Page 70 of Tricks for Free

Everyone stopped. In the case of Mary and Rose, they stopped so perfectly, so completely, that they might as well have been pictures painted on the air. Sam and Cylia just froze. They were still alive, and I took comfort in that fact. Sometimes it can be awkward, being the only living person in a room.

Sam recovered first. “If I were allowed to touch you right now, I’d be slinging you over my shoulder and running for the door,” he growled. “Why the hell don’t you want to leave?”

“Because you’re not allowed to touch me right now,” I said.

He looked at me blankly. So did the others. I sighed.

“The luck-theft doesn’t target employees,” I said. “We don’t get tickets like guests do. We have our passes, and we’re supposed to keep our ID badges on us at all times. I’m willing to bet that there’s some kind of a counter-charm built into the plastic to keep us from being affected if we do pick up a ticket for some reason, or we’d be dealing with a rash of dead janitors.” They couldn’t be stealing luck from employees. There was no way they’d have been able to cover for that many accidents.

“So?” said Sam.

“So employees are getting hurt. It started recently, and it’s getting worse. People died in the parade collapse.” I took a deep breath. “This began when Fern found the dead man outside the Midsummer Night’s Scream. The people who would know said that . . . they said he’d been unlucky. The cut that killed him was a fluke. So call him a possible consequence of the normal luck theft. He got his luck swiped, and then he got into a fight, and what should have been a pretty standard tussle turned into murder.”

“This isn’t explaining why you need to stay, sweetie,” said Mary, sounding more like my babysitter than she had in years. “If anything, this is explaining why you need to go.”

“Because it was after that man died that the cabal running Lowryland found out I existed,” I said. “They’re stealing my magic. They said they would train me, and instead, they’ve been using me like a battery. Employees didn’t start getting hurt until I waltzed in and dropped an untrained, uneducated magic-user in their laps. They’re using me to boost their effects, and people are dying. We can’t leave until I figure out how to stop them and get my magic back.”

I had lived for years without fire in my fingers, and when it had started to develop, I’d wished it gone with everything I had. Now I finally had someone willing to take it away from me, and all they wanted in exchange was more than anyone had the right to ask me to give.

Lowryland owed a lot of people a lot of luck, and I was going to make sure the bills were paid. I owed the dead that much. They had been hurt, however inadvertently, because of me.

Mary sighed. “Why the hell did I instill a sense of responsibility in you? Biggest mistake I ever made.”

“You wanted me to be the best that I could be,” I said.

“Well, the best you can be is a pain in my ass,” she said.

I turned to Cylia. “Can Sam stay here? Until his strength comes back and he can shift again?”

“Yes, of course,” said Cylia, and “Fuck that idea,” said Sam, at the same time, so their words piled on top of each other in a complicated heap.

I frowned at him. “You can’t be near me until your luck comes back.”

“No, I can’t be near you and human until you stop being a magical energy vacuum cleaner, but you keep saying you don’t need me to be human, so who the fuck cares?” Sam gave me a pointed look. “Unless you were lying.”

I didn’t hesitate. I leaned forward and kissed him, deeply enough to get my point across. Sam kissed me back, and I would have been a fool not to feel the relief in the action, or the way his shoulders relaxed, letting his body settle a little deeper into his chair, making a space for me to fall into.

Mary cleared her throat. “I’d say ‘get a room,’ but you might,” she said. “Can we focus?”

“Sorry,” I said, sitting up.

Sam beamed at her. “Not sorry,” he said.

“Didn’t think you were,” said Mary. “Sam, you understand that it’s not safe—”

“If it’s not safe for me, it’s not safe for her,” he said. “I don’t have to go out in public. Both her roommates know I’m not human. I can sleep on the couch if I need to, give my luck time to grow back and shield me from the sucking. Whatever. What I can’t do is walk away and leave her alone again. Don’t ask me to.”

“And this way you don’t have to feel bad about not calling my parents,” I said. “I’ll have backup. Cylia can even drive us back to the apartment. Maybe Megan and Fern will have some luck to spare.”

“Saints preserve me from the living,” said Mary, rolling her eyes ceiling-ward. “All right. Since it seems like you’ve thought of everything, can you just promise me that you’ll be careful?”

“Nope,” I said. “When a Price promises to be careful, that’s when we get dead.”

“Speaking of dead,” said Rose. “It’s been fun seeing you again, Timmy. Good luck defeating the evil luck-sucker empire, but if this is routewitch doing, I’m not sticking around to find out what they’ll do to a girl like me.”

It was the sensible thing to do. Rose has been a hitchhiking ghost for so long that she’s crossed the continent dozens, if not hundreds, of times, and the spells she’d fuel would be terrifying. I smiled wanly.

“Thanks for coming, Aunt Rose,” I said.