Flesh Circus (27 page)

“Are you a loose end?” It was worth a shot.

“I belong to Chango.” All jolliness dropped away, and his broad moonface turned solemn. “The Twins, they have no hold on me.
My
patrón,
he whip their asses if they come near me. I in
strong
with Chango. And you got some help too. Ogoun just waiting for you to come around.”

My mouth was dry as desert sand. “I didn’t think you had any truck with Ogoun.”

He shrugged. “The spirits come when they will. You know. You called on them in the beginning of this. Papa Legba and Ogoun
both watching you.”

Well, training in dealing with possession has to take these sorts of things into account.
I suppressed a shiver. The first time I’d brushed up against voodoo was during a ceremony devoted to Ogoun, Mikhail by my
side. There was a skip, like a needle lifting from a record, and the next thing I knew I had a mouthful of fiery rum, Mikhail
watching me very carefully, and the followers were drifting away toward the dinner table. He never would tell me what exactly
I’d done when the drums lifted me out of myself. Broken glass had littered the floor of the peristyle, and there were curls
of cigar smoke in the air. It had taken me a while to wash the smell of cigars away.

After that, Mikhail was very, very careful to teach me how to build an exorcist’s hard etheric shell. I’d never had that problem
again, thank God, but still. You never can tell when dealing with shit like this.

I fished the two Ziploc bags out of my coat. Straight razor and enamelware cup, both of them almost quivering with readiness.
“What do these have to do with Zamba?”

He eyed my hands, then went pale under his brownness.
“Ay de mi.”

“Are we going to start talking, or are you gonna try yanking me around some more? Because I have to tell you,
señor,
my temper’s getting a little thin.”
Understatement of the year, isn’t it?

He was still staring at my hands. His eyes unfocused, brown irises sheened over as if with cataracts, a thin gray film spilling
over his gaze. The air tightened, a breeze from nowhere riffling the papers on his desk, touching the leather-clad spines,
and fingering the sheer curtains over the French doors looking onto the backyard’s wide green expanse.

I braced myself.

When he spoke next, it was a different voice. His mouth moved, but the sound came from elsewhere, a mellow deep baritone crackling
at the edges.
“Ay, mi sobrina. Bienvenidos a mi casa.”

The goose bumps rose again, hot this time instead of cold. My hair stirred, the silver chimes shifting, and my blue eye caught
little dark shapes moving through the charged, heavy atmosphere that had suddenly settled inside the study.
“Buenos días, señor. Muchas gracias por su atencion.”

Hey, it never hurts to be polite.

Melendez’s face worked itself like rubber, compressing and stretching. His mouth worked wetly. “You come here seeking knowledge,
eh? What you give to Papa Chango?”

How about I don’t rip you out of your follower there? How about I leave this place standing instead of burned down as a lesson
in not fucking with me?
I kept control of my temper, but just barely. It was getting harder and harder. “You wouldn’t ask me if you didn’t have something
in mind already.”

“
Es verdad.
Me and the Twins, we have a wager. They think their little
puta
is a match for the devils and for you. She pay them well, she always have.”

I’ll bet she does. There’s all sorts of death lately she’s been paying them with.
“Payment isn’t everything. There’s more at stake here than just revenge. What does Arthur Gregory want?”

“I tell you what,
bruja. Mi hijo
here, he tell you all he know. In return, you owe me
una bala.
He lie, or he tell you nothing useful—and you put that
bala
through his
cabeza,
eh?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“Why should I strike a bargain with you?”

The thing inhabiting Melendez’s body laughed, a chortle that struck every exposed, shivering surface and blew my hair back.
I smelled ozone, and rum. And cigar smoke, drifting across my sensitive nose. My eyes stung, smart and dumb alike.

“Because otherwise,
mi sobrina,
you ain’t never gonna find that tick dug itself into the city’s skin. She gonna bloat up with blood and strike the one she
aimin’ for, and you can’t let that happen, can you? No. And this little
caballo
of mine know not just the
who
but the
why.
That what you wantin’. You just like every other
macizo;
you always sayin’
por que, por que?
”

It chuckled, moving Melendez’s lips like ripples on the surface of a pond. “So what you say,
bruja grande de Santa Luz? Una bala, por la razon,
for the great
por que.
”

Jesus Christ. It always comes down to this, doesn’t it. What part of myself am I willing to mortgage to get this case over
and dealt with?
“Deal.” The word was ash in my mouth. Cigar ash. “But if you double-deal me,
señor,
this
caballo
is wormfood and you’re on the outs within the borders of my city.”

A good threat. I couldn’t bar a
loa
from the city, of course—but I could make it hell on his followers. If I had to.

If it became
necessary.

It laughed again. Chuckled long and hard, Melendez’s hands jerking like brown paper puppets on strings. “We like you,
bruja. Mi hermano
Ogoun and me, we got a wager on you too. We be watching.”

And just like that, it winked out. Melendez sagged, coughing, in his chair. A long jet of smoke spluttered through his lips,
and his face hit the desktop with a solid thump.

It looked painful. He coughed, and more smoke billowed up. I swallowed a sarcastic little laugh.
If this turns into a case of spontaneous combustion, we’re going to have a problem.

Yeah, just add it to all my other problems.
I stayed where I was as Melendez hacked, and the smoke gradually thinned.

When his bloodshot eyes swiveled up and he pushed himself upright, I sank my weight into my back foot, prepared to go any
direction.

“Kismet.” He coughed again, but without the smoke.

“Melendez.” I sank down, coiling into myself like a spring. Just in case.

“I need a beer,” he muttered. “Then I tell you
todo.
”

“Sounds good.” I didn’t relax. “Does Chango smoke every time he rides you?”

“
Chingada,
no.” Amazingly enough, the round little man laughed. “Only when he mad,
bruja.
Only when he really fucking mad.”

I
left his quiet little house a half hour later. I paused only once, standing on his threshold, to look back at the courtyard
and the dry fountain. I was cold, and not even the white-yellow eye of the sun could warm me.

It was the damndest thing, but the Cirque’s dogs didn’t come up Melendez’s driveway. Instead, they clustered up and down the
street, each piece of knife-edged morning shadow full of writhing slender shapes and winking colorless-glowing eyes.

The Pontiac’s door slammed and I stared at the steering wheel. Measured off a slice of it between my index fingers, bitten-down
nails ragged, my apprentice-ring gleaming on my left third finger. Tendons stood out on the back of my scrawny hands, calloused
from fighting and sparring, capable work-roughened hands.

Jesus.

When all else fails and you’re looking at a huge clusterfuck, sometimes you just need a moment to sit and collect yourself
before you start running the next lap toward the inevitable.

What came next?

The Cirque. Get out there and take a look at the newest body. Chances are you’ll be able to triangulate her position from
the traces, now that you know what she’s doing and how they’re linked. If you can get to her before she gets what she wants—

But there was another consideration. If Mama Zamba,
nee
Arthur Gregory, was out for vengeance against the Cirque, she had a right. Sloane had been working the case, which meant
it fell to me to tie up loose ends and finish the job.

Helene took the brother in, and the fortuneteller—Moragh—had something to do with it. The Ringmaster too. That’s who Zamba
blames, at least. Reasonable as far as I can see.

But what about Ikaros? Why does she want to kill the hostage?

I reached over, grabbed Sloane’s file from the passenger seat. Saul should have been there with me. He would be looking at
me right now, his head tilted slightly and his eyes soft and deep.

The pain hit me then, gulleywide sideways. I blinked back the tears rising hot and vicious.
Shut up,
I told myself.
Shut up and take it. You can take this.

I hadn’t really thought he would leave me. Well, I
had;
it was the song under every thought of him, the fear under every kiss. But I’d hoped.

That great human drug, hope. It makes fools of everyone, even tough-ass hunters. And I was so
tired.
When was the last time I’d slept?

“Goddammit,” I said to the glaring-hot dash, the burning steering wheel, the flood of sunlight bleaching everything colorless-pale.
“Do your
job,
Jill.”

It was left to me. It was always left to me. That’s what a hunter is—the last hope of the desperate, the last best line of
defense against Hell’s tide. No matter what shit was going on in my personal life, it was up to me to see that the entire
fucking house of cards didn’t fall.

My pager buzzed again. The goddamn thing just would not shut up. I fished it out with my free hand, glanced at it, and swore.

Perry, again. Which could only mean trouble.

I flipped the file open. Past the picture of Arthur Gregory’s young, heartbreaking smile to the précis of the case.

Brother disappeared. Last known contact was outside the Carnaval de la Saleté. Suspects: Helene, hellbreed of the lesser type.
Moragh, hellbreed of the higher type, refused to give information when questioned. Henri de Zamba, hellbreed of the higher
type. Also refused to give information.

Holy shit. There it was—Arthur Gregory’s gauntlet thrown down.
Zamba. I’ll be damned.
It was there, staring me in the face. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place, clicking hard.

Maybe she wasn’t trying to kill the hostage after all. Maybe she’s been after the Ringmaster all this time, and it’s just
echoing through the bloodbond since the Trader would be his weak point. Jesus.

I slapped the file closed, dropped it on the passenger-side floorboard, and twisted the key in the ignition. The Pontiac roared
into life; I didn’t bother buckling myself in.

Come on, Jill. Get this done, and you can rest.

It sounded good. The trouble is, as soon as this was done something else would come along.

I’ll deal with that when it comes up. And if it does, that will mean I don’t have to think.

There’s something to be said for drowning your sorrows in work.

I parked on the bluff and locked my doors, then took the path down to the parking lot. The cars were hooded with dust, the
paint already looking weary and sucked-dry. There were a lot of them, and the empty spots looked like knocked-out teeth. It
was barely noon and the calliope was going full-bore, a souped-up version of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” punctuating the
air. The reek of cotton candy, animal shit, and fried fat painted the heavy motionless air. I checked the sky—over the mountains
hung a dark smudge.

Rain, finally. Which would mean flash floods and misery, wet boots and cold hanging out on rooftops, steaming mornings and
dripping against every surface. It would also mean old-fashioned hot chocolate, Saul’s signature hash browns, and chili.

I pushed the thought away.

There were only two or three shufflers outside the ticket booth. The same Trader was on duty, her rhinestones sending back
a vicious glitter, sweat-sheen greasing her pale skin as she kept as far as she could in the shade. I didn’t pause, just strode
straight past and jumped the turnstile. She gave a high piercing cry, but I paid no attention.

During the day, the Cirque did look shabby. Holes in signs, tawdry glitter, most of the booths deserted. The murmuring of
Helletöng spilled under the surface, plucking at the visible world with flabby fingers. Dust rose in uneasy curls, and the
calliope belched, missed a beat, caught itself, and went on.

Where is everyone?

I was cold, despite it being in the high nineties under the sun’s assault. The alien scents of the Cirque swallowed me, teased
at the inside of my skull. It was a few degrees cooler inside the Cirque’s borders, but not enough to be a relief. Just enough
to pull out some humidity and make every surface cloying and sweaty.

I heard a low wet chuckle and spun, steelshod heel grinding in dirt. My coat flared like a toreador’s cape, the pockets weighted
down.