His upper lip twitched. “Why on earth would I do that?” But he hadn’t denied it. Becausefear deargcannot lie.
“Whywouldyou do that?”
Gallagher shrugged broad, strong shoulders. “Sometimes it is easier to break out of a fortress than to break into one,” he whispered.
On his left, the minotaur snorted.
Before I could ask him what he’d seen of the Spectacle and its security procedures so far, one of the handlers stationed behind Eryx and Gallagher—the only two male cryptids in the room—frowned at me. “Go refill your tray.”
I nodded, but before I turned back to the bacchanalia, I gave Gallagher a pleading look. “Please don’t cause trouble,” I whispered. “No matter what you see, I’m more okay than I will be if you interfere. Okay?”
“No.”
“Gallagher, I can take care of myself,” I hissed. “In here, Ihaveto.”
“Move along,” the handler ordered.
I turned to Eryx. “Keep him in check, okay?”
The bull nodded, giving me his mute promise to try. They’d dressed him in nothing but a loincloth, similar in style to what he’d worn in the menagerie, which gave me a clear view of his massively muscled human chest and arms, beneath the fur that began on his shoulders and grew over his bovine head, up to the base of two enormous, curved horns. I saw no new cuts or bruises, and no sign that he’d been denied food or water. The only real change in him was the massive steel collar around his thick neck.
I couldn’t understand why the women had been given beautiful costumes but the men had not, until Willem Vandekamp walked through the grand entrance, then made his way toward the stage, shaking guests’ hands as he went.
Onstage, he eschewed the microphone and congratulated the groom in a voice that carried the width of the room on its own. He thanked the guests for coming and the host for choosing the Savage Spectacle as the venue. Then he signaled to someone at the back of the room, and the crowd parted as Eryx and Gallagher were marched forward to stand in front of the stage.
“You may have noticed these two beasts standing at the back of the room all evening,” Vandekamp began. “I’ve brought them in to give you an early glimpse, on the house, of our newest competitors. Our minotaur and redcap will be making their debuts in the ring later this week, and I promise you, it will be an event like no other.”
“What’s a redcap?” someone shouted from the crowd, words slurred together.
Vandekamp smiled. “Watch this.” He knelt on the stage and plucked Gallagher’s hat from his head, then tossed it into the crowd. It hit the floor, and though everyone stared, no one reached for it.
“Galla—”
Gallagher called his cap before Vandekamp could order him to perform, and a collective gasp echoed across the room. No one actually saw the hat disappear from the floor, and no one actually saw it reappear on his head. Somehow, it happened in midblink. For everyone. All at once.
The audience burst into applause and excited chatter. And like a true showman, Vandekamp dismounted the stage without offering any further information, keeping them curious for Gallagher’s event in “the ring.”
He shook more hands on his way out of the room, then disappeared through the massive double doors without even a glance my way.
Gallagher and Eryx remained on display in front of the stage.
For the next hour, I avoided invasive questions and wandering hands, eager to escape into the kitchen every time my tray was emptied. Lenore sang and the rest of us served, and the patrons quickly got drunk on top-shelf alcohol and their own egos.
“What are you?” a man asked, plucking a tiny caprese skewer from my tray.
“I’m a Gemini,” I said, as he stuffed the bite into his mouth. “That makes us totally incompatible.”
The man next to him laughed into a fragrant glass of expensive whiskey.
As I left to refill my tray, the event coordinator brought Lansing and the groom onto the stage and announced the start of the hypnotist game.
At first, the “tricks” were simple and stupid, but the guests were all drunk and privileged, so the game devolved quickly. Lansing made Lenore compel his friends to tell their most humiliating secrets and when one of them admitted onstage to having slept with the bride, the host told Lenore to make him strip to nothing and take one of the servers’ trays. He spent the next half hour serving his friends in the nude, with a cloth napkin draped over the erection Lenore had made sure he wouldn’t be able to get rid of.
I was leaving the kitchen with another tray, reluctant to rejoin a group of men evidently determined to prove that money doesn’t equal class, when something clattered to the floor across the room, accompanied by a familiar low-pitched feline growl.
Eryx took three thundering steps into the fray, eager to protect a friend, and his handlers grabbed him. I waved him back, to keep him out of trouble, then pushed my way through the crowd toward Zyanya.
I found her surrounded by half a dozen drunk partiers. Her tray was on the floor, bits of fancy cheese, crackers and tapenade scattered across the marble.
