Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

“Miss West.” The voice was Emily’s. The fact that it hadn’t been accompanied by footsteps was somehow unsurprising. Routewitches aren’t heard when they don’t want to be. “Why am I not surprised to find you in the midst of another crisis?”

“I didn’t do it,” I said, not opening my eyes. I hadn’t done it. The fact that I’d been nearby both times was just a terrible coincidence.

Wasn’t it?

“I know. I do believe we may need to have a conversation, however, about why you run away whenever it seems your picture might be taken. You can open your eyes, by the way. It’s just the two of us here.” I could hear the smile in her voice. It had teeth. “Your little ghost isn’t going to be able to come back until I decide to let her. It seemed like a good time to remind her that she’s a guest in our home.”

Crap. I opened my eyes and tilted my head, looking up at her. “You knew she was here?”

“I know whenever a ghost steps foot on Lowryland property. Most of them are tourists even among the guests. You’d be surprised by how many people have ‘ride the Midsummer Night’s Scream one last time’ as their unfinished business. Well, that, and the Re-Entry. I’m not sure why it’s the roller coasters that bring back the dead. Maybe it’s something about wanting to feel afraid enough to be alive again.” Emily shook her head, looking unperturbed by the lack of a clear explanation. “I know every time she visits. I just didn’t know why she was showing up here. Now I do, and I can find her whenever I want.”

“Right.” My stomach sank. After more than fifty years, was I going to be the one who doomed Mary to a routewitch’s spirit jar, all because I wound up choosing the wrong theme park? They probably didn’t have these problems at Disney World.

“Get up.” Emily offered her hand. I took it, letting her pull me to my feet. She looked at me critically. “You have blood in your hair and on your collar. That’s going to be difficult to get out of the fabric.”

“I’m good with blood.”

Emily raised an eyebrow. “As you say. I’m going to be recommending all damages due to this incident be waived on the cast member level. We don’t want to discourage people from playing Good Samaritan when things like this happen—which, God forbid, is sometimes unavoidable. We run a fairly tight ship here. Accidents are still going to slip through.”

My fingers itched, not with fire, but with the urge to slap her. “Princess Laura’s face came off on the pavement,” I said quietly. “This wasn’t an accident. This was a tragedy.”

Ginger was probably still waiting for me to come back. No. No. I couldn’t think like that. Ginger’s mother was fine. She wasn’t one of the people crushed under the bulk of the float. She was fine. She was probably with her daughter right now, helping to get the other children back to their families. Ginger would be the darling of the people looking for a positive human interest story to pluck out of this disaster, the little girl in the Princess Laura dress who’d stepped up and somehow organized her own little nursery school.

I was happy to let her have the limelight. She might get something good out of it. All I would get was pain.

“Of course, it’s a tragedy,” said Emily. “What do you take me for? I’m not a monster, Melody. But this Park is my world, and it’s your world , at least for now. Whether you intend to stay with us forever or not, you need to consider Lowryland in everything you do.”

“Her face,” I repeated.

“Yes. Security is coordinating the EMTs now, and we have firetrucks and engineering en route, ready to remove the float and find out what caused the failure. This is a public relations nightmare. We’ll be dealing with the repercussions for a year or more. Disney will laugh all the way to the bank. And you helped. You ran into the danger when there was no reason to. You’re a very lucky girl.” Emily reached out and took my chin between her thumb and forefinger, looking at me critically. “Very lucky.”

I took a step back when she let me go. It was automatic, unavoidable. She didn’t look surprised.

“Go home, Melody,” she said. “We’re closing early today.”

Then she turned and walked away, leaving me utterly, achingly alone.





Twelve




“There are a lot of ways to be haunted. Some of them are even good ones, if you’re up for it.”

–Mary Dunlavy

Lowryland, backstage, walking slow

MARY DIDN’T COME BACK.

I stayed where I was for a good ten minutes, counting the seconds, listening as the sounds outside the wall moved from quick urgency to slow, methodical diligence. They weren’t trying to triage the wounded or rescue the trapped anymore: they were trying to evacuate the remaining guests before they began unearthing the dead. The actress who played Laura in the parades would probably be one of the first bodies removed, since she was only covered by a thin sheet of plastic. I couldn’t even figure out what part of the float it had been, before everything went to pieces.

And Mary didn’t come back.

When I couldn’t put it off any longer—not without risking a return appearance of Emily, or worse, the rest of the employees from my shift, who had all seen me running for the float—I turned and trudged toward the door that would take me into the tunnels. Once I was there, I could walk back to the locker room, change out of my uniform, and get my things. I needed to be out of here. I needed to go home.

The tunnels were dim and smelled like boiled laundry. That was a constant. On hot days, they were actually cooler than the rest of Lowryland, thanks to that easy darkness. Someone could have told me there was an entire colony of bogeymen living peacefully under the Park, and I would have believed them. Given how I was feeling, I would probably have asked for directions. Tea with a quiet, accepting bogey community was about all I was feeling up for.

People hurried past me, none of them stopping to ask how I was or why there was blood in my hair. I couldn’t blame them. They all looked about as shaken as I felt, and doubtless with far better reason—at least I’d been trained for this sort of thing. They were ordinary people, going about their ordinary business, and now here we were. Everything was falling apart.

I didn’t realize I had turned away from my own locker room until I was standing in the doorway of a nearly-identical room, looking blankly at a group of women who were encircling one of their own. The one in the middle was sobbing like her heart was broken. Maybe it was. I took a step back.

My heel hit hard against the concrete floor. Several of the women looked around. One was still wearing Princess Lizzie’s dress, although she had removed the wig, revealing a clean blonde crewcut. Another, in street clothes, raised a hand and pointed at me.

“You,” she said. “You were corralling the kids after the parade crash. I saw you.”

The other women started looking around, murmuring. I spotted Fern at the back of the group, and some of the tension left my spine. She was all right. She was here. I wasn’t alone anymore.

The Princess Lizzie was looking at me expectantly, clinging to the hand of the woman who had pointed me out. I forced myself to nod, and said, “Yeah, that was me. I was working in the gift shop when . . . when whatever happened, happened. Please don’t ask what went wrong with the float. I don’t know. I just knew I had to do something.”

“Andrea and Marissa,” said the princess. “Are they all right?”

I looked at her blankly. She looked back, impatient, until she realized that I wasn’t being dense: I didn’t know who she meant.

“They play Laura and Lizzie on the float,” she said. “Marissa borrowed my wig.” There was a wealth of concern in that sentence, making it clear that she wasn’t just asking after her misplaced possession: she was asking after her friends, the way I would have asked after Fern or Megan if I thought they’d been in the path of danger. The fact that she didn’t have the words to frame her question didn’t change the size of it, or its terrible weight.

“Oh,” I breathed. The room held its breath. “I . . . Marissa plays Lizzie?”