Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Tricks for Free
    Tricks for Free
    Tricks for Free
    Ebook522 pages8 hours

    Tricks for Free

    By Seanan McGuire

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The seventh book in the funny and fast-paced InCryptid urban fantasy series returns to the mishaps of the Price family, eccentric cryptozoologists who safeguard the world of magical creatures living in secret among humans.

    Includes an all-new Aeslin mice novella and a map of Lowryland!

    Penance, noun:
    1. Punishment for past actions.
    2. An attempt to pay for what can't be bought.
    3. See also "exile."

    Antimony Price is on the run. With the Covenant on her tail and her family still in danger, she needs to get far, far away from anyone who might recognize her--including her own mice. For the first time in a long time, a Price is flying without a safety net. Where do you go when you need to disappear into a crowd without worrying about attracting attention? An amusement park, of course.

    Some people would call Lowryland the amusement park. It's one of the largest in Florida, the keystone of the Lowry entertainment empire...but for Annie, it's a place to hide. She's just trying to keep her head down long enough to come up with a plan that will get her home without getting anyone killed. No small order when she's rooming with gorgons and sylphs, trying to placate frustrated ghosts, and rushing to get to work on time.

    Then the accidents begin. The discovery of a dead man brings Annie to the attention of the secret cabal of magic users running Lowryland from behind the scenes. They want the fire that sleeps in her fingers. They want her on their side. They want to help her--although their help, like everything else, comes with a price.

    No plan. Minimal backup. No way out. Annie's about to get a crash course in the reality behind the pretty facade. If she's lucky, she'll survive the experience.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDAW
    Release dateMar 6, 2018
    ISBN9780698183582
    Tricks for Free
    Author

    Seanan McGuire

    SEANAN McGUIRE is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award–winning Wayward Children series, the October Daye series, the InCryptid series, and other works. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant. Seanan lives in Seattle with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls, horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 became the first person to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot. In 2022 she managed the same feat, again!

    Read more from Seanan Mc Guire

    Related to Tricks for Free

    Titles in the series (12)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Graphic Novels

      Mar 13, 2024

      By Jay Stephens. Illus. by the author. Apr. 2024. 272p. Oni, $34.99 (9781637152911). 741.5. Fictional small-town Elwich is located in Ontario, has a rich folklore tradition, and also happens to be a place where truly horrifying events occur on a regu

      20 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Murakami, Oyeyemi, Wideman, and More

      Apr 6, 2021

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Haruki Murakami, Helen Oyeyemi, John Edgar Wideman, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Murakami, Oyeyemi, Wideman, and More appeared first on Th

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      More Than Just Acknowledgments

      Jun 28, 2024

      More Than Just Acknowledgments
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Graphic Novels

      Nov 6, 2024

      Cemetery Kids Don’t Die. By Zac Thompson. Art by Daniel Irizarri and Brittany Peer. Dec. 2024. 112p. Oni, paper, $17.99 (9781637155202). 741.5. Facing a bleak future and a past filled with trauma, high-school student Birdie and her friends take out t

      18 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Spotlight on Romance

      Sep 11, 2024

      Gentlest of Wild Things. By Sarah Underwood. Oct. 2024. 400p. Harper, $19.99 (9780063234529). Gr. 9–12. Since Leandros, a descendant of Eros, came to Zakynthos, young women have fallen prey to his Desires (potions that make them fall helplessly in lo

      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      100-WORD-STORY COMPETITION Winners

      Aug 16, 2022

      We’ve been delighted by the huge response to our 100-word-story competition. The entries have flooded in thick and fast during the past few months, but while we’ve enjoyed reading every story, only a few can come out on top! You, our readers, voted t

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Teenager, Strangers And A Pair Of Apes

      Oct 26, 2023

      PERHAPS AS A FUNCTION OF MY OWN journey through middle age, I have become increasingly interested recently in late work. This is the writing that comes when a writer has passed what blurb-composers call “the peak of their powers”, but at the same tim

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Swansongs And Southern Discomfort

      Oct 27, 2022

      THE BORDERLAND BETWEEN popular fiction and literary fiction is now fertile territory. Once upon a time it was easy to tell them apart. Popular and genre fiction were in small format paper-backs, literary fiction larger: now all have been promoted to

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In Search Of An Ending

      May 14, 2019

      In Search Of An Ending
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Ecology Of The Family

      Jun 9, 2024

      The Ecology Of The Family
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Almost Heaven

      Aug 28, 2024

      Almost Heaven
      50 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      April’s BOOK CLUB

      Mar 1, 2024

      Diva by Daisy Goodwin (£20, HB, Bloomsbury) Hailed as one of the greatest opera singers of all time, Maria Callas’ life was as dramatic and fascinating as her vocal range. In this fictionalised historical story, Goodwin delves into the Greek soprano’

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books

      Aug 1, 2022

      Books
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      April Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Apr 5, 2021

      April brings new books from Haruki Murakami, Helen Oyeyemi, Elizabeth McCracken, Kaitlyn Greenidge, and a whole lot more. The post April Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The 15 Best Books of 2020

      Dec 24, 2020

      The 15 Best Books of 2020
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Holding Out For A Hero

      Jun 3, 2024

      Holding Out For A Hero
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books

      Nov 27, 2023

      It should come to the surprise of no one aware of Nathalie Olah’s bibliography that her latest Bad Taste: Or the Politics of Ugliness, is as relentlessly class conscious and anti-capitalist as her priors Steal as Much as You Can and Class. Bad Taste

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What We’re Reading This Summer

      Jun 28, 2019

      Atlantic staffers pick 14 books to spend time with this season, including Freshwater, Republic of Spin, Killing and Dying, and more.

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books

      Jan 23, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Tricks for Free

    4/5

    122 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Delightful newest installment in the InCryptid series. Nice to see Antimony creating a posse of friends and trouble. Interesting to learn about how Seanan McGuire would build an amusement park. Yep, excellent.
    • 4/5
      Antimony is on the run from the covenant as well as hiding from her family, so she goes to ground and goes undercover as an employee at LowryLand, a Disney-like theme park with equally soul-destroying working conditions.

      It wouldn’t be an InCryptid novel if she wasn’t surrounded by cryptids and the supernatural. Her dead aunt Mary hangs around to make sure she’s safe, and her roommates are a sylph and a gorgon. She doesn’t have her mice or her boyfriend Sam, but plenty of weird stuff keeps happening around her no matter what she does and how much she tries to hide.

      When Antimony runs afoul of magic users in the park, she jumps at the chance when one of them offers to teach her how to control her magic. Everything seems great until strange, unexplained accidents start happening around the park and Antimony decides to investigate even though it might blow her cover.

      This was yet another highly enjoyable entry in the InCryptid series. I did get a little frustrated late in the book when it felt like the characters were constantly rushing into danger without much of a plan, but it wasn’t enough to kill my momentum. The ending sets up further complications that will surely pay off with dividends in the third Antimony book, That Ain’t Witchcraft.
    • 4/5
      I really liked this book! It was nice to see some more character development for Antimony, as well as some more involvement of the ghost-ier parts of the Incryptid universe. I was so relieved that all Antimony's friends were still alive at the end!
      The novella at the end was also cute.
    • 4/5
      This is not the book to start the series with since it would mostly ruin everything that has come before. Antimony is on the run from the Covenant after they figured out she was spying on them. Knowing they can track her she runs from her family and decides to hide in a large crowd instead. Lowryland is much like other amusement parks in FL, large, crowded and employing lots of people. Annie does get a bit of good luck and scores a job there along with some cryptid roommates including someone from her roller derby days.
      With everything that is going on what the story and plot do revolve around is luck. When you have it and why you have it. The plot does hinge on luck and it is explained in a great way. Overall another great read in this series but by no means the end of the story. Now to wait until the next one comes out.
      Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Netgalley
    • 4/5
      Antimony is on the run from the Covenant of St. George - so she goes undercover in a completely different environment. Where she meets some more cryptids...and some much more dangerous beings. Ghosts play a strong part; so does her sort-of boyfriend Sam. Actually, he plays more of a part than she wants him to. There's some major twists to what we - and she - know about the world and people in it - and about Antimony herself and her abilities. Things will get even more interesting from here on out... The novella at the end is rather neat - the adventures of a couple mice, from their own point of view. Nice to see how they think about things, after having been on the edges of the story so much.
    • 4/5
      I gave it 3.5 stars

      TRICKS FOR TRADE was a bit slow in the beginning. Antimony finds herself isolated after the events of MAGIC FOR NOTHING force her into hiding. On her own she has to find a way to make money so she can eat and sleep somewhere other than the side of the road. Lowryland might not be the circus, but a chance encounter with someone from her past gets her a job there. Unfortunately she might not be as safe there as she expected.

      A lot happens in TRICKS FOR TRADE. It's all connected, but a lot of crap falls on Annie's shoulders. Thankfully she doesn't find herself as alone as she expected. I really enjoyed the introduction of the new characters that are now a part of Annie's 'crew'.

      One thing that doesn't happen is anything having to do with the Covenant of St. George storyline. Having it so heavy in the last book and not having anything happen with it in TRICKS FOR FREE was a little odd. I also realllllly missed the mice.

      I still find her relationship with Sam a little weird. I'm just not in love with 'them' and it makes it hard to really get into those parts of the story.

      I can't say that Antimony is my favorite Price sibling, but I still enjoy reading about her adventures. Having said that, I wouldn't be disappointed if there wasn't a lot more books with her as the main character unless something drastic happens. I guess we will see what comes next.

      * This book was provided free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
    • 5/5
      This is the seventh book in the InCryptid series a was a wonderful continuation of the InCryptid series. This book continues to follow Antimony Price and her adventures.

      While Antimony isn't my favorite character follow in this series, I did think this was the best book about her yet and I really, really enjoyed it. We finally get to see more of Antimony’s magic and watch as she struggles to learn to control it.

      I loved the new characters introduced; Annie’s roommates are a slyph and a gorgon and both were highly entertaining. I loved the mystery, the plot, and the deep dive into amusement park life. I also really enjoyed all the luck magic that comes into play.

      This book ties in with Sparrow Hill Road some; Rose is in the story a bit and there is a lot of discussion about the Crossroads and those that make deals at them. I assume some of this will tie into the second book of The Ghost Roads series, The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, which is supposed to release in July 2018. I loved learning more about the Crossroads as well.

      McGuire always does an excellent job of balancing world-building, engaging characters, action, and mystery. She is amazingly talented and writes stories that are smart, entertaining, and highly creative. She continues to be one of my favorite authors.

      Overall this was an amazing continuation of the InCryptid series. I still love the October Daye series more than this one, but the InCryptids series is nearly as good. I will definitely be picking up the next Ghost Roads books and continue to look forward to new books in both the October Daye and the InCryptid series.
    • 4/5
      Antimony Price is hiding from the Covenant of St. George in a theme park in Florida (but not the one you're thinking of), where the sheer mass of humanity can keep her safe. She can't go home without endangering her family, but she does have friends with her. And she may have even found someone to help her control her magic. But then the accidents begin.

      Recommended.

    Book preview

    Tricks for Free - Seanan McGuire

    Payment, noun:

    1. The act of paying for something; reward or punishment.

    Penance, noun:

    1. Punishment for past actions.

    2. An attempt to pay for what can’t be bought.

    3. See also exile.

    Prologue

    Woe betide the damned soul who tries to get between me and my children. I’m only the nice one in this family because I don’t care enough to hurt you.

    –Evelyn Baker

    The locker room of Lewis and Clark High School, Portland, Oregon

    Six years ago

    CHEERLEADERS FILLED THE ROOM. Most were half-clad; all were getting dressed with the ruthless speed and lack of artifice universal to teenage girls with no one they needed to put on a show for. The show would come later, when the Trailblazers football team took the field with their loyal spirit squad behind them, waving their pom-poms and cheering for victory.

    A new girl rushed into the room, forcing the others to make room or get knocked over. Her game bag was slung over her shoulder and her auburn hair was pulled into a sloppy ponytail, tied off with a wilted spirit ribbon in Trailblazers blue and gold. A freshman girl straightened from her crouch too slowly; the newcomer placed a hand between her shoulders and used her as an impromptu vault, landing on the other side of her without breaking stride.

    A diminutive peroxide blonde with the figure of a Tolkien elf and the presence of a pop star dropped her mascara wand and turned away from the mirror, planting her hands on her hips in a classic superhero pose. Melody West! she snapped, voice a whip cracking through the room. "You are late!"

    The new arrival stumbled to a halt, momentum lost in the face of her captain’s disapproval. She turned, spirit bow somehow looking even more wilted. I’m sorry, Sophie, she said. My family—

    Sorry doesn’t stack our pyramid when you don’t show up, Mel, said Sophie. Then she stopped, eyes going wide. Wait, are you—are you bleeding?

    Melody West, better known in some circles as Antimony Price, youngest daughter of the Price family and cryptozoologist in training, barely managed to conceal her wince. She’d been hoping to get to her locker and her emergency first aid kit before anyone noticed that her lip was split and her knees were skinned severely enough to impress a six-year-old.

    You should see the other guy? she said weakly.

    Sophie lowered her arms and moved toward her teammate, irritation forgotten. The other cheerleaders clustered around them as Sophie seized Antimony’s hands. Antimony swallowed another wince. Sophie clearly hadn’t noticed that her palms were almost as raw as her knees.

    Who did this to you? Sophie asked, voice low. A murmur of angry curiosity rose from the rest of the squad, formless and violent. Melody was one of their own. Melody was part of the team. If they needed to no-show on the game to kick somebody’s ass on her behalf, well, that was a price they were willing to pay to protect a fellow Trailblazer.

    Antimony dropped her eyes, looking to the side and away. It was a practiced motion, and one she’d been using when people asked about her frequent injuries since the start of high school. It wasn’t fair. Her older sister, Verity, got the skill with makeup to conceal her bruises and scrapes without looking like she was enrolling in clown school. And Alex, her older brother, was a boy: people generally shrugged off anything less severe than a broken bone as long as he looked stoic about it.

    (She was pretty sure that wasn’t fair either: Alex had as much right to concern and compassion as she did, and being a boy didn’t mean his injuries hurt any less. But he didn’t complain because a bruise ignored was a bruise not reported to Social Services. Under the circumstances, she would have swapped with him in a hot second.)

    Mel, you’ve got to talk to someone. If this is your loser boyfriend . . .

    There was no loser boyfriend. There had never been a loser boyfriend. Antimony had fabricated him from whole cloth, a rough, slightly disreputable character who went to a different high school and had been portrayed—on the few occasions when he needed to be seen by her classmates, from a safe distance—by her nerdy cousin Artie in what he insisted on calling jock cosplay, driving her Uncle Ted’s 1969 Camaro and sneering. Thus far, she’d managed to keep any member of the squad from meeting him face-to-face, which was for the best, since Artie’s pheromones tended to scramble the hormones of girls he wasn’t actually related to.

    I’m fine, she said, and that was the truth, at least; all her wounds were the kind that could be handled with Band-Aids and antiseptic and extra foundation. The changeling-infested bear she’d helped her family kill couldn’t say the same. It was dead and downed and probably on fire by now, since her mother had very firm ideas about disposing of hazardous material.

    If she was being really honest, she was feeling a little smug. How many people could fight a murderous, technically undead bear and make it to campus in time for the big game? Not many, that was how many. She was crushing it.

    Sophie sighed. Okay, we don’t have time to argue about this right now, but will you promise me you’ll at least think about talking to someone? I’m scared for you.

    I promise, lied Antimony, without a twinge of guilt. She’d been lying to her friends and teammates since kindergarten. What was one more?

    Thank you, said Sophie, and pulled her into a quick hug before turning to the rest of the squad and barking, Anyone who’s ready to hit the field, get your butt over here and get Mel presentable! What looks bad on one of us looks bad on all of us!

    Like a glittering cloud, the cheerleaders descended.

    If there had ever been a triage team as efficient as cheerleaders helping one of their own get ready, Antimony couldn’t think of it. In a matter of seconds, she was sitting on a bench, stripped from the waist down. One cheerleader bandaged her knees; another covered the gauze in Trailblazer blue athletic tape, making it look more aesthetic than accident. Two more cheerleaders dealt with the damage on her face, expertly layering paint and powder.

    "Arms up," commanded Sophie. Antimony put her arms up. The makeup team paused long enough for Antimony’s sweater and bra to be removed. Antimony spared a momentary thanks for the fact that she’d been through this process before, and had no difficult-to-explain weapons concealed on her person.

    "Arms out."

    Antimony stuck her arms out. Sophie produced Antimony’s sports bra and uniform top from the gym bag, pulling them onto the larger cheerleader’s body.

    Someone hit Antimony in the face with a fistful of glitter. She struggled not to cough. It might have thrown off the person who was brushing her hair. Then someone else was taping her hands, and her skirt was being fastened around her waist, and she was done: she was dressed.

    Good work! shouted Sophie, clapping her hands and glancing at the clock above the door. With two minutes to spare! Go Trailblazers!

    "Go Trailblazers!" shouted the rest of them, even Antimony, who wasn’t really Antimony anymore: she was Melody West, high school cheerleader, without a care more complex than finally landing that perfect tumbling pass and seeing the world spread out before her in perfect, crystalline simplicity.

    They moved as one, out of the locker room and across the grass to the glowing rectangle of the football field. The sun was long down, and floodlights lit the bleachers and the green, making it look like a slice of paradise, like something too perfect to be real. There was a cut between the sections of the stands, and the squad ran through it just as the announcer boomed, Your Trailblazer cheer squad!

    Everyone in the bleachers cheered and shouted and waved their pennants and foam fingers in the air. It wasn’t because they loved cheerleaders so much, Antimony knew. It was because the football teams would be out next, and then the game could finally start. That didn’t slow any of them down. The squad broke into a new formation, the fliers going into an elaborate tumbling pass, the bases hitting their poses and waving their pom-poms high. Antimony hit her mark and froze.

    It wasn’t safe for any of them to go to the same school. She and her siblings had all been educated separately, using their education as an opportunity to test out their false identities and learn to blend. She’d never set foot on any of Verity’s high school campuses—she’d had three, overachiever that she was—and had only seen Alex’s school once, after he’d graduated, when an away game had taken her to their football field. Family didn’t come to school. That was the rule. That was how they kept things distinct, and prevented future disaster.

    And there, sitting in the front row, dressed in school colors and clutching school pennants and looking for all the world like students who’d decided to come and see what all the fuss was about, were her dead aunts, Mary and Rose. Rose was wearing a letter jacket, which explained the hot dog in her free hand. As a hitchhiking ghost, she could become temporarily alive again if she borrowed someone else’s clothes, and she was always, always hungry. Mary just looked like, well, Mary, white hair blowing in the breeze, one fist thrust into the air.

    Finally, her family had come to see her cheer.

    Grinning ear to ear, Antimony shook her pom-poms, and chanted, Do your best to blaze that trail! You know our team never fails!

    The other team’s cheerleaders answered, and the crowds roared, and the football players took the field, and everything was perfect. Everything was finally, absolutely, perfect. Antimony never wanted the night to end.

    But of course, it did.

    One

    Change is good. Change keeps us growing, and growing keeps us living. But don’t ever change so much that you forget who you used to be.

    –Frances Brown

    The Cast Member Recruitment Office of Lowry Entertainment, Inc., Lakeland, Florida

    Eight months ago

    I SAT VERY STRAIGHT IN my uncomfortable plastic chair, trying to look like I wasn’t freaking out. Judging by the way the other applicants kept glancing at me, I wasn’t doing a very good job.

    Let’s see any of them stay this calm after spending four nights sleeping in the snake-filled bushes next to the Florida highway, waiting to be eaten by the next available alligator, wondering if that might be an improvement over waking up in the morning and resuming their walk. I hadn’t eaten in two days. The only reason I didn’t smell like a dumpster fire was the truck stop half a mile outside of town, which had attached showers available for rent. My last five bucks had gone for hot water and industrial soap, and the prayer of getting this job.

    There were other jobs. Some of them might be easier to get, especially given my current circumstances, and if I had to resort to them, I would. There’s no shame in flipping burgers or cutting lawns. But I wanted the anonymity of the crowd, the knowledge that my itchy polyester uniform made me part of a faceless mob. If the Covenant was looking for me, they’d be checking the greasy spoons and car washes. Those are the places people on the run are supposed to go to make a quick buck. This was a whole different league, and I was counting on that to protect me. If I could get through the door.

    I’d burned most of my fake IDs when I ran away from the carnival. My cousin Artie tracks them for us, making sure the associated credit cards and address information will always ping as valid on government systems. The trouble there was that my cousin Artie tracks them for us. If I used any of those identities, he’d be able to find me, and that would completely undercut the point of running away.

    But I still had one to fall back on.

    Artie didn’t create Melody West, because he’d been too young when I first needed her. She’d been a gift to my parents from Uncle Al, a jink living in Las Vegas who got adopted into the family through the usual complex series of unreasonable events. We don’t have much blood family left in the world, but we make up for it by acquiring honorary family everywhere we go.

    As far as most people are concerned, Melody West disappeared after she graduated from high school, one more boring mystery for a world that’s always been absolutely full of them. I’ve never liked to let anything useful go to waste. I’d been expanding upon and tinkering with her identity ever since, keeping her on the grid just enough to qualify as a real person. She’d never held a steady job, never anything lucrative enough to attract the attention of the IRS, but she’d never applied for benefits either. She moved around a lot. She was unremarkable, unnoticeable, and she was mine. No one else knew her ID was still active.

    Antimony Price couldn’t get a job at Lowryland, because Antimony Price wasn’t here. Melody West, though, just might stand a chance.

    Melody? The woman who called my name didn’t look up from her clipboard.

    I rose. Here.

    She finally glanced up. Her nostrils flared in barely-smothered dismay at the sight of me. There’s only so much a truck stop bathroom can do for a body.

    I’ll give her this much: she covered her reaction quickly. This way, she said, stepping back into the hall. People had been vanishing through that door all morning long. None of them had come back. There was another door that led to the outside, to keep those of us still waiting from either getting dispirited when we saw happy applicants, or cocky when we saw disappointed ones. Psychologically speaking, it was probably a good design.

    In practice, it made me feel like everyone who left was being fed into a giant meat grinder somewhere behind the scenes. And now it was my turn. I forced myself to keep smiling and followed the nameless woman out of the room, toward what I hoped would be my future.

    Children and parents all over the world speak the name of Michael Lowry with only slightly less reverence than the name Walt Disney. They were rivals once, after all, and while Disney proved to have the edge when it came to modern family entertainment, Lowry held his market share with an iron hand, producing innovative pictures and inexpensive alternatives for the family that couldn’t quite afford the golden spires of Disney’s enchanted kingdoms. Not managing to match Disney’s towering successes didn’t take him out of the game.

    Like Disney, Lowry dreamed of amusement parks, immersive environments for the whole family to enjoy. Like Disney, Lowry saw California and Florida as the best locations to realize his dreams, since they were the states with the mildest winters and hence the fewest annual closure dates. They weren’t the only ones to flee to America’s vacation destinations, but they were the first to break ground on their great entertainments, and Florida’s Lowryland opened only two years after Disney World.

    Not that anyone would have known Disney World even existed from walking down the hall of the Lowryland recruitment office. Framed black-and-white photos of Lowryland were placed every few feet, each tastefully accentuated with a plaque or framed award certificate or article extolling the superior virtues of Lowry Entertainment, Inc. over all other children’s entertainment companies. I’d been expecting team spirit from the Lowry folks—no point in being on a team if you can’t find something to cheer about—but this was approaching pep rally levels.

    My escort led us to a cubicle maze, where she gestured for me to take a seat on the petitioner’s side of an L-shaped desk. She wrinkled her nose, ever so slightly, when my butt hit the chair. I was clearly even dirtier looking than I’d thought. My heart sank.

    I could try Lowry again, of course. The nice thing about having a fake ID is that you can always get another one. But fake IDs cost money, and without contacting my family, I’d have to find a way to get that money on my own. Robbing convenience stores might play a big part in my future if I wanted to be able to buy clean clothes, a clean name, and a second shot at all the jobs I was about to not get.

    All right, Miss . . . West, what brings you to the Lowry family? Why should we consider you for the position?

    I’m a hard worker, I’m motivated to meet and exceed any employment requirements, and I have experience working with traveling carnivals, which means I’ve worked with crowds, children, people experiencing ride-related vertigo, and entertainers. All of that was true. That’s the key to a good lie: build it on a foundation of as much truth as possible, because the truth will shore it up even when the falsehoods begin falling away.

    I’m getting awfully tired of lying about who I am. There’s always been a veil of pretense between me and the rest of the world, thanks to my family and what we do, but there’s a big difference between basic subterfuge and this Bruce Banner on the run from the government goons bullshit that has consumed my life.

    The woman flashed me a frozen smile. My heart sank. That wasn’t the sort of smile that came before you got the job. It might be the kind of smile that came before Security is going to escort you off the premises. All in all, not a good sign. My fingertips grew hot as my anxiety about failing to get the job translated into adrenaline and the adrenaline translated, as it so often does, into my body trying to involuntarily set things on fire.

    Being an untrained magic-user in the process of manifesting her powers is fun, and by fun I mean only slightly better than being covered in wasps, like, all the goddamn time. Better yet, there’s no one around to train me. The last magic-user in our family was my grandfather, Thomas Price, and he’s been missing since long before I was born. My Aunt Mary could get me the lessons I need, but she’s a crossroads ghost, and well . . .

    Some prices are still too steep for me to pay, even if it means occasionally charring my clothes.

    I stuck my fingers under my knees, smothering them as best I could, and met the woman’s frozen smile with a weak, wavering smile of my own. Please don’t say what you’re about to say, I thought. Please don’t.

    She did. Lowryland is not a traveling carnival, Miss West, and while we appreciate your enthusiasm, your lack of either references or a fixed address makes you—

    "Melody? Excitement tinged my assumed name, causing it to climb higher with every letter, until it peaked in something just shy of a squeak. Melody West?"

    The woman with the clipboard blanched. I turned.

    There, standing in the mouth of the cubicle, was my high school cheer captain, Sophie Vargas. Oh, she was older now—who wasn’t?—and had traded her cheerleading uniform for a smart pantsuit in a shade of cream that set off her naturally tan skin gorgeously. It looked like it cost about as much as my cousin Elsie’s car, and that wasn’t even going into the accessories, which were all opal, and obviously all real. Her makeup was tasteful, her heels were both leather and low, and I could easily have walked past her on the street without a second glance, if not for one little detail:

    She had a spirit bow—in the Lowry Entertainment logo colors, red and silver—clipped above her left ear. It was a playful, almost juvenile affectation, and it made the rest of her make sense. Sophie was always an overachiever. Now she was just overachieving on a corporate level.

    I didn’t have to work to make my eyes widen or my jaw drop. The sight of her did that all on its own. Sophie?

    "Oh, my God, I heard your voice down the hall, and I thought ‘naw, that can’t be Mels,’ but here you are— Sophie paused, frowning. Here you are. Clarice, what are you doing here? If this is an intake interview, it should be happening in one of the conference rooms."

    Miss West’s credentials are somewhat . . . lacking, said the clipboard woman. She was less frightening now that she had a name and was grimacing like she’d bitten into something sour. She does not have a fixed address, and while she’s listed several relevant skills, she has no verifiable past employment.

    I see, said Sophie. There was a sudden, venomous sweetness in her tone. I remembered that voice aimed at cheer newbies on the field behind our high school, usually right after they complained about something trivial. Did you not receive this quarter’s memo on giving back to the community by working with people who lack work history but possess applicable skills?

    That was meant to help us hire more seasonal college workers, not homeless people, said Clarice.

    Sophie’s face froze. I see. Thank you for your candor; I’ll be speaking with your supervisor. Melody, with me, please.

    It had never been a good idea to argue with Sophie when she used that tone. I couldn’t imagine that had changed. I jumped to my feet, grabbing my backpack from where I’d stuffed it under the chair, and started toward the cubicle exit. At the last moment I paused, offered Clarice a wan smile, and said, Thank you for meeting with me.

    Sophie took my arm and whisked me down the hall before Clarice could reply. That might have been for the best. I couldn’t imagine whatever Clarice might have to say would be terribly complimentary.

    The cubicle maze extended to the far wall, where Sophie took a sharp left, pulling me into a narrow hallway with walls only a few shades darker than her suit. I made a sound of impressed amazement as I realized her outfit was not only designed to coordinate with her accessories and her coloration, but with the building itself. She was dressed to look like the whole place had been painted solely to flatter her. It was either genius or proof that she’d spent too much time as a cheerleader. Or possibly both. Both was always an option.

    We reached an open door with her name on a brass nameplate next to it. SOPHIE VARGAS-JACKSON. I blinked.

    You got married?

    I would have invited you, but no one knew where you were. Sophie gave me a measuring sidelong look. It was the first time she’d visibly assessed me since stepping into Clarice’s cubicle. It definitely wasn’t the first time she’d done it. Sophie was good like that. People never knew she was sizing them up until it was done. You know, most of the old squad has stayed in touch. You’re the only one who dropped off the face of the planet.

    Yeah, well. I looked away before she could see more than regret in my eyes. Things got complicated.

    Things always do.

    Sophie’s office was sleek, sophisticated, with leather chairs and glass-topped furnishings, all accented with little pops of Lowry red. (Literally Lowry red. That’s the name of the color. Isn’t trademark law fun?) She stepped around the desk and sat in her high-backed executive chair, gesturing for me to have a seat. I sat.

    The visitor’s chair here was sure a lot nicer than the one in Clarice’s cubicle. It was probably going to need to be steam-cleaned after encountering me.

    Did you marry him? asked Sophie, without preamble.

    I blinked at her. Uh . . .

    Because I’ve been the hiring manager here for two years—don’t laugh, I’m young, but I went to business school, and the company knows potential when it comes along. I’ve seen a lot of people come through those doors and run into the gatekeepers like Clarice. She’s supposed to screen out the ones who aren’t safe to be around children, the ones who aren’t competent. Clearly, it’s time to send her back to sensitivity training. Sophie rolled her eyes. Some people can’t get it through their damned thick skulls that if you’re willing to see the potential in everyone, you’re in a position to benefit from everyone. You’ll never find a harder, more dedicated, more loyal worker than someone who’s already been passed over by somebody else.

    You’re running a corporation like a cheer squad? Sophie had become squad captain when we were sophomores in high school, winning by a clear majority vote on a platform of inclusiveness and not being a jerk without good reason. She didn’t quite have an everybody into the pool policy, but under her guidance, our squad had become a lot more diverse and a lot more successful than it had been under the previous regime’s we like skinny blondes who don’t make good bases but sure can shake their asses guidelines.

    Sophie smiled thinly. I’m not running the corporation yet. Give me ten years, and maybe I will be. Did you marry him? Because I’ll be honest. I assumed you’d said ‘no’ when he asked, and that he’d murdered you and stuffed your body into a drainage ditch somewhere. It’s not like your absentee parents would ever have noticed.

    Just like that, everything clicked.

    Melody West did not come from a warm and loving home, because if she had, I wouldn’t have spent all my time making excuses for the absence of her—of my—parents. My home was warm. My home was loving. It was just that my parents couldn’t come to my school functions any more than they’d come to Verity’s or Alex’s. We were as close to on our own as the system allowed. But that meant people looked at my naturally somewhat dour demeanor and frequent bruises and assumed I was neglected at best, abused at worst. I didn’t work very hard to convince them otherwise. If they thought they had all the answers, they didn’t look any deeper.

    Unfortunately, it also meant that when my squad decided I was dating a boy who beat me, they didn’t trust my parents to step in and stop it before I got seriously hurt. My high school career had been peppered with well-meaning interventions aimed at ending a relationship that didn’t exist. When Melody West vanished after graduation . . .

    It was easy to understand why they’d drawn the conclusions they had, and I felt terrible for doing that to them.

    Not so terrible that I wouldn’t take advantage now that I needed it. I cast my eyes down at my hands, clasping them together in my lap, and mumbled, I didn’t get murdered.

    Where is he now?

    I shrugged.

    Sophie sighed, relieved. Mel, did you finally leave him?

    I glanced up, reading her expression quickly before I said, I was in a bad spot. I couldn’t stay. So I just . . . I ran with what I had on me. The money ran out a couple of days ago. I know I look like hell, but I can work, you know what kind of work ethic I have, and I thought . . . I thought I might feel better if I went to work someplace that’s about making people happy. I thought it might make me happy, too.

    All of it was true, except for the last part. Working at Lowryland wasn’t going to make me happy. It was going to make me harder to find. It was going to buy me the time to figure out what to do next. I needed to disappear before the Covenant used me to find my family.

    Sophie nodded. I can’t do you any special favors just because we have a history.

    I know. I didn’t expect to find you here.

    But I can do you the favor Michael Lowry wanted us to do for the entire world: I can give you a chance. Sophie leaned across the desk. Do you really want a job?

    I do.

    Then welcome to Lowryland, she said, and held out her hand. And welcome back to your life.

    I took her hand, and shook it, and smiled. Things were finally going my way.

    Two

    If you live a lie too long, it turns into the truth. Be careful which ones you decide deserve that kind of power.

    –Enid Healy

    A shitty company apartment five miles outside of Lakeland, Florida

    Now

    MY ALARM WENT OFF before sunrise, shrieking shrill and piercing in the gloom of my bedroom. Only gloom, not darkness: both my roommates were already up, and while they were generously keeping their voices down until I crawled out of bed, neither of them could see in the dark. The hallway light crept around the edges of my door, painting everything in shades of charcoal.

    I rolled onto my side and hit the alarm clock with all the pent-up aggression I’d collected over the past few days. It stopped shrieking. It did not, alas, break. Like all Lowryland Cast Member Housing (capital letters mandatory, unless you wanted an Official Lowryland Branding Lecture), our apartment came equipped with ancient, industrial-strength alarm clocks designed to wake the dead, if necessary. If you could break one, you’d be fined twenty dollars and issued a replacement that had been made less than ten years ago, which meant it could take an iPod hookup and wake you with something less violent than the screeching of a nuclear air raid siren.

    (As to why we didn’t just replace them: spot inspections were a thing that happened because, apparently, we couldn’t be trusted not to destroy company property. If one of the managers swung by and found us with an unauthorized alarm clock, we could be fined a lot more than twenty dollars. We’d also get a black mark on our records—all three of our records, even if only one of us had gone to Target for modern technology. Much as we hated the alarms, we hated black marks on our record even more.)

    My name is Antimony Price, even if no one calls me that anymore, and sometime in the last eight months, this became my life. I worry about alarm clocks now. I worry about black marks on my record.

    I worry about getting out of bed on time.

    Groaning, I sat up and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, trying to make them want to open. They did not. Opening was, in fact, low on their list of things to do today, right above staying open and looking at the world. I respected their right to protest, but had to declare a fiat, since they didn’t really have a choice. I needed to work if I wanted to eat, and I needed to eat if I wanted to stay alive. For all that things had turned to shit since leaving the carnival, I wasn’t ready to lay down and die. Not yet. Not until I knew whether I’d managed to save my family by running when I did.

    Most people have seen the footage, either live or on YouTube: a blonde girl in high heels and a sequined dress fighting a giant monster snake on national television, right before declaring war on a shadow organization, shooting the camera, and disappearing. (Oh, heads almost certainly rolled over that. Someone should have killed the feed before it hit the air. The network did kill the feed for all time zones after the first one. But we live in the age of instant gratification, uploads and downloads and viral videos, and once the cat—once the giant dimension-hopping snake—was out of the bag, there was no putting it back. The world was watching.)

    That wasn’t me. That was my big sister, Verity, she of the awesome dance moves and totally absent common sense. We’re in hiding from a global organization of monster hunters who thinks we’re public enemy number one, she thought. I’ll just go fight a snake cult on national television.

    To be fair to her—not that I’m usually inclined to be fair to her—she probably didn’t say it exactly like that. And she wasn’t the one who summoned the giant dimension-hopping snake during a live broadcast. My family sometimes charges into danger without thinking about it, but we’re pretty good about not endangering civilians, or blowing our cover. Given a choice between blowing her cover and letting a lot of civilians die, Verity had taken the only real option she had available. It was the one I would have taken, too, if I’d been in her place.

    But once her face was broadcast around the world, people saw her. People knew her. The Covenant was suddenly aware that our family was still alive, kicking, and getting in the way of their undoubtedly nefarious plans for the world. That was a problem. The Covenant of St. George didn’t become the biggest, baddest monster hunting organization the human race has ever known by standing back and letting their enemies do whatever they wanted to. They’re killers. They were going to come for us.

    We needed to know how much they knew. And that’s where I briefly digress from my digression about the Covenant of St. George to talk about monster hunter breeding programs.

    See, the Covenant has been a closed wall against the rest of the world for centuries. They take new recruits when they can get them, but the monster hunters of old did way too good a job: they wiped out most of the dragons and ogres and giants and other really big, obvious, impossible to explain away monsters that evolution had to offer. They also believed that a lot of those creatures drew their power from being believed in, so they spent centuries trying to convince everyone that sea serpents were logs and crossroads ghosts were just a trick of the light. The end result? A world where no one believes in monsters and so nobody is really panting to sign up with a paramilitary monster hunting organization.

    But they still need members, and like all good paramilitary organizations, they’ve been recruiting from the easiest available population: their own children. This is where I’d say something nasty about their parenting skills, except for the part where my parents raised me the same way. I always knew I was going to go into the family business, because I always knew we lived in a dangerous, complicated world—one that needed me. Maybe that’s the Covenant in us coming to the surface.

    Up until five generations ago, we were members in good standing, as bloodthirsty and obedient as the rest. We got better. The rest of the Covenant didn’t.

    In order to avoid inbreeding and bad things, the Covenant started a genealogical branch right around the time they started having recruitment issues. Arranged marriages and predictable family traits became the name of the game. My family, my modern, American, non-Covenant family, looks a lot like a Covenant family called the Carews: short and blond and spunky and dangerous. Apparently, Carew genes are dominant, although Alex looks more like a Healy, taller and browner-haired and with slightly worse eyesight.

    Me, though? I actually look like a Price. And since my grandfather, Thomas Price, was the last Covenant member of his line, no one in the modern Covenant really knows what that means anymore. Out of all of us, I was the only one who could be sent to find out what the Covenant knew, and what they were planning to do with that knowledge. I barely had time to tell my roller derby league I was going on sabbatical before my family had me on a plane to London, where I’d hooked up with the local Covenant recruitment center and been whisked away to a big manor house in the middle of nowhere to be tested, evaluated, and eventually dropped into a shallow grave if they decided I wasn’t what they were looking for.

    I have always done excellently on tests. I passed them all, despite the stress of pretending to be a zealot while concealing my honor guard of talking mice, and the Covenant decided I was a great recruit deserving of a field trial. Which is how I wound up with the Spenser and Smith Family Carnival, having been sent undercover by the people I’d been sent undercover to spy on, and if that sentence feels like a headache waiting to happen, just imagine how I felt when all this was actually going on.

    The Covenant wanted me to assess the Spenser and Smith Family Carnival for a purge. There had been some disappearances; there had been some questions raised. If there was something killing people, the Covenant was ready to step in and make it stop . . . and the fact that they’d be doing it on North American soil, in territory my family had been struggling to protect for decades, was almost icing on the cake. They were testing my loyalty. They were testing my skills.

    They were backing the wrong horse. In a move that was predictable to anyone who’d ever met me without my masks on, I betrayed them, saved the people of the carnival if not the carnival itself—we sort of burned that down—and then I got my mice to safety and ran, because they knew me. They had my blood, sweat, and skin, and if they were willing to bring their magic-users to the party, they could track me down. I wasn’t going to be the reason they found my family.

    The crowds at Lowryland are big enough to confuse that sort of tracking spell. See, everyone in the world is technically related, if you go far enough back along the family tree, and when you put a few thousand distant cousins in one place, the false positives are enough to overwhelm even the most focused magic. As long as I stayed where the people were, I would be safe, and as long as I had no contact with my family, I would be drawing no lines for the Covenant to follow.

    All it cost was my home, and my name, and everyone I cared about. No big deal, right?

    Right.

    Rubbing the back of my neck with one hand, like I could massage away all the aches and agonies of the day before they even happened, I left my room for the dubious comforts of the rest of my shared apartment. Lowryland promised affordable housing to all their thousands of employees, in part, I assumed, so they could figure out how much of our paychecks we were socking away in preparation for heading someplace better. They didn’t promise particularly comfortable housing, or that we wouldn’t have to share it.

    Enter my roommates. Banes of my existence, the only reason I was still sane, and best of all, the reason the hall outside my room smelled strongly of bacon and coffee.

    Coffee, I moaned, shambling toward the kitchen. The door to the room shared by Megan and Fern was shut, which probably meant they had suffered another laundry tornado and didn’t want to risk guests seeing inside. Not that we ever had any. Inviting guests over would have meant allowing other people to enter our home, and we had reasons to avoid that.

    Fern looked up when I appeared in the doorway. She was already beaming. Morning, Annie, she chirped. I made you extra bacon because I know you’ve got an extra shift tonight.

    I love you, don’t call me ‘Annie,’ I said, and made a beeline for the coffee machine.

    Reason number one, and the main source of any mental stability I currently have: Fern. AKA, the only person at Lowryland who could blow my cover at any moment if she chose to, but who has blessedly chosen not to. AKA, one of the girls I used to skate with on the Slasher Chicks roller derby team back in Portland. AKA, one of the few close friends I’ve ever had who wasn’t related to me, and thank God for that.

    Fern is a sylph, a humanoid cryptid capable of controlling her personal density. She’s always short, skinny, and colored like a porcelain Bo Peep figure, all milky skin, golden hair, and vast blue eyes. It’s just that sometimes she’s light enough for a stiff breeze to carry away—literally—and other times, she’s denser than tungsten. Watching her deal with people trying to shove her out of the way on the train to work is one of my life’s small joys. As to why she’s in Florida instead of Portland, where I left her, I have yet to get a straight answer. And, honestly, I don’t much care. I know she’s not reporting on me to the family. That’s all I need to know.

    (As for how I know . . . that’s another story, and involves my dead Aunt Mary, who checks in on me weekly. I have a weird family.)

    Without Fern, I wouldn’t have survived my first week with the company. Without Fern, I definitely wouldn’t be in one of the nicer apartments—and yes, our tiny, cabbage-scented place was considered one of the nicer options available. Fern had spotted me across the quad during housing registration for new hires, and had come bounding over to grab me by the elbow and announce me as her long-prophesized second roommate, awaited and adored. I’d been too surprised to fight, and she’d dragged me home with her, where I was given my own room and added to the lease.

    As for why I got my own room when I was the

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1