Tricks for Free

by Seanan McGuire

  I looked back to Sam. He was recognizably the same person, only . . . not . . . at the same time. His hair had shifted from black to a dark brown ticked with blond undertones, while also spreading down his cheeks in what would have been sideburns, if they hadn’t been so clearly made of fur. His features were broader, more simian in some ways, and entirely alien in others, and his arms were longer, fingers resting slightly below his knees rather than at mid-thigh. The biggest changes were his feet, which now looked more like a second pair of hands, and his tail, which was long and curved behind him in what I had come to recognize as a relaxed position. All of him looked more relaxed this way. Maintaining his human-esque form was a matter of effort and concentration, and he was only truly comfortable when he could stop and be himself.

  “You’re a fūri,” said Fern, in a tone that couldn’t make up its mind between wonder and irritation. It would have been impressive, if she hadn’t been directing it at Sam. “Why didn’t you say you were a fūri? I thought you were extinct!”

  “I get that a lot.” Sam rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “I didn’t say it because it’s not the sort of thing I go around saying to the lady at the Starbucks, you know? But I really am faster than you. I’m faster than just about anyone.”

  “Are you faster than I can take off my glasses?”

  The voice was Megan’s. All of us turned. She was at the mouth of the hall, her wig in her hand, the snakes covering her head rising into silent strike positions, their eyes fixed on Sam. Her other hand rested on the arm of her glasses, ready to whip them off.

  I sighed. I couldn’t help myself. “Please,” I said. “Please, can we all just accept that we’re friends here, or at least not enemies, and stop threatening each other? This is starting to feel like a bad comedy routine.”

  “Whoa,” said Sam. “Gorgon.”

  “Pliny’s gorgon,” said Megan. I could have used her voice to chill my drink. “I live here. Who are you?”

  “Megan, this is my boyfriend, Sam Taylor,” I said. “He’s a fūri, which is a kind of yōkai. Sam, this is Megan, my other roommate. She’s a resident at the local hospital. Megan, please don’t paralyze Sam. Sam, please don’t get paralyzed.”

  “What, I don’t even get to fight back in this scenario?”

  “She can look at you faster than you can throw something at her.” That’s what makes gorgons, of all types, so dangerous. I rubbed my face again. “Can we talk about all this after we’ve had some sleep? My head is spinning.”

  “Is he staying the night?” asked Megan.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.” I looked at Sam. “Are you?”

  “Only if you want me to,” he said, and smiled uncertainly.

  “He’s staying.” I turned back to my roommates. “Please. Sleep, relax, and know that I absolutely vouch for him. I trust him with my life.”

  “That’s good, because you’re trusting him with ours,” said Megan.

  She turned and walked back down the hall to her room. Fern followed, pausing to pat my arm and lean toward me.

  “He’s cute,” she whispered, sotto voce, and was gone, leaving me and Sam alone.

  I looked at him. He looked at me.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” he answered. His tail, which sometimes seemed to have a mind of its own, wrapped itself around his left leg, pulling tight in clear anxiety. He looked down at it and scowled. “Sometimes I wonder why I don’t keep this thing put away.”

  “Because it would be uncomfortable for no good reason,” I said, and took a step toward him. The urge to touch him again, to reassure myself that he was really here, really real, was almost overwhelming. I was angry, yes, but not at him. All my anger was reserved for Mary. When I looked at Sam, all I felt was . . .

  Was relief. I was so relieved to have him here that I could have cried.

  “Yeah, see, I want to believe you care about that sort of thing, but you know what’s uncomfortable for no good reason? Lying there bleeding on everything while your asshole girlfriend walks away to ‘protect you.’” Sam gave me a sharp look, anger and recrimination in his eyes. “I would have come with you. You didn’t have to do this—any of this—alone.”

  “I know you would have,” I whispered. “That’s why I couldn’t let you.”

  Leonard Cunningham, presumptive heir to the modern Covenant of St. George, had been there when one of his underlings had put a bullet in Sam’s head. He’d been there when the bullet ricocheted against bone, unable to deal with fūri skeletal density. That meant that—if it happened again—he’d be packing something with more power. The Covenant watches. The Covenant listens. The Covenant, slow and hidebound as it seems, learns. Leonard would kill Sam as soon as look at him. Sooner, if he had a sniper available.

  Sam shook his head. “That wasn’t just your choice.”

  “Your grandmother needed you.”

  “You needed someone.”

  “I had Mary.”

  “I’ve done some research since we split up. Having Mary isn’t much better than being on your own.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Every kind of ghost has its own limitations. For Mary, those limitations take the form of her connection to the crossroads. I couldn’t ask her for much of anything, because the crossroads might interpret that as my starting to offer a bargain—and while the crossroads ghosts act on the side of the people who go down to make deals, the crossroads themselves are a lot less charitable. They would chew me up and spit me out, and laugh the whole time. As the youngest member of the current generation, I was the one she had the most leeway around, because she was still, until I passed her to someone else, my babysitter. As soon as Verity or Shelby got pregnant, I’d lose that rarified status, and I’d see Mary as often as anyone else did, which wasn’t nearly often enough.

  Sam sighed. “I just wish you hadn’t gone. And I wish you were happy to see me.”

  “What?” I blinked at him. “Sam . . . I’m so happy to see you I don’t know how to put it into words.”

  “Really? Because you sure aren’t acting like—”

  Whatever else he’d been about to say was lost as I did the only thing that made sense: I stepped closer and kissed him again. This time, I was the one pressing my hands against the sides of his face, tangling my fingers in the short hair that limned the edges of his cheekbones, making them easier to find. This time, I was the one pressing myself forward, trying to close all the distance between us, to render it irrelevant.

  Something snaked around my waist: his tail, grabbing me and pulling me closer still. I didn’t resist. He was holding me, and I was holding him, and for a moment, the world almost made sense. This was something I could do. This was something I could understand.

  He broke away, hands still on my shoulders and tail still around my waist, and asked, in a tone that broke my heart a little, “Does this mean I can stay?”

  I forced myself to smile. “It means I may never let you go,” I said, and kissed him again, and prayed—yes, prayed—that I wasn’t about to fuck this up.

  Fourteen

  “Love is love. If anybody tries to tell you your love’s not worth having, shoot them in the kneecaps a couple of times. It won’t change their minds, but it’ll make you feel better.”

  –Frances Brown

  The smaller of two bedrooms in a shitty company apartment five miles outside of Lakeland, Florida

  SAM DIDN’T UNTWINE HIS tail from around my waist until we were standing in my bedroom with the door soundly shut behind us. Only then did he let me go, take a quick, assessing look around, and sit down on the bed, folding his hands in his lap and looking at me gravely. My heart did an odd stuttering sidestep, leaving me frozen.

  “Mary said I needed to come because you wouldn’t let her call for me,” he said. “She said you didn’t ask, and that meant there was no
obligation, but that she was worried about you. Why was she worried about you?”

  I couldn’t guess from looking at him how much Mary had—or hadn’t—elected to share. He might be testing me, making sure I’d tell him the truth. Or he might be offering me an out. I could downplay the cabal and the accidents, make it sound like Mary was just worried about how isolated I was, and . . .

  And I’d be lying to him. I didn’t want to lie to him. I wanted to hold him and let him tell me it was all going to be okay, even if we both knew it wasn’t going to be. I wanted him to be the one who lied to me.

  “Remember how I sometimes set things on fire by touching them, even when I don’t mean to?” I asked.

  Sam nodded stiffly. The last thing he’d seen me set on fire was the big tent at his family’s carnival.

  “I can’t do that anymore.”

  “What?” He frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because it turns out it’s not good for me. I could hurt myself channeling magic that way. I met a cabal of people who know how to use magic safely, and they’re teaching me. I mean, I guess they’re teaching me. I haven’t actually learned much yet, except for how not to set things on fire all the time.”

  “I thought you wanted to stop setting things on fire.”

  “I did! I do. I just . . .” I shook my head. “It feels like something’s missing. It’s weird. I understand why random pyrotechnics aren’t a good thing. I guess I assumed that if I gave that up, I’d get something else in return. Maybe that comes later.”

  “So why did Mary tell me you needed me here?”

  “She’s been around a long time. She knew my grandfather. He was a magic-user. I inherited it from him. I guess she worries. She doesn’t want these people to take advantage of me, and she wanted me to have some backup.” I took a deep breath. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Weird shit’s been happening in the Park lately.”

  Sam tilted his head. “Weird shit? Like what?”

  “Like a deep fryer exploded and nearly burned a woman to death. Like a parade float collapsed today, and a bunch of people actually died.” Again, the image of Andrea and her missing face flashed behind my eyes. I shuddered. “It’s not good. It’s not right. Lowryland is obsessive about safety. If they get a reputation for hurting people, they’ll wind up shutting down. I don’t even know if they’ll be open tomorrow. Something’s wrong.”

  “Then we’ll fix it.” Sam stood, putting his hands on my upper arms and looking at me solemnly. “I’m here now. I’m not leaving again. You don’t get to send me away.”

  “I could run.” I tried to make my voice seem light, casual even. I failed.

  Sam wasn’t buying it. His expression darkened, and he said, “You got one freebie. You already used it up. If you run away from me again, I’m tracking you down and looking at you sadly until you agree to stop.”

  “What, not shaking me?”

  “We both know that wouldn’t be cool, and it’d just give you an excuse to try to kick my ass. I have better things to do with my girlfriend than have superhero fights.” Sam paused before adding thoughtfully, “Although that could be cool. We should put that on the list for later.”

  “There’s going to be a later?”

  The corner of Sam’s mouth curled upward. “I sure hope so,” he said, and kissed me.

  I was filthy, sticky with sweat and smoke and residue from the parade fire, which had smelled chemical and foul thanks to the burning plastic of the artificial trees. None of that mattered. Sam kissed me like he’d been starving since I’d walked away from him and I was the first meal he’d been offered in all that time. His hands moved to cup my ass, fingers splayed to give him the best possible grip.

  I pulled away. He looked hurt.

  “Did I—”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said, and was relieved to watch the glimmers of worry disappear from his eyes. “These clothes are gross. Mind if I take them off?”

  Sam looked surprised for a moment. Then he grinned. “Not if you don’t,” he said.

  We stripped quickly, both of us, and there was nothing erotic or enticing about it: we were two people getting naked as fast as we could. Sam got out of his jeans while I was still untying my shoes, and “helped” by unfastening my bra with his tail, looking innocent all the while. I was laughing too hard to say anything about it, and kept laughing as I stepped out of my shoes and yoga pants. Then I straightened, laughter stilling, and looked at him. He looked back.

  It was strange seeing him without a canvas sky behind him, without the sounds of the midway jangling quietly in the distance. He was a beautiful man. He always had been, although it had taken me a while to see it. When we’d first met, I’d been the stranger in his family’s carnival, the threat to his way of life, and he’d reacted accordingly. I knew now that he was just a protective person. He’d been taking care of his own. Somehow, somewhere along the line, I had joined that list, and I was so grateful, and so afraid of everything that could imply.

  He stepped closer, raising one hand to rest his fingertips against my cheek. The heat coming off his skin made me shiver, but in a good way.

  “We don’t have to do this,” he said. “I didn’t come here because I wanted to get laid.”

  “I know,” I said, and kissed him again, and conversation was over for a while.

  The first time—the only time—we’d been together like this, we’d been standing at the edge of the end of the world, and we had gone in knowing we might not get another shot: that we were attempting to put paid to everything our relationship was and might have been in a single hour. There hadn’t been time to slow down or to explore. There hadn’t been time to admire. We had that time now, with morning miles away and both of us carnival-trained into silence, which meant my overprotective roommates wouldn’t come charging in to save me.

  For the first time in a long time, there was nothing I felt like I needed to be saved from. I was exactly where I wanted to be.

  Sam looked me up and down, appreciation and eagerness in his eyes, and I didn’t move, giving him the opportunity to change his mind. After a moment, he paused, and frowned.

  “Annie? You okay?” A faint blush spread across the visible part of his cheeks. “Is it the furry thing? I can . . . y’know, stop . . .”

  “You’d be dead if you were human,” I said, and stepped toward him, closing the last little gap between us. There was a fine sheen of fur on his chest, where a human man would have had wiry hair, and it tickled pleasantly, making me press myself even closer. I reached up and traced the whisper-thin outline of the scar on his forehead. It was barely visible. Sadly for me, I knew exactly where to look. “Pow, right in the head, and you’d be dead. No more Sam. No more asshole monkey throwing me around the flying trapeze. The furry thing didn’t bother me before you got shot. Now? I wouldn’t care if you never stopped again. All I want you to do is stay alive.”

  “I could say the same thing to you,” he whispered, tail snaking around my waist and pulling tight. There was no way for me to get away without hurting him.

  I didn’t want to get away. “So keep me alive,” I said, and kissed him hard.

  He responded by grabbing my ass again, this time using the combined leverage of tail and palms to boost me up off the floor. I wrapped my legs around him, holding myself in place, and stayed there as we fell onto the bed, kissing each other hard all the while.

  The kissing went on for quite some time, accompanied by a certain measure of groping as we got familiar with one another again—and in some cases, for the first time, since we didn’t need to worry about a Covenant strike team or Sam’s grandmother bursting in at any moment. Heavy petting with someone who essentially had four hands was a whole new experience for me. For most people, I would imagine.

  Sam pulled away slightly, and asked, “Condom?”

  I blinked at him, dazed and slig
htly out of synch with myself, before I replied, “In the bedside table. For emergencies.” Not that I’d been counting on anything like this happening, but the best way to wind up in a bad situation is to be unprepared for all eventualities.

  “Cool,” he said, and kissed me again, and we toppled past the point of no return.

  * * *

  When I was a kid, on the rare occasions when Verity had treated me like a sister, instead of like some sort of weird stranger who lived in her house for some reason, we’d had a few slumber parties. Just her and me and my cousin Elsie, and later, when she’d started feeling secure enough in her ability not to read random minds to travel, my cousin Sarah. We’d all sit up all night eating popcorn and watching scary movies and talking about whatever seemed important—which was, quite frequently, sex.

  I’ll never forget those nights, the four of us and the occasional mouse sitting in the dark living room, talking about things that were too adult for me, but which I’d wanted to hear anyway. I’d wanted to hear everything, to devour it all and make it a part of me. I’d never said much. There wasn’t really anything for me to contribute, and I hadn’t wanted to remind Verity of how young I was, or give her a good reason to send me away.

  “Sex with therianthropes must be amazing,” Verity had sighed, sweet sixteen and dreaming constantly of being kissed, and I’d been thirteen, already inclined to hate her, but yearning for her approval all the same. It was a weird, toxic brew that I shared with younger siblings all over the world, and the only antidote was time.

  Elsie, who had been the most experienced of the lot of us, having actually kissed a girl before the end of the school year, had looked at her blankly and asked, “Why?”