Page 60 of Magic for Nothing

“Just cross your fingers, okay?” Corpses would be difficult to dispose of without endangering the carnival. Living victims would be even harder. Somehow, I thought everyone involved would be cool with the complication.

Gingerly, I cut the webbing away, peeling it back from the pale face of the boy Umeko had stolen. He was young, maybe seventeen, with a strong jaw and those annoyingly long eyelashes that always seem to go to the boys. I pressed the first two fingers of my left hand against his neck, counting slowly as I waited.

I had just reached ten when his heart thumped, once.

“He’s alive,” I said, and started cutting again, faster this time. “Sam, help me. We need to get them out of here.”

“What?”

“They’re alive!”

Sam rushed to help me, and together, we lowered the first survivor to the floor.

They weren’t all alive: only two, the first and the last, had survived what Umeko had done. The other two had partially liquefied inside their cocoons, and a substantial amount of what should have been there was missing. Umeko had been doing her best to stay away from human flesh, but without someone to help her balance her diet, the protein shakes hadn’t been able to cut it.

There was no egg sac.

It was odd. I was furious at the loss of life, but I still felt terrible for Umeko. What she’d been through, what she’d been forced to do by her own body. None of this was her fault. She’d done it, and she’d paid for it, but it hadn’t been her choice, and it hadn’t had to happen.

If the Covenant hadn’t wiped out so many of the Jorōgumo, maybe Umeko would have had a supportive community around her, one that could tell her how to handle the changes she was going through. If humans hadn’t reacted so badly to the idea of sharing the world with people who weren’t like us, maybe she wouldn’t have become a killer. Sometimes monsters are made, not born.

Neither of the survivors had any memory of what had happened to them, or any idea of how much time had passed. Emery let them call their parents, hovering nearby while they explained that the carnival had saved them, not stolen them. Maybe it was the fact that any memories they did have would center on a giant spider, but both boys sounded utterly sincere as they spun a tale of being knocked out cold until the heroic carnies—me and Sam, who had been conspicuously absent since the teens woke up—rescued them. Emery agreed to hold the show where it was until their parents could come and pick them up.

The teens who hadn’t made it were still in Umeko’s RV. Unless the police did a door-to-door search, the bodies wouldn’t be found—and the police weren’t going to do a door-to-door search. They didn’t have any reason, and the only person they knew had died had been a carnie, not one of their own.

Emery was pressing mugs of tea on the boys. I slipped out.

Sam wasn’t in the mess tent. I hadn’t expected him to be. I hadn’t known him long. I’d still known him long enough to know that when he was stressed, he went for the trapeze.

The bone yard was buzzing and the midway was deserted: classic early morning. Our posted hours would have the show opening for business at four. I wondered whether Emery would delay that, given the circumstances, but I rather suspected the thought would never cross her mind. The show must go on, after all. I made my way to the big tent and slipped inside, pausing by the bleachers to let my eyes adjust.

Sam was on the trapeze, swinging back and forth with a ferocious, fluid grace. The odd stiffness I’d seen in his shoulders before was gone, replaced by utter relaxation and a spine that seemed to be made of wire or live ferrets or something other than rigid bone. No wonder he’d been tense before: he’d been fighting to keep looking human when he should have been letting himself go and relaxing into the moment.

I watched him for almost a minute. He was graceful in motion, spinning and flipping and leaping farther than a human acrobat could pray to achieve. He used his hands, feet, and tail almost interchangeably; he was more likely to break a fall with his foot than his tail, but I assumed that was because of the way shock was distributed through the body. Having his tail pulled couldn’t feel awesome. Yelling didn’t seem like the thing to do. He was lost in his own world, letting gravity speak for him.

Slowly, I bent and removed my shoes.

There’s something exhilarating about the long climb toward a trapeze swing. Every step means there’s farther to fall, and plenty of opportunities to consider just how bad an idea this is. My toes gripped the rope, holding me fast as I ascended. The muscles in my shoulders had already started to ache by the time I reached the platform. I’d been throwing knives and working on the trampoline, doing laps and push-ups and sit-ups and all that fun bullshit, but those all work different muscle groups. They didn’t suspend my body weight from my arms the way climbing or the flying trapeze did. I was out of practice, and I was probably going to pay for this tomorrow. That was okay. I’ve made a long habit of writing checks against my future, and so far, I’ve always been good for them.

There was a small ball next to the hook holding the swing for this side of the trapeze: cheesecloth filled with powdered chalk. I picked it up, beating it against my palms until they were white and dry. Sweat is the enemy of the flying trapeze. Lose your grip once you’re out there, and you could very easily become an interesting smear on the tent floor—not a fate I’ve ever aspired to.

Sometimes I think my parents encouraged me to take trapeze classes because they thought it would bring me closer to my sister. Verity’s all about flirting with gravity and plummeting to her doom. It backfired. The more I learn about proper form and safety on the trapeze, the more I hate the way Verity risks herself for nothing more important than a temporary thrill and the joy of looking like Batgirl. It’s careless, it’s selfish, and it’s going to get her killed one day, which will probably result in my parents deciding I’m not allowed to climb anymore, since gravity is only allowed to claim one of their children.

Verity never learned to appreciate how her actions could affect the rest of us. And now here I was, infiltrating a carnival under a false name for the benefit of the Covenant of St. George, all because Verity Price didn’t understand consequences. I loved my sister. I was never going to learn to like her.

I took a deep breath, pushing thoughts of Verity and my family aside. Then I unhooked the waiting swing, locked my wrists into position, and jumped.

Trapeze is never safe. All the bells and whistles in the world won’t save you if you screw up. That doesn’t mean it has to be dangerous, if it’s done correctly. There was a moment of beautiful, stomach-dropping freefall before the swing snapped tight beneath me, and then I was sailing in a hard, glorious arc toward the middle of the tent, where Sam, wide-eyed, was swinging my way.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, before his swing carried him past me. He let go, flipped around, and swung back in the opposite direction.

I laughed and did the same, hitting my remount as hard as I could to build up more momentum. The trapeze is sort of like a combination of the dreaded chin-up and the beloved swing set. It’s all about the shoulders and the core, but the legs can be used to make things faster or slower, depending on what you do with them. I wanted to synchronize with Sam, enough that I could talk to him.

My swing carried me in his direction. Trying to sound casual despite the burn in my shoulders, I said, “You weren’t going to come down, so I came up. You okay?”

“Not really.” There was another pause as our swings separated us. When they brought us together again, he continued: “One of my friends was a yōkai and I didn’t know it, so I didn’t help her.” Break, resume. “Now three people are dead, and she’s dead, and it sucks.”

Break, resume. “I’m sorry. There was no way you could have known.”