Page 95 of Tricks for Free

The whole scenario unfurled like a terrible flower, each piece leading seamlessly to the next as it all came together. I shoved myself away from Colin, looking over my shoulder to find Joshua standing there, his eyes glowing faintly, like a cat’s, and his hands raised above my head.

“Shit,” I hissed.

Joshua was a trainspotter, and while he might be almost out of juice after his trick back in the Deep-Down, he could still whisper his wanting to the trains—to any train—and be answered in the affirmative. He could turn the coaster on from a distance. He had turned it on. And Colin was a sorcerer. Which meant that blood sacrifice would make him stronger.

Colin’s smirk grew, becoming an outright grin. “I think you’ll find I’ll have a new wand in no time,” he said.

The train would crush Fern, Cylia, and Megan, imbuing the train, the wheels, everything around it with the trauma of their intentional and carefully orchestrated deaths. Colin would be able to take his pick of materials, crafting a new wand capable of channeling his mystical energy. Everything we’d done would be for nothing. The cabal would be back in business without missing so much as a step.

“No,” I said, and skated toward Sam, moving fast, trusting him to know what I wanted.

There are advantages to having a preternaturally strong, incredibly swift boyfriend. Sam saw me coming, saw the lights coming on along the roller coaster’s tracks, and knew what I wanted him to do. If he had issues with it—if he didn’t like the idea of flinging me headlong into danger while he stayed with the danger we already had—there wasn’t time to discuss it. He stood, making a basket with his hands, and when I was close enough, I jumped, knees together, wheels spinning against the empty air.

Sam’s hands grasped my calves for only a second before he was flinging me upward as hard as he could, away from the remnants of the cabal, toward the distant but rapidly nearing shape of the Midsummer Night’s Scream.

Guess it was time to come up with a plan.

Twenty-six

“The survivors decide how well the show went. Always survive.”

–Frances Brown

About to slam into the side of a massive roller coaster

THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S SCREAM was built in the 1990s, after the first wave of wooden coasters but before they became trendy again. As a consequence, the only wood involved is in the structures surrounding the track, most of which are actually plastic and steel, both of which require substantially less maintenance. I had never approached the train from this angle, and I didn’t have much time to decide where I was going to land.

When all else fails, go for the path of least resistance. I braced myself as best I could, and when I reached the sculpted metal “trees” next to the mouth of the big tunnel, I grabbed on, feeling the metal edges of the “branches” bite into my palms. My momentum died with a bone-shaking jolt, and I was suddenly hanging there, as vulnerable to physics as anyone.

The train was still snarling and growling in its launching bay. It hadn’t started moving yet. Why hadn’t it started moving yet? It would have made sense to tie my friends to the coaster track, and I knew Colin would want them all to die at the same time, for the sake of grinding their last moments as deeply into the structure as possible—

But that didn’t mean they had to be tied at the same point. I had to think about this logically. Normally, riders would wind slowly up a wooded path, traveling deep into “goblin territory” before joining Laura and Lizzie on their lightning-swift journey to freedom. Maintenance crews could ride the ADA-mandated elevator or climb up the stairs built into the structure. That gave three access points, and that would probably have felt like two too many to Colin and his flunkies. They’d want something that could only be reasonably accessed one way. Via the track.

The train was still warming up. Turning on a modern, high-tech roller coaster with nothing but magic probably wasn’t easy. That didn’t mean I had much time. Pulling myself up with shaking arms, I swung my feet over, onto the track. My skates, formerly an advantage, made it virtually impossible for me to get my balance back. I ground my teeth and kept trying until I felt steady enough to let the tree go.

The track had been built to be maintained, thankfully, and there was room for both my feet. I caught my breath, testing the faint downward slope of the hill’s ledge. Then, with a silent prayer and a lot more silent cursing, I lifted my toes, releasing my brakes, and let go.

Fun facts about roller skates: the only brakes they have are the ones on the toes. Otherwise, physics does most of the hard work. Which meant that when I released my toe stops at the top of a coaster hill, gravity kicked in and kicked my ass, pulling me down what felt like a sheer drop until my hair was whipping straight out behind me and my lungs ached with the effort to keep myself from screaming. All my focus was on staying on the tracks, keeping myself yoked to the great steel structure that had never been designed for something as soft and squishy as a human being.

I’m going to die, I thought, as I hit the bottom of the hill and started up the next one, propelled by nothing more or less than my own momentum. I’m going to hit the loop-de-loop, and there’s going to be nothing to keep me on the track, and I’m going to die. I’m going to—

A dark hole loomed up ahead of me, lit by a flickering rainbow sheen, like bioluminescent fungus. This time, I gave up and screamed. I’d been so concerned about the big loops that I’d forgotten the goblin caverns at the bottom of the ride.

I dropped into the darkness, my skates suddenly soaked through again as I hit the artificial lake at the bottom. It wasn’t deep, designed to kick up water and delight guests, but it was there.

And it gave me an idea. I threw myself to the side, abandoning the track for the water, and splashed down hard, sliding a few feet before the water finished absorbing the shock of my landing. I came up gasping, no longer bound to the structure of the track—and no longer aided by its merciless progress, either. That was fine. I needed some control over where I was going, given what was likely to come next.

From here, the track rose up into the darkness, the flashes of rainbow light becoming less frequent, while never quite stopping altogether. Total darkness was terrifying: near darkness was exhilarating. I wiped my wet palms against my wetter jeans, and started climbing.

I was almost to the top of the first hill when my hand hit something that wasn’t metal. It was soft, yielding, and mammalian. I paused, considering the silence of the something, and touched it again, more intentionally.

“Fern?” I whispered.

“Annie?” She sounded hopeful but wary, like she knew this couldn’t possibly be anything but a trick. “Is it really you?”

“Why didn’t you make a sound when I touched you?”

“I thought you were them, and I thought they’d leave me alone if they thought I was still knocked out.” Fern’s voice was even wispier and softer than it usually was. She was clearly fighting to remain calm. “Are you here to save me?”