Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

I understood the sentiment better than I’d ever thought I would as an adult. I wanted my own mommy so badly that it hurt. “I know, princess,” I said, smoothing Ginger’s hair back from her face. “But I need to help some more people before we can go find your mom, and I need you to be brave and strong like Laura, and watch this baby for me, okay? I can’t take a carrier with me while I make sure everyone else is okay.”

Everyone else was not okay. There was too much blood for that, and too much screaming, even now that most of the guests had fled. A lot of people were never going to be okay again. I kept looking at Ginger and kept smiling, listening to the sirens getting closer and the wailing of the wounded.

Finally, sniffling, she said, “Okay,” and leaned against the baby carrier. The pressure of her body caused it to rock, and the wailing infant stopped, apparently startled into silence.

“I’ll be right back,” I said solemnly, before turning on my heel and sprinting back into the chaos.

Mary was there, her hair standing out like a banner against the blood and smoke. Sometimes I thought she had someone with her, but whenever I tried to look closer, they were gone, fading back into the landscape. She was gathering ghosts, the newly-dead who were still too close to the twilight to be visible to the living. That was . . . that was not great. I mean, it was great in the sense that Lowryland might not wind up more haunted than it already was, and yet. It would have been nice if no one had died.

It would have been wonderful.

I plucked four more children off the sidewalks and ran them back to Ginger, who was taking enthusiastically to her new role as “person who was keeping an eye on everyone else.” I would drop them off and run again as she started to explain the situation, that I was one of Princess Laura’s helpers, and I was going to find all their mommies and daddies just as soon as I was finished finding everyone. She made it sound like a game. That was probably at least half shock speaking, keeping her from fully understanding what was going on.

A little shock would have been nice. A little shock would have been great, as I moved aside a sheet of fallen plastic to reveal the actress who played Laura. Had played Laura. She wasn’t going to be playing any roles after this one, save perhaps—after the mortician finished working on her—the role of beautiful corpse. Lizzie’s actress had gotten off easy with her broken arm. Laura’s actress had a broken neck, and a wide swath of skin had been scraped off the side of her face, exposing muscle and bone.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, and placed the plastic gently back across her body, so none of the remaining guests would accidentally see her and realize what had happened.

She wasn’t the only casualty. She wasn’t even the worst of them. I was trying to convince a weeping man to let go of his boyfriend’s hand and move away from a structurally unsound piece of the float when the sirens suddenly got much closer, and I turned to see the full Lowryland security team rounding the corner. A knot in my chest let go, allowing me to breathe again. They were here. I wasn’t alone anymore. I wasn’t alone.

A glance at the flower clock next to the gift shop told me that it had been less than ten minutes since the float collapsed. It felt like it had been so much longer. I straightened, trying to shake off the feeling that time was broken, that something had somehow gone horribly wrong and caused everything to stretch out like taffy.

A child was crying. An adult was still screaming. The Lowryland security team was running for the float, while the handlers they’d brought with them were working to clear the remaining guests away.

A hand touched my elbow. I flinched and whipped around. There was Mary, now wearing the uniform of a Fairyland staffer. It made sense. She didn’t do it often, for fear of attracting the wrong kind of attention from management, but with the chaos around us, no one was going to be pointing fingers at a single unfamiliar face.

“Come on,” she said, getting a firmer grip on my arm and tugging me backward, toward her, away from the chaos. “You need to stop staring and come on.”

I looked at her blankly, not resisting, but not helping her either. That shock I’d been wishing for felt like it was finally settling in. Yay. “What? Why?”

“Because people are snapping out of it, and they’re taking pictures, and you’ve been behind smoke or behind ghosts until now, but the number of cameras is about to skyrocket, and I can’t keep your ugly mug off the news forever.” Mary looked at me grimly. “Run or get outed to the world.”

I chose “run.”

Mary slung an arm around my shoulders as I hunched slightly forward, trying to give the impression that I was feeling poorly and needed to get to a toilet before I tossed my cookies all over the bloody pavement. People behind us were shouting and clearing the sidewalks, and no one was paying attention to two seemingly uninjured workers.

We made it through the employee door and into a quiet stretch of the backlot before my knees went weak and I nearly toppled forward. Mary was there to grab me and keep me from going over—mostly. She was still sweet sixteen, and a skinny sixteen to boot. I was more than a foot taller, and easily fifty pounds heavier. She managed to slow my descent, but in the end, she couldn’t keep my knees from hitting the concrete.

The crunching sound they made was familiar from a thousand roller derby practices, and oddly soothing. The world was turning itself merrily upside down. I could still feel pain, and still pay for the choices I made.

“Hey.” Mary knelt in front of me, brushing my hair away from my eyes. Her own eyes were a thousand miles of empty highway, a color that wasn’t really a color and was more a state of despair. They shouldn’t have been soothing. I’ve been looking at them for almost my entire life, and they were something familiar I could cling to. “Stay with me now. Don’t you go wherever it is you want to go.”

“I want to go home,” I whispered, and my voice had so much in common with little Ginger that it hurt to hear.

“You could.”

“I can’t.”

“I know.” Mary offered a small, half-pained smile. “But you’re with me now. Breathe. Keep breathing. I’m going to go get you something to bring your blood sugar back up. You should be safe here. Do you feel like you’ll be safe here?”

I nodded, closing my eyes. Despite the bone-deep weariness that was settling over me now that the adrenaline was leaving my body, I wasn’t hurt; I wasn’t even scratched, unless I wanted to count my aching knees. I was just tired. This was so like what I had trained for, and so unlike it at the same time, that I didn’t have the coping mechanisms I needed.

“Okay. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

There was the faintest of sounds, like air rushing back into the space where she’d been, and I was alone. I kept my eyes closed, inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth, looking for that quiet core of serenity that Colin had been helping me to find.

The fire hadn’t been there when I needed it. After so many accidents and one notable save—it’s hard to top burning down the big tent while I was still in it for the needlessly dramatic, even if that alone hadn’t been enough to save the carnival—the fire hadn’t been there. I was learning to speak, and losing the ability to scream. That was unnerving on a level that I didn’t really have the words for. If turning me into a better sorcerer meant I wasn’t going to be able to defend myself, was it really worth it?

(Did I even want to be a sorcerer? I didn’t have a choice about being a magic-user. It’s in my genes, a gift from a distant grandfather who disappeared long before I was born, and I can’t reject it any more than I can change the color of my eyes. But there’s a big difference between having a talent and training it in a specific way. If I kept working with Colin, one day his way wouldn’t just be the right way: it would be the only way, and I wouldn’t understand why I’d ever thought differently. There was only so much of a window for stopping this, and it was getting narrower by the day.)