Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

“I don’t know. Sailor Moon did, at least twice. I will diminish and go into the west, but not before I kick your ass.”

Colin sneered. “You’ll fail. You and your little collection of monsters can’t possibly—”

He froze. Literally. Both he and Joshua stopped where they were, not moving, not visibly breathing. I started to turn.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Megan wearily. “Let me get my glasses back on.”

“Why did they let you keep those, instead of just blindfolding you?” asked Sam. He glanced at me and smiled, just a little. “Hey. Missed you.”

“Well, you know. Places to go, people to save.” I shrugged extravagantly. “I lived.”

“What did you mean about selling . . . ?”

“Later.” I offered what I hoped was an encouraging smile. “I’ll tell you later.”

Sam nodded. “I’ll make sure you do,” he said.

“How about you can the sweet moment and let me up?” demanded Emily. “You can’t keep me here forever.”

“No,” I said. “We can’t. But you’re probably going to wish we had.”

She didn’t have an answer for that.



* * *





Getting Emily to drop the shields keeping the dead out of Lowryland wasn’t really an option, and so we did the next best thing: we walked. Sam used his tail to pin her arms to her sides and Cylia and Fern carried her, while Megan walked alongside as a constant reminder of what would happen if she tried too hard to escape. The memory of what had happened to Colin and Joshua after Megan got close to them was clearly very fresh in Emily’s mind, because she didn’t fight.

(The gaze of the Pliny’s gorgon doesn’t petrify; it only stuns. But their venom is one of the strongest petrifying agents known to man, and the snakes on their heads make an excellent delivery agent. I had been trying to figure out how I was going to find the will to kill two men. Megan had just walked up to them and allowed her hair to bite them. In the morning, the groundskeepers were going to find two really weird new statues. I didn’t know how to feel about that yet. I was pretty sure I was going to be okay with it. I was equally sure that that would mean there was something wrong with me.)

Mary and Rose were waiting just outside the Park gate. Both were wearing what I thought of as their funeral clothes, Mary in a knee-length skirt and a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, Rose in a green silk prom gown. Emily, who had been quiet up until that point, started to kick and scream when she saw them.

“No!” she shouted. “No, no, no! Turn me to stone! Kill me! I don’t care! Not this!”

“You earned this,” said Mary, in a voice like a tomb door swinging closed, and there was nothing else to say, and no other way for this to end. Rose and Mary each took Emily by an arm, taking a step backward. The air grew hazy around them, creating the impression of a long road running off to nowhere.

“Wait,” I said. They stopped, looking at me. “What’s . . . what’s going to happen to her now?”

“She swore by the Ocean Lady that no harm would come to you while you were in her company,” said Rose. “Maybe she shouldn’t have done that. What comes next is of her own creation.”

Emily was screaming when the three of them disappeared, leaving the rest of us to stare silently at the place where they had been.

Megan spoke first.

“Fuck this,” she said. “I’m going back to the hospital and finish my residency.”





Epilogue




“Well, hell. Now what?”

–Enid Healy

A shitty company apartment five miles outside of Lakeland, Florida

Three days later

“YOU’RE SURE YOU WON’T change your mind?” asked Sophie.

I looked at the keys in the palm of my hand. They were little and rusty, worn smooth by dozens of hands. They were mine. They were Melody West’s. The door they unlocked was small and safe and far from the Covenant of St. George, and while I had lived behind it, I had been small and safe, too.

“I’m sure,” I said, and held them out to her with a quick, sad smile. “Better not ask again. People will think you’re showing favoritism.”

“I can’t show favoritism,” she said. “You don’t work here anymore.” Then, making no effort at all to hide her tears, she reached out and pulled me into a hug.

I let her. She’d earned it. And as I hugged her back, I couldn’t help feeling like I’d earned it a little bit, too.

When we pulled away from each other, Sophie kept my hands and said, seriously, “You promise me you’re not going back to him. You promise.”

“I do,” I said. Not turning, I gestured to the car waiting by the sidewalk, avocado green and already packed with the strangest road trip buddies I would ever have. Fern was perched on the roof, light as a feather. Cylia was standing next to the driver’s side door, waiting for me. Sam . . .

Sam was on the sidewalk, and I knew that if I turned, he’d be smiling, glad to go anywhere with me, as long as I didn’t send him away again.

Sophie glanced over my shoulder, and she saw that smile. I know she did, because she squeezed my hands, leaned in a little closer, and said, “I like this one. Take care of him.”

“I will,” I said.

Then she let me go, and I turned, and walked away.

Colin and Joshua were officially missing. I didn’t know what happened to their weird statues, and I didn’t want to. The disaster in Deep-Down had accomplished the unthinkable, closing all of Lowryland for a week while a full safety review was conducted and the rides were repaired. It was probably costing the company millions in lost revenue and bad publicity. Guess without the cabal redistributing things, their luck had finally run out. That was okay. If Lowry Entertainment could survive the dry spell, their luck would rebalance, and they’d endure. There’s always room in the world for a little more magic.

There was room in me for a lot more magic. The fire in my fingers was officially gone, ceded to the crossroads as collateral against whatever they were going to ask for. I was willing to wait to find out what that was. Mary was right about one thing: whatever the crossroads asked of me was probably going to be more than I was willing to pay.

Only probably. As I looked at Sam, standing there, waiting for me, alive, I was fairly sure that there was no price I wouldn’t have been willing to pay for the opportunity to be here.

“Got everything?” he asked.

I hefted my backpack. “Everything worth taking,” I said.

“Got any idea where we’re going?”

“Cylia’s driving,” I said. “She’ll get us where we need to be.”

“And on that note, get in, losers,” said Cylia. “I want to be in South Carolina before morning.”

“What’s in South Carolina?” asked Fern.

Cylia grinned. “I have no idea, but it’s on the way to Maine.”

Fern slid off the roof and into the front passenger seat, leaving me to fold myself into the backseat with Sam. Cylia turned the air-conditioning on. Sam squirmed into a hoodie that would have been way too warm to wear outside, and as soon as the hood was up, I felt his tail wrap around my ankle. Fern was happily singing along to some piece of crossover pop country fluff, and as I let my head droop to rest against Sam’s shoulder and closed my eyes, I knew one thing for certain:

Wherever we went next, I was better off in the company of friends.

The road rolled by under our wheels, and I drifted slowly off to sleep, finally safe, finally secure, and finally a little bit closer to home.





   Read on for a brand-new Aeslin Mice novella by Seanan McGuire:

   THE RECITATION OF THE MOST HOLY AND HARROWING PILGRIMAGE OF MINDY AND ALSO MORK





“Remember who we were. Remember who we are. Remember that one day, all of this will change. The gods provide. All else is up to us.”

—from the Aeslin litany of Faiths Forsaken and Yet to Come.

The parking garage of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport

Two weeks and three days after the departure of the Precise Priestess, may her blades fly ever true



* * *





SAM