Page 22 of Tricks for Free

–Frances Brown

In an unknown location in Lowryland, surrounded by magical assholes

I STARED AT HIM. He smirked back.

I burst out laughing.

This did not appear to be the reaction he’d been expecting. His smirk melted into a confused frown, and his confusion melted into irritation, until he was glaring at me, making no effort to conceal his anger.

“What?” he demanded. “What is so funny?”

“I’m sorry!” I said. “I’m sorry, that was just the most ‘welcome to the X-Men, hope you survive blah, blah, blah’ moment I’ve ever had in my life. Like, I wish I’d had a camera running, because I want to relive that sentence over and over again forever. You have a wand. An actual wand. Harry Potter Land is in Orlando, you know.”

His glare deepened. “This is no laughing matter. You’ve trespassed.”

“No, I haven’t. There’s no posted sign saying ‘sorcerers not allowed without an engraved invitation.’ I applied for a job. I got a job. I do my job well. I do my job every day, because I don’t want to get fired. Which, by the way, you’re keeping me from right now—I was supposed to be at work over an hour ago.”

“You’re a sorcerer,” said the man with the wand. “You shouldn’t need to be told.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Can you please show me the super-secret sorcerer bulletin board? Is it an Internet forum, maybe? I don’t have a logon. I wouldn’t have been here if I’d known I wasn’t allowed.”

Emily stepped up next to me. “Let’s not be hasty,” she said.

“No, let’s be hasty,” I said. “I didn’t ask for this. I’d like to leave, if you don’t mind. This isn’t really my scene.”

“But it ought to be,” she said. Turning to the others, she continued, “Melody is almost entirely untrained, and has spent no time working with anyone else of her kind. She’s strong enough that I could feel the heat coming off her from feet away. This kind of power can do a great deal of damage—or a great deal of good.”

Heads started nodding all around the table. I glanced at Emily, alarmed, and took a step to the side, putting some distance between us. It was mostly symbolic, given how close our quarters were, but it was a start.

“No,” I said. “No, and no, and hell no. I’m not looking for my own personal Emma Frost, thanks.”

“What?” she asked blankly.

“She’s the headmistress of the Massachusetts Aca—you know what? Never mind. Just assume that I’ll talk about comic books when I’m nervous, and you won’t be wrong, which means you won’t need to understand what I’m talking about.” I focused on Wand Guy. He seemed to be the one in charge. “I’m not looking to be recruited.”

“Most neophytes aren’t,” he said. His glare was fading, replaced by a cool satisfaction that was actually substantially more unnerving. “Let’s see. Your hands started getting hot some time ago. It was slight enough at first that you dismissed it, and then flammable things—paper, cotton, even hair—started to char when you touched them, until you set your first fire. It may have happened while you were sleeping. Many of our kind wake to ruined sheets and fire alarms blaring.”

I said nothing.

“Perhaps you’ve made a few small objects float, or have moved something from one place to another. Perhaps you think you have things under control, that you can walk in the world as a living violation of the laws of physics and the world will be forgiving. I am here to tell you that you’re wrong. There are people who hunt those like us. They call themselves ‘the Covenant of St. George,’ and they’ll cut you down as a monster as soon as they’ll look at you.”

That wasn’t entirely true. The Covenant has always had a tradition of captive magic-users, people like me and Grandpa Thomas who’ve been bent to the goal of making the world safe for a very specific idea of what it means to be human. I still did my best to look shocked and horrified, widening my eyes and slackening my jaw just that fraction that people usually read as sincerity.

“So why are we here?” I asked. “If there’s people hunting us, we shouldn’t all be together.”

“Oh, she’s adorable,” said a woman in an orange jacket. “I want to swallow her whole.”

“No, thank you,” I said quickly.

The woman laughed as Wand Guy shook his head. “We’re safe here,” he said soothingly. “Lowryland is under our protection. We keep the Park healthy and thriving in the face of all the challenges thrown up by the entertainment industry, and in exchange, it provides us with the psychic and magical cover we need to remain hidden. You knew, didn’t you, that placing yourself amongst so many people would keep you from being detected?”

“It even kept you from being detected by us,” said Emily. “That’s a bug in the system.”

“My ghost said that if I went where there were lots of people, it would be harder to track me,” I said carefully. I needed to avoid lies. The trainspotter would hear it if I lied. I didn’t know how charged he was, but there were sufficient trains in and around Lowryland that I had to assume he was running at full power. That made him more dangerous than a polygraph, and a hell of a lot more effective.

“Your ghost. How quaint.” Wand Guy smirked. “Your ghost was correct. People confuse the universe. All that thinking, all those changes to their ideas about the world. People can power anything, if you allow them the room to do it. You could stay here for a hundred years and the Covenant would never find you.”

“A hundred years. Got it, thanks. Can I go back to work now?”