Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

“Only if they deserve it,” I said.

Megan was laughing as I closed the door. Fern and I turned to wave before joining the line. In the distance, the bright lights of Lowryland were warming up for another day, splitting the sky into candy-colored segments, like something out of someone else’s dream. Not mine. Never mine.

Clutching the strap of my purse, I shoved my misery and loneliness down as far as it would go. Time to go to work.





Three




“We all have to do things we don’t want to do in this life. For example, right now, I have to keep not shooting you.”

–Jane Harrington-Price

Lowryland

WE SEPARATED AS SOON as we were on Park property, Fern heading for the dressing room to join the rest of the face characters in preening, primping, and getting ready to face their public. Not a job I envy, or one I would aspire to, even if I fit the requirements for any of the Park’s many featured characters—I’m too broad-shouldered and chesty to be a princess, too bitter and sarcastic to be a Fairy, and too tall in general to be shoved into a complicated costume that looks like something out of a child’s nightmare. My Price genes may have gotten me into this mess in the first place, but at least those same genes are keeping me from being crammed into a cloth-and-plastic Goblin suit. There are small mercies everywhere.

I took the underground route into the heart of Lowryland. Most guests never realize that everywhere they walk, they’re walking over more Lowryland. A complicated maze of tunnels and corridors runs from a point fifty yards outside the visible Park boundary, all the way under the Park itself, sometimes stacked two and three deep, so that it’s possible to just keep going down, into an endless warren of laundry rooms, storage, and intra-Park transit tunnels.

(Do I know for sure that there’s a colony of hidebehinds living under Lowryland? No. I do not. Am I pretty damn convinced that it has to be down there somewhere? Yes. Yes, I am. Because hidebehinds are smart, and they like it when other people do their work for them.)

The sound of laughter, conversation, and the occasional groan drifted out to meet me as I approached my assigned dressing room. I stood up straighter, pulling the veil of Melody West, grateful ex-cheerleader fleeing from a dubious past, down over myself. Then I stepped inside.

There are people who say you never really escape from high school, you just keep finding it in different forms, over and over again, until it finally kills you. Those people are assholes, and should not be allowed in polite company. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Entering that locker room was like falling down a dark tunnel to the first time I’d been Melody, when she’d been a lie I told the world to keep them from figuring out that I was a lot more Wednesday Addams than Marilyn Munster—not that Marilyn was a good option either, since being Marilyn implied living in a world where monsters were real, and that wasn’t something I was allowed to share with my classmates.

They got to be ignorant. They got to walk in the world thinking humanity was in charge of everything, the peak of the evolutionary ladder and rulers of all we surveyed. Turns out, ignorance often comes with an exciting, unexpected side effect: cruelty. To people who think they’re the best the world has to offer, kindness is an afterthought and an unnecessary one at that.

The women already in the locker room were no better or worse than me. We were all junior employees, all moving around the Park daily as management decided what our priorities were for the week. We did everything but serve food and sweep streets—and when there was a janitorial emergency, there was always a chance one of us would find ourselves holding a broom. I didn’t mind. At the carnival, anybody could be asked to do just about anything in a pinch. I’m not too much of a fainting flower to mop up outside the Scrambler.

Try telling them that. They had better haircuts, better shoes, more friends, and everything else from the mean girl starter kit. Three of them laughed behind their hands when I walked into the room. The others continued getting ready. That didn’t mean I could shake the feeling that they were watching me, waiting for the moment when I’d try to strike up a conversation and I could be slapped down hard.

Humans are monkeys, and monkeys like to have a pecking order. I’d sealed my place in ours when, during training, I responded to someone asking “where did you move here from?” with “Route 4.” That was all it took. I was formerly homeless, a pity hire, and there was no possible way I could ever be as deserving of comfort or compassion as they were, because poverty is always a personal failing, no matter how it came about.

There are days when I want to punch absolutely everyone around me, and keep punching until they’re no longer capable of fighting back. I’m told those desires are antisocial. Sometimes, I really don’t care.

I crossed to my locker, opened it, and began to strip. I was going to spend my day in the Fairyland section of the Park, where Princesses Lizzie and Laura would be greeting their adoring public in between rides on the Midsummer Night’s Scream (a roller coaster that seemed to have been designed by someone who really hated the kind of people who like to ride roller coasters) and trips around the artificial river in Lizzie’s Goblin Voyage. I’d be swiping credit cards and making change at the Fine and Fair Gift Shop. Pretty standard, pretty boring, and pretty much a job I could do in my sleep.

I caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of my eye as I yanked on my uniform top. My fingertips warmed in anticipation of the coming fight. I tried to will the heat away. It had been more than a week since I’d set fire to anything I’d need to pay for, and almost three months since the last time I’d started a fire in the Park, period. That was a good thing. If I lost my job because I’d been caught burning company property, I was going to have a hell of a time getting hired anywhere else.

(The traditional destination for Lowryland Cast Members who lose their jobs due to minor rules infractions is Disney World, and vice-versa. Half the ride jockeys in Florida get passed back and forth between theme parks like trading cards on a playground. But there are things that render a person unemployable, and destruction of corporate assets is on the list. Also on the list, bizarrely enough, is chewing tobacco. I guess everyone has standards.)

“Hey, Mel,” said a sweet voice.

“Melody,” I replied, and finished adjusting my top. Fairyland has six separate themes, depending on which part of it you’re working. The Goblin Market area is styled in a vague parody of the pre-Raphaelite aesthetic, all deep jewel tones layered over pale pastels. It’s one of my favorite parts of the Park to work in, mostly because the costumes don’t show blood as well as, say, the ones in Candyland.

“Sorry, hon?”

I turned, pasting on an artificial smile. The woman next to me was dressed for a day in Metropolis, all shiny silver chrome and breathable purple mesh fabric. She looked like she was getting ready to skate backup in a production of Starlight Express, even down to the spray glitter in her hair.

“My name is Melody, not Mel,” I said. “That’s all I said.”

She frowned, nose wrinkling. “That’s not friendly of you.”

“Really? Because I thought I’d said I didn’t like being called ‘Mel’ every day for the last eight months.” The heat in my fingertips died back to comfortable embers. The magic was willing. The magic was ready and eager to go. That was soothing, even if I had no intention of using it. “Hello, Robin. What can I do for you today?”