"Ah, no, um, that's his circus name. Shoot, he's…Keatinge, I think is his real last name. Alan Keatinge. One of the other acrobats. I don't think he's secretly a rooster." Stephen smiled briefly. "Since he kind of freaked out and bolted early."
Alarm clenched Briana's stomach. Alan Keatinge wasn't a name they had on their list at all. "Do you think you could talk to him? Or rather, get hold of him so one of us could talk to him? It's not your problem to deal with, I know that. And—can I ask if you might know who else from the circus was there, who might have left early?"
"Hey, look, for real, I don't mind actually being the persontotalk to him, if you think it would help. He's not a bad dude, but, like, don't take this wrong, but this is in fact kinda freaky. And yeah, I can get you a list of the acrobats. Most of us were still on site when the mudslide hit."
"Most of you? God. Okay." Briana had a sudden sinking feeling that they'd missedfarmore people than she had imagined. "Hopefully our list will mostly cross-reference yours. And I know," she added with a quiet sigh. "It is kind of freaky. Thanks for being cool. You have no idea how much I, we, appreciate it."
"Let me get your number and I'll try to chase Alan down and either talk to him myself or set up a chance for you guys to talk to him, okay? He thinks the Torbens are good guys, for what it'sworth, so maybe if one of them reached out. And I'll send you the list of everybody I remember who was there."
"Thank you, Stephen," Briana said, heart-felt. "I'm going over to the fairgrounds later. Will you be there?"
"If I'm not, some of the other circus members will be. This is…" His expression fell. "You shifters aside, this is a real disaster. Have you heard anything about Diane?"
Briana shook her head. Diane Carver was one of the badly-injured survivors, and aside from knowing she was an athlete—which in Faire terms meant she took part in the sword-fighting—Briana didn't know much about her. "No. I, ah. Christ. It sounds really selfish, but I've been pretty focused on…us. I haven't heard much about everybody else yet."
"You have good reason to be focused on your own community," Stephen said with an unexpectedly kind note in his voice. "This has put all of you in a lot of danger in a way that has nothing to do with the problems the Faire as a whole is facing,anda whole lot of you also havethoseproblems to deal with. There's only so much any one person can focus on at a time."
Briana squinted at him, somewhere between grateful and amused. "I thought you were, like, a computer programmer, not a therapist."
Stephen shrugged, smiling. "¿Porque no los dos? Iseea therapist, anyway. Look, thanks for the coffee, but I bet I'm not the only one you have to talk to today?"
"Depending on your list of who was still on the grounds compared to ours, I might have to talk to way more people than I was expecting. Thank you, Stephen." Briana gave him her phone number and went back to her Jeep to drive it out to the fairgrounds, her head swimming with worry.
A stunning number of people were on site. Far, far more than she expected, participating in a cleanup effort she hadn't even known was being organized. She wandered in, astonished,and found Larisa LaBrant in discussions with a geologist whose team had been up on the mountain since dawn, examining it for stability. Larisa waved at her, and when she was done speaking with the geologist, came over to shake her hand. "We're hearing that with the rain finally ending, the mountain has stabilized enough to move forward with the cleanup effort. How did your morning go?"
"As well as it possibly could." Briana didn't want to go into more detail for fear of being overheard, but trusted the other shifter knew what she meant. "Yours?"
"Not quite that well," Larisa said frankly. She was a well-built blonde woman, which Briana thought was a little funny: surely an orangutan should be a redhead. But, mindful of the fact that orangutans could casually pull trees apart, Briana thought maybe she wouldn't say that. Fortunately, the impulse passed as Larisa went on with, "Most of my team took it all right, but a couple of them are really struggling. I don't think there's much danger they'll go to the press or anything, but I doubt they'll stay with me."
"I'm sorry."
"Me too. We’ve worked together as a unit for a long time, but this is a real make or break kind of situation nobody’s ever had to face before. Aside from my own team, I've spoken with several of us from the pub meeting last night. Mostly their conversations have gone…reasonably well. A few haven't. People are talking, but there's not much we can do about that except hope it dies down. Sorry," Larisa said as someone else came hurrying up to her. "I have to deal with this."
"No, it's okay, it's your job." Briana shoved her hands in her jeans pockets and worked her way up through the devastated fairgrounds, stopping to talk with cleanup workers here and there. The plan was clearly to work inward to clean up the debris, at least until fortifications against another mudslide wereput in place up at the top of the fairgrounds. Mostly people were hoping to get their wares and goods, if possible. No one, Briana included, seemed to have much idea of what would happen after that.
The site was a combination of somber and quiet, and strangely loud with generators and heavy equipment shoveling mess aside. Briana steered clear of the equipment, still heading up the low incline until she caught a glimpse of Laurie Torben on top of the muck, near what had once been the tavern.
Only then, as she felt herself relax a little, did Briana realize that on some level she'd been looking for him. Irritation rose in her at the realization, but so did a sense of rueful acceptance. She might have been avoiding fate, but fate wasn't trying to avoidher. It probably shouldn't be a surprise that, after starting to learn Laurie really did have some appealing aspects, part of her was relaxing into the idea of fate conquering all, in the end. She picked her way across the mud and debris, and caught him tamping down a smile when he saw her. She called, "Hey," as she approached, and his smile lit up after all.
It was, she had to admit, a pretty good smile. Laurie waved, and as she got a little closer, said, "Hey," back, and, "How'd it go this morning?"
"Pretty much as predicted. Stephen also said he'd make a list of the other circus performers who might have seen us but left before Larisa got her list going. How about you?" Briana came to a stop beside him, not quite ankle-deep in muck, and sighed at the ruins surrounding them.
Laurie wobbled a hand. "Also more or less what I expected, I guess. She didn't really want to talk to me, but the fated mates thing did kind of smooth over the chicken bucket proposal."
Briana, taken off guard, shouted with laughter. "The chicken-bucket proposal. Oh my God. What a way to phrase it. So she's not going to tell people?"
"No, I don't think so. Maybe her husband," he said, making an uncomfortable face. "Which on one hand, fair. On the other, I wish she wouldn't, you know?"
"Yeah. Have you heard from anybody else about how it's going?"
He held up his phone. "A bunch of cryptic texts saying it went well, or didn't go well. Mostly it's going okay. There've been a couple 'I always knew there was something weird about Renaissance' responses, and a few people who turn out to have a lot of shifters in their friends groups and are mad, or, no, notmad, but hurt, that they weren't let in on the secret. They mostly get it, but…you know?"
"Yeah. I think if Stephen and I were a little better friends he might've felt that way, but he just asked if he married a goat whether they'd have…kids."
There was a beat of silence before Laurie burst out laughing. "Oh, God, I see what you did there. That was awful."
Briana smiled, pleased with herself. Laurie, as it turned out, had a laugh as good as his grin. Not that he was worming his way into her affections, of course.
