Free The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett Page A

friends who hadn’t seen one another in a long while. The professor sat opposite them, crooked in his seat as though his side pained him, but his hand never left his pocket. George guessed there was a pistol hidden there. He began to wish he had never come.
    As they traveled Silenus asked him a variety of bizarre questions. Had George recently been forced to eat or drink something he would not normally consume? Had he found any scars on himself that he could not explain, especially under the left armpit? Had he ever been to southern Ireland in midwinter? Had he recently experienced any dizzy spells or feelings of weightlessness, and in these moments of weightlessness had he actually levitated several inches off the ground? Did he ever get the sensation that there was a small person forcing their way into the space behind his eyes? And did he have a curious predilection for shrimp that he had not displayed before?
    When George had answered all the questions (the answer to each being no, except the first question, because he had politely eaten an odd, doughy bread of Irina’s), he asked how these things could possibly be relevant. “I know you think you’re telling the truth, kid, there’s no doubt about that,” said Silenus. “But there are methods of duping someone into saying what you want them to say, usually very nasty ones. That’s what I worry about. So what we’re going to do is go to the hotel and have a look-see, and if you’re right, well, then, you’re right. Why this boy felt the need to warn me about these gents in gray, well, that’s another question. But I won’t ask it now. Because it’s always possible that you are, unknowingly, a part of the machinations of my enemies.
    “And I do have enemies, George,” he said calmly. “I got more enemies than there are stars in the fucking sky. A man can’t make a ripple in the ocean without another trying to give him the knife for it. And if you’re working for these enemies of mine, then we’re going to have to figure out what to do with you. See?”
    “I see,” said George.
    “Good,” said Silenus. “Smart kid.”
    “Can I ask you something, Mr. Silenus?” said George, now angry.
    “You can call me Harry, kid. And my associate here is Kingsley. You put someone through what we’re putting you through, might as well be cordial about it,” he said.
    “All right… Harry,” said George. “Is this sort of behavior common in your troupe?”
    Silenus smiled. “In our troupe, kid, it’s as common as rain. Wish that it fucking weren’t.”
    They came to the stop closest to the hotel, hopped off, and began walking toward it, Silenus strolling out in front with his arm around George and Kingsley walking behind them, hand in his pocket. George miserably thought of all the fantasies he’d had of taking a friendly walk with his father, and reflected that he’d never imagined this would be how their first would go.
    Yet the street ahead seemed curiously abandoned: not only was there no one on the sidewalks, but the houses and shops were dark and shuttered, like those within wanted passersby to think no one lived there at all. It’d been a busy scene when George had visited earlier that evening. Had he not seen a lady in a raincoat just over there, next to the hotel, pulling her coat tight about her chest as she shivered? And a group of children playing with a tin hoop in that alley? But now there was no one.
    George stopped. Silenus looked at him and nodded back at Kingsley, who stood ready.
    “What are you stopping for, kid?” said Silenus. “Come on.”
    “You don’t feel it?” said George. “Or hear it?”
    “Hear what?”
    “That silence,” said George. “Before I heard it around the hotel, so that’s how I knew the men in gray were there, but now…”
    “Now what?” asked Silenus.
    George looked around them. The building faces on either side ofthe street seemed gray and faint, and the streetlamps were sputtering as if fighting