Flesh Circus (7 page)

I flipped it open and took a look. A couple of drug arrests, one breaking and entering dismissed with time served, and nothing
for the last three years. Emilio Ricardo, thirty-six, brown and brown, employed halfway across town at a Mexican restaurant.
Avery had even, bless his thoroughgoing little heart, pulled his recent renewal of a food-handler’s card. “Huh.”

“Yeah. The address on his food permit isn’t the place on Silverado where I found him.” Avery scratched at his forehead under
a flop of brown hair. “It just tingled too funny. I got called in by a patrol car—they’d gone in for a domestic disturbance
in the same apartment building and ended up hearing this guy screaming. Couldn’t break the door down, and one of them—Jughead
Vanner, you know, blond kid, looks like an advertisement for Clairol—radioed me in. He said it made him feel hinky.”

That’s odd.
“Poor Jughead. You know he came across a Trader a couple months ago?”

Ave’s sleepy smile bloomed. “He told me. Not in so many words, but… he wanted nothing to do with anything weird. I had to
jiggle the door to get it open, and the vic tried to cold-cock me when I stepped in. I returned the favor, we tussled, I knocked
him out.”

“Where was he when you came in? Right next to the door?”

“Guess so. Why?”

“No reason.” The straight razor was still in my pocket. For some reason, it bothered me. “So he’s been quiet?”

“As a mouse.” Avery’s eyebrows were struggling not to rise. “Something wrong, Jill?”

“Not yet.”
But this is strange.
“I’ll peek in on him, then I’ve got a couple other things to do. Can you hold him for a bit?”

He made an expansive motion, rolling his eyes. “All things should be so easy. It’s been quiet on the exorcism front.”

I didn’t tell him that with the Cirque in town, exorcisms would probably bottom out for a while. He didn’t need that kind
of uneasiness weighing him down. “Yeah. I haven’t pulled something out of someone for at least two weeks, before this.”

“No rest for the wicked.” He indicated the first door. “Wanna take a look? Eva and I are going out for beers after I get off-shift.
In about twenty minutes.”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with her. Speaking of Eva, how’s Benito? And Wallace? Is Benny’s leg okay?”

“Oh, yeah, it itches like hell under that cast but he’s all right. Says he feels more stupid than anything else.” Avery pointedly
didn’t mention Eva again, and—was he
blushing?

I stared at him, my jaw threatening to drop. Ave’s got a sleepy smile and big brown eyes, both of which draw women like honey.
They don’t stay—girls don’t like it when their man spends his nights somewhere else, even if it’s with possessed people. And
Avery never makes much of an effort to keep them, either.

But he and Eva had been hanging out an awful lot lately. She’s smart, tough, and a capable exorcist, even if she’d never make
a hunter. Both Benito and Wallace have a little-sister thing going for her, and she handles it as gracefully as any woman
in a predominantly male field does.

That is, with a smart mouth and twice the moxie of any mere man.

I swallowed the smile struggling to rise to my face. “Mmmh. Serves him right, taking on an exorcism-plus like that without
calling me.” I put the file under my arm and stepped up to the first door, my back itching a little because it was to the
hallway. Only one entrance and one exit to any exorcist’s lair.

Getting trapped is a risk we’ll take. Letting a Possessor or a victim escape without being cleaned out isn’t.

“Eh, well. None of us want to call you without reason.” He shrugged when I glanced at him. “I know, I know. Better to call
you without need than to need you and not call you. Believe me, I’m down with that.”

I eased the bolt on the porthole free, slid the small reinforced square aside. Even this aperture was barred with cold iron,
blue light running under its pitted, rusting surface. Reinforcing the protections on a space like this was an every-day, every-other-day
job at most. Some exorcists do it twice a day, even.

Considering the alternative, I don’t blame them.

Emilio Ricardo crouched in the center of the circle scored in the concrete floor. He rocked back and forth, subvocalizing,
and now that the peephole was open I could hear it, a tuneless buzzing plucking at the air. He was hugging himself, and the
rags of his shirt fluttered. The restraints lay in a corner, a jumble of leather straps.

Interesting.
“Did you untie him?”

“Yeah. Figured he was going to be in there awhile. I’ll trank him through the door if we need to take him out for a walk.”
Avery shivered. “I got a bad feeling about this, Kiss.”

Don’t call me that.
“Me too.” I shut my dumb right eye and peered through, concentrating.

There was only a slight, fading quiver of the unnatural around Ricardo. He was just keening, probably in psychological shock.
Either that, or…

“Huh.” I looked closer, my smart eye dry and buzzing.

“I hate it when you say that,” Avery muttered.

Lingering cheesecloth veils hung around him, pulsing every time he took a breath. It looked like he was fighting free of the
contamination—though contamination isn’t the right word when it comes to voodoo or any of her cousins. He was definitely struggling
with the mental and emotional damage done by having something inhuman use your body as a hotel room—or getting that something
violently evicted.

It didn’t look like the regular event of a
loa
or
orisha
“riding a horse.” The bargains that priests and priestesses make with those spirits are well-defined on both sides, and initiation
into the secrets of any voodoo-esque branch carries a protection against unwanted possession as well as methods of doing it
safely.

That is, if any possession can be called “safe.”

They are jealous of their followers, those spirits. I learned as much doing a residency, working the voodoo beat in New Orleans.
Now
that
had been an education. Just goes to show there’s always something more you can learn, even as a hunter.

I slid the porthole closed, locked it. “Has he eaten anything?”

Avery shook his sleek dark head. “Nothing yet. I slide the food in, he doesn’t touch it.”

I don’t like this.
I restrained the urge to flip through the file again. “Okay. I’m going to ask some questions. Hopefully I—” My pager buzzed,
I broke off and dug for it. “Jesus. Never rains but it pours.”

“You say that a lot. I’ll just keep feeding him, then.”

“Be careful. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on here, and until I am I don’t want him going anywhere. Okay?” I checked the
pager. Galina, again. Which meant I had to get over there—it wasn’t like her to buzz right after I’d visited her unless something
was going on. Usually she’ll just wait for me to drop by every couple of weeks, figuring I have other irons in the fire.

“Okay. Say hi to Saul for me, will you?”

“I will.” I pocketed my pager, took another long look at the closed door holding a mystery behind it, shook my head, and turned
on my heel. “Say hi to Eva for us.”

He
was
blushing. He should’ve known I wouldn’t leave without twitting him. “Go fuck yourself, Kismet.”

I laughed and was on my way, pushing up the stairs lightly with each foot. Outside the jail, the Pontiac was parked in a fire
lane, Saul leaning against the front left quarter-panel and smoking. The streetlamp shine of just-past-dark was kind, and
I stopped on the steps for a moment, just taking a good look at him.

Tall, dark man, silver in his short black hair, jeans and combat boots and a black T-shirt. Broad-shouldered and lean-hipped,
and almost too delicious to be real. Weres are generally striking if not beautiful. They just look more
finished
than regular humans.

He was studying the street, presenting me with a three-quarter profile hard-edged as a statue. There were dark circles under
his eyes, I noticed, and his mouth was drawn tight. And his shoulders were hunched in a way I’d never seen before.

He looked tired.
Well, his mom just died. Leave it alone, Jill. Be supportive.

My pager buzzed again, and I fished it out.

Galina, again. A chill touched my nape. “Fuckity.”

That got Saul’s attention. He ditched his cigarette, a long, thin stream of smoke following its arc into the gutter. “What’s
up?”

“Galina’s buzzing. Twice. I should get over there. Avery says hi, by the way. I think he and Eva are dating.” I waited for
him to give me a quick smile, waited for his eyebrow to quirk.

Instead, his mouth turned even thinner. “Huh.”

He really did look tired. My fingers tightened on the manila folder, making it creak and crackle slightly. “I can drop you
off at home.”

That earned me a look sharp enough to break a window. “You don’t want me along?”

What?
“Of course I do. You just look a little under the weather, that’s all.”
You look tired, and I don’t blame you.

He didn’t scowl, but it was close. “I’m
fine.
” He slid along the side of the car, opened his door, and dropped in as my pager sounded again.

Goddammit.
I stalked around the front, popped the driver’s door, and got in, tossing the file in the backseat. I’d go over it after
we found out what was going down at Galina’s. “Saul—”

“I’m fine.” He lit another Charvil. “If that’s Galina we’d better hurry.”

“You’re actually telling me to drive fast?”

He grabbed for the seat belt as I twisted the key. The Pontiac purred into life. “Christ, when do you not drive fast, kitten?”

When indeed.
I dropped the Pontiac into gear. My pager buzzed again, and I floored it while Saul was still trying to get his seat belt
on.

G
alina’s shop windows shone with featureless yellow light behind paper-thin blinds. The telephone poles marching alongside
the road in this part of town were festooned with paper. As I cut the engine, looking at the one right next to the car, I
saw a huge painted poster stapled over the weathered drift of concert announcements and nudie-bar placards.

Come To The Circus!
Art Deco flowers festooned the edges, and in the middle was a grinning clown’s face, deep lines in its paint, leering at
the street. A suggestion of fangs touched the greased lower lip, and the clown’s eyebrows came up to high peaks. A dusting
of corruption lay over the paper, visible only to my blue eye.

There was no address. Of course, the people who wanted to would find it. That’s the way it works.

My mouth went dry. “Jeez.”

Saul barely gave it a glance. “Trashy.” He opened his door, flicking his Charvil into the gutter.

A shadow moved in the plate-glass front of the shop across the street. I eyed it for a few moments, took my time opening my
door. Blue fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror rocked slowly to a halt—Galina’s gift, a replacement for the red ones
that had gone up in flames with my Impala.

The thought
still
pissed me off. I’d nursed that car back into shape from a rusted hulk in a wrecking yard. All that work and effort gone in
a few heartbeats, dying in the barrio.

Saul hadn’t asked any questions when I picked him up from the train station in the Pontiac. I was glad about that.

The shadow in Galina’s window moved again. I slid out of the car, slammed my door, and eased a gun free of the holster. Saul
had paused at the rear of the car, his head up, hot wind touching his hip-length leather jacket and making the fringe move
a little. His dark eyes flicked to the gun in my hand, and he straightened infinitesimally before stepping out into the road.

He followed two steps behind and to my left, carefully out of the way but close enough if I should need him. The skin between
my shoulder blades twitched a little when I crossed the centerline—it hadn’t been so long ago that I’d been right in the middle
of the street and got chewed up by an assault rifle. They’d used copper-jacketed lead, the dumb bunnies, instead of silver
to hurt a helltainted hunter.

Everyone skipping and scrambling to kill me, when if they’d just left me alone they could have quietly had their bioweapon
and their higher-up from Hell stepping through to make my entire city—hell, probably the entire
country
—a wasteland before I could stop them. There wouldn’t have been a damn thing I could do about it. I’d only been poking around
the suicide of Monty’s old partner, not looking for a serious dose of lead poisoning or a firebombed car.

I wasn’t far enough away from that case yet for my body to forget. A prickle of chill touched the curve of my lower back.

The body remembers, and the body knows. You can override that knowing with enough training, but it’s still never pleasant.

The blinds twitched and one moved aside slightly. The shape in the window was Galina, her marcel-waved hair an immaculate
cap as always. Her green eyes sparked as the sheet of etheric energy folding over her shop changed slightly, like light refracting
through a waterfall. Even my dumb eye could sense the reverberations, watering and tingling. The scar prickled.