Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

“Got it,” he said.


“Good,” I said, and stepped into the tunnel.

The thing about road witches, whatever their type, is that they’re limited. Roads and feet and trains. Boats and planes and once, when we were more dedicated to sending people down into the bowels of the earth to bring back armfuls of riches, mines. An ambulomancer could no more wall off a tunnel than a trainspotter could read the story of a road. But the tommyknockers have been rare or entirely gone for decades now, outside of places like Kentucky, where the coal mines still thrive. Colin didn’t have one. His ambulomancer didn’t have the employee passageways.

Sam didn’t have any of that background. He just knew that I’d gone for the tunnels, and he trusted me enough to follow me underground. It was a humbling thought, knowing that he trusted me that much. I was going to do my best to make sure I deserved it.

It was hard to follow the twists and turns in the dark. I had been working mostly in Fairyland for long enough that I knew the way I had to go, and after only two false starts, we were standing at the door that would take us into the landscaping of the Midsummer Night’s Scream.

I put a finger to my lips in an exaggerated hushing gesture. Sam nodded. Then he leaned in, pushed my finger aside, and kissed me.

His lips tasted like chlorinated water, and he smelled of wet fur, and I grabbed his arms and clung to him, counting off the seconds I felt we could afford to spend on this small, utterly self-indulgent gesture. When I reached ten, I let him go, offered a tight smile, and opened the door on the dark tangle of the bushes that hid it from casual view.

The voices reached us immediately.

“Joshua should be back by now. Are you sure you didn’t make your shell too strong?” Colin. He sounded peevish and unnerved, which was fine by me. The more off-balance he was, the better our odds were.

“Something hit it,” said a female voice. The ambulomancer. I wished I’d taken the time to learn her name. I’d been too trusting. I’d allowed them to lull me into a false sense of security—and I’d done half the work for them, treating Lowryland as some sort of magical, uncrackable safe haven against all the people who would do me harm. I’d been so focused on the threat of the Covenant that I had never considered the possibility of danger from within.

“That’s what happens to shells,” said Emily.

“Yes, but something hit it without shattering it,” said the ambulomancer. “Your little apprentice is probably walking around the edges, looking for the door I left her. She’ll be here soon, or she’s unconscious on the ground and Joshua will bring her back. Either way, I did my job, and either way, she’s only still a threat because you did your part wrong. She should be loyal by now.”

“You enjoyed her power as much as the rest of us,” snapped Colin. “Don’t be a child, Andrea. If I’d drained her any faster, she wouldn’t have been able to regenerate for years, and we would have lost all the good she’s done us.”

I turned to Sam and pointed upward. He nodded, catching my meaning, and I barely had time to take a breath before his hands and tail were around my waist and he was propelling himself nimbly into the air, carrying us past the brush in a single powerful leap. We landed in front of the cluster of magic-users, him with bent knees, me standing as straight and seemingly effortless as any pom-pom girl since the dawn of cheerleading time. Sometimes it’s all about making an entrance.

Emily jumped. The ambulomancer—Andrea—clapped a hand over her mouth to stop a shriek. And Colin, whose back was toward us, went ramrod straight and tense, his shoulders forming an iron bar beneath the jacket of his tailored suit.

“I asked you to teach me, not rob me,” I said coldly. “Give back my friends and this can be over.”

“Demanding as always,” said Colin. He turned slowly, looking first at me and then at Sam. His lips pulled back in a sneer. “Beauty and the Beast indeed. Have you considered what the children will look like? It’s a disgrace.”

“Nah,” I said broadly. “My family will be cool with it. We’ve been cool with stranger.” Now was the moment to put that dramatic entrance to good use. I took a step forward, Sam’s tail obligingly uncoiling from around my waist, my eyes fixed on Colin and my hands spread by my sides like the fire was still there.

Cheerleading and roller derby have this much in common: image and attitude are sometimes everything. You’re going to eat grass and track no matter how good you are. What people will remember is how you get back on your feet. So I advanced on those people like Dany emerging from the fire, like Jean stepping out of the Phoenix Force, like . . .

Well, like me. Antimony Price. The girl who burns and does not die.

“I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” I said. My hands moved, plucking knives from the waistband of my wet jeans and holding them low against my hips, as deadly as the fire I had given to the crossroads, and a lot harder for unethical sorcerers to steal. “My name is Antimony. Antimony Price. Maybe you remember my grandparents?”

Andrea went white, taking a quick step backward and almost tripping over one of the low decorative walls used to shape the walkways. “You’re a Price?”

“It’s hot when your name scares the shit out of people,” Sam observed.

“She’s lying,” said Colin dismissively. “Don’t listen to this foolish little girl who thought she could take advantage of our kindness and wound up in over her head. She’s not a Price. They’re all dead.”

“She stinks of travel and the grave,” said Emily. Her tone was uneasy, and she was looking at me with a new intensity. “Alice Price grew up among ghosts, and her godmother was an ambulomancer. We knew her very well.”

“Thomas Price was a fool who chose to fritter his potential on a farm girl,” snapped Colin. “He died childless.”

“He disappeared the father of two, after making a deal with the crossroads for the life of his wife, my grandmother,” I said, keeping my voice calm, keeping my hands steady. “I take after him in so many more ways than you can imagine. If you’re not with me, you’re against me—and I don’t think you want that, do you?”

“She’s bluffing,” said Colin—but there was a note of unease in his voice now, like he was reviewing every interaction we’d had, and finding at least a few of them questionable.

I took another step forward. Andrea took another step back.

“No,” she said, voice clear and only shaking a little. “She’s not. I’m out. I don’t have the chops for this shit.” Then she turned and fled, racing off into the darkness of the Park.

Colin scowled. “Is this your plan, child? Say dire things and frighten us all away?”

“No,” I said, and raised my right hand.

The knife flew straight and true, embedding itself in Colin’s left shoulder before he had a chance to realize what I was about to do. He bellowed, pain and rage and shock all mixed together into a single primal sound. That was Sam’s cue. He leaped straight upward, crashing down on Emily while she was still gaping, wide-eyed, at the blood soaking into Colin’s sleeve. She went down like a sack of potatoes, Sam crouching on top of her, pinning her to the ground. He rolled his lips back, showing his teeth. She froze. Smart girl.

Colin grasped the knife in his shoulder, yanking it loose and flinging it to the ground. “You ungrateful little wretch,” he snarled. “How dare you? Don’t you know who I am?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re the guy whose ass I’m about to kick.”