Page 92 of Magic for Nothing

She stopped mid-sentence, an odd look spreading across her face. Then she fell forward, hitting the ground hard, revealing the man who was standing behind her with a hypodermic needle in his hand.

“Dilute manticore venom has a remarkable sedative effect when injected by someone who knows what they’re doing,” Leo said. There was a brittle sort of serenity in his voice. He was holding his composure by a thread.

“What are you doing?” I asked, sliding my free hand behind my back and beginning to slowly draw a knife from my waistband. “Where’s Chloe?”

“I sent her to the car to bandage her wounds. I convinced her we could handle things without her.” He looked down at Margaret, lying face down in the mud. “My sister is a little credulous sometimes. It comes of being excessively sheltered.”

“Why . . .” I paused. “Why are you helping me?”

“Did you kill Robert?”

The knife was in my hand. I nodded mutely.

“But you didn’t kill Chloe, and I could tell you didn’t want to kill Margaret.” Leo looked at Sam and frowned. “Did Robert shoot your friend?”

Another nod. It would be so easy to throw the knife, to catch him unawares. I hesitated. My time with the Covenant might not have changed my loyalties, but it had humanized them in a way I hadn’t been counting on. They weren’t a faceless enemy anymore. They were people. They had done to me exactly what my sister had worked so hard to do to Dominic: they had made themselves harder to kill.

“Then it’s no wonder.” Leo dropped the needle into the mud, crunching it under his foot. Behind me, the tent began to blaze more fiercely, the flames crackling as they devoured the canvas. He looked at me calmly. “It’s too bad one of your friends managed to catch Margaret by surprise. You ducked back into the tent to regroup. You burned to death.”

“What?” I stared at him. “Why would you do that?”

“Because you could have killed my sister, and you didn’t. Because I’ve been reading the reports on your progress. You killed the Jorōgumo that had been hunting people. You didn’t hesitate once you knew she was dangerous. You’re going to come back into the fold, and when you do, you’re going to be remarkable. I can wait for you. For a little while, I can wait.” Leo’s smile was quick and cold. “You’ll find I can be surprisingly patient.”

I stared at him. Finally, I said, “You knew. From the start, you knew.”

“Oh, come now. You don’t think the heir to the Covenant would be able to identify any member of an approved bloodline? I’ll admit, you threw me at first. No one’s seen a Price—a true Price—in so long. Who would have thought the Carew blood would be such a beast? Half the Healys look like Carews since we let Enid marry into the line. It was the cheekbones. I knew I’d seen them before. I went to Penton to check the portrait gallery, and once I realized what we had . . .” He shook his head. “It was too delicious. I had to get to know you. And truly, you’ve exceeded my expectations. I can’t wait for you to choose us over the errors of your upbringing.”

“So you’ll let me walk away?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” He seemed genuinely puzzled. “Any damage you do now happens under my grandfather’s watch. When my time comes, I’ll be the one who brings the Price family back where they belong. My predecessors could never accomplish that. So go, Timpani, or Antimony, or whatever you want your name to be. Go now, and go knowing that one day, you’ll come back to me. I’ll find you. When I want you, I’ll find you.”

I stared at him for a moment, all too aware of the burning tent at my back and the weight of Sam on my arm. That was what made up my mind. Sam couldn’t handle another fight, and if I lost—if Leo killed me—he would be defenseless. He wasn’t even supposed to be here. I was not going to burn down Emery’s carnival and get her grandson killed in the same night.

Adjusting my grip on Sam, I offered Leo one last, silent nod and turned to walk, slowly, away from the burning tent, into the waiting darkness. Putting my back to a member of the Covenant was a calculated risk. I was trusting him not to pull a gun and shoot me as soon as I was defenseless.

He didn’t. Sam hanging heavy off my arm, I left the fire, and the blood, and the carnival behind.

The bone yard was a ghost town. About half the RVs were there, but all their occupants were gone. I stopped at the Ferris wheel to retrieve my backpack before helping Sam to the first safe place I found—a flatbed truck old enough to be hotwired if the fire reached this far—and lowering him onto the tailgate. He was still human, which meant he was still awake.

“Hey,” I said softly. “If you can stay like this while I clean your forehead, that would be great. If you can’t, I’ll work around it.”

“Sure, Grandma,” he mumbled.

I smiled to conceal my worry. “Wow, I’m your grandmother now? What’s the word for an Oedipus complex that skips the mother and goes straight back up the line?” I slipped out of my backpack and unzipped it, rummaging until I found my first aid kit.

“Ask Zeus,” he said.

“Now you’re making jokes about the King of fucking everything that moves,” I said, pulling out a gauze pad and soaking it with antiseptic. “This is going to sting.” I pressed the pad against Sam’s forehead.

His eyes snapped open. “Holy shit.”

“I told you it was going to sting.” I kept dabbing at the wound. It was deep enough to worry me. The bullet must have bounced straight off the bone. “Also, hi. Congrats on not being dead, you dick.”

“Hey. You’d have been in real trouble without me and you know it.”

“I do.” I kept dabbing at the wound. “I’m in real trouble now. I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything.”