Page 38 of Magic for Nothing

I didn’t know who I was looking for: my briefing from the Covenant hadn’t come with anything as useful as a top-down org chart to tell me who was in charge of hiring and firing. I just knew that if I kept going, eventually someone would stop me to ask what I was doing.

“Stop.”

Like that, for example. I stopped. I turned. I offered the speaker what I hoped would look like a timid smile—although given how tired and jet lagged I was, it could have looked like a baby-eating grin and I wouldn’t have known. Travel really screws with the body.

“Hi,” I said. “I, um, was hoping to find someone who’s in charge?” Always make it a question. Questions are harmless. Questions say, “I don’t know what I’m doing, ergo I cannot be planning to do you harm.” Questions say, “No one would find my body for at least a week.” Questions rock.

The man behind me frowned suspiciously. He was Asian, taller than me by at least three inches, and wearing a gray sweatshirt with holes in the hem, like it should have gone to the rag bag months ago. He might have been cute if he hadn’t been looking at me like I was a new species of bug; as it stood, I sort of wanted to punch him until he stopped. His hair was cut in a short, practical style, a little floppy at the front, close-shaven where it tapered toward the nape of his neck, like he had better things to worry about than grooming. Really, the oddest thing about him was that he was barefoot. I’ve done my share of barefoot running around in bone yards, and it’s generally pretty safe—carnies don’t go in for breaking bottles where they sleep any more than the next person. But that was in summer. This was late September in Wisconsin, and there was definitely a nip in the air.

“Why?” he asked. “Who are you?”

“Um, why would be because I don’t feel like explaining who I am eleven times while I work my way toward the boss conversation, and who would be Timpani Brown, late of the Black Family Carnival. I’m looking for work.”

His face underwent a remarkable series of transformations, from suspicious to familiar to sympathetic and finally back to suspicious again. “Last I’d heard, the Blacks were camped in Vancouver,” he said. “It’s a long way from Vancouver to here.”

“Then the last you heard is pretty damn out of date, because the Blacks are dead.” The irritation in my tone was aimed more at myself than at him. Even if Timpani Brown had never existed, I was still claiming acquaintance with the dead—something long exposure to Aunt Mary and Aunt Rose told me wasn’t to be done lightly. If I kept telling lies, I was going to wind up haunted. “They picked the wrong place to lay the bone yard, and they paid for it. I was away at school; I lived. Now I’m homeless and don’t have a family to vouch for me. So if you could point me to someone who’d like to listen to a sob story, I’d really appreciate it, Mister . . . ?”

“It’s not even noon yet,” he said, ignoring my request for his name. “I’m sorry about the Blacks, but honestly, how many shows do you know that get up and running this early?”

“Pretty much none,” I said. “Try telling that to the bus routes. I got here when I got here, and I figured worst case scenario, I’d crawl under a truck and sleep until somebody woke me up.”

“That’s a good way to get yourself run over.”

“Better than sleeping in a townie shelter. People there don’t have any respect for a girl’s personal space.”

He took a step closer, like that had been a dare. Jerk. “They’re probably also less likely to throw you in the dunk tank for disturbing them.”

“Probably,” I agreed. I didn’t give any ground. Going by his build, he was either a performer or a manual laborer; going by his hands, which were callused but clean, he was a performer. Weight lifter, maybe, or acrobat. Either way, I knew his type. Territorial, suspicious, endemic to carnival bone yards. He probably thought he was a lady-killer and wondered why I wasn’t swooning. Double jerk. “Look, I walked a long way to get here. Can you either show me someplace I can crash for a few hours, or tell me who I should talk to about earning a bunk on a long-term basis?”

“How about you come back when we’re open and buy a ticket like all the other rubes?”

“I don’t have any money, and I don’t have anywhere to go. I’ll wait.”

He frowned. Whatever script I was supposed to be following, I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. “Come on, shoo,” he said. “I have shit to do.”

“Like what?” I asked, injecting a challenge into my tone. If he wanted to flex his belonging at me, I was going to refuse to back down. It was a little “no, you move” of me, but that attitude had served me well as the youngest child in my family, and I couldn’t imagine it failing now.

“Like working out,” he said. “It’s easier in the morning, when there’s no one around to need the ropes.”

“Ropes? You do trapeze?”

He nodded, jaw tight.

Great: here was a chance to show I could be useful, even if it was in a small way. “I’m trapeze trained,” I said. “I’ll spot you.”

“Why would I trust someone I just met to spot me?” he asked with a sneer. “That doesn’t seem very smart.”

“Since you were on your way to work out without a spotter, familiar or otherwise, I’m not expecting ‘smart’ from you,” I said. “Come on. It’ll let you decide whether I’m a scary stranger or not. And you’ll have a spotter, which believe me, is better than the alternative.”

He waffled for a moment, looking like he couldn’t decide one way or the other. Finally, reluctantly, he said, “All right. But the moment you do something I don’t like, you’re not only done helping me, you’re getting kicked off the grounds. I can’t stop you from coming back tonight. I can make sure everyone with the authority to hire you knows you’re a bad idea.”

“I’ve been a bad idea for most of my life; I think I’ll take the chance,” I said, smiling. He frowned and started walking again, his shoulder bumping mine as he made his way out of the bone yard and toward the big tent. I didn’t protest—it was a small gesture of territorial dominance, perfectly normal—just chased after him, leaving the slumbering carnival behind.

As with most shows, this one had taken steps to split the bone yard from the midway. We had to pass through three layers of heavy tarp tied shut with pieces of rope before we emerged into the shadow of the Scrambler, lights dim and control panel unattended. The stranger hurried past it, and I hurried after him, letting his sense of direction provide me with the time to check out the show.

You can tell a lot about a carnival by seeing it in daylight, without the motion of crowds and the sound of calliope music to serve as a beautiful distraction. Twilight makes even the shabbiest of shows seem magical and elegant, worthy of your trust and your time. Daylight strips that away, leaving reality behind. The reality of the Spenser and Smith Family Carnival was this: if they weren’t running the red line of bankruptcy, they were close enough to see it on a cloudy day, and they didn’t care, because every penny they got was going right back into the show, tucked into the mended skirting of the dark rides and welded into the shining struts of their kiddie-coaster. The midway games were rigged and the scares were artificial, but they were bought and paid for with good, honest toil, and nothing I saw set off any red flags worth mentioning.

The stranger reached a solid wall of canvas, painted in the red-and-white stripes that have been customary for such things since the 1800s. He gave me a dour look before pulling aside a flap that had been nicely camouflaged by the repeating pattern and slipping inside. I followed him, not willing to let him out of my sight for any longer than necessary.