The scale in the picture was off. The animals seemed... wrong. The wrong size, compared to the trainer standing front and center. They had the wrong look in their eyes. Like they knew too much. Something. It might have just been the camera angle, some kind of forced perspective on the stage, or a bad Photoshop job.
Ben studied the poster over my shoulder. “I’m not buying it,” he said but didn’t sound convinced. “Those aren’t really—”
I pursed my lips. “But that would explain that smell, that weird feeling we’ve had since we walked in here.”
“Like we’re walking into someone else’s territory?”
“Yeah. That one,” I said.
The lycanthrope smell: the distinctive human/animal, skin/fur combination. No matter how clean the place was kept, a hotel featuring an animal show would smell a little bit like animal. No one else would even be able to sense it.
So, how about that? A Vegas animal act full of lycanthropes. That rated a slot on my show; I could make the space for that. Assuming Balthasar, King of Beasts, would talk to me.
“This is even pushing my weirdness-tolerance level,” I said. “The only thing to do now is talk to Balthasar and ask him whose idea it was to put a bunch of were-tigers in an animal act.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? This is making me nervous.” He stepped back from the picture, leaned one way, then the other. “I think his eyes are following me. Doesn’t that guy creep you out?”
I tilted my head and considered. “Actually, he’s kind of hot.”
Ben huffed and stalked on without me.
We found the theater box office another thirty paces down the hallway. The scent of lycanthrope grew stronger.
The box office was open and staffed by a perky young woman. “Can I help you? We have a few seats left for tonight’s show.”
“Actually, I have a few questions,” I said. I leaned on the counter in front of her while Ben paced a few steps away and pretended to be fascinated by what were probably the doors to the theater itself. I picked up a brochure from a stack. The front had the same picture as the placard at the end of the hall. Inside were more pictures: leopards jumping through flaming hoops, Balthasar putting his hand in the lion’s mouth, animals standing on one another’s backs in unlikely pyramids. Standard fare.
But the lion was too small. And the leopards were too big.
Lycanthropes transformed into animals—not monsters, not monstrous version of animals. Werewolves in wolf form looked like wolves, except for one thing: size. The law of conservation of mass held true. Werewolves turned into very large wolves, since a two-hundred-pound man becomes a two-hundred-pound wolf.
Natural lions were big, heavy, something like four hundred pounds. Balthasar’s hand should have disappeared in that mouth. It didn’t. The lion had to stretch its mouth to fit over it. Balthasar could have slung the body over his shoulders. And the leopards were about the same size as the lions. But if I hadn’t been looking closely, I might not have noticed. I could still write it off to a bad Photoshop job.
The clerk waited for my questions.
“What’s the show like? It looks like the usual circus tricks.”
“Oh, no, it’s much more than that.” Her eyes grew wide and admiring. “Trust me, you’ve never seen anything like this. The tricks those animals do—they’re complex. Really difficult stuff. It’s like they listen to him. I don’t mean hand signals or the usual training. It’s like they’re really talking to each other.”
“Are they on display? Sometimes with shows like this, you can see the animals during the day, in their habitats.”
She shook her head. “The show takes a lot out of them, so Balthasar insists on letting them rest.”
“What about Balthasar? What’s he like?”
This woman’s face was so expressive. This time, she rolled her eyes and melted into an ecstatic smile of admiration. “He’s so amazing. He’s gorgeous. You don’t realize it until he’s standing right there, but oh, my
“Does he give interviews? My name is Kitty Norville, and I host a radio show. I’m always looking for interesting stories, and this might be right up my alley—”
Her expression shut down, becoming that of a professional gatekeeper. A loyal gatekeeper who would protect her employer to the end. “I’d have to forward you to the press office for that. But really, Balthasar is far too busy and private a person to be able to talk to you.”
“Private? He’s the front man for a Vegas stage show,” I said. “I can get him some great publicity—”
“I’m sorry, I really can’t help you. Call the press office.”
I recognized a brick wall when I saw one. I pulled out a business card and set it on the counter. “Maybe you can give this to the stage manager or someone who can pass it along to him. I really do hope to catch the show this weekend.”
She looked at the card distastefully but took it. The card had the KNOB logo on it, so at least she knew I was telling the truth. Not that I’d bet that the card would actually get to Balthasar. That was okay. There was always more than one way to skin a cat. Whatever the cat.
I joined Ben by the theater doors and lingered, taking in slow breaths to smell every piece of the place.
The area was public, well traveled. Under the odor of carpet cleaner I smelled people, lingering perfume and aftershave, hundreds of warm bodies passing through these doors, and under it all lurked a musky feline scent. Feline, but different. Distinctive, including both fur and skin.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ben said. “This is making me nervous.”
We didn’t speak until we were back outside, on the sun-baked pavement and in the fuel-tainted air. I took a deep breath of it and smiled. After the close environment of the Hanging Gardens, even the crowded, traffic-filled Strip felt like wide-open territory. We walked back to the Olympus.
“I’m not sure I want to see their show,” Ben said, after taking a deep breath right along with me. “It would just be weird.”
“And nobody knows about it. They’ve kept it secret. Of course Dom knows—but wow. What a story.” But I wouldn’t be the one to break it unless Balthasar wanted me to. I had too much respect for the kind of effort it took to keep any lycanthropic identity hidden to blow it for someone else. Kind of like my identity was blown. But that was why I really wanted to talk to Balthasar, to find out how this had started, why they did this—and how.
My face pursed with concentration. “I wonder...”
“Hm?”
“Does the group of them work like a pack? If Balthasar’s also a lycanthrope”—and with that look in his eyes, even in the picture, I was betting he was—“is he the alpha? And if both those things are true, do you think the performers are there voluntarily? Or are they being coerced?”
“How? Like someone’s holding a gun to their heads or something?”
“We’ve seen what a dysfunctional pack of lycanthropes can do. If the alpha’s got them cowed, yeah, they might not want to do this. I just can’t imagine a lycanthrope shape-shifting and performing like that voluntarily.”
We walked another half block, dodging a crowd of what had to be a bachelor party. Young men, loud, cans of beer in hand. The group swarmed around one guy in the center; they might have been egging him on, or dragging him with them. He looked a little spaced out. Ben and I moved as far to the edge of the sidewalk as we could, and they surged past, like a pack on the prowl.
Ben said, “If all that’s true, what are you going to do about it? Mount a liberation?”
“That’s why I want to talk to Balthasar and get the whole story. Then—I don’t know.” But yeah, depending on how the interview went, I might just have to mount a liberation.
Chapter 8
I took a cab to the Diablo for my meeting with Odysseus Grant. By myself this time. Ben wanted to spend some time playing poker this afternoon. “Practicing,” he said, for the tournament tomorrow. I’d promised I wouldn’t nag him about how he spent his free time while I was doing work for the show, so I didn’t nag him. But I did remind him about dinner with my parents this evening.
I’d been instructed to ask for Odysseus Grant at the box office at the Diablo theater. The clerk there directed me to theater door. “He’s onstage, practicing. Go right in.”
It was somehow less exciting sneaking around a theater when I’d been invited.
The empty theater seemed larger and lonelier than it had yesterday. All the lights were on and the curtains were open, making the stage seem like a gaping warehouse instead of the setting for a show. I could see the tape marking out spots on the floor, as well as the scrapes and scuffs that marred it. Catwalks and hanging stage lights were also visible. A few of the show’s larger props sat toward the back of the stage, looking lost under the bright lights. Less mysterious.
In the middle of the stage, next to a small folding table, stood Odysseus Grant. A few props sat on the table: a top hat, a glass of water, what looked like scarves, and a folded newspaper. Grant, wearing a button-up white shirt, open at the collar, sleeves rolled up, and dark trousers, was shuffling cards, rotating through a number of tricks so quickly his hands blurred. He pulled one out, showed it to the empty seats, shuffled, drew out the same card again. And again, and again. He shuffled a different way every time. At one point he winced, shook his head a fraction, and did the same trick again. And again. I hadn’t seen anything wrong with what he’d done.
I made my way to the stage stairs. “Mr. Grant? I’m Kitty Norville. Thanks for agreeing to talk with me.”
He gave the deck one last spin—almost literally, launching the cards into the air with one hand so that they fanned in the air and landed neatly in his other hand. An old, familiar trick, but I’d never seen it done in person. The cards whispered through the air.
“Yes. I know who you are.” He glanced at me sideways with icy blue eyes.
“The woman up front told me you were practicing. You do this every night, I’d have thought that would be enough practice.”
“No. You never stop practicing. You always have to find new tricks, stay at the top of your game. Otherwise you become obsolete.” He set the cards down, then twisted his hand to produce a coin. Then another, and another. “I’m afraid I only have a few moments. What would you like to talk about?”
“Rumor has it your magic is real.”
He kept going through tricks, plucking coins and scarves out of the air, shoving them all into the hat, pulling out a second glass of water.
“You don’t mince words, do you? Straight to the point.”
“That’s me,” I said.
“It’s a useful rumor. Especially recently. I suppose I have you to thank for that. People are willing to believe lots of things these days.”
“Is it? Real, I mean.”
He gave a smile that made his craggy face light up with mischief. “You’ve been watching me for five minutes now. What do you think?”
Hey, I was supposed to be the one asking questions. I moved on. “You might have heard I’m doing a televised version of my show tonight. Stage, audience, everything. I wondered if you’d like to come on, do a few tricks for the audience, talk about your act. It would be great publicity for you. I have a pretty big audience who would love to see what you can do.”
He was already shaking his head. “I don’t need publicity. This may come as a shock, but I don’t aspire to great fame and success. I have my little show, my little talents. It’s all I need.” He turned a formerly empty hand to show four silver dollars stuck between the fingers.
