“This is not a time for joking,” Madam Oksana said stiffly. But she turned on a lamp. Lenka saw she was in her bed in the office truck, with Madam Oksana’s seven cats huddled around her, pinning down her blanket. She should have been able to throw them off easily, but no matter how she strained, she couldn’t budge them. They stared up at her as only cats can stare, their round, unblinking eyes glowing red.
Lenka suppressed a hysterical giggle. “No? It would make a great movie. Girl with leukemia runs away to join a circus of vampires who turn into cats and bats.”
The biggest cat, a brown furball like a miniature bear, shook itself and became Hector, sitting sad-eyed by her hip. “Spiders,” he said. “We can also be spiders and mosquitoes, but it is unpleasant to be so small.”
This was too much for Lenka, who started to laugh helplessly and couldn’t stop until Madam Oksana slapped her, bruising Lenka’s jaw and knocking the laughter right out of her.
“I do not like hysterics,” Madam Oksana said. “It is very simple. You will stay with us. We will buy a big computer and you will conduct the business of the circus and book tours and make everything smooth with the chinovnik. You will share your blood with us.” Her scarlet mouth stretched in a feral smile. “It will be what you call totally smoking.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Lenka said. “I’d call it incredibly gross.”
The cats turned back into circus performers and perched on the furniture. Free at last, Lenka sat up and glared at them. “I’ve got leukemia, remember? That’s a disease of the blood, in case you didn’t know.”
Dusan took her hand. He’d never touched her before. His skin was cool and waxy against her fingers. “For us, it is not poison,” he said. “For us, it is new strength.”
“All those multiplying white cells,” Boris said, “can put a real bounce in a vampire’s step. We wouldn’t love you half so much if your blood was normal.”
Lenka tried to tug her hand out of Dusan’s grip. It was like pulling against handcuffs. “Well, it is. I mean, remission, remember? I told you when I came.”
Rima bent and stroked her cheek, a touch like falling snow. “Nice try. But you are not in remission.”
As Lenka stared at her, stunned, Dusan lifted her wrist to his mouth, delicately nicked the flesh with a sharp canines, and licked the resulting drops of blood from her skin. “Delicious,” he said.
“If you don’t like hysterics,” she said shakily, “then you should all get out now, because I am about to seriously lose it, and I think you’d have to kill me to make me shut up.”
The office truck remained closed and silent all the next day, the door locked and the shades drawn. Carmen sold tickets from a table by the bar and flirted coolly with the bartender. The house was good, the applause enthusiastic, the chatter overheard during the blow-off promising. When Madam Oksana counted the take, she said she thought they’d be able to order new costumes soon, maybe even a desktop computer.
“It will do you no good,” Rima pointed out, “if Lenka goes mad with shock.”
Madam Oksana shrugged. “Then we will not buy computer.”
The next day, Boris eyed the silent office and wondered aloud whether he should break down the door to check if the mortal was still alive.
“She does not want to die, that one,” Madam Oksana said. “Leave her alone.”
The next night, another sold-out show. Townies gathered at the back door in hopes of a smile, a word, maybe even a date with one of the performers. Carmen and Evzen fed on something tastier than rat blood. The office trailer stayed locked and silent.
The next evening, after the last show, Lenka washed, put Rima’s dress on over her jeans, braided her dark hair, and went to the tent, where she found Horace and Carmen and Madam Oksana.
“I want to talk to you.”
Three pairs of eyes examined her gravely. The whites looked red, as if they were all suffering from a bad case of pinkeye. Lenka wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before.
Madam Oksana beckoned her closer.
“No, I want to talk to all of you. I’m only going through this once.”
Madam Oksana shrugged and closed her eyes briefly. Lenka heard a flutter, and three bats swooped down from among the lights, transforming as they landed. A calico cat snaked between the stage curtains and became Rima. The big gray tom that was Boris leapt smoothly onto the ring, his muzzle dark with blood, and settled down to a leisurely bath.
“We are all here,” Madam Oksana said. “Speak.”
Lenka licked her lips. “I’ve done a lot of thinking since the other night, and I’ve made some decisions. First, I’m totally okay with the whole vampire thing. I mean, you’re awesome performers and it’s not like you go around killing people all the time — ”
“Not on purpose,” Evzen murmured.
“Or very often, or somebody would have noticed. Anyway. I wouldn’t turn you in, even if I left, which, before you start telling me how I don’t have a choice, I actually do.”
She glared around at the assembled vampires, challenging one of them to argue. They gazed back, patient and incurious.
“I said in Cleveland I wanted to join you. I still do. Make me a full member of the troupe — make me a vampire — and I’ll stay.”
“Or else?” Kazimir prompted.
“Or else I’ll erase all my files, the bookkeeping program I set up, all the contacts in all the towns where you’ve got gigs, all the permit numbers — everything.”
Evzen shrugged. “We will keep you away from the computer.”
“You don’t even know how to turn it on,” Lenka said. “All you know how to do is search YouTube, and that’s not going to get you very far when some policeman in Utah wants to see your paperwork. You can’t figure out anything new by yourselves. You know how to do what you did when you. became vampires — and that’s it.”
Madam Oksana nodded. “True. So why should we deprive ourselves of your knowledge, your imagination, your fire?”
“Your blood,” Boris added, licking his (now human) lips.
“Crude,” Carmen said. “But he’s got a point.”
Lenka’s careful poise shattered. “Because I’m sick, you self-centered jerks. Because if I don’t get treatment, I’m going to die and take my special high-energy tasty blood with me.”
She’d startled them, which was a minor triumph in itself. Madam Oksana’s glance darted to Hector, who shook his head ruefully.
Rima, astonishingly, laughed.
“Oh, let her join us. She won’t forget anything she already knows, after all, and we can get new ideas for our acts off YouTube.”
“It would be a shame to waste her blood,” Kazimir said. “Perhaps she can come up with some way to preserve it?”
Lenka was shaking, possibly with relief, possibly with horror: She felt both. Also sick and weak and in need of something more to eat than the Fritos and jelly babies she’d been living off for three days.
“Sure — why not? There’s a bunch of things I want to do before I. turn. I need to work on a triple act for the cube rig, for one. And find someone to make us new costumes.”
Madam Oksana stood up and stretched. “Well, that is decided. Good. I will come to the office now and look at the YouTube.”
Lenka shook her head. “Unless you want me to die ahead of schedule, you’ll get me something to eat and let me go to bed. You can watch YouTube tomorrow.”
Joska and Mariana Kubatov joined the line of eager customers waiting for the house to open for the eight-o’clock show of the Cirque des Chauve-souris in San Francisco.
An Asian girl approached them. “Mr. and Mrs. Kubatov? Please follow me.”
Lenka’s mother saw that the tent had been painted and regilded, the faded murals artfully touched up, the brass lamps polished. The girl — the unicyclist — showed them to a booth. Two glasses of red wine sat on the table.