Page 14 of Tricks for Free

“Seriously, you’re making me anxious.”

“Then we can both be anxious,” I said, but I stopped walking and stood in the middle of the living room, back so straight my spine ached, vibrating slightly, like a taut bowstring. Megan’s gaze turned wary. Humans and gorgons are both predators, but humans are hunters and gorgons are trappers. Even coming from such similar backgrounds, we were so different, and we were always going to be.

Silence spread between us, filling the air until it seemed to drip down the walls. I held my tongue as long as I could, and when I couldn’t anymore, I blurted, “I should move out.”

“What?” Megan frowned, one sketched-on eyebrow rising. “Why?”

“If the Covenant decides to come here—”

“Then they’ll kill me and Fern just as dead for being cryptids as they would for being your friends. I don’t want to go back into the roommate lottery, and I don’t want to deal with Fern moping around the place for the next, oh, forever.” Megan shook her head, snakes hissing. “Stop, okay? Just stop. Eat some ice cream, or read a book, or sharpen all the knives, but stop. You’re not leaving. Fern would have my hide if I let you leave.”

“Fern takes team spirit a little far sometimes.”

Megan smiled wryly. “Says the former cheerleader who got her job through nepotism.”

“We do what we have to.” I glanced at the door. “She should be back by now.”

“She wasn’t . . .” Megan paused before continuing, sounding suddenly nervous, “She wasn’t arrested for doing it, was she?”

“What? No. Lowry Security wouldn’t let that happen, even if they had a way to pin things on her. It doesn’t work that way in the real world.” Television procedurals have a lot to answer for. They make it look like being within fifteen feet of a dead body gets people arrested for murder—which, to be fair, it can, but there are hundreds of other factors to be considered. Fern was a Lowry employee, carrying no weapons or obvious means of harming a person, and when she wasn’t tinkering with her own density, weighed ninety-five pounds soaking wet. She might be suspected if the man had been shot and there was gunpowder on her hands, but since he’d looked stabbed and her hands were clean, she was going to be fine.

She was going to be fine.

She had to be fine.

“So what’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” I gave the door another look, willing it to open, willing Fern to appear.

Neither thing happened. Instead, my phone rang. I lunged for it with barely a glance at the clock—three AM, swell—and swiped my finger across the screen to answer. “Hello?”

“Um, hi? It’s, um. It’s Fern.” Her voice was shaking, and she sounded like she was on the verge of tears. That didn’t necessarily mean anything beyond “had a long day” and “landed on a corpse.”

I hoped it didn’t. “Hi, Fern,” I said, glancing at Megan. She sat up straighter, snakes once again hissing wildly. “Where are you?”

“I’m at Security. The main office. They, um, already called my shift supervisor to say I was going to be off work tomorrow. I have to go over everything with them, and then I have to talk to some people who are in charge of public relations. They don’t get here until eight, so I’ll be home sometime after that.” Her voice quavered even harder on that last word.

I closed my eyes. “You probably can’t answer this with anything but a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ but have they let you change your clothes?”

“No.”

Meaning she was still covered in a stranger’s blood. That was dandy. “Find someone in charge. Someone who looks . . . who looks like they pay a lot of attention to their clothes.” Someone like my mother, who would have clucked her tongue and given Fern a new shirt hours ago, recognizing that no one really enjoys the feeling of blood drying on their skin. Not even Grandma Alice is that far gone. “Ask them if they have something else you can wear. They should get you a new shirt, at the absolute least.”

“Oh,” said Fern, voice going small. “Can you ask Megan if she works tomorrow?”

Fern knew my work schedule, and knew I had to be on-shift. Megan’s was less predictable, thanks to the hours the hospital kept. “One of us will call in sick.”

“Not you,” said Fern. The steel in the words was enough to take me aback. She continued: “You have too many absences this quarter. I don’t want to see you getting docked a vacation day for absenteeism. How can we go to Key West this year if you don’t have the vacation days?”

I had no hobbies. I had no local family. Apart from Megan and Fern—and Mary, when she popped in—I had no friends. Put all this together, and I was possibly the most reliable employee Lowry had. I’d been late for work several times, but never late enough to get written up for it; most of the time, my managers didn’t even notice, since years of cheerleading and roller derby and carnival work have left me incredibly efficient when it comes to getting ready. As long as I was standing where the guests could see me when I was supposed to, they didn’t care. Fern didn’t want me there for another reason.

“Fern,” I said carefully, “are the police still with you?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay? Tell Megan I’m fine.” Then she hung up, leaving me with only the sound of empty air.

I lowered the phone and turned to the agitated gorgon. “She says she’s fine,” I said. “I think she’s lying, but not too much. She’s freaked out, not panicking, and not under arrest. She wanted to know if you were working tomorrow.”

“I seem to have come down with a cold,” said Megan, and coughed weakly into her hand. “Oh, no. That sounds serious. Better stay in bed.”