Freeks(27)

I’d exchanged my bloodied pajamas for jean shorts and a T-shirt, and though I’d really wanted to shower and wash away everything, I’d felt like there was too much that needed to be done. I’d settled for washing the blood off my skin and pulling my thick hair back into a ponytail, then went to work.

Everyone else had gathered in the center of the camp, arguing and placing the blame squarely on Zeke Desmond and his two tigers.

Well, not everyone. Gideon and Carrie were still at the hospital with Seth.

“You know bloody well that it wasn’t my tigers!” Zeke shouted. He’d been yelling so much that his face had begun to turn beet red, matching the shock of hair that sprang wildly from his head. “They’re still in their pens, and if they’d gotten out, they’d still be out.”

“The gate to their cage was open!” Doug shouted. He’d left his post in the midway camp to come over and give us all orders, since Gideon wasn’t here.

“They were still in their cage,” Zeke insisted. “They didn’t go anywhere.”

In the aftermath of discovering Seth, the tigers’ gate had been discovered wide open, but both of them were still inside, cowering in the corner. Mahilā had been making a plaintive mewling sound all morning, which many of the people in our troupe took to be a sign of guilt.

But no one else had really taken to actually confronting Zeke. They stood in a small semicircle crowded around Doug and Zeke, watching the two of them go at it. Except for my mother, who was still in her trailer, and me, because I couldn’t just stand there doing nothing.

I kept picturing Seth, and the weakness of his hand as it gripped mine. I had to keep moving so I wouldn’t think about him so much.

“You heard what Mara and Tim said,” Doug said through a mouthful of chewing tobacco. “It looked like Seth had been mauled by a tiger.”

“No, we never said that.” I stopped scrubbing the trailer and looked over at them. “Seth was attacked by something, but we never said we thought it was a tiger.”

Doug scoffed. “What else could it be? There’s no bears around here.”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, and lowered my eyes.

“It was probably the same vandals that spray painted Gideon’s trailer,” Zeke suggested, not for the first time.

“You think a person did that?” Doug pointed over to the puddle beside Roxie’s trailer.

Zeke folded his arms over his chest, standing as tall as he could. “It wouldn’t be the first time that the locals had come after us like that.”

Doug shook his head. “They’ve got no reason to. We just got here, and we haven’t done anything.”

“They had no reason to deface Gideon’s trailer like that either, but they did,” Zeke countered. “And you know how people have treated all of us.”

Tim shook his head, and when he spoke, his voice sounded hollow and cold. “No, you all didn’t see Seth. There’s no way a human did that.” He stood a few feet back, looking at the ground, and Luka had his arm around him.

Doug threw his hands up in the air. “Then it must be a tiger.”

“It’s not one of my tigers!” Zeke continued to protest. “Safēda wouldn’t hurt a fly, and Mahilā wouldn’t go anywhere without her sister.”

Brendon Phoenix—Tim’s older brother and the patriarch of The Fantastic Flying Phoenixes—had been holding back, standing in front of his trailer with his wife and three-year-old daughter. But he left now, walking over to stand in between Doug and Zeke.

He’d been with the sideshow for a long time. Whenever Gideon had business to attend to elsewhere, he usually left Brendon in charge.

“Everyone needs to just calm down,” Brendon said. “Nobody knows what happened to Seth, okay? And whoever—or whatever—it was, it doesn’t do us any good to fight amongst ourselves.”

Doug spit a huge wad of gross tobacco spit on the ground, right near Zeke’s feet. “We need to get rid of those damn tigers.”

“Doug, we’re not getting rid of anything,” Brendon told him firmly. “And the carnival opens in a couple hours, so why don’t you go back over and calm down your people?”

“The carnival is still on?” Doug laughed darkly. “You must be joking.”

“I’m not.” Brendon turned to survey the crowd around us, speaking to them. “Seth was hurt, and we’re all sorry about that, but that doesn’t change anything. We still have a job to do, and yesterday, we hardly made enough money to get us out of this state, let alone put food on the table. We need to go back to work.”

Doug looked like he wanted to say more, but he just shook his head and started trudging back toward his camp.

“With Seth out of commission, we have to find something else to fill his strongman act,” Brendon continued.

“Luka could step in,” Hutch suggested. “He has his sword swallowing and fire breathing.”

“I could work with Luka,” Roxie offered. She’d been sitting on the steps in front of her Airstream, taking it all in, but she stood up now. “Make it a bit more elaborate and exciting.”

I thought about mentioning the crossbow trick I’d been working on with Luka, but truth was, I didn’t feel much like performing, and Roxie had it covered. But I still planned to get my crossbow out tonight and practice with it—if there was something attacking the camp, I wanted to be prepared.