Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

“You’re not, baby, you’re not.” Emery started to reach for him, then seemed to think better of it and pulled her hands back. “You’re special.”

“Grandma, I’m a monkey.” Sam shrugged. “I’m not complaining. I like being a monkey. I like being able to go back and forth. I can walk around in the human world, doing whatever, and then come home and know that I’m stronger and faster than they could ever hope to be. But even if I didn’t like it, that wouldn’t make it change. I am always going to be what I am, which means I am always going to be looking over my shoulder for Covenant assholes and bigger monsters. I’m not going to go to college and have wacky hijinks. Jimmy Wong isn’t going to play me in the movie. I’m totally cool with all of these things. I like who I am, I like my life. But you don’t get to tell me Annie’s dangerous and I’m not. Maybe I’m a different kind of danger. I don’t think so, though. I think we’re pretty much the same kind of health hazard.”

Emery sighed, pressing a hand to the hollow of her throat, like she was trying to trap her breath inside. Like she thought she could keep herself from shaking into pieces. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“You’re not going to lose me. You’re my Grandma. You raised me. When I was little, I always wondered why you didn’t do like the young grandparents in Lifetime movies and tell me you were my actual mother.”

“I let you watch too much television,” Emery sniffed. “And I didn’t want you to think I could answer questions about your father, or that you were adopted. You needed to know you were mine, but that there were things I couldn’t tell you, because they’d never been mine to know.”

“See?” Sam smiled encouragingly. “We have so many years of just us. We have bad jokes and too much TV and ‘don’t hang from the ceiling, it’s uncouth,’ and setup and teardown and everything. You’re never gonna lose me.”

Emery opened her mouth to reply. Then she paused, eyes narrowing as she really looked at her beloved, boneheaded grandson. When had he gotten so tall? When had the fur on his cheeks gone from baby fuzz to something that looked like it could break a razor in two? When had he grown up, and why hadn’t she found a way to stop it?

“You’re going to go after her, aren’t you.” It wasn’t really a question.

Sam’s smile wilted a little, losing its edge of encouragement, gaining an edge of melancholy. “Wouldn’t you? If you were in my position, if someone you lo—liked a whole lot was out there somewhere alone and maybe scared, wouldn’t you go after them?”

“Yes,” she said. “My brave boy, yes.”

“Good,” said Sam, and folded his grandmother into a hug, staring over her shoulder at the wall.

He was going to go after her. Just as soon as he knew where to go.



* * *





MINDY


The first man stopped at a gate some distance shy of our destination. We hopped down before we could be seen and rushed to the shelter of the nearest trash can, sticking close to its base, where we could be reasonably sure we would go unseen. A Dorito greeted us there.

“Praise the divine,” Mork murmured, and broke it in two.

“Praise the divine,” I echoed, and pretended not to notice when he passed me the larger of the two pieces.

We sat in peace for a moment, enjoying our scavenged treat, watching the people come and go. There were so many of them, humans in unbelievable array. Some were dressed as for ritual purposes, garments all of one color, tight-fitted and tidy. Others looked as if they were preparing for a very long nap. None of them saw us. We moved through their world but apart from it, separated by scale.

Mork followed my gaze, and asked, “Do you envy them?”

“Envy them what?” I looked to him, ear cocked to show curiosity. “Their size? It would be nice, to be so protected from predation. But look how much they need! What fills my belly is but a crumb to them. They are endless hunger. They will devour the world, and they still will not be fulfilled. And lacking predators to turn their hands against, they turn so very often on each other. No. I do not envy them their size.”

“I envy them,” murmured Mork. He looked down. “They do not depend on faith to steer themselves. I have seen humans who believed in nothing but their own decisions. Humans who served the Covenant because it was convenient, not out of any sincere desire to better the world. It would be . . . pleasant . . . not to believe that the gods are aware, and judging, at all times. It would be good not to be found wanting.”

“You have not been found wanting.” I brushed my palm over the tips of his whiskers. “You have been found by me, who was carried to you by an envoy of the gods, who has found you perfect in all ways. You are gloriously good, and we will be so glad of having you.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.” I fanned my whiskers at him. “I would not have chosen you to sire my children, were it not so.”

He squeaked amusement, and bumped his head against my belly. “Then where are we to go?”

“There.” I pointed down the length of the airport. “We continue this way. And look: a good thing comes.”

A vehicle was rolling down the carpet toward us, long and gray and open-topped, carrying a scattering of humans and their bags. It moved slowly enough that we could catch it easily.

    Mork nodded. We tensed. The vehicle rolled closer.

“Now,” I said.

We ran.

It was a short distance in the open; short enough that I anticipated no problems, and perhaps there would have been none, had not the vehicle slowed to a stop. I leapt, grabbing hold of the undercarriage and securing myself out of sight. Mork leapt in turn—

—only for the swinging foot of a dismounting human to catch him square in the gut and send him flying. He impacted with the wall; he did not move when he landed on the carpet. Someone screamed. Humans began to point. I clung, frozen with indecision, to the pipe where I had secured myself, and saw someone drop an empty cup over his half-curled form.

He was lost.



* * *





SAM


After his grandmother left—which was honestly something of a relief, since he hadn’t been sure how many more reassurances he didn’t entirely believe he could offer before he started shrieking—Sam’s motel room seemed to contract, becoming more like a cell than ever. She knew he wanted to go after Annie. She had even, in her stilted way, told him that she wouldn’t blame him when he did. All that was great.

It was just that he had no idea where Annie was, and until he knew that, “going after her” was pretty much another way of saying “running away from home.” That, his grandmother was not going to go for.

And the carnival needed him. He knew that. They needed him to be there to talk to the insurance investigators, to be visible as the owner’s grandson, rather than missing as the possible arsonist. As long as Mary said Annie was okay and didn’t need him rushing out there to find her, this was where he belonged.

“Fuck,” he muttered, tail lashing, and stalked toward the bathroom.

One nice thing about growing up in a trailer: basically anyplace with plumbing had a mind-blowingly awesome shower in comparison. He relaxed under the stinging spray, pushing it hotter every few seconds, letting it blast the tension out of his back and shoulders. Clouds of steam billowed through the room.

(Once, they’d stayed at a bogeyman-owned motel with a hot tub, and he and Ananta had snuck down at two o’clock in the morning, when all the good humans were asleep and the bad humans were too stoned to process what they were seeing. They’d luxuriated in the hot water for hours, him and the snake who walked like a woman and her two baby brothers who actually looked like snakes. It had been one of the best nights of his life.)