“Sure,” I said. “Every performer I ever worked with held something back. Usually their best gag.”
“Gag?”
“Gag. Trick. Gimmick.”
She nodded approvingly at the analogy.
“I understand it’s an offer that requires a certain leap of faith,” she said. “I cannot promise that you will be happy. Happiness is, I’ve found, an elusive thing. But I think I can promise you will find the work interesting.”
“Do I have to answer right now?”
“Of course not. Please take the day.” She came out from around her desk and retrieved a package from a side table. “While I was leaving the circus grounds I was stopped by a Mr. Kalishenko. He asked that I give you this.”
She handed me the package. It was heavy and small, wrapped in brown paper and twine and with a sealed envelope taped to one side.
“I’ll be in the kitchen seeing about lunch.”
When she was gone, I opened the envelope. I’d never seen Kalishenko’s handwriting, but it was exactly as I’d imagined—cramped and elegant but somehow slurred. No Russian accent, but I couldn’t help but read it in one.
My dear Will,
You told me once that you consider the circus your chosen family. I think you know, having left my family behind in the steppes, that I feel much the same way. But for the young, families should not be things you cling to. They should be something that helps propel you to new heights. The trick, you see, is knowing when to let go.
Your friend forever,
Valentin Kalishenko, Dancer of Blades, Master of Fire, Last and Final Heir of Rasputin
PS: I heard that the commissariat would not return your blade. I hope you will find these a suitable replacement. I also hope you will never have to use them in such a manner again. However, hopes are fragile and the world is hard. You should walk into it prepared.
I unwrapped the package and found not one but a whole set of throwing knives. Unlike the one I’d left in McCloskey’s back, each of these had a wooden handle, worn smooth with oil and long use. These were some of Kalishenko’s originals—taken with him from Russia when he fled the fallout of the revolution. They were the best going-away present I could have imagined.
Then it hit me. He assumed I really was going away. In his mind, I’d already said yes.
For the first time in years, I started to cry. Just for a moment. Then it passed and I wiped my tears away. I put the letter and the knives on the smaller desk.
My desk now, I figured.
The first time I left home, I ran as fast as I could. This time, I needed a little shove. But there’s no sense arguing with an heir to Rasputin.
I walked into the kitchen to see what was cooking.
CHAPTER 3
Three years passed.
Enough happened during that time to fill a dozen books. And if you’re wondering why I’m not starting there—with the first case Ms. P and I ever worked together—it’s because I don’t know how this is going to go.
It’s possible I’ll type “The End” and never want to hit another key again.
So if I’m only going to tell one story, it might as well be the Collins murder. In a lot of ways that was a threshold moment for both of us. It set a lot of dominoes falling and left me with more than a few scars, physical and otherwise.
But first, I realize up to this point I’ve been a little cagey about my biography. That won’t do. Not if I want you to understand everything that follows. Here are the essentials.
Born in a small town. I won’t give the name so you don’t have to pretend to have heard of it. Only child; mother died when I was six; father a third-generation railroad man and fourth-generation boozehound. You probably won’t be surprised to learn I ran away from home the day after my fifteenth birthday.
I footed it two towns over, where the Hart and Halloway Traveling Circus and Sideshow was wrapping up a weeklong run. I hitched a ride and made friends with a group of the spec girls—the showgirls who appear in the larger big-top numbers and in the strip-show tent after dark. By the time the circus reached the next town, they’d practically adopted me. I don’t know if they thought of me as a little sister or the daughter they’d never had. Either way, they got me a job at the bottom rung of the crew. Actually, I had to crane my neck to see the bottom rung. I spent the first few months scraping out animal cages, emptying latrines—anything they wanted to foist on the new kid.
When I proved I could shovel manure without fumbling, I got recruited doing general setup and takedown, providing backup for the games, greasing the crowd for the midway performers.
I’d been there maybe half a year when the Lovely Lulu got laid up with the nine-month flu and both Mysterio and Kalishenko were down one shared assistant.
Between Kalishenko’s personality and Mysterio’s wandering hands, none of the spec girls wanted the job, so I got drafted. I was squeezed into an outfit that was mostly bare thigh, rhinestones, and a spangly bustier the girls helped pad out with fabric scraps. I spent each day being handed off from magician to knife thrower and back again.
I was definitely no Lovely Lulu, and no amount of padding made me look like anything other than what I was: a fifteen-year-old tomboy in borrowed sparkles. That didn’t stop a lot of our male audience from making propositions you’d be shocked to hear coming from the lips of good churchgoing folk.
Or if you’re a woman, maybe you wouldn’t be shocked at all.
Mysterio lived up to his reputation but kept his hands to himself after I purposefully flubbed one of his tricks, embarrassing him in front of a sold-out crowd.
Kalishenko was a different story.
His nickname among the crew was the Mad Russian. Partly because he professed to be a descendant of Rasputin, partly due to his tendency to hiss and snap and toss the occasional knife at whoever rubbed him the wrong way.
My job was mainly to stand still and let him outline my body with thrown blades, hold balloons in my teeth that he would pop—that sort of thing.
“Just stand, smile, bend over every few minutes to show the crowd your ass, and don’t talk,” he slurred. “No reason for little girls to talk.”
After a couple weeks of this, he had the idea to add a bit where I got mad at him, grabbed one of the knives from the wooden target, and threw it back. It was supposed to go wide left. Instead, the first time we did it live I cut it so close to his face I practically trimmed his sideburns.
After the show he asked, “Did you do that on purpose?”