Menagerie

  I bit back the urge to defend him. “He had no role. Metzger put him in charge of me.”

  Adira and Nalah exchanged a private, ominous look, then the merid turned back to me. “Did he mention why?”

  Unease crawled beneath my skin at the suggestive arch of her brow. “No.”

  Adira turned to her young companion, wringing her hands in sudden, overblown uncertainty, and I couldn’t tell whether she was a drama queen by nature or intentionally putting on a show. “Maybe we shouldn’t tell her. I can’t see how it would help.”

  “Would you want to know, if your positions were reversed?” Nalah’s voice was soft and steady. Comforting, but somber, just like both her bearing and her expression. My attention was repeatedly drawn to her, in spite of her cage mate’s histrionics.

  “I would.” Adira nodded. “Manipulation is their strongest weapon, and I’d want to know if it were being wielded against me.” She seemed completely ignorant of her own hypocrisy.

  “Then you must afford her the same rights you would claim for yourself,” Nalah advised. “She deserves no less.”

  “Your counsel is wise without fail.” Adira turned back to me with exaggerated solemnity. “Gallagher was put in charge of you because he is the reason you’re here.”

  “What?” I backed away from their wagon as far as the ankle chain would allow. That couldn’t be true. They were playing some kind of cruel prank. “No.” I shook my head firmly. “Metzger bought me. I was there.”

  “The old man wrote the check, but Gallagher advised the purchase,” Adira insisted. “Gallagher told him what you’d done and where they’d taken you after...your display in the hybrids tent.” She paused for dramatic effect, and my heart thudded painfully. “You’re here, locked up, a possession of those who were once your equals, because of Gallagher.”

  “No. You’re wrong.” I reveled in the numbness of denial, a psychological narcotic, because they couldn’t be right. They couldn’t. “I don’t know what kind of stupid adolescent game you two are playing, but I’ve sat through enough community theater to know an amateur performance when I see one.”

  “She doesn’t believe us.” Adira shook her head in exaggerated pity.

  “I’m sure she means no slight against your honor, Princess,” the companion murmured. “Delilah has obviously grown fond of Gallagher, and hearing the truth about him must be difficult.” Nalah laid her free hand over her heart. “Truly, she has my sympathy.”

  “Mine as well.” Adira studied my expression, but I could find only ice in her blue-eyed gaze. “If you don’t believe us, ask Gallagher. I’m sure he will tell you the truth.” The merid watched me closely as she struck the final blow. “His word is his honor.”

  I flinched, and she noticed. She’d been waiting for it.

  Gallagher had told them the same thing he’d told me—that his word was his honor. Were they the other captives he’d made a promise to? If so, what had he promised them?

  I sank to the ground on my knees and ran both hands through my tangled hair. I wanted to believe the djinn were lying—their delivery hadn’t exactly reeked of sincerity—because from the very beginning, Gallagher had treated me better than any of the other handlers had, and it wasn’t just the extra food and water. He spoke to me like a person. He spared my dignity. He argued with me.

  People do not bicker with cats and dogs. They give pets orders and expect to be obeyed.

  I didn’t want to believe that the only Metzger’s employee who thought of me as a person was actually the reason for my imprisonment.

  Cryptids have been warned by the federal government to stay in their homes as the investigation continues into the origins and instigation of “the reaping,” amid growing pressure from the public.

  —Public service announcement, issued October 10, 1986

  Delilah

  “Get up.”

  Startled, I looked up to see Gallagher walking toward me carrying a plastic grocery store bag. He opened the djinn’s cage and handed the bag to Nalah, then locked the cage again and freed my ankle. The whole time, I watched him, trying to see if I’d missed something. Maybe it was naive of me to believe him just because he’d told me I could, but I’d never caught him in a lie to anyone. Not to my fellow captives or to his own coworkers.

  He’d said I was meant to be free, yet the djinn girls claimed he was the reason I’d been bought by Metzger’s in the first place.

  I had no reason to trust Adira and Nalah over Gallagher, yet in spite of their manipulative delivery, everything they’d said made sense. Gallagher was in the hybrid tent when I was exposed. He came with Metzger to buy me from the sheriff. The old man had put him in charge of me, as if he’d had some reason to hold Gallagher accountable if I failed to perform.

  I probably never should have trusted him in the first place, but because I had, the sting of his betrayal was sharp and deep.

  “Let’s get moving.” Gallagher reached for my arm, but instead of hauling me to my feet, he simply helped me up, and again my resolve faltered. I couldn’t decide from one heartbeat to the next whether I was being unfair to him by suspecting him or unfair to myself by wanting him to be innocent.

  He frowned with one look at whatever conflict showed on my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m a captive in a traveling zoo,” I snapped, caught between a pressing need to demand the truth and a fear that doing so would end any chance I had of escaping with him. “A better question would be ‘What’s right?’”

  Gallagher’s frown deepened, but instead of replying, he led me through the service entrance to the deserted fairgrounds, which sported a blacktop midway and kiosks built like little storybook cottages. I felt like a hostage in a warped fairy tale as we passed a cobbler’s shop, a small castle tower, and what appeared to be the cabin from Goldilocks’s infamous home invasion.

  With every step, my leg shackles scraped the blacktop, reminding me that my status as a prisoner might be Gallagher’s fault.

  I assumed we were going to my usual tent until he guided me through another service entrance. Just outside the carnival proper, a camper sat about fifty feet from a flatbed pickup truck with the Metzger’s logo painted on one door and an empty livestock cage lashed to the bed.

  “We took the long way, so no one would see us, but everyone else is parked just around that corner—” he pointed at a curve in the exterior fairgrounds fence “—so we still have to be quiet.”

  “Why are we here? Is that yours?” I gestured toward the camper.

  Gallagher nodded. “I thought you might like a break from tents and cages and folding furniture. Not that I have much better to offer.” He led me to the camper and unlocked the door. “There’s a light switch on your left, but don’t flip it until I get the door closed.”

  He helped me up the steps in my chains, then followed me inside, and for a moment, he seemed to take up the entire tight space.

  Fear skittered up my spine until it hit the lump in my throat. I couldn’t even breathe without brushing his arm or chest, and I was suddenly, terrifyingly certain that I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life. Not that I’d had any choice.

  I stumbled forward to put much-needed space between us and collided with what felt like a hollow wall.

  The door latched behind me with a solid click. A second later, the light came on, and I found myself staring at a small wood-paneled refrigerator.

  “Have a seat.” Gallagher scooted past me and pulled two bottles of water from the fridge. “Anywhere’s fine,” he said, when my focus skipped from the booth-style table against one wall to a small sofa, then to an unmade bed at the back of the trailer.

  I sat on the closest of the padded booth benches.

  Gallagher set both bottles of water on the table, then he knelt in front of me and removed my handcuffs. The
y hit the chipped top of the table with a clank.

  He sank onto the sagging built-in couch, his elbow resting on the tiny kitchen counter. “Water?” He gestured at the bottles, but I shook my head. “What’s wrong, Delilah?”

  “Are you the reason I’m here?” The words fell out before I could rethink my approach. “Did you tell Metzger to buy me?”

  For one single, unprecedented instant, Gallagher’s thoughts were unguarded, and I saw the truth. He leaned forward on the couch, his bearing instantly tense. “Okay, first of all, Rudolph Metzger doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do—”

  I stood, and he rose to slide between me and the door, and suddenly oxygen seemed to be in short supply.

  “Delilah, wait. Please listen.” He reached for me, and when I backed away, I hit my hip on the edge of his tiny kitchen cabinet.

  “Is it true?” I snatched the handcuffs from the table top, which was only an arm’s length away in the tight space. “Is this because of you?”

  He exhaled heavily, but held my gaze. “Yes.”

  “You soul-rotting bastard!” I threw the cuffs at his face and tried to push past him for the door, all promises to bide my time—to wait for his mysterious plan to unfold—forgotten. “You lied to me!”

  Why did that knowledge hurt, when I should have expected it? Why did I feel so betrayed, when I should have known better than to trust anyone who dressed me in linen scraps accessorized with steel cuffs?

  Gallagher refused to budge, and I realized he was actually broader than the door—he probably had to turn sideways to get into his own home. “I have never lied to you.” His gray eyes flashed in anger, as if he were mortally wounded by the insult. “You never asked if buying you was my idea. If you had, I would have told you the truth.”

  “You lied through omission,” I insisted, glaring up at him, and bewildered lines creased his forehead. “You intentionally withheld information I had a right to.”

  His confusion cleared like clouds blown away to expose the sky. “That’s not a lie, that’s a deception,” he said as if the distinction somehow relieved him of guilt. “Deceit is a much more complicated, nuanced concept. I’ve never lied to you, or to anyone else. Ever.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but no more came.

  A river of lava pumped through my veins. “Are you seriously trying to absolve yourself using semantics?”

  “Please sit and let me explain.”

  “I don’t have any choice, do I?” Yet he’d already said “please” twice since closing the door behind us. “You give the orders and I follow them. That’s how the relationship between captor and captive works, right?”

  “I’m not your captor,” he growled. “And you sure as hell aren’t my captive.”

  “I’m wearing several pounds of metal that would suggest otherwise.” I lifted one foot, and the chain connecting it to my opposite ankle clanked against the floor. “You were never going to set me free, were you? So what was your plan? Get Metzger to buy me like a piece of meat, then swoop in and string me along with snacks and water and promises you never make good on?” I frowned up at him, still trying to puzzle it through. “What was the point?”

  He hadn’t asked me for anything, other than patience and cooperation with my “act,” and the only deception I could pinpoint was his admission about buying me.

  “You don’t understand.” Gallagher reached for me, but I backed up until my spine hit the narrow bathroom door. “I don’t want to hurt you—I want to protect you.”

  “Is that what you said to those pretty little djinn girls? Did you buy them, then promise to let them go, too?” Despite the lack of evidence, in the absence of a more logical theory, the obvious—and vile—conclusion seemed most likely. “They’re children, Gallagher!”

  “Adira told you...?” Gallagher lifted the faded cap from his head and raked his fingers through his hair. “Damn it!” His fist slammed into the table with an iron thud and it broke into two pieces, then fell apart.

  I jumped, startled, and bumped the bathroom door again.

  The table fell apart, like a stack of children’s blocks. I stared at it, stunned, and my vague need to escape his trailer became a command to flee, from every muscle in my body.

  Gallagher stepped in front of the broken furniture, as if out of sight really might mean out of mind. “It was old and poorly constructed. Delilah, Adira’s...” He rubbed his forehead and started again, but I hardly heard him. I was still staring at the table he’d destroyed as easily as I might rip a sheet of paper. “In her homeland she was royalty—given everything she ever wanted, no matter what it cost anyone else—and she refuses to acknowledge that her circumstances have changed.” Gallagher tilted my face so that my gaze met his.

  I flinched away from his touch, but had no more room to retreat.

  “She manipulates people into doing what she wants,” he said. “She’s a troublemaker.”

  “But is she a liar?” I didn’t care about her motives. “Or was she telling the truth?”

  “She doesn’t even know the truth. She told you something she heard out of context, because she got scared. I’ve never touched either of those girls beyond my duties as a handler, and I had nothing to do with Metzger buying them,” he growled, huge fists clenched in response to accusations that clearly offended him. “They were here before I took this job.” He stood straighter, and the top of his cap brushed the ceiling. “I swear on the solemn honor of my name.”

  I frowned, caught off guard by archaic phrasing he didn’t seem to have noticed, and suddenly I remembered how my mother’s Southern accent had always thickened when she was angry or upset.

  “Moreover, I will tolerate no further unwarranted denigration of my character, from you or from anyone else.”

  “Denigration of your...?” Fire flushed my cheeks and scalded my ears. “You’re the bastard who put me here, and you never had any intention of setting me free.”

  He reached for me again, and when I sidestepped his touch, I almost fell onto his bed. “I talked Metzger into buying you to save your life.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Because I’m so safe here, half-starved, surrounded by child-abusing rapist handlers.” I half expected him to deny the circumstances I’d described, but I should have known better. I had yet to catch him in a lie.

  “You’re safer here than you’d be anywhere else.” When he took a step back, I realized he was trying to set me at ease. As if it had just then occurred to him that closing in on me would have the opposite effect.

  “Why on earth would I be safer here?”

  “Because I’m here!” His spine straightened with the claim, and his next words carried the first hint of vulnerability he’d shown. “Because if you’ll let me, I’ll make sure no one can hurt you.”

  With a sudden bolt of surprise, I realized I was finally seeing a crack in the steely facade he’d worn from the moment I’d first met him. The longing that showed through that crack was somewhere between the lust for a beautiful woman and the craving of a juicy steak.

  Gallagher was looking at me like Shelley might look at a pair of designer shoes she could never afford. Like my mother had looked at the only new car she’d ever had, convinced she didn’t deserve it, but resolved to take care of it.

  He was looking at me the way I looked at freedom, with ironclad determination to take it for myself and make the most of it.

  “Clyde hurt me,” I whispered, stunned and disoriented by the strange, restrained desire I could hear in his voice and see in his eyes, yet couldn’t make sense of. It felt cleaner than lust and more formal than physical attraction. Almost like...chivalry.

  Real chivalry—not simple manners, but archaic courtly valor.

  Suddenly I remembered Gallagher helping me dress with his gaze averted, after Clyde had cut my clothes off. The clean clothes and
blanket he’d brought me, after my confrontation with the hose. The food and water he gave me. How fundamentally insulted he’d looked when I’d asked what his favors would cost me.

  Whatever he was showing me felt...urgent. Significant, in some way I couldn’t truly understand.

  “You said if Clyde touched me, you’d rip him apart. Then you let him hose me down.” I’d considered that a failed threat, rather than a broken promise, but Gallagher flinched, and I was fascinated by his reaction.

  “I apologize. I didn’t know how else to bring out your beast and keep you from being sold into a situation I couldn’t protect you from. I chose to let him hurt you a little now to keep someone else from hurting you worse later. But I swear on the solemn honor of my name that I will keep my word. Evan Clyde will pay for what he did to you. He will pay in pain, and in terror, and in pints and pints of glistening blood.”

  Chills rolled through me not just at his words, but at the hushed, reverent quality of his voice when he said them. At the eager look in his eyes. He felt and sounded nothing like the steely-eyed boss of livestock I’d come to know. This Gallagher felt larger and more powerful in some captivating way that had nothing to do with his physical size. It was as if he’d just put on a costume.

  Or had finally taken one off.

  “If you’ll let me, I will rip apart anyone who lays a hostile hand on you. I swear on my life, and my word is my honor, Delilah.” This time when he reached for my hands, I let him take them, because I believed him. His voice sounded like truth. His every utterance felt like fact.

  My head swam and my pulse roared in my ears.

  He squeezed my hands, the pads of his fingers rough against my palms. “I can protect you. I want to protect you. I want to fight for you.”

  Warmth gathered low in my stomach. “What does that mean?” Why did the intensity of his voice hint at more than his words seemed to say?

  Gallagher knelt and unlocked the cuff around my right ankle. He looked up at me from his knees, still holding my dirty foot. “My people believe that from birth, each of us owes the world a service, in exchange for the seeds we sow and the air we breathe.”