Page 16 of Tricks for Free

(Except I couldn’t have. Consistency is the keyword across face characters at all the Parks that use them, regardless of the parent company: what one Princess Laura does or says or knows must be echoed across all the other Princess Lauras, lest they damage the illusion that they’ve casually wandered out of a cartoon. Sadly, this is why Princess Thistle and her husband, the dashing Prince Corwin, are the only face characters who speak American Sign Language.)

Sophie nodded, clearly having anticipated this outcome when she made her request, and turned to stroll out of the station, trusting me to follow. My coworkers stared as I left in the company of a hiring manager, and the first mutters started before I was out of earshot. Swell. I’d managed to keep myself out of the rumor mill where Fern’s corpse was concerned, but now I was going to get my turn for a completely different reason.

Three spaces outside every Lowryland employee train station and bus stop were reserved for managerial use. This was the first time I’d seen one of them filled. Sophie strolled toward her silver Lexus, pausing at the last moment to beep the doors open, and slid inside.

The interior of the car smelled of leather and cleaning fluid and money. It was like inhaling the inside of a very expensive wallet, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was going to be charged for it. Sophie didn’t say anything, just slid her key into the ignition and started the engine. Eyes watched from all across the station entrance as we pulled away, some jealous that I was getting a ride, others taking in every detail of what they saw so they could repeat it later to anyone who would listen.

“So,” I said finally, desperate to break the silence, “how’re you?”

“They make these cars so they don’t even need a key anymore,” she said. “You use your thumbprint to unlock it. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. We started using guest thumbprints to key to their tickets three years ago. Did you know, we’ve been sued for our guest information by the federal government six times? They say we have the largest private fingerprint database in the country, and even wanted felons have children who want to ride a roller coaster. We could help them solve a bunch of unsolved crimes.”

“But we haven’t,” I guessed.

“Oh, hell, no. Imagine the headlines. ‘Lowryland destroys family vacation by summoning the FBI.’ Disney would make hay while the sun shone on that one. No, we’ll keep fighting their requests, we’ll keep shoveling money toward the lawyers, and we’ll keep banking on Disney being a bigger, sweeter target. If they’re the ones who allow the government to start arresting guests, our stock will go through the roof overnight. Always stick with the people who seem to care about your privacy.”

I snorted. I couldn’t help myself. Lowryland only “cares” about the privacy of their guests as long as it impacts the bottom line. There are cameras in all the rides and public areas of the Park. There are even more cameras in the company resort hotels. Nothing happens on Lowry property that Lowry doesn’t know about thirty seconds later.

Realization hit me hard on the heels of that thought. My eyes went wide and my spine went stiff, my fingers not even heating up in the face of my shock. Sophie glanced at me and nodded, looking satisfied.

“Good,” she said. “We’re on the same page now—and in case you were worried, there aren’t any microphones in my car. The corporate overlords, long may they reign, will probably be bugging the rank and file long before they get around to bugging management.”

As a member of the rank and file, that probably shouldn’t have been reassuring. Somehow, it was, if only because her need to explain meant that they weren’t doing it yet. “How much did you see?”

“Not nearly as much as I wish we had.” Sophie pulled a sour face. “The cameras in front of the Midsummer Night’s Scream have been down since yesterday morning. A damn squirrel chewed through a wire. One of the electricians found the little bastard hanging off the transformer box, stiff as a board. They were supposed to get the cameras back on last night, and obviously, that didn’t happen.”

“Then how—”

“Ice cream.” Sophie shrugged, turning onto the freeway. “There’s nothing wrong with the cameras there. We have footage of you skating after Miss Conway, and then skating back alone, grabbing Miss Rodriguez, and exiting the Park. So my question for you is this: were you with Miss Conway when she found the body?”

I liked that wording. Sophie wasn’t accusing Fern of murder, just of covering up my part in the victim’s discovery. “What happens if I say yes?”

“I ask how confident you are that Miss Conway is going to stick to her current story, which is that she was by herself when she tripped and fell into the flowerbed, having already told her roommates to return to the apartment. Under normal circumstances, she would have been liable for any damage to the landscaping. Given she found a body that Security somehow missed on their initial sweep, we’re willing to let this one go.”

“Uh, yeah.” In that part of Fairyland, in that sort of flowerbed—surrounded by a low hedge which was often full of birds and the hands of curious children—the odds that our victim would have been discovered by someone under the age of twelve were extremely high. Talk about bad press. “So if I had been there, and if Fern were lying about that part, I would be very confident in her ability to stick to her story. I . . . I knew her before we came here. She and I were sort of in the same situation.”

Sophie nodded thoughtfully. “I understand why you ran.”

“You do?”

“Of course, I do. I wasn’t born yesterday, Mel.” Sophie sighed, shaking her head like this was the sort of burden she would rather push onto someone else’s shoulders, but was nonetheless compelled to carry on her own. “You still won’t tell me what that bastard finally did to make you leave, and that’s fine, I’m not going to push; you have a right to your privacy. That’s something I would never try to take away from you, especially not after what you’ve already been through. If you’d been with Miss Conway when she found that . . . unfortunate soul, the police would have questioned you. They might have taken your picture. I suppose the other thing I have to ask is whether there’s anything out there for them to find that might embarrass the company. Because you’re my friend, we did a shortcut on certain aspects of the hiring process and background check. Was that a mistake?”

“No, ma’am.” If Sophie had set Lowry’s lawyers to digging, the worst thing she could have discovered was that Melody West didn’t technically exist. Since we’d gone to high school together, shared locker rooms and buses and late-night pizza parties, she knew Melody existed. She would have written all that off as nonsense, an artifact of my dropping off the grid for so long. My fingerprints weren’t in any systems except for Lowry’s.

And the Covenant’s. That was what I needed to be worrying about. That, and Fern—and my job. I caught a glimpse of the dashboard clock and yelped.

“Sophie, I’m going to be late!”

“Don’t worry. Your manager has been informed that you’re needed in Public Relations, and your shift is being covered, with no black marks on your record.”

The inside of the car suddenly felt very cold. “I told you, I wasn’t there.”

“I know you did. We’re calling in everyone who closed in Fairyland last night, to make an announcement about what happened and hopefully squash wild speculation.” Sophie’s frown was fleeting. “Gossip is poison.”

“No argument there.”

Sophie sighed. “Do you ever miss high school? The squad? I cheered in college, but it wasn’t the same, was it?”

“You’re doing it again,” I said.