Page 47 of Magic for Nothing

“Timpani!” The voice was Emery’s. I turned. She was striding toward me, streaks of greasepaint on her cheeks. The carnival didn’t have a ringmaster as such—that was more the purview of the circus, which depended more on spectacle, and less on things like candy sales—but it had been clear from the start of the evening that if anyone was in charge here, it was her. She was wearing tight white spandex pants, and a black bustier which, combined with her makeup, made her look twenty years younger, and probably made Sam uncomfortable. It would have made me uncomfortable if she’d been my grandmother. Not fair, but there it was.

(Yes, my grandmother looks about the same age as my older sister. There’s “my grandmother looks younger than she is,” and there’s “my grandmother is encouraging people to look at her breasts.” One is normal. The other is disturbing.)

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Sam told me about your little accident. Apart from that, how was your evening?”

“Good, ma’am. Sold a lot of candy, didn’t trip over my own feet, or accidentally stab a townie. I think I did okay.”

“Excellent.” She patted my cheek. “Drop what you have left back with the supplies for tomorrow night, and get out of that costume. Supper’s on at the mess, and you don’t want to miss out on that. You did very well. I think this is going to work out just fine.”

I beamed. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Don’t thank me. We’re going to work you harder than you’ve ever been worked before, because you don’t have the luxury of being family here. But we’ll take care of you.”

I nodded, swallowing the impulse to thank her again. “Can I check out the rides after I eat?”

“If you have the stomach for it, yes. Just tell the jocks you’re Emery’s new girl, and they’ll let you ride.” Her gaze darted to the side, as if she’d sensed some disturbance in the Force. “Hey! Be careful with that!” Then she was off, leaving me to my own devices.

It was almost nine-thirty. The Covenant expected me to check in at ten-seventeen. I ducked out the back of the tent, pausing at the supply closet to drop off my candy and earnings with the bored teenager doing inventory. She didn’t even glance at me as she took the tray out of my hands. Either candy girls were interchangeable to her, or she was in a real hurry to get back to her game of Words with Friends. Or both. Whatever the reason for her ignoring me, I answered it with a wave and a smile, and took off for the bone yard.

Before, I’d been a stranger in street clothes, wandering where I had no business being. Now, I was still a stranger to most of the people I passed, but I was a stranger in sequins and fringe, and I clearly belonged. I was greeted with curious stares or friendly nods. No one glared. No one loomed. They just let me go by.

My temporary home was exactly as I’d left it, except for the mouse lean-to on the counter, which had doubled in size. There were walls now, made of scraps of wood. I eyed it. “Are you being careful when you scavenge? You know there are giant snakes in the other half of this RV, right?”

“Yes, Priestess,” said Mindy. “We have avoided the Realm of Unreasonably Large Pythons.”

“Good.” I began stripping off my sequined leotard. The sequins scratched my skin. “Anything unusual happen while I was out?”

“A human woman with red in her hair came and looked inside; we hid,” said Mork.

“That’s Umeko. This was her place before Emery put me in it.” I was going to have to look into locking my door. Aeslin mice are rare, which makes them valuable. We’ve had people try to steal portions of our traveling colonies before. I wasn’t going to let that happen to Mindy and Mork.

(Paranoid? Sure. Not everyone is a bad guy. But since I was infiltrating the carnival on behalf of the people I was infiltrating on behalf of my family, it was reasonable for me to be a little twitchy. It’s hard to know who you can trust when you can’t even figure out whether you’re allowed to trust yourself.)

“Should we let her see us, Priestess?” asked Mindy.

“Better not,” I said. “For right now, try not to show yourselves to anyone unless I’m here with you, and even if I am here, don’t come out unless I say it’s okay, or it’s Emery. She’s the boss. We’re going to play nicely with her.”

“Yes, Priestess,” chorused both mice.

“Excellent.” I changed back into more normal attire: jeans, a Helsinki Roller Girls tank top, and a hooded sweatshirt. As long as I didn’t wear any derby attire pointing to the Portland area, I was okay, and it would explain my roller skate skills. It’s always best to hide things in plain sight when possible.

And just to hide them, when plain sight wasn’t an option. I looked ruefully at my hands. The more stress I was under, the more fires I was going to start, at least until I got it under control. It couldn’t even be useful fires. That sort of thing takes years of practice, and according to Grandpa Thomas’ diaries, the most he’d ever managed was a sort of small fireball that landed two feet away from him and set half the lawn aflame. Not really combat-efficient, especially not when I had knives. Sure, I could take out a field or something, but since I wasn’t planning to go up against the Children of the Corn any time soon, I wasn’t in the market for a field to fight.

My fingertips started heating up. I shook them until they stopped. The mice were rustling around in their little house, which was more . . . concrete . . . than temporary Aeslin mouse dwellings tended to be. I wondered whether Mindy’s quest for the missing colony hadn’t also been about bringing in some new blood. Our colony was stable, but they hadn’t had any newcomers in generations, thanks to that whole “functionally extinct” thing. The Aeslin mice in England were distant cousins, emphasis on distant. If Mindy wanted to take advantage of that, I wasn’t going to interrupt her. At least one of us had a love life to speak of.

It’s not that I don’t date. It’s that I don’t date. I am an essentially misanthropic person: I don’t like people much, and they usually reward me by not liking me either. Which doesn’t mean I hate everyone. I like the girls I skate with. I love my cousins. I even like my siblings, when I’m not hating them. It’s just that none of those people are good romantic prospects.

The clock on my phone ticked over to 10:17 PM. I opened a group chat to “Sue” and “Tom” and typed “LOL having best time, food great, wish you were here.” I signed it with three smiley faces and a heart, supposedly for veracity, but really because I knew it would irritate Robert. Anything I could do to get on his nerves without putting myself in danger was a-okay by me.

A minute passed. The phone buzzed. “Tom” had messaged me back, saying, “Glad to hear it, talk tomorrow.” No smiley face. No hearts.

“Because that doesn’t look like a secret message at all,” I muttered, dropping the phone on the bed and standing. The carnival was open until midnight. I wanted to see it. I wanted to see it all.

The air in the bone yard smelled like charcoal and burnt marshmallow, a camp-out bonfire scent that I remembered from the few autumns I’d been able to spend with the Campbell Family Carnival. I wasn’t hungry enough to trade precious midway time for the mess tent, and besides, I had a few bucks in my pocket; if I needed food, I could always throw some cash at the show and pick up a hot dog. Sacrilege, really—if I was pretending to be a carnie, I needed to be a proper skinflint about giving money to the carnival—but this was my first night, and I figured I’d be forgiven, if it came to that.

I walked across the bone yard, taking note of the larger tents and where the conversational clusters had formed, before letting myself through the tarp and into the shadow of the rides. Screams greeted me as the roller coaster went whizzing by. Small as it was, it was still a novelty here, and people enjoy novelty. The history of the human race has been one long quest to find new, novel things, and then kill, eat, or enslave them. There’s a reason the aliens haven’t made an appearance yet, is what I’m saying.