spent before we even make it.”
“What? All of it?” Unshed tears seem to magnify her eyes. “But we’re going to be within a few miles of Gael’s son.”
Like most of us, Lala got invested in every cryptid we tried to buy from the other menageries, preserves and labs that owned them. But this one was personal for her. She was the one who’d found the berserker’s son, in a vision.
“We have to buy him, Delilah. That’s the whole point of this, right?” She spread her arms to take in the entire menagerie, and our perilous, secret possession of it. “So pay something late. We only need twelve thousand dollars.”
Right after we’d taken over the menagerie, I would have paid it in a heartbeat to free one of our fellow cryptids from captivity. In fact, I’d done just that, before I had a handle on the menagerie’s finances. Before I’d realized how dire our financial situation really was.
I’d handled tens of thousands of dollars in cash nearly every night since we took over the menagerie, but the vast majority of it went to paying our operating costs. Taxes. Licenses and permits in every single town. Fairground rental fees. Inspections. Food. Fuel. Maintenance. And insurance. That was the big one. Insurance alone cost Metzger’s Menagerie more than a million a year. And we were only getting off that easily because Rudolph Metzger hadn’t reported most of our recent “incidents” to the insurance company—some, because the old man was trying to cut corners, and some because he was no longer in a position of authority at the menagerie.
We’d shipped him south of the border in one of his own menagerie cages, as a peace offering to the marid sultan, whose only daughter had died during our revolt.
If the insurance company knew about everything Metzger had covered up, our coup of the menagerie would have been exposed long ago, not because a customer saw through our masquerade, but because of simple, stupid bankruptcy.
Even so, we sat on the verge of that very catastrophe on a nightly basis.
“Lala, we’re already paying bills late. If that gets any worse, they’ll start foreclosing on things.” Old man Metzger had bought much of his equipment on credit. Ironically, we no longer needed most of it, since we were running our own show now and only selling the illusion of captivity. But we couldn’t return any of it without explaining why our creatures and hybrids no longer needed to be restrained or sedated.
“There has to be a way,” the young oracle insisted, heartbreak shining in her eyes.
“Maybe there is. I don’t want everyone to get their hopes up, but I was thinking about asking Renata if she’d be willing to help.”
“Oh!” Lala jumped and clenched her fists in excitement.
“Shhh!” I stepped in front of her, trying to shield her delight from the man running the funnel cake stand. The game booths and food stands—everything other than the actual menagerie—belonged to subcontractors who worked the seasonal carnival route. They had no idea Metzger’s was being run by the very cryptids who made up its exhibits and performances, and if any of them ever found out, our ruse—and our freedom—would come to a violent end.
“Sorry,” Lala whispered, as she recomposed herself into the role of tired carnival worker. “I just... I thought it was too dangerous to let the encantados play with people’s minds.”
“It is. But we don’t have a lot of choice this time.” I pulled my pen from the top of the clipboard while she tried to control her smile. “I have to go collect the stats. What was your head count?”
“Two hundred seven. We had a thirty-minute-long line late this afternoon.”
“Mirela must be exhausted.” The oldest of the three oracles was alone inside the tent, since it was Lala’s turn to play carnival employee.
Lala shrugged. “Exhaustion makes the bed feel that much softer at the end of the night.”
I gave her a smile as I moved on to the next tent. Her upbeat outlook never failed to amaze me. At the end of the day, as grateful as I was to have regained my freedom, I couldn’t help missing the apartment and belongings I lost when I was arrested and sold. I resented the fact that even in freedom, I had to hide. But Lala lived for every minor liberty and moment of comfort, as if indulging in them might someday make up for everything she’d been denied in her sixteen years as a captive.
I continued down the sawdust path, taking head counts from the few tents that were still open until I got to the bestiary, where the nonhuman hybrids were on display in a series of vintage circus cage wagons. Ember, the phoenix, was easily my favorite. From her head down, her plumage graduated through shades of red, yellow and orange, ending in long, wide tail feathers that looked like living flames in the bright light thrown from high pole-mounted fixtures. But she could hardly even stretch those tail feathers in the confines of her cage.
Darkness shifted behind the next enclosure, a subtle blending of one shadow into another, and though I heard neither footsteps nor breathing, I knew I was no longer alone.
“This isn’t fair to them.” I tucked my clipboard under one arm and stared up at the phoenix.
“I know.” Gallagher stepped out of the shadows, yet they seemed to cling to him, giving him a dangerous look that most humans would feel, yet be unable to truly understand. They would blame their instinctive fear on his towering height. On his massive musculature. But they wouldn’t really grasp his destructive potential.
If they were lucky.
“I got a quote on bigger cages, but considering that our budget is around zero, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.” Three months after our coup, we had yet to come up with a solution for the beasts’ confinement. Their enclosures were inhumanely small, but much like the lions in any zoo, the chimera, the griffin and the others were all far too dangerous to simply keep on leashes. “We’re going to have to raise ticket prices.”
Gallagher shook his head, and light shone on the red baseball cap covering most of his short, dark hair. “The menagerie’s customer base is blue-collar. They’re already paying more than they can afford. We need to be touring larger venues. Exhibition grounds. Amusement parks.”
“No.” I was already weary of the argument we’d been putting off for two months. “Bigger venues are too much of a risk.”
“Eryx brings in five hundred people in every tiny town we visit. Imagine the thousands he’d attract in a larger venue. In bigger cities.”
I turned to look up at him. “The cryptids... We’re all still skittish, Gallagher. Most of them are terrified to deal with vendors and carny subcontractors, and with good reason. That would only be worse if we played larger venues, with more inspections and more invasive oversight.”
His brows furrowed low over dark eyes. “It’s September, Delilah. Schools are already back in session, and the county fair circuit will dry up in the next few weeks. If we’re not prepared to step into the big interior venues—stadiums and concert halls—we won’t make it through the winter, because we certainly can’t raise funds the way old man Metzger did.”
The very thought gave me chills.
During the off-season, when the carnival circuit shrank to virtually nothing, Rudolph Metzger had rented the most exotic of his cryptids to various private collections, where they were exhibited in a more formal setting
