Chapter 8

Aix was glad to be back in the hotel room Lady Sitrinne had insisted on getting for him, because meeting all those people had been wonderful, but he hadn’t had a chance to write anything in days and it was making him itch.

He ended up doing the creative equivalent of blacking out and coming to several hours later with a few thousand words of intensely weird smut posted to the archive site he was a member of. He got up, managed to brush his teeth and do a few other things, staggered over to the fridge and stared at it for a while before getting himself a large glass of milk, grabbed some of the unfrosted toaster pastries that were a comfort food for him, consumed both in a haze, and fell into bed, too tired to even masturbate first, despite writing thousands of words of smut always making him turbo-horny.

He’d completely forgotten about giving some of the vampires the address to his author page; or rather, he’d forgotten that people might actually look him up rather than just forget all about it because Reading Was Too Hard.

He woke up to his meds alarm, groped around for the pill box and the water, struggled up and took the giant horse pill he had to take every eight hours for his anxiety, and slumped back in bed, not sure if he was going back to sleep or staying awake—it was so hard to tell, he was so tired and sore all the time. He grabbed his phone, after a few minutes spent laying alone in the dark, and considered what to do carefully. It was four am, that counted as morning enough for coffee, but not morning enough for anything business like. He didn’t want to shop, that would tire out his hand; so would playing solitaire, the only game app he had on his phone because it was the only one he could find without ads on it. He fed his little virtual cats while he was thinking, but after that there was little else to do other than check his email.

Well, he thought to himself, he wouldn’t open up his Serious Things email address, then; he’d only look at his Fun Things email address. Maybe he’d gotten his favourite reviewer.

His inbox had dozens of messages, all of them reviews on his work—on his smut.

Adrenaline flooded his body, because the first time he’d gotten this many messages on something he’d created and posted to the internet, he’d been dogpiled by a coordinated group of bullies that regularly went around and dogpiled art or writing they judged as laughably bad. It had been years, but the truth of it was he rarely got positive attention—the things he wrote and drew were too polarising, too weird, too unashamed.

Well, he was awake now.

He kicked off the covers, carefully folding them to one side, and raised one leg as high as possible, feeling the pain from how stiff all the ligaments were, and then threw it down to sit up using a sort of counter-weighting technique. Usually, this got him high enough to grab the top rail of his four-poster canopy bed and pull himself up, but the hotel had a regular bed, and it was high enough that simply rolling onto his belly and swivelling to put his feet on the ground that way wasn’t going to work. However, one advantage in this bed was that there wasn’t a memory foam pad that made pushing himself up so impossible, so he was able to push up on his fists without too much wobbly protest from his wrists or finger joints sinking into the surface.

He sat on the edge of the bed, rolling his stiff ankles idly as he rested from that endeavour, seeing how painful his feet were. Lately, they had been pretty okay, though the foot he’d sprained a few months ago slipping and falling down the back steps had never quite been the same. He really should get some physical therapy for that….

There was a soft beep, and he realised Pippin was awake. She’d taken up on the other bed in the room—Aix had a room to himself, but the hotel only had double rooms on offer. So, Pippin got a bed all to herself, and Aix even let her use his down duvet to nestle in, so she wouldn’t be cold, since the hotel actually had more than a thin fleece blanket on offer, and sheets of actual cotton.

‘Hey bean,’ he said softly, as he slipped into his shoes; and she slowly lit up her Flash—red at first, brightening to soft peachy orange. ‘Wow,’ he said, and clapped a little. She giggled, making her Mask a little bashful, with pink glowy cheeks.

He turned on the light by the bed, and then went to the coffee maker. He’d brought his own coffee with him, glad someone had thought to pack it in the grocery bags that had made it onto the Moonbus, because he couldn’t drink regular coffee anymore, he had to have the special low acid kind, which was mail-order only….

He always had to be thinking about so much when he woke up that he almost entirely forgot about what had woken him up, especially since part of his waking up ritual now was feeding Pippin—though he’d found some frozen breakfast corndogs, that were neither corn nor dogs, but sausages wrapped in pancake batter—but they were the same shape and on a stick, so his brain called them Breakfast Corndogs.

He made one for each of them, with a banana and milk for Pippin and coffee with cream and Fox’s U-Bet for him. Pippin eating with him meant he actually sat and ate without doing anything else but interacting with her. She was chatty in the morning, telling him about her dreams and what she wanted to do that day. He told her that Friend was tired of being outside and needed to be inside today.

Go Play Other Joeys? Was her response to that.

‘Okay bean, let’s see where the joey parks are,’ he said, figuring he could just go to one with his laptop and write while she played. He wouldn’t mind that, really, he just needed to be with his online friends for a while, and attend to his actual profession, which he enjoyed rather a lot, despite not being able to—not wanting to—make money at it, for religious reasons.

He gave a little squeal as he saw the name of the nearest one, in Canton, which was still across town but—

‘It’s in Baltimore,’ he breathed, and gasped. ‘Ohhhh my god oh my god. Oh my god. Pippin.’

She beeped, excited.

‘Pippin.’

She beeped again, beaming.

‘Saving Joeys is in Baltimore!’

Pippin saw in his thoughts this was Big Exciting, but didn’t quite understand why—she didn’t need to though, she hopped around the room—careful to stay out of Duckie’s way—beeping excitedly, jumping on the bed, doing little handsprings.

Aix got up and turned on the big lights, pulling out the clothes the Averays had let him have after letting him look through the extensive collection of old clothes they had that actually fit someone his size—and all in black. He put on his T-gel then washed his hands, pulled on a pair of socks and his spiderweb mesh shirt, then a comfy sort of sheath dress he’d been wearing lately, dragged a comb through his hair and hurriedly checked the wheelchair pockets for snacks and other supplies and filled up his half-gallon water bottle.

Pippin ran around squeaking, excited, pulling open the drawer on the bottom of the dresser that had her new clothings in it. They were all black, because they were clothes from the Big Black House, but she was a Pierrot, so she didn’t mind black like other Faces might have. She put on the striped suit that she’d found immediately when she and Aix had been going through the Big Closet.

When Aix saw Pippin had picked out and put on the tiny Beetlejuice costume, he chuckled. He’d learned that his new little pet had the sensibility of a toddler a lot of the time, once she’d gotten clothes—always wanting to wear Costumes. She hadn’t had them until they’d arrived at Averay Manor and Lady Sitrinne and Gaspard Averay had invited him to look through all of the family’s old clothes. They were wealthy, the Averays, but they didn’t do fast fashion. Children who outgrew clothes had lots to choose from in their new size, as did people who changed weight, or style, or age, or got pregnant…. And it was all black, all of it, with the exception of perhaps a handful of pieces in some 1980s and -90s pinks with the black. These had belonged to a teenaged Victoria, and from the measurements of them, she’d started off about Aix’s old proportions—the bombshell hourglass that everybody supposedly thought of as the ideal, but that stores still didn’t fit—at least, when Aix had been that size. They did now….

But there was so much that fit him perfectly that had been from the 1920s and 30s that he couldn’t dwell too much on missed opportunity. He looked at himself in the mirror, feeling extremely goth and androgynous (and therefore beautiful) in the knee-length jazz-era sheath, with its black-on-black spiderweb embroidery on the bat-wing-shaped collar, the slip beneath. He put on some makeup, making sure to draw clown-lines on, his clown face, that he hadn’t done in a lot of years—not since before meeting his coulrophobic ex-husband—and Pippin hopped up on the table in front of the mirror to see; he let her, understanding why she would have done something so uncharacteristic—she’d never seen his clown face, before. There was no worry she’d knock or mess any of his makeup—clowns treated all makeup with reverence, some of them barely even touched it or came near it. Even the most mischievous wild zanni wouldn’t spoil makeup or interrupt someone putting it on; they were the same about masks. They’d also been observed following masked and made-up people more readily with their eyes, paying closer attention to them if one was in sight—one of the reasons that, in the past century or so, clowns had been seen as a pet for women.

Finished with his face, Aix closed the makeup and set the used brushes aside to wash later, wiped the makeup pencils and palettes he had used with an alcohol wipe, then opened the door and pushed his wheelchair out of the room, into the hallway, and pushed it down the hallway to Lady Sitrinne’s door, knocking politely. When she answered, she was already dressed and made-up, herself, all in distinguished black with her perfect makeup; seeing him, she only smiled, and said,

‘Sit down, dear, I’ll get my handbag.’

She pushed Aix—she always insisted on it, when she was with him, because she had listened when he said his hands and wrists were extremely fragile. Pippin bounded ahead, tail up, doing flips and cartwheels down the empty hallway to the elevators. Aix giggled and applauded for her.

‘We’re headed to Saving Joeys, it’s in Canton, on—get this—Toone Street!’ Aix told Lady Sitrinne, used to how she never really laughed outright. But there was a smile in her voice as she replied, pushing the elevator button.

‘How exciting,’ she said, as they waited. ‘Would you like me to stay with you or would you like to establish yourself in this social milieu independently?’

‘I was going to go so Pippin could socialise and I wouldn’t have to,’ Aix said. ‘I have my laptop, I was going to do some writing.’

‘An excellent idea,’ she said.

They chatted on the drive there, about everything, and even though Aix felt that strange prickly weirdness about talking to parents of any sort, Lady Sitrinne was both familiar in that he knew the culture she came from (WASP) and unfamiliar in that she seemed to be emotionally generous and socially competent and moreover, interested in everything he had to say, no censoring needed—not of swears, or smut, or queerness, or fandom, or anything Aix was used to having to censor around anybody that had ever been called ‘mom’ by anyone.

Though he couldn’t imagine anyone calling this woman anything but ‘Mother’ or perhaps ‘Mamma’ with emphasis on the last syllable. He could imagine someone calling her husband ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy’ though. Gaspard was one of those men that you could easily imagine as a boy, a young man, a father, and a grandfather very easily. He was the sort of boisterous, fun-loving person that had the range. Lady Sitrinne… was a Lady of the first water. …She was perhaps an Aunt, Aix realised with a start—an Aunt of the sort Bertie Wooster talked about. Except she liked Aix, and the younger members of her own family didn’t seem to fear her.

Did… did other people? Aix wondered. Was she the Aunt Agatha to the boyfriends, the girlfriends, the friends that got brought over? Did she put the fear of her into them? Gaspard would cheerfully run you through with his rapier (the man was an Olympic fencer—and the thing about fencing was that you didn’t really age out of it), but he would cheerfully run you through with his rapier. You would probably apologise for getting blood on his sword, he was that sort of jovial (and then he’d apologise for getting a hole in your suit)….

The car had stopped, and Pippin was beeping up a storm, making more noise than Aix had ever heard her make. She even started laughing the way clowns did when they were very excited and happy and usually in response to seeing other clowns. It was more avian than anything, Aix thought. Birds laughed like that. She was practically vibrating into another plane of existence as she let Aix put the black and white striped harness on her. Aix let her have a gummy bear for that, he’d had some secreted away in a pocket, in a package that made no noise.

He made sure the leash was securely fastened and then unlocked the door, and opened it, prepared for her to jump out and strain at the leash. She did jump out, but she didn’t pull. She just jumped up and down.

‘Are you a little jumpin’ bean?’ Aix said, chuckling. She laughed back at him, too excited to contain herself. ‘Okay, okay,’ Aix said.

‘It would be cruel to make her wait, I think,’ Lady Sitrinne said, and her voice was that thrumming tone that meant she was very pleased, or fond. ‘Would you like to go inside with her, or would you rather take a moment here while I summon help with your wheelchair? I notice there is not a ramp.’

It was true, the building might have been a church at one point, but it had been converted to a clown shelter and playground. Aix assessed the brick building, the way the paint was peeling, the way the name of the church had been painted out on the awning over the front steps, and over a part of the playground, which had once been a parking lot, from the way the curb outside it looked.

‘They don’t have the money for one,’ he said, quietly. ‘It’s not malice. I don’t mind. Animal shelters don’t have money to do that sort of thing unless…’ he paused, as the quote from the rest of Seuss’ poem wanted to come out, ‘unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,’ he finished, because it was true. He just hesitated to even address that with any of the Averays. But they weren’t just Rich, they were Wealthy. ‘I’m going to be sitting down the whole time I’m there, so I don’t need the chair right now.’

‘As you wish, my dear,’ she said. ‘Call me if you need anything,’ she said, pressing some neatly-folded cash into his hands.

‘I will,’ he said. His stuff was tucked in a bag, but the bags that lined the pockets of the wheelchair were removable, so Aix just had them down at his feet when he was in the car. They also zipped together and could be carried like a messenger bag. It was very clever, Aix thought, and very practical. He admired things that functioned a great deal. He shouldered the bag on his good shoulder, Pippin’s leash in his left hand. He appreciated that Lady Sitrinne waited while he climbed the steps, Pippin jumping on them and dancing up and down them as she followed, and didn’t drive away until the door had been opened, and Aix went inside.

The person who answered the door was a young person, possibly a teen, in the kind of clown makeup a lot of people Aix’s age and younger wore as a way of signalling they liked clowns or were clownkeepers. She had a very big smile and her textured hair was dyed and in little puffs all over her head, each one a different colour.

‘Oh, do you have a Tall Boi?’ she asked after she opened the top of the Dutch door.

Aix chuckled, knowing what she meant—he was dressed in black, and most of the time, goth clown people had Småtrolde.

‘Quite the opposite. I’ve,’ he said, picking up Pippin to show her. ‘got a Smole.’

‘Ta da!!!’ Pippin said, and the girl giggled.

‘Ohhhhhhh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh—’ she said, as she hurried to unlock the bottom of the door and let them inside. ‘Ohhh she’s so cute.’

‘No pictures,’ Aix said, loud enough for everyone in the lobby to hear him. ‘No pictures please and thank you.’ If there was one group that overall respected consent and even release forms before taking photos, it was clown people.

There weren’t a lot of people in the lobby, likely because everyone was outside enjoying the day. It was a nice day—for this biome, anyway, Aix thought. It was far too humid to feel like a nice day to his desert blood. The lobby had definitely once been the front area of a church, and while there had been a lot of effort to paint the place with cheerful shapes and colours, the money was going to help the clowns, not keep the shelter looking in top shape. That was most shelters though, and it was a good thing really. Aix didn’t much trust the kind of shelters or veterinary surgeries that looked too slick and shiny.

‘So,’ said the receptionist, walking around to behind the desk again. ‘This is our sign-in book, which we don’t have to show anybody by the way, that’s why it’s behind this desk. Mr Grishakin just likes to know who is visiting, he knows most every clown that exists, so you don’t even have to put your name, really.’

Aix listened, and heard what wasn’t being said, and signed Pippin in as ‘Pippin (prev. Peasepetal)’, because that seemed accurate, though he’d never known a clown that was old enough to have changed names. ‘I just found her,’ he explained, as the receptionist had a bit of a double-take at the name.

‘She’s… she’s not a fooly?’

‘No she’s got Smolism,’ Aix said. ‘She’s, ah, she’s pretty old, I just found that out recently. She really wants to go outside,’ he said.

‘Right yes, I know it’s so exciting!’ the receptionist said to Pippin’s squeaking and giggling, which hadn’t let up, even as she dipped behind the desk to get something from a drawer. She came up with some wristbands that had wiggly uneven neon stripes in pink, blue, and green. ‘These are to tell people you don’t want photos or video taken today.’

Despite his visceral reaction to Tyvek wristbands because of asylums, the friendly colours and pattern helped a lot, and Aix out his right wrist, and the receptionist put it on with care that it was lined up as she fastened it. Then she turned to Pippin.

‘Hey, babbu, can I put it around your arm?’

Pippin shook her head firmly. ‘Bad men wear arm bands.’

The lobby went so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Clowns didn’t talk full coherent sentences—except in Crises, and even then, they usually only knew one word, like ‘help’ or ‘fire’ or ‘hurt’. It took them years to learn words meant something specific and abstract.

‘Um… I… what do we do?’ the receptionist sat down very slowly in her chair, and Aix’s heart went out to her. He set Pippin on the desk to sit, so he had hands free to Pantomime to her.

‘Bad men wear red arm bands with the Bad X, that’s true,’ he said, using Pantomime when he knew the word, ‘have you ever seen a black arm band, Pippin? All black.’

Pippin screwed her Mask up in thought, kicking her little feet (which had little black Chelsea boots on them). Yes, she thought with a nod and a squeak, she had seen those. A long time ago.

‘Black ones are for when our friends go away forever and we miss them, like black clothes.’

Pippin nodded. She remembered, she was a Pierrot, she knew about Sadness.

‘This one tells our friends we don’t want pictures taken.’

Pippin looked at it, clearly having some Thoughts, then reached out a hand to the wristband still in the receptionist’s hand and made the grabby motion twice, the Pantomime for ‘I want that thing please’. The receptionist handed it over, and Pippin stuck out her tongue, folding the wristband into the shape of awareness ribbons, and putting it to her lapel, looking up at Aix.

‘Okay, we’ll do it that way.’ He kissed her forehead, looked at the receptionist. ‘Can I borrow some scissors? I have a safety pin, don’t worry.’

‘Oh, uh, sure, yeah… lemme see…’ she disappeared into the drawers again, before coming up with an old pair of blue children’s scissors—the good kind. Pippin beeped at the colour, reaching out her hands—

‘Bupbup, no. Danger. Sharp,’ Aix said firmly. ‘Duckie uses the scissors.’ His feet were starting to hurt, but he had enough time to cut the white ends off, and even finish the ends in two points like real ribbon, using one of the safety pins he always kept on his clothes to pin it to Pippin’s striped lapel. ‘There!’ he said, patting it. ‘Now we can go play, huh?’ He picked her up and put her down on the floor again. The receptionist pointed to the door Pippin was already heading for excitedly, and Aix gave her a little salute as he headed out.

The parking lot had been dug up, and it was clear all of the money they had to spare had gone to the playscaping. There were woodchips and soft pads, and a lot of the playground equipment was the old style kind you could get hurt—or do real fun stuff, like gymnastics—on. Some of it looked salvaged from a Discovery Zone, including an actual rolly-slide (well, that’s what Aix had always called them). There were lots of clowns—circuses mostly, but Aix saw more Småtrolde than one usually found in one place, and most of them Horror Queens—Drag Queen-Småtrolde vanity crosses, usually very ‘badly behaved’ because of what you got when you crossed a Drag Queen’s assertive fussiness with a Småtrolde’s height and natural weaponry. But that was what Saving Joeys specialised in, was “Horror” clowns, as Americans wrongly called Småtrolde.

Under the side awning there were some picnic benches, and Aix scoped out to see if there were any outlets along the outer wall as he got Pippin out of her harness. He looked at her, though, before she ran off. ‘Okay, baby, have fun.’ He kissed her forehead, which was what she’d been waiting for. She gave him a big squeaky dramatic kiss back on his cheek, and then scampered off, giggling.

If Aix hadn’t seen her interact with the many Småtrolde happily haunting the Averay estate, he would have been worried Pippin would have got bullied by bigger clowns; but he’d seen how free she was with asserting when she didn’t want to be picked up, thank you very much, and how readily she would use her little teeth when someone didn’t respect her warnings. Småtrolde weren’t aggressive to other clowns, usually, but circuses could be quite mean if they were poorly socialised and of the Red Group, and there was a Harlequin here—a high content Harlequin, from the look of his motley, and… that was probably Pepper, the Killer Clown of Baltimore, Aix realised as he watched Pippin beeline for him, and invited him to play the way wild zanni did—by jumping on him. Pepper, contrary to being hostile, literally lit up, and they were off doing a Bit together instantly.

Aix relaxed, and turned to get his laptop out, reasoning if they didn’t want him using this outlet they’d ask. This empty table was close enough to the wall that nobody would trip, he reasoned.

It wasn’t that Aix really believed Pepper was just a clown that had ‘gone bad’ and started killing randomly. He had killed precisely one person—his previous keepers—and that only after multiple reports of animal abuse had been filed and not followed up on, and also he hadn’t directly killed the couple, he’d just trapped them in the attic and rigged a trap worthy of Kevin McCallister that had killed both as soon as they’d tried to get out.

A lot of people thought that had been poetic justice, given what was found in the attic; but the press had run with it after the Baltimore Sun had published an article that had named Pepper The Killer Clown of Baltimore, and the judge had not been understanding.

‘He’s not gonna hurt her, don’t worry,’ said a voice, and Aix jumped.

‘Oh golly, I’m sorry!’ he said, and Aix looked up to see a big man in colourful, paint-splattered overalls over a worn-in blue t-shirt had just come over. The hair on his arms was dark red, and he was masked, which made Aix feel better. Most of the people here were masked, he realised, though many had the kind that had a panel of see-through vinyl, so you could see their mouths when they spoke.

‘I startle easily,’ Aix said, brushing it aside, like he always did.

‘Nah, it’s my fault, folks say I oughta put a bell on. Anyroad,’ he said, ‘I’m Simon Grish, I run the place.’

Aix was quiet for a while. ‘I am processing that,’ he said. ‘I am. Very excited to meet you. I have your book memorised.’

He chuckled bashfully. ‘Gawl-lee,’ he said, and Aix stifled a giggle at how charming that was. ‘I’m just me. You new in town, then? I expect we would have remembered that little fella you have.’

‘I’m new in town, yeah,’ Aix said. ‘I’ve only had her for a couple days, actually. ‘s a long story, but the short version is that I grew up not being allowed to have a clown, even though I wanted one and read all about them et cetera, and then I had the bad luck to marry someone coulrophobic, but he’s gone now and I finally got my first one, and it’s Pippin.’

There, that was nice and bloodless, not embarrassingly over-sharing, right? Right. Aix thought to himself.

‘Ah, that explains her age.’

‘Oh she’s—she’s old.’

‘I heard,’ Simon said, chuckling. ‘Marshmallow at the front desk ran and got me, could have knocked her down with a feather! Don’t worry though, ‘tain’t nothin’, she’s just too young to have run into that before. Can I ask—do you know that little one’s pedigree?’

‘I know she was called Peasepetal once,’ Aix said, as he stowed his bag next to him on the bench and opened his laptop, ‘and that she lived in London around Shakespeare’s time. She’s in Pepys’ diary I believe, under that name. I was just going to research all of that today—haven’t had a chance until now.’

‘I’ll leave you to it—I know how we all get about researching older joeys.’ He took a card out of his overall pocket, ‘Here’s the Wi-Fi password for today—we have to change it every day to keep the folks around here from taking up all our bandwidth,’ he said as he handed it to Aix. ‘Are you in town long? There’s a show in a couple days—nothing through the ACC, just for fun and to give the kids some practise. We’d love to have you.’

‘Oh—yeah, I’d love that!’ Aix said. Simon got to his feet.

‘I’ll get you the entry forms then, and our resources packet,’ he said, and stopped to say, ‘Oh, I love your stickers,’ before he ambled off, and Aix breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t had to directly say that he wanted to be left alone.

He also, smiled to himself—the stickers on his old beater of a laptop (which he’d gotten on purpose—he’d had enough of new laptops that broke within a year, and had bought a used laptop of the line that were issued by IBM and had been since the laptop had been invented, the laptops that could get dropped out of a second story window and still boot up) were fan-made stickers of the clown character Fizzarolli, as well as a pair of stickers that had a little clown that looked similar to Pippin—one said ‘Pain, Agony’ in cheerful bubble letters, the other said ‘Suffering If You Will’. Aix had gotten them the first time his arthritis had shown up, which had been last year.

They were the first clown stickers he’d been able to have, both in terms of being able to afford frivolities and living free of people with coulrophobia that they made into his problem.

He signed into the Wi-Fi, and loaded his email inbox just to test the speed.

And then he was faced with his stuffed full inbox again, reminded of what had woken him this morning. He got his big half gallon water bottle beside him, took a sip of water, and opened a new tab, loading up his author inbox on the actual Archive Of Our Own website, because it was easier to read the reviews there.

Oh.

Oh, Aix thought, wide-eyed, staring at the pair of emoji signing the review. He scrolled down, seeing it over and over and over and had Roseblade just gone through and read every single story?

As Aix read them, the dopamine hits started to make him a little giddy.

He was falling in love with Roseblade, a little bit—and then a new username appeared, on his most recent work, the one he’d banged out and barely remembered.

‘Oh holy shit,’ Aix whispered into their hands, staring at the message. This was the holy grail of reviews, and he almost wanted to close his laptop. He copied and pasted it into a word document, just to make sure he had a hard copy.

And then he went back and read it again.

And again.

He could feel his brain telling him that he should respond, he should say he was single, he should… no, no. That was how he’d met his ex-husband; normal people found it very easy to lie online, very easy to say things they didn’t mean, very easy to play with other people because other people weren’t real when they were just words on the screen. It wasn’t like how Aix viewed things—it was difficult for him to lie at all, in real life or online; and he only lied online when it came to his name and his location and other details.

Scents… and the username had the word ‘Grasse’ in it, and Grasse, Aix knew, was where perfume came from.

Was this guy French?

Was this… was this René?

He opened up his instant messenger program and looked up in his phone the handle that Cameron had given him, before realising he had a friend request from… Cameron.

Aix kept eyes on Anna Heeren, who was speaking to a group of big sunburnt butches with folded arms, and Aix was typing furiously and hitting enter frequently, using the chat as a lifeline. He couldn’t duck out without Pippin, but she was on the other side of Heeren and Aix just kept typing, hoping someone could come. He couldn’t text Lady Sitrinne, that would have required looking down at his phone and he didn’t poke touch-screens nearly as fast as he typed with a proper keyboard.

Someone came to sit down at his table. ‘Hey,’ said the receptionist. ‘You okay?’

‘That woman is very scary and I would like to leave before she knows I am here, please,’ Aix’s voice was quiet and monotone and rapid.

‘Yeah, Suze spotted her shoulder holster,’ the receptionist said in a similarly low voice. ‘You want me to get Pippin, or do you wanna leave her here? That’s okay, we’ll keep her safe.’

‘I would like you to keep watch while I pack up and possibly run interference. Can you grift?’

‘Can I—can I what?’

‘Just keep watch then, and if she starts coming over, pretend to check your phone, and then act like you just got a phone call about our ride being here, and get me out of here.’

‘Oh, I have a car. You wanna go somewhere?’

‘Yes please,’ Aix was still speaking low and urgently. ‘I have also called for help, I am talking to my friend Cameron.’

‘Gotcha. I’ll keep an eye on her while you pack up.’

Aix finally tore his gaze from Heeren’s blonde ponytail, and unplugged his laptop as fast as he dared without moving so quickly a predatory animal like Heeren would register it. He didn’t bother winding the cords as neatly as usual, he just shoved them in with the laptop, and slowly got up, and offered his hand to Marshmallow, who took it in a way that made it obvious she was comforting him.

‘Act like we’re a couple,’ Aix said in a low voice, ‘it’s less suspicious if she looks over, that way.’

She got a little closer to him, and they walked inside the building, and Marshmallow kept going, leading him by the hand into the back of the shelter, past the little exam rooms that they’d made using plywood screens painted brightly with the simple colours and shapes clowns liked, and out a side door that went into an alley, where some cars were parked. She unlocked a red 90s Nissan Quest, pulling the sliding door open and revealing the middle row of seats was gone, and there were various plastic totes of clown things that revealed she wasn’t just a clownkeeper—she was a clown, herself.

‘Get in,’ she said, and Aix was glad she understood the concept of a getaway car as she hopped in after he’d clambered in and slammed the sliding door closed, using her remote to lock the car even as she climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car. Aix took the back left seat, not even worried about buckling in before the car started moving, but feeling strangely calm now that he’d been able to leave.

He untangled himself from the shoulder strap of his bag and got his seatbelt on as she was pulling down the alley slowly.

‘Thanks,’ Aix said.

‘No problem. You can tell me what the hell some miscellaneous white woman dick with a gun is coming to a clown shelter for when we get wherever you wanna go. So, where do you wanna go?’

‘Give me a minute to think about that.’ Aix thought it over, as he got out his phone and calmly messaged Cameron.

He looked up at the messages Cameron had sent between his frantic typing, but there was only one,

‘How do you feel about driving me over the state line to DC?’ Aix asked.

‘Only if you tell me if you’ve actually done something illegal.’

‘No,’ Aix said. ‘I have not. She thinks I have, and the cops are on her side in this town. I don’t know if I can explain further.’

‘I know what goes on in this town,’ Marshmallow said, turning onto a highway, checking her mirrors before she said, ‘When I was sixteen, I saw a fucking huge monster one night while I was walking home from a party in Upton. A fucking—have you seen Princess Mononoke?’

‘Yes,’ Aix said, wondering if she meant—

‘I saw a boar about that size, just like, sneaking around. Like he cared about not being seen. Pigs don’t care about who sees them. And they don’t have pierced ears. And one time, like back during the clown trial when I was five, I saw a kid at a vending machine that had pointed ears and four joints on his fingers. That doesn’t happen to humans. Like you don’t get extra joints on your fingers as like, a mutation or something. And clown people know this shit is real, clowns know all kinds of shit.’

‘That’s true,’ Aix said. ‘She’s someone who wants to kill all of those types of beings, I can tell you that at least. She wants them dead and thinks that she’s a hero for it, that she’s saving people by hunting things. But they’re not things, they’re people.’ He hoped that was general enough.

‘You mean you’re people, right?’ she said, and Aix froze, and apparently she saw that in the mirror and it was enough. ‘You’re safe with me,’ she said, in a softer-edged voice. ‘So,’ she said, ‘you wanna go anywhere specific in DC or just to somewhere like a mall?’

‘Um, I don’t know. I can’t walk much, normally if I’m walking around a lot I have a wheelchair; I was planning on just sitting and writing at the shelter, that’s why I didn’t have my wheelchair with me.’

‘Oh shit, okay. Okay.’

‘I would prefer not to be somewhere I can be seen by cameras or cops,’ Aix said. ‘I do not know anyone in DC personally, so if you’re willing to drive farther, we should head for Manhattan. That’s the nearest city where I have an actual destination and a person I can go toward.’

‘How about we stop at this Heart,’ she said, pulling off into the huge parking lot, ‘and we’ll figure out what to do. Do you wanna call anybody?’

‘I… I should keep use of this phone to a minimum. If we can find a payphone, or…’ Aix tried to remember what Mike said, as Marshmallow drove through the expanse of mostly-empty asphalt. ‘…Heart stations are safe,’ he said, remembering. ‘They’re faestations. No cameras.’

‘Yeah, and they don’t call the cops on you.’ Marshmallow said, as she parked near to the entrance as she could, using a handicap spot. ‘I’m parking here because you’re disabled and it’s an honour system, I know that because my grandmother never got a placard or anything but they told her she could park here anyways because their handicap spots aren’t official because official handicap parking is so hard to get.’

‘Oh, yeah, it is,’ Aix said, with bitter emphasis.

‘Yeah fuck that, for real.’

‘Indeed!’ Aix said, with feeling, and Marshmallow laughed. ‘Fae are very honour system. Like, we know that humans lie, and that’s one of the things that makes humans interesting and marvellous and dangerous; but we don’t lie. We can’t.’

‘Hang on,’ she said, and got out of the driver’s seat, climbing into the back again. Aix was faintly jealous; he remembered being that thin, and that strong…

‘That’s why you asked if I could grift, isn’t it?’ Marshmallow asked, feeling a little less offended about it, now that she had that context. She’d been a little wary of suddenly being given orders by this white guy, but the situation being what it had been, she figured it was that he’d been in situations like that before, and it wasn’t like she had really known what was going on; but she’d wanted to help, and Simon and the others had told her to make sure everyone had a buddy in emergencies where cops or other dangerous people showed up, and this guy hadn’t had anyone near him to buddy up with….

She figured she should tell her grandmother where she was, and pulled out her phone to send a quick message while the fae in her back seat answered her question:

‘Yeah, it’s—well, I learned a lot about how to human interaction from this one show called Leverage, which is about thieves and grifters and explains a lot about how that works. That’s how I learned a lot of how bad people work, and how to manipulate them. I can’t do a lot of it—I can’t lie, not even like, my facial expressions or reactions—but I can do some of it.’

‘And you can coach other people.’

‘Yeah. Thanks, by the way. I’m sorry if that—if I made you uncomfortable, or—’

‘You’re fine, it’s okay, it was just a Bit we were doing, I get it. Do you need—’ she started digging around. ‘I think I have a spare cane in here somewhere, I keep it for my grandmother, gimme a second and I’ll find it for you….’

‘That folding stool would be more helpful, I can walk better than I can stand.’

‘Okay!’ she said, ‘that, I can do; lemme dig it out,’ she carefully rearranged some of the things—a balloon pump, wigs, some pink and green platform clown shoes, some jazz shoes with a split sole—until the little folding stool was unearthed. ‘This is my face painting stool usually, so you might stand up covered in glitter. Kids love glitter.’ She set it down, opened the sliding door—the car was old enough there was only the one—and hopped out, then got the stool. ‘You good to get out or do you wanna hand?’

‘I think I’m good,’ Aix said, and carefully got out, leaving his bag but making sure he had his card case and his phone. ‘Thank you. For all of this. Do you want something at the Heart? I have a little cash and need to make change without announcing I need change.’ He got to his feet in the parking lot, adjusting his hat and veil.

‘Yeah, sure,’ she said, Aix carrying the stool as she shut the sliding door and they started across the parking lot. ‘You think I’m too obvious, with the makeup?’

‘Nope. The thing about being conspicuous, like dressing in a subculture or whatever, is that people don’t think someone that conspicuous is going to do anything, because obviously.’

‘Are you like, a teacher or some shit?’

‘People always ask me that,’ Aix laughed, as they walked in. ‘I’m good at teaching, but that’s not what teachers have to be. Let’s see…’ he said, going over to the fridges, picking out a bottle of fancy brand-name water for himself. ‘I’m gonna go see the candy, come get me when you’re ready.’

‘Oh I just like coke,’ she said, pulling out a bottle and hip-checking the glass door shut. Aix grabbed a box of turkey sandwiches and some sour gummy worms, and she grabbed a box of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and then went over to the bakery case. ‘It okay if I get a donut?’

‘Yes, g’ahead and get however many donut you want,’ Aix said with a smile. He liked having money enough to treat people to whatever they wanted—it had been so rare, in his life, that he had money enough to share even a little bit. They went up to the counter and Aix paid, careful not to reveal how much was in his wallet.

They left, and followed the sign pointing to a payphone that was still on the front of the building, but in a little area off to the side of the doors. As it turned out, they needn’t have brought the stool, because there was a concrete bench to sit on, right by the payphone that was mounted to the wall.

‘I’ll keep lookout,’ Marshmallow said, and Aix nodded, reading the instructions on the payphone, glad for the privacy to figure out how a payphone worked, as much as the privacy to make his call. He was old enough that they’d been around when he was a kid; but he’d been kept helpless enough that nobody had taught him to use them or given him money to do so.

But there were instructions, and he knew how to follow instructions. He read through them twice, like his dad had taught him, and then followed them to the letter, putting in his coin and waiting for the helpful robot lady saying, ‘At the sound of the tone, please dial your number, or press zero to speak to an operator.’

He pressed zero.

An actual human voice answered. ‘Hello, how may I direct your call?’

‘I need to contact Victoria and Dmitri Blackwoodstone, Manhattan, thirteen thirteen.’

‘Who may I say is calling?’

‘Aix, it’s an emergency.’

‘Would you like me to stay on the line while I connect you?’

‘Yes, please.’

It rang twice, before Victoria picked up. ‘Blackwoodstone residence, Lady of the house speaking.’

‘Victoria, it’s Aix. I’m in trouble, can you talk?’

‘Of course, darling. Operator, hang up please, this call is now on my authority.’

‘That’s okay with me too,’ Aix made sure to say, and they heard a click. ‘I’m at a Heart rest stop. I was at the clown shelter in Baltimore when the Heeren showed up, and I don’t know why, but I had one of the shelter workers help me leave, said worker was kind enough to drive me to this rest stop. Pippin is… Pippin is still at the shelter. I asked Cameron to help before the shelter worker came and offered to help, and he said his lawyer mom was coming to the shelter, but by then I was gone. Nobody knows where I am, I didn’t feel comfortable calling your grandmother about this, I don’t know what to do or what the Heeren wanted. Should I go see Mistress in DC or… what should I do? The shelter worker has seen some things before, but I don’t know what I’m allowed to tell her.’

‘This counts as a crisis, my dear. You can tell her exactly what’s going on. Anyway, we trust clown people more than regular civilians. Do you need money? Nevermind, you’ll say you don’t. I’m wiring you money with this new-fangled app thing some of the young people in my building taught me about. There. Did you get it?’

Aix checked his phone, seeing a four digit number and staring at it. ‘…Victoria, that’s a lot of money.’

‘Yes, well, gasoline is expensive just now, so I hear. We’ll make sure Pippin is transported back up here, but ask your shelter worker if she can spare a few hours to drive you up to your Auntie Victoria. I’ll treat her to a showing of Beetlejuice if she’d like, in addition to paying her, in cash, for her time.’

‘I’ll ask, hang on—wait, will this call run out of time?’

‘No, dear, the call being on my authority prevents them disconnecting us.’

Aix put the phone against his chest, and said, loudly but hopefully not sounding angry or distressed. ‘Marshmallow!’

She popped her head around the side. ‘Damn, you got lungs. What’s up?’

‘My Aunt Victoria wants to know if you would mind driving me up to Manhattan. She would pay you for your time and I have gas and food money for both of us that she just sent me. Also she would treat you to a showing of Beetlejuice.’

‘Like the Broadway show?’ Marshmallows eyes were wide.

‘Yeah. Xander Teague’s her cousin.’

‘Xander Teague’s your cousin?’ They went wider.

‘Is that a yes?’ Aix was smiling, but needed to be sure.

‘Fuck yes!’

Aix put the phone back up to his face. ‘She said yeah that’s okay with her.’ He paused, and offered the phone. ‘She wants to talk to you for a minute.’

Marshmallow took the phone. ‘Hello, ma’am?’

‘Hello, I’m Victoria Blackwoodstone, and I would like to know your usual hourly rate for whatever job I am pulling you away from. Do not lowball me, I want to pay you what your time is worth, plus expenses and hazard pay.’

‘A hundred dollars an hour,’ Marshmallow said, with confidence she didn’t feel, seeing what would happen when this white lady with her private school accent heard that, heard it in Marshmallow’s extremely Baltimore Public School one.

‘So, let me think, I believe double that would be appropriate for hazard pay then, plus expenses and a Broadway ticket and a place to stay over a few nights—I have a spare room if you don’t mind sharing it with a sewing machine and most of my costume wardrobe.’

‘I’m—I’m a clown, ma’am, I share my own room with my costume wardrobe and a sewing machine.’ Marshmallow thanked all her years of improv training on how to cover her shock or fear with jokes for not just stammering at the amount of money just being accepted. This lady was rich rich, not ‘I count every penny and expect it back and live in a suburb’ rich, but ‘I don’t know how much regular stuff costs’ rich.

She had a nice laugh. ‘Oh, splendid! Well, you’ll get on famously with us, most of my friends are drag queens! Well, how about it? Will you take the job?’

‘Yeah,’ Marshmallow said, not believing her luck—and a little suspicious, but she could grill this lady’s nephew on the way. And, well, she reminded herself, this white guy was a fae, like literally; so maybe this was what Fairy Tale Rules looked like in the modern day.

‘Thank you so awfully much, you’re doing a great favour to me and my family. Please don’t use your cell phone for the duration, they can be tracked and we are avoiding the most well-funded criminal organization in the country—by which I mean the police, of course. Is that all right? Pay phones such as this one are safe—safer than regular landlines, even, as they are run by us. Do you still want the job?’

Marshmallow thought about it, thought about the money involved, and said, ‘So, I could call anybody I wanted on one of these phones?’

‘You can’t tell them many details—at least where concerns names and specific addresses, and so on—but yes, I would like you to tell your family you are safe; I just don’t want Google knowing where you are, they’re snitches.’

Marshmallow stifled a giggle at that accent saying ‘snitches’. ‘Can I text them?’

‘No, we haven’t the technology for that yet, I’m so sorry. I know texting is quite the thing, nowadays, but the police can access it whenever they like, and that makes it unsafe.’

‘I already texted my grandmother that there was an emergency evacuation and that I was safe and would be late home. Is that… does that break the deal?’

‘No, my dear lady, no, just keep it vague like that. Would you like to call your grandmother and have me speak to her right now, so she knows I am a legitimate employer?’

Marshmallow thought on that. It was a very respectful offer, and she was still young enough that Bonma got a little overprotective when it came to job offers, not wanting Marshmallow to get hurt or trafficked. ‘I think that would help a lot.’

‘Very well, I’ll have the operator connect us—is this a landline?’

‘Yeah, Bonma’s had the same number since the sixties.’

‘Then it’s likely her line is more secure than a cellular or newer line. Excellent! Bear with me, I have to hit a few buttons.’

Marshmallow heard the tones of numbers being pressed, and there was a sort of clicking noise, and a voice came on the line—a human voice, not a robot one.

‘This is the Operator speaking, how may I help you?’

‘Victoria Blackwoodstone, thirteen thirteen. Say your Grandmother’s phone number, my dear lady.’

Marshmallow recited it from memory, as Bonma had trained her from the time she was able to talk, and there was a ringing sound, and her Bonma’s voice.

‘Hello, who may I ask is calling?’ came her Bonma’s Secretary Voice, soft-edged and professional.

‘Hello, I’m Victoria Blackwoodstone, I have your granddaughter here on the line with me and was calling because I have offered her a job driving my nephew up to Manhattan to see me quite suddenly, and I wanted to give her and her family the courtesy of calling, so you could ask me questions, if you have any.’

There was a pause. Marshmallow spoke. ‘She’s gonna pay me two hundred dollars an hour, plus expenses.’

Bonma started to grill—politely, but Bonma could be really polite and still hard as steel. She asked questions about insurance and liability and accidents and all kinds of things Marshmallow wouldn’t have thought to ask. She got Mrs Blackwoodstone to send an advance to Marshmallow’s bank account, and to give Bonma her contact information—which included an address up in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Mrs Blackwoodstone even encouraged Bonma to look up her name and family, and to call some lawyers and people down in Baltimore to give her references. In the end, Bonma declared she was very glad for the opportunity Marshmallow was being given, and Mrs Blackwoodstone hung up.

‘What on earth is going on, baby? You said there was some kind of emergency evacuation at the shelter, and now this?’

‘The emergency was the police coming again, Bonma,’ Marshmallow said. It wasn’t the first time the cops had come to the shelter, and the procedure was always to get as many people out of the building as possible. Simon was really good at using his being a big white guy with a harmless, even stupid, kind of way about him, to help the people of colour that volunteered or even just visited the shelter. He basically put himself between them and the cops, sometimes physically filling up a doorway. All the big butch moms and dykes surrounded any dangerous visitor, but Simon was the owner and he was always happy to say things like, ‘well gawl-lee, Officer, what brings you to my place today? You wanna adopt?’ and stuff. He was good at being the Bumpkin.

‘They were after that harlequin again, huh?’

‘Idunno, Bonma, Mr Simon just has us buddy up and leave as quick as we can while he handles it. I buddied up with the right person, I guess.’

‘Why would he suddenly need to leave the whole state? Did he do somethin?’

‘I think they’re after his clown being a zanni, Bonma.’ Which might have been true—Pippin was full of blue markings, and had no red nose—she was pure zanni, and those were illegal, even in Maryland. You weren’t allowed to release them into the wild, but you also weren’t allowed to have them as pets.

‘So his rich Auntie hired you to smuggle.’

‘No, the clown is still at the shelter. I’m just driving him up to New York, Bonma.’

‘Even with seeing this money in my bank account—and she sent me quite a bit more than an advance—I don’t trust something about all this, baby. You be careful around these people. I’m gonna test and see if this money’s legitimate, you call me exactly at nine pm tonight, and at nine am in the morning, every day you’re gone, hear? Bonne-maman needs to know you’re safe.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Marshmallow said.

‘And you get some sleep. You find a hotel less than two hundred dollars a night and call me at nine pm, and I’ll pay for it from this money and we’ll see if its real.’

Marshmallow knew Bonma didn’t yet trust online banking, but it wasn’t a bad idea. She hadn’t even considered having enough money to stop at night and sleep in a real bed. ‘Okay, Bonma. I will, I promise.’

‘Bonne-maman loves you, you know, I worry about you.’

‘I love you too, Bonma. Please call Kofi and ask him to come stay with you until I’m home—I worry about you, too.’

‘Oh him and his babies are already here. We’ve been visiting. His man is out making groceries for me.’

Marshmallow smiled at the familiar remnant of Bonma being from New Orleans. Kofi was Marshmallow’s oldest brother, he was a vet at the Maryland Zoo and married to Chaz, a Piscataway man who was, also, a vet at the Maryland Zoo; and they’d just had a new baby a few months ago, added on to their twin girls. All of them coming immediately to help Bonma made Marshmallow feel a lot better about being away. ‘Oh good. Say hi to everybody for me.’

‘I will, baby. You drive safely, and only stop at Heart stations after it gets dark.’

‘Yes, ma’am, I will.’

‘You still have my old Green Guide?’

Marshmallow had the old guide, the last edition that had been published, in her glove box. ‘Yes, Bonma.’

‘Well you look at it before you stop anywhere. It may be from the sixties but towns have longer memories than people.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Can I talk to this passenger of yours?’

‘Uh, hang on—’ Marshmallow covered the receiver and said to Aix, who was sitting on the bench, reading his phone. ‘My grandmother wants to talk to you. She’s just worried about my safety.’

He looked like a deer in headlights; he looked scared, she realised. ‘Understandable!’ he said, cheerfully. ‘I can do my best,’ sounded like it was more to remind himself. ‘Are you a minor?’ he asked, and that startled her.

‘I’m… I’m twenty-four,’ she said.

‘I’m bad at telling how old people are, I’ve been worried, apologies,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I can talk to her.’

She handed the phone to him,

‘Hello, ma’am, I’m Aix Underhill, I’m Mrs Blackwoodstone’s nephew.’

Marshmallow was relieved to hear his polite Phone Voice; Bonma was old-fashioned and valued when people knew how to talk on the phone properly. She pulled out her cigarette case, holding it up; Aix gave a thumbs up and she walked off a little distance, leaning against the wall and lighting up one of the clove cigarettes her grandmother hand-rolled for them both.

Well, Bonma had a machine that injected it into the little papers; but she still mixed up the tobacco herself, and everything. It was cheaper than buying them, and healthier too—as healthy as tobacco could be, anyway. Bonma had said Marshmallow could smoke as long as ‘it wasn’t one of those nasty electric things—you don’t know what they put in those!’, after she’d found the first one Marshmallow had bought and snuck home. Ever since then, Bonma had supplied Marshmallow’s cigarettes. She smoked herself, had never had any cancer or anything from it, despite her doctors trying to get her to stop.

Marshmallow got out her phone, and saw she had a notification on her money app, and had to take a minute to check—and saw a four-digit number had been sent to her by NineInchNeedles, with only ‘Lodging & Expenses -Victoria’ as the note attached.

That was a lot of money, Marshmallow thought, even as she immediately transferred it to her bank account—it was so much money that the fee for having it be instant didn’t even matter. After that, she took a puff (you didn’t inhale cloves) of her cigarette, contemplating her luck and turning her location and Bluetooth off.

Bonma had been supportive of her being interested in clowning, had been the one to take her to a children’s clowning class at the Y when she’d been little; and the clowning community was a very supportive, big, old community, in Baltimore. There had immediately been lots of people, not just her big family or her neighbourhood, in her world. She’d grown up with a lot more white and also a lot more queer adults looking out for her, and Bonma had always grilled anybody she was going to be left alone with, but had been pleased when Marshmallow brought home food and got gigs being a clown at parties and events, and the job at the shelter that was paid, not just a volunteer position… and clown folk were strange, and Simon himself had a lot of stories of the fae that she’d heard, and the white people always talked about the fae like they were as real as bears or something, but Marshmallow had always thought they were something you encountered outside a city, up in the mountains where Simon was from….

She’d been kind to one of the fae, Marshmallow realised again. She’d been Kind and, also, Followed Instructions, and now she was being rewarded.

She wondered how much this job would end up paying her. Maybe she could help get the roof replaced, so it would stop leaking whenever it rained… the rowhouse they lived in was Bonma’s ‘free and clear’ as Bonma always proudly said; and it was Marshmallow’s too after Bonma put her on the deed, but just because the bank wasn’t coming to take it didn’t mean they didn’t need money. Houses needed work, and their house was old, and the roof had needed replacing for years.

She tried not to think too far ahead of herself, and wondered if Underhill was just nervous around grandmothers or what. She wondered where his wheelchair was, if he’d be okay this long without it. She checked her bank account, and saw the money had landed, and updated the tiny register she kept next to her bank card, rounding down like she always did with deposits—something Bonma had taught her. Round deposits down and withdrawals up, the cents you saved that way gave you padding in case of emergencies or fees the bank wasn’t telling you about.

After that, she supposed there wasn’t any reason to keep her phone on, anymore. She was glad she hadn’t had any plans for the next couple days, due to being busy working at the shelter. She felt guilty and wrong, not telling anybody else where she would be; but Victoria had said not to tell people addresses or anything. To fall off the map. And anyway, probably Victoria was calling the shelter herself, to arrange for Pippin’s care. It wasn’t like they’d let Pippin come to harm—Pepper wouldn’t let that happen, if nothing else. He was the Ringleader of the clowns at the shelter, even if they were visiting just for the day.

She counted five things she could see, four she could hear, three she could smell, two she could touch, and by then, Aix was off the phone with her Bonma. He got to his feet, taking the bag of food that had been sitting beside him.

‘Okay,’ he said, as they started back to the car. ‘I guess she feels like you’re safe around me, which is a high compliment. She seems like a cool lady, your grandmother.’

Marshmallow laughed. ‘I did not expect you to have that reaction,’ she admitted. Aix shrugged.

‘I get where she’s coming from. Some strange white guy suddenly needed you as a getaway driver. That’s hella suspicious. She just wanted to make sure I wasn’t taking advantage of you. So, three things: one, phone off?’ he asked. She held it up.

‘Phone off.’

‘Excellent. I know it’s nerve wracking but phones tattle to cops constantly. Two: keep an eye open for a place to get foil so we can wrap the phones in a faraday cage, just in case they are lying about being off—smartphones are like that, and we gotta be paranoid. Three: I have a lot to tell you on the drive, so I’ll sit in the front with you. Your grandmother also made me promise I would use my whiteness to protect you from cops, which I have never done before but I’m willing to try my best to do. Victoria gave me the phone number of a lawyer her family has on retainer, so I have some weaponry.’

There was a maritime pipe across the parking lot, and that made Aix curious. ‘The hell…?’ he said, looking out at the parking lot, where a gorgeous vintage car had parked, and it was far away but Aix saw long red hair, and also, Pippin. ‘Oh that’s Cameron! He’s safe, he’s one of us.’

‘You sure it isn’t a trap?’

‘The car, and the whistle, means it can’t be—that woman after me can’t do that sound, even if she had the right instrument; it’s hard. Also, Pippin would not be that friendly to an enemy of mine. She’s protective.’ He waved to Cameron, then got in the car. ‘But I am not walking all that distance.’

She got in, started the car. ‘Did he bring your wheelchair too? I can make room.’

‘He might have, but I’m not sure I want to look that overtly weak.’

Marshmallow didn’t say anything to that; anyway, they were across the parking lot now, and Aix was rolling down the window, and a really good-looking red-haired white guy was leaning against the window, smiling a really nice smile.

‘I’m here to bring you a Pippin,’ he said, and they saw flashes of Pippin, behind him, as she jumped up and down, timing her squeaks so that she would do it just as she came level with the window, then disappear again. Marshmallow couldn’t help giggling.

‘I should ask for my wheelchair, but I don’t want to mess with it,’ Aix said.

‘That’s a reasonable consideration, but you’ll be staying in Manhattan, and you’ll want the chair once you get there at least.’

‘True. Marshmallow, is there room? It’s not really a foldable chair.’

‘I can make room,’ she said. ‘This is Simon’s old minivan; he showed me all the tricks.’

‘I’m good for heavy lifting,’ Cameron offered, leaning out of the window again and catching Pippin mid-air, passing her through the window. ‘Here, take your child,’ he said to Aix, while Pippin giggled and reached for Aix, immediately hugging around his neck and nuzzling him hard.

‘Oof,’ Aix said, but hugged her just as tight. ‘I was so worried about you, beeble. You remember Marshmallow? She’s going on an a’venture with us!’

‘Rshameloh!’ Pippin said, and reached for her, and Marshmallow’s heart about melted. It was really special when a joey said your name. She reached her hand over and Pippin nuzzled it like cats did.

‘Good job being Safe, Pippin,’ Aix said, as Marshmallow—reluctantly—pulled her hand away to turn the car off and get out of it, taking the keys out of the ignition out of instinct. You never left the car running without you sitting in it, and you didn’t leave the keys in the ignition either.

‘So how did you learn that whistle thing?’ Marshmallow asked, as she met Cameron and opened the hatchback, then the sliding door.

‘My boyfriend’s a sailor.’

Marshmallow felt a little disappointed. ‘Yeah?’ she said. ‘That’s cool. Like with the navy?’

‘Pirates, actually,’ Cameron said, grinning. ‘Baltimore’s full of pirates.’

‘Stop teasing her, Cammie. He means it literally,’ Aix said, from the front. ‘The vampires are all pirates.’

‘Ah,’ Cameron said, ‘she’s in the Mummery now. Got it.’

‘We were getting to that,’ Aix said. ‘Marshmallow, there are such things as monsters, not just fae, and what you saw when you were a kid was real. Cammie, are there wereboars here?’

‘Well, yeah—you from Upton?’ Cameron asked the speechless woman handing him a plastic crate full of juggling stuff.

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s where the wereboars are. The Livaudais family. Big Creole family of chefs and musicians, came up here during the sixties, bought the Royal Theatre in the seventies and turned it into a food pantry and jazz-themed restaurant.’

‘Wait—I—I know that place!’ Marshmallow said. ‘I saw a boar around there when I was sixteen. You’re saying that was one of my neighbours?’

‘Well, who else would it be?’ Cameron said.

‘What about you? Are you one of the fae folk? Is that rude to ask? Sorry!’

‘It’s okay,’ he said, as she folded down the back seat, flipping it into the well behind. ‘No, I’m not. I’m one of the werecats—that’s cats, mind you, not lions. Lions are a whole different family, name of Katz, which is a form of the Jewish name Cohen. Those are my lawyer moms, Aix,’ Cameron said. ‘They got Pippin out of there and made sure to remind the Heeren that Pepper had done nothing at all to violate the terms of his parole for years, and that bringing a gun onto a property meant for children and vulnerable adults was against the law, and Mr Grishakin accepted their offer to help him sue her into oblivion.’

‘Noice,’ Aix commented.

‘Simon’s very strict about weapons,’ Marshmallow said, covering the back seat with the custom padding Simon had built for this car when he’d owned it—it filled in the gaps so there was one smooth floor, but there were places to hook tie-down cords too, which Marshmallow used to anchor the crate Cameron was holding. ‘Clown folk are. That’s why Bonma let me around them when I was a kid. Can you tie things down if I sit in the back and pass them to you?’ she asked Cameron.

‘Yeah,’ Cameron said.

‘The shelter could really use the help, legally,’ Marshmallow said. ‘We’ve got a lot of folks that know a lot more law than normal, but no lawyers. And we all know because the whole queer community orbits the clownkeeping one, out here. Like it’s… the Venn diagram is a circle.’

‘And what’s outside that circle is the kink and monster Venn diagram-is-a-circle,’ Cameron said. ‘For better and for worse,’ he added, grimly. Marshmallow paused, and Cameron knew what she was going to ask. ‘Yes, I am a sex worker,’ he said. ‘The vampires were in the sex trade. Always have been, even the Mistress that was here before my time was in the trade. Still is, but she’s in DC now.’

‘Bonma talks about the Block. She told me I wasn’t to go there ever—but like, I think she just wanted me safe.’

‘She was right to warn you,’ Cameron said. ‘The Vampire Prince of this city—whom Aix killed for us recently, by the way—was bad news.’

Marshmallow looked over at Aix, who was nuzzling with Pippin. ‘…This guy? This guy shanked a vampire?’

‘Diedrichs never watched all those horror movies where someone reads out of the old book bound in human skin and bad stuff happens,’ Cameron added, and Aix laughed like a supervillain.

‘Now, now, Cameron, my dear, she deserves the whole story, told properly.’

‘I totally want to hear the whole story told properly,’ Marshmallow said.

‘I did promise,’ Aix assured her; and then Cameron led Marshmallow over to the very old car, opening the back to reveal…

‘That is the coolest wheelchair I’ve ever seen what the heck!’

‘Take this side here,’ Cameron said, showing her where to hold, ‘it’s about thirty pounds. Ready?’

‘Where do you get something like this?’ Marshmallow asked, as they carried it the short distance to the side door of her minivan.

‘This was custom-built by some of the relations,’ Aix said, as Cameron took over pushing the wheelchair in the van while Marshmallow went around to climb in the back hatch to help pull.

‘So cool! My grandmother would love something like this—is it motorized?’

‘No, fully mechanical. There’s hand-levers for pushing it, and lots of bicycle parts beneath that fiberglass shell. I can also have someone else push me, if I want, but the lever is locked inside the chair and nobody can even see it unless I release it. It doesn’t take nearly as much effort as a normal chair. Auntie and I have the same disease, so she gave me that chair, which is from when she was a teen. She uses a more steampunk chair now, and that one has a motor.’

Cameron helped by pointing out where one could loop the hooks of tie-down cords, and soon they had it all locked down, the doors closed, and Marshmallow getting back in the driver seat, Cameron heading back over to his car. Aix leaned out the rolled-down window of the minivan.

‘Cameron, you owe me a ride in that—what is it?’

‘1938 Packard twelve,’ Cameron said, with a grin. ‘And I promise, you’ll get lots of rides in this, it’s Domine’s car.’

‘She’s gorgeous,’ Aix said, seeing the car’s Prussian blue sparkle in the Golden Hour sunlight. He watched as Cameron drove off.

‘Domine?’ Marshmallow asked, as he rolled up the window.

‘His dominant,’ Aix said, not sure what her tone meant.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Like his pimp?’

‘Not how you’re thinking of it, no. I killed his pimp. René is his boyfriend and they play pretend with a power dynamic, because they enjoy it. Has nothing to do with their jobs as sex workers.’

Aix was worried he’d over-explained or been too harsh in his tone, but Pippin was helping him not worry, because she was very snuggly and babbling softly as she patted him and nuzzled him, purring. He wondered whether she was actually talking to herself, or to him, or just having fun with mouth-sounds.

‘So, now that they don’t have to work for a pimp, they still wanna do that?’

‘Yeah, it’s like… working for yourself is way different than working for a shitty boss, you know?’

‘Ahhh, okay. I guess I never thought of prostitution as being that way, cos you’re like, selling your body and all.’

‘Sex work is work. The issues it has are the same ones all workers face. We all sell our bodies, most of us have nothing else to sell. Retail bosses are just as shit to you as a pimp, you know? I mean, look at how Amazon treats its workers. Saying when you can and can’t pee or sit down isn’t that different from saying who you have to fuck. I am ranting, sorry.’

‘You’re fine,’ Marshmallow said, ‘I don’t have a lot to say because I don’t really interact with this side of life. I got lucky, I didn’t really have to force myself to work anywhere because I’m good at being silly for money.’

‘That’s still selling your body. I’m glad you get to do something where you set your own hours and such, though. I got lucky too; I never noticed how I was having trouble getting and keeping jobs, and managed to scrape by on being a wife for the first decade; even if we were couch-surfing!homeless.’

‘That doesn’t sound lucky, exactly.’

‘Well, I managed to never sleep outside except in a tent in someone’s backyard,’ Aix said, hoping he sounded philosophical. ‘It could have been worse, but it could have been better too. I got away from my abusive ex, I’m divorced, I eventually got the medicine I needed, and housing, and then I met Mike and became part of the Mummery—which you’re part of now, too. Oh, we should stay off the highway to cross the state line. The Heeren has friends in the police.’

Marshmallow took the next exit—another Heart station. By now, it was dark, and Marshmallow again parked in one of the handicap spaces. There were four other cars—one electric truck by the chargers, with a roof box (Aix didn’t know the word for it) that might contain a whole fancy tent (Aix had looked up those trucks once, wanting an electric truck or van); a semi truck with some custom painting of horses on the sleeper cab; one of the new SUVs that didn’t exactly look like SUVs but didn’t exactly look like anything else, either, other than dangerously tall and full of blind spots; and a van hauling a very shiny Airstream trailer.

‘So, before we get in there—the Mummery is a secret, it’s from the old word for acting or putting on a show. We’re putting on a show that the only beings on this planet are humans, that fae and vampires are fictional, and that show is put on because it keeps everyone that’s not human safe. You can’t tell your grandmother, you can’t tell anybody.’

‘Understood. I have lied to Bonma before,’ Marshmallow said. ‘I have been a teenager, after all.’

‘I’m glad teenaged rebellion hasn’t gone extinct; I was starting to worry about the generations after me.’

‘How old are you, anyway? I thought you were my age.’

‘I’m in my thirties, ma’am, but thank you for the compliment. Pippin and I both look younger than we are.’ He shifted a little, and she beeped softly, waking up. ‘Hey beeble, we’re stopped, you wanna get some snacks?’

‘Ye!’ Pippin beeped, Pantomiming she was hungry for more than snacks.

‘Okay chickenbee, we can get food. Lights down,’ he said, and she dimmed her Flash, making her Mask into a worried expression. ‘Good girl. You gotta stay in the car and hide, okay? There’s cops.’

Her Flash went out, and her Mask went black except for a white stripe over her eyes; it took a minute, and Marshmallow started laughing before he did.

‘Yes, like a ninja!’ she giggled.

‘I’ll get you your favourite if they have it, okay?’ Aix promised Pippin, kissing her forehead and letting her kiss his cheek, before she climbed into the back of the van.

‘God, I’ve always wanted one of those,’ Aix said, as they walked past the Airstream trailer. ‘I think that’s the Bambi, that’s the smallest one with a bathroom they make.’

‘You like camping?’

‘I do,’ Aix said, as they got inside. ‘SCA camping, that is. You want anything? My treat again.’

‘Uh, sure, but I gotta make a call first, I told Bonma I’d call when it got dark.’

‘No problem, I gotta hit the bathroom first.’

As he was nearly to the corridor to the restrooms, Aix noticed someone was heading for him, someone big and in flannel and jeans. Aix sped up from ‘somewhat painless mosey’ to ‘City Walk’, worried about what the size of that person meant.

‘Hey, Aix, it’s just me, darlin,’ was soft, as she caught up Aix. Recognising the pretty, scratchy voice, Aix glanced over—and saw the tattoo of the big brown tabby cat on her forearm, the fact she was in a mask that matched her shirt’s orange and black plaid; but mostly the tattoo jogged his memory.

‘Oh,’ he said, startled. ‘Oh, Amber. You’re Amber, that’s your cat, Mr Christopher Monday.’ He relaxed, even more than he might have with a femme woman; he knew Amber was a butch lesbian. In her words, a ‘bull dyke’. Aix felt safest around butch lesbians, they thumbed their nose at gender just like he did.

‘Hey,’ Amber said. ‘Sorry for startlin’ ya. Remembered what you said about bein’ nervous about bathrooms. You want me to come with?’

‘Yes,’ Aix said, before he could back out. It was true, he was scared of binary bathrooms; any trans person was, but it was particularly scary to be faced with binary spaces when you weren’t. And Aix wasn’t, and never had been, even when he’d been trying. His body wasn’t, and never had been; even on testosterone, he wasn’t.

And men’s rooms were always worse than the women’s room—they smelled worse, were messier, and had fewer stalls, even at a Heart station, where the bathrooms were very clean.

Amber followed him to the doors, and Aix took a deep breath, steeled himself, before going into the women’s room. Because of his face mask being a niqab, he usually didn’t get bothered in women’s rooms anymore, like he had when he’d used them before the plague, with his face bare and his stubble showing. Once he had finished, he felt better, and Amber only spoke again after they left the bathrooms’ hallway, turning the corner back into the shop that took up most of the building, though this stop was big enough that there was a dining room. A young athletic couple were eating at one of the tables, probably the owners of the airstream from the look of them—affluent, from the logos Aix recognised on their stuff—and there were some kids scattered around the store; that only left the electric car.

Marshmallow was just rounding the corner beneath the sign that had a telephone symbol; Aix tried not to worry about what she’d say to whom, and turned his attention to other things. ‘How’ve you been, Amber?’

‘Oh, fine. We’re hauling north to get some slate from Vermont.’

‘Cool,’ Aix said, heading for the fridges, hyper-aware of everyone, of being overheard. There was no music, nor a television, in Heart stops, which was nice. The lighting even dimmed a bit when the sun went down.

‘How’s that joey?’ she asked.

‘She’s great; I’m getting her some stuff to eat just now,’ Aix said, glad Amber wasn’t asking where he was headed. ‘How’s Mr Christopher Monday?’

‘Keeping watch,’ Amber chuckled. ‘Seen anything good lately?’

Aix lit up, and started talking about the latest show he’d been watching, and Amber was so glad to be around someone who had these kinds of deep thoughts about stories. Aix was truly from Hollywood, born and raised behind the scenes and among film critics of the old school. Talking to him was like reading a review from William Rutger, something Amber missed doing, now that the great man was gone. He talked as he picked through the fruit, loaded up a basket with fruit, sour gummies, jerky, nuts, water, and unsweetened tea. Travel food that wouldn’t leave your fingers that messy, and lots of it. He must be travelling somewhere. Maybe he was returning to New York from somewhere.

A young black woman in bright clothes came and found them. ‘Hey,’ she said to Aix, ‘friend of yours?’

‘I’m Amber,’ Amber said, holding out her hand to shake.

‘She’s a friend,’ Aix said, ‘she helped me move. Friend of Mike’s.’

‘Ah yeah, Mike. You were gonna tell me about her.’

‘You wanna sit outside together and eat?’ Amber offered. ‘That little joey can play with Mr Christopher Monday again, I know she’d like that. And he’s been pining.’

‘Mr Christopher Monday?’ Marshmallow echoed, and Amber pointed to the tattoo of the cat. Marshmallow lit up in a huge smile. ‘Oh, of course, that’s definitely a cat name—par excellence.’

Amber laughed her big laugh. ‘I like you!’

Once outside, Aix and Marshmallow let Amber to the minivan to get Pippin, before going over to the spot where Amber had parked, near the verge of grass that dipped down to some sort of pond that Aix could never understand the purpose of, but had seen everywhere from Minnesota to Georgia. He had always assumed it was just some sort of biome allowance, given the proliferation of catkins and other plants that seemed happy to thrive there. The tropics were so weird…

Amber went over to her truck, opening up the passenger side, a cat jumping onto her broad chest with a chirrup, and after clipping a leash to his harness, Amber brought him over, Pippin beeping and reaching up for the silky brown tabby, who was beeping back, in his way, hopping down on the grass when Amber gestured, his tail up and shaking with joy, same as Pippin’s. They bonked heads, and Pippin immediately went full cat, licking him as he licked her, and pestering him affectionately the way cats did to one another.

‘Aww, they’re so cute,’ Marshmallow gushed, as she sipped her soda. ‘So,’ she said, ‘You said I should know about this lady Mike?’

‘Michaela Van Helsing, yes,’ Aix said, saying her name—her True Name, as it were—on purpose. Marshmallow’s eyes went wide.

‘Like—like the Van Helsing? From Dracula?’

‘Yep. She’s the Hunter Prime, which means she’s basically taking care of everywhere that doesn’t have their own Hunter of the City, and she’s also like… the main rep for humanity on the Diet of Night.’

‘Oh—so the government is called like in Japan?’

‘Yeah, exactly!’

‘How are people elected?’

‘They’re not,’ Aix said. ‘I’m still learning about it. It’s really new, a lot of the immortals are still kind of viewing it as an experiment, and it’s mostly vampires, because vampires are the most political and deadly monsters that still have enough like… um, regard for humans as people, rather than just viewing us as food. But Mike says Baltimore being one of the most diverse cities makes it politically important and volatile. The Vampire Prince dying, when he had so many childer—Idunno the official word, I’m just using white wolf terms—is a big deal.’

‘Are… are people gonna die?’ Marshmallow said. ‘like what kind of upheaval is this?’

‘Oh, um, no it’s for the better. Less people are gonna die now, because the Prince isn’t making people do harm. But I think everyone that isn’t a vampire is pretty nervous. Mike is staying in Baltimore to handle the Hunter, who is really bad news. Oh, and someone else is staying too—Lady Averay, Victoria’s grandmother. The Averays are a really old family of white folks that are…’ Aix paused. ‘spooky.’

‘Spooky.’

‘Like… I’m not sure how to describe this.’

‘They do all the scary stuff Christians are afraid pagans are doing,’ Amber supplied, between bites of her salad. ‘Like, cavorting with the Devil, and all that. They actually do that.’

‘Not all of them,’ Aix felt the need to clarify. ‘There’s a Jewish branch of the family, and they pointedly do not do that Christian stuff. But yeah, Lady Avery is a really powerful witch—who is not Jewish. She is goyische,’ he emphasised, again. ‘The ones that do Hellish magic are goyische, I want to be very clear on that. Some of the Averays married Jews, usually the Blackstone family. Why are you smiling?’ he asked Marshmallow.

‘You repeated it three times,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a fairy thing,’ she said.

‘Ah.’

‘But seriously, I get it,’ she said. ‘My cousins are Jewish. The distinction is important. The Devil doesn’t even like, exist, in Judaism. Or um… he’s not… you know, like that.’

‘Yeah,’ Aix said, relaxing a little. ‘Yeah.’

‘So,’ Marshmallow said, Bonma having taught her to repeat back what she thought she heard, ‘Lady Averay is like a Halloween type of goth type of witch.’

‘That is about the sum of it,’ Aix said, nodding.

‘And she’s helping Mike keep things together in Baltimore right now.’

‘Right.’

‘How does a new vampire prince get chosen?’

‘I am not sure,’ Aix said, ‘but I met all the vampires, and they’re all… like, they seem like pretty decent folks. A lot of them might leave, actually,’ he added. ‘See, the old prince was a pirate, and he would capture other pirates and burn their ships; and most of those other pirates want to go back to sea. Captain Roseblade is probably going to take like half of them and sail off, maybe to London or maybe just haunting the sea again, like he used to.’

‘Is he aware the age of piracy is over?’

‘Is it, though?’ Aix asked, mostly as a challenge. Shipping—and therefore, pirates—was Amber’s profession, surely she had some opinions?

‘There’s still a surprising amount of stuff that gets transported on ships,’ Amber said, nodding.

‘But it’s all like, huge ships, like the Evergiven, right?’ Marshmallow was curious; shipping and logistics seemed very opaque. You ordered something and it just sort of arrived on a truck, from a warehouse somewhere. She’d never thought much about how things got from, say, China to her doorstep….

‘Usually,’ Amber said, ‘but he could definitely still do piracy at sea.’

‘He mentioned cruise ships being sitting ducks,’ Aix added. ‘So he’d be going after cruise ships in international waters, rather than shipping containers. But who knows. Man’s a little crazy, in that specifically English way.’

‘I think I’ve met him. Or seen him perform,’ Amber said. ‘I got to the Black Cat during June, back in… 2016, yeah, 2016, it was during the election,’ she said, nodding. ‘He’s the MC of the show. Blond fella? Very eighties makeup?’

‘Yeah, that’s him!’ Aix said with a grin.

‘He’ll be missed,’ Amber commented. ‘Best MC I’ve ever seen in my life.’

‘He’s a card, I’m not surprised.’ Aix’s watch started to go off, and he dug in his bag after turning off the alarm, pulling out his pill-box. ‘Can’t believe it’s ten already,’ he said, dumping the entire contents into his hands, taking the huge one first, with a gulp of iced tea, and then the rest of the smaller pills.

‘Damn, what’s the big one for?’ Marshmallow asked.

‘Keeps me from hearing infrasound,’ Aix said blandly.

‘They make pills for that?’ Amber joked, knowing it was likely for something else.

‘Infrasound? Like ghosts?’ Marshmallow asked, remembering from an article she’d read once; but if monsters were real, then maybe he meant real ghosts....

‘Like generators, air conditioners, industrial machines, motors, that sort of thing,’ Aix said. ‘It’s noisy out here, and I can feel it all through the ground if I’m not on lots of drugs. Very conductive ground, the east coast has got,’ he commented. ‘It’s all super hard granite and clay. We have sand out west, I think that dampens the sound some.’

‘But you have earthquakes!’ Marshmallow said, eyes wide. She’d never felt an earthquake, they seemed so scary.

Aix shrugged, laughing. ‘I sleep through those, my brain knows they aren’t anything. They only last like a couple seconds, anyways.’ He dropped the smile. ‘Generators go for days, just grinding away at your entire body and you can’t escape.’

‘I’ve never noticed them before—not that I’m saying your experience isn’t valid, but I just wonder why I haven’t.’

‘I have a lot of trauma and I also just have really sensitive hearing. Pippin!’ he said, sharply, as he noticed her heading behind a tire. ‘No! Danger!’

Pippin ran back to him, mewing sadly. Joeys hated being in trouble. Aix spoke gently, as he pantomimed. You could explain simple concepts to joeys.

‘Hey, that’s dangerous. Wheels move and cars kill, okay?’

She mimed that the car was asleep, not moving.

‘No,’ Aix repeated firmly. ‘No playing around cars at all. Cat friends don’t understand cars move, don’t teach them to do dangerous things. They could die.’ He knew it was dire, but car safety had been drilled into him from a young age, because he had always lived on a busy city street that was dangerous to cross except at the crosswalk, and had grown up around mothers that were very strict about how you were allowed to move in a parking lot. Safety rules were inviolate and set in stone, in Aix’s upbringing; they were the only rules you could not under any circumstances break. All other rules were breakable, but not safety rules.

Pippin indicated she understood; Pierrots weren’t contrary, and Pippin could tell this was Important. She stayed on the grass.

‘Have you had clowns all your life?’ Marshmallow asked, finishing her pink-frosted sprinkle donut.

‘Wasn’t allowed. Mom was afraid of them; but I learned everything I could about them at the library. I had a big selection of clown books at my library growing up. I taught myself pantomime out of one, and practised on my bunnies and cats and with the clowns I just met around, then just by myself. Pantomime makes more sense to me than anything else, you know?’

‘Yeah, definitely. It’s really easy to learn,’ Marshmallow agreed. ‘I don’t have clowns of my own yet, I’ve been too busy with jobs and the house isn’t really up to having a pet at the moment; but I want some.’

They’d all finished eating by this point, and Amber got up, dusting herself off. ‘Well, it’s been a delight, as usual, Aix, Ma’am,’ she said, touching the brim of her old cowboy hat to Marshmallow at the last. ‘You need some help back to the car, Aix?’

Aix looked pensively at the minivan for a while. ‘No,’ he decided. ‘I think I’m alright. Thanks though.’

Amber whistled, and Mr Christopher Monday immediately came trotting over, leaping straight up toward Amber’s chest; she caught him in her arms, and helped him onto her shoulders, his leash still looped around her wrist. Pippin tumbled over to Aix again, giggling as he dusted the grass off her. The green stains went well with her little striped suit, so he wasn’t worried.

Pippin followed as he and Marshmallow threw away their trash in the can a few yards away, waiting patiently before reaching up to Marshmallow, opening and closing her hands in the ‘want’ Pantomime. Marshmallow picked her up immediately, balancing her on one hip.

‘Aw, sweet baby,’ she lilted softly, nose-kissing Pippin as they walked across the parking lot and back to the car.

‘So, she said, after Aix had buckled up and Pippin had been settled down between the seats on the pillow Marshmallow kept in here for naps. ‘You shanked a vampire?’

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