Page 51 of Magic for Nothing

“Nah, I spend enough time sticking them in my mouth that they never get the chance.”

I snorted. “Was that a joke? Did you actually make a joke?”

“I’m not completely humorless,” he protested. “Just . . . Grandma says I’m mildly xenophobic. I like people fine when they’re ours. I’m not too big on people from the outside.”

“Meaning me,” I said.

He nodded. “Meaning you. Outsiders are more trouble than they’re worth.”

“I guess you’re not wrong,” I said. “I mean, I’ve been here, what, twenty-four hours? And I’m already finding corpses on the midway.”

Sam grimaced. “Something like that. I know you didn’t hurt Savannah.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I would have seen you.”

I blinked. “You realize that’s basically an admission that you’ve been following me around.” And I hadn’t noticed. That was . . . worrisome.

“Yeah, but Grandma knew I was doing it, so it’s okay.” He shrugged. “You’re new, I get nervous, she doesn’t care if I watch you for a few days while I decide whether or not to demand you go. Those damn mice screwed everything up. Without them, I would’ve been able to ask her to get rid of you yesterday.”

“You are taking talking mice remarkably well.” I gave him a searching sidelong look, trying to find some sign that he wasn’t human, that he’d been touched by the cryptozoological world. I didn’t find one. He looked like an ordinary, if tall, Asian man in his mid-twenties. He wasn’t exactly what I’d call break-the-bank handsome, but he wasn’t unfortunate to look at either, and when he was on the trapeze, looks didn’t matter nearly as much as the strength of his arms and the grace of his turns. “Have you seen Aeslin before?”

“No,” he said. “I thought they were just, you know, a myth. But there they are. With you. Why are they with you?”

“They’ve been with my family for generations. We have a responsibility to them, to keep them safe. I can’t do much, but I figure I can protect two mice that really and truly need me.”

“I hope so,” said Sam. “A lot of things need protecting.” He sat up a little straighter.

I followed his gaze to the mouth of the mess tent, where Emery was entering, accompanied by several people I didn’t recognize. None of them were wearing police blue. That was a relief. They looked like the sort of pitch men, ride jocks, and carnies that any good owner could collect during a walk along the midway, and not one of them looked happy.

Emery clapped her hands, bringing the conversations in the mess hall to a screeching halt. “Everyone, if I could have your attention for a moment? By now, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about the police currently canvassing our rides. There’s been an accident. Savannah is gone.”

A few gasps, a few mutters, but on the whole, silence: people were listening. More were coming in through the open door, drawn by the sense of something important happening, and they were quiet also, letting Emery speak.

“Right now, it looks as if she died of natural causes. The police are going to look into the matter. As we were already confirmed in this location through the end of the weekend, they’re not asking us to do anything out of the ordinary, just stay where we are, try not to impede their investigation, and not leave without clearing it with them. As long as nothing unusual comes to light during their examination of her body, we’ll be able to leave as normal. The Scrambler will be closed tonight, for obvious reasons.”

Mutters broke out around the room. No one asked their questions loudly enough to be answered, and that, too, was only to be expected.

Carnivals exist in a strange sort of twilight where the law is concerned. A lot of crimes get blamed on carnies—thefts, vandalism, the sort of thing that’s likely to be bored teenagers letting off a little steam; by pinning it on someone from outside the community, people can avoid painting their own children as criminals. Sometimes it backfires spectacularly, allowing future killers to fly under the radar, never held responsible for their own actions. Other times, it ends with innocent people rotting in townie jails, pinned down under fixed roofs that they’d spent their lives avoiding. Because of that, a lot of carnies don’t trust the townie law, and will do whatever they can to keep from getting outsiders involved.

A few people cast hostile glares in my direction, and that, too, was only to be expected. I was the new thing here, and the night I’d come to the show, one of their own had died. Sam wasn’t one of the ones glaring, which was new and also a little weird. Maybe finding a body had been the icebreaker we needed. In which case, wow, was I staying the hell away from him. Some ice is not meant to be broken.

“Thank you, all,” said Emery, and started across the tent to where Sam and I sat. It took her a while to reach us—people kept stopping her to talk, and to her credit, she listened with her full attention every single time. When she did reach us, she looked at me, not her grandson, and said, “It looks like a heart attack. I thought you should know, since you found her.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That’ll help me sleep tonight.”

“No, it won’t.”

“No, it won’t,” I admitted. “But it does help. At least a heart attack probably means she went quickly.” Although what had she been doing under the Scrambler? That part didn’t make sense. Collapsing in the middle of the walkway would have increased her chances of getting found while there was still something that could be done to save her. Instead, she’d gone into the dark, alone, and she’d died there, alone. Something didn’t add up.

“Probably,” agreed Emery, and I saw shadows in her eyes that matched the one in my own. She had her own suspicions. But I was the new girl; it wasn’t my place to ask her for them. And she was a relative stranger; even if she’d asked me, I wouldn’t have told her.

We looked at each other across a bridge of all the things we couldn’t safely say, and neither one of us said anything at all.

Fourteen

“Secrets are like bricks. Sometimes you need them if you want to build a wall. Other times, they’ll only weigh you down.”