was merely an animal. Then I understood it must have something to do with the food and drinks Madame had served them.
Both Radax and Amira had mentioned camyte, the luminescent liquid I gave to Radax for his pain.
“It would make him care about it less,” Amira had said, and now I wondered if that was what the drug did to the VIP clients, too. It made them care less about a man trapped in a fish tank for their entertainment.
I might not have understood the full effects of the drugs Madame had at her disposal, but I had learned enough to suspect that eating or drinking or even inhaling anything around here might have consequences.
Poking with the spoon at my porridge, I noticed a few more of the little pink sparks in it, like dots of glitter. The new smell was faint and pleasant, actually making the boring food more appealing. Yet I hesitated, remembering Zeph’s vacant stare and Amira’s complete and utter obedience.
What if Madame’s plan was to turn me into a silent, mindless servant, as well? Radax had suggested something about my helping around here. Could that be why my life had been spared? If drugged, I might never be able to escape this place even if an opportunity presented itself.
I searched around for a place to dump the food out, having decided not to touch it myself.
With my cage being inside the truck, there was no place to dispose of the tainted porridge without someone soon discovering it.
My gaze fell at the enclosure of Yenric, the two-headed pig, which was right next to my cage during this trip. He had a similar bowl of porridge in front of one of his heads. The other head impatiently turned and twisted, in an attempt to get to it, too.
Sliding the bowl between the bars, I placed it in front of his second head. It dove into it eagerly.
A little obedience wouldn’t hurt the little brat, I decided, remembering the nasty bites he gave to Amira every time she was cleaning his enclosure or taking him out for a bath.
As soon as Yenric was done with the porridge, I took the bowl back to my cage. When Amira came back to pick up the dishes, she didn’t appear to notice a thing.
Of course, the drawback was that I had to do without dinner that night. At least the water bottle didn’t seem to have been tampered with, and I drunk it all, fooling my stomach into being full.
Upon arriving in the new destination, my cage was covered before being unloaded from the truck. Once the rug was taken off again, I found myself inside an actual room, not surrounded by the striped canvas walls for once.
It was a concrete-walled storage room with no windows. The animals were here, too. I had expected another fair and wondered why we all had been put in here, instead.
Asking Amira when she brought our food didn’t gain me anything, as expected.
I carefully inspected the porridge again, finding the same pink glitter in it. Well, Yenric got the double portion that night again, and I got nothing but water for dinner.
During the day, Amira and a couple of Madame’s men—bracks, as Amira had referred to them—took all the animals away. However, she brought Yenric back for the night. I remembered that the enclosure I saw him in during that first day at the CNE had a short ornate fence and was lavishly decorated for the show. Here, he had a higher fence he couldn’t hop over and an unsightly pile of old felt and fur he seemed to like to sleep in.
In the morning after breakfast, Amira took him away. I wondered if there were still shows running out there during the day, and Yenric was displayed as part of the exhibit. Either that, or Madame wanted to keep the pig near her. She seemed to have a fondness for that animal she didn’t have for anyone else. Either way, by dinnertime, Amira brought him back into his enclosure next to my cage.
With Yenric taking his dinner nearby nightly, I continued to feed him my tainted porridge undetected.
For bathroom breaks, I was taken to an actual washroom, just a short walk down the corridor from the storage room where they held me. The entire place appeared to be a basement of an older building.
Still no one told me anything about why we were there.
A few days later, Trez and Ulg came in. After escorting me