Page 29 of Animal Tamer
“That's not what I—” He stops. Shakes his head. “Never mind. Go be a devil.”
The lights die, and a thousand voices drop into that hush that never gets old, and then Elias's voice pours through the dark, promising them sins and wonders. His cane cracks against the boards, and Matt hits the ring with a column of gold light.
I unlatch Caesar's gate.
“Ready, old friend?”
He chuffs and butts his skull into my sternum, all four hundred pounds of him, and my heartbeat drops into the slow rhythm of show nights.
Elias's voice rises to give me my cue.”—and from the darkness where wild things dream, I give you the Tamer and his court of beasts!”
The canvas parts.
Caesar walks out at my hip, matching my stride the way he's done since he was a cub with paws too big for his legs, and the crowd gasps. We circle the ring once. He hits his pedestal on my signal and rises onto it, mane blazing under the lights, and roars when I lift two fingers. Gleefully. He’s learned long ago that the sound makes the humans scream, and Caesar has always been a shameless showman.
Brutus lumbers in on the next cue and pretends the pedestal is beneath him, which is part of the act now because he did it once, sulking, and the crowd howled, so we kept it. He sits up. He waves. A little girl in the front row waves back with both arms and Brutus tips his head at her, milking it.
Cleopatra and Domino thread figure-eights around us, her stripes flashing. Pip and Squeak rocket down from the rigging and land on Brutus's shoulders—two monkeys instead of three tonight, Peanut still warm in his fleece basket back in the tent.
Then the back canvas lifts, andRome comes.
Emperors don't hurry. He crosses the ring like the whole tent was built as his audience chamber, and the crowd lose their minds. Rome's trunk settles across my shoulders, and the applause comes down on us like rain.
I don't look for her, but I feel it.
She came.
Wren findsme after the show, just as I’m making sure my menagerie is settling in for the night.
She looks incredible. Her long brown hair is loose around her shoulders, she’s replaced her plaid shirt with a whimsical blouse, and there’s a soft smile on her face.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she says before I can make my mouth work. “I told the worker I ran into that I’m the animals’ vet and he let me through.”
“I don’t mind,” I answer, my voice hoarse. I clear my throat. “What did you think about the show?”
“I loved watching you perform.”
The words are out for exactly one second before color floods her face, up her throat, over her cheeks, all the way to her hairline.
“The animals,” she blurts. “I loved watching theanimalsperform. Obviously. That's—that's what I meant.”
“Obviously,” I say dryly.
“Because I'm their vet.”
“Right.”
“Professionally speaking.”
“Professionally speaking,” I echo, and something unfurls in my chest, warm and unfamiliar, because she's standing in the sawdust with her hands strangling thestrap of her bag and she can't look at me, and I've never made anyone blush in my life.
Terrified them, yes. Blush, no.
She recovers by turning to Caesar's enclosure, where he's sprawled across fresh straw like a king who's dismissed his court for the evening.
“He was incredible. The way he tracks you. He's not watching for commands, he's watchingyou, the way a dance partner watches. And Brutus—” a laugh bubbles out of her, “—Brutus is a con artist. That sulking bit is a performance. He was watching the little girl in the front row the whole time to see if it was landing.”
“You caught that,” I say softly.
