Page 76 of Tricks for Free

“Sometimes leaving survivors isn’t the kind option. Sometimes it’s a warning to others.”

–Frances Brown

Heading for the Lowryland Public Relations building, ready to rock

ROCKING HAD TO WAIT until Cylia was awake, for several reasons, the most important of which was that we were going to be using her car. It was simple logistics: Megan was driving a beat-up green Corolla that worked great for getting three people to the Park, but really wasn’t equipped to ram a gate. Also, out of all of us, she was the one planning to stay at Lowryland long enough to finish her medical residency. Any pictures of our little adventure needed to leave her out of it.

(We could get her to the admin center through the time-honored method of “putting someone in the backseat, across the laps of everyone else there, under a blanket.” Traffic cams are everywhere. I was going to be wearing sunglasses and a big floppy hat, which should be enough to keep me off the Covenant’s radar, but if Lowry Security decided to check the footage later, they needed to count four people in the vehicle, not five.)

Fortunately, a gorgon’s gaze isn’t like a drug: once somebody shakes it off and opens their eyes, they’re basically ready to roll. Once Cylia was awake, we were five minutes from hitting the road. We wouldn’t even have been that far if I hadn’t wanted to give everyone one last opportunity to change their minds.

No one did. Whatever else happened from here, it was going to be all of us.

So there we were, five people crammed into one mid-century American muscle car, Sam in the front seat and Cylia behind the wheel, while Fern and I—both in floppy hats that hid as much of our faces as possible—rode in the back, Megan stretched across our laps.

The gates to the admin complex were supposed to be locked at all times, requiring ID cards and verifications to get through. Even if that failed, the guards were supposed to be there, checking everyone against their computers before they allowed anybody to enter the secret fastness of the Lowry empire. It was their bad luck that when we pulled up to the gate, it was to discover that entire stretch of wall dark.

Cylia looked at the rearview mirror, directing her words to me: “Localized power outage. They’re not uncommon around here, sadly. Sometimes it’s rats chewing on the substation wires. Sometimes it’s alligators chewing on the rats. Either way, we’re in the clear.”

“No, we’re not,” said Fern, and I could hear the frown in her voice. “This much good luck for us means bad luck for you later.”

“Try to keep me alive,” said Cylia. She got out of the car, walking around to the wooden barrier that was supposed to prevent intruders from just driving onto the property. It lifted easily when she pushed on it, apparently designed to be operated manually.

She got back into the car, and we drove on.

The power outage had been even more localized than I’d initially assumed: the streetlights scattered around the parking lot were on, casting every rock and remaining car into stark relief. Cylia chose a spot that was close to the Public Relations building, and also to the fence that separated it from the nearby swampland. She killed the engine, hands still resting on the wheel, and stared at the greenery on the other side of the chain-link.

“Anyone wants out, this is where you say so,” she said.

“Does that mean you want out?” I asked.

“No.” Her chuckle was utterly mirthless. “Tav would tell me to run like hell, because the life of every jink in the world isn’t worth my own. Let me be a species of one, if that’s what it comes down to. But Tav left. I’m a widow, and I make my own choices, and I say these assholes need to pay for fucking with a force of nature that was never meant to be theirs.”

No one else said anything. The moment stretched out until it seemed to fill the whole car with silence, until the whole world was silence. They were waiting on me.

I took a breath.

“All right,” I said. “If things go south, scatter. Megan—”

“I’ll hit the swamp,” she said. “Nothing there can hurt me.”

“I’m not leaving without you,” said Sam, utterly calm, like he was talking about ordering another pizza. “So if things go south, I’m grabbing you, and heading for the highest ground I can find.”

“Given where we are, that’s in Lowryland,” said Fern. “Regroup at the Midsummer Night’s Scream? Fairyland’s closed. It’s the safest place to go.”

The fact that she was talking about breaking into one of the largest theme parks in Florida like it was no big deal was as endearing as it was accurate. I nodded firmly.

“It’s a plan,” I said. “Let’s go.”

The night air outside the car was warm and humid, hot enough to have been an Oregon summer, even though the sun had been down for almost an hour. We walked across the parking lot to the Public Relations building, where the door, as always, was unlocked.

That was where the bad luck caught up with us. We stepped inside just as one of the conference room doors opened, and Emily emerged, followed by Sophie Vargas-Jackson. My old cheer captain. The woman who had believed, for all the time she’d known me, that I was a victim.

Emily froze, eyes going wide in surprise and shock. Sophie did no such thing. She took us all in with a single flick of her eyes, identifying Fern and Megan as Lowry employees and clearly filing Cylia under the same category—no one could know everyone who worked for the Park, not and have room in their heads for anything else—before stalking toward us.

“You bastard,” she hissed, and slapped Sam, hard, across his human-seeming cheek.

He took a step backward, more out of surprise than in response to the blow, and raised a hand to touch the spot where he’d been struck. “What the hell, lady?” he asked.