Tricks for Free

by Seanan McGuire

  Without someone to teach me, I’d keep setting things on fire and bumbling through, becoming an increasing danger to myself and others, until I finally got caught. Whether I was caught by normal policemen who thought I was a dangerous arsonist or the Covenant didn’t really matter, because the end result would be the same: imprisonment, and probably death.

  A teacher would fix everything. A teacher would change my life, and make my future a hell of a lot brighter, since my other option was joining my grandmother on her endless quest for my probably-dead grandfather.

  But a teacher would also know me better than I wanted anyone outside the family to know me, ever, and on the rare occasions when I’d considered looking for someone, I certainly hadn’t been thinking about a man who looked like the ADA of the week on one of the Law & Order clones.

  “Teach me,” I said carefully. “You’re a sorcerer.”

  “The nineteenth of my line,” he said, with the kind of pride that always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Most people who take that much pride in being the nineteenth anything in their family are the kind of folks who look down on girls like Fern and Megan for having the audacity to be born inhuman, and on girls like me for being common.

  Trust me. If girls like me were common, we’d have a totally different class of problems. “What’s the wand for? I thought sorcerers didn’t use wands.”

  A few of the others exchanged looks, like I’d just committed the ultimate faux pas. Wand Guy stood straighter, narrowing his eyes.

  “It’s a focusing tool,” he said. “You may find a wand of use once your studies have progressed beyond brute force. My offer is simple: let me train you. Work with us for the betterment of ourselves and of Lowryland. Refuse, and I’m afraid your employment will need to come to an end. We can’t have untrained sorcerers running around the property. It’s untidy.”

  Two things were immediately clear. First, that he really, really wanted me to agree to let him train me. All of them were looking at me with avarice in their eyes, like dogs considering a platter of steaks on the way to the barbecue. They were a cabal of grown adults with control over their powers, and for some reason, adding an untrained baby magic-user to their ranks was the best idea any of them could come up with. That unnerved me.

  The second thing was even more unnerving. Specifically, that there were five of them—six if I was counting Emily—and only one of me, and Florida is a state rich with swamps and alligators, aka, “Nature’s body disposal service.” If I refused them, my employment might not be all that was terminated.

  “What do I have to do?” I asked.

  Wand Guy smiled.

  * * *

  Fern sat in the corner of a small, unwelcoming room. The walls were painted electric yellow, and there was a vending machine packed with Lowry-branded snack offerings next to her chair, but those were the only concessions to the location: the room itself could have been part of any DMV or government office in the country. It was the sort of featureless, windowless place where people were sent to be forgotten about.

  Her head snapped up when the door opened, and her whole face brightened when she saw that it was me. Then it closed off, leaving her wary and displeased. “An—Melody!” she said, barely catching herself in time. “I told you that you didn’t need to come.”

  I winced at the first syllable of my real name, resisting the urge to look over my shoulder and check Emily’s expression. If she didn’t realize Fern had been starting to call me something else, I might get out of here without any more awkward conversations. That would be a nice change.

  “Of course I came,” I said, and held up the bag I’d been carrying since leaving the house. “I have my post-shift change of clothes if you want to borrow them. Also, I have a hairbrush.”

  “You are my favorite,” said Fern, and lunged for the bag. She was exhausted from being up all night: when she moved, it was with the odd floating quality that only really kicked in when she’d started lowering her density to keep herself from falling down.

  “I try.” This time I did look over my shoulder at Emily. “Is this an okay place for my roommate to change, or should we head for a bathroom?”

  “I’ll be outside,” said Emily. “Ms. Vargas-Jackson will be giving both of you a ride the rest of the way to the Park, and I’ll get those time slips for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, with all the sincerity I could muster. It was more than half a mile from here to the employee entrance to Lowryland—even the backstage areas were enormous, thanks to the scope of the Park they supported. Getting a ride rather than catching a tram would probably shave half an hour off the trip.

  (We weren’t lazy. Lazy people don’t work at Lowryland. But we were about to go and spend what remained of our shifts on our feet, and there was a non-zero chance our respective managers would ask us to stay late and make up what we’d missed, official note from the PR department or no. Any walking we didn’t have to do was a good thing.)

  Fern was staring at Emily, eyes wide and as wonder-struck as those of the children who came to see her every day in all her princess glory. “Time slips? Really?”

  “Really,” said Emily, with the sort of smug, patronizing smile that I’d come to expect from Lowryland management. “I’m sure if you ask Melody, she’ll share.” Then she was out, shutting the door behind herself as she left us alone.

  Fern looked at me. I shook my head. This space looked empty, but that didn’t make it safe. Cameras can be small. Listening devices can be smaller. Was I being paranoid? Sure. That didn’t mean that I was wrong.

  “They’re giving me a whole booklet of time slips to apologize for pulling me off my shift this morning,” I said, finally surrendering the bag to Fern’s questing hands. She retreated back to her seat, hauling the bag open and starting to strip in essentially the same motion. I leaned up against the wall. We’d been on the same roller derby team. Our bodies held no secrets.

  No visible ones, anyway. Fern didn’t know about my little magical problem. It had seemed like a step too far. “Hi, having me as your roommate might bring the Covenant of St. George down on your head, and oh, by the way, sometimes I set things on fire without meaning to?” No. That wasn’t a conversation I’d been willing to have.

  I was going to need to have it now.

  “Can I have some?” she asked, shedding her old bra and rubbing a deodorant stick under her arms and breasts before starting to put the new bra on.

  “Of course,” I said. “I don’t know whether they’re going to be fours or sixes, but I can give you a couple either way.” Time slips were one of the many ways Lowryland management pitted us against each other, like we were fighting chickens in the farmyard of life. Each piece of carefully watermarked and uncopiable paper was good for two, four, or six hours of vacation time, and they trumped even mandatory attendance policies. A whole book of time slips was a great big slice of freedom pie.

  On some level, I wanted to keep the whole book for myself. I’m only human, after all, and time slips could buy that most precious of commodities, free time during Park hours, when the stores off-property would actually be open. I could go to Target. I could shop for groceries, rather than trusting Megan and her idiosyncratic ideas about vegetables—specifically, that they were what food eats, and not food themselves—to fill the fridge.

  But training with Colin, aka “Wand Guy,” was likely to mean some changes to my work shifts, and my coworkers already didn’t like me much. Spending my time slips on keeping the peace was probably for the best, even if I would prefer not to.

  Fern, who would need to do her hair and makeup in the dressing room where her full costume waited for her, had already finished dressing. She looked at me expectantly.

  “Have you eaten?” I asked.

  “They had bagels in the room where they were going over my story,” she said.

  “Okay. Are you ready to get out of he
re?”

  Fern nodded firmly.

  If there had been any question of whether we were being monitored, that answered it. As soon as Fern nodded, the door swung open, and there was Emily, now with Sophie standing behind her. Sophie looked confused, even slightly concerned, which was something of a relief. She wasn’t a part of this secret cabal that seemed to be in charge of the place: she was just someone I’d gone to high school with who happened to have been in the right place to help me when I needed her. I wasn’t sure my heart could have handled finding out that Sophie had been lying to me all this time.

  Sure, I’d been lying to her since the day we met, but I’ve never claimed not to have a hypocrite heart.

  “I assume you’re both ready to go?” asked Emily.

  We nodded. She turned to Sophie.

  “Miss West has been very helpful,” said Emily. “We appreciate your bringing her here to review last night’s events. We’ve found no wrongdoing on the part of either employee, and they’re both well aware of the injunctions preventing them from speaking to either members of the press or the general public. Everyone’s a blogger these days. Even the six-year-olds could be tiny public relations disasters in princess dresses and pigtails.”

  That was probably aimed at me. With one thing and another, I hadn’t actually been given the “don’t talk to anybody” lecture like I was supposed to have been. At least I had common sense enough to know better without anyone telling me.

  “We appreciate your taking the time,” said Sophie.

  “I know,” said Emily. Her hands moved too fast to follow, and like another card trick, she was suddenly holding two books of time slips, one stamped with a four and the other with the all-powerful, endlessly coveted six. She held them out, the four toward Fern, the six toward me. “As promised.”

  It was hard not to feel like I was being bribed, and even harder to care. I took the booklet, fighting hard not to snatch it out of her hand, and tucked it into my front pocket, where I wouldn’t lose it. “We’re ready to go if you are.”

  “I can still make my afternoon shift,” said Fern, making her book—her bribe, since it had never been promised to her, and we were both smart enough to see it for what it was—disappear.

  “Great,” said Sophie, clapping her hands in a way that made me want to fall into a starting cheer position. “Let’s get you two to work!”

  “See you soon, Melody,” said Emily sweetly.

  I didn’t say anything. I just followed Sophie away from that unkind little room, Fern at my heels.

  Sophie was silent until we were out of the building, across the sidewalk, and in her car with the doors closed. Only then did she look at me and ask, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, leaning back in my seat so I could see Fern in the rearview mirror. She looked tired but alert. She’d be fine. Roller derby teaches many important lessons about sleep deprivation and why it is sometimes just one more obstacle to wave at as you skate on by. We’d both sleep like rocks tonight, and the world would keep on spinning.

  “That was Emily Doyle.”

  “Okay.”

  “She’s a shark. Don’t trust her. She shows up every time something happens, and she gets the credit suspiciously often.”

  Of course she did. She was a routewitch, and what were the paths and trails through Lowryland, if not roads? She might lack the power of her peers who drew their strength from highways and urban thoroughfares—but then again, she might not. Thousands of feet traversed the smallest of Lowryland’s trails every day. That much presence, that much power, had to go somewhere, and Emily was as good a vessel as any.

  “She just wanted to review my side of the story and make absolutely sure Fern and I were in agreement,” I said. “We were. She had me sign a statement, promised me the time slips, and we were done. Where did you go?”

  “To view the video footage. Nothing contradicts what either of you have been saying.” She glanced at Fern in the rearview mirror. “As long as it stays that way, there shouldn’t be any lasting effects.”

  “Except on the dead guy,” I said.

  Sophie sighed. “Except on the dead guy,” she agreed. “Mel . . . you’re not going to go all Nancy Drew and try to figure out what happened to him, are you? We have our own security. Lowryland is not the place to play out your high school dreams of cracking the case.”

  “Since I’m under the age of sixty, I’d actually be going all Veronica Mars, and no,” I said. “I’m not a mystery solver. I do not yearn for the feeling of closure as the clues all come together. I mostly just want to get to work before I wind up getting docked a vacation day.”

  “You won’t be docked a vacation day,” said Sophie. “I updated your file with the reasons behind today’s tardiness myself. You’re fine.”

  “Except for the dead guy,” chirped Fern.

  Sophie sighed, seeming to deflate. I could still see my high school cheer captain in her, but for the first time, I could also see the adult woman who’d kicked and spat and clawed her way up the corporate ladder. We were the same age. Her birthday was less than a month before mine. In that moment, she looked like she was ten years my senior, something she usually concealed beneath makeup and careful hair and attitude.

  “Except for the dead guy,” she said, and while it was remarkably close to what she’d said after my last prompt, she hadn’t sounded so damn defeated then. “Be careful, all right? Both of you. You’ve done nothing wrong, and I understand that, but you’ve been noticed. Having the eyes of Lowryland upon you is not always all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “Understood,” I said. She had pulled up in front of the gate that would take us past the boundary of the Park and into the endless warren of tunnels, offices, and locker rooms that would allow us to do our jobs. I flashed her a smile. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Any time,” she said.

  Sophie sat there, hands resting lightly on the wheel, and watched as Fern and I walked down the sidewalk to the gate. I glanced back at her. She raised one hand in a small wave. I returned the wave, and we stepped through the gate, and we were gone.

  Eight

  “Performance isn’t all sequins and bright lights and knowing when it’s done. Sometimes performance is what drags you through a day when nothing else will stick around to finish the job.”

  –Frances Brown

  Lowryland, subject to the judgment of coworkers, because that’s fun

  ARRIVING FOR MY SHIFT three and a half hours late was about as well-received as I’d expected. My cushy duty attending on the princesses was gone, handed off to someone who actually got to work on time, and I was back in retail hell. Whee. Sharp glances and casual glares greeted me when I stepped onto the floor of the Fine and Fair Gift Shop. Having anticipated this, I’d tucked my book of time slips into the pocket of my apron, and responded to the most acidic glares by pulling it out just enough to let my adversaries see the big golden “6” on the cover. Their eyes went wide, and judging by the speed with which the negative looks turned into friendly, open-faced smiles, the rumor mill was making sure everyone knew I was in the possession of a truly excellent Get Out of Snubbing Free card.

  I was folding and stocking shirts when someone sidled up next to me, approach announced by the rustle of their long uniform jacket. “Hi, Mel,” said a sweet voice.

  I closed my eyes, counting silently to five before opening them again. Of course. I might be working in the same area every day this week, but that didn’t mean anyone else was. Even Fern was doing a shift as Princess Aspen in one of the private “dining experience” restaurants, rather than hanging out in the main meet-and-greet.

  “Hello, Robin,” I said, glancing meaningfully at my nametag and its prominently displayed “Melody” as I turned to face her. “What can I do for you?”

  She dimpled at me. “I was just wondering if you might need
some help with the folding. Looks like there’s a lot.”

  I glanced around. There were no guests nearby. The shop was in the middle of one of those odd, unpredictable lulls that came and went on even the busiest days, when the aisles would seem to empty out for no apparent reason, leaving us with the chance to catch our breath and repair all the damage the last wave of guests had done.

  Naturally, that also gave us time to bother each other—or more specifically, it gave Robin the time to bother me. “I’m good, thanks,” I said. “It’s just the normal number of shirts.”

  “You shouldn’t have to take care of all that on your own,” she protested, and made a grab for the shirt I was holding, pouting at me when I moved it out of her reach. “You know, we could be really good friends if you’d only learn to play the game the way the rest of us do. A little give, a little take, a little yes, a little no. You’re not willing to let anyone in, Mel, and we worry about you.”

  “Right.” I put the shirt down and straightened, turning to face her fully. Crossing my arms where guests might see me was frowned upon: I joined my hands behind my back instead, which had the helpful side effect of preventing me from setting her on fire if she continued pissing me off. “And this sudden urge toward camaraderie, it has nothing to do with the book of time slips in my pocket, right?”

  She could grab them, if she wanted to. She could make this physical. If she did, I’d be within my rights to get our shift supervisor involved. I could see by the way she hesitated that Robin knew it, too.

  In the end, she took a half-step back, removing herself from temptation, and offered a toothy smile. “If I was hoping you’d share something you’d been so blatantly flaunting, can you really blame me?”