Spectacle (Menagerie #2)(43)
Our handlers led us down a wide concrete hallway lit by hanging fluorescent fixtures, then into a kitchen virtually identical to the one in the main building. The same chef I’d seen the night of the bachelor party was hard at work again with an even larger staff.
A new event coordinator greeted us in the kitchen. Her name tag read Olive Burnette, and her smile looked frozen in place. She gave Drusus and the others each an assignment number, then dismissed them, and as their handlers led them out of the kitchen—oddly, none of them carried trays—the coordinator turned to me.
“Okay, I’m only going to say this once, so listen closely. You’ll be serving one of our wealthiest guests in one of our luxury boxes.” She tucked a strand of her blond bob behind one ear. “Keep his glass full and food within reach. The box seats are pretty well stocked with everything customers could want, but if you run low on anything, just press the red button on the wall, and someone will come see what you need.” She glanced over my shoulder at Bowman. “Obviously you’ll be monitored by a handler at all times.”
The coordinator straightened her fitted silver suit jacket, then marched out of the kitchen. Bowman shoved me into the hall after her.
A service elevator took us up four floors and opened into an empty, curving hallway, which obviously ran around the perimeter of the arena. Burnette led me past several open doors, where I could see into private viewing boxes, each of which held either a professional server or an engaged cryptid waiting to serve guests who hadn’t yet arrived.
Finally, she stopped to open a closed door, then waved me into a box where three tiers of plush theater-style seats faced a wall shielded from view by a red curtain.
Bowman followed me inside and Burnette quickly closed the door behind him, clearly glad to be relieved of my company.
“Delilah.”
Startled, I turned to find Woodrow, the gamekeeper, standing on the other side of the box, his black tactical gear blending in with a sidewall painted a very dark gray. Like Bowman, he wore leather gloves and had turned up his collar, to expose as little of his skin as possible.
“If you’re any trouble tonight, the boss will put a bullet in your head. But first, he’ll make you watch your boyfriend die.”
“Boyfriend?” But then I understood. “Gallagher and I aren’t together. Not like that.”
“Bullshit,” Bowman said from my left. “He snapped a man’s neck trying to get to you, and after they dragged you out, he pulled Hilliard’s head clean off. He would have killed everyone else in the room to get to you, if not for his collar.”
I started to argue, but then I recognized the futility. They obviously couldn’t conceive of a motivation that didn’t involve either money or sex.
The gamekeeper grabbed my chin in his gloved hand and made me look at him. “Are you as protective of Gallagher as he is of you?”
I didn’t have to answer. He saw it in my eyes. But there was a bigger problem at hand. “I didn’t do anything to Murphy. He touched me. I can’t prevent what happens to people who touch the furiae voluntarily.”
“So we’ve heard. If you feel this furiae surfacing, gesture to one of us, and we’ll take care of it.” His hand settled onto the tranquilizer pistol holstered at his waist, in case I had any doubt about what he meant. “Tonight’s guest knows he can’t touch you. He’s just here to watch the fight. The only way this can go wrong is if you make it go wrong, and if that happens, you can kiss your boyfriend goodbye. But not literally, of course. Do you understand?”
I nodded, then swallowed the sick-tasting lump at the back of my throat.
“Good.” Woodrow pointed to the back wall of the box, where a countertop was equipped with a bar sink and a small refrigerator. An assortment of stemmed glasses hung upside down from a rack over the sink. “There’s white wine and champagne chilling in the fridge. Red wine and liquor are on the counter. Soda and beer are on tap. The basic snacks are in that cabinet, and someone will come by with food soon.”
“I’m not a bartender.”
“Anything more complicated than beer or wine will come in from the bar down the hall. Just tell us what you need, and we’ll radio it in.”
“So, I just give this guy drinks and food, and Gallagher gets to live?”
“What happens in the ring is up to him. But if you behave, we won’t kill him. That’s the deal.”
Gallagher was scheduled to fight.
Fighting for someone else’s entertainment is barbaric, even when humans get paid to do it. But being forced to fight? That was an especially cruel assignment for a redcap, a warrior sworn to fight for something real. Something important.
I wasn’t sure Gallagher would participate at all. He would never willingly smudge his honor, no matter how much pain the collar could put him through. But if they could somehow make him fight, surely it would be a short bout. I’d never met anyone, human or cryptid, who could take Gallagher in a fair fight.
Would the fight be fair? Would they handicap him, for entertainment’s sake?
The door opened before I could ask any of my questions—not that Woodrow would have answered them—and Olive Burnette escorted a portly man in his early sixties down to the center of the first row, her arm looped through his. Her smile no longer looked frozen in place. When he slid a one-hundred-dollar bill into the pocket of her suit jacket, I understood why.