Circus Grounds

[Okimiyage]

Bastchilde tossed her head and stood, waltzing to where Eglantine awaited to escort her back to her dressing room. "Don't insult me, Nicolas." she said impatiently. For Bastchilde, the thought of being an extra--literally moving scenery--was insulting. Especially after she'd vocally made her opinions of Nicolas's plays known. No, it was a matter of pride now; that meant it was all or nothing. Then, turning around, she caught sight of Nicolas's frown and felt a twinge of repentance. "Now, Nicky~" she sang out, shaking her head. "You know I'm only teasing you." Laughing, she swung about and escaped through the tent flaps.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Nicholas did not respond and did not watch her leave. Adeline only spared her a parting glance as Kasumi murmured, "We all told you it was a bad idea to bring a human into the troupe. You only have yourself to blame for not listening."
"She does well on stage," Nicholas snapped, defending himself, "If we could only keep her there around the clock, if would be just fine."
Adeline and Kasumi exchanged a quick glance and then dropped the subject, bored of it. "So Klaus will be the moon," Kasumi said, flipping through his drawings, "Sirius will be a dragon, Lialis will be a good witch, Pandora will be the queen, and Aidan will be the king, correct?"
"Oui, oui," Nicholas murmured, reclaiming his drawings and pacing with them, "Now listen, both of you, I want this to follow the fairytale as closely as possible." He took up a large volume as he spoke, the sharp tip of his long nail tracing Antha Mayfair's curling name inscribed on the surface. "All of your improvisations and complaints do not fit into this production, am I understood."
For Kasumi, this was no problem. She did not dare to interfere with Nicholas' genius. It was Adeline who was the prima donna, who pouted her full pink lips and settled a gaze of sad, sparkling blue eyes at him, though he was unmoved. "And if my costume should be wrong? Or your dances have me twisting the wrong way? Am I supposed to stay silent about such things? Do not be preposterous!"
"The scripts, Adeline, the script! If you go changing it around, I think I shall hang you." Still, the girl pouted.  

[Okimiyage]

Eglantine, who had remained in the tent after Bastchilde had flounced off, removed his scruffy baseball cap and toddled over to look at the drawings that Nicolas had produced. He had no truck with the productions that drew their largest crowds, but he enjoyed them all very well none the less. No, his business was with the circus. Clown, sideshow performer, magician, wearer of the gorilla suit: Eglantine was not choosy about his trade. He could do it all, and often did. The one task he left well enough alone was animal handling and care--it didn't do well to be a dwarf around elephants, after all. But he liked being part of behind the scenes, the one who pulled the lever or made the smoke that vanished a pretty girl into thin air. Looking up at Nicolas with mournful eyes, he asked, "What's this one goin' to be about, Mr. Nick? Are you going to use the wave machine again?" The wave machine had been a favorite of Eglantine's ever since he'd persuaded Nicolas to spring for it. Well--it had been the combined joint efforts of himself, Dominika and Peaseblossom.

Circus performers had strange names.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Sleeping Beauty!" the vampire responded cheerfully, taking Antha Mayfair's book of fairytales and handing it to the dwarf, flipping open to the marked page, "A cursed princess, a sleeping kingdom, a wicked witch, a shining prince, and millions upon millions of roses. Cities of roses, barrages of rose petals! I want to drown the audience in them!"
"Nicholas!" Kasumi interrupted, snapping her fingers, so that all at once he calmed down, though the dreamy sparkle in his eyes only intensified.
"I am very tired of Julius Caesar," he murmured as if in a trance, "I am ready to have my fairytales back, to speak sweet nothings and watch our girls frolic through fields of colorful flowers again. And the costumes---!"
"Nicholas!" came Kasumi's sharp voice again, snapping him out of it.
"He is only excited," Adeline sighed, settling down on the divan again, her white skirts flaring out in a puffy circle around her, "As am I. If I must play Portia much longer, I shall throw myself into the Seine."  

[Okimiyage]

XCandy and LunacyX

"Sleeping Beauty!" the vampire responded cheerfully, taking Antha Mayfair's book of fairytales and handing it to the dwarf, flipping open to the marked page, "A cursed princess, a sleeping kingdom, a wicked witch, a shining prince, and millions upon millions of roses. Cities of roses, barrages of rose petals! I want to drown the audience in them!"
"Nicholas!" Kasumi interrupted, snapping her fingers, so that all at once he calmed down, though the dreamy sparkle in his eyes only intensified.
"I am very tired of Julius Caesar," he murmured as if in a trance, "I am ready to have my fairytales back, to speak sweet nothings and watch our girls frolic through fields of colorful flowers again. And the costumes---!"
"Nicholas!" came Kasumi's sharp voice again, snapping him out of it.
"He is only excited," Adeline sighed, settling down on the divan again, her white skirts flaring out in a puffy circle around her, "As am I. If I must play Portia much longer, I shall throw myself into the Seine."

"You'll have to go a mite out of your way for that, Miss Adeline," Eglantine remarked cheerfully. "Don't think the Seine goes through this city. 'Course, water is water and you'll drown in most rivers you care to jump into." Eglantine liked Nicolas's wave machine, but as for the real wet stuff? You could keep it. "Oh--but don't go jumping into any rivers, Miss Adeline. We need someone to play the princess, you know." He frowned, rubbing the hatchet of his nose with stubby, callused fingers. Turning back to Nicolas, he gave a short bow. "I'm sure it'll go over splendidly. Between you 'n me, I think the audiences were beginning to get a bit tired of tragedies. We do 'em so well, but--eh--we all need a few more roses in life, yes?" With a wink, Eglantine began to back towards the tent flap. He'd timed his exit masterfully; just as he reached the door, Bastchilde's cry of Eglantine! could be heard to resound across the fairgrounds.  

[Okimiyage]

He was only gone for a few moments; when Eglantine returned, he was accompanied by one of the sideshow barkers, a young, dark-haired man named Grigor Malkovitch who occasionally rode a unicycle and juggled when one of the clowns took sick leave. Both of them were white as sheets.
"Mr. Nick?" Eglantine panted; he'd been running, and that meant it was urgent. "Think you'd better come and have a look at this. There's a dead man in one of the tents. He's not one of ours."
Grigor, who had hung back upon entering and now came forward, glancing around the tent with eyes like coal, snorted. "Bastchilde is the one who found him. She is having her 'hysterics', as they are called, while we speak." His voice was low, his Russian accent thick and harsh, clipping his syllables in strange ways. His English had much improved during the time he had spent with the circus.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Oh...yes," Nicholas murmured, putting his fist to his chin in the general pose of deep thought, "Antha spoke to me about that. I suppose I forgot..."
"Nicholas!" Adeline chastised him, giving a light slap to his arm, "You cannot forget about dead bodies in our circus!"
The circus master shook his head at her, turning to Eglantine. "I would ask you if you will take care of Bastchilde. I have little patience for hysterical mortals. Grigor, show me to the corpse. We must be rid of it, and it must stay our secret. If this should cause some sort of scandal...Antha would ******** kill me." The last was not said with his usual musical, whimsical tone, but rather plainly, making it seem all the more serious.
"And what do you propose to do with it?" Kasumi purred, slinking up behind him, "Burn it in the woods?"
"Well we need to do something with it!" Nicholas hissed back, tromping off with a sharp motion of his hand, "Grigor, let us be off!"  

[Okimiyage]

Grigor drew open the entrance to the tent and gestured for Nicolas to come through--out of habit more than anything--and then followed behind him, out into the sparkling lights of the circus fairgrounds. Lanterns swung from tent to tent, and small fluorescently-colored birds with tailfeathers that sparked like fireworks cheeped furiously at one another from across the lantern-lines. The Russian man led the way through the crowds; the thinnest and most agile of their acrobats would have been hard-put to find a path through the throngs, but somehow he managed it.
They came to the tent too late. If they'd wanted to avoid a scene, then Bastchilde shouldn't have been in the middle of it. She lounged amidst a small swarm of men, young and old alike, fluttering her eyelashes theatrically and pressing a hand to her forehead as though rising from a faint. "Oh, where am I?" she murmured. "I remember--blood, there was so much of it--that poor man--"
Grigor scoffed. He had been one of Bastchilde's most ardent admirers at one point, but repeated ill use at a woman's hands tended to dull the shine of even the most youthful affection. He brushed past them impatiently, but the mortals were not so easily dissuaded. "Blood?" one of them yelped. Another, "Has anyone called the police yet? An ambulance?" "--they don't need an ambulance, they need a hearse--" Laughter at that, panicked and giggly and high, a hallmark of distressed mortals. Grigor had, fortunately, possessed enough foresight to pull one of the circus strong-men off his act and station him at the tent entrance to keep onlookers from...well, looking on. "No-one's been in since you left," the man--who could well have been a golem, for his height and breadth and particular range of expression--said, and he uncrossed his arms from across his chest and stepped aside to allow them both in.

The scene had been set like a magic show. A single spotlight illuminated the ghastly visage of an elderly man, seated center stage, a gleaming red sphere set between his bloody fingers. His throat had been not slit, but nearly ripped out, as though by one of the great circus cats. As they entered, his head turned, slowly, blood spilling out over the shredded edge of flesh. Then, the red sphere spilled out of his hands, and rolled across the floor to Nicolas and Grigor, who stopped it with his foot, like a soccer ball. The boy's brow furrowed, as he caught sight of a gleam of glass beneath blood. "It's a crystal ball," he said, and reached to pick it up.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Do not touch it," came Nicholas' voice, fast and fierce, taking Grigor's arm to halt him, "We do not know who this man is or where he came from, much less what killed him. Do not touch him or his things."
William, who had sensed trouble like a very distinctive smell, had tromped through the fairgrounds with them and come briefly inside, leaning over the body to look, before he went to the crowd outside and began shouting, "Stay back, it's tuberculosis! I must ask all mortals to leave the area!"
Within the tent, Nicholas almost wanted to laugh. In their respective days, far in the past, such a word had not existed. It had been consumption, and the single word had held a world of fear. Of course William had gone straight for it, after all the condition still warranted great caution---the onlookers were fleeing before the words had all left the vampire's lips---and it explained away the death and blood easily, and why the vampires did not fear being so near to the body. After all, diseases that were not blood-born could not survive in their bodies, and only a few of those such could even affect them.
While Nicholas prowled carefully around the tent, inspecting the small space for some type of clue, Allen strode inside, drawn from the depths of his damp cave by the commotion, his anger flaring, and took Bastchilde roughly by the arm, shaking her. "What in the hell is wrong with you?!" he half hissed and half roared, his glassy eyes boring into her own, "Drawing everyone in the whole damn circus to see this! And for what, your pathetic need for attention? I swear I should break your neck on the spot!"
"Patience, Allen," William interrupted, laying a light touch on his arm, though he made no attempt to separate the vampire from the mortal girl, "Let us try to act with some civility." But despite his placid tone, even rational William had gone livid, his eyes glowing dangerously.
"Can you figure anything out from this?" Nicholas asked, turning to William, as if he hadn't heard a word Allen had growled against the girl. When William shook his head slowly from side to side in the negative, Nicholas sighed deeply, thoughtfully, a hand to his chin. "Grigor," he called after a moment, "I will need for you to fetch me a phone, s'il vous plait. The Talamasca are the only ones who could possibly make heads or tails of this, I am afraid. Until then, William, we will need to close the park down for the night. Clear everyone out, announce that we are not certain when it will be reopened, we must be certain it is safe for our mortal patrons."
"Of course," William murmured, with something like quiet horror that they would not be in business for an indefinite amount of time, before he vanished towards the big top to set everything in motion.  

[Okimiyage]

Bastchilde burst into tears. Admittedly, she hadn't been having what one would call an easy day. First rats and now cadavers. "Well--I'm--sorry--" she managed, between sobs for air. Eglantine, quietly, held up his hankerchief for her. "I'm not used to seeing dead people like all the rest of you! Thank you~" Taking Eglantine's hankerchief, she dabbed at her eyes with the scrap of lace. Then, folding her hand about the fabric in a fist, she put both hands on her hips and went on the offensive. "Anyways, how the hell am I supposed to react to that? 'Oh, nothing to see here, folks, show's over, exit that-a-way, don't mind the <******** corpse choking on its own blood behind me!" The snarl of her sarcasm met with appalled silence. She handed Eglantine back his hankerchief, and raised her chin at Nicolas. "Go on," she said, her voice high and shaky. "Haven't all of you been waiting for the chance to snap my throat for weeks now?"

Grigor, who had drawn closer to inspect the corpse--"Not one of ours," he muttered to himself, studying the blood-spattered face. "And not one of us responsible for this, either." Even the most idiotic of fledglings would have had the sense to hide the corpse, not put it on display like a--a circus sideshow. No, this had the ring of a message. And speaking of which...no rings, no tattoos, no pockets to speak of--just what looked more or less like bedsheets--the corpse had purposely been stripped. Or--like many of their supernatural brethren--wasn't the sort of man to carry identification, and Grigor wasn't certain which was the less appealing idea. Best not to think about it; keep to the sideshows and let the thespians sort it out on center stage. He went to find Nicolas a phone. With typical circus aplomb, he reappeared within the matter of moments, carrying a red lacquered rotary telephone on a silver tea service, with the cord looped about his arm many times over. One always accepted whatever Grigor produced, always said 'thank you', and never, ever asked where it came from.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

To Bastchilde's outburst, William and Nicholas only rolled their eyes. It was Allen who looked at her dead in the eye, expression blank, and said quite simply, "God, yes."
"Thank you, Grigor," Nicholas murmured, still watching the corpse as if it might burst into animation as he groped for the phone, taking it into his arms and dialing the motherhouse. "David Talbot, please. This is Nicholas de Lioncourt, and I'm afraid it's rather urgent. Merci. Ah, Monsieur Talbot. Yes, we have a situation here at the fairgrounds and we are quite at a loss. I don't suppose you could...merci, monsieur, merci." He hung up quietly, sighing to himself as his eyes raked across the small circle of the tent. "Aaron Lightner will be here shortly, William, will you show him the way?"
"Of course." With that, William was gone as quickly as he'd come. It wasn't until a half hour later that he returned through the drape with Aaron in tow.
To be associated with the Talamasca, people were generally surprised to see Aaron's appearance. The word scholar was so often associated with old men and their gray hair and beards, glasses and suits, a slumping posture, and Aaron could be associated with none of these things. He was tall and broad and handsome, his crystalline eyes bright and thoughtful, white-blond hair brushing his shoulders, clothes loosely in dark slack and a silk shirt. Personally, William was most thrown off by his gracefully lax posture and movements. "What have you got yourselves here?" he asked, bringing his cigarette briefly to his lips before flicking it out the door. Of course William had told him, but it was important to get Nicholas' version of things.
It was Nicholas, sighing, who said, "We do not know. Antha's new vampire---Vikteren, was it?---apparently he had very brief contact with the man, something disturbing apparently, and then he died. He was found like this."
"Vikteren?" The man had gone to stand beside the corpse, looking down into the dead eyes as if they might tell him something, "Curiouser and curiouser. Who found the body, exactly?"
"That would be the human," Nicholas sighed, motioning at Bastchilde and glancing outside the tent to the lightening sky, "But if you will excuse us, Monsieur Lightner, the sun is nearly upon us and we children of the night must be retiring. I trust, since we know virtually nothing of this...mishap, you can carry on without us? If you need anything, I am sure Grigor can see to it while we are absent. Au revoir, Monsieur Lightner."
In the dramatic flair he was known for, Nicholas swept out of the tent, Allen following on his heels after giving Aaron a short nod of her head. It was William who paused at the doorway, pushing his glasses up with a small nudge of his knuckle, and looked at the witch. "If anyone knows anything about this, I would assume it to be Vikteren. Perhaps Antha would---"
"Stefan Mayfair has just died," Aaron interrupted shortly, staring down at the pool of blood at his feet, "Mayfairs are not greatly fond of my kind to begin with, and I fear they will be nothing short of murderous in the wake of tragedy."
Quietly, thoughtfully, William left the mortals to their own.  

[Okimiyage]

"Well, I suppose I'm lucky that you're not quite the animal lacking in all self-control that you appear, hmm?" Bastchilde snapped back, throwing Eglantine's hankerchief back at him. She was feeling immensely put-upon; Bastchilde was not used to people being rude to her. In a world where, in movies and television, 'beautiful' was visual code for 'good', she had always been treated kindly by even total strangers. Of course they had ulterior motives--she had learned that early on--but the clumsy traps men had laid for her throughout the years, with roses and candlelight and copious amounts of alcohol, were easily evaded. But vampires were notoriously difficult to impress, even if she was physically a creature of the highest calibur. And she thought perhaps their company was good for her; a comment like Allen's would have elicited real tears from her, months ago, but now she was dry-eyed and pissed off.
Grigor took the phone away, picking up trailing red electrical cord as he exited. It was not unless one looked closely that one would realize that it was not electrical cord that he was winding, but a long scarlet silk ribbon.
Presently, moments before Aaron Lightner himself entered the circus grounds, Grigor returned, and took up a position just out of the spotlight which illuminated their cadaver. As the Talamasca representative entered the tent, the Russian man looked up, and gave out a low whistle. The man moved like one of the big circus cats, one of the trained black panthers that Grigor was responsible for the feeding of.
After the conversation--tense, hurried, brief--as the vampires swept out of the tent, leaving only Grigor and Bastchilde and Aaron behind--Eglantine hurried after his own kind in the hobbled caper which children found so cruelly amusing. Bastchilde folded her arms across her chest, and did not try to hide her bold stare as she critically eyed Mr. Lightner.
Grigor cleared his throat.
"Since the mortal members of the troupe seem to have been assigned to assist you, Mr. Lightner, I believe the phrase is 'what can we do you for?'"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"You shouldn't piss off vampires," Aaron commented dryly, examining the dead man's eyes, "A pretty face is not an excuse for them as it is with humans." He stopped, turning to Grigor and extending his hand, "Grigor, was it? Some of my colleagues are on their way to collect the body, they will have it out of your way soon. In the meantime, I have a few questions. Does anyone know how long the man was tagging along with the circus?"
Across the distance, he could hear the resonance of David's mind like a whisper. Aaron was the head of the Mayfair case at present, it was his responsibility to investigate them, to be at the funeral and peruse the unguarded minds present. Instead, he had latched onto this case and run with it. He wasn't sure why exactly he didn't want to work on the Mayfair file---threat of death by Antha Mayfair had never frightened him before, he was too greatly intrigued by the Mayfairs to care---but the thought seemed suddenly greatly repulsive and he had thrown Singe at David instead, let him spout off his account of his time with the Calais brothers while Aaron ran off and busied himself elsewhere.  

[Okimiyage]

Bastchilde peeked over Aaron's shoulder as the dead man's eyelids were lifted, the milky white irises inside duly examined. Gross. "Well, you know what they're like," she said absently. "It's hard not to. And they're all so unsympathetic--but we're getting used to one another. Really, I think of the troupe as my family. They're all so dear to me." Grigor snorted in disbelief. Bastchilde, ignoring him, raised her hands over her head, arching her back in a stretch as she strolled across the diameter of the tent. It was difficult to tell when Bastchilde was actually being honest about her feelings on other people; she did not do it often. She was very good at lying about it, though.
At Mr. Lightner's question, Grigor spread his hands, and shrugged. "I would know if this man had so much as toed the border of these fairgrounds. He has never been seen here before today. And if he had--" The Russian man reached out, turning over the man's stiffened wrist to expose the needle tracks that patterned the inside of his arms. "--he would have been run off very soon. There is only room for one particular kind of junkie in a vampire circus, yes?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"You're not used to being around witches," Aaron commented dryly, drawing a pen from the front pocket of his shirt and poking at the puddle of blood, examining it, "Are you, Miss...?" His words trailed off purposefully, glancing at her over his shoulder in expectation of a name. She was pretty at least, he would give her that.
"Aaron?" Quietly, with the faint glare of dawn at his back, David Talbot entered the tent, glancing briefly around at the assembled company. He held his hand out briefly for Grigor, introducing himself shortly---David had never really been one for fieldwork, he had always handled the research and the papers---before turning to Aaron. "We came for the body. The lab is set up, ready to examine it."
"And you came to help yourself?" Aaron scoffed, standing up straight, hands to his hips, "You? Leader of the Talamasca? I don't think so, David. What's going on?"
The man sighed once, briefly, his fingers going to fumble nervously with the knot of his tie, adjusting it. "They'll know soon enough anyways," he mumbled, before he straightened up and looked his colleague dead in the eye. "Antha and Nicolae Mayfair have killed Sleet---eaten him, actually, from what I've been told---and Nicolae has taken his place as coven master. Aaron, I need you on this. The Mayfairs are your responsibility, your charge, you should have known this already. I should be hearing this from you."
"You'll have to pardon my colleague," Aaron said shortly to Bastchilde and Grigor, taking a pair of gloves from the two men that entered with a body bag, helping them lift the body and zip it up all nice and neat while a third man gathered up the blood in a little sterilized container, "He thinks the world revolves around the Mayfair family."
"Information," David corrected him with the first stirrings of anger, "Information revolves around the Mayfair family, and the greatest secrets of our age. You know this even better than I do." He shook his head briefly at Aaron, effectively ending the conversation as he turned to Bastchilde, "I am sorry miss, I know this must be terribly traumatic for you. I understand you found the body, yes?" Like Aaron---when he was in his right mind that is, which at the moment he was not---David was well practiced in the art of talking to a young lady. All charm and good manners, delicate smiles and polite words. They understood that women, especially pretty ones, were accustomed to a certain amount of reverence and without it, they gave nothing away. It was insulting, a blow to their pride, and wounded women didn't tend to be obliging.