Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

“Planning to stay that way,” he said.

The Park was deserted, lit by the minimum number of bulbs and glowing fixtures. It would have made more sense to light the place up like midday for the sake of the janitorial staff, but that would also have attracted attention. Insomniacs and teenagers were attracted to Lowryland’s rare midnight openings like moths to a flame, following the blazing lights of the complex across the freeways of Florida. Maintenance and cleanup happen in the dark, lest they be seen, lest they be noticed.

They’re not the only things that happen in the dark. I shook my hands and felt the ghosts of flame in my fingers, still too drained and distant to reach. I breathed in the familiar, irreplaceable scent of Lowryland, that mixture of plastic reality, real sweat, fried sugar, and sunscreen, and felt regret welling up in my chest, stronger than the flames but fanning them at the same time. This was my last walk through the Park. By the time the sun came up, we’d be gone.

The skeleton twist of the Midsummer Night’s Scream loomed ahead of us, rendered eerie and organic by the shadows surrounding it. I pointed.

“There,” I said. “That area’s been closed all day, so janitorial will be staying clear, and the maintenance should be done by now. That’s where we’re going.” It felt right. It felt true. That was where we’d agreed to meet our people, and the cabal was running scared, drawing power from their routewitch and their ambulomancer, both of whom were tied to the narrative logic of the road. Add in the trainspotter, who would want to be someplace where he could recharge himself if the need arose, and it was the place in the Park that made the most sense.

That made me nervous. Things that make sense aren’t necessarily unreal. What they are, frequently, are traps.

I glanced at Sam. He was moving easily enough, despite the blood on his shirt, and if he was doing this well while concentrating on looking human, he was probably close to top form in his natural shape. It was the “close” that was the problem. Every time we ran into each other, I seemed to put him in danger.

Except no. Except he’d known when he came looking for me that being in my presence was likely to mean bullets and bloodshed and the occasional bout of arson, and he’d shown up anyway. He’d made the choice this time, putting himself in harm’s way for the sake of my company, and I’d be damned before I took that away from him. If Sam wanted to be here, then here was exactly where he belonged.

“The security cameras are on even at night, but once people start flinging impossibilities around, it should be okay,” I said, voice low. “There’s no way cryptids haven’t been caught on film before. The folks who see them either say ‘this is a hoax’ or ‘this is outside my pay grade,’ and it doesn’t get out. Lowryland isn’t going to want to be associated with something that looks like a B-grade horror movie. They’ll bury it.”

“You seem pretty confident.”

“My family’s been doing this for a long time.”

I felt, rather than saw, Sam’s glance in my direction. “Do you miss them?”

“More than anything.” I even missed the ones I don’t like very much, like Verity. My family shares my context. They know my education, my experiences, where the bone-deep bruises on my psyche are. We have secrets from each other—God, do we have secrets from each other—but even those secrets are built upon a shared foundation of loss and loneliness and duty. Those things aren’t unique to our weird little community. People have been forging alliances and pledging fealty based on those things since there have been people in the world. But the specific recipe that we follow, the blend, that’s all us. That’s unique.

Something warm and soft touched my skin. I looked down. Sam’s tail was looped in a tight knot around my wrist, providing an anchor without slowing me down.

“You’re not alone,” he said.

Warmth seemed to flow through my veins, a cousin to the fire that lingered in my fingers, but different, more diffuse, less dangerous. “I know,” I said, and we kept walking, a human disaster and a fūri heading toward the inevitable, leaving safety in the rearview mirror, as we had already done so many times before.

This wasn’t the first time I’d been in Lowryland after dark—far from it, in fact; my first nocturnal roller skating expedition had followed my employment by less than a month—but it was the first time the Park had seemed actively hostile. The shadows were too deep and the edges were too sharp, as if painted by an inimical hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see light flashing off window panes and bits of polished plastic, seeming more like the eyes of hostile creatures than any simple trick of light and shadow.

“Shades of Lovecraft,” I muttered.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

We were approaching the gate that would take us out of the backstage employee areas and into the main body of the Park. It wasn’t locked. What would have been the point? Once someone had made it into Lowryland, locks would only give them incentive to break things. Locks were for areas where guests could get seriously hurt or do substantial amounts of damage, not for the great expanse of open space and twisting trails that made up the majority of the Park’s real estate.

“You ready?” I asked, looking back at Sam.

He unwound his tail from around my wrist, knowing I was going to need my full range of motion. I nodded appreciatively and pushed the gate open, revealing the gleaming chrome and low nighttime lighting of Metropolis, Lowryland’s answer to Disney’s World of Tomorrow. Loosely themed after the futuristic utopia of 1927’s (thankfully public domain) Metropolis, the Lowryland version owed less to Weimar, Germany, and more to the pulp covers of silver age science fiction novels. During the day, robots, androids, and space explorers roved the neon walkways, delighting guests and luring them onto the sleek, chrome-plated rides.

At night, Metropolis was less a dream of a future that had never come and more a graveyard of ideas that had never been able to come to fruition. The spidery legs of launching pods and “spacecraft” seemed menacing and vaguely animate in the shadows, like they could reach for us at any moment.

I didn’t say anything, only pointed to my right, indicating that Sam should follow me along the walkway to the Deep-Down. He nodded, letting me lead the way.

As we walked, the Park became less futuristic, more drowned and damaged, worn away by the forces of time and entropy. Atlantis skirted the edge of the two sections, blending them in a way that delighted the Park’s designers and horrified the marketing department. It was hard to explain something so high-concept that it required the shared themes of two entire areas to shore it up. But the kids loved it, and the merchandise sold, and so no one messed with Atlantis, and no one messed with the Deep-Down.

It wasn’t my area. That’s the only excuse I can give for forgetting that a roller coaster runs right through the heart of the Deep-Down, slicing through the Kraken’s Lagoon in a self-contained tunnel. It’s called the Sea Dragon, and it’s the largest, most powerful coaster the Park has, utilizing every trick the engineers know and a few dozen I would have sworn they didn’t to get the job done.

We were halfway through the glass-walled tunnel to Fairyland when a roaring sound reverberated through the water around us, magnified by the liquid until it seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Sam jumped. I froze, fire surging into my fingers, hands balling automatically into fists.

“Uh, Annie? What—”

The sound was getting steadily louder, and closer at the same time, filling the world. The water was dark, but I could still see the movement through the glass—and it wasn’t sticking to the outline of the tracks as it raced toward us.