that includes my cousin Artie the incubus, who seems destined to die alone in the basement of his parents’ house, thanks to a near-pathological fear of getting close to any girl he’s not related to. It’s not healthy, but hey. He’s family. Besides, I hadn’t been at the carnival looking for a boyfriend. I’d been looking for the source of a string of mysterious deaths and disappearances that had gone on long enough to attract the attention of the Covenant of St. George. I’d been undercover with them, pretending to be a trainee, and since my cover story had involved a carnival background, they had sent me to figure out exactly what was happening.
Carnivals and traveling shows have long been a haven for cryptids who could almost pass as human, but who had needs, attributes, or abilities that would inevitably unmask them to the locals. By hiding behind the mask of the sideshow or pretending to be skilled human athletes, they could keep themselves from becoming targets. They could live happy, functional lives without anyone becoming the wiser. That’s the principle by which the Campbell Family Carnival has always operated. I spent my summers there when I was a kid, falling in love with the flying trapeze and setting snares for my cousins, who took too long to learn to respect my need for personal space. Sending me to Spenser and Smith had seemed like the best possible choice.
Maybe it wasn’t for the Covenant, but it was for me. I had found the woman responsible for the murders, a carnival performer named Umeko who had discovered her own true nature as a Jorōgumo relatively late in life, and with no other members of her species around to help her. The transition hadn’t been easy. She’d started assaulting, and then eating, people who caught her eye, drawing the Covenant’s attention and resulting in my assignment to the show.
Sam had been the first person to find me skulking around the carnival boneyard, and he hadn’t liked me being there. Growing up a cryptid in an insular, largely human community left him with a deeply ingrained distrust of strangers, and he’d known almost from the beginning that I was lying to him. Chalk it up to his naturally suspicious nature and move on. I did.
Despite his suspicions, I’d managed to play along for long enough that he’d realized I was smart, funny, and reasonably unflappable, and he’d asked me on a date. I’d already known he was a fūri by that point, thankfully. I don’t think our burgeoning relationship would have survived if he’d learned that I was working for the Covenant before I’d known that he wasn’t human. But it had, and he’d left his family and the carnival behind to follow me to Florida when the situation forced me to go into hiding for the sake of everyone I’d ever cared about—him included.
Sometimes being a cryptozoologist is even more complicated than it ought to be. Because, see, my family hates the Covenant like nobody’s business. We’re mostly human, apart from some of my cousins, and my mother’s adoptive parents. And sure, I’m a sorcerer, but I get that from my Grandpa Thomas, who was a full-fledged member of the Covenant before he turned on them, so you’d think they’d be used to it. Nope. Magic is “unnatural,” so in their eyes, I’m little better than a cryptid myself. Probably worse, since I’m voluntarily banging one, and that makes me a traitor to the human race.
Treachery has amazing abs. I’m just saying.
“Where are Cylia and Fern?” I asked, looking around the small space. The trailer, despite being split into the “living area,” “sleeping area,” bathroom, and kitchenette, is slightly smaller than my bedroom back in Oregon. There wasn’t a lot of space to hide.
“They’re taking a nap,” said Sam, gesturing toward the closed curtain across the sleeping area. “Are we at another fruit stand?”
“No. The car made a really terrible noise, and James is upset, and we’re not moving anymore, and where are you going?”
Sam was standing, reaching for the jacket he had thrown carelessly across the arm of the couch. “I know a few things about engines, thanks to all the maintenance I had to do back at the carnival. I can probably help him out. Where are we?”
“Michigan.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Why are we in Michigan? I thought we were cutting down toward Ohio to shave off a few hours.”
“My family’s originally from Michigan,” I said. “We still have a