Page 88 of Magic for Nothing

“Evacuation?” she asked, meeting my eyes and shaking her head. Unlike Sam, she made no effort to keep her voice down. She wanted the other people in this haunted house to come and find her. Everyone here was her backup, and my ending. “Oh, Annie. Robert said he was afraid you’d turn against us, but I never expected anything like this.”

If she pulled that trigger, Sam was either dead or crippled for life. Neither option was acceptable. But if I could surprise her enough . . .

“You should have been expecting it,” I said sweetly. “I was worried when I met you at Penton. I thought, ‘Oh, shit, my sister said she was a smart one, she’s going to see right through me.’ But you never did. You kept thinking I was on your side. It’s no wonder we always win when we go up against the Covenant. You’re too stupid to beat us.”

Margaret frowned, looking perplexed. “What are you talking about?”

Sarah brain-blasted Margaret back in New York, wiping the memory of her encounter with Verity from her mind. We were never sure how complete that wipe was, or whether Verity’s appearance on television would open cracks in Margaret and Robert’s memories. Everything I’d seen so far told me that it had been pretty damn complete . . . but nothing is perfect.

“Verity Price,” I said. “Pretty, blonde, showed up on live television with a gun in her hand and blood on her cheeks. Remember her now?”

“You’re talking nonsense,” said Margaret.

“No, I’m not,” I said. “I’m talking about my sister. But then, we’ve never been properly introduced, have we? Hello, cousin. I’m Antimony Price, and you deserve everything that’s coming to you.”

Margaret’s eyes widened, searching my face, cataloging all the little points of similarity that could be family resemblance or could be genetic coincidence. She lingered on my hair, where my henna-free roots were growing in the same chestnut color as her own. With a shout of rage, she pulled the gun away from Sam and aimed it at my face. Sam’s tail wrapped around her wrists before she could pull the trigger, yanking her arms toward the sky. I punched her in the throat. She went limp, and he dropped her.

“Now what?” he hissed.

I looked at Margaret’s motionless body. She was family. She was the enemy. I needed to kill her. I’d never killed a human being before, much less one who was unconscious and unable to defend herself. For all that I had spent most of my childhood tormenting my siblings out of a twisted desire to make them love me, I had never wanted family blood on my hands.

But if we left her here, when the plan moved into its next stage, she was going to burn to death. How was that any better than a quick, clean pull of the trigger? I bent, retrieving her gun from the floor. It fit easily into my hand. I took aim on her head, thumbing off the safety as the world seemed to slow and narrow to that single point. Sam didn’t say anything. I think he knew how difficult this was, and how much either answer would hurt me.

A gunshot rang out, the bullet whizzing past my head, close enough that I felt the wind of its passing. What felt like a rope was suddenly wrapped around my waist, yanking me out of the line of fire. I realized what it was a split-second later: Sam’s tail. I took aim on the shooter, trusting Sam not to drag me into anything that would get me hurt. The gun jumped in my hand when I pulled the trigger. There was a shout from the shadows ahead. I’d managed to hit something. It was so much easier when the person I was shooting at was actually trying to kill me.

“Not a good place!” said Sam, and pulled me farther back, out of the mirrored chamber, into the artificial swamp. I looked over my shoulder at him. He nodded and unwrapped his tail from my waist.

“Come on,” he said, offering me his hand. “We need to get out of here.”

Robert would find Margaret. He would get her out of the Haunted House before it burned. I nodded, taking Sam’s hand, and didn’t fight as he swept me off my feet and jumped for the ceiling. It wasn’t that high—maybe ten feet—and he was able to hook his free hand on one of the retaining bars holding up the scenery. He dangled as I shoved on the panels above his head, opening a “door” into the drop-ceiling where the mechanisms that ran the special effects and lighting were stored. Sam hoisted himself up, taking me with him into the dark.

The drop-ceiling was only a few feet high. He let me go, and together we crawled for the nearest exit. This had clearly been designed by the two bogeymen who owned the attraction: it assumed a level of skinny flexibility that most humans couldn’t come anywhere near. Sam had to go human again, just to fit through some of the tighter spaces. By the time we reached the panel that would lead us to the roof, I was giving serious thought to becoming claustrophobic.

“When we get out of here, you need to run,” I whispered.

Sam cocked his head, seeming to consider it. “Nope,” he said finally.

“Asshole,” I grumbled, and pushed the panel open.

It was a relief to be back in the fresh air after being squashed inside the Haunted House for so long. It was less of a relief when the bullets started whizzing by our heads. It wasn’t that Robert was a lousy shot; we were at a bad angle, and he had Margaret slung over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry, which had to be throwing off his aim. I yelped and ducked. Sam grabbed me around the waist—with his arm this time—and flung himself off the roof, back in full monkey-mode, leaping from the Haunted House toward the Scrambler. Which was still moving.

I screamed. I’m not ashamed of that fact. We were diving straight into the arms of a carnival ride that looked a lot like Lovecraft’s idea of a blender, and we were probably going to die.

Only we didn’t. Sam landed solidly on one of the rotating cars, grabbing hold with feet, tail, and free hand, and grinned at me. “Still want me to leave?” he asked.

“I am going to murder you myself,” I snarled.

“Thought so!” he said, and jumped again, landing on the ground on the other side of the Scrambler. He put me down. I took his hand, and together, we ran deeper into the carnival, heading, whether by instinct or by design, for the big tent.

All around us, lights twinkled, music played, and the ghost town that was the carnival went through its paces, not seeming to notice the absence of the people who should have been there, filling it with light and life. The carnival didn’t know that it was about to burn. A figure stepped around a corner up ahead of us. I had time to register who it was; then I was diving for the ground, yanking Sam out of the path of Chloe’s crossbow bolt just before it scythed through the air where his head had been.

“Another friend of yours?” he demanded.

“Old roommate,” I replied, rolling to my feet and pulling a dart from inside my shirt. The shaft was wood. The tip was metal. I tried to focus on the feeling of fire in my fingers, like I’d done in the shed, like I’d been doing unintentionally for months, and I threw.

The dart burst into flames in midair. It was still burning when it hit Chloe’s shoulder. She yelped and dropped her crossbow, trying to beat out the fire with her hand.

“I want it!” I told Sam, and started running again, trusting him to catch up.