Page 82 of Magic for Nothing

“All right,” she said, shutting the door. “Talk.”

“I know you’re a wadjet because I’m a trained cryptozoologist, and I know they’re your brothers because they’re not your sons, and there’s no way you could have two unrelated male wadjet in the same tank without one of them killing the other,” I said quickly. Even if I hadn’t been surrounded by snakes, female wadjet have their own venom, and are perfectly capable of doing a lot of damage when they feel threatened. “My real name is Antimony Price.”

“Price? Really?” Ananta took a step toward the bed, putting herself between me and her brothers. “Like Alex Price?”

“He’s my brother,” I said, suddenly serene. Alex mostly worked with reptiles, and there was a male wadjet living at the zoo where he’d been working for the past few years. The wadjet community knew him as a friend and ally. Thank God. “Look. My sister accidentally declared war on the Covenant, so the family sent me to England to infiltrate the Covenant and find out how much they knew about us. Only they didn’t count on Umeko killing those people and attracting attention.”

“The Covenant sent you to infiltrate the carnival and find out what was going on,” said Ananta. I nodded. She groaned. “Humans are the worst. You’re always scurrying around and kicking over other people’s anthills. Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“Because I was trying to do as little damage as possible. Before we found out about Umeko, I didn’t know for sure whether the carnival was aware of the disappearances and just covering them up, or whether you were all innocent. After we found out about Umeko, I was trying to convince the Covenant that everyone here was human and deserved to be left alone.”

“That’s a human thing, too. That weird savior complex.”

“You can’t honestly tell me the Covenant has a savior complex.”

“Can’t I?” Ananta raised an eyebrow. “When they got started, humans were at the bottom of the pecking order. The only thing you had going for you was the speed with which you bred. Even at our greatest, the wadjet could never compete, because we have too much trouble mating. The Covenant began as an attempt to save your species from extinction. It got out of hand when they learned to love killing. Now we get people like you and your family, trying to rebuild what your own species destroyed. It’s all about savior complexes. It always has been. Not that I mind, since it means I get to live in a world where some people don’t want to kill me on sight, but seriously. You think you can fix everything. You can’t.”

“I need to fix this.”

Ananta nodded. “Yeah, it’d be nice, since you fucked it up. But you didn’t make Umeko do what she did, and you didn’t attract the attention of the Covenant. You’re a pawn for once, just like all the rest of us. What did you think I could do to help you?”

“You own this RV, right? And the tent where you do your reptile show?”

Ananta nodded again, slowly this time, like she wasn’t comfortable with where this conversation was going. “I do.”

“Great.” I smiled sunnily. “Tell me about the way the carnival’s insurance is set up.”

Twenty-two

“You won’t get everything you want in this world. That’s a good thing. What you do get will matter more, because you’ve earned it.”

—Evelyn Baker

The big tent at the Spenser and Smith Family Carnival, sitting on the edge of the net, waiting for the sky to fall

THE RAIN WAS STILL COMING DOWN in buckets, turning the ground into a swampy mess and keeping the townies at bay. It was a blessing in disguise. No one was there to see the carnies sneaking away in ones and twos, packing themselves into carefully-selected RVs and rolling off down the road. Ostensibly, if anyone stopped them to ask, they were heading for our next site, checking to see whether it had better protections against the weather than this one. In reality, they were getting as far as they could from what was going to be one hell of a fight.

Emery hadn’t wanted me there when she addressed the show; said my presence would be a confusing distraction, would keep people from focusing on what was important about the situation. I was pretty sure she just couldn’t stand the sight of me, but didn’t have a good way of getting rid of me, not without endangering the people we were both struggling to protect. So she’d gathered the rest of the carnival in the mess while I’d wandered down the deserted, muddy midway to the big tent. That had been more than an hour ago. The only person I’d seen since then was Ananta, who had stopped in on her way to get the rest of the snakes from her tent.

“Did you get your things out of the RV?” she’d asked, and I had nodded. My suitcase was packed and hidden in the field; the tiny house where Mork and Mindy had spent their rodent honeymoon was in a box. Mork and Mindy were with me, curled in my backpack, talking about whatever it was Aeslin mice discussed when there were no humans around to hear them. It might have been safer to leave them in the field. It might not. If my suitcase got stolen, so what? If my backpack got stolen . . .

Any additional risk was worth it for the security of knowing where they were.

Ananta had paused, sizing me up. Finally, she’d said, “A lot of people around here are going to hate you. I’m not going to tell them they’re wrong. But I’m not going to join in, either. Maybe we’ll see each other again someday. You could introduce me to your brother.”

“Sounds only fair,” I’d replied. “I’ve met two of yours.”

She’d smiled, and I’d smiled, and we’d only looked a little pained. Then she’d vanished back into the rain, to finish packing her snakes into great plastic tubs and carting them to the RV. She was gone by now, I knew, joining the quiet exodus. I hoped she could drive far enough to escape the Covenant’s attention. I hoped she could be safe.

I hoped that for all of them.

At least I was armed now. Timpani Brown was buried, and with her went the need to seem like an ordinary trapeze artist. The throwing knives I’d borrowed for my act were tucked into my clothes, providing a comforting layer of metal against my skin. I’d also swiped a handful of darts from one of the midway games, reasoning that their absence would never be noticed, but it’s always good to have a few more things to throw.

A shovel would have been better. A shovel, and time to dig about a hundred pit traps, and maybe some C-4. It was nice to be armed again, but dynamite would have been even nicer.

There was a flicker of motion from the bleachers. I turned wearily toward it. “You may as well come out, whoever you are,” I said. “I’m not going to get any less cranky.”

The motion resolved itself into Sam as he stepped out of the shadows and walked to the edge of the ring with deliberate slowness. My heart jumped into my throat and hung there, perfectly suspended, while I forgot how to breathe.