Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Do you understand the rules now?”

“Don’t ask you questions, which is sort of a bummer, don’t go to the crossroads, don’t sell my soul.” Sam ran his hand through his hair, leaving it in spiky disarray. “I guess I’m sort of curious about why you’re here, though, with so many rules.”

“I’m here because I figured you’d want to know that Annie is okay, even if I’m not in a position to tell you where she is right now.” Mary gave him a wry smile. “You’re not family, but you’re family-adjacent, and that means I’m allowed to check up on you from time to time. Before I was a ghost, I was a babysitter, after all.”

“This is weird,” said Sam.

“Yes,” agreed Mary.

“Very weird,” said Sam.

“If you start singing show tunes, I’m leaving,” said Mary.

“What?” asked Sam.

Mary rolled her eyes. “Never mind. Kids these days, I swear. You get the mice to the airport okay?”

“I did,” Sam said. “I, uh . . . I sort of want to ask if they’re going to be all right out there. They’re awfully small.”

“I know,” said Mary. She sighed. “Aeslin mice always are.”



* * *





MINDY


At the pipe’s end was a Kitchen such as I had never seen before, not even at Penton Hall, where they fed so many people each day that it was dizzying. This Kitchen was vast, shared between multiple groups of humans, who moved from station to storefront and back again as they worked.

Mork and I froze in the shelter of the pipe, watching the humans move, counting out their steps. Once we knew the pattern, once it was committed to memory, we left our shelter, and we ran. Pipe to table leg, while all backs were turned, all eyes were lifted; table leg to the side of the freezer while the man who worked nearest to it was consumed with staring at a pretty co-worker. Freezer to door.

Door to crevice, and crevice to hall, and suddenly we stood in an echoing room with floor of concrete and ceiling of high, naked beams, all steel and glass and the smell of cleaning fluid. We moved quickly, darting behind the nearest object: a metal bookshelf laden with heavy binders.

People moved here as well, but not as many, and not with as much purpose. We were behind closed doors, where the public could not go.

Mork looked to me, and I felt my chest swell with pride. I was a Leader. I was bringing him to true faith, and I was bringing him home. Truly, those who had sponsored me into the priesthood would feast and dance on our arrival.

“Where do we begin?” he asked.

“The holy Departures Board in the airport where we began was black, and mounted high upon the wall,” I said. “I do not believe they would put such effort into Form here; this is a place for Function. Seek things whose Function seems to be the spreading of information, and meet me here in the time it takes to recite the first Catechism of the Kindly Priestess.”

“A wise thought,” he said, and pushed his whiskers lightly against my own before he scampered away.

I took a breath. “On the fifth day of summer, after a week of poor forage,” I began, and scampered in the opposite direction, reciting all the way.

My eldest sister was called to the services of the Kindly Priestess. She knows all the rituals, even the ones so obscure that they are no longer performed within the main colony. She can perform the Calling of the Chickens, and sing the lullabies for the children whose names were willfully removed from the ranks of the divine, who wished only to forget their mother’s strangeness and live as did their peers. We treat our gods as a single branch, stretching straight and true, but we cannot forget that we were the ones to prune them so, at their own requesting.

There are no other Lost Colonies, however much we might wish it so. It took crossing an ocean to cause a schism in our current faith, and that has only happened the once. We are, and we remain, the last.

This place, designed as it had been for the ease of humans, afforded plentiful hiding spots. I ran, keeping close to the wall, looking in all directions for a Departures Board, and found nothing. When I reached the middle point of my recitation I stopped, made the sign of the Kindly Priestess across my chest and withers, and turned to run back in the direction from whence I had come.

The Lost Colony kept its liturgies well: Mork and I arrived back where we had parted at the same time, both of us mouthing the final words of the rite. He twitched his ears, greeting and apology, and said, “There was no Departures Board in the direction I chose. Only men, and bags, and a room of computers.”

Were the God of Chosen Isolation with us, he could have made those computers tell us everything we needed to know. But had he been with us, we would have had no need of the knowledge. He would have placed us in his bag and carried us onto the airplane, even as the Precise Priestess had done, and our only task would have been to mark his actions.

A pang of homesickness grew where my heart should have burrowed. How I missed the safety of my gods, who were large and powerful and walked in a world built to their scale, carrying us, their faithful, with them. This would all have been so much easier, had we not been alone.

But that was what made it a trial, and not a vacation. Slicking back my whiskers in defiance and acknowledgment, I said, “There was less in the direction I chose, but I saw there a door, labeled ‘Open Slowly,’ which I believe led to the Place of Passengers. Let us go there together. We do not need to Open Slowly. We do not need to Open at all. We can find the Board of Departures, and from there decide which plane will carry us most quickly home.”

The Precise Priestess had lived up to her name and title when giving her directions: either Portland or Seattle would do, although Portland was to be preferred, but if necessity demanded we choose between a direct flight to Seattle and a connecting flight to Portland, we were to go to Seattle. Changing planes would mean putting ourselves in active danger a second time, and it would be better if that part of our journey were finished as quickly as possible.

“Yes.” Mork hesitated, and then, with the shape of my name on his whiskers, he asked, “Will they truly welcome me? Me, who was outcast, who was lost?”

“You were never outcast, nor were any of your ancestors,” I said, moving closer, touching my tail to his. How strong he was, and how frail! My children would be blessed in their father, to be sired by one so brave. “Those who chose to stay did so from devotion. We have never doubted your faith. You will be lauded when you return home by my side, the lost son finally returned to us, filled with the moments we have yet to learn. Those who keep the devotions of the God of Bitter Honesty and the Obedient Priestess have been waiting lifetimes for your arrival. We need only to reach them, and you will see. You will understand.”

“I believe you,” whispered Mork, the sweetest words that any lover has ever spoken. Together once more, we turned and ran for where I had seen the door. We would continue. We would prevail. We were Aeslin, and together, we would be strong.



* * *





SAM


“You can’t tell me where Annie is, and you won’t let me give you my number for when you see her, and you won’t promise to remind her that it’s a serious dick move to run out on your boyfriend so you can be martyred by a bunch of asshole monster hunters.” Sam folded his arms and scowled. “I’m starting to wonder whether there’s anything you will do.”

“Well, for one thing, I appear to have taught you how not to ask questions, which is a skill that will serve you extremely well if you’re going to continue hanging around with Annie. I love her to death—which is completely true when I say it, since I’m already dead—but I swear asking her questions is like taking the midnight train to oh god why would you do that no, no, please stop talking-ville. She’s a good kid. I’m not trying to warn you off her. I just hope you have an incredibly high threshold for awful.”