Flesh Circus

It’s a tough look to pull off while covered in dry sweat, rucked-up in a T-shirt and leather pants, and frustrated enough to chew nails. I still managed.

“I know what you do.” Gilberto dropped his hands. They dangled loosely, reminding me of the strangler-fingered Trader. “I want to do it, too.”

I didn’t have to put any more bitterness into my laugh. It was already bitter enough. “Go home, poquito. Leave the night alone and don’t darken my door again.” I swept said door to and closed it in his face.

No sound from the other side. None that you could hear with human ears, that is. I could still hear his heartbeat, pounding a little harder and faster now. Accelerated breathing, too.

I’ll bet that didn’t go the way you thought it would. I half-turned, and Saul stood close behind me, his hair mussed and high color blooming in his cheeks, one dark eyebrow elegantly lifted.

I shrugged. “Hopefully he’ll go away. I’m going to hit the shower.”

“What if he rings the bell again?”

“Ignore him.” I swung past him, already pla

His broad shoulders dropped. “I’ll make you eggs.” He even managed to make that sound tentative. His hand twitched again, like he wanted to touch me, but he refrained.

Why?

You’ve got other problems, Jill. Just let him be. Be supportive, for once. “Good deal. Thanks, sweetie.” I paced away, a little faster than I should have, trying not to feel like I was retreating.

Now that was a losing battle.

Chapter Five

Avery’s desk always looked about to disappear under a mound of paper and ranks of liquor bottles. He’d stuck slim candles into bottle mouths, some burned down and others pristine, though I never saw a burning one. If he ever lit them up, it was probably when he was alone.

Cops aren’t supposed to drink on duty, but exorcists get a little bit of leeway. However, Ave didn’t immediately reach for the mini-fridge under his desk to get me a beer, and that was odd.

The tiled passageway behind me resounded with faint echoes from the downtown jail above. Here, at the very bottom, the long corridor terminated in Ave’s office and three rooms, each barred with cold iron. Each with a circle carved into the concrete floor to hold victims hosting a Possessor—or those who had been cleaned out but had to be protected from the demon coming back to crawl right in and set up housekeeping.

He handed over the file. “This is seriously weird.”

When isn’t it? I rolled my shoulders back in their sockets, my coat creaking a little. “What’s weird? Where’s our boy?”

“He’s the wi

I flipped it open and took a look. A couple of drug arrests, one breaking and entering dismissed with time served, and nothing for the last three years. Emilio Ricardo, thirty-six, brown and brown, employed halfway across town at a Mexican restaurant. Avery had even, bless his thoroughgoing little heart, pulled his recent renewal of a food-handler’s card. “Huh.”

“Yeah. The address on his food permit isn’t the place on Silverado where I found him.” Avery scratched at his forehead under a flop of brown hair. “It just tingled too fu

That’s odd. “Poor Jughead. You know he came across a Trader a couple months ago?”

Ave’s sleepy smile bloomed. “He told me. Not in so many words, but… he wanted nothing to do with anything weird. I had to jiggle the door to get it open, and the vic tried to cold-cock me when I stepped in. I returned the favor, we tussled, I knocked him out.”

“Where was he when you came in? Right next to the door?”

“Guess so. Why?”

“No reason.” The straight razor was still in my pocket. For some reason, it bothered me. “So he’s been quiet?”

“As a mouse.” Avery’s eyebrows were struggling not to rise. “Something wrong, Jill?”

“Not yet.” But this is strange. “I’ll peek in on him, then I’ve got a couple other things to do. Can you hold him for a bit?”

He made an expansive motion, rolling his eyes. “All things should be so easy. It’s been quiet on the exorcism front.”

I didn’t tell him that with the Cirque in town, exorcisms would probably bottom out for a while. He didn’t need that kind of uneasiness weighing him down. “Yeah. I haven’t pulled something out of someone for at least two weeks, before this.”

“No rest for the wicked.” He indicated the first door. “Wa

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with her. Speaking of Eva, how’s Benito? And Wallace? Is Be

“Oh, yeah, it itches like hell under that cast but he’s all right. Says he feels more stupid than anything else.” Avery pointedly didn’t mention Eva again, and—was he blushing?

I stared at him, my jaw threatening to drop. Ave’s got a sleepy smile and big brown eyes, both of which draw women like honey. They don’t stay—girls don’t like it when their man spends his nights somewhere else, even if it’s with possessed people. And Avery never makes much of an effort to keep them, either.

But he and Eva had been hanging out an awful lot lately. She’s smart, tough, and a capable exorcist, even if she’d never make a hunter. Both Benito and Wallace have a little-sister thing going for her, and she handles it as gracefully as any woman in a predominantly male field does.

That is, with a smart mouth and twice the moxie of any mere man.

I swallowed the smile struggling to rise to my face. “Mmmh. Serves him right, taking on an exorcism-plus like that without calling me.” I put the file under my arm and stepped up to the first door, my back itching a little because it was to the hallway. Only one entrance and one exit to any exorcist’s lair.

Getting trapped is a risk we’ll take. Letting a Possessor or a victim escape without being cleaned out isn’t.

“Eh, well. None of us want to call you without reason.” He shrugged when I glanced at him. “I know, I know. Better to call you without need than to need you and not call you. Believe me, I’m down with that.”

I eased the bolt on the porthole free, slid the small reinforced square aside. Even this aperture was barred with cold iron, blue light ru

Considering the alternative, I don’t blame them.

Emilio Ricardo crouched in the center of the circle scored in the concrete floor. He rocked back and forth, subvocalizing, and now that the peephole was open I could hear it, a tuneless buzzing plucking at the air. He was hugging himself, and the rags of his shirt fluttered. The restraints lay in a corner, a jumble of leather straps.

Interesting. “Did you untie him?”

“Yeah. Figured he was going to be in there awhile. I’ll trank him through the door if we need to take him out for a walk.” Avery shivered. “I got a bad feeling about this, Kiss.”

Don’t call me that. “Me too.” I shut my dumb right eye and peered through, concentrating.

There was only a slight, fading quiver of the u