Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

That was the trigger. We were tired, we were tense, and we were about to go into a fight against people whose abilities we didn’t fully know or understand. People get weird when they’re looking down the barrel of something like that. Fern batted the napkin away and threw her pizza crust at me. I snatched it out of the air and threw it back, only to be hit in the side of the face by a pillow flung by Megan. She was laughing, and her snakes seemed to be doing the same, their mouths gaping open in silent serpentine smiles.

Cylia grabbed another pillow, holding it in front of herself and doing an admirable job of compacting her long limbs into a complicated curl. “I’m fragile!” she yelped.

Sam hit her with an empty soda bottle.

The living room descended into chaos. Fern grabbed a pillow in each hand and bounded into the air, dropping her personal density until she was practically floating. Sam’s tail wrapped tight around her ankle, and she yelped before she realized that he was swinging her at Megan. Her yelp transformed into a maniacal laugh, both pillows raised to strike. Megan ducked but still got a mouthful of upholstery for her trouble, Fern aiming low to avoid hitting her glasses.

I laughed too, dropping to the floor and beginning to chuck wadded-up napkins every which way, keeping the air full of projectiles, which Fern kept batting aside in her determined quest to smack Megan a second time. Cylia flicked her fingers every time it looked like my napkins were going to hit her, sending them careening in odd directions as some gust of wind from Fern’s flight or other atmospheric disturbance knocked them out of true. My aim hadn’t been that bad since I was a very small child, but I didn’t manage to land a hit on her once.

It was fantastic. Play is an essential part of learning what the body is capable of, and while we were all just blowing off steam, I was learning more of what our group was tactically capable of than I could possibly have asked. The only factor that was missing was Megan’s stony gaze, and even when Fern was hitting her with the pillows, she was being careful not to knock our resident gorgon’s glasses off. Which mattered.

“Time-out!” I called.

Sam stopped swinging Fern. Robbed of her momentum, she drifted slowly down toward the floor. Cylia peeked out from behind her pillow.

“Truce?” she asked.

“Not quite,” I said. “Megan, I know you can’t paralyze Fern. What about Cylia and Sam?”

“I don’t know,” she said, blinking at me as she wiped a smear of tomato sauce off one cheek. Her hair writhed and settled, a few locks drawing back in curious curves. “I’ve never looked directly at a jink or a fūri before.”

“Got it.” I looked at Sam and Cylia. Cylia, who in her own weird way knew more about the cryptid community than Sam did—he had been raised by his human grandmother, who had always done her best, but who had been missing some essential facts about his biology—grimaced.

“I don’t know either,” she said, in a tone which implied that she really wasn’t looking forward to the next part. “I don’t suppose we can say ‘probably’ and leave it at that?”

“Not the best plan,” I said. “If we need to get you sunglasses, we should probably know that before things get messy.”

“I won’t turn you to stone unless I’m making an effort, and I promise not to make an effort,” said Megan, in a tone that was probably meant to be reassuring, and missed the mark by about a mile.

Sam unwound his tail from Fern’s ankle, suddenly seeming to realize what we were talking about. “Hold up a second here,” he said. “I don’t want to be turned to stone.”

“Megan is a Pliny’s gorgon,” I said. “She can stun or petrify, depending on what she’s trying to do, and whether or not her hair is uncovered.”

“Can’t petrify if the snakes can’t bite you,” said Megan cheerfully. “My wigs double as a safety measure. I’ll be taking them off before I try to freeze the bad guys.”

“This isn’t helping,” muttered Sam.

“Unless Megan’s life is actively threatened, she’s unlikely to be trying to turn anyone to stone,” I said. “But we need to know if you need sunglasses, and whether she needs to be as careful around you as she is around me.”

“My mother was human,” said Sam. “If she can stun you, she can probably stun me.”

“It might be tied to the form you’re in,” said Megan.

Sam opened his mouth to protest again. Then he closed it, sighed, and said, “You’re going to do this no matter what I say, aren’t you?”

“No,” I said. “If you don’t consent to her looking at you, she won’t look at you.”

He and Cylia both relaxed.

“But,” I continued, “if you don’t consent to her looking at you, you have to agree to stay here while I take her and Fern and go to face the cabal.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “No.”

“Then she looks at you.” I shook my head. “We need to know. You don’t go into a fight without all the relevant information, and this is super-relevant.”

“This feels a little bit like blackmail,” Sam informed me.

I shrugged. “So it’s a little bit like blackmail. I’m okay with that if it means you don’t get stunned in the middle of a bad situation.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” said Megan. “It’s more like going to sleep and not dreaming for a little while. We can even stun each other, if we work at it.” She glanced at me. “It’s how we get around the lack of anesthesia in most of our hospitals.”

Being a cryptozoologist sometimes means learning something new every day. I managed to keep the surprise out of my face as I nodded and said, “That makes sense.”

“Fine,” said Cylia. I turned to look at her. She shook her head. “I want to be involved with this fight about as much as I want to gargle a mouthful of spiders, but people are screwing with luck, and that sort of thing paints a big target on the jink community. Even if we don’t have anything to do with it, this is going to get a bunch of us killed if it doesn’t stop. So fine. Stun me.”

“Sam, close your eyes,” I said. “One at a time.” I closed my own eyes, putting my hands over them for good measure.

“I’m taking off my glasses,” warned Megan. There was a soft hissing sound from her hair, and then a thud as—presumably—Cylia hit the floor.

“She’s out,” reported Fern.

“Sam?” I asked.

There was a pause before he said, “I’m not letting you do this without me.”

Several seconds ticked by. Nothing happened.

“Sam?” I asked again.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m going to try something.” There was a faint stretching sound. I’d heard it before. It was the sound of fur retracting and muscles moving to fit a human’s musculature, rather than a fūri’s. It was followed by a much louder, more distinct sound: that of a body hitting the floor.

“He’s out,” reported Fern.

“I’m putting my glasses back on,” said Megan. “It’s safe.”

I opened my eyes. Both Sam and Cylia were sprawled on the floor, unconscious. Sam was unconscious in his human form, which was strange enough to be unnerving. Since fūri was his default, he normally couldn’t stay human when he wasn’t awake.

“I think we need you as the anesthesiologist if we ever have to take him to a human hospital for some reason,” I said.

Megan’s smile was half-feral, and very full of teeth. “My rates are reasonable, and I’m not the only Pliny’s gorgon working in the medical field.”

“That’s good to know.” I stood, beginning to gather the wreckage from our pizza party. Fern got up and joined me. “How long are they going to be out?”

“No more than ten, maybe fifteen minutes,” said Megan. She didn’t get up to help us. Maybe she felt like she’d already done her part. Even her snakes seemed calmer, twining around themselves in a serpentine parody of a braid. “I didn’t put a lot of oomph behind it.”

“Can you modify the, ah, ‘oomph’ on the fly, or is this one of those things where you have to call your attacks before the GM rolls?” I asked.

Megan blinked at me slowly before she snorted. “Sometimes I forget how much of a nerd you are,” she said. “I have to ‘call my attacks,’ as you put it, before my target’s eyes are closed. So if you point me at someone and say they need to be out, make sure not to get in the way.”

The thought of winding up a lawn ornament because I got in the path of one of my own allies wasn’t appealing. I nodded. “Got it. Can human magic-users deflect your gaze?”

“Not so far as I know,” said Megan. “My dad’s pretty paranoid. I bet he would have told me.”