Page 55 of Animal Tamer
19
WREN
The girls bring me to a trailer that's bigger than Rowe's and looks like a magician robbed a hardware store.
Chains hang in loops from hooks by the door. There are padlocks and keys everywhere, playing cards, scarves, even two doves in a cage in the corner. And a couch that swallows me whole the second Jules pushes me into it.
“Sit. Stay. Good vet.” Jules opens a cabinet and surveys the bottles inside like a general reviewing troops. “Nova, your fiancé is obsessed with fine booze.”
“He's not my fiancé.” Nova lowers herself into the armchair across from me. “Neither of them is. I'm keeping my options open.”
“You're living with them and growing their baby,” Jules says deadpan.
“Ababy. Ownership pending.” She catches my expression and grins, freckles scrunching. “Oh, honey. Your face. Drink up, this is going to take a while.”
Jules puts a glass in my hand. Whatever's in it is amber and smells like a bad decision. I sip it anyway, because aman tried to rape me this afternoon and my body still hasn't unclenched, and because these two women closed ranks around me like they'd known me for years instead of hours.
“So,” I say, and my voice only wobbles a little. “Both of them. SilasandTeddy.”
“Both of them,” Nova confirms.
“The Teddy who looks like a...”
“FBI. Had an actual badge and everything.” Nova says it the way other women sayhe golfs. “He came here to investigate us.”
I choke on the drink. Jules thumps my back, delighted.
“Investigate you forwhat?”
“That's a later-tonight story.” Nova waves it off, silver rings flashing. “We're doing origin stories first. I bet Jules made a schedule.”
“I did make a schedule,” Jules confirms, folding herself onto the floor with her own glass. “Trauma, then romance, then the goat story. Structure matters in storytelling.”
Nova pulls her knees up as far as the little bump allows and rests her chin on them, and I can see her deciding how much to hand me.
“I was married,” she says. “Before this. Roman Miller. He started sleeping with me when I was fifteen and ran away from home.”
The glass in my hand suddenly feels very heavy.
“He was thirty-two.” She says it flat, like reading a chart. “He waited until I was eighteen to marry me so it would look right, and by then I didn't know there was any other kind of life. He'd built the walls around me so slowly I thought they were mine.” Her thumb finds the little key on her choker and rests there. “You know thefunny part? I'm an escape artist. Locks, chains, straitjackets… I can get out of anything. Took me twelve years to get out of him.”
“Nova.” My eyes are stinging. “I'm so sorry.”
“Don't be sorry.” The grin comes back, sharp as a blade. “Because when I finally ran, I crashed into this carnival like a raccoon into a dumpster. Silas found me before I could even hound Elias for a job.”
“And then the Fed showed up,” Jules prompts, clearly working the schedule.
“And then the Fed showed up.” Nova rolls her eyes at the ceiling, but her hand drifts to her belly and stays. “With his irresistible jawline and golden boy morals. Silas and I broke them down piece by piece. Now there are two of them, and they bicker about crib brands, and I'm having a baby with a criminal and the man who was supposed to arrest him, and I have never once in my life been this happy. I can't wait for her. Or him. I keep telling Marek not to tell me what the cards say.”
I blink. “He knows?”
“He always knows.” Both of them say it at the same time, and then look at each other and cackle, and something in my chest loosens another notch.
I turn to Jules. “And you?”
“Me.” Jules stretches her long legs out and crosses her boots at the ankle, blue hair falling over one eye. “I'm a journalist. Investigative. Small-town corruption, crime, bikers. I came to the carnival to do an exposé.”
“On what?”
