Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

What felt like seconds later, I opened my eyes again, and I was alone in the bed. Sunlight slanted under the edge of the curtain, filling my room with an eerie Twilight Zone glow. I sat bolt upright, the muscles in my back and thighs protesting, looking wildly around for any sign that Sam’s sudden appearance on the doorstep hadn’t been an oddly sexual wish fulfillment dream.

There wasn’t one. My clothes were strewn around the floor, but that happened regardless of whether I had company. Back at home, a messy room had been a solid defense mechanism. Once my siblings figured out that they couldn’t tell where I’d spilled the caltrops just by looking, they’d gotten a lot more careful about sneaking into my room to steal my shit. Here, it was a comforting reminder that this wasn’t forever: one day, I would shove all my secondhand Lowry tank tops and worn-out yoga pants into a bag and go back to the loving arms of my family, where I didn’t have to be frightened all the time. Better yet, I’d leave it all behind, and drop a match on it as I walked away.

I slid slowly out of the bed and grabbed my yoga pants off the floor, yanking them on before casting around for a shirt that didn’t smell like blood, sweat, or diesel fuel. It was harder than it should have been, but in short enough order I was dressed and creeping out into the hall, shoulders hunched, listening for signs of danger.

Instead, I heard laughter, and the distinctive pop of frying bacon. The smell of pancakes hit me a moment later. I straightened up. There’s only one person who would come into my apartment and start making breakfast—and as a hint, it’s not one of my roommates. Fern can’t cook to save her life. Megan can cook. It’s just that most of the things she produces are dangerous to the human esophagus.

I walked briskly down the hall to the small “dining nook” attached to the kitchen, separated by a Formica island that should have been remodeled sometime in the late seventies. Our battered secondhand kitchen table was occupied for a change, by Fern, sipping a mixed berry smoothie out of a reusable 7-11 cup . . . and Sam, who had a cup of coffee in his right hand and another held firmly in his tail, in case someone tried to take it away.

Mary was in the kitchen, flipping pancakes with the ease of a long-time diner cook. She turned at the sound of my footsteps—or maybe at the sound of my heartbeat, ghosts can be creepy sometimes—and flashed me a grin. She was dressed in her customary seventies hippie gear, peasant blouse and bell-bottomed jeans, and there were daisies braided in her hair.

“You left your phone in your gym bag,” she said. “Fairyland is closed today, and all workers who witnessed the accident—that would be you—have been given a shift off, with pay, probably so you won’t sue. And, um, someone named Colin texted you and said that under the circumstances, you didn’t need to come see him this morning. So you’re free. There’s bacon, and pancakes will be up in a moment.”

I stayed where I was, blinking, trying to tamp down the lingering remnants of panic and replace them with something verging on comprehension. It didn’t help that Sam wasn’t wearing a shirt. Combining a higher than human body temperature with our unreliable air-conditioning probably made that a bad idea. He offered me a sideways, almost hesitant smile.

“You were out cold,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake you. Especially not once Mary said you didn’t need to work.”

“I wouldn’t have let him wake you anyway,” said Mary. “You don’t sleep nearly enough. You need to work on that.”

“You’re dead,” I said. “You sleep forever. Where’s Megan?”

“She had to go to the hospital for her shift,” said Fern around a mouthful of bacon. The reason for her relative quiet was obvious when I looked at her plate: she was doing her best to show Sam that size didn’t matter when it came to putting away breakfast foods. “She said to tell you she doesn’t care if your boyfriend stays over, but if he drinks her cherimoya juice, she’ll let her hair bite him.”

“Sam, don’t drink Megan’s cherimoya juice,” I said, heading for the kitchen. The lure of pancakes was too great to resist any longer.

“What’s a cherimoya?” he asked.

“It’s a fruit,” I said. Mary handed me a plate. I began piling pancakes and bacon onto it. “They’re from Colombia, I think. Incredibly tasty, unless you eat the seeds, which will kill the crap out of you. Really interesting neurotoxins. Megan puts her cherimoya into the juicer whole.”

Sam frowned. “Meaning . . . ?”

“Meaning the juice is full of crushed neurotoxic seeds, and if you drank it, you’d probably be dead before you hit the floor, so don’t drink it.” I walked back to the table. The seat next to him was open. I hesitated like a kid in a high school cafeteria before sinking into it, and was rewarded for my bravery with a quick, shy grin.

Fern rolled her eyes. “Get a room.”

“I have a room,” I said. “I just came out of my room.”

“I spent the night in her room,” said Sam with the faintest hint of smugness. He took a sip of his coffee—first one mug, and then the other. “No work today. That’s good, right?”

“Good and bad.” I leaned across the table to snag the milk. When you have hobbies like mine, healthy bones aren’t just a good idea, they’re a necessary investment in not becoming a smear on the track. “Good, I didn’t oversleep and get myself in trouble. Bad, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.”

“Says the girl with her boyfriend, who she hasn’t seen in six months, sitting next to her,” said Mary.

I shot her a glare that would probably have been a lot more effective if it had contained any actual heat. “I told you not to bring him here.”

“I didn’t,” said Mary. “I just told him where to find you, and that you needed him if you wanted to stay alive.”

“It’s not like I was doing anything,” said Sam.

Fern fixed him with a stern look. In that moment, she seemed to be channeling my mother. I choked on my milk, barely managing to keep it from coming out of my nose.

“What do you do?” she asked.

“Well, ma’am,” he said, with sudden politeness, “I’m normally a trapeze artist with my family’s carnival, and I do a lot of administrative tasks for my grandmother, who owns the show. Unfortunately, we had a little issue with fire damage—”

“Meaning Annie burned the whole damn place to the ground to keep the Covenant from tracking them all down and killing them deader than I am,” said Mary blithely.

Sam continued, unruffled, “—and had to shut down for the rest of the season. The insurance money is coming through, and we’ve rented a training facility in Indiana, so everybody’s staying in shape. This will probably be good for the show in the long run. New rides, new equipment, time to work on our routines without needing to worry about keeping our bellies full—honestly, it’s a blessing.”

“I hear a ‘but’ coming on,” said Mary.

“But it’s boring,” said Sam. “But there are humans around like, all the time, talking to my grandmother, or running more tests on the residue from the fire, or doing one more interview before they sign off on the latest report. And we’re sharing space with another carnival, and they’re all nice people, but they have their own way of doing things, and some of them are sort of na?ve when it comes to remembering that humans don’t own the whole world, just most of it. So I have to stay human unless I’m in my room or in a closed rehearsal.”

Fern frowned. “So?”

“Imagine trying to hold in a sneeze when you really need to pee,” said Sam. “Now imagine doing that forever.”

Fern’s frown melted into a look of horror. She looked to me for confirmation.

“He means it,” I said, nodding. “Fūri aren’t like chupacabra. They actually have a default form, and it’s not the one that looks like me.”