Wild Ride (7 page)

Ashley leaned in close, brushing her breast against his arm. “How long will you be staying?”

“Till I die,” Ethan said, not moving away.

“That's good.”

They went past the orange OK Corral booths—shooting gallery, fast-draw saloon, and roping range populated with assorted wood cowboys—and then rounded the bend to the next ride, the huge lump of pink concrete across from the Keep lake, known as the Tunnel of Love.

“We should try that,” Ashley said.

Ethan had some fond memories of the Tunnel from high school. Perhaps he could make some new ones.

Beyond the Tunnel, the Worm ride leered at him, its ugly red face and bulging eyes a blight on the park, and beyond that, the seven-foot-tall double-D-cup blue-green mermaid statue pointed toward the Mermaid World Cruise, the tunnel there striped in blue and turquoise and plastered with flags of the world, or at least the twelve countries on the cruise.

Ashley stacked up pretty well against the statue.

“You know—,” Ethan began as they passed it, but then he felt her stiffen. “What's wrong?”

Ashley shuddered for several seconds, then she pulled her hand out from his arm and turned to look at him. Her head tilted slightly as her gaze went from his head to his boots, then back to his eyes, her own eyes hard now, almost black in the midmorning sun.

“You all right?” Ethan asked.

She turned and walked back the way they'd come as if he didn't exist, her hips swaying and her skirt swishing around those strong legs.

“Great,” Ethan said. He really had to work on his small talk.

He shook his throbbing head and headed back to the Dragon Coaster to look for evidence of his shooter.

 

M
ab walked through the park toward the Fortune-Telling Machine, admiring all the color and craftsmanship of the things she'd restored. Her work. It was all so much better without people climbing all over everything, just beautiful things . . .

That guy from the Dream Cream would look good here
, she thought, and then frowned at herself. There was no point in attaching to people, she
was going to be gone in two weeks anyway, and besides, he and Cindy were probably getting to know each other right now.

Back to work.

The Fortune-Telling Machine stood about seven feet tall and maybe thirty inches wide, made of cast iron, with cloudy glass windows on three sides under a peaked roof trimmed with metal scallops and iron tassels. The booth was dark, heavily molded in a wave pattern, and rusted in many spots, with most of its paint gone.

“Okay,” Mab said. “Let's get you amazing again.”

She took off her hat, put her bag down on the ground, and took out cleaning supplies. She moved around the box, taking off most of the surface grime, but barely made a dent in the cloudiness of the glass since most of the dust was on the inside, coming between her and the fortune-teller statue in there. Then she began on the deeper cleaning of the iron sides, using fine steel wool and a magnet to pick up the rust dust that generated. When she got to the fourth and most damaged side, the front, the carving was different. She squinted at the rubbing and realized there was a name there.
V
. . .
a
. . .
n
. . . Vanth? Vanth, the Fortune-Teller?

She pulled herself up by the corroded-in-place lever on the front of the case so she could peer at the face behind the cloudy glass. “Vanth?” she said, leaning hard on the lever as she stood, and then it moved and she almost fell as she heard the metallic grind of unoiled gears inside the machine, and a yellowed card spit out into the tray.

“I didn't put in a penny,” she said.

The statue inside sat unmoving behind the clouded glass, so she picked up the card.

YOU HAVE GREAT ADVENTURES BEFORE YOU
.

“Good to know,” she told the statue, and put the card in her bag so that they could print new ones just like it. If she was lucky, the machine would be full of them and they could just copy those so she wouldn't have to make up fortunes for the next two weeks, which would be good, since her insights ran to
A job worth doing is worth doing meticulously and obsessively
and
Always floss
.

And maybe
Embrace the experience
.

“Oh, stop it,” she told herself. “You don't even know that guy.”

“What guy?” her uncle said, and she looked around to see Ray standing there, smiling in the sunshine, a cigar clamped in the corner of his mouth. The smile was about as believable as the robot clown.

“I hate it when you do that,” she told him. “Moving around the park on little cat feet, startling people.”

He walked around the booth. “Lot of work to do here.”

“Yep,” Mab said. “If you go away, I can do it.”

Ray took the cigar out and tapped his ashes on the ground next to Mab's work bag. “I just came to see how my niece was feeling. It's just the two of us now, the only Brannigans left, so we have to look out for each other. How's your head?”

“Fine.” Mab moved her bag and picked up her crayon, not sure what her uncle wanted, but positive it was good for him, not her. “What do you want?”

“I noticed the FunFun statue is missing. Damn college kids must have stolen it again and run into you with it.” Ray tried to make his voice hearty, but there was tension there.

Mab hated tension. Another reason to avoid people, all that emotion, gumming up her day. “I didn't see any kids, but I was hallucinating.”

“So what did you see?”

“The big metal clown from the gate,” Mab said patiently.

“You haven't seen him again, have you?”

“Ray, it was a hallucination.”

“Right. Right.” He seemed relieved as he gestured toward the box with the cigar. “Really looking forward to seeing what you do with this.”

“Thank you,” Mab said, still suspicious.

“If you see that clown again, you tell me, okay?”

“It was a
hallucination
, Ray.”

“Right. Well, just in case, you tell me.” He waved at her, stuck his cigar back in his mouth, and headed up the midway.

“I don't know him very well,” she told the shadowy Vanth inside the box, “but I think he's up to something. My mother never trusted him.” Then to be fair she added, “Of course, she didn't trust anybody, she used to call me demon spawn, so take that for what it's worth.”

The Vanth didn't say anything, so she moved to the door in the back so she could clean the inside. The problem was the latch. She'd carved away as much grime as she could and scrubbed off the rust, but when she tugged on it, it wouldn't open.

She went around to the front of the box.

“I'll get this,” she told the Vanth through the cloudy glass. “I just have to figure out how to open your box.”

The machine whirred and a card spit out.

“Okay,” Mab said. “I did not push that lever.”

Inside the box, the figure sat unmoving.

Mab picked up the card.

FIND THE KEY AND ALL WILL BE ANSWERED
.

“There's a key?” Mab said to the box. “There's no lock back there.”

Then she realized she was having a conversation with a box.

Okay, the box was not talking to her. That was a standard . . . fortune. She patted the box. “I'm going to make you beautiful again.”

The machine whirred and spit out a card:

THANK YOU
.

“That's not funny,” Mab said, and looked around to see if anybody was playing a trick on her.

Nothing. Just empty, dusty amusement park.

So maybe that was a joke, back in the old days you put in a penny for your fortune and got back a thank-you and everybody laughed. . . .

The box was not talking to her; the cards were just old fortunes.

“Sure, that's it,” she said, and went back to her work, a little rattled this time.

 

E
than stood where the shooter had been and looked back toward the Dragon Coaster, the big ugly orange Strong Man statue in front of the ride giving him his approximate location from the night before. A long way at a tough angle. Hell of a shot in the dark, even with laser targeting, and given the depth perception problem when using night-vision goggles. He searched the ground for a spent shell casing, to no avail. So either the shooter had scooped it up or had used a round that left no casing. No
signs of tracks in the loose gravel. The man in black was light on his feet or had learned the art of not leaving tracks. Or, most likely, had come back and cleaned up after himself.

Ethan sensed someone behind him and turned, hand twitching to go for his pistol.

A large-chested man wearing a sharp trench coat walked up like he owned the place. “Ethan Wayne?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm Ray Brannigan.” He didn't extend his hand, so Ethan didn't either.

Ethan noted a small black-and-gold Ranger crest pin on the man's lapel. “Winter or summer?”

Ray nodded. “Summer. Florida was hell.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a large coin. “Coin check.”

“I don't do that,” Ethan said, but Ray tossed the coin to him and he caught it. It was a Ranger coin with Ray's name inscribed on it, but a different color and weight from the standard coin, more like iron than bronze or brass. Ethan tossed it back to him. He'd never been impressed by the game some guys in elite units played, challenging with their coins because if the other guy didn't have his coin, they got a free drink.

Strangely, Ray nodded as if he'd passed some kind of test. He took out a cigar and lighter, tapped the cigar on the lighter, and lit it. “The FunFun statue from the park gate is missing. Need to find it. ASAP.”

Ethan stiffened. He hadn't been issued orders in months. “I think you got bigger problems here than a missing statue.”

“Find the statue,” Ray barked, then chomped on the cigar, turned, and walked away.

“Asshole,” Ethan muttered.

“Forget him. We gotta find the chalice,” Gus rasped behind him.

Ethan turned. “Chalice?”

“The wood cup Fufluns was trapped in.” Gus walked down the midway toward the entrance to the park, and Ethan followed him, making sure he was on the old man's left.

“Fufluns,” Ethan said.

“Trickster demon,” Gus said. “Untouchable. I told you this already.”

Demons again. “Gus, look—”

“The chalice was in the FunFun statue that ran into Mab. We find that statue, we find the chalice.”

“Gus, I think you and Glenda should see a doctor,” Ethan said.

“Don't need to,” Gus said.

“Ray wants me to find the statue, too,” Ethan said.

That gave Gus pause; then he nodded. “Hurt his niece. Plus, first thing people see when they come in the park.” He kept walking until they got to the front gate. “There, see?” He pointed to two patches of black in the shape of very large feet next to the gate.

Ethan knelt down and traced the outline of one of the dark patches with his finger. Clown feet. Great. He looked to the left and frowned. There was the faintest of imprints in the dirt scattered over the flagstones. He scooted over to it. Another big clown foot. Then another.

“This way, Gus.” Ethan couldn't believe he was tracking a metal clown, but then he remembered those guys who did the Bigfoot scam, using dummy Bigfoot feet to leave tracks in the woods. Damn college kids.

Actually, pretty smart college kids. They'd managed to leave clown prints without leaving any of their own. Just like the shooter.

This wasn't college kids.

Ethan looked at Gus. “Maybe the guy who shot me took the clown?”

Gus looked exasperated. “Nobody took it. The demon was
inside
it. There weren't any people around to possess, so he possessed it.”

Since it was looking more and more like finding the clown would lead to the shooter, Ethan decided to stop arguing about reality for the moment. “All right. Let's go find it.”

Once Ethan focused, it wasn't hard to follow the tracks. They led to the carousel, where the grass was disturbed, then past the Roundabout to the Mermaid World Cruise, disappearing at the edge of the water the little cruise boats floated in. The taller-than-life-sized redheaded metal mermaid beside the ride held out her blue-green hand, beckoning to them, nothing small about her. Maybe the metal FunFun had stopped by and tried to pick her up. Ethan sure as hell would have, she was built like Ashley—

“He's in the tunnel,” Gus said, and tried to climb over the side of the tank into the cold water.

“Wait a minute.” That was all Gus needed, pneumonia at his age. “Let me do it.” Ethan stepped into the tank, feeling the cold water soak into his boots. “You wait here,” he told the old man and walked into the darkness of the long cavern, home to twelve dioramas of different countries, ignoring the happy little French dolls in berets in front of the Eiffel Tower, probably drunk on champagne, now frozen without power. Ditto for the Germans in their lederhosen, the Hawaiians in their leis, and the Russians doing that boot dance they always did, their little boots stuck in midair.

There were no clown footprints on the service ledge in the Mermaid Cruise, and the cars were undisturbed.

He went back out to Gus. “I don't think he went in there—”

“Around the back,” Gus said, and took off again, and Ethan followed him, then drew his pistol as he saw somebody standing in the shadows in the back of the ride.

“T
here it is.” Gus stumbled into the shadows, and Ethan relaxed as he recognized the FunFun statue. Then he frowned. It looked . . . different. When they got up close to it, he realized why: The arms were down at its sides and the surface was mangled, the mouth torn at the corners, the neck stretched out of shape, gaping holes in the shoulders that exposed the wood beneath—