Page 65 of Magic for Nothing

“Disappear,” I said, in a harsh whisper that still felt like it was far too loud. “Margaret Healy is here, at the carnival. You know what will happen if she finds you. Don’t be found.”

The mice didn’t say a word. They just vanished, scampering behind the microwave and out of view. Their little mouse-house was still there, but that was okay: I could claim it was some kind of weird hobby, a handicraft to let me pass the time. Aeslin mice are scrupulous about hygiene. There would be no droppings or food scraps inside the building for her to find.

My hand shook as I picked up the phone and swiped my thumb across the screen. As I had expected, all four messages were from Margaret:

SUE (11:35): Planning to come see you today.

SUE (11:37): I understand you’re putting on quite the little performance there at the noontime shows. Can’t wait to see for myself.

SUE (11:40): Come find me when you’re finished. I’ll be waiting where you found the dead girl.

SUE (11:42): Don’t make me wait for long.

That was where the messages ended. I would have been happier if they’d never started in the first place. My hands were still shaking as I dropped the phone on the bed and stripped off my costume, trying to find some comfort in the essential ritual of folding it and hanging it over the back of my one folding chair. It would need to be washed, of course, but I wasn’t set up for that, and so the responsibility fell to the costume mistress, who really just wanted to see that I was making an effort.

By the time I was standing naked and alone in the RV, I’d stopped shaking and started tapping into something much cleaner and more familiar: anger. How dare she come here, when I had done nothing to make her suspect that I was lying to her? How dare she follow up on me like I was some sort of liar?

But I was a liar, and even if she didn’t think of me as one, she would think of me as a raw recruit, someone whose indoctrination had been stopped too soon in order to send me on the sort of assignment that could easily become a loyalty-breaker. As far as she knew, this was the world I came from, and I was showing every sign of assimilating back into it. What would the Covenant do if I told her I wanted to stay here, that being a warrior for the secret survival of the human race had been a whim, but this was what I loved?

I had a feeling Robert would make sure I went back, while Margaret would take the punishment for my wanting to stay in the first place. That was the real trouble with him being here. He made her subservient, because of her family—because of my family—and the desire to prove herself to him made her dangerous. Goodie.

Getting dressed only took a minute, in part because I was still running around unarmed most of the time. I wouldn’t have been able to explain my customary number of weapons to Sam when I stripped for practice, or to Emery if she stopped me and noticed that I clanked. It was almost ironic. My siblings used to make fun of me for being a brawler, but these days, the fact that I was good at punching people was the only reason I didn’t feel defenseless all the damn time.

My hands were heating up again as I left the RV. I shook them briskly, trying to chase the heat away. It was just starting to fade when a shape landed in front of me with a soft thud. There was no warning.

“Ahhh!” I shouted, and swung for the figure’s head before I had time to realize who it was. Blame it on the tension: with the Covenant this close, coherent thought wasn’t high on my list of skills.

“Whoa!” Sam danced backward, dodging my fist so easily that it was almost insulting. Nothing human could have gotten out of my way that fast. Then he paused and sniffed the air, tail curling into a question mark. “Dude, Annie, did you have a match in your hand or something?”

“Um.” The fur on his cheeks wasn’t burning. That was good. Nothing else about this was good, but at least I hadn’t managed to set him actually on fire. “No. It just smells really smoky for some reason. I think they’re burning a bonfire somewhere near here? Anyway, I have to go, sorry.” I tried to step around him.

True to form, Sam was immediately in my way again. Sometimes his speed was awesome, like when I slipped during practice and he kept me from eating net. Other times, it was a pain in my ass. “Why didn’t you wait for me today? Are you okay?”

“I had to be somewhere, and sort of, but I still have to be there, so please, can I explain later?” I looked at him plaintively. “This is one of those things I absolutely have to do.”

Sam’s expression turned suspicious. “Did you see someone you knew in the stands? Is that why you got all weird before you started throwing knives? Because we have bouncers.”

The thought of the carnival’s bouncers going up against a trained member of the Covenant would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so chilling. “Please don’t do that,” I said fervently. “Yes, I saw someone I know. I need to talk to them alone. If you have them thrown out, it’s going to cause all kinds of problems that I don’t want to deal with.”

“Are you in trouble?” He took a step closer, face grave. I’d never seen him look so serious about anything, not even when he seriously wanted me to go away. “If you are, I want to help. You know that, right?”

“Reel it in, Parker,” I said, in my best Gwen Stacy voice. He laughed, some of the seriousness going out of his posture. That was good. I didn’t need a knight in shining armor saving me from the . . . knights in shining armor. Okay, that metaphor sort of got away from me even as I was putting it together. “I’m okay. I’m not going to be in trouble if I go see this person.”

“And after, you’ll tell me what’s going on?”

I paused. Finally, I said, “I’ll tell you what I can. But a girl’s got to have some secrets, or no one’s going to show up for the next issue.”

“I’ll trust you this time, Annie, but you scared me. Please don’t let yourself get hurt because you don’t think we’ll stand with you. We’ll stand with you.” He paused before amending, “I’ll stand with you.”

“I believe you,” I said, and smiled. This time, when I stepped to the side to get around him, he didn’t move to block me. I hoofed it for the edge of the bone yard, only pausing when I reached the tarp. I looked back. Sam was still there, backlit by the afternoon sun, watching me go.

I raised one hand in a wave. He waved back, and I slipped through the tarp, back into the carnival proper.

Where I found the dead girl: that was pretty clearly the Scrambler, where Umeko had left poor Savannah’s body after frightening her to death. I walked down the corridor of rides, flinching from shadows, waiting for Robert to jump out at me. He didn’t. Ride jocks and carnies nodded in my direction as I passed them, acknowledging me as a part of the family without making a big deal of it; there was always the chance, after all, that I didn’t want to put up with townie attention right now, and they respected that.

Not everyone who works for a carnival is a good person, any more than any group of people defined by a common shared trait will consist entirely of good people. But the sort of folks who wind up finding their homes under the big tent and in the bone yard understand the importance of privacy, even when that privacy is found in the middle of a crowd. They’d let me be. They’d gossip about whatever they happened to see, which made it important for me to keep things with Margaret as uninteresting as possible, but they wouldn’t interrupt.

Margaret was next to the Scrambler with a stick of cotton candy in her hand, munching pink fluff as she watched the ride whip around and around. I stopped next to her and waited.