Page 57 of Magic for Nothing

“You get used to it,” I said. “Mork, Mindy, this is Sam. You don’t need to hail him, but he’s safe enough that you don’t need to worry if it just slips out.”

“HAIL!” cheered the mice.

Mindy stepped forward, fanning her whiskers out before she said, “Priestess, your telephone rang many times during the night. Many, many times. We did not answer it, for lo, did you not say ‘Keep Your Paws Off’? But perhaps it was important.”

My stomach flipped over. I only had one phone, and only two people had the number.

And I had missed a check-in.

Turning to Sam, I smiled as brightly as I could while also feeling like I was about to throw up, and asked, “Meet me at Umeko’s RV? I need to change out of your pajamas and into something a little more actually mine. I’ll need about fifteen minutes.”

“And to make a private phone call,” he said, with a sour expression that was much more like the Sam I knew than his friendliness of the morning so far had been.

I nodded. “And to make a private phone call,” I agreed. “I don’t know who called, but if it mattered enough to keep trying, I should probably let them know that I’m okay, I was just caught up in the carnival. Don’t worry about me telling tales out of school, if that’s why you look so worried. I’m pretty good at keeping secrets.” Sometimes too good.

Sam continued to look dubious as he nodded and said, “All right. But if you’re not there in fifteen minutes, I’m coming back here to get you.”

“Deal,” I said.

I followed him to the RV door and watched as he walked away into the bone yard. Then I stuck my head outside and looked up, making sure that he hadn’t somehow doubled back and returned via one of the neighboring roofs. There was no one up there.

Locking the RV door didn’t make it much more secure. It was still a thin-walled tin can, bordered on all sides by people I didn’t know and couldn’t trust yet with the secrets that defined my presence here. It was enough to make me feel a little bit better. I sat down on the bed, retrieving my phone from beneath the pillow, and checked the call log. Eleven missed calls, six from “Sue” and five from “Tom.” Since Margaret was my official contact, I selected “Sue” and hit the button to call her back.

The phone rang. I closed my eyes. The phone stopped ringing.

“What the hell are you playing at?” demanded Margaret.

“The disappearances were connected to the carnival, but they didn’t know,” I replied. “One of their performers turned out to be a giant spider-woman who’d been kidnapping locals to use as a larder.”

Margaret didn’t say anything.

“I saw her leaving with a local boy last night, and I followed, because I thought something seemed wrong with the situation. When she saw me, she transformed.” Not quite true, but true enough: it looked like the truth, from a distance. “I managed to get a knife in her throat before I fell on her carapace and shattered it. She died, and I passed out from the venom, hence my not being able to take your calls. I only just woke up.”

“We’ll be there inside the hour.” Her voice was steel and sharpness, and in it I heard the end of everything.

“No,” I said, as quickly as I could. “Don’t.”

This time, her silence was dangerous, the silence of a snake deciding whether or not to bite me.

I hurried to fill it. “The rest of the carnival didn’t know about her, I’m sure of it. I’ve spoken to their leader, and she was genuinely stunned. If you come in now, a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt. Human people. If you give me more time, I can find out whether anyone here isn’t quite as innocent as they seem. I can flush them out for you.”

The Covenant understood the meaning of “acceptable losses” better than I liked, especially when they were talking about humans who willingly associated with monsters: they thought the species as a whole was better off without harboring traitors. At the same time, they tried to keep a low profile when they could, and they didn’t go in for wholesale slaughter. It was messy and tended to attract attention.

Margaret’s voice was cold as she asked, “Are your loyalties wavering, Miss Brown?”

My loyalties had never changed. They just weren’t where any of these people expected them to be. “No,” I said. “I want to prove myself. Having the two of you come in and take over the situation doesn’t let me do that. It proves I can yell for help when I don’t actually need it. Please. Give me more time.”

“If you miss another check-in, we’re done,” she cautioned. “We won’t allow you to risk yourself for the sake of impressing us.”

“I won’t,” I said. “I promise, I won’t. I just feel like I can learn more if I stay here than if I leave now.” And I would be leaving if the Covenant came. Not for the reasons they thought, either. If they were coming to clean up the mess Umeko had made, that was going to mean killing everyone else here. I’d be warning the carnival and running for the hills as hard and as fast as my legs would carry me. There was no way I could go back after doing something so blatantly contrary to the Covenant’s interests.

But I also knew I couldn’t live with myself if I allowed innocent people to suffer because I’d run away too soon. Maybe if I stayed long enough, I could find a way to get all the cryptids to leave with me, so the Covenant would find nothing to destroy when they arrived. I wasn’t going to be a party to deaths. I just needed time. If I had that, I could figure everything else out.

“I’ll explain things to Robert. He may still try to overrule me—this is technically my mission, but he outranks me.” The bitterness in her voice mirrored the bitterness I’d heard so often in my own, when circumstances forced me to work with my older siblings against my will. It was weird, feeling sorry for a member of the Covenant. I didn’t like it. Life was so much simpler when it was black and white. Unfortunately for me, the deeper I got, the more things seemed to depend on shades of gray.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t fuck this up, Brown.” The line went dead. Margaret had hung up on me. I lowered the phone, looking at it for a count of ten. Then I stood. Time to get dressed. I had a dead spider-woman to see.