Freeks(59)
“I know exactly what you’re talking about,” he said at length. “I’ve done the same thing before.” He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “But I don’t want to do that with you. I don’t want to keep you separate from anything.”
I closed my eyes, trying to steel myself from the depth of his words and the pain they brought with them. Here was someone asking me to share my life with him, and I couldn’t.
“Gabe, you’re not listening.” I opened my eyes. “I’m not your girlfriend.” My voice cracked, but I kept going. “I will never be your girlfriend. A week just isn’t enough time.”
“It’s actually ten days,” he corrected me softly.
“I have to go.” I pulled my hand away from his and opened the car door.
“Mara, wait,” he said, but I was already out the door. He got out too, and I didn’t want him following me into the carnival, so I stopped. “When will I see you again?”
“I don’t know.” I started backing away. “I’ll let you know.”
“How? You don’t have a phone.”
“I know where you live. I’ll find you when I’m ready,” I replied simply, and I hoped that that would satisfy him because I couldn’t keep having this conversation. I turned and jogged away, and at least the rain helped mask my tears.
35. gambit
“Can you grab me one too?” I asked Hutch as he pulled a beer out of the fridge in the trailer he shared with Luka.
Luka was sitting across from me in the dinette, and he gave me a look over his cards. “That’s your second beer tonight, and you’re not usually a drinker.”
We’d finished taking down the carnival for the night, and Roxie, Tim, Luka, Hutch, and I were all relaxing over a game of poker and a few beers. We used tokens from the digger crane games on the midway as poker chips, each with a theoretical value of a penny, though we rarely actually enforced payment.
“Your date with Gabe must’ve gone really bad,” Roxie commented as Hutch handed me a beer. She sat beside me in the booth, playing with her tokens. “Especially considering you won’t even talk about it.”
“There’s just nothing to talk about.” I rubbed my temple. “And it’s been a really long week, and that has nothing to do with Gabe.”
I wasn’t actually lying about that. While things with Gabe had taken a depressing turn tonight, one where I wasn’t sure that it would be fair to him if I saw him again, it was mostly the carnival and Caudry and everything around it weighing down on me.
“I will drink to that!” Tim lifted his beer up, like he was toasting, and then took a long drink.
Luka put one hand on his boyfriend’s leg. “How are you feeling?”
“My leg’s still sore, and I’m only levitating about a third of the time,” Tim said.
“Yeah, it’s about the same for me.” Roxie grimaced. “My pyro is a frickin’ joke right now. Like, I hated it when I first got it, but now my whole act is based around it, so I need it. This whole place sucks.”
Hutch sat at the end of the table, rocking on a crate that he used for a chair since the table didn’t comfortably seat five. “Is Jackie still planning on leaving?”
“I don’t know.” Tim set his cards facedown on the table and slumped back in his seat. “She wants to, but my brother is refusing to go right now, and I don’t think she’ll leave without him. At this point, though, I’d honestly be happy if we just packed up and left.”
Roxie folded her arms and leaned forward. “You know what my theory is?”
“What?” Hutch asked, looking up at her.
“That thing—whatever it is—is targeting us because we have supernatural powers,” Roxie said, like this was a theory she had worked out in her head even though I hadn’t heard it before.
Luka scoffed. “That doesn’t make any sense. The only things that have been ‘targeted’ so far were Seth and the tigers, and the tigers aren’t any more supernatural than any other cat.”
“Whoa.” Hutch sat back, and his eyes widened. “What if Safēda did have extra senses like you guys did? I mean, she was particularly well-behaved and nice for a tiger.”
“That’s not what I meant, but maybe.” Roxie shrugged. “Or maybe the thing just attacked them because they were outside and available.”
“Let’s say I buy your theory that we’re being targeted,” Luka allowed, but he did little to mask the skepticism in his voice. “What is this thing allegedly doing the targeting, and what’s its motive?”
“Gideon seems to think it’s some type of coyote, so maybe it is,” Roxie said, which only caused Luka to roll his eyes. “We all agree that Caudry has bad vibes going on, and it’s messing with all of us. Even those without extra senses have been having strange dreams.”
“Last night I dreamt that I had the head of a bear, and when I tried to talk to people nobody could understand me and they all ran away screaming,” Hutch interjected.
“So, it’s reasonable to assume that whatever ‘power’ is at play here is screwing with the local flora and fauna,” Roxie went on, ignoring Hutch. “This place could drive a wild dog or a coyote mad and cause them to lash out, especially at anything that they sense has supernatural powers.”