Guilty Pleasures

Chapter 36

I didn’t want to go back to my apartment. Edward would be coming tonight. Tell him where Nikolaos slept in daylight or he’d force the information from me. Complicated enough. Now, I thought he was my murderer. Very complicated.

The best thing I could think of was to avoid him. That wouldn’t work forever, but maybe I’d have a brainstorm and figure it all out. All right, there wasn’t much chance of that, but one could always hope.

Maybe Ro

I heard the tape whir and click; then, “Anita, it’s Willie, they got Phillip. The guy you was with. They’re hurtin’ him, bad! You gotta come-” The phone went dead, abruptly. Like he’d been cut off.

My stomach tightened. A second message came up. “This is you know who. You’ve heard Willie’s message. Come and get it, animator. I don’t really have to threaten your pretty lover, do I?” Nikolaos’s laughter filled the phone, scratchy and distant with tape.

There was a loud click and Edward’s voice came over the phone. “Anita, tell me where you are. I can help you.”

“They’ll kill Phillip,” I said. “Besides, you aren’t on my side, remember.”

“I’m the closest thing you’ve got to an ally.”

“God help me, then.” I hung up on him, hard. Phillip had tried to defend me last night. Now he was paying for it. I yelled, “Dammit!”

A man pumping gas stared at me.

“What are you looking at?” I nearly yelled that, too. He dropped his eyes and concentrated very hard on filling his tank with gas.

I got behind the wheel of my car and sat there for a few minutes. I was so angry, I was shaking. I could feel the tension in my teeth. Dammit. Dammit! I was too angry to drive. It wouldn’t help Phillip if I got in a car accident on the way.

I tried breathing deep gulps of air. It didn’t help. I turned the key in the ignition. “No speeding, can’t afford to get stopped by the cops. Easy does it, Anita, easy does it.” I talk to myself every once in a while. Give myself very good advice. Sometimes I even take it.

I put the car in gear and drove out onto the road—carefully. Anger rode up my back and into my shoulders and neck. I gripped the steering wheel too hard and found that my hands weren’t quite healed. Sharp little jabs of pain, but not enough. There wasn’t enough pain in the whole world to get rid of the anger.

Phillip was being hurt because of me. Just like Catherine and Ro

The anger was almost enough to hide the fear behind it. If Nikolaos was tormenting Phillip for last night, she might not be too happy with me either. I was going back down those stairs into the master’s lair, at night. Didn’t seem real bright when you put it that way.

The anger was fading in a wash of cold, skin-shivering fear. “No!” I would not go in there afraid. I held onto my anger with everything I had. This was the closest I’d come to hate in a long time. Hatred; now there’s an emotion that’ll spread warmth through your body.

Most hatred is based on fear, one way or another. Yeah. I wrapped myself in anger, with a dash of hate, and at the bottom of it all was an icy center of pure terror.

Chapter 37

The Circus of the Damned is housed in an old warehouse. Its name is emblazoned across the roof in colored lights. Giant clown figurines dance around the words in frozen pantomime. If you look very closely at the clowns, you notice they have fangs. But only if you look very closely.

The sides of the building are strung with huge plastic cloth signs, like an old-fashioned sideshow. One ba

Guilty Pleasures treads a thin line between entertainment and the sadistic. The Circus goes over the edge and down into the abyss.

And here I go inside. Oh, joy in the morning.

Noise hits you at the door. A blast of carnival sound, the push and shove of the crowd, the rustling of hundreds of people. The lights spill and scream in a hundred different colors, all eye-searing, all guaranteed to attract attention, or make you lose your lunch. Of course, maybe that was just my nerves.

The smell is formed of cotton candy, corn dogs, the ci

I had never come here before, except on police business. What I wouldn’t have given for a few uniforms right now.

The crowd parted like water in front of a ship. Winter, Mr. Muscles, moved through the people, and instinctively they moved out of his way. I’d have moved out of his way, too, but I didn’t think I’d get the chance.

Winter was wearing a proverbial strongman’s outfit. It had fake zebra stripes on a white background and left most of his upper body exposed. His legs in the striped leotard rippled and corded, like it was a second skin. His bicep, unflexed, was bigger around than both my arms. He stopped in front of me, towering over me, and knowing it.

“Is your entire family obscenely tall, or is it just you?” I asked.

He frowned, eyes narrowing. I don’t think he got it. Oh, well. “Follow me,” he said. With that he turned and walked back through the crowd.

I guess I was supposed to follow like a good little girl. Shit. A large blue tent took up one corner of the warehouse. People were lining up, showing tickets. A man was calling out in a booming voice, “Almost show time, folks. Present your tickets and enter. See the hanging man. Count Alcourt will be executed before your very eyes.”

I had paused to listen. Winter was not waiting. Luckily, his broad, white back didn’t blend with the crowd. I had to trot to catch up with him. I hate having to do that. It makes me feel like a child ru

There was a full-size Ferris wheel, its glowing top nearly brushing the ceiling. A man held a baseball out to me. “Try your luck, little lady.”

I ignored him. I hate being called little lady. I glanced at the prizes to be won. It ran long on stuffed animals and ugly dolls. The stuffed toys were mostly predators: soft plush panthers, toddler-size bears, spotted snakes, and giant fuzzy-toothed bats.

There was a bald man in white clown makeup selling tickets to the mirror maze. He stared at the children as they went inside his glass house. I could almost feel the weight of his eyes on their backs, like he would memorize every line of their small bodies. Nothing would have gotten me past him into that sparkling river of glass.

The Funhouse was next, more clowns and screams, the shooting whoosh of air. The metal sidewalk leading into its depths buckled and twisted. A little boy nearly fell. His mother dragged him to his feet. Why would any parent bring their child here, to this frightening place?