Desolate, depressing, and desperate were words I would normally use to describe a carnival during the day. Tired parents straggling behind their excited children who were scrambling to ride every ride possible before they threw up and bored carnival workers wondering why the hell they were suffering through the hottest part of a Missouri summer day were what I was expecting. That was not the case.
There were tired parents straggling behind youngsters determined to ride every ride possible and there were carnival staff looking like the heat was draining them of life and honestly, it probably was. However, the place was busy. It didn’t seem to matter that it was daylight. There was stuff happening.
Rides were in full swing already. Game barkers were calling to people, trying to get them to part with a few bucks for a chance to win a giant teddy bear or a large elephant. Food vendors had small lines, most of the people wanted cold drinks. Lemonade was very popular and these stalls had the longest lines.
Craft booths were doing a brisk business. Shoppers wandered from booth to booth looking at the goods. Those that proclaimed to be Missouri-made and handmade were doing the best business. A shop selling tiny pewter ornaments glued to dragon’s tears seemed to be doing really well, surprising, considering the figurines were less than an inch tall and a single one cost five dollars, but the owner claimed the molds for the figurines were handmade and he was a Missouri native, these two things seemed to have people digging deep in their wallets for slightly off-kilter dolphins and lopsided wizards.
The Missouri Highway Patrol and Homeland Security had tried to get the fair to ban coolers. It hadn’t worked. There weren’t many coolers, but it was my job to look for unattended coolers and try to find their owners. I also seemed to be in charge of defusing whatever chemical destruction was inside said cooler. For this, I had been given a bottle of distilled water and a box of baking soda. The water was a really bad idea since sulfuric acid was a component of the bomb, but no one listened to me. The baking soda felt heavy in the small bag I carried. The water felt even heavier.
It was at least a hundred degrees in the shade with almost no breeze blowing. Once in a while, Gabriel would talk, but that was the only break from the monotonous buzzing that seemed to permeate the air. Lucas and Xavier were together. Gabriel and I were together. Michael was sitting in a nice air conditioned building watching computer screens of people coming and going at the gates. When the assignments had been handed out, I had pointed out how much they sucked, but Xavier had reminded me of Michael’s incident in the desert.
The thought of him touching a “fuzzy” cactus made me giggle. It had required effort to stifle it. However, I had noticed Lucas crack a smile with me.
“Well, is it as bad as you thought?” Gabriel asked.
“I’m in a jacket to hide my badge and gun, it’s a bazillion degrees out here and the place hums,” I told him.
“You are always so negative.”
“Fine, on the plus side, when we both get heat stroke or sun stroke or turn into lobsters, we’ll get to go home,” I smiled. “And it isn’t dark yet.”
“That’s the spirit, look for the silver lining.” Gabriel gave me a small shove with his shoulder. To anyone watching, this would have looked like playful flirting. To Gabriel and me, it was sibling banter. There was no flirting in my world. I didn’t understand it or care about it. Besides, Gabriel had a thing for Nyleena. This was awkward since Xavier did as well. We all just ignored it and it worked.
“Did my arm just spontaneously combust?” I asked, giving Gabriel a grin and looking at my shoulder. He was in jeans, a t-shirt and a light-weight short sleeve shirt. I was in jeans, a t-shirt and a long sleeve shirt. The only thing I could say for it was that he would sunburn first. Of course, he was a red-head and would sunburn first anyway, but I took some pride in my olive skin-tone. It was pretty miraculous considering my parents were both Scottish and my mother seemed to instantly get a sunburn without a gallon of sunscreen.
“You bitch when it’s hot, whine when it’s cold, are you ever comfortable?” He asked.
“In Missouri?” I raised an eyebrow. “It isn’t the heat, it’s the humidity.” I hated that saying, but it was true. The warm moist air could act like a hot compress and ease my aching joints or it could make them feel swollen and achy because the barometric pressure was too high. Today was a too high day. The long sleeves and jeans covered the scars that decorated my body. New ones seemed to appear like magic. However, it had been almost two months since I had been injured. There was nothing I could do about the small burn scar on my neck, but it wasn’t as horrid as some of the others.
“Can you really use baking soda to defuse a bomb?” Gabriel spoke quietly, trying not to spook anyone within hearing distance.
“Probably,” I shrugged. “I certainly can’t do it with distilled water. Baking soda is a much better bet since it has sulfuric acid as an ingredient, but I’d have to know how it was set up before I could really make that determination. Baking soda won’t neutralize everything in the make-up, so it’s basically a working theory. When do I get my funnel cake?”
“After we’ve had dinner.”
“Um, we’re at a fair, I haven’t seen a whole lot on the food menus that I can eat.”
“That’s why we are ordering pizza to be delivered to the building where Michael is holed up.” Gabriel lapsed into silence. Pizza I could and would eat.
A stall carrying nice hand fans caught my eye. I had no idea what I would do with it after today, perhaps give it to Nyleena, but it offered a touch of relief. On the flip side, I’d have to carry it around with me all day or drop it into the shoulder bag that already felt full and heavy.
“Just buy the fan, it will help you look normal,” Gabriel gave me a small nudge. I moved towards the stall. The color options seemed endless. Most were made of lace with strange spines that I thought might be bone or some similar material. The woman behind the cash register looked at least two hundred years old.
“Did you make all of these?” I asked lamely.
“Of course,” she smiled. Most of her teeth were gone, but the smile reached her eyes. It was rare for anyone but my unit and a select few others to give me a real smile. People tended to be unnerved by my presence. “You look like an earth tones type of girl.”
“That’s correct,” I smiled at her.
She stood and walked to the back of the stall. Her hands materialized a dark green lace fan with brown spines and a lighter green lace accent. I had to admit, it was beautiful. I hoped it functioned as well.
“Give me two of them, the other one in brighter colors,” I added hastily.
“Jewel tones or pastels?” She asked.
“Um,” I frowned. I didn’t know what a jewel tone was, however, Nyleena wasn’t really a pastels person. She liked vivid purples and blues.
“Jewel tones,” Gabriel said from behind me.
“Purple if you have it,” I looked at the walls. The hanging fans were lots of colors, but none of the purples were eye catching.
“Jewel tone purple,” the old woman smiled. She pulled another out of the back. “I’ve been saving these two for just the right people. I guess my instincts were right. They usually are.”
The second fan was a dark, deep purple accented with a bright red. In my world, the two colors would never have matched. Somehow, this old woman made them work. It was just as beautiful and delicate as the green one. The spines were black on it.
“What do you use for the spines?” I asked, trying to dig money from my pockets without exposing my guns.
“Animal bones mostly, but sometimes wood,” she said. “My great grandmother taught me to make them when I was just a girl.”
“They are beautiful,” I dug a hundred out of my pocket. The fans were forty a piece. I told her to keep the change. She dug out two boxes and put each fan in a wooden box that seemed custom made for it. I slipped Nyleena’s into my bag and took mine out of the box.
“They’re functional too,” she gave me a wink and demonstrated by picking up a vibrant mahogany colored fan. As she moved it, her white hair moved with a gentle breeze.
“Thank you,” I used my new fan. It was the simple things in life. Nyleena would love hers. Mine could be used as decor when I finished with this stake-out.
As I turned away, I saw Gabriel slip another twenty to the old woman. He smiled and touched his cowboy hat. Usually he wore a baseball cap, but he’d foregone it to “dress up.” He wore a black hat that he told me was a Stetson. This meant nothing to me and I had no reason to doubt him, so I had just nodded and we had moved into the fairgrounds. Later, I would ask someone about a Stetson and its significance. It did shatter the idea of good guys wearing white hats and bad guys wearing black. As tormented as Gabriel was, he was definitely a good guy. He’d be great for Nyleena if they ever hooked up.
“What now boss?” I asked him.
“We continue to walk around, looking like fairgoers and trying not to draw attention to ourselves.”
“That sounds like a crappy plan.”
“That’s what security details are all about.”
“I think I like chasing bad guys better.”
“No, Ace, you enjoy getting shot at or stabbed or beaten up more than you like sitting on your hands waiting for a bad guy to appear.”
“Well, the good news is, I’m a bad guy magnet.”
“If that’s the good news, what’s the bad?”
“I’m a bad guy magnet.” I smiled and turned away from the craft stalls.