Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

A hitching indrawn breath, and then a soft: “I can’t reach you.”

That answered the question of what he saw when he looked at me. “I’m fine, Sam. I was surprised, and I was in pain, but I’m not hurt. The fire isn’t really burning me.” Because the fire was mine, and once it had realized that, it had started pulling back.

It wasn’t intelligent, as such. Fire knows how to burn, and not much more than that. But it belonged to me, it belonged with me, and it wanted to come home. I looked at the flames dancing all around me, licking at the air, and I knew they wanted to come home. I just didn’t know how to let them.

“I’m sorry,” I said, holding out my hands, fingers spread, palms toward the ceiling. The heat was entirely gone now, replaced by a pleasant coolness. Sam was still fighting the illusion of the fire, but not as hard; he could hear me. Even if he couldn’t quite believe me, he knew I was at least intact enough to talk. “I thought I was learning to control you, and instead, I was letting someone take you away from me. I should never have done that. Can you forgive me?”

The flame burned blue, pressing in closer, until everything was fire, and there wasn’t room in the world for anything else. I kept my eyes and hands open.

“I don’t know how to take you back,” I said softly. “If you know how to come back on your own, come home. If you don’t, please, pull back. Let my friends help me, and we’ll make the bastard who put you here put you back where you belong.”

This room wasn’t real. I’d known that the first time I’d stepped into it. The water table was too high and the walls were too thick. Magic had made this place, and magic was sustaining it, and it only made sense that they would put the pieces of my magic that they weren’t using in what was effectively the largest bell jar they had available to them.

The flames froze for a single heart-stopping moment before they sank back into the floor and were gone. I could still feel them, the way I’d always been able to feel them lurking in my fingers, but . . . distant, like they and I were both swaddled in a whole roll of bubble wrap.

I didn’t have time to think about what that meant, as Sam slammed into me from the side the instant the flames faded, literally sweeping me off my feet and carrying me easily four feet deeper into the room. Not a good idea, from a trap-avoidance standpoint, but then he was kissing me, and I had other things to worry about, like kissing him back while his tail wrapped around my waist and pulled me closer, until I was in danger of having the breath squeezed right out of me.

Cylia cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said, sounding amused. “It’s fun watching you two try to suck each other’s faces off, and I am very aware of what danger does to the hormones, but do you think we could put this on the back burner until we’re not supposedly using stealth to sneak up on the people who want to hurt us? Just as a thought? Because this is not what I want to die for.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Sam, and put me down.

Finally free to look around the room without fire or fūri getting in the way, I turned in a slow circle, studying my surroundings. The mirror had broken inward, covering the floor in shards of glass. There were scorch marks on the walls. Interesting. The fire hadn’t harmed me or Sam, but it had been trying hard enough to get out at one point that it had been able to burn concrete.

The char was thickest on the wall around the mirror. My stomach turned. If the magic had flowed from me into this space, that would have been where it realized we were no longer together. It might be nothing but instinct and power. That hadn’t stopped it from understanding that something was wrong while I was running on intellect and denial. I shook my hands. My fingers were still cold.

They weren’t going to stay cold for long.

“Follow me,” I said, and started for the stairs.

Our descent was fast compared to everything else we’d already been through. In what seemed like not nearly long enough, I was in front of one last door. Megan was behind me, ready to remove her glasses, and Sam was behind her, out of the line of visual fire. I took a deep breath.

I opened the door.

The Lowryland cabal, seated around their conference table, dressed in their impeccable business clothes, turned and looked at us. Emily was the only one who looked even remotely worried. Colin, especially, seemed utterly and completely calm, as if this were the sort of thing he dealt with every day. As if he had been expecting it. Which he probably had. He was a sorcerer. He had to know that eventually, I would put two and two together.

I felt like a fool for letting it take this long. That feeling propelled me forward, over the doorframe, into the conference room. “You’ve stolen something of mine,” I said coldly. “I want it back.”

“Ditto,” said Sam. He paused. “That sounded cooler in my head.”

“Yes, by all means, impress us with your ‘coolness,’” said Colin. He sneered on the last word, and he didn’t stand. “I’ve stolen nothing from you, little apprentice. I’ve taken only a tutor’s fee. Can I be blamed if you didn’t read the fine print before you signed?”

“You people really love your fine print, don’t you?” I flexed my fingers, this time not trying to call fire, just to relax them enough for the knives to come easily. “You’re hurting the guests.”

Emily’s eyes widened. “Are you genuinely telling us you’re here for them? Don’t be ridiculous. They’re mindless tourists looking for a good time. They spend more money than some people make in a year just for the opportunity to touch a fictional princess and pretend that makes everything okay. They’re sheep. We’re farmers.”

“One, that should be ‘shepherds,’” I snapped. “Two, no you’re not, and also ew, and what the fuck is wrong with you? People have been killed. This has to stop.”

“Your power is settling down,” said Colin, in what was probably intended as a soothing voice. I was not soothed. “Now that I know how to control it, we’ll be able to adapt. The accidents were regrettable growing pains. I assure you, they won’t happen again.”

“Can I pull his head off?” asked Sam conversationally. “I bet it would be easy. Can I try? I think I’m gonna try.”

“I’m fascinated by how quickly you were able to raise an army of monsters,” said Joshua. He stood, and I had to fight the urge to take a step back, away from his prying, scrying eyes. “I wouldn’t have expected it. None of these people are human, are they? Only you. Why is that?”

“She has unusually good taste in friends,” said Cylia. She managed to sound nonchalant, which was no mean feat, given the situation. We were surrounded. Half these people were unarmed, and it didn’t matter, because they were the weapons.

Joshua could look into our eyes and see every plan we’d ever sketched, whether we planned to act on it or not. He was a trainspotter at the height of his power, fully charged by the motion of the roller coasters and the monorails, and I didn’t know enough about what he was capable of to be properly terrified. Colin might need a wand to access his magic—and maybe that had something to do with the kind of control he’d been trying to teach me, or maybe it was a statement on how limited his power would have been without the tools of his trade—but wand or no, he could certainly ruin our day. Emily had already shown her capability to steal luck and distance, both of which were key to getting out of this alive. The rest of them . . .