Page 28 of Tricks for Free

The woman who’d been injured wasn’t screaming anymore. She was sobbing, her hands occasionally fluttering toward her face, but stopping shy of touching it, like she was afraid feeling the damage would make it real. Her burns were so bad that she was unrecognizable. I’d probably shared shifts with her for months, but I didn’t know who she was.

I was struck by the sudden, terrible thought that this might be my fault. My magic, such as it was, was entirely uncontrolled, and responded to my anger. That boiler shouldn’t have exploded. If this was Robin . . .

No. Her undamaged nametag said her name was Cathy. I hadn’t done this. The realization allowed me to relax fractionally—which caused the pain in my hands to come surging back, as bright and electric as it had been when I was burning myself. I yelped and blew on them, trying to soothe the damaged skin and seared tissues.

A hand touched my shoulder. I stopped blowing and turned. Emily looked at me sternly.

“You’ll need to see the EMTs,” she said. “That was very brave and very foolish, what you just did. Sticking your hands into the fire to extinguish her hair? You’re a credit to the Lowry name.”

Her voice was a little too loud and a little too cadenced, like she was making sure that when people thought of this moment, it would be her version of events that they remembered.

Assuming anyone was even paying attention. The flames were lower and sparser than I remembered, slowed down by my sudden, violent removal of so much heat from the area, but they were still climbing, and they’d started to grow again. Outside the wall, I heard the sudden blast of a bugle. The Wild Hunt was going to ride through the Park early today, hurrying the guests away from the area, allowing the fire department to get access without shutting all of Lowryland down. Safety first, but if safety could be accomplished without actually losing any money, that would always be the preferred option.

Someone shouted, and a team of Lowry EMTs in bright jumpsuits came running into the area, surrounding the unfortunate Cathy even as security staffers rushed in behind them with extinguishers in their hands. I wobbled. It felt like these people were shamefully late, but I knew the feeling was lying to me: I knew that it had only been a few seconds, a minute at most, since I had heard the screaming.

Emily’s hands were a welcome pressure on my arm, holding me up. My booklet of time slips was on the ground, oily and now getting spattered with drops of fire retardant. Emily followed my gaze to the booklet, and sighed.

“I’ll get you another,” she said. “Truly, it’s the least we can do after your heroic intervention.”

Well, that, and bribing me didn’t do much good if I didn’t hold onto the bribe. That was fine. I didn’t want to try bending my fingers right now anyway.

“How did you get here so fast?” I asked, blinking slowly at Emily. The EMTs were all busy with Cathy. It would be a few minutes before they got to me. The shock was starting to set in, unwilling to wait. Burns hurt.

“Just lucky, I suppose,” said Emily, with another glance at Cathy. “I’ll inform your supervisor that you won’t be returning today, and put in for a commendation for your quick thinking and flexible response to the situation. Lowryland thanks you.”

“Cool,” I said, and stayed where I was as she walked away, leaving me surrounded by shouting, flames, and the smell of burning wood.

This day was not getting any better.

Nine

“Oh, isn’t that special. Honey, go tell your father we’re going to need a bigger chainsaw.”

–Enid Healy

A shitty company apartment five miles outside of Lakeland, Florida

I WOKE UP TO the sound of the front door slamming and Fern shouting, “Annie? Annie!”

“’S not my name,” I mumbled, and automatically moved to shove my hair out of my face, only to stop when the bandages on my hand scratched my skin. The sensation was followed by pain in my fingers as even that slight pressure reminded my body that I was wounded.

“Annie!”

I sat up, lowering my hands, and called, “My room, Fern.”

The door was shoved open a second later, and there was Fern, makeup still covering her face, hair still matted from its time beneath her wig. She paused only long enough to be sure that I was in one piece. Then she flung herself across the room, flinging her arms around my shoulders and bursting into tears all at the same time.

“Shhh,” I said, fighting the urge to pat her on the shoulder. I wasn’t going to help her by showing obvious signs of how much pain I was in. “It’s okay. See? I’m fine. I just got a little scorched. No big deal.”

“No big deal?!” She pushed herself back, eyes terribly wide in her pale face. “You got burned! I saw the damage! The chicken stand is all burned out inside, and the walls are so messed up that they’re probably going to have to close that section of Fairyland for months!”

“It was an accident,” I said, still trying to be soothing. “Something broke when it shouldn’t have broken, and someone got hurt.”

“You got hurt.”

“I got hurt because I was trying to help the woman who was right behind the boiler when it blew.” I was grateful for the painkillers the EMTs had pressed upon me before sending me home to sleep. They had kept me from having any unwanted dreams. I was pretty sure Cathy’s melted face was going to be a recurring feature in my nightmares for the foreseeable future.

“I can’t . . . I can’t be upset that you did that.” Fern sniffled. “I know you’ll always do that if you feel like you have to, and if you didn’t feel like you had to, I guess you wouldn’t be you.”