back to me. “If I have to go find a muzzle for you, you’ll wear it for a week straight, even if we have to feed you through a straw.”
When he let go of my chin, I glared up at him, blinking back angry tears. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll scramble your brain and leave you drooling in a puddle of your own urine?”
“With your hands cuffed behind your back?” Ruyle’s mouth laughed, but his eyes didn’t.
“I won’t always be cuffed, though, will I?” None of the “exhibits” I’d seen had been restrained within their cages.
The supervisor’s eyes narrowed into angry slits beneath his deeply furrowed brow. “Three.” His gaze slid up to Gallagher again. “My money’s on three days before the old man sells her to R & D. Or I feed her to the adlet. We’ve got a pool going.” Ruyle pointed to his desk, where an old pickle jar held a handful of wrinkled five-dollar bills. “You want in? The dark elf made it a week and a half.” His contemptuous gaze narrowed on me. “But I’m betting she won’t make it half that.”
“Get on with it,” Gallagher growled, while I stared at the jar of cash bet against my survival.
Ruyle rounded his desk and dropped into the chair behind it, looking up at me with both arms folded on the cluttered plywood desk. “You’re what? Twenty? Twenty-two?”
“Twenty-five, today.” Gallagher sank onto the edge of a two-drawer filing cabinet, without letting go of my arm. He’d either seen my driver’s license, spoken to my friends, or read a report at the sheriff’s station.
Ruyle’s brows rose. “Hell of a birthday, huh?” He leaned over his desk and his gaze narrowed on me. “Look, twenty-five years is a long time to spend living a lie, and I’m sure you got real comfortable with a bunch of liberties and amenities you never really had any right to. Most in your situation don’t make it in the menagerie because they can’t let go of the past. But if you want to prove me wrong and cost me a small fortune in fives—” he gestured to the jar of cash “—that’s exactly what you’ll need to do. Forget about your friends, and your family, and your car, and your job, and any other defunct delusions. They were never really yours in the first place. If you can accept your place, you could be pretty comfortable here.” His hard-eyed gaze took on a lascivious gleam. “I’ll see to that myself. But if you make my job hard, I will make your life a living hell.”
“She’s my charge.” Gallagher’s hand tightened around my arm, tugging me closer. I fought the urge to pull away from him.
Ruyle nodded. “True, you’re Gallagher’s problem until you’re broken in and turning a profit. But I’m his boss, which means that ultimately, just like all the other beasts, you’re my problem. Understood?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged, trying not to let the pain in my shoulders show. “You’re the boss, so you have a lot of problems.”
Ruyle’s jaw clenched. He glared at Gallagher. “Three days. And that’s a generous estimation.” Then he picked up a form from a pile of papers scattered across his desk and turned back to me. “As the lot supervisor, I’m in charge when old man Metzger’s gone, which is most of the time. Even when he’s here, he leaves the real work to me and our boss of livestock.” He threw a careless gesture at Gallagher, without looking away from me. “Obviously, you’re the livest
ock. I’m sure a lot of this comes as a shock, after the way you were raised, so if you have any questions...” He shrugged. “You’ll figure it out.”
Ruyle scribbled something on the form in front of him. “Put her in crate forty-two. With any luck, it still smells like cat piss from that leopard shifter we leased from All American.” He spun the form around and slid it across the desk toward my new handler. “Give this to Nellis and tell him we’ll use one of the spare wagon casings for now. I’m not going to have Alyrose fix up something special until we know your new pet’s a keeper.”
“Crate?” I turned to Gallagher, wincing when the cuffs cut into my ankles. “You’re going to put me in a box?” Would they at least punch holes in the top, so I could breathe?
“It’s just a cage on wheels,” Gallagher said. “A circus wagon with the decorative casings removed for transport.”
Ruyle leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “I think you’re onto something, though. I’m sure we could find a shipping crate to stuff you in. Yesterday’s high was one hundred twelve degrees.” The manager shrugged. “It’d be a real shame for you to broil in your own sweat because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”
Survival instinct stilled my tongue, but terror ate away at me from the inside. He was right. I couldn’t survive the menagerie. I couldn’t live in a cage. I couldn’t be someone else’s property.
Panic crept in from the edges of my mind, where lurked all the horrifying possibilities I hadn’t yet let myself consider. They could do whatever they wanted with me. To me. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, trying to tune Ruyle out, but the best I could do was mentally distance myself from the miserable existence his forms and decrees were outlining for me.
In addition to a crate number, he assigned me to uniform group C and hygiene plan A, with the caveat that if I became a security risk in the bathroom, I would lose the privilege.
Having never considered hygiene a privilege, I wasn’t entirely sure what a downgrade from plan A would mean.
The supervisor also assigned me to the omnivore meal plan and gave me a wagon number, which would indicate my position in the “take down” and determine which of the menagerie’s custom-built, wide-load 18-wheelers I would be “shelved” in for transport.
I couldn’t fully process all the new information, and I didn’t even try. But by the time Gallagher escorted me from the silver wagon, accompanied by the clank of my heavy iron bindings, the takeaway was clear.
Everything I’d ever owned had been taken. Everyone I’d ever known was gone.
I’d become the property of Metzger’s Traveling Menagerie.
“According to the most current numbers, more than three hundred thousand human families lost a total of almost one million children in last week’s massacre, and all of them appear to have been killed by their own parents. But what’s really strange, Bill, is that the authorities are saying not one of those parents remembers a thing that happened in the early hours of August 24. Could all of those parents have been acting in some kind of subconscious state?”
—From an NPR interview with William Green, the world’s foremost authority on hypnotism, September 3, 1986
Delilah
The county fairgrounds ladies’ room. Six stalls—four toilets and two showers—and a sink-lined walkway. Grimy concrete floor. White cinderblock walls, dripping with slimy condensation.
As an eight-year-old, I’d vomited in the third stall from the left after a bad chili dog at the fair. At thirteen, I’d borrowed Shelley’s makeup and applied it in front of the very last sink, a willful violation of my dad’s “not until high school” rule. And a week after my eighteenth birthday, I’d stood outside the fourth stall while Shelley took the pregnancy test she hadn’t had the nerve to take at home alone.
But I’d never been marched down the abandoned midway in the middle of the night by a man the size of a small building, passing darkened game booths and locked-tight food stalls on our way into that bathroom. I’d never looked into the mirror and seen finger-shaped bruises rounding my chin or dark circles forming beneath each of my eyes.
I’d never been ordered to strip in front of the curtain-less shower while three men watched, their expressions ranging from Gallagher’s objective professionalism to Mustache Man’s leering grin of anticipation.
“I’m going to uncuff you, and you’re going to take off your clothes and turn a slow circle so we can visually check you for species-identifying marks or features,” Gallagher said. “Then you’ll step into the shower and thoroughly wash your hair and your body.”
“No,” I said, and irritation narrowed his gray eyes. “Please don’t make me do this. I don’t have any marks, I swear.”
He scowled and turned me by my shoulders for access to the cuffs at my back, but I spun around again before he could dig his keys from his pocket.
“I get it, okay? I don’t have any rights. I’m just a piece of meat you’re going to lock up in a metal box.” Each word killed a little more of my soul, but desperation kept me talking. “I can’t stop you from doing whatever you want with me.”
“Damn right,” the man with the mustache said, but I only exhaled and kept my gaze on the boss of livestock.
“You can make me strip. But I’m asking you not to. As a kindness. I have nothing left but my dignity. Please let me keep it.”
Gallagher blinked, and for just an instant, he looked...surprised. Then the professional blinders slid back into place, locking me out of his thoughts. “There are rules. If you refuse to follow them, we’ll have to cut your clothes off and bathe you ourselves, and there is much less dignity in that.”
I nodded, my jaw clenched to keep my chin from trembling, and as I turned to give him access to the handcuffs, he exhaled.
“I think we can forgo the flea and lice treatment.”
“Ruyle says no exceptions on that.” Mustache Man picked up a commercial-sized bottle from the box at his feet. “We can’t afford an infestation.” The name on his shirt identified him as Clyde.
“This morning she was a bank teller with manicured nails.” Gallagher slid his key into the cuffs with the scrape of metal. “She’s probably cleaner than you are.”
Clyde scowled, but didn’t push the issue.
Gallagher released my left hand, then my right, then turned me by my shoulders to face him again. He knelt to unlock my ankles, and Clyde leered at me over the top of his boss’s red cap.
I crossed my arms over my chest, shielding myself from the pending visual violation. “Okay, how ’bout a compromise?” I said to the top of Gallagher’s head as he freed my left ankle. “I’ll strip and shower without a fuss, saving everyone a lot of time and effort—but not in front of them.”
Gallagher shook his head without looking up at me as he unlocked my ankle. “Until we know what you’re capable of, federal regulations dictate a three-to-one ratio of handlers to unrestrained cryptids.”
I shrugged. “So make them turn around. How many of you really need to see that my back isn’t hollow and my ass isn’t covered in scales?”
Gallagher stood, towering over me with my shackles in hand, and I watched anxiously while he weighed the risks and benefits of my proposal. “If you try anything, I will never be able to trust you again. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
A stubborn thread of anger steeled my spine as I stared up at him. “Let you see me naked, or you’ll make my life hell?”
“This isn’t about seeing you naked.”
“Right.” I rubbed my sore wrist, left raw from the sheriff’s department’s restraints.
Gallagher turned me by both shoulders, and I held his hard, gray gaze. “At the back of the menagerie, in a tent trimmed with a red ribbon, sit four of the most beautiful women ever seen on this earth. Succubi crave physical contact and
take off any clothing we don’t practically glue to their skin. So understand, Princess Vanity, that yours is not the most coveted flesh in this carnival.”
I blinked, surprised by the longest speech I’d heard from him.
“It’s almost dawn,” Gallagher growled. “Get moving.” He glanced at each of the other handlers. “You two turn around.”
Only slightly mollified, I reached into the shower stall and twisted the knob. Water exploded from the showerhead and I held one hand beneath the flow, waiting—hoping—for it to warm while Gallagher fielded protests from Clyde and the other handler, whose name was Freddie. When the water was as warm as it was going to get, I turned to find the boss of livestock watching me expectantly while the other men stood between us, facing him, but turned away from me.
Their stiff bearing and crossed arms spoke volumes, but so did their obedience. They weren’t willing to cross Gallagher.
I turned away from him, and my hands shook as I pulled my sheer blouse and cami over my head together in one quick movement. Despite the warm night, I had to clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. I could practically feel his gaze on my back.
My fingers fumbled with my bra hook, and by the time I pushed my underwear to the floor and stepped out of it, I was trembling all over. Reducing the spectators from three to one hadn’t helped as much as I’d hoped. I was still naked and vulnerable in front of a stranger.
“Extend your arms,” Gallagher said, and I jumped, so on edge that any stimulus from the world around me—the splatter of lukewarm water from the shower, the tick of Clyde’s old-fashioned wristwatch, the scent of bleach emanating from the toilet stalls—was a shock to my system.
I held my arms out, silently commanding them not to shake. For a moment, there was only silence behind me. Then, “Turn around.”
Exhaling slowly, I turned and looked Gallagher in the eye, silently challenging him to look away first.
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