“Shut up,” I say.
“I said nothing.”
“You were very loud about it.”
The afternoon builds into evening and the evening builds into something else. I go back to the stall for the four o’clock rush and run it through to seven, when the backup crew takes the window and Tristan tells me I’m done for the day. I untie the apron and fold it. I then try to calculate whether I go back to Doris Harrow’s, whether the evening is mine, whether —
“Come with us,” Tristan says. Not asking, but not directing either. That tone he uses that is an invitation rather than a requirement.
I go with them.
The carnival at night is different from the carnival atany other time and I knew this theoretically and I know it now in my body.
The lights. I’ve worked under them all week, I’ve seen them go on and go off, but at full Saturday night capacity they are something else. The sparkle, the warmth, the way they turn the air into something amber and cozy. The Ferris wheel in full color against the total dark. The stage with its spotlights and the music that’s live now, something with a real beat, the crowd on the dance space moving.
Thesmells.
The smells at peak are extraordinary and it’s too much. It’s layered and dense, full of everything Tristan has made, the river underneath it, the crowd, and above all of it, surrounding me, the four of them. The pack.
I’ve been aware of their scent all week. It’s constant, background, present, and becoming part of the baseline. Tonight, in the bustling crowd and the warmth, they’re not background.
They’re foreground.
All of it is foreground.
We move through the central area together. The crowd is thick here, the dance space full, and the closeness required by the density means I am completely surrounded by them. Not in a contained way, but in the way our shoulders and arms briefly touch as we navigate the same space.
Ryan’s hand at my back, steering around a groupstopped in the middle of the walkway. Archer close behind, his snow scent cutting through the heat of the crowd. Jack at my left, arm occasionally brushing mine. Tristan at my right, steady.
I breathe in and it’s all of them, all at once, layered and warm and…
Something shifts.
It’s a change in awareness, sudden and complete. Like a signal that’s been background noise all week suddenly jumping to full volume. Every nerve ending I have goes online simultaneously. I’m aware of the crowd and the lights and the music and the smell and the heat and the four of them with a specificity that is overwhelming. It’s not frightening, which is almost worse, because frightening I know how to respond to.
This isn’t frightening.
This is apull. Deep and biological and older than any choice I’ve ever made. A current running from somewhere I can’t locate toward something I can’t name, and it’s all four of them, all at once, and it’s this town and this carnival and days of —
The crowd surges.
A group moves against the flow and the press of bodies increases. The heat jumps and the smells jump and the music is very loud and the pack bond that shouldn’t reach me is reaching me and I can feel it, feel the edges of it, feel what it would be like to step into it, and my instinct saysyeswith a conviction that bypasses my entire rational mind.
I stop walking.
Ryan notices first. He’s beside me in a moment. Not in front, not blocking, just beside. His voice is low against the crowd noise. “Lola? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I reply.
“Okay,” he says, in the tone that meansI hear you and I’m not arguingand alsoI don’t believe you.
“I just need…” I don’t finish because I don’t know what I need, which is the problem. I need the volume to go down. I need the layered warmth of them to step back. I need my own nervous system to return to my jurisdiction.
“Come with me,” he says.
Not a question. Not a direction exactly. An offer in a direction.
I follow him.
