Page 87 of Tricks for Free

“So don’t get out,” I said. “Stay here. I’ll send anyone we find to the car, and if the charms collapse, you’ll know we’ve managed to take Emily down.”

“Annie . . .” She paused, looking faintly ill before she said, “If it’s a choice between the crossroads and the cemetery, you call for me. No routewitch can keep me out when there’s a bargain to be made.”

“It’s not going to come to that,” I assured her, got out of the car, and walked toward the gate.

Sam was close behind me. He pulled up by my side, matching his steps to mine, and asked, “Do you have a plan?”

“Not so much.”

“Do you have enough knives?”

“Never.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

I glanced at him. He looked earnest, faintly confused, and determined. I sighed. “Go ahead.”

“What’s with Mary? She told me what she could when she was keeping me updated on you, but . . . I feel like there’s a lot she had to leave out.”

“You don’t ask small questions, do you?” I exhaled. “Do you know what the crossroads are?”

“Yeah. You go down to the crossroads when you want to make a deal.”

“Just like that. Only you don’t normally need to go anywhere; the crossroads can find you, if they’re interested enough. Some people go to the physical place where the crossroads are currently manifesting, and those are the people who want. Most folks stumble into a deal. Bad bargains, sold souls. The usual.” I shook my head. “Not a good plan. I don’t recommend it.”

“I’m picking up on that. So Mary . . . ?”

“Was human, was dying, and made a deal with the crossroads to stay on as a ghost and serve them for as long as they want her. See, when you make a deal at the crossroads, it’s sort of like an episode of Law & Order. You get the defense, and you get the prosecution. Mary’s the defense. Mary’s the one who tries to argue the crossroads into giving you what you want, instead of what you technically asked for. She’s the good guy.”

Sam frowned. “Even though she’s working for them?”

“When you have a choice between Godzilla and Cthulhu, you take Godzilla every time. At least the King of Monsters isn’t actively out to destroy humanity. Mary . . . Mary isn’t cruel. She doesn’t make bargains with family if she has any choice in the matter. She reminds us that while crossroad bargains may seem like a cheap and easy way out of a tight spot, there’s always something else that can be done. And she makes brownies using my great-grandmother’s recipe, which is pretty amazing.”

There was a lot else I could have said, like how people like us have a tendency to trip and stumble up against the spirit world, and how having her around made sure we never did it by accident. How she’d been able to successfully keep any member of the family from calling on the crossroads since Grandpa Thomas—and how she never let us forget what he’d done, or what he’d paid for doing it. How much we needed her, and by extension, how much she needed us, because having a family to worry about kept her from falling into the trap that waits for all the world’s ghosts. As long as she had us, she couldn’t forget that she’d been one of the living, once. She couldn’t forget that the living were small, and soft, and worth worrying about.

We were going to keep reminding her forever, if I had any say in the matter.

We had reached the gate to the Park. It was locked, but that was no real barrier: not to people who’d trained on the trapeze and didn’t care about getting busted. Sam formed a basket with his hands and I stepped into it, one knee pulled toward my chest in a classic cheerleading pose. If not for the humidity and the darkness and the fact that we were about to commit an act of breaking and entering, it would have felt just like old times. He boosted me up. I grabbed the top of the gate and hoisted myself over it, dropping down into the Park proper.

Sam appeared next to me a second later, having leaped over the gate. He offered me my backpack. I shook my head as I took it and slung it over my shoulder, smiling at him fondly.

“Show-off,” I said.

“Hey, I have to keep you interested,” he replied.

“Trust me; keeping me interested is not going to be the problem,” I said. “Keeping me breathing may be, but so far you’ve been up to the challenge.”

“Planning to stay that way,” he said.

The Park was deserted, lit by the minimum number of bulbs and glowing fixtures. It would have made more sense to light the place up like midday for the sake of the janitorial staff, but that would also have attracted attention. Insomniacs and teenagers were attracted to Lowryland’s rare midnight openings like moths to a flame, following the blazing lights of the complex across the freeways of Florida. Maintenance and cleanup happen in the dark, lest they be seen, lest they be noticed.

They’re not the only things that happen in the dark. I shook my hands and felt the ghosts of flame in my fingers, still too drained and distant to reach. I breathed in the familiar, irreplaceable scent of Lowryland, that mixture of plastic reality, real sweat, fried sugar, and sunscreen, and felt regret welling up in my chest, stronger than the flames but fanning them at the same time. This was my last walk through the Park. By the time the sun came up, we’d be gone.

The skeleton twist of the Midsummer Night’s Scream loomed ahead of us, rendered eerie and organic by the shadows surrounding it. I pointed.

“There,” I said. “That area’s been closed all day, so janitorial will be staying clear, and the maintenance should be done by now. That’s where we’re going.” It felt right. It felt true. That was where we’d agreed to meet our people, and the cabal was running scared, drawing power from their routewitch and their ambulomancer, both of whom were tied to the narrative logic of the road. Add in the trainspotter, who would want to be someplace where he could recharge himself if the need arose, and it was the place in the Park that made the most sense.

That made me nervous. Things that make sense aren’t necessarily unreal. What they are, frequently, are traps.