Page 39 of Tricks for Free

Mary slung an arm around my shoulders as I hunched slightly forward, trying to give the impression that I was feeling poorly and needed to get to a toilet before I tossed my cookies all over the bloody pavement. People behind us were shouting and clearing the sidewalks, and no one was paying attention to two seemingly uninjured workers.

We made it through the employee door and into a quiet stretch of the backlot before my knees went weak and I nearly toppled forward. Mary was there to grab me and keep me from going over—mostly. She was still sweet sixteen, and a skinny sixteen to boot. I was more than a foot taller, and easily fifty pounds heavier. She managed to slow my descent, but in the end, she couldn’t keep my knees from hitting the concrete.

The crunching sound they made was familiar from a thousand roller derby practices, and oddly soothing. The world was turning itself merrily upside down. I could still feel pain, and still pay for the choices I made.

“Hey.” Mary knelt in front of me, brushing my hair away from my eyes. Her own eyes were a thousand miles of empty highway, a color that wasn’t really a color and was more a state of despair. They shouldn’t have been soothing. I’ve been looking at them for almost my entire life, and they were something familiar I could cling to. “Stay with me now. Don’t you go wherever it is you want to go.”

“I want to go home,” I whispered, and my voice had so much in common with little Ginger that it hurt to hear.

“You could.”

“I can’t.”

“I know.” Mary offered a small, half-pained smile. “But you’re with me now. Breathe. Keep breathing. I’m going to go get you something to bring your blood sugar back up. You should be safe here. Do you feel like you’ll be safe here?”

I nodded, closing my eyes. Despite the bone-deep weariness that was settling over me now that the adrenaline was leaving my body, I wasn’t hurt; I wasn’t even scratched, unless I wanted to count my aching knees. I was just tired. This was so like what I had trained for, and so unlike it at the same time, that I didn’t have the coping mechanisms I needed.

“Okay. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

There was the faintest of sounds, like air rushing back into the space where she’d been, and I was alone. I kept my eyes closed, inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth, looking for that quiet core of serenity that Colin had been helping me to find.

The fire hadn’t been there when I needed it. After so many accidents and one notable save—it’s hard to top burning down the big tent while I was still in it for the needlessly dramatic, even if that alone hadn’t been enough to save the carnival—the fire hadn’t been there. I was learning to speak, and losing the ability to scream. That was unnerving on a level that I didn’t really have the words for. If turning me into a better sorcerer meant I wasn’t going to be able to defend myself, was it really worth it?

(Did I even want to be a sorcerer? I didn’t have a choice about being a magic-user. It’s in my genes, a gift from a distant grandfather who disappeared long before I was born, and I can’t reject it any more than I can change the color of my eyes. But there’s a big difference between having a talent and training it in a specific way. If I kept working with Colin, one day his way wouldn’t just be the right way: it would be the only way, and I wouldn’t understand why I’d ever thought differently. There was only so much of a window for stopping this, and it was getting narrower by the day.)

“Miss West.” The voice was Emily’s. The fact that it hadn’t been accompanied by footsteps was somehow unsurprising. Routewitches aren’t heard when they don’t want to be. “Why am I not surprised to find you in the midst of another crisis?”

“I didn’t do it,” I said, not opening my eyes. I hadn’t done it. The fact that I’d been nearby both times was just a terrible coincidence.

Wasn’t it?

“I know. I do believe we may need to have a conversation, however, about why you run away whenever it seems your picture might be taken. You can open your eyes, by the way. It’s just the two of us here.” I could hear the smile in her voice. It had teeth. “Your little ghost isn’t going to be able to come back until I decide to let her. It seemed like a good time to remind her that she’s a guest in our home.”

Crap. I opened my eyes and tilted my head, looking up at her. “You knew she was here?”

“I know whenever a ghost steps foot on Lowryland property. Most of them are tourists even among the guests. You’d be surprised by how many people have ‘ride the Midsummer Night’s Scream one last time’ as their unfinished business. Well, that, and the Re-Entry. I’m not sure why it’s the roller coasters that bring back the dead. Maybe it’s something about wanting to feel afraid enough to be alive again.” Emily shook her head, looking unperturbed by the lack of a clear explanation. “I know every time she visits. I just didn’t know why she was showing up here. Now I do, and I can find her whenever I want.”

“Right.” My stomach sank. After more than fifty years, was I going to be the one who doomed Mary to a routewitch’s spirit jar, all because I wound up choosing the wrong theme park? They probably didn’t have these problems at Disney World.

“Get up.” Emily offered her hand. I took it, letting her pull me to my feet. She looked at me critically. “You have blood in your hair and on your collar. That’s going to be difficult to get out of the fabric.”

“I’m good with blood.”

Emily raised an eyebrow. “As you say. I’m going to be recommending all damages due to this incident be waived on the cast member level. We don’t want to discourage people from playing Good Samaritan when things like this happen—which, God forbid, is sometimes unavoidable. We run a fairly tight ship here. Accidents are still going to slip through.”

My fingers itched, not with fire, but with the urge to slap her. “Princess Laura’s face came off on the pavement,” I said quietly. “This wasn’t an accident. This was a tragedy.”

Ginger was probably still waiting for me to come back. No. No. I couldn’t think like that. Ginger’s mother was fine. She wasn’t one of the people crushed under the bulk of the float. She was fine. She was probably with her daughter right now, helping to get the other children back to their families. Ginger would be the darling of the people looking for a positive human interest story to pluck out of this disaster, the little girl in the Princess Laura dress who’d stepped up and somehow organized her own little nursery school.

I was happy to let her have the limelight. She might get something good out of it. All I would get was pain.

“Of course, it’s a tragedy,” said Emily. “What do you take me for? I’m not a monster, Melody. But this Park is my world, and it’s your world , at least for now. Whether you intend to stay with us forever or not, you need to consider Lowryland in everything you do.”

“Her face,” I repeated.

“Yes. Security is coordinating the EMTs now, and we have firetrucks and engineering en route, ready to remove the float and find out what caused the failure. This is a public relations nightmare. We’ll be dealing with the repercussions for a year or more. Disney will laugh all the way to the bank. And you helped. You ran into the danger when there was no reason to. You’re a very lucky girl.” Emily reached out and took my chin between her thumb and forefinger, looking at me critically. “Very lucky.”

I took a step back when she let me go. It was automatic, unavoidable. She didn’t look surprised.