Summer was hunting season. Not the only, but certainly the best. Children tended to roam in summer despite the most watchful eyes, and when the Cirque was in town, they roamed right through the gates. The lights, the music, the wonders – like the flashy bulb of an angler fish, they were, guiding them right to the maw.
Not every city or backwater town was a hunting ground, of course; neither was the season regular. There were rules Evangeline (and those like her) had to follow, for the sake of her not-quite-Knot. Mum was the word, and the rubes were apt to suspect a traveling circus first, if a little one went missing here and there and back again. But that was no trouble. Might’ve been, had she not been the only one taking steam. Her precious canisters lasted ever so long with her alone.
Still, it never hurt to keep a sharp eye. Or, in Evangeline’s case, a sharp mind. A whiff of big steam was not an opportunity to be wasted, and the Ringmaster was nothing if not obliging. The Cirque rarely set up shop so close to the city – too risky it was, too close to those reincarnates who didn’t quite shine but did pay attention – but Evangeline had a feeling about this stop. A feeling with a taste to it.
A taste she craved.
The Ringmaster knew before she did. Once upon a time, that would’ve infuriated her other half, would’ve led to her seeking his destruction and likely ensuring her own instead. Not Evangeline, though. She knew what to be grateful for, and whom to be grateful to when it meant presents of the rarest vintage waiting for her in her RV upon the completion of her nightly act. She put a hasty end to it once the feeling became undeniable.
Waiting for her, so sweetly slumbering, was a prey she’d long been hunting, and there were promises to keep. Oh, yes.
Such promises.
The drab exterior of Evangeline’s RV belied its luxe interior, but so large was her present that, even prone on the soft carpeted floor, he drew the eye and held it, and made her space seem small. Practically a giant, he was, and though Evangeline was hardly one to be physically intimidated, the Ringmaster had the right idea of it, knocking him cold. No danger in his herculean frame for her, no, but there was in a mind with defenses such as his. Now, hopefully, disarmed.
She left him there for quite a spell, taking her time through her post-performance routine. A practiced removal of her stage face, a letting-down and thorough brushing of her fiery hair, a change of clothes from her sequined one-piece to her favorite robe of palest green and purest silk. He slept through it all; such was the power of the Ringmaster, which she never feared but always respected.
Finally, one last touch: she donned her hat, tracing the brim of it with a long finger before tipping it at an angle that seemed physically impossible for it to stay firmly to her skull. But it always did, her trusty hat.
Sitting cross-legged at the head of her present, Evangeline touched her hands to either side of his temples and leaned forward, breathing deep. “Oh, Danny Boy,” she whispered, a faint lilt of Irish roots a hundred years gone drifting from her tongue. “So long I’ve waited. So long I’ve wondered.”
She straightened her spine, closed her eyes, and dove in with a smile. When she spoke again, it was with her mind and straight into his.