Magic for Nothing

  “I don’t know how a traitor thinks, but I know I want to thank you, truly, for being so kind to me,” I said, staring into his eyes and praying my own hands wouldn’t choose this moment to heat up. “I knew I was taking a risk when I came to England. This could have ended so incredibly badly. It didn’t, and a lot of that is down to you being such a good friend. We’re friends, right?”

  Leo blinked, a flicker of surprise rolling across his face before he smiled. “Sure,” he said. “Friends. You’ll be back here soon enough, mission done, and then you can swear properly, and be a true member of the Covenant. We’ll have to go out to celebrate. Just the two of us. Do you dance?”

  The question came far enough out of left field that I answered honestly: “Does a mosh pit count?”

  His smile could have lit up the room. “Oh, we are going to have a lot of fun when you get back, Annie. Keep yourself in one piece, all right? You have training to do, and we need to go dancing.”

  Mindy had grabbed Mork by the tail and was dragging him under the nearest dresser. Given the utter lack of self-preservation he was currently exhibiting, I had no idea how the Aeslin mice had been able to survive in this building for as long as they had.

  Leo was still beaming at me. I smiled back, somewhat weakly. This wasn’t part of my playbook. It never had been.

  Is he going to kiss me? I thought. If he kisses me, I’m going to have to let him. For the mice.

  He did not kiss me. Thank God. Instead, he let go of my hands and took a decorous step back before saying, “I think it’s going to be lovely having you here. I’ll even see about getting you moved to a different room, without Chloe to snore in your ear all night.”

  “That’s okay, I don’t—you know what, no. No one is that good of a liar. Please move me. She could wake the dead.”

  “She did, once. We’d been trying to track down this nasty little spirit that kept haunting its childhood home. Finally popped Chloe into the girl’s room. The thing materialized to ask us to get my sister out of there.”

  “What did you do with her?”

  “Woke her up and told her to sleep in her own bed.”

  “I meant the ghost.”

  “Oh, that. We stuffed the thing into a spirit jar. It’s not going to bother anyone else.” Leo’s smile had a different edge on it this time. “Just think. Soon, that sort of story is going to be yours. Car leaves for London in an hour. See you then.”

  He turned and left the room, leaving me to stare after him. These people . . .

  I had to get out of here. Luckily for me, that was exactly what I was doing.

  Ten

  “The trick is not learning to disappear. The trick is learning to hide in plain sight, until everyone around you swears you belong exactly where you are.”

  —Jane Harrington-Price

  The baggage claim area at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport, getting real sick of time zones

  FOR REASONS OF “they can’t catch us both if we’re never in the same place at the same time,” Margaret and I flew in on different planes, under the auspices of different airlines. I didn’t know what they arranged for her, but I’d been on a London to Chicago American Airlines flight, followed by a Southwest Air short-range hopper to Minneapolis. My next trick was going to involve a five-hour bus ride to Madison. By the time I got there, I expected to be just this side of homicidal, possibly with a side order of setting every damn thing in the world on fire.

  Margaret was going to beat me by at least six hours, courtesy of not having been routed through Minnesota for no good reason. Madison was only three hours from Chicago, by bus. This was the Covenant’s idea of misdirection, and I hated it.

  (On the plus side, there weren’t many people taking the middle-of-the-week flight from London to Chicago. I’d been able to claim a row at the back of the plane as my very own, allowing Mork and Mindy to crawl out of my bag and spend most of the flight playing with the seatback entertainment system while I dozed. It was the most normal thing I’d done in weeks.)

  Other things I hated: the fact that I’d just bounced through Chicago, where my Uncle Mike and Aunt Lea lived, and where the Carmichael Hotel with its staff of friendly gorgons was located, and I hadn’t been able to tell them I was there. Margaret was going to be watching me like a hawk—for all I knew, she already was. I was pretty sure there’d been no Covenant spies on the plane, because there’s devotion to the mission and then there’s doing that to yourself voluntarily, and besides, I’d been at the back of the plane, where I could see people coming, but as soon as my feet hit American soil, all bets were off. She could be following me, having lied about her travel plans. They could have sent someone else to make sure I went where I was supposed to go. There were too many variables. It wasn’t safe to reach out. Not yet, anyway.

  As if triggered by my meandering thoughts, I caught a glimpse of a man who was either Robert Bullard or his long-lost twin. I stretched and yawned, using the motion to cover a slight turn of my head, but the man was gone. The cold feeling he’d awakened in my chest remained.

  My suitcase rolled down the belt. I grabbed it and made for the door. I needed to hurry if I didn’t want to miss my bus.

  One nice thing about jet lag: it can lend an air of resigned unreality to everything, so situations that would normally seem time-consuming or pointless become dreamlike and fine. I picked up my prebooked ticket from the Greyhound window and climbed onto the bus that would take me to Madison, pausing only to get a Snickers bar and a bottle of Dr Pepper from the vending machines in the bus depot waiting room. My high-calorie snacks tasted like high-fructose corn syrup, cheap chocolate, and chemicals. In short, American. I was home.

  I was one of the first people onto the bus. Moving quickly, I jammed myself into a window seat, unzipped my backpack enough to let the mice see out the window without revealing themselves, and put my head against the glass, closing my eyes. Sleep came almost instantly, hitting me with the hammer strength that only seems to follow travel. I never even felt the bus engine come to life. I was gone.

  “Priestess.”

  The whisper was low, insistent, and next to my ear. I made a grumbling noise, and didn’t open my eyes.

  “Priestess, the Driver of Buses has announced our stop. If you do not wake, I fear we will journey onward to Parts Unknown.” A sharp tug on my earlobe punctuated the words.

  Aeslin mice have remarkably sharp little claws on their handlike paws. When an Aeslin mouse grabs something sensitive, like an earlobe, it’s hard not to pay attention.

  “Ow,” I muttered, and opened my eyes. Rolling fields of wheat almost ready for the harvest greeted me.

  “Hail,” squeaked Mindy, still barely above a whisper. She could teach classes on stealth to the rest of the colony when she got home. “No one has troubled your slumber. No one has touched you, or attempted to claim that which is not meant for them. Have we Done Well, Priestess?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” I said, and yawned. I usually try to avoid talking to myself in public, but this was a Greyhound bus: no one would pay attention or care, as long as I kept it to a low roar.

  Of course, that didn’t mean Robert wasn’t nearby. Maybe I was being paranoid, but the nice thing about paranoia is the way it can keep you alive.

  “Have you seen Robert?” I asked, pitching my voice as low as I could.

  “No, Priestess,” said Mindy. “He did not board this vehicle. For now, we are In the Clear.”

  “Great. Get back in the bag.” I felt her scuttle down my shirt. Yawning again, I sat up and pulled the second half of the Snickers bar out of my pocket. Midway through the motion, I realized there was someone sitting next to me: a wild-haired teenager with eyes as wide as saucers. Oh, joy and rapture. A civilian. I didn’t even bother to smile as I looked at him and asked, flatly, “What?”

  “Lady, I don’t want to like, freak you out or
anything, but a mouse just ran into your backpack.”

  I nodded. “I know. She’s mine.”

  He blinked. “You don’t keep her in a cage?”

  “Why would I? She knows better than to chew on my books, and it’s not nice to animals to keep them in little prisons. I believe in a fair and equal relationship between people and members of the animal kingdom.” I scowled at him. “Why? Don’t you?”

  Confronted with what he was probably assuming was a member of PETA—and not having noticed my leather shoes—he shied away. “Totally, lady, whatever you say. I just wanted to help.”

  “Well, thanks, but I don’t believe in ‘help’ that enslaves my fellow creatures.”

  He shook his head and turned away. Not before I heard his mutter of “Freak.” I didn’t contradict him. The last thing I wanted to do was strike up a conversation with someone I would never see again when I was jet-lagged and exhausted. I needed to save what strength I had.

  Then the road bent, just a little, and the Madison skyline came into view.

  It wasn’t as tall as Chicago or as iconic as London or even as urban as Minneapolis, but there was something to be said for seeing a city appear and knowing I’d be staying there for a while: that I’d have time to unpack my things, wash my clothes, and maybe even re-henna my hair, depending on the facilities at the carnival. My first stop was a motel at the edge of the college district, bare bones and dirt cheap, with clerks who wouldn’t ask too many questions and other residents who wouldn’t notice if I lit myself on fire. I’d get a good night’s sleep, shift myself a few hours back onto local time, and check in with Margaret before I went to find the carnival.

  Everything was going to be fine. This time, for sure, everything was going to be fine.

  Everything was not going to be fine. Nothing was ever going to be fine again.

  The motel where I was staying looked like the sort of place that would feature heavily in a horror movie, something indie with “Camp” or “Blood” or “Night” in the title. Not a major release by any stretch of the imagination. They didn’t ask to see ID when I showed up to check in, which was basically the biggest warning sign they could have flashed in my direction.

  “Have a nice stay,” said the desk clerk, handing over a key—an actual key, not a magnetic key-card—attached to a plastic fob.

  “I’m going to get murdered here,” I said genially, taking it and leaving the lobby before something in there could accidentally come into contact with my skin. The place didn’t look like it had been cleaned since the 1970s, if ever. It was possible the depressing atmosphere had caused even the mold to shrivel up and die, leaving the motel preserved for all eternity.

  Outside, the motel followed the classic Middle American theme, with doors pointing toward the parking lot and a metal railing stippled with rust surrounding both the stairs and the second floor. I hefted my suitcase against my hip to keep the concrete steps from destroying the wheels, walking past door after identical door until I reached the one assigned to me. The key stuck when I jammed it into the lock. I wiggled it hard, forcing it all the way in before opening the door to reveal a tiny room with a single queen bed, a floral bedspread, a television that was probably older than I was, and two members of the Covenant of St. George.

  I did not scream. I did not slam the door. I did freeze, but I think that can be forgiven: six weeks of pretending to be an ally does not undo a lifetime of sensible fear. The Covenant were not my friends.

  “Hey,” I said, with forced joviality. “Did you pick the lock on my room?” You sillies, said my tone. I would have let you in. “Can you teach me to do that?”

  “Shut the door,” said Robert.

  I stepped inside. I shut the door. I even put down my suitcase, to make it look like I wasn’t planning to bolt at the slightest sign of danger. I did not take off my backpack. My willingness to risk myself did not extend to letting them get my mice.

  “I was against sending you on this jaunt from the beginning,” said Robert. His tone was flat; his eyes were cold. It was like being lectured by a lizard that had decided to spend some time in human form. “You’re American, and Americans are inherently untrustworthy. You don’t understand tradition. Not really. Not down to your bones. You’re also very new. No one should be in the field after only six weeks with us. It’s inappropriate, and it’s unfair to you. If you fail, it will be counted against you forever, when we were the ones who sent you into something you’re not prepared for.”

  “I thought this was going to be me and Margaret,” I said. I allowed a note of irritation to creep into my tone. I didn’t like Margaret, but in a distant, terrible way, I recognized her as family. And no one treats my family badly but me. “Why are you here?”

  Margaret, standing against the wall, didn’t meet my eyes. That probably wasn’t a good sign.

  “I don’t know how much you retained from your lessons, but our Maggie is the latest scion of a line known for throwing traitors. She’s not allowed to leave the United Kingdom without a minder, lest she go the way of all Healys and defect. She and I have worked together before. She knows how to take orders from me. As to why you weren’t told, it was a test. We wanted to know how you’d behave if you thought you weren’t under supervision.”

  “Well?” I spread my arms wide before allowing them to slap back against my sides. “Do I pass, or is this where I try to see whether I can run faster scared than you can murderous? Because I can run really fast when I’m scared.”

  “Calm down, Miss Brown. You comported yourself admirably. You didn’t draw excessive attention, you moved between your checkpoints without hesitation, and you didn’t have unnecessary contact with civilians. All in all, you did as well as could have been expected, and substantially better than I’d expected from you.”

  My first impulse was to get angry. Fortunately for me, my second impulse was to simper and look flattered, and that was the impulse that won. Baiting a member of the Covenant when I was exhausted and unarmed didn’t seem like a good way to keep myself breathing.

  “So what happens now?” I picked up my suitcase, walking over to sling it up onto the dresser next to the ancient television. “I need to get some sleep before I talk to the carnival. I’m so tired that my hair hurts.”

  “What happens now is we leave.” Robert pulled a battered smartphone out of his pocket, holding it up for me to see. “There are two numbers programmed into this. ‘Sue’ will reach Margaret. ‘Tom’ will reach me. Only call if you have something to report, or if your life is in danger. Otherwise, you’re expected to text us both at ten-seventeen every evening to tell us what’s going on. References to food, cats, or having a good time will be taken as a sign that your mission is going well; references to alcohol, dogs, or frowny faces will be taken as a sign you need assistance.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You’re not the one who came up with this code, are you?”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?” asked Robert, lobbing the phone at me. “And it doesn’t matter who conceived the code, as long as you stick to it religiously. If you miss two check-ins in a row, we’ll come for you, and we won’t come gently. Either Margaret or I will call to inform you of any changes to the mission. Do you understand?”

  “I do,” I said. “Are you going to back off now, and let me convince these people that I’m on their side? Because I can do it, but only if you leave me the time I need to work.”

  Robert looked at me assessingly. I stayed where I was, trying not to squirm. I needed him to give me the freedom to act. I needed to be able to approach these people on my own terms, to get them to trust me, so I could figure out whether I’d be able to protect them.

  And whether I should. If they were responsible for those disappearances—if they were kidnapping children, and especially if those children weren’t alive—I would normally have notified my family, and we would have dealt with it. Dealing w
ith it didn’t always end bloodlessly. So if they were killers, and turning them over to the Covenant could strengthen my cover, why shouldn’t I do exactly that? Why shouldn’t I protect humanity and myself at the same time?

  I swallowed the urge to shake the thought away. I was tired, and these people were getting to me. I needed to sleep. I needed to rest. Once I’d done that, I’d be able to think more clearly, and the idea of turning innocent cryptids over to the Covenant of St. George would stop seeming like something that could ever, ever be “all right.”

  (Yes, sometimes we killed, and sometimes we did it because cryptids were putting humans in danger. But there was a big difference between a clean kill on home ground and inviting the assassins over to play.)

  “You’ve got your own reins,” he said, and stood, walking over to clasp my shoulder firmly. “Don’t fuck it up, Annie-girl. You’re not going to get another shot.”

  Then he turned and walked out. The silent Margaret trailed after him, pausing only to shoot me a pained look. I felt almost bad for her. It was pretty clear how the hierarchy here worked, and she wasn’t anywhere near the top.

  The door slammed behind them. I was alone—only not quite. Shrugging off my backpack, I put it down next to the bed, yawned, and said blandly, “It’s sure nice to have a little privacy again.”

  The sound of scurrying feet from under the bed told me Mindy had taken the hint, and was hauling Mork along with her while she searched the room for listening devices, hidden cameras, and other things that could ruin my night. Without Chloe there to snore and provide cover, I couldn’t talk to the mice until we were sure that it was safe. So I sat down on the edge of the bed to wait.

  It was a nice bed. So nice. So soft. So comfort . . . able . . .