“That is not a spray can,” I said.
Tim pointed to Roxie’s Airstreamer, shimmering like a silver bullet in the moonlight. “It’s coming from Roxie’s trailer.”
Luka held on to Tim’s hand, trying to slow him down, so I sprinted ahead. The noise grew more pained, and almost recognizable—like it was human. I raced around the back of Roxie’s trailer, running toward the noise.
I nearly tripped over Seth’s shoe, and then I saw him. It was dark enough where the blood looked black, and Seth was completely drenched in it. He’d been shredded—his arms, legs, everything was sliced up. His stomach had been torn open, and his entrails were spread out around him like slick sausage.
Somehow, he was still alive, but a slash across his throat made it impossible for him to talk. I crouched down next to him and took his hand. He squeezed back, but he no longer seemed to have the superior strength he should’ve. His eyes stared up at me, filled with terror, and blood spilled out from his lips. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.
13. provisions
The water was cold, freezing my fingers, but I barely even noticed it, even though they were raw from how long I’d spent trying to scrub Seth’s blood off my hands.
Behind me, the sun rose lovely above the treetops, promising another beautiful morning, while I used a sponge and bucket to try to wash off the graffiti from the side of Gideon’s trailer. Roxie had tried to wash all the blood from beside her trailer, and from the corner of my eye, I could see a huge rust-colored puddle slowly drying.
I’d exchanged my bloodied pajamas for jean shorts and a T-shirt, and though I’d really wanted to shower and wash away everything, I’d felt like there was too much that needed to be done. I’d settled for washing the blood off my skin and pulling my thick hair back into a ponytail, then went to work.
Everyone else had gathered in the center of the camp, arguing and placing the blame squarely on Zeke Desmond and his two tigers.
Well, not everyone. Gideon and Carrie were still at the hospital with Seth.
“You know bloody well that it wasn’t my tigers!” Zeke shouted. He’d been yelling so much that his face had begun to turn beet red, matching the shock of hair that sprang wildly from his head. “They’re still in their pens, and if they’d gotten out, they’d still be out.”
“The gate to their cage was open!” Doug shouted. He’d left his post in the midway camp to come over and give us all orders, since Gideon wasn’t here.
“They were still in their cage,” Zeke insisted. “They didn’t go anywhere.”
In the aftermath of discovering Seth, the tigers’ gate had been discovered wide open, but both of them were still inside, cowering in the corner. Mahilā had been making a plaintive mewling sound all morning, which many of the people in our troupe took to be a sign of guilt.
But no one else had really taken to actually confronting Zeke. They stood in a small semicircle crowded around Doug and Zeke, watching the two of them go at it. Except for my mother, who was still in her trailer, and me, because I couldn’t just stand there doing nothing.
I kept picturing Seth, and the weakness of his hand as it gripped mine. I had to keep moving so I wouldn’t think about him so much.
“You heard what Mara and Tim said,” Doug said through a mouthful of chewing tobacco. “It looked like Seth had been mauled by a tiger.”
“No, we never said that.” I stopped scrubbing the trailer and looked over at them. “Seth was attacked by something, but we never said we thought it was a tiger.”
Doug scoffed. “What else could it be? There’s no bears around here.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, and lowered my eyes.
“It was probably the same vandals that spray painted Gideon’s trailer,” Zeke suggested, not for the first time.
“You think a person did that?” Doug pointed over to the puddle beside Roxie’s trailer.
Zeke folded his arms over his chest, standing as tall as he could. “It wouldn’t be the first time that the locals had come after us like that.”
Doug shook his head. “They’ve got no reason to. We just got here, and we haven’t done anything.”
“They had no reason to deface Gideon’s trailer like that either, but they did,” Zeke countered. “And you know how people have treated all of us.”
Tim shook his head, and when he spoke, his voice sounded hollow and cold. “No, you all didn’t see Seth. There’s no way a human did that.” He stood a few feet back, looking at the ground, and Luka had his arm around him.
Doug threw his hands up in the air. “Then it must be a tiger.”
“It’s not one of my tigers!” Zeke continued to protest. “Safēda wouldn’t hurt a fly, and Mahilā wouldn’t go anywhere without her sister.”
Brendon Phoenix—Tim’s older brother and the patriarch of The Fantastic Flying Phoenixes—had been holding back, standing in front of his trailer with his wife and three-year-old daughter. But he left now, walking over to stand in between Doug and Zeke.
He’d been with the sideshow for a long time. Whenever Gideon had business to attend to elsewhere, he usually left Brendon in charge.
“Everyone needs to just calm down,” Brendon said. “Nobody knows what happened to Seth, okay? And whoever—or whatever—it was, it doesn’t do us any good to fight amongst ourselves.”