Ally threw the remains of the BigMac wrapper onto the pickup's dash and dusted her hands off on her pants. She stretched in the seat, pushing her legs to full extension against the back of the firewall until her neck touched the roof, head bent over, and she felt what might have been her patellae settling in place. Feeling slightly more human, she dropped back into the seat with a sigh.
The radio/CD-player in the dash, which was quietly playing Stewart's REM disc, displayed 02:42. The disposable coffee mugs by her knees were long cold and empty, a fact Allison cursed. The warmth would have been appreciated as Stu had insisted on opening the windows a crack to keep them from misting up and the night was unseasonably chill.
Stu, in the passenger seat, was still absorbed in his casebook. When his eyes weren't flickering up to watch the street, he was reading the battered, dog-eared pocketbook by the dim glow of a snake-light attached to the back cover. Whenever Allison glanced over she saw pages covered in his laborious, crabbed hand-writing and careful sketches - glyphs, simulacra, suspects and artefacts. Here and there folding card sheets had been attached to blank pages, hiding larger - or more dangerous - diagrams. She knew better by now not to ask and he never volunteered the information.
"There's our man."
Stewart's head was up, looking out at the solitary figure who had appeared on the street. The man wore a heavy jacket and hurried along the pavement, alternately blending into the night and making stark contrast against the street-lamp spotlights. Ally and Stu watched as he studiously ignored the world around him, the quiet city streets and the street-walker who shivered with her arms crossed over herself he passed on the corner of a side road. He only slowed when he reached a narrow alley and approached the lone non-descript service entrance to Finnegan's Garage lit by a pale cage-wrapped bulb. He knocked, looked over his shoulder, knocked again and the door opened to spill a square of light across the alley. A moment later and the figure was gone, the door closed once more.
Allison took the revolver from the glove compartment. Stu snapped the notebook closed and slipped it inside his coat. As one they stepped out of the pickup's cab and, without a word, crossed the street to the garage.

I started writing this randomly and about half-way through I realised it was unintentionally a fan-fic for The Night Circus. No bad thing I suppose.

---
Her gaze drifted across the ring, eyes straining against the lime light glare to pierce the gloom which hung over the stands. She struggled to pick out individual faces. Here a lady's floral head-piece stood out from the shadows; there a gentleman's spectacles shined in the reflected glory of the show lights.

The gentle murmers of the audience fell to silence as the tent dimmed, the gas lamps flames shrinking until just a shaft of moonlight remained.

With a slow, elegant sweep of her arm towards the sky, the figure at the centre of the ring appeared. Of course, she had been there all along but, in a leotard of palest marble-grey and with skin and hair dusted to match, she had been near imperceptible against the moon-bathed sand of the ring.

Later, Charlotte could not have told even herself what unfolded in the ensuing time. It might have been a few minutes or a turn of the planet, as short as a dream and long as a love's sigh. Though the tent remained in utter silence throughout, the figure recounted a memory of adoration, delight and loss from the peaks of ecstasy to the abyss of despair in graceful flowing motions. Figures faded into and out of view around her as the story progressed, each as pale and otherworldly as the first.

When Charlotte left the tent, the sun was rising on the horizon, little more than a glow in the clouds. She could feel dry tears on her cheek and somehow her heart was lighter.

Around her, other guests stepped into the dawn. A dowager lady dabbed at her eyes with a violet handkerchief. A slight gentleman with a thousand-mile stare cleaned his spectacles on a sleeve. There amongst them, facing her, waiting for her, was the man with the scarlet waistcoat.