Page 40 of Tricks for Free

“Go home, Melody,” she said. “We’re closing early today.”

Then she turned and walked away, leaving me utterly, achingly alone.

Twelve

“There are a lot of ways to be haunted. Some of them are even good ones, if you’re up for it.”

–Mary Dunlavy

Lowryland, backstage, walking slow

MARY DIDN’T COME BACK.

I stayed where I was for a good ten minutes, counting the seconds, listening as the sounds outside the wall moved from quick urgency to slow, methodical diligence. They weren’t trying to triage the wounded or rescue the trapped anymore: they were trying to evacuate the remaining guests before they began unearthing the dead. The actress who played Laura in the parades would probably be one of the first bodies removed, since she was only covered by a thin sheet of plastic. I couldn’t even figure out what part of the float it had been, before everything went to pieces.

And Mary didn’t come back.

When I couldn’t put it off any longer—not without risking a return appearance of Emily, or worse, the rest of the employees from my shift, who had all seen me running for the float—I turned and trudged toward the door that would take me into the tunnels. Once I was there, I could walk back to the locker room, change out of my uniform, and get my things. I needed to be out of here. I needed to go home.

The tunnels were dim and smelled like boiled laundry. That was a constant. On hot days, they were actually cooler than the rest of Lowryland, thanks to that easy darkness. Someone could have told me there was an entire colony of bogeymen living peacefully under the Park, and I would have believed them. Given how I was feeling, I would probably have asked for directions. Tea with a quiet, accepting bogey community was about all I was feeling up for.

People hurried past me, none of them stopping to ask how I was or why there was blood in my hair. I couldn’t blame them. They all looked about as shaken as I felt, and doubtless with far better reason—at least I’d been trained for this sort of thing. They were ordinary people, going about their ordinary business, and now here we were. Everything was falling apart.

I didn’t realize I had turned away from my own locker room until I was standing in the doorway of a nearly-identical room, looking blankly at a group of women who were encircling one of their own. The one in the middle was sobbing like her heart was broken. Maybe it was. I took a step back.

My heel hit hard against the concrete floor. Several of the women looked around. One was still wearing Princess Lizzie’s dress, although she had removed the wig, revealing a clean blonde crewcut. Another, in street clothes, raised a hand and pointed at me.

“You,” she said. “You were corralling the kids after the parade crash. I saw you.”

The other women started looking around, murmuring. I spotted Fern at the back of the group, and some of the tension left my spine. She was all right. She was here. I wasn’t alone anymore.

The Princess Lizzie was looking at me expectantly, clinging to the hand of the woman who had pointed me out. I forced myself to nod, and said, “Yeah, that was me. I was working in the gift shop when . . . when whatever happened, happened. Please don’t ask what went wrong with the float. I don’t know. I just knew I had to do something.”

“Andrea and Marissa,” said the princess. “Are they all right?”

I looked at her blankly. She looked back, impatient, until she realized that I wasn’t being dense: I didn’t know who she meant.

“They play Laura and Lizzie on the float,” she said. “Marissa borrowed my wig.” There was a wealth of concern in that sentence, making it clear that she wasn’t just asking after her misplaced possession: she was asking after her friends, the way I would have asked after Fern or Megan if I thought they’d been in the path of danger. The fact that she didn’t have the words to frame her question didn’t change the size of it, or its terrible weight.

“Oh,” I breathed. The room held its breath. “I . . . Marissa plays Lizzie?”

She nodded.

“I’m pretty sure she has a broken arm, so they’re probably taking her to the hospital. She didn’t look like she had any other injuries. She was thrown clear when it went down.” Please don’t ask about Andrea. Please. Please don’t ask—

“What about Andrea?” asked another princess.

Dammit. “I’m sorry,” I said.

The whole group stared at me for a frozen second before they began to wail and keen. It was an unearthly sound, too alien to have come from human throats. I took a step backward, suddenly afraid that they were going to blame me for the whole incident.

“Come on.”

Fern was at my elbow in eerie parody of Mary’s earlier appearance. She had managed to change out of her velvet gown while the other princesses were interrogating me, and had it stuffed into a garment bag over her arm. The makeup still smeared on her face was generic enough that no one who saw us would peg her immediately for a fleeing Princess Aspen.

Her eyes were wide. She looked worried. I shared the sentiment.

Not trusting my voice and not wanting to attract more attention from the grieving gaggle of actresses, I nodded and took another step back before I turned and fled, alongside Fern, into the relative safety of the tunnel system. Anyone we encountered here would be as focused on getting out of Lowryland as we were.