Page 45 of Tricks for Free

“I felt like I was forgetting myself,” Verity had said, eyes on the marshmallows melting in her cocoa, shoulders hunched. She’s been shorter than me since I was twelve, but in that moment, she hadn’t looked short. She’d looked small, beaten down and human, and for the first time, I’d realized that my sister was as mortal as I was.

Alex hadn’t said anything. His eyes had darted toward the stairs, and I’d held my breath, willing him not to notice me. Either he hadn’t, or he’d decided this was something I should hear, because he still hadn’t said anything. He’d just looked back to Verity.

“Being Valerie was easy,” she’d said, spitting the word out like it was bitter. “All I had to do was dance. Valerie didn’t care about anything else, and for me to be her, I had to stop caring, too. It was easy, and it was tempting, and if I’d won . . .”

“You didn’t.”

“But if I’d won, I would have kept on being her, because it was easy, and it was fun, and I wasn’t scared. Nothing was trying to eat me. I got to just . . . exist.”

Alex had reached across the table then, putting a hand on her wrist and smiling. “Hey,” he’d said. “You’re always a winner to me, and I like Verity better than Valerie.”

She had raised her head and smiled back, and I had crept back up the stairs to my room without my midnight snack, but with a head full of things that wouldn’t let me go to sleep for hours.

Here, now, skating circles with two people I actually trusted, who actually knew me, I finally understood what Verity had been talking about. I was always Antimony Price, and I always would be. I was also Timpani Brown, Covenant recruit, who had wanted nothing more than to kill the monsters that had killed her family, until she’d found a new carnival, and fallen halfway in love while she was trying not to fall off the trapeze. And I was Melody West, former cheerleader on the run, current employee of Lowryland, sorcerer in training.

Timpani and Melody didn’t have to keep track of who they were. They knew who they were, because they were only one person each. I was all three, under the pressure of remembering who I really was, of holding fast to the core of identity that belonged to me and me alone. It would have been easier if I’d had my mice. Mice never let anybody forget who they really are.

We skated, and the world was simple.

The trouble was going to come when we had to stop.

Thirteen

“Your family, your real family, will always welcome you home with open arms. Anyone who says you can lose their love isn’t really family, no matter what blood says.”

–Evelyn Baker

A shitty company apartment five miles outside of Lakeland, Florida

FERN AND I CREPT through the apartment door and into the darkened living room sometime after midnight, shoes in our hands, trying to be quiet enough not to wake Megan. We were almost to the hall when a voice spoke from the couch.

“Nice to know that you’re not dead.”

We froze, me grimacing, Fern pressing closer to me, like she thought I was going to protect her. Which, let’s be honest, I would have happily done if this had been some dangerous monster or supernatural threat. Sadly, it wasn’t. It was our roommate, and she did not sound happy.

“Hi, Megan,” I said weakly, turning toward the voice. I couldn’t see her, not even an outline, but I had no doubt that she could see me. Gorgons have excellent night vision. “How was your shift?”

“Eight fatalities—fatalities—from an accident inside the Park, in the area I know you were working today.” The light next to the couch clicked on, revealing Megan. She was glaring behind the smoked lenses of her glasses, and if it had been possible for sheer anger to make her gaze more powerful, I would have been petrified before I had a chance to blink. “You want to tell me where the hell you’ve been?”

Looking at her, even as a friend and ally, it was easy to understand why the Covenant had taken one look at the gorgons and gone “we need to kill those in a hurry.” The snakes surrounding her face had picked up her anger and transformed it into something out of a horror movie, rising until they formed a sort of hood of scales and fangs and potential pain. They were all pulled into striking positions, flattening their heads slightly to make themselves look bigger. I knew Megan didn’t have conscious control of what they did, and that was a good thing, because if she had been able to tell them what to do, I would have had to assume she’d ordered them to scare the pants off me.

“Skating,” said Fern, in a meek voice. She stayed pressed close at my side. She was scared, too.

We keep frightening each other. Whether we mean to or not, we just keep frightening each other. “Neither of us was hurt when the float collapsed, but I was right there,” I said. “I was technically one of the first responders because I beat the security team and the EMTs to the wounded.” Andrea who had played Laura, her face gone. Ginger, parents missing and eyes bright with tears. “I . . . it messed me up pretty bad.”

“So I took her skating,” said Fern, picking up the essential shape of the narrative. She stepped forward, putting herself between me and Megan. Scared as she was, she knew I didn’t share her immunity to a gorgon’s gaze. “I’m sorry I didn’t text. I knew you were working.”

Megan held her glare for a moment before thawing and saying, “It’s okay. I had my hands full all night. I didn’t even start really worrying about you until I got home and you weren’t here. Neither of you was hurt?”

“We’re fine,” I said. “Eight people died?”

“And about fifty were injured. What happened?”

I opened my mouth to reply. Then I hesitated.

Cylia hadn’t done this. She said she was innocent, and I believed her. Jinks don’t create luck, just move it around, and if she hadn’t been spending her luck since reaching Florida, the accident couldn’t be her fault. My proximity to it was on her—and it was exactly what I would have asked for, if she’d told me this was coming. Because I’d been close, I’d been able to help. Because I’d been able to help, maybe things had been less terrible.

“I don’t know,” I said finally. “I was in the shop when something went bang, and by the time I made it outside, the float was on the ground and people were running everywhere. I don’t think it was something somebody did on purpose.”