Wicked as They Come by Delilah S. Dawson Page B

waving water plants, was a mermaid.
    I had to look twice to confirm it. Yep, a mermaid, complete with silvery blue tail.
    Beautiful blond hair billowed around her head, and she had white clamshells over her breasts. Her eyes were dark with kohl and pinned to Criminy. When we were right in front of her, she swam up to the glass and kissed it with a saucy wink at my escort.
    “Sirena,” Criminy said. “The mermaid. Bit of a trollop. Tried to teach her magic once, but she didn’t get on at all.” She was waving madly, so he waved back with a bored smile, saying, “Yes, yes, we see you. Get on with it.”
    The mermaid scowled at us and did a backflip, slapping the surface of the water with her tail. I shrieked as cold droplets sprinkled over me, and Criminy pulled me a little closer. My heart sped up as he gently dabbed at my face with a bright red handkerchief.
    “Missed a drop,” he said, voice quiet and husky. “Just there.”
    His lips barely brushed mine. I wanted to push him away. I should have turned my head and slapped him for taking advantage of me. But I was too busy keeping my knees from buckling and melting into a puddle at his feet. The touch was brief and searing, and it was all I could do to pull back and clear my throat. Criminy didn’t apologize. He just grinned.
    Sirena smacked the glass with her hand and went to sulk behind a water plant. Before I could ask if she was fake or real or really magic, Criminy steered me to the next wagon and the strong man, Torno. He was almost a giant, with huge muscles and a waxed black mustache with curled tips. He wore a tan leather suit that extended up his neck into the oddest top hat I had ever seen, molded tightly around his ears and chin. I couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable and sweaty it had to be inside his costume.
    As he did squats, he held a red velvet fainting couch over his head. Seated primly on it was a two-headed boy of fourteen or so. Both heads had scraggly hair the color of nothing and dark eyes that were crafty and sullen. The open collars told me that they were Bludmen, and I watched as each hand lifted a teacup to a different mouth, which slurped and sucked as only a teenager can. When the cups returned to the saucers, the lips were painted with blood. Both heads grinned luridly at me, showing red-stained teeth. I shuddered, and Criminy yanked me forward, saying, “It’s rude to stare unless you’ve paid, pet. They were born that way.”
    “I wasn’t staring at their heads,” I said. “I was staring at the bloody teeth.”
    “You get used to it.”
    Just then, a strange woman walking past us caught my attention. She was actually swallowing a python head-first as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Her skin was a deep indigo black, and her hair fell in braids to her waist. She wore nothing but a shiny corset, bloomers, and snakeskin boots that came to her knees.
    “I can’t tell,” I whispered to Criminy when she had walked past. “What is she?”
    “Veruca Lindenfain, Abyssinian swallower of swords, fire, and snakes,” he said. “Abyssinians are human, but their blood is so powerful that nothing will drink it. Not even a bludrat wants to go blind and mad. Makes a pretty penny for us, you know, draws a huge crowd wherever we go. Not a lot of her type around, able to walk both worlds and swallow fire, too.”
    Next was the lizard boy, stretched out on a log, asleep. He seemed like a perfectly normal teenager who happenedto be covered in scales of a sickly pale green. A long forked tongue flapped as he snored.
    “He needs sunlight,” said Criminy. “So he says. I think he’s just a lazy bugger.”
    The trailer beside the lizard boy was painted purple and pink. I smiled at the two pretty girls whispering on the roof. Even when doing handstands on chairs ten feet off the ground, they just seemed so innocent and girlish and happy.
    “Cherie and Demi. The Twisty Sisters,” Criminy mused with a fond wave. The girls waved