Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

My reflection looked small and scared and frazzled, nothing like the image of myself that I’ve always tried to project. I stopped, looking critically at myself. My hair was good. Megan didn’t have hair of her own—again, snakes—and consequentially viewed me and Fern as life-sized versions of her childhood Barbie dolls. When she’d learned I used henna to keep my hair closer to red than brown, she’d actually squealed and demanded I let her take over the process. Since I hadn’t been doing my own henna since high school, I’d gladly handed her the reins.

I needed to eat more. My collarbones were showing too clearly through my skin, and that has never been a good look for me, or a goal of mine. My sister is a dancer and always will be, whether she’s doing it professionally or not. For her, weight management is a part of her career. I, on the other hand, skate to kill and set things on fire with the power of my mind. The trapeze requires a certain awareness of size, but that’s as much about knowing the strength of your partner as it is the size of your pants. Sam had been perfectly happy to sling me around the big tent—boobs, hips, and all—and he had never once suggested I needed to cut back on the sandwiches in anything other than jest.

Lowryland hadn’t been as kind. I was still eating, but my meals were more like the one I’d failed to consume yesterday for the most part: Park food, scarfed down fast, assuming it made it past my lips at all. Nutrition and the food pyramid were no longer my friends.

“Hello?”

No response.

“I’m assuming you’re watching me right now, since it wouldn’t make sense for you not to be—not when I’m in your nice training room and all. So if you’re watching me, you must be testing me in some way.” I was talking partially to hear myself talk, and partially to see whether anything in the room reacted. Nothing did. “I do better on tests when I know what I’m supposed to be accomplishing. Just an FYI.”

Still no response. This would get irritating fast if I allowed it to do so, which was probably what my new teacher was counting on: the more annoyed I was, the more likely I was to set something on fire without meaning to. I didn’t know whether this was intended to gauge how much power I could generate or give them a baseline of how easy I was to annoy, and—honestly—I didn’t care. They were playing games. I could play games, too.

“I wish I had my skates. This is a nice smooth floor like the ones I used to train on, not like the bumpy paths in Lowryland. I could build up a real head of steam here.” I walked to the middle of the room, dropped my bag, and kept walking until I came to the bar in front of the mirror, where I kicked off my shoes. Verity would already have been practicing her ballet form. I had something similar in mind.

My hands hurt less than they had immediately after being burned. My fingers still felt thick and clumsy, slow to obey my commands and slower still to clamp down, but that was okay; what I had in mind didn’t require fine motor manipulation. Bending forward, I rested my forearms against the floor, putting the bulk of my weight on my elbows. I held that position for a moment, letting my spine lengthen into the pose, before lifting up onto my toes, clenching the muscles at my core, and slowly, carefully lifting my legs into the air.

As always, there was a moment where it felt like I was going to overbalance, sending myself crashing to the floor. The moment passed, and then my toes were lightly tapping the surface of the mirror, reassuring me that gravity was working the way it was supposed to.

Trampoline and the trapeze are all about core strength. Without it, you’ll never get off the floor. Funny thing: cheerleading and being a roller derby jammer work the same muscle groups. I may not be the fastest thing on two feet—although give me a pair of skates and I’ll give damn near anyone a run for their money—and I may not have the best aim in my family, but I can hang upside down like a bat for hours. It’s actually pretty soothing. Even blood needs a vacation every now and then, and I enjoy sending mine to visit my brain.

Closing my eyes, I focused on my breathing, letting every inhale fill my entire body, letting every exhale root me deeper in my pose. The pain in my hands receded, driven away by the meditative focus on being exactly who and what and where I was.

A door clicked shut somewhere behind me. I didn’t open my eyes.

“Miss West, may I ask what in the world you’re doing?”

The voice belonged to Wand Guy. Nice to know I’d been right about who was keeping an eye on me. Still not opening my eyes, I said, “I figured you’d gotten stuck in a meeting or something, and wanted me to entertain myself. I’m meditating.”

“You’re inverted.”

“Not quite. I can’t trust my hands, and there’s no hang bar on the ceiling anyway.”

“Please remember what it means to be right-side up, and turn to look at me while I’m talking to you.” He didn’t sound angry. More confused, with a healthy side order of amusement.

That was something I could work with. I tapped my toes against the mirror one last time before lowering my legs toward the ground, pushing myself farther up onto my elbows at the same time, until I was drawing a horizontal line with my body. This accomplished, I lowered my legs the rest of the way down and opened my eyes, meeting my own gaze in the mirror.

There was Wand Guy, standing behind me and about eight feet back, his wand in his hand. He was wearing a suit—big surprise there—and a quizzical expression.

“Yoga?” he inquired.

“Among other things.” I pushed myself to my feet, dusting off my knees before I turned to face him. “It helps to keep me calm.”

The corner of his mouth quirked upward. I’d guessed correctly about the idea behind putting me in this room by myself, then. “I see,” he said.

I offered him my biggest, brightest smile. “So what’s the plan? How are you going to teach me to avoid going full Carrie?”

“How much do you know about other sorcerers in your family line?”

The question was mild, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t have teeth. It’s always hard to know how people will react to the name “Price.” Some of them think we’re still with the Covenant, which makes us monsters. Others think we’ve long since sold the human race out in favor of the cryptid communities of the world, which also makes us monsters. And regardless of how he responded, telling him who I really was would compromise that whole “hiding” thing I had going on. So I kept smiling, and I lied.

“Not much.” So far so good. “It was my grandfather, according to our family ghost, and she didn’t see too much of what he could do—just knew that he could do it. He didn’t leave behind any instruction manuals. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any other family, so it wasn’t like we could go talk to them when I started smoking.”

“How much does your grandmother know? Having a family ghost is unusual enough that she must be aware of something.”

This was where I’d need to start treading carefully. So far as I knew, magic-users can’t detect falsehood any more than, say, routewitches, or babysitters. They can learn to read people, but they can’t hear a lie the way a trainspotter would. So I could tell Colin lies and be okay, as long as I constructed a chain that made logical sense and wasn’t likely to trip me up later. It was just that if he asked me to repeat any of this in front of the trainspotter, I was going to go down in flames.

Oh, well. I’d come too far to let one more possible disaster keep me from learning what I needed to know. “I didn’t know she was my grandmother when I was little. I thought she was my imaginary friend,” I said glibly. “She would appear after my parents turned the lights out. She told me bedtime stories and chased the monsters out of my closet before she went away. When I asked my mom about her, she always said there was no girl in my room after bedtime. Every kid has their own version of normal, you know? When other kids talked about their imaginary friends, I thought they could see them the way I could see mine.”

“I . . . see,” said Colin.

In for a penny, in for a pound. “She went away when I was nine. That was the year I found out Santa Claus wasn’t real, and neither were imaginary friends. She came back five years later, when I had a bad dream and set my pillow on fire. She’s been with me ever since.”