Chapter 6
TEDDY
The rental sedan kicks up dust in the carnival lot.
I park away from the main entrance, somewhere between the RVs belonging to families chasing nostalgia and the beat-up trucks that probably belong to staff.
I can blend in here, just another body drawn to the bright lights and questionable cotton candy.
The air smells like fried dough and diesel fuel, and music drifts from somewhere deeper in the fairgrounds. It's loud, insistent, pulling me forward like I'm a puppet.
I pay twenty bucks at the gate to a teenager who barely looks up from her phone.
The ticket's cheap for a Friday night show, which either means they're confident or desperate.
From what I've seen of the crowd filtering in around me—families, couples, groups of college kids already half-drunk—they're not hurting for attendance.
The midway opens up ahead. String lights crisscross overhead, bathing everything in gold and red.
Game booths line both sides, barkers calling out to anyone who'll listen.
A woman wins a massive stuffed bear at the ring toss, and her boyfriend hoists it over his shoulder like a trophy. It's all so normal.
Except the performers. They're everywhere—walking on stilts, juggling fire, contorting themselves into shapes that shouldn't be possible. Definitely not normal.
The crowd thickens as I approach the Big Top. The massive tent dominates the center of the fairgrounds, the burgundy and off-white canvas stretching three stories high, with music spilling out from the open flaps.
I show my ticket to the guy at the entrance. He's wearing a plague doctor mask, the beak gleaming gold. He tears my stub and gestures inside without a word.
The interior's dim, lit only by lanterns hanging from the support beams. Tiered seating circles a center ring, and I find a spot halfway up with a good sightline to the main floor and both side entrances. The seats fill quickly around me—the show's about to start.
The drums go silent, and darkness drops like a theater curtain. Someone near me gasps. A child whimpers. Then a single spotlight pierces the black, illuminating the center ring.
A figure stands there, impossibly still. He's tall—well over six feet—dressed in a striped ringmaster's coat. A top hat sits low on his head, casting his face in shadow, but I can see the mask covering his eyes—Venetian style, black leather with gold filigree curling across the surface.
His voice rolls through the tent, deep and commanding. Not shouting, but somehow filling every inch of space.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” He spreads his arms wide, and the ruby on his cane catches the light. “Welcome to the Seven Sins Carnival, where desire becomes spectacle and spectacle becomes sin.”
The crowd murmurs. He lets the sound build, that cane tapping a slow rhythm against the sawdust.
“Tonight, you'll witness feats that defy reason. Acts that challenge your understanding of what flesh and bone can endure.” The mask tilts, and even from here, I catch the pale gleam of his eyes through the eye holes.
“But first, I must ask... who among you has the courage to confront what you truly desire?”
No one answers. He wasn't expecting them to.
“Then watch closely.” His voice drops to something almost intimate. “Because the only thing more dangerous than your desires...”
The lights cut out again.
“...is denying them.”
When the spotlight returns, he's gone. The crowd erupts in applause, and I realize my hands are gripping the edge of my seat hard enough to hurt.
That has to be Elias Vale. The height, the presence, the way he commanded the space—it matches everything I've pieced together about the man who owns this operation. I make a mental note of his build, the way he moves.
The drums start again, faster this time. Three spotlights illuminate the ring simultaneously, revealing a man who probably doesn't fit through normal doorways.
The strongman.
He's massive—muscles carved so precisely they look like they've been sculpted from marble. Dark skin gleams under the lights, his chest bare except for chains wrapped around his torso like decoration. Or restraints.
But it's the mask that stops my breath. Horizontal bars of black and gold, positioned across his lower face like a cage. Like he's something dangerous that needs to be contained.
He breaks a chain with his bare hands. The metal shrieks as it parts, and the crowd loses their minds. He's performing a standard strongman routine—bending steel bars, lifting impossible weights.
I'm cataloging details for my report when the next act enters.
The knife thrower.
Lean and agile, he moves like water. His mask is all sharp angles, pointed like his knives. Thick black hair falls over his forehead as he produces knives from seemingly nowhere, spinning them between his fingers before launching them at a rotating target board.
A woman from the audience volunteers—or gets volunteered by the ringmaster, I can't tell—and stands against the board while the knife thrower outlines her body in blades. Each throw lands within an inch of her skin. The crowd holds its breath, and I find myself following suit.
He takes a bow, and the woman practically runs back to her seat.
Then comes the animal tamer.
He leads a lion into the ring. A goddamn lion. The beast moves with lazy grace, completely at ease with the man at its side. The tamer wears a mask with horns curving up from the temples. It looks animalistic, demonic, pagan.
The lion performs tricks I didn't know lions could do—jumping through hoops, standing on pedestals, even rolling over on command.
But what strikes me is the relationship between man and beast. The tamer never uses a whip, never raises his voice.
He guides the animal with hand gestures, with movements that don't even look like commands.
An enormous bear shambles into the ring next, and the crowd gasps. The tamer handles it with the same gentle authority. When both animals sit at his feet like massive house pets, I realize I've been holding my breath again.
The fire eater comes next.
His mask resembles a furnace grate, and he opens it to eat torch after torch, exhaling plumes of fire that lick the tent's ceiling. The heat reaches even where I'm sitting. Someone behind me swears softly.
The ringmaster reappears between acts, his voice weaving it all together. He introduces each performer with reverence, but there's something else in his tone. Pride. The kind you have for family, not employees.
A man materializes from the shadows at the ring's edge. Slight build, ethereal presence. His mask looks like a calavera—the ornate skulls from Día de los Muertos, beautiful and unsettling in equal measure.
The fortune teller.
He doesn't speak. Just produces a deck of tarot cards and begins laying them out in patterns only he understands. The ringmaster selects someone from the audience—a middle-aged man who climbs into the ring looking equal parts excited and terrified.
The fortune teller reads three cards. His light gray eyes never leave the man's face.
The words he's saying make little sense to me, bringing up people and events in the man's life, but the volunteer's expression shifts from skepticism to shock to something like grief before he stumbles back to his seat.
The crowd murmurs, uncertain whether they witnessed entertainment or something more real.
Then the lights drop again.
When they return, two figures stand in the center ring.
The illusionist steps forward first. Tall, sleek, wearing a mask like a skeleton's grin. Blue eyes are visible above the mask that covers his mouth, sharp and calculating. I'd bet everything this is Silas Crowley. Same height as Vale, similar build, similar hair color.
He gestures to his partner, and my mouth goes dry.
She steps into the light, and the tent might as well be empty except for her.
Auburn hair artfully pinned atop her head, her body wrapped in chains.
They should weigh her down, but she moves like they're made of silk.
A black corset cinches her waist, pushing her breasts up in a way that ought to be illegal.
Fishnet stockings disappear into high-heeled boots.
Tattoos wind up her forearms—botanical designs that make me want to trace them with my tongue.
Her mask is the only one that isn't built to frighten.
Where the others wear skulls and grates and horns, hers is a sweep of black filigree across the upper half of her face, delicate as wrought iron, leaving her jaw and her painted mouth bare.
Through the eyeholes, her eyes scan the crowd—fearless, feral, a green so vivid it carries to where I sit.
A leather choker encircles her throat, and the sight makes my blood run hot for reasons I can't begin to explain.
The illusionist produces a cabinet—one of those classic magician's boxes meant to make people disappear. He opens it, shows the audience it's empty. The woman circles it once, examining every angle, before the illusionist helps her inside.
His hands linger on her waist. She doesn't pull away.
He closes the cabinet, spins it three times, then opens it again.
Empty.
The crowd gasps. I should be analyzing the trick, cataloging how they pulled it off. Instead, I'm scanning the tent for where she went, already half-convinced she's actually vanished.
The illusionist produces a set of keys from his pocket. He holds them up, lets the spotlights catch them, then tosses them into the audience. A teenage boy catches them, looking bewildered.
Then chains drop from the tent's ceiling.
The illusionist steps into them willingly, and assistants I didn't notice before secure them around his wrists and ankles. He's lifted off the ground, suspended ten feet above the sawdust. The chains lock—padlocks clicking shut one after another.
The lights dim. A spotlight focuses on the illusionist as he begins to move—subtle shifts of his body, testing the restraints. His coat falls away, revealing a white shirt beneath. The muscles in his arms flex against the chains.
Music starts. Something slow and sensual, building gradually.
Then she appears.
The escape artist rises from beneath the stage floor on a platform, still wrapped in her own chains. But now she's moving differently—not struggling, but dancing. The chains become part of the performance, swaying with her body as she undulates.
She begins to shed them.
The first chain drops. Then the second. Each removal is choreographed, timed perfectly to the music's rhythm. It's like she's not just escaping; she's stripping, turning her freedom into seduction.
By the time she's down to the last chain, every eye in the tent is glued to her. Mine included.
She lets the final chain pool at her feet, then looks up at the illusionist. Still suspended. Still bound.
She approaches his discarded coat, produces something from the pocket. Lock picks. She holds them up for the crowd to see, then walks directly beneath where he hangs.
The music shifts. Faster now, urgent.
She reaches up, and the illusionist is lowered down. She picks the first lock while maintaining eye contact with him. It falls open.
The second lock. Her body pressed close to his now, so close I can almost imagine what he's feeling.
The third lock. His hands are free.
But he doesn't move to release himself. Instead, his fingers find her hair, tangling in those auburn strands. She tilts her head back, and even from here I can see the challenge in her eyes.
The fourth lock. His legs are still bound, but his hands roam freely now. Down her sides, across the curve of her hips. The crowd's gone silent, hypnotized.
She picks the fifth lock. The sixth. The chains loosen enough for him to drop, and his feet hit the ground. She's still pressed against him, lock picks in hand, his fingers still in her hair.
The final lock. She turns it slowly, drawing out the moment.
It opens.
The chains drop.
They stand there, inches apart, surrounded by fallen restraints.
His skull mask tilts down toward her. Her chin lifts, her masked face turning up to his.
For one breathless moment, I think they’re going to tear the masks off each other and kiss right there in the ring—and God help me, I want to see it. I want to see both their faces.
Instead, they step apart as one. Turn to face the audience. Bow in perfect unison.
The crowd erupts.
I'm not clapping. Can't. My hands are on my lap, hiding the bulge tenting my pants.
What the hell was that?
My shirt sticks to my back with sweat. The tent feels too hot, too close. I need air. I need to get out of here and remember why I came—to investigate, to gather evidence, to build a case.
Not to sit here with a painfully hard cock while watching what might be the most erotic thing I've witnessed outside actual pornography.
The illusionist and the escape artist take their final bow. As they exit, his hand rests on the small of her back—possessive, protective. She doesn't pull away.
The ringmaster returns one last time, his voice washing over us like a benediction.
“Thank you for joining us tonight. Remember...” The lights begin to dim. “Your darkest desires are always welcome here.”
Darkness swallows everything.
When the lights return, the ring is empty. The performers vanished like smoke.
People around me stand, gathering their things, chattering about what they've seen. I stay seated, trying to will my body back under control. Trying to remember I'm Special Agent Theodore Coleman, here because I'm working. Here because of disappearances, maybe even murders.
But I can't stop seeing her. The way she moved. The way those chains fell from her body like she was shedding a skin. The freckles across her nose and the defiance in her eyes.
And him. The illusionist. The way he touched her, like he owned her. Like he'd kill anyone who tried to take her away.
I finally stand, adjusting my jacket to hide the evidence of my... reaction. The crowd filters out through the exits, but I hang back. Wait.
When the tent's mostly empty, I make my way toward the side entrance the performers used. There has to be a backstage area, a place where they prepare between acts.
A place where I can get closer to Elias Vale and Silas Crowley.
To the Seven Sins Carnival's secrets.
And maybe… a place where I can see her again.
The woman who just made me harder than I've been in years without even knowing my name.