Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

Sam shrugged, looking sheepish. He took his hand away from his side, revealing a torn shirt and skin that was ripped and red with blood. “It’s just a little road rash,” he said. “No big.”

“Very big,” I said firmly. “Any injury is very big as far as I’m concerned. Do you need to go back to the apartment? I won’t be angry if you sit this out.”

“Are you going to sit this out?”

I shook my head. “I can’t.”

“Then neither can I.” Sam shook his head. “Where you go, I go. That’s the rule. The only reason I let you walk away before was because I’d just been shot for the first time. I think I was allowed a little lapse in judgment.”

I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to hug him. The damn fence was still in the way. “I love you,” I informed him, and turned back to Mary. “Sorry, Aunt Mary. No can do on the leaving our friends to the tender mercies of people who think luck theft and magic siphoning is a fun thing to do. If you want to tell me where they are, we can get this over with quick. If not, I’ll figure it out.”

“You know what it would cost for me to give you specific information,” said Mary. There was a challenge in her voice. “You think this is worth that?”

“It would be if I needed it,” I said. “Luckily, I don’t need it, because I know where they are.”

“You do?” asked Mary, with the ghost of a smile.

“You do?” asked Sam, sounding bemused.

I shifted so I could beam at both of them at the same time, each out of one corner of my mouth. “We’ve damaged their power. They’re going to go where the heart of their empire lies. They’re going to go to Lowryland.”



* * *





The nice thing about old cars is how easy they are to hotwire. Cylia was probably going to be pissed that I’d cracked her steering column. I’d make it up to her. Not being dead would be an awesome start.

Sam sat in the passenger seat, still in his human form, clutching the grip above the door with white-knuckled fervor. The gauze I’d found in the glove compartment stood out starkly white where I’d covered his scrapes and bruises. Mary was in the back, occasionally flickering out of existence when I took a curve too fast, only to reappear a second later, keeping easy pace with the car. From the way Sam rolled his eyes at her, I guessed her impermanence wasn’t helping.

Oh, well. There’d be time to worry about my boyfriend’s nerves later, when we weren’t racing an unspoken deadline for the lives of our loved ones. I kept my foot down and tried not to think about how much I hate driving, or how I didn’t have a license, or how easy it would be to crash into something big and solid and die horribly. (Okay, I was failing at not thinking about any of those things, but I could pretend. Boy, could I pretend.) In what felt like no time at all, we were rocketing into the virtually deserted employee parking lot, rolling past the cars of security staff and janitorial workers to park as close to the doors as I could get us.

Mary grimaced as soon as the engine died. “Bad news, kiddo,” she said, through gritted teeth. “I can’t get out of the car.”

“What?” I twisted in the driver’s seat to frown at her. “Why not?”

“Your routewitch has apparently decided you don’t get any more help tonight. She doesn’t want me even this close to her territory, but this car has a lot of miles on it, and it’s shielding me from her repulsion charms. At least a little. If I tried to get out, I’d find myself slammed back into the twilight before I could say ‘boo.’”

“So don’t get out,” I said. “Stay here. I’ll send anyone we find to the car, and if the charms collapse, you’ll know we’ve managed to take Emily down.”

“Annie . . .” She paused, looking faintly ill before she said, “If it’s a choice between the crossroads and the cemetery, you call for me. No routewitch can keep me out when there’s a bargain to be made.”

“It’s not going to come to that,” I assured her, got out of the car, and walked toward the gate.

Sam was close behind me. He pulled up by my side, matching his steps to mine, and asked, “Do you have a plan?”

“Not so much.”

“Do you have enough knives?”

“Never.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

I glanced at him. He looked earnest, faintly confused, and determined. I sighed. “Go ahead.”

“What’s with Mary? She told me what she could when she was keeping me updated on you, but . . . I feel like there’s a lot she had to leave out.”

“You don’t ask small questions, do you?” I exhaled. “Do you know what the crossroads are?”

“Yeah. You go down to the crossroads when you want to make a deal.”

“Just like that. Only you don’t normally need to go anywhere; the crossroads can find you, if they’re interested enough. Some people go to the physical place where the crossroads are currently manifesting, and those are the people who want. Most folks stumble into a deal. Bad bargains, sold souls. The usual.” I shook my head. “Not a good plan. I don’t recommend it.”

“I’m picking up on that. So Mary . . . ?”

“Was human, was dying, and made a deal with the crossroads to stay on as a ghost and serve them for as long as they want her. See, when you make a deal at the crossroads, it’s sort of like an episode of Law & Order. You get the defense, and you get the prosecution. Mary’s the defense. Mary’s the one who tries to argue the crossroads into giving you what you want, instead of what you technically asked for. She’s the good guy.”

Sam frowned. “Even though she’s working for them?”

“When you have a choice between Godzilla and Cthulhu, you take Godzilla every time. At least the King of Monsters isn’t actively out to destroy humanity. Mary . . . Mary isn’t cruel. She doesn’t make bargains with family if she has any choice in the matter. She reminds us that while crossroad bargains may seem like a cheap and easy way out of a tight spot, there’s always something else that can be done. And she makes brownies using my great-grandmother’s recipe, which is pretty amazing.”

There was a lot else I could have said, like how people like us have a tendency to trip and stumble up against the spirit world, and how having her around made sure we never did it by accident. How she’d been able to successfully keep any member of the family from calling on the crossroads since Grandpa Thomas—and how she never let us forget what he’d done, or what he’d paid for doing it. How much we needed her, and by extension, how much she needed us, because having a family to worry about kept her from falling into the trap that waits for all the world’s ghosts. As long as she had us, she couldn’t forget that she’d been one of the living, once. She couldn’t forget that the living were small, and soft, and worth worrying about.

We were going to keep reminding her forever, if I had any say in the matter.

We had reached the gate to the Park. It was locked, but that was no real barrier: not to people who’d trained on the trapeze and didn’t care about getting busted. Sam formed a basket with his hands and I stepped into it, one knee pulled toward my chest in a classic cheerleading pose. If not for the humidity and the darkness and the fact that we were about to commit an act of breaking and entering, it would have felt just like old times. He boosted me up. I grabbed the top of the gate and hoisted myself over it, dropping down into the Park proper.

Sam appeared next to me a second later, having leaped over the gate. He offered me my backpack. I shook my head as I took it and slung it over my shoulder, smiling at him fondly.

“Show-off,” I said.

“Hey, I have to keep you interested,” he replied.

“Trust me; keeping me interested is not going to be the problem,” I said. “Keeping me breathing may be, but so far you’ve been up to the challenge.”