Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

“Agreed. Let’s not.” I started down the path, which had been stylized to look like it was made from frosting, flanked by springy gumdrops. Too much time in Candyland could make me feel like I needed to eat the entire world. “We can’t cut through Fairyland, so it’s back to the hub from here, and then on to the Deep-Down. I think you’ll like the mermaids, and the Drowned World coaster is supposed to be one of the better ones in Florida. It’s definitely the only one with actual sharks as part of the ride environment—”

I chattered as I walked, trusting Sam to follow me. We were doing this for him, after all. I liked the Park, but with Fairyland off the menu, I would already have been in the Deep-Down, hanging out with the phantom pirates and eating endless buckets of chicken at Mother Carey’s Seaside Barbecue. Sam was the one who wanted to see absolutely everything that Lowryland had to offer, and I was merely his willing guide.

I was so focused on telling him about our next steps that I didn’t hear the cracking until it turned into a splintering roar, followed by the sound of children screaming. I whipped around. The top of one of the taffy-flower trees—a plastic-and-steel rebar brainchild of Lowry’s engineering division—had snapped off, and was plummeting toward a pair of kids holding plates of gingerbread. They couldn’t have been more than seven, and they were watching the tree fall with the dull-eyed resignation of the walking dead. They knew this was how they ended.

A brown blur slammed into them from the side, knocking them out of the way before the tree could crush them. Their screams turned into the open-throated sobs of frightened children everywhere. Sam—because it could only have been Sam; no one and nothing else moved that fast—didn’t stop or slow down. He kept moving, into the shadows of the artificial forest.

By the time he popped out again, I knew what he was about to do, and I was braced. Dropping our plates into the trash bin, I raised my arms, like I was preparing to be caught on the trapeze. He grabbed onto me with surprising delicacy, wrapping one arm around my torso and his tail around my waist, and I was borne up, away from the ground, into the distant spires of Lowry’s closed and smoke-singed Fairyland.





Sixteen




“One of these days, something is going to go right. But probably not today.”

–Jane Harrington-Price

Lowryland, about to have a very unpleasant afternoon

SAM DIDN’T STOP RUNNING until we were well away from the crowds and standing under the awning of the Midsummer Night’s Scream waiting area. The small, bus stop-like structure was intended for use by families of riders, people whose health wasn’t good enough or height wasn’t great enough to endure the multiple drops and inversions.

He let go of me, stepping away. “Cameras?” he asked, huffing and puffing all the while.

“What?” I blinked at him for a moment before I realized—with horror and dawning dismay—that he hadn’t shifted back to his faux-human form. He was still simian, clearly fūri. “Sam, change back.”

“Are there cameras here?” He leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees. It wasn’t nearly as pronounced a lean as it would have been for a human his height and build. Still struggling to get his breath back, he asked, “Is anyone recording this?”

Something was wrong. I looked frantically around, comparing the angles of the roof to the known locations of the surrounding cameras, before I said, “No. We passed at least six getting here, but there aren’t any cameras focused on this spot.”

“Good.” He straightened up, wheezing a little, and said, “Get me out of here.”

“Can you—”

“No.”

The word was simple, direct, and changed everything. I looked around again, mentally comparing what I knew of the Park layout to what I knew of the camera array. Fern and I had spent a cheerful week learning the location of most of the hidden cameras before we’d started skating in the Park, using that as a guide to where she could and couldn’t play games with density.

Like all major theme parks, Lowryland is incredibly focused on guest safety and security, and figured out long ago that cameras were both cheaper and less distracting than security patrols. If you’re in a public area, or more importantly, on a ride, someone is watching. It keeps graffiti and shoplifting under control, and prevents people from doing things they shouldn’t while the rides are in motion. But there are blind spots. Even the most comprehensive camera array in the world can’t be everywhere.

Most of the rides had cameras on the areas people were able to access easily, preventing kids from slipping under barricades and falling into the artificial deep-sea vents in the Deep-Down, or climbing the conveyor system in Metropolis. But that was as far as they went. Putting cameras on an entire outdoor ride environment didn’t make fiscal sense, and there was no way a guest could get to, say, the back of the Midsummer Night’s Scream without tripping a few of the exterior cameras.

Unless they could go straight up to avoid the ground cameras entirely, that was.

“All right,” I said. “Can you pick me up again?”

Sam didn’t say anything. Only nodded.

“Okay. See that tree?” I pointed. “Look at the fourth branch up. That’s the only camera aimed at the waiting area. It may not even be on, since the zone is closed, but we don’t want to count on that. I need you to jump from here to the branch right below the camera. That should take us through the blind spot. Can you do that?”

“I hope so.” Sam sounded uncertain. That was enough to give me pause . . . but when he held out his hand, I still took it, letting him gather me in something that was between a bridal carry and the beginnings of a Fastball Special. He took a step backward, looking assessingly at the branch, and then he leaped.

Nothing human could have made that jump. Humans can be strong, swift, and athletic, but we don’t have the raw muscle power of our simian cousins. Sam had the strength. Even then, he might not have been able to hit his mark, if he hadn’t spent his entire life training for the trapeze. Everything we are in any given moment is the sum of our experiences and choices up until then, and as we flew through the air with me clinging to his arms, I was temporarily glad that the fire in my fingers had fled. My nerves were so frayed that I would definitely have burned him otherwise.

He landed on the branch so lightly it barely rocked. I pressed a finger to my lips, signaling him to silence, and pointed to a point on the roller coaster’s environmental shell that was just outside the range of what guests were assumed to be able to reach.

Florida’s weather, while generally warm, is unpredictable enough that building fully outdoor roller coasters is a gamble. Sure, they look impressive, but there’s always a chance a storm will roll in and shut them down during the busy season, and any exposed track is likely to require triple the maintenance. The Midsummer Night’s Scream was constructed almost entirely inside a plastic and fiberglass “mountain” covered with real soil and real plants, including a blackberry tangle wide and wild enough that it had to be cut back weekly to keep it from getting out of control. The coaster train only emerged into the open air three times during the ride, twice in plain sight of the viewing area. That was enough to keep families mollified, and the controlled ride environment inside the mountain made it substantially easier to control the overall experience. Everyone walked away happy.

Right now, the mountain was serving a different purpose: cover. Sam leaped from the branch to the point I’d indicated, and then again when I pointed for the second time, into the heart of the blackberry snarl. The landscaping team had a private entrance there, right where the vines grew thickest. They used it for pruning the bushes without affecting what guests saw, since management wanted the Midsummer Night’s Scream to look like an untouchable fairy wilderness.

That was working in our favor. If there was one place in Lowryland where I knew there wasn’t a camera, it was here.

Sam put me down as soon as we landed, huffing and puffing again. I took a step backward to give him room, stopping when the briars behind me poked my shoulder. His tail curled and uncurled around his ankle, betraying his anxiety more clearly than anything else about him.