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The brilliant spotlight blinded me for a moment, and I failed to make out Rex’s towering frame. His displeasure with me was instantly identifiable, however. Seizing my wrist, he held my hand up to his face and shook my gloved hand.
“What is this?” he demanded.
“A glove! What does it look like?” I snapped, looking around for the ghostly horse and yet, the mysterious beast was nowhere to be found. And I couldn’t think about it for long because Rex was already unceremoniously dragging me out of the big top. Even with my impaired vision, I knew where he was taking me: Laurent’s office.
***
I was perched on a stool in the corner of Laurent’s office, like a classroom dunce, being mocked for my disobedience. Rex stood in the opposite corner with crossed arms, leaning against the wall. His eyes alternated between me and the door. I, meanwhile, stared at the old poster of Brandeis that was hanging right next to him. Seeing her carefree smile as she rode that magnificent white horse was enough to make me weep. All that happiness seemed worlds away from where I was now, even if I couldn’t help but notice how similar the white horse in the poster was to the white horse who had just visited me. Or who I’d just hallucinated.
But if the creature had been real, to whom had it belonged? That was a more rhetorical question because the answer was staring me right in the face. It was Brandeis’ horse. But, if such were the case, then where was she?
When Rex looked at the door once more, he held his gaze on it and cursed, “Dammit all, what could be taking him so long?”
“Who? Laurent?” I asked.
“Who said you were allowed to talk?” he snapped.
“I’m just surprised you are,” I told him with a shrug, choosing not to take offense to his obvious foul temper. “Those are the first words you’ve said since we got here.”
He grunted and went back to sullenly watching the door. I’d studied his face long enough to notice his usual baleful gaze was absent. I thought I caught a glimpse of fear in his eyes, something I’d been feeling ever since he’d dragged me here. On the way, he wasted no time before ripping off my gloves and demanding to know where I got them. I refused to tell him anything, which only aggravated him even more. Eventually, though, he quit asking me. After we arrived at the office, he made a point of retreating to the opposite corner from me and crossed his arms defiantly.
Any other time, I might have been afraid of him. His sheer size, sinewy muscles and horrible scars combined to make him look like an ogre in real life. But there were worse things, and from what I learned in the last two nights, Rex was far less terrifying. I suspected the scarier things could be what was frightening him now.
The door suddenly opened, and Laurent glided in as if he were skating on ice. He seemed to dance rather than walk into the office. After shutting the door behind him, Laurent looked at Rex who growled, “Where the hell have you been?”
“Why, mingling with our adoring public, of course,” Laurent answered easily. “Thinking of ways to compensate for tonight’s shortfall.”
“It was Standing Room Only! How could we have a shortfall?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow in disbelief.
“I’m afraid we do,” Laurent said, his charm souring into something more sinister under his smile. “I must attribute that shortfall to you, Bindi.” He walked over to the desk and picked up the gloves that Rex had left there. “Perhaps all of the blame falls on these items.”
“How could a humble pair of black gloves manage to cause any shortfall?” I asked sarcastically as I frowned at him. If Laurent wanted to play cat and mouse, I was determined to beat him at it.
All at once, Rex closed the distance between us and grabbed my arm, yanking me to my feet. “Stop being coy!” he snapped. If I weren’t a contortionist, I would have protested over the brutish way he was restraining me. But I managed to keep my mouth shut and simply gave him a duplicate of the glare he was giving me.
“I’m not being coy.”
Rex’s eyes narrowed. “You knew exactly what you were doing tonight.”
Meeting his hateful eyes with my own steely stare, I hoped I could maintain it longer than he did. “With an act like mine that requires complete concentration, you have to know exactly what you’re doing atalltimes.”
Laurent waved my confiscated gloves in my face. “Where precisely did you get these?”
I harrumphed as I did several times before to answer him, but said nothing.
“We know someone is helping you,” Laurent continued, entering my space and putting his face mere inches from mine.
“Helping me do what?” I demanded, and they both swallowed uncomfortably.
“When you said we had a shortfall tonight,” I started.
“No more of your damned questions,” Rex ground out.
“Who is it?” Laurent asked. “Who is helping you?”
“As if I’d tell either one of you,” I retorted.
“So someoneishelping you,” The ‘Incredible, Indestructible Man’ said. “Is that the same person who knocked those two useless idiots guarding your tent out cold?”
