Tricks for Free

  “Not so far as I know,” said Megan. “My dad’s pretty paranoid. I bet he would have told me.”

  “Awesome,” I said.

  Fern and I finished cleaning up while Sam and Cylia slept. Sparing them the physical labor seemed only fair, given that we were responsible for their current condition. Fern did pause to look at Cylia and sigh wistfully.

  “I wish I wouldn’t feel like a jerk for drawing all over them,” she said.

  I snorted.

  “Anyone drawing on me is going to get a bucket of water dumped over their head when they least expect it,” said Sam.

  I started a little, surprised. “You’re awake?” I glanced at the clock. It had been roughly six minutes since Megan knocked him out. Not quite the ten to fifteen she’d guessed, but that made sense: he hadn’t gone down until he’d changed forms. He must still have a certain degree of resistance.

  “Can’t quite convince anything to move, but yeah,” he said. “It feels like my whole body went to sleep.”

  “Can you change forms?”

  “Not sure.” Sam’s brow furrowed. It was like watching someone try to shake off a shot of Novocain after a trip to the dentist. He relaxed again. “No. Which would be less upsetting if this hadn’t just happened.”

  “It’s muscle control, not anything more serious,” said Megan soothingly. I had never heard her break out the doctor voice before. She saw me staring and flashed me a thumbs-up. “As soon as the paralysis wears off a little more, you’ll be fine. It’s unusual for you to even be awake right now.”

  “I’m an unusual guy,” said Sam, and opened his eyes. His lips twitched as he tried to frown. “Your ceiling is dull.”

  “So paint it,” I said.

  “So don’t,” said Fern. “Lowry doesn’t allow employees to paint their company-owned living areas.”

  “So move,” said Sam, and transformed, skin rippling and limbs lengthening, until the monkey-man I had come to see as the real him—the him that mattered, the him I was rapidly falling in love with—was stretched out on my floor. Immediately, he leaped to his feet, displaying a level of muscular control that was virtually unthinkable in a human athlete, and stretched, fingertips brushing the ceiling.

  “Better,” he said.

  “Agreed,” I said. Sam smiled at me, shyly again, and for a moment, I almost forgot that I wasn’t allowed to touch him yet.

  Fern cleared her throat. I jerked back.

  “As soon as Cylia’s awake, we can move,” she said. “Is there a plan? Or were we just going to storm the castle? Because Lowryland has a lot of castles. I don’t think we should go storming them all willy-nilly.”

  It felt like it should have been the middle of the night. A glance at the clock confirmed that it was only half past six. The media buildings would be closed. The cabal would still be there. Colin and Emily never seemed to leave before nine, and half the time my “lessons” had been held when the world was dark, on the days when I had morning shifts to deal with.

  “Here’s the plan: kick their asses.” I looked at Cylia, sprawled on the floor like a dead thing. “Make them understand that they fucked with the wrong group of weirdoes. And then get the fuck out of here.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Sam, and cracked his knuckles with a sound like a small-caliber handgun going off. “Let’s rock.”

  Twenty

  “Sometimes leaving survivors isn’t the kind option. Sometimes it’s a warning to others.”

  –Frances Brown

  Heading for the Lowryland Public Relations building, ready to rock

  ROCKING HAD TO WAIT until Cylia was awake, for several reasons, the most important of which was that we were going to be using her car. It was simple logistics: Megan was driving a beat-up green Corolla that worked great for getting three people to the Park, but really wasn’t equipped to ram a gate. Also, out of all of us, she was the one planning to stay at Lowryland long enough to finish her medical residency. Any pictures of our little adventure needed to leave her out of it.

  (We could get her to the admin center through the time-honored method of “putting someone in the backseat, across the laps of everyone else there, under a blanket.” Traffic cams are everywhere. I was going to be wearing sunglasses and a big floppy hat, which should be enough to keep me off the Covenant’s radar, but if Lowry Security decided to check the footage later, they needed to count four people in the vehicle, not five.)

  Fortunately, a gorgon’s gaze isn’t like a drug: once somebody shakes it off and opens their eyes, they’re basically ready to roll. Once Cylia was awake, we were five minutes from hitting the road. We wouldn’t even have been that far if I hadn’t wanted to give everyone one last opportunity to change their minds.

  No one did. Whatever else happened from here, it was going to be all of us.

  So there we were, five people crammed into one mid-century American muscle car, Sam in the front seat and Cylia behind the wheel, while Fern and I—both in floppy hats that hid as much of our faces as possible—rode in the back, Megan stretched across our laps.

  The gates to the admin complex were supposed to be locked at all times, requiring ID cards and verifications to get through. Even if that failed, the guards were supposed to be there, checking everyone against their computers before they allowed anybody to enter the secret fastness of the Lowry empire. It was their bad luck that when we pulled up to the gate, it was to discover that entire stretch of wall dark.

  Cylia looked at the rearview mirror, directing her words to me: “Localized power outage. They’re not uncommon around here, sadly. Sometimes it’s rats chewing on the substation wires. Sometimes it’s alligators chewing on the rats. Either way, we’re in the clear.”

  “No, we’re not,” said Fern, and I could hear the frown in her voice. “This much good luck for us means bad luck for you later.”

  “Try to keep me alive,” said Cylia. She got out of the car, walking around to the wooden barrier that was supposed to prevent intruders from just driving onto the property. It lifted easily when she pushed on it, apparently designed to be operated manually.

  She got back into the car, and we drove on.

  The power outage had been even more localized than I’d initially assumed: the streetlights scattered around the parking lot were on, casting every rock and remaining car into stark relief. Cylia chose a spot that was close to the Public Relations building, and also to the fence that separated it from the nearby swampland. She killed the engine, hands still resting on the wheel, and stared at the greenery on the other side of the chain-link.

  “Anyone wants out, this is where you say so,” she said.

  “Does that mean you want out?” I asked.

  “No.” Her chuckle was utterly mirthless. “Tav would tell me to run like hell, because the life of every jink in the world isn’t worth my own. Let me be a species of one, if that’s what it comes down to. But Tav left. I’m a widow, and I make my own choices, and I say these assholes need to pay for fucking with a force of nature that was never meant to be theirs.”

  No one else said anything. The moment stretched out until it seemed to fill the whole car with silence, until the whole world was silence. They were waiting on me.

  I took a breath.

  “All right,” I said. “If things go south, scatter. Megan—”

  “I’ll hit the swamp,” she said. “Nothing there can hurt me.”

  “I’m not leaving without you,” said Sam, utterly calm, like he was talking about ordering another pizza. “So if things go south, I’m grabbing you, and heading for the highest ground I can find.”

  “Given where we are, that’s in Lowryland,” said Fern. “Regroup at the Midsummer Night’s Scream? Fairyland’s closed. It’s the safest place to go.”

  The fact that she was talking about breaking into one of the largest theme parks in Florida like
it was no big deal was as endearing as it was accurate. I nodded firmly.

  “It’s a plan,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  The night air outside the car was warm and humid, hot enough to have been an Oregon summer, even though the sun had been down for almost an hour. We walked across the parking lot to the Public Relations building, where the door, as always, was unlocked.

  That was where the bad luck caught up with us. We stepped inside just as one of the conference room doors opened, and Emily emerged, followed by Sophie Vargas-Jackson. My old cheer captain. The woman who had believed, for all the time she’d known me, that I was a victim.

  Emily froze, eyes going wide in surprise and shock. Sophie did no such thing. She took us all in with a single flick of her eyes, identifying Fern and Megan as Lowry employees and clearly filing Cylia under the same category—no one could know everyone who worked for the Park, not and have room in their heads for anything else—before stalking toward us.

  “You bastard,” she hissed, and slapped Sam, hard, across his human-seeming cheek.

  He took a step backward, more out of surprise than in response to the blow, and raised a hand to touch the spot where he’d been struck. “What the hell, lady?” he asked.

  “You bring her here to make her resign?” she demanded, eyes fixed on Sam. “You think if you get her away from us, you make her yours again?” Her next sentence was in Spanish, venom dripping from every word, enough to make the language barrier almost inconsequential.

  Sam blinked. “Uh. I think you have me confused for somebody else.”

  “Does she have you confused for someone who is not an employee of Lowry Entertainment, Inc., and thus has no business in this office?” Emily unfroze, taking a brisk step forward. “Miss West, what is the meaning of this intrusion?”

  Her tone promised retribution. The last twenty-four hours of my life meant I didn’t care. People who were trying to wreak retribution were almost always people I was allowed to punch, and I was really looking forward to that right about now.

  “I need to see Colin,” I said, and turned to Sophie. I wanted to take her hands. I wanted to thank her for everything she’d done for me, for trusting me, for giving me a place to lick my wounds and heal before the world remembered I existed and compelled me to start moving again. I couldn’t do any of those things. She would never have been willing to leave if she’d understood what was happening, and I didn’t dare touch her, not when I didn’t know whether her luck was intact. With my luck, she’d secretly been a therianthrope this whole time, and touching her skin would strip her protections away and leave her vulnerable in ways I didn’t even like to think about.

  Instead, I said the thing I knew would make her feel better, without actually being a lie. “Sophie, this is Sam,” I said. “I met him about six months ago, and I love him, and he would kill any man who hurt me. He’s not the reason I had to run. If anything, he’s the reason running broke my heart.”

  “Uh, hi,” said Sam, looking a little dazed. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Melody loves you?” Sophie looked him up and down, cheeks reddening slightly. “Sorry I slapped you, then. But if you hurt her—”

  “Ma’am, I am not intending to hurt her, and if I did, I promise you, I’d regret it.” Sam managed a small smile. “Melody is the best thing that’s happened to me in a very long time.”

  “I think I may be sick,” said Emily. She pushed Sophie out of the way—literally pushed her, sending the other woman stumbling to the side—and moved so that she was standing directly in front of me, our noses only an inch or so apart. “Mr. Brightman is not currently available. As your employment is in question following this little . . . stunt . . . he may not be available in the future. Leave. Now. It might save your job.”

  “Ah, but will it save my soul?” I shrugged expansively. “Sorry, Emily, but I’m not here to save my job. I’m here to save Lowryland.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Sophie.

  I managed, barely, to suppress my wince. Sophie was a civilian, a human civilian—I was almost certain, like, ninety-five percent certain—and she didn’t need to be here for what was about to happen.

  Luckily, I wasn’t the only one on the scene. “I can explain,” said Megan, stepping forward and reaching for her glasses.

  I closed my eyes, opening them only when I heard the soft sound of Sophie hitting the floor. She looked a bit like something discarded, lying there with her limbs akimbo and her face slack, artificially at peace.

  Emily wasn’t at peace. Emily was staring at Megan, eyes wide and mouth slightly open, hands raised in a complicated warding gesture.

  “A gorgon,” she breathed. “You brought a gorgon to the Public Relations department. Are you insane, or just stupid?”

  Megan pushed her glasses back up her nose, getting them seated firmly in place before she said primly, “My parents taught me not to sling around words like ‘insane’ as if they were insults, so fuck you very much, lady. And fuck your little ward, too. If I’d looked at you, you’d be on the floor.”

  “Sam?” I said tightly.

  “On it,” he replied, and scooped Sophie into his arms, carrying her to one of the plastic chairs in the corner. They were designed more for show than for any semblance of comfort, but at least she wasn’t going to wake up on the ground. She’d probably have a raging headache, and no idea what had actually happened to her. Those were small things, when compared to the potential consequences of keeping her conscious.

  “I need to see Colin, Emily,” I said again, with as much dignity and patience as I could scrape from the bottom of my heart. There wasn’t nearly as much as a good Lowry girl would have found. Being used did that to me. “I know he’s here.”

  “How?”

  “Because you’re here, and you’re too much of a company girl to waste resources on yourself alone.” I took a step toward her, my flameless hands balled into fists at my sides, like that would somehow call the fire back. It wouldn’t—I knew that—but it would sure make it easier to deck her. “You’re a routewitch. Ask the road what you should do.”

  Emily’s eyes widened fractionally, her gaze snapping to my companions, reading and assessing them as she tried to figure out how much trouble she was in. To her credit, she didn’t accuse me of telling lies. She already knew Megan was a gorgon, and since none of us were passed out, having looked away or closed our eyes as necessary, it was clear that all of us knew, too. Whatever my companions were, they knew enough to know that routewitches were real.

  “The road is not a toy, little girl,” she said, in a patiently withering tone. “You’re interfering with matters so far beyond you that you might as well be an insect crawling on the pavement, struggling to understand things that have never been yours to know.”

  “Insect imagery,” I said. “Nice.” I unclenched my fists, slowly flexing my fingers to limber them up. “Do you read a lot of cold war spy novels, or does that sort of thing come naturally once you become an evil mastermind? Oh, wait. You’re not the evil mastermind here. You’re just the routewitch. Does the road even talk to you anymore? Or have you used up so much of what you should have been that this is all you get? Just the paths of Lowryland, and the charms you put on innocent guests to rip their luck away. . . .”

  This time, Emma’s flinch was visible. There was no way it wouldn’t have been. “How do you know that?” she demanded.

  “How can you do that?” I countered. I could see my allies out of the corner of my eye, falling into position behind me. Sam and Cylia were to my right, Fern and Megan were to my left, and this was all going to end so very, very poorly, and there was nothing else we could have done. Having a duty to the cryptid world means having a duty to the human race at the same time, and to the people who blur the line. People like Sam, who had one human parent and one yōkai parent. People like Emily, whose humanity was unquestioned,
but whose abilities were preternatural at best.

  People like me, who should have had fire in my fingers, instead of cold ashes.

  Her eyes narrowed. “You have no idea what you’re doing. You’re throwing your future away.”

  “You used your magic to hurt people who never did anything to you. What right did you have? Luck isn’t a toy.”

  “Don’t you sound like the pious little killjoy?” Emily shook her head, giving our group one last look before she raised her hands to the level of her face, palms turned outward, showing us that they were empty. “I surrender.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “I said, I surrender. I give up. You win. I am your prisoner.” Emily sounded almost bored, like she was reading a script someone else had written, and which she didn’t think much of. “You can do with me as you like, and I’m assuming that what you’d like is for me to unlock the elevator and take you up to have a little chat with Mr. Brightman. Am I correct?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, exchanging a glance with Sam. Every alarm bell I had, and a few I would have said I didn’t have, was ringing. But we needed to get to Colin. We needed to end this.

  Sam nodded marginally. So did Fern. All right. I turned back to Emily.

  “All right,” I said. “Take us to your leader.”

  * * *

  We left Sophie asleep in the lobby, where she’d hopefully wake up, assume she’d dozed off from overwork, and go home believing our entire encounter had been a surreal dream. It wouldn’t help when the next day found me missing from the Lowry complex, but it would at least keep her from charging up the stairs, looking to stop whatever bizarre nonsense was going on. She didn’t deserve to be hurt by this.

  No one did. That was really the problem. No one who came to Lowryland, whether they were looking for a temporary escape or for a whole new life, deserved to be hurt by a group of irresponsible magic-users who thought that being able to do something most people couldn’t somehow gave them the right to do whatever they wanted. Sometimes people did things that they deserved to suffer for, like licking bees or using poison ivy for toilet paper. The world is not infinitely merciful. But this place was supposed to be an escape. It was supposed to be a fantasy that anyone who could afford a ticket was allowed to be a part of, unjudged, unharmed, without fear. Emily, Colin, and their little cabal had taken that away.