Divine’s gaze swept the darkening midway, the structures mostly black shadows against the moonlit night. Within moments the first of the carnies would finish their shutdown and be headed for the back lot beyond the front of her RV where the trailers all were. There would be drinking and laughter as they unwound from their long day and the stress of dealing with the public. Divine sometimes joined them. Not to drink, since that did little for her. She went to enjoy the camaraderie. She usually sat and nursed a cup of tea outside Bob and Madge Hoskins’s trailer on a nice night. If it was raining, they’d move inside to dissect the day and talk about how good or how poor the take had been.
Divine shifted her feet, briefly debating whether she should do so tonight. It was the greenie Marco who was making her hesitate. Most immortals, like mortals, considered carnies beneath them, not seeing the long, hard hours they worked, only seeing their shabby unkempt appearance, and bad teeth for lack of money and time to fix them. In fact, Marco was the only immortal besides herself that she knew of who had chosen to spend time with the traveling carnivals over the years, and his presence now was troubling.
She suspected Marco had to be rogue and hiding out to have found his way to the carnival. If that was the case . . . well, the last thing she needed was for a rogue to draw the attention of the Rogue Hunters to her carnival. Divine had managed to hide in this environment for a good hundred years. She didn’t want someone like this new guy blowing that for her. The safest thing to do was to avoid the man, and since she couldn’t guarantee he too wouldn’t go to visit with the Hoskinses . . . well, she thought, perhaps she should bypass her usual routine of relaxing with the couple this night.
On the other hand, greenies often had homes to go to at night. If they didn’t and stayed here with the carnies, they usually sat on the fringes, away from the owner and his wife. It might be okay for her to join the couple and unwind a bit. Certainly, she had no need to go hunting tonight. Allen Paulson had supplied her with dinner.
Decision made, Divine popped the lock on her RV door. She then headed around her vehicle for the back lot where Bob and Madge had parked their own private RV. The couple had several vehicles for business, including a trailer where they hired greenies and handled customer service issues. They also had several games and rides, but they never traveled without their own RV for living and sleeping in. After a long day dealing with carnies and customers alike, a private space to retreat to was a necessity.
The back lot was a large area, almost as large as the carnival itself. Here there were half a dozen RVs belonging to the better-off full-time carnies who had stalls, rides, or ran games, but there were also bunkhouse trailers with tiny rooms big enough for a bed or bunk beds and a small walking space. Divine suspected you’d have more room in a prison cell, but all it was for was sleeping so in that sense it served its purpose. There were usually four to six bunkrooms in each trailer; some bunkhouses had their own lavatory for the inhabitants to share, some didn’t. For those without, there were other trailers with mobile lavatories in them. There was also a trailer that served as a schoolroom for those children traveling with carnie parents, as well as a laundry trailer and a couple of small trailers that acted like small markets, corner stores, or drugstores, depending on which one you used.
In effect, the carnival was a small traveling city carrying everything they might need with it. A carnie didn’t really have to go into the towns they visited at all if they didn’t want to unless there was some specialty item that wasn’t available in the traveling stores.
“Miss Divine.”
Slowing, she glanced to the side, nodding in greeting when she spotted Hal walking toward her with a slight limp. A lifelong carnie, Hal was short, wiry, bowlegged, and had more wrinkles, and fewer teeth, than an elephant. The man had one good tooth in his mouth—a nasty, brown thing that looked like it too should have been pulled or fallen out by now. Divine didn’t like stereotypes, but some of the carnies lived up, or actually down, to those things said about them: hard drinking, fast living, rotten teeth, and old before their time. Hal fit every one of those stereotypes. Still, she liked the man.