Page 85 of Tricks for Free

“Up,” said Sam. He stood carefully, helping me to my feet at the same time. “Was that ‘no’ to ‘are you all right,’ or to the other thing?”

“The other thing.” I grimaced as I rotated my shoulder, feeling the joint complain. “We need to get back to them.”

“Uh, that’s probably going to be easier said than done, since, you know—”

Whatever he was going to say was lost as something pounded hard against the door to our temporary sanctuary. Sam turned to me, clearly expecting me to know what to do next. It would have been touching, if not for the fact that we were trapped, with no weapons more useful than my knives, no exit, and no way to get back to our friends.

But we had a window. We were three floors up, maybe more, and the edge of the swamp was less than twenty feet away. There were no security cameras in the swamp. Alligators, yes, cameras, no. I pointed.

“Throw me,” I said.

Sam stared. “What?”

“No time to argue!” Whoever had followed us down was still pounding on the door, and they’d be through in a moment. “Throw me!” He’d slung me almost twice that distance when we were in the tent back at his family’s carnival, and he’d had a lot less motivation then. If he threw me hard enough, if I could shape my descent like this was just another trick on the trapeze, if I could hit the water at the right angle to prevent myself from slamming into an alligator, if, if, if . . . if we could manage all those things, we might be able to walk away from this and get back to our people. We might escape.

Sam looked, for an instant, like he was going to argue. Then he nodded and kissed me, before grabbing my waist with both hands. I went as limp as I could, trying to think of this as perfectly normal, the tent lights around us, the net below us, the world aligned to let us dazzle the crowd without hurting ourselves. We were going to be fine. We were going to be fine.

He flung me away from him so hard that I was going to have bruises on my ribs for a week, assuming I lived long enough for them to form. I curled myself into a tight ball, cutting down on wind resistance, feeling the air whisking by around me, as jagged as the broken glass I was leaving behind. When I judged that I’d flown far enough, I stretched out in the classic pose of the flying trapeze, legs pressed together like the shaft of an arrow, arms spread wide, like I thought I could will myself into becoming a bird.

Below me, the parking lot was a black, yawning chasm, ready to swallow me whole, to batter my body and break my bones, one more victim of Lowryland’s stolen luck. Then the landscape changed, sliced in two by the knife’s edge of the chain link fence, and I was flying over the swamp, green and brown and hungry. I was already losing momentum, beginning to drop, a superhero whose comic had been destined for cancellation from the very first panel.

I screwed my eyes tightly shut against the mud and muck, and let the water have me.

I’ve always hated swimming.

Alex loves it. He enjoys the freedom and weightlessness of the water, and anyway, it’s easier to study frogs and alligators when he’s on their level. Verity doesn’t mind it. She prefers dancing, but swimming has enough in common with dance that she can find enjoyment in the activity. Me?

I knew the water wanted me dead long before I felt fire in my fingers. We were natural enemies, the water and I, and it didn’t matter whether it was in a swimming pool or the Pacific Ocean, it would kill me if I gave it the opportunity. So I endured my swimming lessons exactly as long as my parents forced me to do so, learning enough that I was at a low risk of drowning—as long as I stayed conscious. As long as I wasn’t plummeting blind into a swamp filled with alligators and unknown obstacles. As long as I had some common sense.

It really sucks how often my early training is no match for the world in which I live.

I hit the swamp hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs. I think I blacked out. It was hard to tell, since everything around me was darkness, leaving me functionally blind and unaware of danger. I drifted several feet in a state of shock, barely even able to muster up gratitude for the fact that I had managed to avoid slamming into either the ground or some unseen, even less yielding obstacle.

Something splashed to my left. I was not alone.

My brother Alex is the reptile expert, but that doesn’t mean I’m ignorant. A noise like that in a place like this was likely to mean “alligator,” aka “America’s own prehistoric killing machine.” The alligator is proof that once evolution gets something right, it stops screwing around with the details and lets it go on its merry, murderous way. Even a juvenile could kill me if it caught hold of me here, and I was much more likely to attract the attention of an adult, given my size, given the volume of my splash. I needed to move.

Too bad my body had other ideas. My lungs ached. My stomach did the same. It was like the water had punched me, right after Sam had flung me more than twenty feet across open space.

Sam. The thought was electric, shocking some of the strength back into my useless limbs. There hadn’t been a second splash. He was more than strong enough to jump that distance, unless he’d decided to climb down the side of the building instead. As long as he hadn’t tried to stay and make a stand, he should have been able to get away. Please, he was able to get away.

I rose out of the water with a gasp, trying to minimize my splashing as I stood, spat out the muddy taste of the swamp, and began moving away from the sound that had awakened me. Alligators, snakes, worse things, they were all out here with me. I needed to move. I needed to get away from them. I needed to get to Sam and the others.

My fumbling hands found solid ground. I pulled myself up onto the grassy bank, pulling knives from inside my shirt and getting a good grip on them. They were small—far too small to be effective against a hungry alligator—but they still made me feel better. We all have our security blankets in this world.

Once I was standing, it wasn’t difficult to spot the Lowryland administrative complex. It was the big, bright square blazing with light, a clear contrast to the dark around me. Carefully, all too aware that I’d do myself no favors by putting a foot down wrong, I began making my way toward the light.

I was almost there when a dark shape moved in front of the fence. I stopped, keeping to the shadow.

“Annie?”

“Sam!” Relief chased caution away. I ran across the last stretch of swamp between me and him, hitting the chain link and pressing my hands against it, knives still held against my palms. There was Sam, back in his humanoid form. He smiled wearily at the sight of me.

“You’re like a cockroach,” he said. “I’m dating a cockroach. That’s pretty cool.”

I laughed. The sound had a little too much in common with a sob. “That’s me,” I said. “The unkillable girl.”

“Good. I like your dead aunts, but I don’t wanna date a ghost. I’d wind up feeling like a cradle robber when I kept aging and you didn’t.” Sam looked over his shoulder toward the admin building. “How do we get back up?”