looking up from his phone where he’s sitting behind the counter.
He gives my clothes a pointed look, his eyes pausing on the collar as I head further into the shop. Still holding the wadded up bills in my palm with my bag slung over my shoulder, I take stock of what I have. Thankfully, I changed out of my costume, or the trek here would’ve already wrecked my feet.
I check my bag, seeing that Cliff stashed my leather jacket and another change of clothes for me, but that’s it.
I head through the store and grab the bare minimum, because I know this few hundred dollars I have won’t go very far. I grab the largest bottled water I can find, along with a few protein bars, and then head to the counter to pay.
“Can I use your phone to call a cab?”
The man looks extra put-out as he starts ringing up my stuff. “You don’t got a cell phone?”
“If I had a phone, I wouldn’t be asking to use yours,” I point out.
He frowns, rolling his eyes. “There’s a payphone outside.”
“A payphone?” I repeat. “You still have one of those things? I thought they were all gone.”
“If they were all gone, I wouldn’t be telling you there’s one outside,” he replies.
I level the snarky fucker with a look. He just shrugs and rifles under the counter, yanking out a business card for a cab company.
“Thanks.”
I quickly pay and stuff everything into my bag before heading out to find the phone. It’s off to the side, near the bathroom door, which is currently propped open and reeking of a digested burrito gone bad. “Fucking disgusting,” I mutter as I sidle up to the payphone podium. It’s covered in graffiti, one of them saying, “Help, I’m a millennial and idk how to use this thing.”
Shaking my head, I shove some change in and dial the number from the card and manage to arrange a pick up for ten minutes from now.
As I wait, I brave the bathroom, trying to hold my breath the whole time while I do my business and wash up. I don’t know where I’ll be sleeping tonight, but I have no romantic notions of finding a safe, nice place. So I grab a bunch of toilet paper and stuff it in my bag for safe keeping. I might have to pee in the wilderness for a few days, but I draw the line at wiping my ass with leaves.
Once outside, I slide my leather jacket on and prop my shoulder against the building to wait for my ride. I’m antsy to get further away. I don’t know if it really matters how much distance I gain between myself and Kaazu though. I don’t know that this feeling would ever go away.
Automatically, my hand strays to the collar around my neck. Cliff asked me if I trusted him, and I do. He’s the only person I’ve ever given my trust to.
But what if he’s wrong? What if the conjurer didn’t successfully break the collar? Kaazu could be tracking me right now, seething, eyes lit up with promised retribution.
There have been plenty of troupers who have tried to escape in the past. None of them were successful. And none of them lived past their punishment. I feel like a dead female walking.
But I also feel...lost.
I’ve never been out on my own before. I’ve always lived inside Kaazu’s bubble, never away from the troupe. The world suddenly seems both way too big and way too small, and I have no idea how to navigate it.
Kaazu took me from a human orphanage when I was one year old. One. I didn’t even have the luxury of sub-par human foster parents to contend with. No, I went right into the hands of a manipulative show master who takes rogue Canes and makes them into puppets that perform on his string.
My earliest memory was me when I was four, being made to stand on a broomstick for hours on end. If I fell, the bottoms of my feet would get smacked with a wooden switch. Three strikes to each foot, and then I’d have to get right back up there, and it would be three times harder than before, the pain intensifying the strain.
By the time I was seven, I was training in acrobatics, gymnastics, and dance, along with martial arts, boxing, and basic street fighting moves. When I was ten, I was put on the stage of Troupe Delirium for the first time.