Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

“At least then you’d know where she was,” said Sam.

“Don’t talk about your mother that way,” snapped Emery. “We’re discussing your shortcomings, not hers.”

“Right,” said Sam, and scowled. His mother had taken one look at her bouncing baby boy—complete with prehensile tail and sideburns at two hours of age—and run for the hills, leaving Emery to clean up her mess. His grandmother always said he shouldn’t blame her, that his mother had known too much about the difficulties he was going to face living as a yōkai in a world dominated by humans, and she hadn’t been able to handle it.

If she’d been that concerned about him, why hadn’t she insisted his father wear a condom, or gone and gotten herself knocked up by some nice, run-of-the-mill human guy? He couldn’t imagine wanting to be anything else, but no one in his life had ever managed to make him feel like as much of a monster as his own mother had.

“Honestly, Sam, what were you thinking? You could have been seen. You could have been taken.”

“I was thinking Annie didn’t lead the Covenant to us, Umeko did. Remember Umeko? The one who was killing people? As soon as she started doing that, the Covenant knew who we were and that we were harboring a threat. An actual threat, Grandma, not just the Covenant being weird about us because we were monsters.” Sam shook his head. “If Annie hadn’t been there, we would have all died. The purge would have happened, and they would have burned our bodies. Instead, we got another shot. We can rebuild the carnival, and we can start over. Annie did that for us. We owe her our lives.”

“She still lied. She still hurt you.”

“I’m a big boy. My heart can handle it.”

The look Emery gave him was quietly disbelieving. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

“Because I’m not eight years old anymore, for a start.”

“Samuel—”

“She lied to us. She apologized. She did everything within her power to make it right. She saved my life. She probably saved all our lives, since she’s the reason we had any idea at all that the Covenant was coming.” Sam raked a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Did she mess up? Yeah. She messed up a lot. But I’m pretty glad she did, since otherwise, I’d think she was too good to be true.”

Emery opened her mouth to reply. Then she paused, giving her grandson a narrow-eyed look, and said, “You still like her.”

Sam’s cheeks reddened. “Uh, well. She’s okay, I guess. She doesn’t mind the whole ‘monkey’ thing I’ve got going on, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re not exactly dripping in fūri around here. So that’s a point in her favor. She’s pretty good with knives, too.”

“She’s a Price, Sam. Do you understand what that means?”

“Not really.” He shrugged. “I don’t think you do either, though. Because what she says about her family and what you say about her family doesn’t exactly match up. You’re the one who taught me that when you have two conflicting stories, the truth is usually somewhere between them.”

“They were Covenant,” Emery said.

“They quit. A long time before Annie was born. That part’s consistent in both your story and hers. The Prices quit, and now the Covenant wants them—and by extension, her—dead almost as much as they want people like me dead, which seems like a good way to be sure we’ll always have something to talk about.” Sam shrugged again, more vehemently this time. Something about arguing with his grandmother always made him feel like a sullen kid. “She asked me to get her mice to the airport, I told her I’d do it, I did it. I don’t understand why this has to be some kind of federal case.”

“Because I can’t lose you, too!” Emery clapped a hand over her mouth, looking stricken.

Sam was silent.

It was no secret among the carnies that Emery felt she’d failed her only daughter. Delilah’s rebellion had taken the form of running away to join the business world, as far from the lights and sawdust of the carnival as she could get. Presumably, she was still out there somewhere, sitting in boardrooms and wearing pencil skirts and trying not to think about the world of monsters and midways she had left behind.

Sam tried not to think about her when he didn’t have to. He didn’t hate her—not anymore, anyway; not since he was eight years old and realized that if she’d tried to keep him with her, he would have been her little secret, always stuffed into his human form, always hiding—but he didn’t like her either. She was the woman who’d taken one look at him before giving him away. That sort of thing was kind of tricky to forgive.

Finally, carefully, he said, “You’re not going to lose me just because I like a girl, Grandma, or because I try to keep my promises. You raised me better than that. But if you try to keep me from doing what I know is right, that’s where we’re going to have some problems.”

“You scared me,” said Emery in a small voice.

“It’s a scary sort of time,” he allowed, and gave her a pleading, almost sheepish look. “Now can I have a hug?”

“Of course you can, sweetheart,” she said, and went to him, and held him like her life depended on it. “Of course you can.”

Sam, watching the wall over her shoulder, knowing how close he was probably going to come to breaking her heart, didn’t say anything at all.



* * *





MINDY


Prayer helped us both, as prayer always does: Mork ran alongside me with more serenity now, his tail brushing against mine in peaceful solidarity. We did this for the sake of our gods, long may they watch over us in all things, and for the sake of the Precise Priestess, who walked now as none among our family had walked in years beyond measure.

She walked alone.

If Aeslin live in the halls of believing, our gods live in the halls of memory. It is our duty, and our honor, to remember all that happens to them, preserving it against the ravages of time. We codify history into ritual and rite. When the Thoughtful Priestess, long may she light the way, asks for the stories of those who came before her, we are eternally prepared.

Mork and I ran because we were burdened with a sacred duty: to carry the last months of the Precise Priestess home to the rest of the colony, that they might never be forgotten. That the word “last” can mean many things had not escaped either one of us. These months might be one side of a gap, a place where the catechism would grow vague, suitable for enthralling generations of scholars, teasing them with the unclear. When we are present, we can be sure every detail is perfect, that nothing is left behind. Without us, we would be bound to human recollection, and what a human—even one as glorious as our Priestess—saw fit to share.

These months might also represent the final entries into her litany, the pieces that would cap and conclude her too-brief time upon this world before she transcended flesh and left us for the heavens. The thought was enough to raise the fur along my backbone. We know the gods can die. We know the priestesses must, in their time, do the same. We know also that our time with them would be longer were their mission not so essential. They must fight, and all who fight must one day fall. We treasure our time with them all the more for knowing that it might end.

The Precise Priestess was young, and strong, and clever. She would not allow herself to be lost to us. It was upon me, and Mork, to carry her words and warnings home.

The drainpipe leveled out for a long stretch before it began climbing upward, sloping and slanting below the airport’s foundations. We ran until the good greasy smell of frying potatoes addressed our noses. Then we stopped, in perfect tandem, whiskers twitching. My stomach growled.

Mork looked first to my face and then to my belly, where the pups we had gotten together waited to be born. “You must eat,” he said.

“We can eat once we have achieved our goal.”