bend under the weight of his past before she broke, she wondered. Cat studied his profile like an art student replicating a sculpture. Cal kept his eyes on the road.
Cat hadn’t said a word since leaving the Bronx. The man she’d shared a bed with for six years was holding something back. He’d answered a dozen questions all with the response of a child who’d successfully pilfered the cookie jar and gladly confessed only to not having brushed his teeth yet. Cat was certain Cal would answer a million more questions so long as she avoided one important one.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he asked. He kept his eyes on the road.
“I’m having ten-dollar thoughts.”
“Hmm.”
“And you? What’s on your mind?”
“You have to bend a little lower,” Cal said.
“Excuse me?”
“When you curtsy.” Cal smiled. “Legs bent and torso and head bent forward as well. And it’s not so slow. It’s a quick motion. Your superiors don’t want to be staring at the top of your head all day.”
Cat smiled. “I’ll try to remember that… in case I ever meet a superior.”
Cal put his hand on her knee and stroked it. She laced her fingers on top of his and turned her attention to the road.
“Stop the carriage!” Lelani shouted.
“Shit, Mommy!” Seth screamed, rudely awakened. “What? What?”
They pulled onto the shoulder. Lelani bolted out the back and ran toward a dilapidated billboard.
“Christ! I thought we had an accident,” Seth said.
Cal activated the hazards and backed the Explorer until they reached Lelani. She had a horrified expression on her face. They joined her.
The ad on the billboard was torn and faded, but there was enough to see that it had been for an old carnie freak show in the area. It read, Real Live Man-Horse! See the Eighth Wonder of The World at the Rogers’ Farm, off Route 33. The illustration was of a centaur rearing on his hind legs in all his glory.
“He looks familiar,” Cal said.
“So what?” Seth said. “Carnies have been running crap like this for years. It’s a guy in a harness. It’s a con.”
“The centaur in this drawing is Fronik,” Lelani said. “He’s from my clan and was one of the members of your party.”
“Yeah,” Cal confirmed. “I vaguely remember. Why aren’t all my memories clear? They don’t feel a part of me. More like old television shows I remember watching.”
“The memory spell is still active. It transferred your memory anagrams to inactive neural tissue, and is rearranging them as it rewrites them back to the cerebrum in proper order.”
“Huh?”
“She’s defragmenting your hard drive,” Seth said. “Haven’t you ever used Norton’s speed disk?”
“His memory will be complete by morning,” Lelani answered.
“Should he be driving?” Cat asked.
“Probably not.”
“Now she tells us,” Seth snapped.
“You are inebriated, her ladyship is emotionally distraught, and I am incapable of operating this vehicle,” Lelani stated. “There wasn’t any other choice.”
“We could have waited until tomorrow,” Cat said.
“No. We have already wasted too much time,” she replied.
“Why are we out here?” Cal asked. He was the least concerned with his mind’s precarious state out of the group. “We should find the transfer site. Find Rosencrantz.”
“Fronik’s aid would be invaluable,” Lelani said.
“This poster is ancient,” Seth noted.
“He might know where to find Rosencrantz.”
“It’s a drawing. We don’t even know for sure that it’s him,” Cal said.
“What happened to time not being a luxury?” Seth asked.
“This could shorten our investigation,” Lelani said. It was almost a plea.
It occurred to Cat that until Cal’s brain had caught up with his life, until he got a handle on everything that went wrong, he relied heavily on Lelani’s judgment. She could hear his gears turning, trying to decide if this was a good idea or merely indulging her personal cause.
“Cal, she hasn’t let us down so far,” Cat said. “If my vote matters…”
“So much for the captain being leader of the pack,” Seth said. “‘I’ll follow his orders,’ yadda, yadda, yadda.”
Lelani looked ready to drop-kick Seth. Cal stepped between them. “We’ll go to this farm,” he said. “It’s only a few miles away. This Rogers could be Rosencrantz for all we know. Maybe Fronik got lucky.”
“I’m driving,” Cat said.
2
The dirt road ran for three miles before it came to the farmhouse-if one could even call it a house. Wooden slats barely held up a corrugated tin roof. The windows were caked with dust. The termite-infested porch was missing every other board. Ramshackle, broken, dilapidated, and deserted was what came to mind. Cal regretted the detour already. Cat pulled the vehicle around the gravel driveway and everyone spilled out.
Cal surveyed the scene, not sure what he was looking for. On a field between the house and the barn, pieces of an old canvas tent, flat and weathered with age, sporadically protruded from the snow. The poles leaned inward toward center, rusted at the bottom where they met the ground. Some had fallen over completely and turned the snow orange with oxidation. It hadn’t been used in years.
“Don’t stray,” Cal said. “Lelani, you have twenty minutes to find something relevant.”
She bolted toward the barn, which looked even worse than the house. Lelani looked like any coed running, but her tracks in the snow beyond the periphery of her spell betrayed her equestrian half.
Much to their surprise, the screen door creaked open soon after. A small Cabbage Patch-like woman with gray frizzled hair and a broom in one hand came onto the porch. Her puffy face had the texture of a walnut.
“You folks from the County?”
Cat looked less threatening, so Cal prodded her to speak.
“No, we’re not,” Cat said. “We are looking for an old friend. He looks like the actor who played the horse-man in the billboard on the road.”
The woman eyed them suspiciously. “You friends of Fred?”
“Our friend grew up with him. She’s by the barn right now.” Cat said pointing to Lelani. “Would it be okay if we talked to Fred?”
The old woman studied Lelani with a squint that doubled the creases in her face. She considered the request for a moment, then told them, “You can’t talk to Fred.”
“It’s important. His family is really worried…”
“You can’t talk to Fred on account’a he’s dead. Been dead nine years.” She pointed to a small dirty grave marker next to an old tree.
“I’m sorry,” Cat said. She looked to her husband for suggestions. Cal checked his watch, looked at the waning sun, and watched Lelani pick things out of the snow. His impatience might be an effect of his impeded brain, so he suppressed an urge to scream. He turned back to the woman.
“Did you know him well, ma’am?” he asked.
“Well enough. He was my husband.”
The three caught each other with odd expressions. The side trip was a bust as far as Cal was concerned. They ought to be heading to the lay line; they should be looking for the boy. Everyone else in the party was
