Allen Paulson nodded weakly. The man’s face was as white as his T-shirt, his eyes almost sunken with horror, and he was sliding slowly along her RV, obviously eager to escape, but afraid to try and be stopped. Divine scowled. “And if you tell anyone about this, about me,” she emphasized, “I’ll do worse.”
He began shaking his head frantically and whispered, “I won’t. I swear.”
She narrowed her eyes, and then her nose wrinkled as the acrid scent of urine wafted up between them. Glancing down, she saw the wet spot growing on the front of his trousers and stepped back with disgust. “Get out of here before I change my mind and wipe yours.”
Allen Paulson didn’t have a clue what she meant by that—she could see it in his expression—but he didn’t stick around to ask. He simply nodded wildly and sidled along the RV for a couple feet before finding the courage to turn his back to her and run.
“You should have wiped his mind.”
Divine stiffened at those words from behind her, and then turned slowly. She peered at the tall, fair-haired man who had spoken. He was a greenie, an unskilled laborer and supposedly a local who had been hired to help out at the carnival while they were in town. The name he went by was Marco. Divine knew this secondhand, because while she was normally in on the hiring process, using her “special skills” to help Bob and Madge Hoskins, who owned and ran Hoskins Amusements, this time she hadn’t been here. Family issues had kept her away and the hiring had been done by the time she’d caught up to the carnival. Had she been here to help weed out the troublemakers in the hiring process as she usually did, she never would have allowed Bob and Madge to hire the man. One, she couldn’t read him, and that was usually a sign of insanity in a mortal. This led into the second reason she wouldn’t have hired him; the man, like herself, was an immortal. She’d sensed that about him quite quickly. Divine wasn’t sure how she’d known. She didn’t run into a lot of immortals. In fact, she’d arranged her life so that she wouldn’t. But there had been a frisson of awareness as she’d first passed him on returning to the carnival just before noon that day, as if the nanos in her body recognized and sent signals to those in his. She’d been avoiding him ever since.
But that hadn’t stopped her from finding out all she could about him. Not that there had been much to learn. He went by Marco, last name Smith, of all things. The women all thought he was a hunk. The men thought he was practically a god because he was strong and could do the work of four men, and Bob and Madge were hoping he’d not just help out through their stay in this town, but travel with them to the next and the next and so on. For herself, Divine was wary. She had avoided other immortals for a reason and had been doing so for a very long time. She didn’t like having one around. It made her anxious and she disliked feeling anxious.
“Don’t you have something to do?” she asked, moving past the man and toward the back of her RV. The sign she’d turned had said back in five minutes and that time was up. Besides, she’d snacked on Allen Paulson and felt better for it. Break time was over.
“You should have wiped his mind,” Marco repeated, falling into step with her.
“He’ll keep his mouth shut,” Divine muttered, annoyed, mostly because she knew he was right. The truth was she hadn’t wiped Allen Paulson’s mind because it was slimy, and she hadn’t wanted to have to spend any more time inside his mind than necessary. Besides, he deserved to go through life terrified that she might someday revisit him should he set a foot wrong.
“And if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut?” Marco asked as they neared the end of her RV. “What if he goes to the police?”
“If he goes to the police, and if they don’t immediately lock him up as crazy but instead come to speak to me . . .” She shrugged. “I’ll wipe his mind, the officer’s mind, and leave this carnival for another.”
“Is that how you landed at Hoskins Carnival?” Marco asked as they rounded the end of the vehicle. “You didn’t wipe someone you should have and had to move on?”
Divine turned on him sharply, an angry retort on her lips, but just as quickly caught back the words that wanted to spill out and merely said with forced calm, “You’re an inquisitive fellow, Marco. It’s not healthy around here. Carnies mind their own business. I suggest you do the same.”
Turning away from him, she smiled at the two women who were waiting in front of her door. Others had joined them. In fact, Divine now had a line-up of half a dozen people and it was growing by the minute, but she reserved her smile for the first two only and said, “Which of you would like to go first? Or shall I take you together?”
“Oh, me first,” one of the women said eagerly. “This was my idea.”
Divine nodded and led the woman inside, leaving Marco and all thought of him out on her stoop.
“Here, mister.”
Marcus tore his gaze from the door Madame Divine had just ushered her client through and peered down at the small boy tugging at the top of his pant leg and holding out a half-eaten ball of cotton candy on a cardboard cone.
“Here,” the boy repeated, holding it a little higher. “I don’t feel good. You can have the rest.”
Marcus arched an eyebrow, but took the cotton candy. He suspected the boy didn’t feel good because he was stuffed full of cotton candy, something drenched in mustard, powdered elephant ears, and—he considered the last stain on the boy’s shirt and then decided it had to be—ice cream. The kid was a walking menu of everything he’d eaten that day. At least, Marcus hoped it was all the kid had eaten that day. Otherwise he’d be wondering if Dante and Tomasso hadn’t fathered the little tyke. They were the only two people he knew, mortal or immortal, who could have eaten like that as a boy.
“Danny! What are you doing? Get over here and leave that man alone.”
Marcus glanced at the woman rushing toward them from the midway and offered a reassuring smile even as he slipped into her thoughts to ease her mind that he wasn’t a child molester and nothing untoward was happening. By the time she reached them, she’d slowed to a fast walk, and was smiling in a relaxed manner.
“I hope he wasn’t bothering you?” she said apologetically as she took the boy’s hand.
“Not at all,” Marcus assured her.
The young mother smiled again and then nodded and turned away with the boy, saying, “Come on, honey. Your daddy is waiting with your sister in the Ferris wheel line. They’ll be worried.”
Marcus watched them go and then turned his gaze back to Madame Divine’s RV. The door was closed now as were the blinds. He couldn’t see the woman anymore, except in his mind’s eye, and he was definitely seeing her there. Madame Divine was more than memorable in her Gypsy getup. A white peasant blouse, worn off the shoulders, a crimson underskirt, a bright teal scarf skirt, an orange sash tied at the waist with gold chains hanging from it and tinkling merrily, a wide leather belt, and a crimson scarf around her head. Gold hoops had dangled from her ears, a gold chain hung around her neck, several gold bracelets dangled from her wrist, and knee-high black leather boots with stiletto heels strapped up the front of her legs had finished the outfit.
The woman looked damned sexy in the getup, so sexy in fact that when she’d straddled the would-be wife killer, Marcus had wanted to pull her off the man and onto his own lap. He’d been rather startled by that urge. Marcus hadn’t been interested in women for a while. Okay, for a couple millennia. Still, he hadn’t come across a woman like Madame Divine in quite a while either. The woman was walking sex in her getup, and his body was waking up and responding to it.