Page 79 of Tricks for Free

This wasn’t the time for subtlety. Ramming the point of one knife into the lock on the hatch at the top of the elevator, I shoved the other under the edge, pulling it to the side until it nested against the latch that held the whole contraption in place. Most elevator access hatches aren’t designed to prevent people from breaking into them, since most people aren’t tall enough—or don’t have a convenient trapeze-artist boyfriend to offer a boost. I slammed the heel of my hand against the wedged knife, and was rewarded with a popping sound. Grabbing the other knife more firmly, I twisted hard to the left. This time, the pop was louder, and accompanied by a snap.

“Fern!” I yelled. “Push!”

The sylph reached around me and shoved. When nothing happened—probably because she weighed virtually nothing, and thus had no leverage behind the motion—she took a breath, shoved again, and fell as she yanked all the density back into her bones.

I heard her hit the floor with a crunching thump, like a bowling ball dropped on hardwood. I couldn’t look down to see whether she was hurt, or whether she had punched a hole straight through the bottom of the elevator. I was busy levering open the crack she’d created, using both my knives to pry the wood apart. Once the opening was large enough, the knives vanished back into my shirt and I gripped the edge of the hatch, pulling myself onto the top of the elevator.

It would be difficult to overstate how much more terrifying everything became once I was crouching on top of a metal box, plummeting through a gray-walled chasm, with braided metal cables whipping lightning-fast right next to my face. For a split second, I missed the comfortably mirrored walls of the elevator itself, and the distant, familiar sound of music drained of all power and passion.

The moment passed. Comfort isn’t worth it when it gets you dead. Poking my head back around the hatch, I held my arms out. “Start passing them up!” I yelled.

Megan was first. She grabbed hold of the elevator roof until I was pulling Cylia up, and then moved to help me. The wind from our fall whipped her wig away, leaving her hissing, agitated snakes exposed. One of them snapped at my cheek, not quite making contact. I chose to focus on getting Cylia situated on the roof, then turned back to reach for Fern.

Sam was hoisting her up without visible effort—she had bled off her density again, which was probably a good thing, given the way her left leg was dangling and the visible pain in her face. I grimaced, and swallowed the apology that threatened to rise up and distract us all from the situation at hand. We were still falling. We wouldn’t be falling for much longer. When there’s a fall, there’s always a stop at the end, and I wanted to avoid that if it was humanly possible.

Cylia gathered Fern to her side, and Sam hoisted himself out of the elevator, joining the rest of us on the roof. He shot me a quizzical look. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t know, that I couldn’t know, that this sort of thing wasn’t what I did. I was supposed to be the useless youngest child, not some sort of messed-up action hero leading her personal A-Team through the gates of hell and into a crisis that didn’t validate parking.

But this was where we were. This was what we had to do. I took a breath.

“Grab Megan and Cylia and jump,” I said.

It wasn’t a complicated plan. I could see Sam check it against our speed of descent, against the shaft around us, and find it flawed but feasible.

“I love you,” he said, and grabbed Cylia and Megan, one with each hand, before leaping into the air.

There was an elevator landing bay every ten feet, ledges jutting out into the shaft. I didn’t have time to wait and see whether he’d managed to grab one. I needed to trust him. I needed to trust me. I grabbed Fern by the waist. She barely weighed more than a sack of dried leaves, substantial but airy at the same time, her density all but gone. She slung her arms around my neck, holding on for dear life.

I jumped.

Sam had the kind of strength that my human legs could only dream of. He’d also been making his jump when we were almost ten feet higher in the elevator shaft. At her current weight, Fern wasn’t dragging me down, but neither could she dump her density enough to become truly negative: she could float. She couldn’t fly. My feet left the elevator roof, we curved upward in something between an arc and a prayer, and we were going to fail. We were going to fall again, this time without the elevator to catch us, and while Fern might survive, I was going to die. I was going to be the first Price in generations to end where the mice couldn’t see, with no one to add my deeds to the family record.

Fern clung to me. I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Something that felt like a rope—but wasn’t—wrapped around my waist and jerked me to a stop at the apex of my small, human leap. The shock of the stop caused me to let go of Fern, who drifted downward more than she fell, finally grabbing hold of my leg and hanging there while she patiently waited for me to recover.

“Now I know how Gwen Stacy felt,” I muttered, and looked up.

Sam was gripping the ledge of the nearest elevator bay with his hands, and holding Megan and Cylia with his remarkably prehensile feet, leaving his tail free to keep me from falling to my doom. He offered me a worried, toothy smile.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t date dead girls.”

“Probably a good thing,” I said. “My grandmother was worried about my grandfather dating Mary for a while, and that caused problems for years.”

“Was he?”

“Hell, no. Mary doesn’t date the living.”

Megan looked between us, eyes wide and a little frantic. “Uh, hello? Hanging in an elevator shaft? Shouldn’t you be getting us out of here?”

“Not yet,” I said.

Sam shook his head.

Megan opened her mouth to object again. There was a terrible crashing, tearing sound below us, accompanied by a billowing wave of dust and smoke and metal particles that slammed upward at a terrifying rate. Sam yanked me closer to the wall. I grabbed hold, tucking my head against my chest and squeezing my eyes tightly closed. Just in time: the worst of the wave flowed over us, ruffling my hair, striking my skin in a dozen places, little stinging specks that would have been so much worse if I hadn’t been prepared.

Silence followed. When the wave had passed, I cracked an eye open, looking down. Nothing moved. Fern, still clinging to my leg, offered me a wan smile.

“Is it over?” she asked.