Page 50 of Magic for Nothing

The rides were almost the full length of the midway away from the big tent. I was closer to the bone yard, or to the games that were in the process of setting up. There was no way Sam should have been the first to reach me, but somehow he was, appearing as if by magic. He took one look at what I was looking at, and then he was pulling me back, putting his arms around me, shielding me from what I shouldn’t have needed to see in the first place.

He smelled like hot sweat and chalk dust, the scent of a thousand cheer competitions and childhood gymnastics meets. I relaxed into the aroma more than I relaxed into him, realizing only after the fact that the two were currently indistinguishable, and I was allowing myself to be comforted by a man who didn’t like me one bit.

It was still better than looking at what might be a dead body that I couldn’t do anything about. I didn’t pull away. If Sam thought better of holding me—since I liked him about as much as he liked me—he could be the one to let go.

Footsteps ran toward us, and Emery asked, alarmed, “Sam? What’s going on?”

“Under the Scrambler, Grandma,” said Sam. “Timpani found her.”

There was a pause, broken by a soft gasp and Emery saying, “Oh, that poor girl. That poor, poor girl.”

I pulled away from Sam, who didn’t try to stop me; at the first sign of resistance, he just let go. “Who is she?”

“Savannah. She’s one of the other candy girls. Didn’t you meet her last—no, you wouldn’t have. You came in so late. Damn.” Emery scrubbed at her face with both hands. She was wearing jeans and a patchwork jacket that looked like something out of one of the crunchy granola hippie catalogs Aunt Jane sometimes received. The thought brought on another wave of missing the security of my family. “There’s still makeup on her cheeks. She must have been out here all night.”

“Is she . . . ?”

Emery nodded, the bleak look on her face filling in the missing pieces. “We’ll have to contact the local authorities. We’re her only family. The poor thing.”

“Did someone hurt her?”

Sam went still beside me, and Emery did much the same, both of them freezing in place. Then, with a sigh, Emery said, “There’s no blood, and her clothing is intact. She may have just collapsed. Regardless, the police will want to know. Sam . . . ?”

“On it,” he said, and turned and walked away.

I watched him go before turning back to Emery, a silent question in my eyes. She sighed again. “I’m sure there were people with your original show who wouldn’t have taken kindly to the police showing up without warning them. He’s not going to help a murderer hide, if you’re worried about that, but there are always those for whom involving the authorities will be a step too far. Do you understand?”

“I do,” I said meekly. “I’m sort of one of them. Can I . . . ?”

Emery nodded. There was no surprise in her expression. If anything, she looked relieved that the new girl was running away when the police were on their way, rather than standing her ground and demanding to be a part of the investigation. “Go back to the bone yard. Be in the mess tent when I need you.”

Which really meant “go to the mess tent and stay there, since there’s no telling when I’ll be done with the townie police.” That was fine by me. It meant Emery was planning to discuss the event with me, not just push it to the side, and would put me in the perfect position to watch the other members of the carnival finding out about the death. Losing one of their own wasn’t the same as townie kids disappearing—in some ways it was better, in a lot of ways it was worse—but that didn’t mean the two things didn’t have the same origin.

I didn’t see Sam as I made my way through the canvas flap and across the bone yard to the mess tent. There were a few people there, nursing cups of coffee or getting into position early for the best shot at lunch. I grabbed a mug and a bunch of grapes and took a seat at one of the tables near the back, where I’d be able to see anyone who came in.

Almost anyone. I’d only been sitting there for a few minutes when Sam demanded, from behind me, “What did you see?”

I jumped enough to slosh hot coffee onto my hand. I stuck my scalded fingers into my mouth and turned to glare at him.

Sam looked briefly repentant, but only briefly. “The coffee’s never hot enough to do any real damage; people get mad sometimes, things get thrown, and we don’t provide free weapons. What did you see?”

I took my hand out of my mouth. “I saw a hand under the Scrambler, and when I looked closer, I saw it was attached to a body. I screamed, you came, your grandmother told me to come here and wait for her.”

“Why?”

“Why did I scream, or why did she tell me to wait here?”

“Both.”

“I screamed because I saw a body.” I kept my voice tightly measured, swallowing the urge to yell. It wasn’t going to make things better. It might make things worse. “I came here because I don’t want to talk to the police. I don’t want to talk to the police because if you’ll think way, way back to yesterday, the Black Family Carnival was wiped out in a freak accident, and if they ran a background check on me, they might decide ‘freak accident’ is another way of saying ‘Annie did it.’”

Sam looked at me suspiciously. “Did you?”

“What? God, no. And if I had, would I really be like ‘oh, yeah, I killed everyone, guess I couldn’t resist the opportunity to do it again.’” I glared at him. “Fuck you for even asking.”

To my surprise, Sam looked abashed. “Sorry,” he said, running a hand through his hair and dropping into a seat. “I didn’t think before I opened my mouth. That happens sometimes.”

I forced myself to relax, giving him a sidelong look as I measured his reaction. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt again, and again, he had no shoes. “Don’t your feet get cold?”