Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

She nodded.

“I’m pretty sure she has a broken arm, so they’re probably taking her to the hospital. She didn’t look like she had any other injuries. She was thrown clear when it went down.” Please don’t ask about Andrea. Please. Please don’t ask—

“What about Andrea?” asked another princess.

Dammit. “I’m sorry,” I said.

The whole group stared at me for a frozen second before they began to wail and keen. It was an unearthly sound, too alien to have come from human throats. I took a step backward, suddenly afraid that they were going to blame me for the whole incident.

“Come on.”

Fern was at my elbow in eerie parody of Mary’s earlier appearance. She had managed to change out of her velvet gown while the other princesses were interrogating me, and had it stuffed into a garment bag over her arm. The makeup still smeared on her face was generic enough that no one who saw us would peg her immediately for a fleeing Princess Aspen.

Her eyes were wide. She looked worried. I shared the sentiment.

Not trusting my voice and not wanting to attract more attention from the grieving gaggle of actresses, I nodded and took another step back before I turned and fled, alongside Fern, into the relative safety of the tunnel system. Anyone we encountered here would be as focused on getting out of Lowryland as we were.

Fern knew me well enough to see how upset I was, and didn’t say anything as we walked toward the locker room where my own clothes waited. I flexed my fingers reflexively, chasing away a heat that wasn’t there. It’s not that I enjoyed setting things unpredictably on fire. I didn’t. It was just that it was familiar, something I had grown accustomed to dealing with, and I missed it now that it was gone, the way I sometimes missed a really bad bruise after it had finally finished healing. Yes, a bruise is a bad thing to have. There’s still something soothing about poking it.

When the door to my locker room came into view ahead of us, I stopped, turning to Fern. “This is the second time something awful has happened while I was right there.”

“Yeah,” said Fern softly.

“We need to talk.”

She winced, and I knew I was on the right track. “Yeah,” she said again. “Okay.”

I nodded, satisfied with that answer, and the two of us walked the rest of the way to the locker room, where all the other employees from my shift appeared to have already come and gone. The air smelled of sweat and hairspray, and while no one would be foolish enough to damage Lowry property—not if they wanted to keep their jobs—there was a distinct aura of “we grabbed and we ran” about the place, some indefinable quality to the slammed lockers and off-kilter benches that spoke of swift abandonment.

Fern followed me to my locker, where I stripped out of my smoke-scented, bloodstained uniform. Each piece was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders, taking a slice of the accident away with it. The smell still lingered in my hair. A quick shampoo would deal with that, and I would smell like strawberries and artificial cotton candy instead of a disaster. I couldn’t wait.

It wasn’t until I tugged my shirt on and reached for my jeans that Fern spoke. “Please don’t be mad at me,” she said.

I gave her a sidelong look. “Did you do something I should be mad about?”

“Yes,” she said. “No. I don’t know. But even if I did, please don’t be mad. You’re my best friend. I don’t want you to be mad at me.”

I paused. There were tears in her eyes, heavy and threatening to fall. She looked small and scared and very young—almost as young as she had on the day I’d joined the Slasher Chicks, when she’d looked at me and seen one more human to stand between her and the rest of the world. I hadn’t seen her smile until the day when I’d asked, in my usual sledgehammer way, whether she knew what a sylph was. She’d been sticking to me like glue ever since, going where I went, doing what I did. Being my friend.

“Are you the reason I’m in Florida?” I asked, keeping my tone light.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “But you’re probably the reason I’m here.”

I looked quickly around. Lowry always said they didn’t have cameras or listening devices in the locker rooms, and enough of us were trained to tattle that it made sense the way people who shoplifted or actually violated Lowry policy always seemed to get caught the second they stepped backstage. But that didn’t prove the cameras weren’t there. They could easily be hidden behind the mirrors, or built into the walls. We weren’t safe.

“Later,” I said.

Fern nodded. “I already called for a ride.”

“A ride?” I frowned. “Megan’s still on shift, isn’t she?”

“I didn’t call Megan.” Fern looked at me earnestly. “Will you come? I can explain everything, if you’ll come.”

We lived together. We worked together. Even so, it was surprising how often we were apart. Our shifts didn’t always coincide. Now that I was training with Colin, I was often out in the mornings, and even before that, there had been a lot of days when I’d get home and Fern would be off doing something else, something outside the house that didn’t involve me. I’d never asked, because I hadn’t wanted to pry.

Maybe I should have pried.

“I’ll come,” I said, and finished getting dressed in silence, running a brush through my hair to chase the worst of the smoky smell away before I stuffed my costume into my backpack for washing and turned to face Fern.

“I’m ready,” I said.

She nodded, and stood, and led me out of Lowryland.

The tunnels ran all the way back to the employee lot, and beneath it, keeping workers safe during tropical storms and hurricanes—as long as they didn’t flood, anyway. If the tunnels ever lost structural integrity, we could find ourselves with a whole new set of problems. Fern led the way, her hair pale enough to almost serve as a flag through the dim-lit underground space, and I followed, too weary and beat down to question what I was doing. She would lead me to safety, or she would lead me to my doom. Either way, I wouldn’t stop seeing the dead Princess Laura sprawled in the middle of the Lowryland street.

Being a theme park princess doesn’t come with special powers. It doesn’t even come with special privileges, if Fern was anything to go by. They’re people in pretty dresses, trying to be a huggable face for a beloved childhood character, and no one cares that those dresses weren’t designed to be worn in the Florida heat, or that there are really ten people wearing that same costume over the course of the day, in parades, meet-and-greets, waiting backstage for the current title holder to go on break. The tiara isn’t magic. It still felt wrong for one of the princesses to die on duty, like a compact had been broken.

Fern walked past the doors we usually used to exit for the tram stops or the train, until we were heading down a narrow stretch of tunnel that I’d never seen before. The ceiling was dismayingly low, and the walls smelled of rust. I paused, frowning, and looked back. Yup. The light was definitely dimmer here.

“Fern . . .”

“It’s okay. These are still official tunnels. They just don’t get used much since the tram went in. People used to have to walk all the way to the train whenever they wanted to go home. Can you imagine?”

It felt like we were walking all the way to the train. “Yes,” I said flatly. Then I paused. “Wait. Didn’t they move the train station when they put the trams in?”