There was a line of people giving their tickets to a young woman. She tore them in half and handed back the stubs.
Stephen walked confidently along the line without waiting. We got some dirty looks, but the girl nodded to us. And in we went.
Tiers of bleachers ran up to the top of the tent. It was huge. Nearly all the seats were full. A sold-out show. Wowee.
There was a blue rail that formed a circle in the middle. A one-ring circus.
Stephen scooted past the knees of about a dozen people to a set of steps. Since we were at the bottom, up was the only way to go. I followed Stephen up the concrete stairs. The tent may have looked like a circus tent, but the bleachers and stairs were permanent. A mini-coliseum.
I have bad knees, which means that I can run on a flat surface but put me on a hill, or stairs. and it hurts. So I didn't try to keep up with Stephen's smooth, running glide. I did watch the way his jeans fit his snug little behind, though. Looking for clues.
I unzipped the leather jacket but didn't take it off. My gun would show. Sweat glided down my spine. I was going to melt.
Stephen glanced over his shoulder to see if I was following, or maybe for encouragement. He flashed a smile that was just lips curling back from teeth, almost a snarl.
I stopped in the middle of the steps, watching his lithe form glide upward. There was an energy to Stephen as if the air boiled invisibly around him. A shapeshifter. Some lycanthropes are better than others at hiding what they are. Stephen wasn't that good. Or maybe he just didn't care if I knew. Possible.
Lycanthropy was a disease, like AIDS. It was prejudice to mistrust someone for an accident. Most people survived attacks to become shapeshifters. It wasn't a choice. So why didn't I like Stephen as well, now that I knew? Prejudiced, moi?
He waited at the top of the stairs, still pretty as a picture, but the air of energy contained in too small a space, like his motor was on high idle, shimmered around him. What was Jean-Claude doing with a shapeshifter on his payroll? Maybe I could ask him.
I stepped up beside Stephen. There must have been something in my face, because he said, "What's wrong?"
I shook my head. "Nothing."
I don't think he believed me. But he smiled and led me towards a booth that was mostly glass with heavy curtains on the inside hiding whatever lay behind. It looked for all the world like a miniature broadcast booth.
Stephen went to the curtained door and opened it. He held it for me, motioning me to go first.
"No, you first," I said.
"I'm being a gentleman here," he said.
"I don't need or want doors opened for me. I'm quite capable, thank you."
"A feminist, my, my."
Truthfully, I just didn't want ol' Stephen at my back. But if he wanted to think I was a hard-core feminist, let him. It was closer to the truth than a lot of things.
He walked through the door. I glanced back to the ring. It looked smaller from up here. Muscular men dressed in glittering loincloths pulled a cart in on their bare shoulders. There were two things in the cart: a huge woven basket and a dark-skinned woman. She was dressed in Hollywood's version of a dancing girl's outfit. Her thick black hair fell like a cloak, sweeping to her ankles. Slender arms, small, dark hands swept the air in graceful curves. She danced in front of the cart. The costume was fake, but she wasn't. She knew how to dance, not for seduction, though it was that, but for power. Dancing was originally an invocation to some god or other; most people forget that.
Goosebumps prickled up the back of my neck, creeping into my hair. I shivered while I stood there and sweated in the heat. What was in the basket? The barker outside had said a giant cobra, but there was no snake in the world that needed a basket that big. Not even the anaconda, the world's heaviest snake, needed a container over ten feet tall and twenty feet wide.
Something touched my shoulder. I jumped and spun. Stephen was standing nearly touching me, smiling.
I swallowed my pulse back into my throat and glared at him. I make a big deal about not wanting him at my back, then let him sneak up behind me. Real swift, Anita, real swift. Because he'd scared me, I was mad at him. Illogical, but it was better to be mad than scared.
"Jean-Claude's just inside," he said. He smiled, but there was a very human glint of laughter in his blue eyes.
I scowled at him, knowing I was being childish, and not caring. "After you, fur-face."
The laughter slipped away. He was very serious as he stared at me. "How did you know?" His voice was uncertain, fragile. A lot of lycanthropes pride themselves on being able to pass for human.
"It was easy," I said. Which wasn't entirely true, but I wanted to hurt him. Childish, unattractive, honest.
His face suddenly looked very young. His eyes filled with uncertainty and pain.
Shit.