Which was how Marcus had come to find himself at the carnival, eyeballing the trailer of a woman he couldn’t read and found incredibly sexy. Not that his not being able to read her bothered him. If this was Basha Argeneau, she was even older than he was, and younger immortals usually couldn’t read immortals older than themselves. It wasn’t like any of the other signs of having met a life mate were cropping up, like renewed interest in food and such. Thank God, because if she had been a possible life mate and was Basha Argeneau . . . well, that would have been a doomed relationship from the start. Because Basha Argeneau was considered rogue . . . and rogues were executed. The last thing he needed at this point in his life was a rogue life mate.
“Hey! Marco! Are you going to stand around stuffing your face all night or help me with the pogo stall?”
Marcus glanced around with surprise to find Kevin Morrow walking toward him. The twenty-year-old carnie was tall and stick-thin, his face a collection of freckles so thick that from a distance it looked like a tan. Up close though you saw that his face was definitely freckled, and it was also presently scrunched up with displeasure, reminding Marcus that he was only supposed to take a fifteen-minute break from helping to man the food stall.
“I was—”
“Stuffing your face,” the young carnie interrupted dryly and then turned away, gesturing for him to follow. “Come on. If you’re hungry you can have a corn dog while you work. It’s probably better for you than that sugary fluff anyway.”
Marcus blinked and glanced down at the cone with the half-eaten cotton candy the boy had given him several minutes ago. Or what had been half-eaten cotton candy. There was nothing left of the sweet treat now. Surely he hadn’t eaten it? He hadn’t eaten in more than a millennium. He didn’t remember eating it. But he did have a sweet taste in his mouth that was rather pleasant.
“Damn,” he muttered, tossing the cardboard cone into a garbage bin as he headed after Kevin. He’d eaten it. Couldn’t read Madame Divine, and was lusting after the woman. Oh, this wasn’t good.
Two
Divine saw the last customer out of her trailer and then paused on the steps to peer along the midway. It was midnight, closing time, but the lights from the various attractions still glowed all along the midway. The tinny music still played too, but the rest of the sounds were dying down. The loud hawking by ride jockeys trying to lure people to their rides, and the agents trying to lure townies to the games, had died off. The laughter, chatter, and squealing of the townies enjoying the attractions were dying off too as the mad crush of people that had filled the area earlier dropped to a trickle of stragglers heading for the exit.
Without people filling every space, you could now see the mess that had been left behind. Discarded food and drink containers littered the midway, dropped and kicked to the side rather than placed in the garbage bins supplied at regular intervals. They were interspersed with half-eaten burgers, corn dogs, and ice cream cones left to melt on the tarmac where they fell. Among the mess she could see a pair of tiny running shoes and even a wrinkled T-shirt or two left behind and wondered how the owners had left without them. The shoes belonged to a child who might have been carried out, but hadn’t the parent noticed the bare feet? As for the T-shirts, a lot of boys removed them and hung them through the loops of their shorts in the heat of the day, but shirts were required for rides and had to be re-donned if they wanted on. The only thing she could think was the owners of these particular T-shirts had lost them on the way out. It made her wonder how upset they would be when they got home and realized they were gone.
The music suddenly died and the Ferris wheel lights blinked out. Divine glanced toward it even as the lights on several other rides followed suit. Everything was beginning to shut down. Within moments the midway would be dark, the rides and stalls locked down for the night. The cleanup would be left for morning rather than waste the electricity to keep the lights on to do it now. It was more cost-efficient to do it in the bright light of day. Besides, by then some of the discarded foodstuff would have been gobbled up by local dogs or vermin, which would save a bit of cleanup time.